The Great Unravel, page 22
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
Cram and Henry looked at each other.
Henry made a motion as if to grab someone and wrap them up.
Cram made a motion toward his legs as if to say, “Good luck with that, fine sir.”
Henry nodded. He carefully lowered Cram to sitting on the ground. He rushed forward, grabbed the occupant of the chair, circled his arms with one hand, and got his other over the mouth.
It was like grabbing straw. The boy (it was a boy) was skin and bone. He did not struggle.
Henry turned the boy about on the stool. It was the worst juicing he had seen yet. The grayshot olive eyes were almost completely clouded through, and the black veins formed almost a cobweb effect over every visible inch of his skin.
The boy offered no resistance, only stared up at Henry, mouth open. His tongue was made of metal.
A terrible juicing, an artificial extension to a withered tongue. Henry pulled his hand away. “You’re Evram Hale, aren’t you?”
The boy nodded.
“Ruby sent me.”
A wide smile split the boy’s face.
Foomp.
CHAPTER 29
Cry me, old river
Sit with me and weep
For the Company drowned me
Full nine fathoms deep
—Benzene Yards work song
The pipe running along the crawl space thrummed next to her, and Ruby imagined its innards—some strange chem or gas or whatnot—speeding along to who knows where. Avid led them, and Ruby had no choice but to trust her. The young reeve had said they should follow the pipe, and so that was what they were doing.
Being near Avid helped Ruby stay changed. And it wasn’t just that it was impossible to lose yourself in your disguise because your subject was crawling through an air shaft three feet in front of you. No, it was something about her fire. Avid did not doubt. She didn’t struggle with demons. She had pledged herself to the service of her country, and that was that. Ruby had no illusions. Avid would turn on them in a heartbeat if she thought it would be better for England. Didn’t Ruby have her own priorities? She tried to focus on the other girl’s purity of purpose and drive away the fear for Henry and Cram that ate at her belly.
Avid froze. Underneath them came the now familiar tread of a juiced patrol. Avid waited until the sound faded, and then she fiddled with a latch on the “floor” of the crawl space, opened it, and stuck her head down through.
After a moment she hauled her head back up. “This is it,” she whispered. “All clear.”
They dropped down into the passageway. As they had kept climbing upward, the yards had gotten even more posh. Gone were the peeling wallpaper and knotholed wood of the manufactory rooms. They were at the end of a hall, in front of a stained glass window. Prosperous scenes of chemystral discovery and human progress filled its panes, stark against the night outside. The plush, expensive rugs masked the sound of their passage.
The corridor was empty and quiet, save for the far-off ever-present hum of the yards.
Avid motioned them over to the last door on the right. It was deep mahogany and boasted a vivid carving of a dolphin soaring through the air above the water.
They gathered around it.
Avid knocked softly.
“Enter,” came a muffled reply.
Avid opened the door and ushered Ruby and Athena in, then followed them and closed the heavy door with a thunk.
The room was completely paneled in walnut. On the mantel above the empty fireplace hung a painting of a pack of hunting hounds, coursing down a stag. The stag was at bay, but two of the hounds were down and bleeding. A fresh breeze wandered in, fluttering the lace curtains of a window looking down on some square or another. A porcelain tea set sat unused on the sideboard.
An overstuffed chair faced the fire.
In it sat Wisdom Rool.
He was battered and bruised, his thick haystack of hair splayed out at all angles. He wore the remains of his reeve uniform, though it, like him, looked as if it had been dragged for miles along the sooty cobblestones of UnderTown. Heavy antimony chains bound his chafed wrists and arms into the thick wall behind the chair, as did a stout collar about his neck. Just out of reach, as if to mock him, sat a bowl of beautiful stone fruits.
Rool looked up, and the scarred skin around his desolate eyes crinkled, unmarred by any sign of juicing. “Well. Two Avid Wakes.” He looked over at Athena. “That must have been confusing for you, Evallina Puddledump, of the Virginia Puddledumps.”
Athena smiled grimly. “What can I say? I have been broadening my tactical reach. Perhaps you should think about brushing up, too? It cannot have been part of your intricate game to have been chained up and put on the shelf. You seem to have lost control of your people, your city, and your colonies.”
Rool looked down at his chains. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” He peered at Avid and Ruby. “Though apparently one of the prayers I threw into the wind has come back to me in the nick.”
Ruby permitted herself a small smile. She nodded over at Avid. “Are you calling her a prayer, sir?”
Rool’s eyebrows rose. “Well, whichever one of you is Ruby Teach. Though finding an Avid in my back pocket is a pleasant surprise as well. Whose uniform is that? A giant’s?”
“Ward Dove’s,” said Ruby.
“I hope she gave it to you willingly.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“Well, my friends, have you come to view my discomfort or to free me?”
“That depends. Will you help us?”
Rool smiled emptily. “Of course. Dr. Swedenborg has exceeded the authority granted to him. He has refused direct orders from the crown, forcibly taken the will of reeve, soldier, and citizen, and truly has just been entirely unpleasant. He must be put down. I would hope that we could postpone our own assorted disagreements until a date where we have dealt with this threat most dire.”
Ruby summoned her finger picks, and she unlocked Rool’s manacles.
Rool straightened his filthy uniform, glanced about, then tore off the chair’s hardwood armrest. He tested the heft of his newfound club. “Very well,” he said.
Athena hid a smile.
Ruby found herself grinning. For once she wholeheartedly trusted the man.
He grabbed a stone fruit from the table and bit into it, his eyes flicking to the ottermaton on Ruby’s shoulder. “Let’s be off. I assume you didn’t come to see me for a stone fruit.” He took another bite. “Though, please, help yourself. They are quite delicious.”
Avid led Athena, Ruby, and Rool up one more flight of stairs and then through a trapdoor onto the roof. The great mass of the Lid loomed above, and below to the west lay block after block of UnderTown. A blast of hot air brushed Ruby’s neck, and she turned toward the center of the box, to the heart of the matter.
“Science,” muttered Athena, and Ruby could not but agree. Like a great sea coral, like something living, a wall of twisting pipes, tubes, passages, and walkways lay before them, blocking their path. She fingered the hilt of her sword. “In there?”
“It’s the only way. This labyrinth roofs the entire main floor and twists even up into the Lid.” Avid was breathing heavily, her eyes wide. “He’s in there, at the center.”
Evie chittered in Ruby’s ear. Is she all right?
Ruby had seen the other girl like this once before, in the Swede’s lab back at Fort Scoria. “Avid, what happened at the fort? With you and the Swede?”
Avid set her jaw. “He was experimenting on folk long before you arrived, Sweetling. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Ladies,” said Wisdom Rool, “if you could stop forgetting we are on the same side, might I draw your attention to something?”
“What is it?” said Athena.
Rool put his finger in the air, as if he were testing the wind. “Listen.”
“What?” said Ruby. The yards had gone quiet; no sound of works or machinery echoed through the air. Then she heard it: a wave of shuffling feet and hoarse breathing coming upon them from the rear.
A hand popped out of the trapdoor, black tendrils twisting about a thickly muscled forearm. Then another hand, then the thick, soot-stained head of a grinning juiced blacksmith. The four of them moved as one, sprinting back to the opening, forcing the man back down into the hole.
But there was nowhere to force him to.
The hallway below was filled with the Juiced, shoulder to shoulder so they could barely move. One of them, a thick woman with blackened teeth, climbed up the blacksmith’s back and grabbed Ruby’s wrist with a grip of iron. The woman yanked so hard it felt as if Ruby’s arm were coming off, and she fell forward.
“Ruby!” yelled Athena, her face frozen in fear, a bespectacled Juiced hanging from her neck.
Wisdom Rool wrapped his great arm around Ruby’s waist and pulled, and she screamed now in earnest as he hauled not only her but also three more Juiced who had grabbed her arm onto the roof.
They were everywhere, swarming out of the trap every which way, and every second there were more of them, twisting, tearing, grabbing, pulling the five of them back toward the trapdoor.
The woman with the teeth hadn’t let go, and Wisdom Rool had ten juiced workers hanging from him. For every one he shook off, two took its place. The woman had Ruby by one ankle and then the smith grabbed her other and together they dragged her remorselessly along the roof back toward the door. Evie had wrapped herself onto the smith’s massive forearm and was tearing it ragged with her teeth and claws, but he paid her no mind. Ruby struggled. She kicked. She cursed, but nothing worked.
The trapdoor was now so full of juiced workers that they couldn’t get out of it. Just a twisting mass of reaching hands and grinning faces, reaching out toward her.
Then they stopped.
They let go. They cocked their heads.
And just like that across the rooftop they turned their backs on Ruby and her friends and silently filed away, without even a final glance.
Evie planted herself in front of Ruby and chittered triumphantly as one by one the Juiced calmly disappeared down the hole.
Ruby’s arms and legs burned. Her breath came in great gouts. She felt as if she had just towed the Thrift into port by swimming.
Next to her Athena pulled herself to her knees. “I suppose we have some friend to thank for that.”
Rool spit out something onto the slate roof. Ruby didn’t want to know what it was.
Avid was back staring at the walkways. “In,” she said. “Before he gets control of them again.”
Ruby couldn’t argue with that.
Foomp.
Cram pulled the speaking horn a bit closer and tried to sound as raspy as he could. “I repeat. All workers, and soldiers, and reeves, and anybody else, leave the intrudies and, well, just go your ways. Leave the yards. And when you’re out, cut your bandages off, and help your neighbor do that, too, and take this voice outa your ears. Er, signing off, and you know, be good, be free, and Van Huffridge for queen!” He turned to Evram. “You think that’s enough?”
Evram watched him as if he were a mildly interesting beetle.
Cram shifted onto his other elbow and dug it into the big desk till it hurt a little. It took his mind off the things that he couldn’t feel: his legs, his back. “Professor, the intruders Evram was speaking of, that’s milady and the Ferret we’re thinking?”
“And us, Cram. Though it doesn’t sound as if the Swede knows we’re down here.”
Cram tried not to glance guiltily at the speaking horn. “I think he might now. But can we get to milady and the Ferret? Can’t be of much use stuck down here with all these sparkstones.”
They looked at each other for a moment.
“Evram?” they said together.
The juiced boy stared, kicking his feet idly.
Henry cleared his throat. “Er, could you tell us how to get to the Apex Laboratory?”
Evram pointed.
Bolted to the brick wall among the tubes and traveling straight as an arrow up through a hole in the ceiling far above was a metal ladder.
Cram sighed.
He looked down at his legs.
Foomp.
Henry looked at him.
“I don’t think I can, Professor.” He moved his legs around. They were sluggish; he could barely feel them. The bandages squished at his back. More blood. He didn’t tell Henry, but he reckoned that if the yarrow wasn’t there, he might be hardly moving at all. Or in so much pain he couldn’t think to move.
It was hard to look at the professor’s face. “Cram, I won’t leave you.”
Suddenly the full weight of the thing hit him. He was a bloody pile of bones on the floor in the middle of tinker country. Far, far from safety. And he was slowing the professor down. He put on his best confidence face, the one he used for stealing pies. “You have to keep moving, Professor. They need you, I bet. I think I can make it out the way we came if I start real soon.” It was a lie, for certain, but no use telling Henry that.
The other boy shook his head fiercely. “Cram, no.”
He changed the subject. “Professor. Henry. I been thinking. You know what you gave the reeve out there by the water? When she was going to set fires and have a go at the juice shops, using the sparkstones as kindling?”
Henry looked at him. Then he looked behind him at the thousands upon thousands of sparkstones. “Yes, Cram. Yes, I do.”
“And do you think you could rig something up so that could happen here?”
“Yes. I could. But someone would need to spark it. To set it off.”
Cram waited. Sometimes it was better to let folk work through something they didn’t want to hear.
Henry got it.
Before he could say anything, Cram said, “You know it needs to happen. We need to wipe this place off the map. No matter what happens when you get up that ladder, this can’t be going on anymore.” His eyes strayed to Evram, sitting at his desk staring into space. “That can’t be going on anymore.”
Henry nodded. He held the tears back, which was really good, ’cause Cram didn’t need to be starting any waterworks himself.
The professor laid all his remaining bottles and such out in front of him.
He began.
Foomp.
Athena tried to keep her sense of direction, but two minutes into the labyrinth she was completely lost. They twisted and turned, up stairways and through crawl spaces, down ramps, and under clusters of tubes, following Avid ever deeper into the dark web of pipes and walkways that hung from the Lid. It thrummed with some kind of vibrating pulse up through her feet. And occasionally, just at the edge of her vision, she thought she saw things . . . moving. She shook her head to clear it. She was going mad. Oh, for a bloodless tea party or to be bored out of her mind at a harvest ball.
Adventuring was starting to get to her.
For example, Athena tried desperately to keep her mind off the fact that occasionally, through the grating of a particularly low-hanging walkway, she could see that they were hanging in space, far, far above the main floor of the yards.
So she put her attention to other things, things that had been eating at her.
“Ruby,” she muttered.
Her friend ducked under a crossbeam and then glanced at her with Avid’s eyes. “Yes, Athena?”
“You are Ruby, right?”
Avid’s eyes rolled in a particularly Ruby way. “Barnacles, Athena—”
“All right, good.” She lowered her voice even further. “I’m worried about our other companion.”
“You mean me?” Wisdom Rool rumbled from behind her.
“No, not you. Though someone should put a bell on you, you move so bedamned quiet.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean—”
Avid stopped in the middle of the passageway and turned about. “I can hear you, you know.”
Athena sighed. “The whole reeve superhearing thing is just not fair.”
Rool chuckled.
“That goes for you, too, Lord Captain. And yes, I am worried, Avid. I am worried that you might be losing your grip.”
“My grip?”
“Ever since we have entered this labyrinth you have been, well, twitchier.”
Just at the edge of her vision, just beyond a hedge of pipes, something was moving. Stalking them. “You haven’t said two words out loud, but you are mumbling to yourself all the time, and you must admit you and Ruby do not have the best history. I need to know what your intentions are.”
“What my intentions are?”
It moved again, closer this time. Athena fought the urge to pull her sword from its sheath. Play it out, she told herself. Wait for it. Let it think you are arguing.
Ruby cleared Avid’s throat. “Is this really the time, Athena?”
“We are going into battle, Ruby! It is exactly the time.”
Avid swallowed what looked like a healthy chunk of rage. “After I saved you, after I showed you the lord captain, you question my—”
It struck.
With a hiss of escaping chem, a worm lanced in from between a set of tubes. It was as wide as Athena’s waist, its metal underskeleton covered in viscous goo, and it moved as if it had been shot from a cannon.
Aksam cut it in half.
It fell to the walkway floor, quivering and hissing.
“Neat trick,” said Rool.
Athena smiled. “Thank—”
The other one struck.
From above, so quickly, before she could bring her blade back up, and it slammed onto her face, strong oily flaps whipping around the back of her head. She couldn’t get it off. She dropped her sword and wrapped her hands around it, and something was crawling on her arm; but the worm wouldn’t come off her face and—
—she took a deep breath
—and she knew as soon as she did it that she was lost, as the worm breathed sweet beautiful calming vapor down into her and it started to take all the fear and anger and shame away.
