They ran, walked, stumbled, and then ran again in gasping silence, with no extra breath for words. Cram with his bag, Athena and Henry, and her father behind, whistling like a chem engine. Ahead, ever in front of them, trotted the big mercenary carrying Ruby’s mother. Her mother! Ruby’s hand ached. She tried to find the emptiness the Reeve taught, to stay calm, but too many thoughts banged through her head, threatening to spill out of her ears and onto the forest floor. The woman had abandoned her when she was a baby, but not before coding Ruby’s blood with a set of plans for a horrific machine. While Ruby was prisoner of the Reeve, Dr. Emmanuel Swedenborg had harvested her blood daily and experimented upon it until he had solved the puzzle and assembled the plans. He had built the machine, which he had promptly used to drain the arcane essence from his apprentice, Ruby’s friend Evram Hale, rendering him a terrible husk in the process. All of it the fault of Ruby’s mother. What kind of monster creates a thing to suck the life out of others to begin with? And then hides the plans in her own daughter?

  But was it her mother’s fault? The thoughts ravaged Ruby. She, not her mother, had convinced Evram to help her. Ruby, not Marise, had commanded the brilliant gearhorse Sleipnir to defend her to the death.

  That guilt burned: a pain far worse than the simple ache of running.

  They passed in and out of the forest, winding through abandoned farmsteads and burned-out villages. The war Rool had warned her about had finally come: the French the anvil, the English the hammer, and the colonists ground to flinders in between. Human shapes appeared a few times on far hillsides, watching them pass, but quickly ducking for cover, taking care of their own skins. Every so often Ruby caught a glimpse of Jabalís trailing behind, working to obscure the companions’ clumsy tracks. Mostly, though, it seemed as if their little pack were running across the ruined landscape utterly alone. These Jabalís knew their work.

  But—Ruby knew too well—so did the Reeve.

  And worse, pecking at the back of her mind, were Wisdom Rool’s last words to her: You are a wild wind, a fire in the field. Destruction follows you wherever you go. Was it following her now? She glanced about at the struggling troupe. Cram, wrestling with his huge bag, seemed terribly exposed. Would a reeve arrow pick him off in an ambush designed for Ruby? Henry, limping, caught her eye and gave her a game smile. She tried to smile back. Now that she had found her friends, would destruction come for them as well?

  Daylight slipped away and burned up the worry with it, leaving only the need to stay upright and take one more step. Ruby, Cram, Henry, Athena, and Ruby’s father formed themselves into a stumbling, gasping many-legged beast, taking turns holding one another up.

  Finally the big Jabalí carrying Ruby’s mother followed the hunters down a slope into a deep dead-end thicket. They followed after, too tired to speak. A small passage wound into the brake. On the other side, one of Alla Ferra’s lieutenants, the taller of the two, Vera, stood at the foot of a small cliff, next to a high waterfall that drained into a pool filled with water lilies. The thorns ran in a circle from the rock all the way around the pond like a high garden wall. One by one they ducked stumbling past the girl through the curtain of water.

  When Ruby’s turn came, the girl bowed to her. “Hello again, Ruby Teach. Welcome to our little hunting lodge.”

  Ruby nodded her thanks and ducked her head through the falls. On the other side lay a large, high cave smelling of sweat and warm leather. Most of Los Jabalís were already there, sleeping or sitting exhausted, drying themselves around hand-size chemystral furnaces.

  Alaia led the entire group into an empty side cavern, lit and heated by another of the little tinker stoves. Skins of fresh spring water lay beside a small pile of pemmican. The lumbering cook followed Ruby in, still sweating and breathing like a bellows. Such a feat of strength. That man had carried Marise Fermat the day long. He held Ruby’s gaze for a moment and smiled, as if he somehow knew her. He turned away to guide Ruby’s mother to a seat on the stone and then disappeared into the darkness, presumably to pass out. Alaia turned to Henry, of all people. “The captain thought you might want some privacy.”

  “Thank you, Alaia,” Henry said.

  The girl disappeared, and suddenly, strangely, terrifyingly, they were truly alone.

  Her father came first, enveloping her in a suffocating hug, then, Cram, and Athena, and Henry. They all came together, holding on to arms, legs, whatever they could reach. No laughter, no joyful howls, just still, quiet breaths.

  After a moment, when she could trust herself to speak, Ruby said, “Well, I like all of you, too.”

  They untangled themselves and sat around the wee furnace. They all were staring at her, full of gentle smiles and patient nods. Ruby didn’t know where to look or what to say.

  “You saved me.” She tried. “You came for me.” There was nothing past that.

  Ruby’s mother leaned forward. Her voice rang hollow from inside the mask. “I hope this is a better time to introduce myself. I— It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Then there was that. Ruby’s belly tightened. How to speak to this woman? What to say? How to begin? Did she even want to? She couldn’t. The words would not come.

  Athena was watching her, concern plain on her face. She jumped into the silence and glanced innocently at Henry. “Ruby, did you know that since you last saw him, someone in this room set a forest on fire?”

  And then the dam broke, and the stories tumbled out fast and furious, each more amazing than the last.

  “A giant beaver dam, I tell you!”

  “He climbed up into the balloon, of the flying house!”

  “She fought two of the beasts at once—”

  And the stories stretched out deep into the night, like a glittering river, until Ruby found herself offering her own as well: Swedenborg, and Corson, and the changing, how she had grown picks out of her own two hands and picked the lock of the Swede’s cage. She even told them about Sleipnir. And Evram. These were her people. They were the ones who should know. She was deathly tired of secrets.

  They talked and talked until one by one they fell into the deep, sweet sleep of friendship renewed.

  It was only after she was certain everyone was dead to the world that Ruby slipped away.

  Ruby found a shoulder-high rock shelf at the end of a small passage at the back of the cave, past sleeping Jabalís strewn across the floor like piles of wolf cubs. The drawn-down light of the furnaces cast a wavering blue glow across the rough stone of the passage. She hauled herself up onto the shelf with aching shoulders and quivering legs. It reminded her of her windowsill at Fort Scoria. She didn’t know whether to be comforted or horrified. She had crawled into that window night after night, huddled against the bars, staring down at freedom coursing through the river valley far below.

  She pulled the otter out of her rucksack. It was brass, a gift from Evram, made before the Swede had sucked him dry of tinker’s energy and so much more. She had found it, neglected, on a table in front of him, where he sat wizened and drained by Swedenborg’s infernal machine. Its eyes were closed, and it did not move, lifeless as the beautiful gearhorse from which its parts had been salvaged. She held it to her chest as a toddler would a toy. What should she do? Where should she go?

  A rock crunched in the passage, and a bearlike shape lurked below her perch.

  “Permission to come aboard?” her father murmured.

  She sighed. “Granted.”

  She tucked the otter back into her pack. She didn’t know why, but she wanted it to be hers and hers alone, at least just now.

  Wayland Teach climbed up next to her. He, too, had changed. He was rangier and quieter. The oakum and salt smell of him was gone, and instead, there was . . . what?

  “You smell like a pine forest,” she said. “Everything is different.”

  He nodded. “Always.” He reached for her tentatively, and she snuggled in.

  She wished it could have lasted forever.

  “You know, your mother—”

  “No. No.” Her mother had left her with her father when Ruby was barely a year old. Why was she here? Ruby did not know, and she tried to tell herself she did not care.

  Thankfully he said nothing more. They sat for a bit. The quiet of the cave was deafening.

  “We’re running tomorrow,” she said. It was obvious and stupid, but it was a safe thing to say, a certain thing in a sea of chaos.

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  “And then the day after that and the day after that.”

  He paused. “Probably.”

  Ruby levered herself up to look at him. “What happens when they find us?”

  “They won’t.”

  “You can’t know that. I’ve spent months with these people. They will never stop—”

  “But Rool helped you escape, didn’t he? And this Swede”—his mouth twisted with anger—“he has what he wanted from you, doesn’t he? Would he really—”

  “It’s not just them. It’s me. Rool said—”

  “We’ve gotten away from him.”

  “Let me finish. He said that I was a spark, a spur, that I created mayhem.” She took in a shuddering breath. “I think he is right. Even if Rool and the others are not coming for me, someone else will, and—” And then who would be the next person to get hurt?

  “Aruba”—her father took her hand and squeezed it so hard that it hurt a bit—“I—I want to tell you that I can make it better again. That we are only a stone’s throw from happiness. That all we need to do is push through one more day, and that we’ll find sweet fairies and Captain Faustus’s treasure and a secret port with gentle tides and the ripest of breadfruit and, and a cute little cottage with a proper family.” He touched her finger, right above the spot where the spike had come out. “But I can’t. What I can promise you is that, by Providence, I will stand against wave and thunder, against reeve and beast, so that we may never be parted again. If you want to talk, talk. If you do not, do not. You know what you have been through, and it is enough for me that you are here.”

  Ruby tucked back into her father’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

  For the first time in many months she could go to sleep feeling safe. Her father’s arms were the definition of it, a warm castle wall against the threatening world. But it was a lie, wasn’t it? It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy they had found her. She was. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel safe with him and even somewhat whole again. She did. But her father and her friends didn’t understand that monsters—forces of nature, demons in human form—were coming after her. Even if Rool was happy letting her go, Edwina Corson would never rest until she found Ruby. Nor would Avid or the other cadets: Gideon Stump and the Curtsie twins. In their eyes and—she had to be honest—in her own she had betrayed them. Betrayed their order. Betrayed their trust.

  And what of Emmanuel Swedenborg? The very thought of him had her stomach twisting in fear. He was a true monster. Worse by far than the reeves, who at least were loyal to their country. The Swede had relished Ruby’s pain, but more, he had been willing to spend her life like pocket shillings in exchange for knowledge and power. He had done worse to Evram. Ruby had stolen the Swede’s prized journal for Rool, and she was certain his pride could not bear her escape and her defiance. He would be coming for her.

  She breathed in her father’s piney, earthy musk. Felt the rough leather of his buckskins on her cheek. She took care to catalog it all, so she could think back on it when she no longer had it. What Ruby understood, now more than ever, was that this was her family. And she couldn’t let anything else happen to them.

  The best thing in the world for them? Was to be nowhere near her.

  After Teach’s breathing had settled into deep sleep, she counted to fifty and then slowly, ever so slowly, eased herself out of his arms.

  Ruby cleaved to the bouldered shadows on the wall. The crash of the waterfall at the cave mouth masked the sound of her slipping into the pool, and her reeve training made it a simple matter to hold her breath long enough to dart among the rocks in the darkness of the lake bottom until she surfaced at the other end of the grove, far from the view of the sentries.

  She pulled herself, dripping, out into a bank of reeds in the shallows. Once she was through the thorn brake, any direction would do. But where would she go? She had to put enough distance between her and the Jabalís that they would cut her loose and keep running from the Reeve. Ruby was fairly certain she could keep ahead of her own crew. As soon as she was out of hearing, she could start running. The half-moon filled the clearing with mad shadows. Rocks and gnarled trees hunkered down like elderly giants, and she wove her way between them until she reached the edge of the thorn brake.

  “Going somewhere?”

  The voice stopped her short. There in the moonlight, back up against an ancient oak, sat the huge man who had carried her mother.

  Ruby brushed her palms on her pants, playing for time. “I might be.”

  “Looking for a companion?”

  “Not particularly.” Careful. Had this man suspected she would try to escape? But how? She had barely decided it for herself! “What are you doing here?”

  “I followed you.”

  Ruby took a step back. “You followed me? But you’re in front of me.”

  He grinned, teeth flashing in the shadows.

  Ruby cast her eyes about. There had to be other ways out of the clearing.

  He rose, slowly, arms out to reassure her. They were huge and muscled, and did nothing of the kind. “Looks like you might be stuck. You’re not big enough to kill me, and if you run, I call for the guard, and the Jabalís will be on your trail in moments.”

  “You think those are my only options?” She was bluffing. They were her only options. She shifted her weight to the balls of her feet, just in case he thought to grab her.

  “Use the world as it is, not as it should be.”

  The words rattled her down to her toes. “What did you say?”

  “I won’t, though. I won’t try to grab you.” He was messing about with something in his hands.

  Ruby tensed. Was it a weapon? She took a step back.

  “In fact, I promise I will not say a word if you decide to leave, just so long as you take a look at this first.” It was a tiny tinker’s furnace he was holding.

  What did she have to lose? “All right. What is it?”

  Light bloomed upward, casting shadows across the rough planes of his face.

  But not the mercenary’s face.

  It was Gwath.

  CHAPTER 4

  Friendship is like salt pork. If you find a wizened old piece in your pocket, count yourself lucky.

  —Precious Nel, Scourge of the Seven Seas

  “Gwaaaaaath!”

  That joyful noise might have echoed back to Fort Scoria if her old mentor’s hands, quick as ever, hadn’t covered Ruby’s mouth.

  Instead, what came out was a muffled kind of grrrrrfffff!

  He inched his hand away, wary, ready to quiet her again.

  She threw herself at him. It was a silent dance of pure animal joy, and for the next few moments she rotated back and forth between pummeling, hugging, pounding on the back, and more pummeling. The last she had seen him, he had been stabbed in the gut in a desperate midnight fight on the deck of the Thrift, guarding their retreat from Wisdom Rool. He was her teacher, her ally, her dearest friend, and Ruby had feared him slain.

  She finally beat herself out, and then flopped down in a heaving mass in front of him.

  The big man rubbed his shoulder appreciatively as he looked her up and down. “You’re stronger.”

  “And faster, too. And—” What? More . . . brutal? She filed that away for later and moved on. If anyone from the cave were looking for them, the stupid, sparkling grin on her face would have led the guards like a lantern, but she couldn’t get it to go away. “What happened? Where have you been? How did you escape? How did you find us? How did you get with Los Jabalís?” She clenched her fists. “Does anyone else know?”

  “Athena does.”

  “What? And she didn’t tell me?”

  “I told her to keep it a secret. She has apparently been excellent at that for a long time.”

  She waved away the distraction. “Doesn’t matter. What happened?”

  He crouched down next to her on the balls of his feet. “I kept Rool as busy as I could until you three had cast off from the ship.” He grimaced. “That man is . . . strong. I have never seen his like. At the end I had to fall over the side before he took me apart for true.”

  “But the water? You were wounded unto death before I ran—” Ruby blinked. The memory of that night grabbed her by the neck.

  Gwath shook his head. “I told you to go, Ruby. There is no shame in that.” He blew out his breath. “I swam.”

  “Across the bay? With a gut wound?!”

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t go back to the ship. I went to ground with the Da Rocha sisters at their fish shack on the docks. By the time I was healed you were gone”—he snapped his fingers—“spirited away by the Reeve. Dores Da Rocha heard about someone asking after you in the Shambles, and I tracked them down.” He waved his hands as if finishing a magic trick. “Los Jabalís. From there it was the matter of a quiet conversation (and a small mountain of coin) with Rafa, and Los Jabalís were eating better than they ever had.” His smile warmed her to her toes.

  But Ruby had run enough sharps with him. The smile was a diversion, a distraction. Anger stirred in her belly. She pulled at his cheek. “This disguise must take a long time to prepare. Do you use powder? Greasepaint?” She looked about. “And out in the woods, with no privacy to change—”

  The faintest flicker in his smile was the only giveaway. “We all must have our secrets, pirate queen.” And he reached out to ruff her hair.

 

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