The Great Unravel, page 6
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
“Quiet, Teach.” Greta raised a shape in her fist, its silhouette almost familiar. “It feels so good to say that. Oh, I have been biding my time, waiting for this moment.” The eye of the thing in her hand twinkled in the light of the doorway.
It was a small, terribly cute stuffed pony.
Ruby groaned, but it was muffled by the pony in her mouth. Greta Van Huffridge had been as good as her word. That infernal stuffed toy had been given to Ruby when the Bluestockings had decided to help her learn chemystry, and Ruby had given it to Greta when she escaped. Well, she had left it with Greta. In her mouth. While she was tied to a bed.
A few hard men and women in deep indigo cloth masks (Greta’s bore a set of freshly painted scales) had emerged from a concealed ladder and lowered Athena and Ruby down the pit to the chemystrally smoothed and hardened earthen floor. They had relieved them of their weapons, then trussed up Ruby and Athena in more greasy gray rope. A boil-covered man carrying a vicious-looking ax that matched the image on his mask said, “Welcome back,” and gave Ruby’s knot an extra yank. Another Bluestocking was a squat, tough woman with a badger on her mask, who turned a filigreed quartz lens over and over in her fingers. A few moments later Cram was lowered down to the bottom of the pit like a loaf of red crystal bread. Two of the guards stayed behind to reassemble the whole intricate trap, leaving Greta, the Ax, and the Badger. The three Bluestockings loaded Cram onto an iron cart and forged down the corridor, leading Ruby and Athena briskly down a narrow hallway.
Ahead of her, over Greta’s shoulder, Ruby could see Cram’s terrified face. He was not frozen in amber, like a fly, but some kind of goo inside kept him mostly immobile. He wiggled a finger at Ruby. She raised a hand back. Chem pots cast strange shadows across his face. Here she was again, neck deep in trouble and someone else suffering for her mistakes.
Ruby snuck a glance at Athena. No, Athen. She had to remember. Lord Athen Boyle. Since Ruby’s friends and Los Jabalís had found her, there had been no sign that anyone in the party thought Athena was a boy. But when she and Ruby had met, Athena had taken great pains to conceal her identity, and it was days after they had met before Ruby discovered it, and then only because Athena was gravely wounded. Here in Philadelphi, though, and in London and the rest of the world, for all Ruby knew, it was still Athen. The person in question strode forward, lost in concentration.
The cart rolled to a stop in front of a door. It was big. It was brass. The symbol of the Worshipful Order of Grocers was carved upon it: a roaring camel. For some reason that completely escaped Ruby, the Grocers thought it fierce. A tinny voice, like someone talking high into a pewter mug, came out of the camel’s mouth.
“Password, please.”
Greta puffed up. “I pass with olefiant gas.”
Athena snickered.
Greta threw her a look that could have skewered her to the wall. Heavy whirring and clanking sounded from deep inside the door, and it slowly opened, revealing at least a foot of thickness. Greta hustled them through and right past a boy with half his hair burned off. He held out a slate and chalk like a prayer.
“Journeywoman Scales, I need you to sign—”
“No time!” she called over her shoulder, hurrying down the hallway.
On this side of the door the halls were wider and well lit with soft blue tinker’s lamps instead of the cheap chem pots. Much in the Warren, however, had changed. The orderly classrooms, once filled with students and teachers studying chemystral science, now sat dormant and dark. Tables once littered with beakers and alembics lay stark and barren, sealed boxes stowed underneath. They passed one room where the tables now held neat lines of bedrolls. In another classroom the furniture had been pushed back against the wall. A tall man with a heavy, oiled black beard, his mask sporting a wagon, had lined up a squad of students to toss stone flasks at painted targets.
“What are they doing?” Ruby asked. Actually it came out more like “Waffa buh hooing?” but Greta seemed to understand.
“Training,” said Greta. “A chemyst can be the finest in the world, but it doesn’t matter a whit if she can’t actually hit something.”
Through her gag Athena asked, “Hooba dey frooingah?”
Greta nodded, a glint in her eye. “That is indeed the question.”
“No more chitchat, Van Huffridge,” said the Badger. She had a gruff, no-nonsense voice and a West Indies accent.
“It’s Journeywoman Scales, please, ma’am.”
The woman simply glared.
“Yes, ma’am.” Greta sighed, and she kept leading them down the hall.
Eyes and whispers followed them wherever they went, and Ruby’s pulse quickened. These preparations had nothing to do with her or Athena. The Warren was preparing for a fight. But with whom? Her thoughts raced back to alla Ferra’s chessboard. If they were fighting the French, why were they preparing in secret? Did that mean they were set to fight the crown? But why?
They were running before the storm, with no plan and no prospects. She had to seize control of the wheel before they were smashed upon the rocks.
They stopped at the end of a little side corridor at a depressingly familiar, featureless door. The only thing that stood out about it was the doorknob, an intricately carved stone imp, claws outstretched. The imp had been scrubbed clean, but it still held the faintest traces of red burned into the stone around its eyes. The last time she had seen that imp it had been clutching at her hands, dripping acid, and yelling, “Thief! Thief Here! Thief!”
Ruby mouthed a curse around the pony. Well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known that this was where they would end up.
Greta rapped sharply upon the door.
It opened immediately, and a big man poked his head out. It was hairless as an egg, and his mask bore no sigil.
“Pate, I have visitors for your mistress,” announced Greta.
Pate looked them up and down, eyes widening slightly as he recognized them. He nodded and then opened the door wide.
The silver bookshelf samovar still bubbled in the corner. The armoire still loomed against the wall. She sat at the table. She smiled, and the cracked paint crinkled around the fireplace symbol on her mask, but the smile promised nothing pleasant.
“Ruby Teach,” said Madame Hearth, “I have been waiting such a long time to see you again. Welcome back to the Warren.”
CHAPTER 7
The enemy of my enemy’s friend’s enemy is my friend. Wait. The enemy of my friend’s enemy is occasionally my— Oh, hang it. If it shoots at you, blow it to flinders with a cannon.
—Precious Nel, Scourge of the Seven Seas
Madame Hearth’s tea was just as terrible as Athena remembered.
She took a sip. After a moment of misery she was able to summon the will to offer “Delightful. Is this”—Arsenic? Rotted mushroom? Diseased cat?—“an herbal mixture of some kind?”
“Please don’t try to get on my good side, Journeyman Boyle. That ship has long since sailed. Tell me right now why the two of you are here.”
Even though the room was quite cool, Madame Hearth fanned herself vigorously with a fan the Athena of months ago would have found desperately unfashionable (a pattern of peacocks and abacuses, so very ten years ago). She was pleasantly surprised to find that she cared very little about the fashion of Madame Hearth’s fan or indeed about the opinion of Madame Hearth.
So Athena pointed at Cram in his jeweled prison, propped up against a far corner in what was most definitely a washtub. “I will say nothing until you release him.”
Hearth’s eyebrows arched, and icicles hung from her words. “This is not a Sunday market, Journeyman Boyle. We are not bargaining for potatoes. The three of you broke into my house, and I will hang that crystal, along with that boy, from a chandelier for a hundred years if you do not answer my question to my satisfaction this instant.”
Athena cast a glance at Ruby, who glared an unreadable message at her. The last time they had been in this room, Athena had been torn between duty to her father and the order and caring for this ferocious friend. And what had happened to Athena since? Well, for one, she was not so nearly attached to her pride.
She swallowed that pride and cast her eyes down at the floor. “Madame Hearth, forgive my outburst. I cannot speak for my companion, but one reason I am here is to apologize.”
Hearth started in surprise. “Apologize?”
“For defying your orders and”—she couldn’t resist— “eluding the pursuers you sent after us.”
“Well, you didn’t elude them as much as set up house in the tower of a seemingly immortal chemyst.”
“Touché, madame. Additionally, we would like to request passage through your Warren.”
The fan paused. “You wish to pass into Philadelphi?”
The question threw Athena for a moment.
Ruby stepped into the gap as smoothly as if shot from a musket.
“Madame, I would not like to apologize for my behavior. We have at our disposal a mercenary company, full of hardened clobberknockers, stashed in secret just outside your door.”
Hearth’s eyes hardened. “Do you now?”
“Oh, indeed, madame. And they are ready to move at a moment’s notice.” Ruby’s face went innocent. “They can be quite violent, you know. Very difficult to control.”
Hearth went quite still. “Teach, are you threatening me?”
Athena’s heart stopped, and her mind raced. Had they come all this way just to have Ruby get them thrown back into a Bluestocking cage? But then the images began to pop in her mind: the preparations they had witnessed on their trip to Hearth’s office. Before Ruby could stick a knife in their only chance, Athena lunged to interrupt.
“Hahahahaha, of course not, Madame Hearth.” She reached over to give Ruby what she hoped looked like a friendly squeeze on the arm, but was in truth a grip of death. “You know what a trickster Ruby here is. She just cannot give up the jest.”
Ruby covered well enough. “Ahaha, yes. Ow.” Well, not so well.
But the pictures in Athena’s mind were already running rampant: the bedrolls, the target practice, Greta’s tight-lipped nervousness, the air of tension and preparedness in the passageways. The Warren was going to war. Athena’s words were just seconds ahead of her thoughts, and she hoped she could keep pace with them. “That is why we are here. As a gesture of goodwill we would like to offer you the opportunity to acquire the mercenaries’ services.”
It seemed as if Ruby’s indrawn breath took a year. She licked her lips and stared straight ahead. “Yes.”
Hearth sipped from her tea, face expressionless. “Are they well armed? Veterans? Know their business?”
Ruby and Athena exchanged a glance. Could Athena commit alla Ferra’s people? But never mind could. She already had. “Well, yes, if you call crossbows, muskets, arm’s-length knives, an intimate understanding of corners and shadows and bringing down prey . . . if you call that knowing their business, I would say that they do,” said Athena. Would Petra alla Ferra even agree to any of this? That was a question for another time. For this first pass of the duel, get Hearth to commit. “I could not help noticing that you are preparing for some kind of—”
“How can I be certain of your word? What if these soldiers are agents of the crown? What if this is all some sort of sly betrayal?”
Athena hesitated. How could she prove that Los Jabalís were trustworthy when she didn’t even know that for herself?
Ruby took a deep breath. “Also with them are two people you know, Wayland Teach and Marise Fermat.”
Hearth stood, mouth agape. “Marise is here?”
Ruby’s eyes went wide and innocent. “Yes. Not a quarter mile from your door.”
Without a moment’s hesitation Madame Hearth said, “Very well. I accept.”
“What?” said Athena.
“What?” said Ruby.
“Impossible,” said Greta Van Huffridge.
Hearth turned to the bald steward, Pate. “Release them.” She was already halfway out the door. “Do it as we walk.”
Greta Van Huffridge bristled. “But madame—”
“We don’t have time for these games, Van Huffridge. You, of all people, should know that.”
“Yes, but madame, they humiliated you.”
The woman raked a glance across the two friends, and Athena struggled to meet it. “That is a debt for another time.” Pate cut Athena’s bonds from her wrists with a single pass from a monster of a hatchet, then coiled up the remainder. Hearth continued, quickly and urgently. “Can you describe the location in which they are hidden?”
They nodded as one.
“Good. Pate, take Badger and go with all haste to this place. Tell them that their people are safe and that the mistress of the Warren would see them without delay. Time is of the essence. I will meet you at the first smokehouse door after I show these two what they must see.”
“Wait,” said Athena. She pointed to Cram, who in response nodded so vigorously inside his crystal prison that it wobbled in its washtub. “There is the question of—”
“Your man will be fine, and free soon. Van Huffridge, start the dissolving process.”
The girl grimaced, but to her credit she did not protest. “Yes, madame,” she said, and then stuck some sort of metal needle into the crystal. It immediately began to steam.
“Come now. Time is of the essence,” repeated Hearth.
They followed her down the hall. What is the hurry? What is she showing us? thought Athena. The passages ran narrower and narrower until with two abreast their shoulders were brushing the walls.
“Where are we?” whispered Ruby.
Hearth answered without a glance backward, “Earliest tunnels. No one comes here now; this way I can keep things a bit more private.”
It was impressive the way Hearth had put her grudge aside without a second thought. Wherever they were going, it felt as if something larger were happening. Something more important than personal ill will. Athena sped up to walk with Greta Van Huffridge. The girl gave her a grim shrug and motioned with her chin for her to keep going. It was an inappropriate time to bring it up, but really, why let the appropriate get in the way of the true? “Miss Van Huffridge, please let me apologize for our misunderstanding in London so long ago. We were both a good deal younger, and I may have misstated my family’s—”
“Our parents wanted us to marry, and you said no.” Greta forged forward, keeping her eyes on the chemystrally hardened earthen floor. “You thought yourself too good for my family of hayseeds. What more is there to say? You have another round of insults prepared?”
It rankled at Athena. She had had very good reasons to refuse the match, mostly revolving around the fact that Miss Van Huffridge, daughter of Lothor Van Huffridge, secretary-general of the Rupert’s Bay Company and one of the most powerful men in the colonies, was most likely neither inclined toward nor interested in marrying a young man who turned out to actually be a young woman. So Athena had done something shameful. She had publicly humiliated Greta, denied their engagement in front of hundreds of people. “There are innumerable reasons, Miss Van Huffridge—”
Greta snorted. “Innumerable, you say? The reasons for scorning me are infinite?”
Behind them Ruby stifled a chuckle. “I have to admit that—”
“Ruby, please.” Athena blinked. “Greta, that is not at all what I—”
Hearth stopped. “We are here. Please quiet yourselves.”
Ahead of them in the hallway lay a stout wooden door, the kind of door whose maker’s philosophy was most likely “You can have your frills and carving. Give me something that will keep out a hungry werewolf.” Scarred, thick, and functional. In front of it stood a warden Athena recognized from their previous visit. Reed thin and sharp as thorns, his bushy beard jutted out of his mask, which bore a single flame. Two over-the-shoulder belts crossed his breastbone, holding a crowd of clinking vials and flasks.
“Why the walking laboratory?” whispered Ruby.
“Whatever is beyond that door has someone scared spitless, that’s why,” whispered Athena.
Madame Hearth looked back at them. The front of confidence was gone. Even half hidden by the mask, her face was so nakedly afraid that it set Athena reeling. “Indeed. I have no understanding of what is beyond this door, and it frightens me immensely.” She turned back to the guard. “Flame, we’d like to see our guest, please.”
“Of course, madame.” He pulled a brass key from a pouch and placed it against the lock. The key flowed effortlessly into the very incompatibly shaped keyhole. His jaw set, he held the door open. “I’ll be right here.”
Hearth nodded and stalked into the room, screening their view for a moment. She stepped to the side.
It sat on a cot in the corner.
A thing out of a nightmare.
Black veins crept up its neck from beneath its functional frock. It looked at Athena with vacant eyes, shot with tendrils of slate where the bloodshot should have been. Its hands peeked out from the heavily mended wrists of its blouse, lying there in its lap like cold fish. It looked exactly like a young woman, like a mother perhaps, but everything else about it screamed wrong.
A faint odor hung in the air. Sickness. Or rot.
Beside Athena, Ruby swallowed a curse, working hard to control her breathing, muttering, “Nonononono,” over and over again.
The thing slowly raised its hand.
It waved.
“Hello, my name’s Penny,” said the thing. “What’s yours?”
Athena’s hand strayed to her hip for her missing sword. Her pulse pounded in her ears. The thing (Penny?) made no threatening moves, no hostile gestures. It just sat on the cot, smiling slightly.
“Madame Hearth, what is this?” Athena managed.
The leader of the Bluestockings braced her back against the corner of the cell farthest from Penny. Hearth had picked up a curve of hardened cloth from a small table, and it crackled as she twisted it back and forth. Her nostrils flared. “You tell me.”
“I have no idea. Why would I? I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Athena. “Why did you bring us here?”
