The Great Unravel, page 7
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
Hearth looked down her nose at Ruby. “Call it a hunch.” She held up the torn bandage. “We found this wrapped and hardened about her head. And this”—in her other hand lay a small chemystral device—“wedged into her ear. These mean nothing to you?”
“I tell you, no.”
Ruby hadn’t taken her eyes off the gray woman, the chorus of noes unceasing.
She did know, obviously. She had known the moment they walked in the door. Athena could see the knowledge mixed with terror and guilt plain as a child’s first steps. “Ruby, what is it?”
No response. She was hypnotized.
“Ruby.” Athena touched her shoulder.
“Hello, my name’s Penny—”
With a start Ruby looked up to meet Athena’s eyes. “What?”
At the look on Ruby’s face Athena’s shoulders crept down her back. “Do you know what this is?”
The words came haltingly, as if she were waking from some terrible dream. “I think so. I—I know someone else who was made like this.”
Madame Hearth leaned in. “In Philadelphi?”
“No. In the mountains.”
“The mountains? Where have you been, Ruby Teach?”
Ruby ignored the question. “Where did you find this woman?”
“She is the sister of one of our teachers. He brought her in. She’s a fishwife. He went to visit her in UnderTown and found her like this.”
She knelt and put her hand on the woman’s knee. The gentleness of it surprised Athena. “Penny, can you tell these two friends what you told me? About the shop?”
Penny smiled at Hearth. “They pay you. Not much but a little. It feels good. You go to sleep, and you walk out a little bit richer.” She kicked her feet back and forth like a child.
It didn’t make sense. Athena turned to Ruby. “Like an opium den? But you pay them, not the other way around?”
“I don’t think it’s an opium den.” Something deep and sad and scared lurked behind Ruby’s eyes.
Hearth twisted and pulled at the bandage. “Can you help us solve it?”
“Possibly. As soon as they arrive, please bring a boy named Henry Collins.” Ruby flexed her hands. “And my mother.”
CHAPTER 8
Chemystry is Nature’s Gift to all, without reservation. To grant it to some and deny it to others is as to Hoard Sunlight or to Parcel out the Seas. I shall not allow it.
—Francine of Torres, founder, the Bluestockings, 1692
Henry’s nostrils quivered. He placed a hand on the cool corridor wall next to Marise Fermat’s shoulder, not to reassure her but to brace himself.
“What is it?” Her voice rang hollow inside the metal mask.
He blinked. His eyes were in truth watering. He leaned down to whisper into the narrow air vent nearest her ear. “Mix a tight underground corridor with a pack of Jabalís who have not bathed in weeks, and your product is an acidic fog that could knock over an oliphant.” He made sure to keep breathing through his mouth. A small chuckle emerged from the mask. Henry counted himself lucky. The trip east had not been easy for his new master. She had come willingly enough after Ruby when Henry, Athena, and Cram had arrived on her doorstep asking for aid. But since then it had been a plague of the worst kind of luck. Her brilliant cottage, a chemystral wonder complete with a vesicle that carried it across the sky? Ruined. Her own self? Imprisoned. Her daughter, for whom she had sacrificed so much? Estranged. He could not blame her if she was angry.
“Why have we stopped?” she asked.
Henry hunched down to speak into the mask’s ear. “We have stopped at a large chemystral door, embossed with the seal of the Worshipful Order.”
Marise’s snort echoed. “That stupid camel.” She shifted from one foot to the other. Henry smiled ruefully. Her body could stay no more stationary than her mind. Just like Ruby. In that way and so many others.
“The Warren. Here I am again,” she said to herself.
Henry glanced about at the hard, chemystrally smoothed earthen walls and the intricate engraving on the great door. He had heard about the Warren. Pierre Fermat had dim opinions of the chemysts who worked inside it. It gnawed at Henry’s calm, which was truly never very calm. “You know this place?”
“That door you’re looking at? I helped build it. This was my home laboratory for years before—” The mask tilted slightly.
“Before your journeys with Captain Teach?”
“Yes.”
Wayland Teach stood up near the door, talking quietly and intensely with Petra alla Ferra and her two lieutenants. With them stood a pair of Bluestockings, one in a badger mask, holding some kind of crystal artifice, and the other bigger, balder, and carrying a hatchet. Those two had appeared at Los Jabalís’s hiding place in the trees, waving a white handkerchief of parley (actually some very busy lace, thrust like a pike above the head of the woman) just as Henry was about to gnaw straight through his lower lip for worry over Cram, Athena, and Ruby.
The pair had escorted the troupe under cover of darkness to a strange little house made up of random boards, then down a side stair next to a very deep pit into a highly sophisticated set of tunnels. But Henry’s brief candle of hope had quickly dissolved into an oily slick of worry. Where were his friends? Were they being herded into a trap? The camel’s mouth in the door looked as if all manner of fiery and deadly effects could be shot through it.
He picked at the stains on his fingers.
They had been waiting too long.
With a great groan of gears and mechanisms the door slowly opened. “Something’s happening,” he said to Marise. A woman appeared in the doorway. She was completely unremarkable: medium height, unkempt brown hair under a faded blue mask adorned with a drawing of a fireplace. She walked straight up to Petra alla Ferra, however, and stood nose to nose with her, talking a good long while. The hallway remained silent. The two women spit on their hands and shook. A deal had been made.
The mercenary captain parted the middle of her company like a heated stylus through salt metal. She stopped in front of Marise, the Bluestocking leader trailing behind her. In tones so low only Henry could overhear them the woman said, “Madame Fermat?”
“Devil Woman?”
Alla Ferra smiled grimly. “Today the sun smiles upon you, but do not think I will stand by and watch you harm even a fingernail of one of my people.” She raised her voice to fill the hallway. “In exchange for safe harbor in this place, until the matter of our compensation is resolved, I have agreed to free you from this mask, if only for our time in hiding here.” She turned her eyes to Henry. “Do not forget your pledge.”
He swallowed. “I haven’t.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I would have you say it.”
It was the price that he had been willing to pay. Why did it seem so difficult to say out loud? He cleared his throat and forced it out, filling the corridor as alla Ferra had. “I have sworn that we would accompany you to your employer and that I would aid in translation of Marise Fermat’s journal, in exchange for your aid in saving Ruby Teach. You have held up your bargain, and I will hold up mine.” He glanced at the woman behind alla Ferra. “This is not your contact?”
“His representative is within the city walls. These are— They are—how do you say?—in cahoots with the one who has my money.”
“With Godfrey Boyle.” He chewed at his lip. Athena had told Henry much about her father, and none of it was reassuring. Boyle was loyal to the Worshipful Order, period, and Henry was not a member. Nor, for that matter, was Ruby or Marise.
Alla Ferra’s eyes shackled his. He could not look away. “As you say.” She took the green metal key from around her neck and dropped it into his hand. She turned and walked through the huge brass door into the Warren with her head high, trailed by Los Jabalís.
Vera Medina leaned in as she walked past, her mouth just at the level of his ear. “Never trust a chemyst, Henry Collins. Let alone a hive of them.” She winked and moved on before he could reply.
He felt a sharp jab in his ribs. Alaia Calderon looked up at him with a scowl. “I have my eye on you, Collins.”
“Thank you?” he ventured.
Without another word alla Ferra’s other lieutenant hurried off after her companion.
Before he knew it, the hallway was empty save him, Marise, and the woman with fire on her mask. Wayland Teach hovered out of earshot in the shadows near the door.
The woman looked Henry up and down with interest, eyes lingering over the burns and scars on his chemystry-stained hands.
“Well?” she said.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is—”
“Open the mask, boy.”
He blinked. “Yes, ma’am.” Of course. He should have done it as soon as he had been given the key.
And so Henry put the key in the keyhole, right next to the temple. It turned easily, and a handle popped out.
The faceplate opened easily on its oiled hinges, and Marise Fermat stared back at him. An older, blonder Ruby Teach.
She sported the remains of a quite substantial black eye.
“Hello, Henry,” she said.
“Hello, Master.”
Her eyes flicked behind him. “Hello, Alice. Lovely mask. Still given to overblown theatrics, I see.”
The woman smiled icily back. “Hello, Marise. Still biting the hand that protects you, I see.”
They stared blades into each other. Henry tried to fold himself back into the wall.
“Well,” said Marise, “that was a lovely reunion. Let’s be off to whatever it is you desperately need me to help you with. Henry, be a love and remove this cursed bucket from my head.”
“Of course.”
The women waited for Henry to take the heavy contraption off. “What should I do with this?” he said.
Marise looked speculatively at the other woman. “Bring it along. I’m sure we’ll find some use for it.”
He held it awkwardly to his chest. The Bluestocking woman was staring at him again.
“I am Madame Hearth. You are welcome to the Warren,” she said, in a way that made it quite clear that he should not get used to it. “Follow me, please.” She turned and left at a brisk pace, not waiting to see if they followed.
“What was that about?” said Henry.
“I stole her boyfriend,” said Marise.
“Who was he?”
“I believe you know my husband.”
“. . . oh.”
They set off down the hall after her.
Captain Teach waited just inside the doorway. He fell in next to them.
“What are you doing?” said Marise.
“Hearth wants to show us something or other,” said Teach.
“I don’t recall inviting you to come with us. Henry?”
Oh, no. The relationship between the Teaches was one that Henry still could not understand, and he generally tried to blend into the background when they came near each other. “Yes ma’am? Er, Master?”
“Did I miss something? Did I ask Captain Pickpocket to walk along with us?” From up ahead, where Madame Hearth walked, came a chuckle.
“No, you didn’t.”
“You see?”
Henry chewed his lip. “But I’m not certain the captain requires your permission.”
Teach smiled through his bushy mustaches. “Good lad.”
Marise snorted. “Henry, you are now officially notified that I am initiating a search for a more obedient apprentice.”
“Duly noted, Master.”
And so they followed Madame Hearth through a bustling collection of passageways, full of classrooms and young people, surrounded by older folk in masks. He had heard rumors of these chemysts. The Bluestockings ran a school for students who wanted to learn chemystry but did not meet the Tinkers Guild specifications—to wit, male, of the gentry, and English by blood. They wore masks because the practice of educating these other students was outlawed, and the teachers here undertook their task at great risk to their families. Henry drank it all in hungrily as he passed.
He had been part of a School of One.
The old man—Fermat, Marise’s uncle—had taken him on as a student, and Henry had never met or even seen any other chemysts close to his age. Well, with the exception of Athena Boyle, but she was really more of a dabbler; he felt guilty for thinking it, but it was true. In fifty feet of hallway they passed more chemysts than he had ever seen in his life. And the smells! Cram could go on and on about this wildflower or that, the scent of a particular strain of rabbit scat, and he was welcome to it. Henry breathed in deeply. The sharp bite of aqua fortis acid. The deep base mushroom scent of carbon. The slightly fruity tang of blue vitriol. The smells sang to him, wrapping him in a rich song of Science. They took him back in time to Fermat’s laboratory, and with a sharp ache he realized he deeply missed his old teacher.
He caught Marise Fermat watching him out of the corner of her eye. “It’s like home, isn’t it?”
He blushed.
On her other side Wayland Teach wiped his red, watering eyes with a handkerchief. He blew his nose. “Providence, I hate this place.”
They could not catch up with Madame Hearth, who arrowed down the halls like a runaway tinker’s carriage. As quickly as they strode, she moved more rapidly. She led them by twist and turn deeper into the complex, into a maze of older, rougher, narrower passages. They turned a corner to come upon a hard-looking guard and, next to him, looking shaken, Ruby and Athena. The guard bore a single flame on his mask and wore a veritable arsenal of chemystral flasks. Without a word he unlocked a stout door, stood aside, and motioned the group past. The others went through, but the captain paused a moment next to the guard.
“Hallo, David,” he said.
The man smiled and nodded. “Wayland.”
From inside the doorway Madame Hearth’s voice rang out. “I would ask that you respect our customs while you are in this place.”
Teach rolled his eyes. “My apologies, Madame Hearth!” And in a quick, low voice he said to the guard, “Why her?”
The smile vanished. “She’s pure iron, Teach. And we need someone like that in these times. Loyal, too. A rare quality nowadays.”
Henry had never seen the captain blush.
“You were a Bluestocking, too?” Henry asked.
“A sentinel. A bodyguard of sorts, like Flame here.” Teach nodded at the guard and then sighed. “It didn’t really take.”
The guard cleared his throat. “Go in now. This is something you all should see.” He waved them through the doorway.
Madame Hearth, Marise, Ruby, and Athena stood inside, crammed around a cot with a straw mattress. Cram was nowhere to be seen.
The other person in the room? He would not be able to forget her face for a very long time.
CHAPTER 9
Beneath my cypress, a startling smile.
Wondrous sweet, it bears no guile.
—Taki, first poet to the Tulip Sultan, 1712
Even after a few hours it reassured Ruby to see Henry. And her father. Or should she say Captain Teach? Blast it.
Seeing her mother was quite another thing.
“Stop staring at me,” said Ruby.
Teach frowned. “Ruby—”
“It’s all right.” Marise Fermat had somehow rid herself of the mask Los Jabalís had stuck her with, and now Henry was toting it around like an anchor. Ruby wasn’t certain she approved of the change. Marise flicked her blue eyes away from Ruby to study Penny. Madame Hearth had left Ruby and Athena in the custody of the guard Flame, while she collected the others, and he had responded to their questions with only grunts. So they had watched Penny through the little grate in the door. The woman had sat quiet, smiling vacantly, ever since. “What is your name?” said Marise.
“Penny. What’s yours?” Her eyelids flicked closed, then open again. The gray skin was almost translucent.
Being near Penny gave Ruby the shivers down to her marrow. The skin, the black tendrils, the hollowness. It was very like Evram Hale back at Fort Scoria, and what that might mean had her scared spitless.
“Is this somehow a fruit of your research, Marise?” asked Hearth.
“I suspect it is, but I’d like to observe while my apprentice asks a few questions. Then we can compare our observations to any you have made?” There was a strange formality between them, as if they were following a set of mysterious rules.
Madame Hearth nodded. “Very well. Proceed.”
She passed Marise a kind of magnifying glass, and Ruby’s mother knelt in front of the woman. “My name is Marise.” She looked up at Ruby, and then her eyes slid past her. “Henry, could you help me, please?”
A quick spike of something stabbed Ruby in the gut. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was she jealous? Of Henry? She couldn’t give two shillings for her mother’s regard, and now she was pining for it? She gave herself a mental shake and tried to pipe her mind down.
Henry, who had jumped ship from old Fermat to a new master before you could say “fickle,” wove his lanky frame through the tightly packed cell and knelt down in front of Penny. He hesitated.
“Just ask her about what’s happened to her, please,” said Marise. “This is an opportunity for your education.”
Henry chewed his lip for a moment, and then he turned back to Penny.
“Hello, I’m Henry. May I ask you a few questions?”
The smile widened, strange and just flat wrong on her terrifying face. “Of course.”
His eyes searched hers. “How did this happen to you?”
“What?”
His gaze shifted to Marise, who nodded encouragement. “Your skin seems to have some . . . discoloring to it . . . and your eyes. Have they always been like that?”
Penny laughed, a completely innocent sound. “Oh, no. This is what happens from the juicing. It don’t hurt, though.” She rubbed her hands over her arms. “Feels right nice. Smoothlike.”
Henry forced a smile to match Penny’s. “I see. ‘Juicing,’ you say?”
