The Great Unravel, page 9
part #3 of Riddle in Ruby Series
Henry. An awkward beanpole of a wizard with chemystry-scarred hands, the deepest secrets of the spheres hiding behind his onyx eyes.
Marise’s gaze finally traveled back to Ruby, and she imagined what Marise saw there: a willful child, fists clenched at her side, reckless and wild. But even so, she knew that however she might appear, she would never let someone else decide her fate for her again.
“Very well,” said Marise. Suddenly she was all smiles. She turned to Athena. “What is your assessment of our position, my lady?”
Henry cut in. “My apologies, but—”
“Henry?” said Athena.
“Shouldn’t Captain Alla Ferra be a part of this?”
Athena raised an eyebrow. “Why should she?”
“I gave her my word, Athena. We have an arrangement.”
“Created under duress.”
“They had a literal knife to your throat, lad.” The captain’s face was too innocent. “Who could be held to such a bogus bargain?”
Henry glanced at Ruby. “They helped us save your daughter, sir.”
Ruby would not, could not let them make this only about her. They needed to decide for themselves. “I didn’t need saving,” said Ruby.
Athena laughed. “Oh, that’s right. You were doing perfectly well climbing down that cliff face. In the rain. And the dark.”
Ruby flushed. “I was.”
“I’m certain the Reeve wouldn’t have caught you on that bridge.”
“They would have never noticed! You tipped them off. That is the only reason they came after us. You and that great, galloping herd of Catalonians.”
“They helped us save you, Ferret,” Cram said with a wounded look.
“I didn’t ask to be saved!” Ruby slammed her hand down on the table, sending teacups everywhere. Ruby blushed. Her father’s daughter indeed.
Silence reigned for a moment. Cram went after the cups.
“It wasn’t—” She had asked to be saved. She had dreamed about it and slowly her faith had dissolved into nothing, and then, against all hope, they had found her climbing down the wall in the rain and scooped her up like angels, but— “It wasn’t you.”
Athena snorted. “No, that’s right. We just ran into you in the street, on our way to the coffeehouse.”
“I don’t mean that, Athena. You did. You did arrive and spirit me away”—a tornado of ideas was whirling around in her head just that moment, but one stood out, a candle in the dark—“but it was Rool who set me free.”
“I’m sorry?” said Henry.
“It was Rool.” The realization gathered steam, like Sleipnir at a full gallop. “Could he have released me, at least in part, because he knew I might come here to the Warren? Because he knew about the rising? Because he wanted me to be in Philadelphi at the time of the revolt?”
Athena’s eyebrows were so knitted together they were touching. “But what benefit—”
“I don’t know.” She thought back to Alla Ferra’s chess set; but Wisdom Rool was a grand master, and she was utterly lost. She barely understood the rules. “He said I was an agent of chaos, and that’s what he needed me to do. Be chaos.” She avoided her father’s eyes. “Past that I haven’t the faintest idea what he might want, and I’m not inclined to try to follow his lead. But what happened to Penny, to Evram . . . it cannot be allowed. I will help.” She turned to Athena. “Athena, your father—”
“Wants us here as well. At least the person who hired Los Jabalís on his behalf is somewhere in the city.”
Captain Teach took great care with his words. “The order—and therefore your father—are playing a part in engineering this revolt. He wants it to happen. But you are English. We all are.” An unspoken question hung in the air.
Athena stared at him, then answered it. “In England, sir, I have pretended all my life to be a man, so that I might inherit my father’s vast estate and continue his work.” And then she was talking to Ruby, and Ruby could not tear her eyes away from Athena’s. “But I find this landscape suits me. My friend Winnifred Pleasant Black, who was wise enough to leave us far behind, mind you, cares not a whit whether a person sees her as man, woman, or bear. I find that a position to admire and even emulate.” She took a deep, sharp breath. “My concern is Ruby Teach, those of you in this room, and, only after that, the order. Currently I believe the goals of all of my priorities align. If sometime in the future they do not, well, I will reexamine them.”
“I’m staying. I will help,” Henry said. “Master Fermat is attached to the bones of Philadelphi. He is trapped here, and I am committed to him. Besides, whatever happened to Penny is a perversion of chemystral science and needs to be stopped.”
They all looked to Cram. He cleared his throat, blinked, and then spit a piece of pink goo into his napkin. “I won’t lie if I say I ain’t been thinking about Mam. Boston is burnt to the ground. But even if I could get myself back there, no guarantee she and the other kids hain’t already skarpered off. She never was one for the heat.” His face set in a grim line, and he tipped his head gravely at Athena. “I set my lot with you, Lady Athena.” He looked about. “And you folk. None can say that Cram ain’t loyal. Besides, as far as I see it, a king an ocean away ain’t much of a king nohow.”
Marise Fermat had watched them with growing degrees of dismay. “Wayland—”
Captain Teach smiled. “I am not your ally in this, Marise. And any obedience I owed you has long disappeared. Until I can find a way back to Skillet and the Thrift, this”—he gestured to the four companions—“is my crew. I will not be separated from them.”
Ruby could have floated through the roof with pride.
Marise Fermat shook her head slowly. “This is sheer stupidity. For you two, especially,” she said to Henry and Ruby. “If the great powers get hold of you, it will be misery for the rest of your lives.”
Ruby stared at her mother. They were declaring their allegiances. They were hauling their flags up the mast. But Marise would not see that. Or she refused to go along with them. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Would it ever? “You helped my friends, and you helped me. Thank you. But if you wish to go your own way, please do. It seems that one of the things you are expert in is leaving.” As soon as she said the last sentence, Ruby regretted it. But she would not take it back. It was a truth. And it ate at her.
The look on her mother’s face was too raw.
Henry interrupted. “Master—” He hesitated. “Marise. You helped save us in the west. You helped save Ruby. You helped me. I am grateful to you, and I will never forget that. But I cannot leave these people and this place in danger.”
Marise avoided Ruby’s eyes and gave Henry a curt nod. After a moment she clapped him on the shoulder.
Because she didn’t know what else to say, Ruby said, “It’s settled then.”
“War. Revolution. A mad chemyst. Arcane science gone awry.” Athena looked about. “This is my kind of folly.”
A wisp of a smile played across Ruby’s lips. She put her hand to her mouth and called out, “All aboard the Good Ship Stupidity!”
Henry blinked. “How long did that take?”
Athena frowned. “I think all of ten minutes.”
“Did she say she would return in an hour? Well, then.” Cram sat down next to the tea biscuits. “I suppose we should all get comfortable.”
As if by agreement they drifted apart to islands of their own thoughts. Ruby didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to talk to her mother. It was too hard to talk to her father. Gwath weighed on her mind. And Rool. And Evram. So instead, she just found a corner for herself and plopped down. With the furniture screening the rest of the room it reminded her a bit of her hidey-hole on the Thrift. At least there were two stout walls at her back. Nothing else was certain. Ruby reached into her rucksack and carefully pulled out the artifice otter that had been Evram Hale’s parting gift to her.
Somehow Henry had not gotten the message about keeping to themselves. He hovered just out of reach, leaning against the wall in a bad attempt at casualness. He cleared his throat. “May I approach?”
Sometimes he was so formal. But just now the formality was nice: having at least one person treat her carefully. She gave him a Look for good measure but then nodded her permission.
He sat down next to her, his forearms on his knees.
“What is that?” he said.
She closed herself about the otter protectively. She wanted to keep it to herself. The wounds with Evram and Sleipnir were too fresh. She had to say something, though. “It was a gift. From Evram Hale.”
Henry looked about the room, and she followed his glance. The table and chairs screened the two of them from the rest. They all seemed lost in their own thoughts anyway.
“The young chemyst?” Henry leaned in, interested. “May I see it?”
She met his eyes, and they were so calm and friendly and wise that they unsealed a sadness so deep it shook her to the bone. The sad came pouring out of her eyes, and she let it.
He waited patiently.
She held the artifice out. He shifted to pull it into his lap.
It was a small automaton, just a bit longer than his forearm. It was delicately, beautifully crafted. The skin was brushed brass that looked and felt like living fur, if living fur was metal.
“It’s an otter?” he asked.
She nodded, sniffling.
The dark chestnut of his fingers highlighted the deep blue of the otter’s eyes. “Are these sapphires?”
She nodded again. “Chips. Cut down from the originals.”
He was impressed. “Where did you get this?”
“I told you. A gift.”
“Who was Evram?”
“He was someone who helped me. And didn’t deserve what he got.” She had left some things out back in the cave after the rescue, but she told him the whole story this time of the beautiful eight-legged horse automaton that had saved her life at the cost of its own and then the story of a boy who had helped her only because he thought she was a friend. It hurt her to tell it. But at every turn Henry didn’t frown, or look askance, or pull back. He just nodded. And listened. “Swedenborg . . . because Evram helped me, the Swede did to him what was done to Penny. But much worse. I think Evram made this for me out of parts of Sleipnir before it happened.”
The little otter lay across both of their legs as if it were asleep. But it wasn’t. No life stirred inside it.
“Would you like me to wake it up?”
“Her,” she said.
“Her. I— It’s impossible to know with these things how they’ll animate. Gearbeasts—I think half of them go mad in the first moments. Knowing that . . .” He chewed his lip. “Would you like me to wake her up?”
Her heart caught in her throat. “More than anything.”
He smiled. “Well, then.”
Henry splayed his fingers out lightly across the artifice’s backbone and closed his eyes.
Ruby stayed as still as she could. She felt like a deer or something caught in a thicket, hunters all about.
Henry muttered under his breath, “It’s . . . complex.” Something like awe tinged his voice. “And by Science, efficient. It will run for a long time on the smallest energy, but”—his voice roughened, and his jaw tensed—“starting it is a bit like pushing a boulder over a cliff.” Cords stood out on Henry’s neck, and sweat beaded up on his brow; but then his face changed.
He looked scared.
“Henry—”
“It needs a lot,” he gasped. “A lot. I don’t—” His muscles locked up, as if he had been struck by lightning.
The little otter quivered.
Ruby gasped.
The artifice blinked her blue eyes sleepily and then, curious, quirked her head up. Somewhere inside Ruby the sadness shifted, from raw to bittersweet. And there was something else, too, something she had not felt for a long while.
Hope.
She looked up at Henry, who was looking up at the others, their heads sticking over the table, watching what was happening. Marise Fermat gave him a proud nod.
Henry’s eyelids fluttered. “I think it is time to sleep.”
Ruby didn’t know what to say, but she had to thank him somehow. So she said, just as sleep took him, “Her name is Evie.”
CHAPTER 11
In the Chemystral Age, the idea of Family is a hopelessly antiquated concept, a primitive tribal behavior rendered useless now that we can build our communities with Science.
—Emmanuel Swedenborg, personal journal
Ruby watched as Henry smiled and turned his face into the wall. He was snoring before he even settled. She reveled for just a moment in the small fire of hope he had kindled.
Something tapped her wrist: the lightest of weights.
The otter artifice named Evie sat in her lap, gazing up at her, forepaw outstretched to rest on Ruby’s arm. There could be no mistaking that look. You are mine. You belong to me, and I to you. So pay attention. The little fire of hope blazed brighter in Ruby’s chest, and that gave her both an idea and the strength to follow it through.
“You two, follow me,” Ruby said to Marise Fermat and Wayland Teach. She stood up and walked past them toward the far wall of the office. “Could someone please tell Hearth we are with her? I am taking these two people away to speak to them for a moment or two.”
Athena frowned. “Ruby, Hearth said we can’t leave. How—”
“I consider this”—Ruby rapped on the big armoire against the wall—“part of her office.” She opened the door with a flourish, stepped into the big wardrobe, and then opened the secret door in the back wall, which let out into a steep passage that climbed upward through the rock. The effect was partially spoiled by Evie’s darting about between Ruby’s feet and chittering with excitement, but the others looked suitably impressed.
“So that’s how you skarpered out the first time,” said Cram.
She allowed herself a small spike of pride, and then she faked a bravado she did not feel. “Indeed. Now I would like a moment to speak to my parents alone, and the only way I seem to be able to do that with you folk is to resort to extreme measures. Athena, when Hearth returns, please ask Los Jabalís’s cook to join us.”
Athena’s mouth dropped open.
So did Cram’s. “You mean G—”
Athena’s hand shot up to block his mouth. “I will do that,” she said with a horrible attempt at innocence.
With that, Ruby pulled a small tinker’s lamp from a hook on the back wall and began to climb briskly upward, ignoring the questions and exclamations behind her.
After a moment two sets of footsteps followed.
“Ruby—” Her mother called, but Ruby held up her hand without a backward look and kept walking. Her father said nothing.
She had to keep moving. The feeling was bursting at her rib cage, hammering to get out, and the things she needed to say she didn’t want to say in front of the others. Not because she didn’t trust them; this was simply a family matter. Well, and Evie. Never away from her ankles for long, the little artifice paced the trio in fits and starts, sniffing here, then rushing to catch up, then sniffing there. It was a good half hour of constant upward travel before they reached the other end of the tunnel, a small barred door cut into the rock. The bar was stout and well oiled and slid back easily. Ruby took a brief glance through a small viewing slit and then opened it and motioned the two adults through. Fresh night air greeted them with the smells of cooling flagstones and untended grass. She shuttered the lamp. The high summer moon cast plenty of light.
They were in a tiny courtyard with odd walls, one of those unused orphaned spaces between buildings that no one quite knew what to do with. Stars twinkled above in a cloudless sky. Windowless town house walls bordered the court on three sides, and a fourth wall stood before them, its only feature a locked wooden gate.
Her father quirked an eyebrow at her and murmured, “You know, your mother and I both knew about this tunnel. We used it plenty of times when I was a sentinel and she was a chemyst.” He pointed over his shoulder. “Bluestone Square is right beyond that fence. Fancying a walk through the city? Making certain all our wanted posters are well distributed?”
“Ha. We had better stay quiet. Evie—”
The otter artifice skittered about, sniffing at corners with her brass-whiskered snout and turning over rocks with her paws.
How did this work? “Evie.”
The otter looked up briefly and then went back to her business.
“Try this.” Her mother held something out in her hand. It was a nugget of metal. “Pewter.”
Ruby briefly considered ignoring her altogether but settled on taking it silently. She held out her hand. “Evie? Evie.”
The whiskered snout popped up, and then suddenly the otter was at her side, forelegs on her knee, haunches on the ground, staring intently at her hand. Ruby tried to swallow a smile. “Good, er, automaton. Otter. Ottermaton.” Then she held out the little nugget and Evie grabbed it in both forepaws and settled down right there to gnaw on it. A deep kind of pleasure—warm and satisfied—bloomed in Ruby’s chest. She held on to it.
A voice in her mind named the grave, straight-on look Evie gave her. Thank you.
Both the captain and Marise were also looking at her.
“Ruby, what is this?” said her mother.
She didn’t meet her mother’s eyes but instead looked at her father. “Wait,” she said.
“For once I have to agree with Marise. This is hardly the time to—”
“I had to get out of there, and I didn’t sort the whole thing through. But now going back would be a waste of time, and I don’t want to anyway. Thus, Wait.”
So they waited. The truth was, Ruby had no cursed idea what she was going to say. A flock of pigeons were fighting it out in her belly, and she was sweating gallons. But all this running about in secret and suffering in silence, it couldn’t go on. If Wisdom Rool himself had jumped out of the sky to try to skin them all alive, he would have had to wait. It all was just . . . unacceptable.
