A Riddle in Ruby (14 page)

Ruby stood up. The assumption of authority was just as infuriating in the girl as it had been in the boy. “I never said I would go see anyone. I have more questions.”

“Ruby, we are in dire straits, and my patience is exhausted.” She called over to Cram, “Pack our things, Cram. We should leave nothing here for trackers or gearbeasts to trace. The dress, too. I must rest, but then we shall be gone.” She turned to Ruby. “Thank you for the help with my wound. Within a few hours Cram and
I will depart to see some people who may help us rescue your father. I would prefer it if you left with us, especially since you seem to have no other recourse. But I will not attempt to hold you against your will. If you wish to sulk here like a peevish child, perhaps Grundwidge Fen will be more helpful the second time around.”

With that she lay back down and covered her eyes with her hat. Within moments she was asleep.

It was quiet.

Ruby picked up a piece of gravel from the floor and threw it as hard as she could against the hull of an unfinished barge. It rang like a drum. A child? A child? This jumped-up grocery clerk had no right to name her such. She was a pirate, a rogue, and a fighter. And she was as helpless as a newborn.

She threw another rock at the barge. It missed and weakly clattered into the shadows behind. Athena did not stir. Ruby headed into the front room to gather her things. And think.

Cloathes will never make a Gentleman.

—Cloverdale Farnsworth

A
thena Boyle. Ruby could not believe it. Half of her wanted to run back into the warehouse and guard her even if the roof fell down. The other half wanted to weep. Still another half headed out the door and kept running until she hit the West Indies, another half slammed the brig door closed and threw away the key, and yet another was dancing an odd little jig. That was far too many halfs for one Ruby, and they were tugging her apart.

So she did as Gwath had taught her. She grabbed up all the feelings and distractions, rolled them up in her mind, and then locked them away in the iron chest she kept in the bottom of her belly. It was her secret hold, just like her cubby on the
Thrift
. She stalked over to the midshipman, Collins, who sat at an old table beneath the light filtering through one of the boarded-up windows. He had pulled a few tools from a fancy leather roll-up and was fiddling with something. In a flash of memory Ruby saw it sitting on Grundwidge Fen's shelves. Was their savior also a thief? She couldn't decide if that made her feel better or worse.

He was absorbed in his task and did not turn. He was a tall lad, perhaps Athena's age, skinny as a rope. Jamaican? Algerian? All the extra flesh left at birth had been funneled into a huge, pointed nose and equally large hands. One hand cradled a stylus of some sort, and his fingers were scarred and burned gray, red, and even lime green in numerous places, and the nails were bitten to the quick. A set of linen gloves were tucked into his belt next to his clocklock pistol. What was it with these
boys and these gloves? But then Athen—Athena was not a boy. Anyway.

Ruby cleared her throat.

He turned as if he had been burned, stood, and slid his project behind his back.

She held up her hands. “Stand easy, Captain Courageous. No cause for alarums and bucket brigades.”

He relaxed somewhat and chewed on his lip. Gwath had said to her once that silence was a tool. He was observing her as well. Intently. Like an insect pinned under glass. She did not like the sensation.

She crossed her arms and leaned against a rough wooden support. “What is your name?”

He chewed his lip more forcefully, “Henry Collins. Er, Midshipman Henry Collins, posted to His Majesty's Ship
Percival
.”

“Why did you help us, Henry Collins?”

He scratched at his ear. “Um, well, I saw that you were in danger, and I”—he cleared his throat, repeatedly—“I could not stand by and watch innocents be hurt or killed.”

Ruby stared at him. Did he think she was stupid?

“Do you think I am stupid?” she said.

“No!” he blurted out. Then, after a moment: “No.”

“The scars on your hands mark you as a tinker of some sort.”

His hands found their way behind his back. “I work with metal and the furnaces on my ship, nothing more.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “And the goo and melting walls back there at Fen's? How do you explain that?”

“Certain parts of a midshipman's education involve basic instruction in the chemystral arts,” he said.

“Basic?” She laughed. “You made a great cake the size of an entire room and then poofed away a thick timber wall.”

He blushed.

“You will not be able to go back to the navy. Most likely you are an outlaw. They will hang you from a topmast if they catch you.”

She waited.

Collins cleared his throat again. Finally he offered a strangled “You see, I saw you in this strange dream I had, and—”

“Oh, scuttle this.” Ruby snaked his pistol right out of his belt. She aimed it at his nose. “You will forgive me if I have grown suspicious of new friends unexpectedly entering my life.” She drew back the hammer. “Why did you help us, Henry Collins?”

He looked down the barrel of the gun and, oddly, relaxed. He stilled the lip chewing and ear scratching and raised his hands.

“You will not believe me,” he said.

“I have seen many strange things in the past week or two,” she replied. “Do not assume that there is anything that I will or will not believe. Your coolness in the face of a weapon does serve you well.”

“It is not loaded. I do not trust guns.” He unfolded up to his full height, and his head brushed a crossbeam. He was easily as tall as Gwath, almost six and a half feet, though he had far less weight. “Will you believe me when I tell you that I am part of a secret society and indeed part of an even more secret brotherhood within it whose task it is to monitor that same secret society?”

She tried to interrupt, but he pressed on.

“Will you believe me when I tell you that your father, whom you call Wayland Teach, once had a different name and was at one time a member of our company? Will you believe me when I tell you that you, Ruby Teach, may carry with you a secret for which nations will wrestle and fall?”

Ruby looked at him.

“Barnacles,” she said.

Collins folded back into himself and rested his forearms on his bony knees. “I told you you would not believe me.”

“What secret?”

Collins chewed his lip. “That I don't know.”

She raised her arms in her torn-up boy's getup. “Look at me. Tell me, please, where I'm hiding this secret.” Collins did not respond. “And of course, now it's a ‘great secret.' ‘Nations will fall.' A bigger man than you once told me that if the mark will not trust your little lie, make it a big one. That is quite the fairy story.”

He smiled. For a moment the nose, hands, and eyes no longer belonged to a looming buffoon but to an
ancient hermit or to a secret minister to some clockwork lord of Tripoli.

“Look to your own crew, Ruby Teach.”

“What do you mean?”

“For one, this Athen Boyle is more than he appears.”

He was funny. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Well then.” They looked at each other.

Ruby handed him back his gun with an exaggerated flourish, and he surprised her with an equally overdramatic bow.

“Have I satisfied your suspicions?” He tucked his pistol back into his belt.

“No, but what use is an unloaded pistol?” She craned her head to get a better look at the thing on the table. It was a child's top, covered with engravings. “Why are you working on a fancy spinner?”

“For our protection.” He made room next to him on the bench. She didn't sit but looked over his shoulder. He shrugged. “I have never seen one of these outside of a book.”

“A spinner?”

He chuckled. “It is a miasmic ward.” When Ruby just looked at him, he continued. “It is a special kind of top. The spinning is actually a mediating device for disseminating a chemystral reaction in a measured and unified manner.”

“The top helps it put out the same amount of something?”

He smiled again, impressed. “Correct.”

Ruby knitted her brows together. “Just because I was born on a boat doesn't mean—”

“I am sorry.” They sat in silence, and he turned his attention back to the artifice. It was made of bronze and about the size of a hand. The body of the top was etched all around with thick clouds, masking a range of mountains hiding behind.

“Let's give the peaks a spin,” Ruby said, and reached for the toy. Henry's hand darted out, covering her own. It was warm and dry, like paper. “Please don't,” he said, and then pulled his hand back just as quickly. “This is a very delicate mechanism. I mean, I am sure you would be delicate with—”

“I won't touch it.” She sat on her hands.

“Thank you.” He blushed. He took the calipers and explored a two-pronged peak, right where the mountains met. They swung open, like the lid of a box. “Ah.” He produced a silver-inlaid snuffbox from his jacket and used the calipers to tease a small cube of wet blue clay out of it.

“Fancy.” Ruby reached for the snuffbox.

He closed it and slid it back in his jacket. “Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

“It was my father's.”

“So that means no?”

“It has some small reagents in it that can be quite volatile.”

“So that means no?”

“Yes.”

Collins set the little cube inside the cavity of the top and then closed the chest plate back over it. With a tiny click, the highlands became whole again. He cupped his hands in his lap and turned to Ruby. “All right. Now you can spin it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What if I don't want to spin it anymore?”

“Then whoever is following you will find us.”

“This child's toy will protect us?”

“One of the Tinkers working with the Reeve discovered that you are marked in some chemystral fashion. This will mask our scent, if you will.”

“Our
scent
?”

Henry nodded, chewing his lip.

Anything to throw that scarred bloodhound off their trail. “I'm ready,” she said.

Two little wires with tiny handles wound out of the top. On his command she was to pull them apart to start it spinning. He stared into the peaks for a good while. Ruby felt something shift: The air? Her blood? A premonition?

“Begin,” he said without looking at her.

She gave a good tug to both wires, and the thing started spinning with a low hum.

She was watching his eyes; otherwise, she would have missed it. He crinkled them, just slightly, and there was an
accompanying
pfft
from the top. A plane of deep purple smoke emerged from the clouds and crept outward in all directions.

She took a step back, but Henry said, “It's all right. It won't hurt you.”

The circle of purple smoke expanded toward both of them like water and then up
over
each of them, like the finest cloth. You could see through it, but everything was tinged lavender. It moved on in a circle for a few more feet, slowed, and then stopped, hanging in the air, about five feet past them in every direction. It was like nothing she had ever seen.

She whistled. And then she inhaled. It smelled like feet.

The midshipman was frowning.

“What?” Ruby prodded him. The smoke shroud moved with her. “It worked, didn't it?”

“Only a very little bit,” he said.

“What was it supposed to do?” Ruby asked. “Make a smoke pony?”

“Fill up this room and the next, masking all of us. It
would have hidden us from any chemystral locaters for a few days.”

“How long will this last?”

He looked at the top. “As long as that spins. My best guess? A few hours at most. I will go tell your servant.”

She made to follow him out of the circle. He stopped her.

“You need to stay there. You are the one being followed.”

“What?”

“You are the one they are searching for. Lady Boyle and the servant and me, no one is looking for us. The man my leftenant mentioned, Rool?”

Ice ran up Ruby's back. “I know him,” she said.

“He is a Reeve, yes? They are the hands of the king, empowered to bring justice as they see it, without constraint and with great chemystral and martial power. Each one is an army, and he is their captain. And they are looking for you, Ruby. You know that, but you do not seem to hear it. Please stay there.”

And he went into the boat warehouse, leaving her
sitting on the table, surrounded by a platter of smoke, with no other company than a smug little spinner.

She wanted to push it over.

But she didn't.