A Riddle in Ruby (16 page)

Aequilibrium in omnibus

(balance in all things).

—Motto, Worshipful Order of Grocers

“B
y all odds that should not be standing,” Ruby whispered. They were peering over a low hill at a rickety collection of random scraps of wood, held together by twine, tar, and a huge helping of faith. It sat in a tiny clearing in the woods just over the weak trickle that used to be the Schuylkill River. The wind picked up slightly, and Ruby was certain that the stiff breeze would be the end for the shack then and there, but the thing stayed upright, defying all logic.

Athena looked less confident than she sounded. “Cram,” she said, “this is the Archer smokehouse, correct?”

“That be what the old woman told me,” Cram said through a mouthful of pie. They had decided that he was the one of the three that could risk being seen, and he had been making liberal use of Athena's coin to purchase food from the locals of the Dregs. He called it softening up the natives. “This smoked trout come from that smokehouse, or so she said. Tasty,” he added. He hefted a jug of cider he had liberated as well. “No word on where this come from.” He took another swig. “Also tasty.”

Ruby scanned the horizon. The forest loomed to the west, a solid mass of brown and green. Back behind them the wall of Philadelphi rose high above the trees, with the buildings of UpTown perched above like ravens. Nestled between, the Dregs was a collection of hog robbers, scratch farmers, ne'er-do-wells, and other folks who were too poor to even have a home in the city. Gwath and she had never spent much time in the neighborhood, mostly
because it was bad business to steal from people with no money.

“We need to get inside that shack,” Ruby said. Athena's finery stood out here like a peacock on a dung heap. More than that, whatever mark Athena and Collins had been moaning about was still on her, and that boded no good. Unless they could find another way to mask it or remove it, the gear hounds and men and Wisdom Rool would be on them again soon enough. It still hurt that the young alchemyst had abandoned them. She had liked Collins, and she thought he had liked her. And he had
saved
them. And then he had just left when he didn't get his way.

Gwath Maxim Nine: “Keep to the Crew.” That meant the two people at her side. How they had come together did not matter. They were hers now.

Athena grunted softly and brushed at her side as she stood. Ruby could not help admiring her grit. That wound must hurt more than she let on. She flexed her own wrist inside its splint. Every time she moved it, some sharp edge ground up against another one. They were taking on water, and the pumps were failing.

In the end they just walked straight up to the door. Athena with her hand on her hilt, Ruby clutching a chunk of rock, and Cram following, churn at the ready.

Someone was snoring inside. Loudly.

Athena glanced back, face lit up. Ruby nodded that she was ready. Athena knocked.

The snoring stopped.

A ruckus followed. Shifting wood and some sort of clanking. Then the click of a clocklock. Then another.

“Who is it?” The voice from the other side of the door scraped like a saw on heavy stone.

Cram and Ruby looked to Athena. Athena tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, opened her mouth, and then shut it.

“Say something!” Ruby hissed at her.

“I do not know what to say. It is possible there is a password,” she whispered back.

“But you have it, yes?”

“Not really.”

“What?”

BLAM. The wall near the door exploded outward,
leaving a hole the size of a head at waist level. The shot had also disintegrated most of the cider jug. It ended right below where Cram was holding on to the neck.

“That came from Maisie.” A voice rumbled out of the shack. “I have another thunder gun in here: Loretta. She is bigger than her sister, and irritable to boot. Now. Who is it?”

Athena cleared her throat. “My name, sir, is Athen Boyle. I come visiting with two servants. We are selling spices.”

There was no response.

“
Spices
, I say.”

Cram crouched to the ground with his hands wound around his head. He looked like a frog. Ruby thought being a frog might be nice in the next life.

“Open the door. Let me get a look at you,” the voice said.

“Thank you, sir.” Athena took a step back and slowly opened the door.

The shack was crowded and dark. It was filled with hanging racks of fish and meat. A narrow alley led
through the center of the racks, and at the other end of the alley was a massive, cushioned, elegant easy chair. The man sitting in it had a bald head, fenced by a riot of greasy brown hair, and a suspicious squint. There were two fowling pieces on stands in front of the chair. One sizable barrel was smoking and resting up at the ceiling, and the other was pointed straight at them.

“We do not have much call for spices out here, popinjay,” he said. “I do not see many merchants leaving the pretty city for our little corner of dunghill. What are you doing in my smoke shack?”

Athena scanned the interior of the shack, and she seemed put out or confused. “There is no one else here?”

“Just me and the jerky. Who were you expecting? Cotton Mather? Gov'nor Spotswood and the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe?”

“Possibly, possibly.” She looked down at her shoes, and her tension went away.

Ruby followed her gaze to a mound in the center of the dirt floor of the shack, only a touch higher than the rest of it.

Athena took a step forward, and the bell of the long gun followed her.

“May I?” she asked, pointing toward the mound.

The man followed her gaze, and then he grunted. Eloquently.

“Robby help me, please.” Ruby knelt and followed Athena's lead, clearing the dirt away to reveal an ironbound trapdoor. It was dark, varnished wood, inlaid with an intricate carving of a pepper mill. At the edge facing them were three keyholes, one small and narrow, the center big and rounded, and the third keyhole shaped like a square.

“Cram, my bag if you please?” Athena looked up at the big man, asking permission. He nodded slightly, amused. Cram reached into his large sack and pulled out the smaller oilskin bag from inside. Athena retrieved some powder from a sealed envelope and sprinkled it into a crystal bulb full of silver liquid. She upended the bulb to pour out the liquid, but when it landed in her hand, the fluid settled and hardened into a large silvered key.

“My, my,” said the man, who did not look impressed in the least.

It was an easy match. Ruby's practiced eye told her that the key was a sweet ringer for the center hole.

Athena placed the key on the plate next to the lock, and it did match perfectly. She looked up at Ruby. A dare? Ruby nodded her head. Athena's eyes crinkled. Turning back to the trapdoor, she took the key and fitted it smoothly into the smaller, narrow hole at the top. The key
lessened
as it contacted the lock. It fitted like a glove, and when she turned it, the sound of gears unlocking filled the smoke shack. Ruby tried to not look surprised.

“Fermat's Lock.” The man nodded in approval. “Glad to see they still send some of you prepared. Course, I'm not surprised. Big admirer of your father.”

Athena glanced out of the corners of her eyes at Ruby and Cram. She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

“Name's Abel. Abel Ward. Go on down, Journeyman Boyle. We have been expecting yewse. And your guest.” He gave Ruby a queer look.

He reached behind the chair and handed Athena a battered tinker's lamp. “You should be fine with this. The password is ‘gypsum.' The gatekeeper will take your iron and your flasks. Watch your p's and q's with that one. New, jumpy, and still very, um, official.”

The trap led down a wooden ladder to a dirt landing and a hallway. It twisted several times and got a bit cooler. Ruby wondered if they had doubled back on the river, but the air was dry as parchment against her skin. Something about the passage felt strange, but she could not figure it. Then Cram spoke up.

“So silky,” he said. Ruby looked down. The walls and floor were earth, but everything had been smoothed down, like pitch in a seam. It was cold and hard, like stone.

“Like the chapter house, but less fancy,” Cram said. At Ruby's look, he said, “That carriage I drove in Boston, 'twere owned by the Tinkers. The Boston chapter house was full of walls like this, but most had carvings and swirlies and things.”

The carriage. It brought her up short. Was that truly just a few days ago? She felt a little dizzy. So many things had
happened. So many people that she might never see again.

In the dark, behind her, Cram whispered, “I miss my mam.”

Her stomach got heavy. She had taken his life that day, as true as Wisdom Rool had taken hers. “I am sorry for what happened,” Ruby said. It felt small. “I'll make it right by you, I promise.”

He looked at her funny, as if she had grown another head. “My thanks, Ferret.” He brushed past her and then turned back. “Don't think that'll make me not call you Ferret. Ferret.”

“I won't,” she said.

“Keep up, shirkers,” Athena said from up ahead. After opening the lock, she had been moving more easily, as if she had shed a weight. “You both should know that the place we are going runs on rules and discipline. Speak only when spoken to. I have a certain position among these people and can speak for us all. It will go better if you allow me to do so.”

At the bottom the corridor turned sharply to the right, and the hall beyond glowed with a harsh orange
light. Athena rounded the corner and then came to a halt. Ruby could not see past her.

A voice like nails pulled across slate crept around the corner. “Password.”

Athena's mouth was a line.

“What is it?” Ruby asked.

“That voice,” Athena said. Then louder: “I know your speech, sir, but I cannot place you.”

Ruby sidestepped around the bend, and a scent of metal washed over her. The corridor was blocked off, floor to ceiling, by a massive bronze door. Light emerged from the eyes of a great carved animal head, roaring jaws wide open. In the glare of the eyes, she could not quite recognize the animal. Was it a lion? A dragon?

Cram came up behind her. “That there's a roaring camel.”

Ruby blew out her breath. “Oh, please. More camels? Really?”

Athena grimaced. “It is an important symbol of the order.”

“Not very fierce, though, is it? When I think of fierce,
I think of predators—you know, lion, wolf. Even a guard dog.”

“Most certain not a camel, though,” Cram said.

“You stay out of this,” Athena shot at him. “Ruby Teach, have you ever been spit at by a camel?”

“Spit at?”

“Yes.”

“Why would I let one spit on me?”

Cram coughed. It might have been a snicker.

“They are fierce and terrible. Do not make that face. They are.”

The voice rang out impatiently from behind the metal door. “Do you hear me? The password and your iron right now, or I will flood that hallway with phlogistic particulates, and you can continue your debate of natural history as little piles of sulfuric ash.”

“Gypsum,” Athena said.

“Very well.” A large drawer slid out of a cunning panel in the door. “Now your iron, big and small. Also any reagents or catalysts.”

“Must we?” Athena called. “I am a journeyman
of the order, and we are allowed to carry our arms in London.”

The voice snorted, nasal as a rhinoceros. “Does this look like London to you, you mollycoddle!”

Athena narrowed her eyes at the door. “Your lack of respect will be dealt with. Do you know who my father is?”

“I do. And I know who you are, Lord Athen Boyle, and if you wish to challenge me, you may, but to do that, you must enter this gate, and to do that, you must. Put. Your iron. In the drawer.”

They complied. Athena's sword and Cram's bags. Ruby missed her knives. After, a clacking of gears sounded, and a breeze pushed against her face. The door opened outward until the camel's nose touched the smooth wall of the corridor. Athena strode through, with her gloves in her hand, primed to challenge the rude brigand on the other side. She stopped chest to face with a short hawk of a girl, hair pulled back tight as ship cables.

“Greta Van Huffridge,” Athena sputtered.

Ruby had never heard her sputter.

9th. Over Strident Objection from a Minority, Abigail Booker allowed to deliver her findings re: experimentation with Igneous Fluid. Cause: one part brilliant scholarship, another part Mlle. Booker's Ferocious Thumping of Mr. Smathers, compounded by her threats of further physical exertions if not allowed to speak. Excellent talk.

—Minutes of the Alembic Coffeehouse, UnderTown,

March 4, 1718

“D
o you wish to slap me, sir? To challenge me to a duel?” said Greta Van Huffridge. She thrust her chin upward at Athena like a spear. Ruby's neck muscles tightened in sympathy. The girl could not have been taller than five feet. She was fifteen or sixteen but was dressed like a woman thrice her years, in a salmon pink mantua, patterned all over with hideous butterflies.

Cram whispered behind her, “If she didn't kill us
with fire from behind that door, she certain could have blinded us with that dress.”

Athena covered her surprise with a bow. “Miss Van Huffridge,” she said, “I am so pleased to remake your acquaintance.”

“You are nothing of the kind,” she spit. “Get your people inside this door so that I may close it and we may proceed with this charade.” She seized the crank of a large brass wheel and began spinning it for all that it was worth. Gears engaged, and the door crept back toward them. It was as thick as Ruby's arm was long and closed with a thud and the heavy sound of locks engaging.

Greta grabbed an engraved horn hanging from a tube that passed into the earthen wall and yelled into it, “I require a replacement on the Dregs door, IF YOU PLEASE.” She hurled it back into its hook and pinned the three of them with a stare. Her nostrils flared. “We will wait here until my relief comes. Touch nothing.” She pulled herself back onto a stool, turned her back to them, and began making entries in a large book perched on a shelf desk that hung out of the back of the door.

“Miss Van Huffridge”—Athena raised both her hands in surrender—”I beg you to not let what happened between us in London color our relationship here.”

The pen tore through a number of pages. “Nothing happened between us in London, sir. Nothing.”

Before Athena could respond, Ruby said, “How well do you know each other?”

Greta Van Huffridge turned to a clean page and attacked the book with renewed gusto. “Please inform your baggage that I speak only to persons of a certain merit or social standing and that he occupies neither one nor the other.”

Ruby felt her face redden. “If you come down off that stool, I'll show you how well I can hear. I'll box your ears and create a pleasing ringing sound for your ladyship.”

Athena put herself between the two. “Robby, she is baiting you.”

“Oh, yes, I know.” Her hands itched. “And I mean to use her as bait on the nearest fishhook I can find.”

“I mean, violence is forbidden here. If you attack her, you risk the ire of the order.”

“I don't care about your stupid order. What about you? You were just going to slap her in the face and challenge her to a duel.”

Athena grabbed her shoulder. “She is a girl. If she were a boy I would have presented her with my glove, and we would have settled our disagreement outside the confines of this house.”

There was something else she was not saying. Then Ruby saw it. “Ah,” she said.

Athena flexed her fingers. “Yes. As two gentlemen we would have been presented with a certain latitude. That is an advantage men have in polite society.”

It hit Ruby like a bucket of water. They did not know that Athena was a girl. None of them. “I see. Fine. Very well. Lord Athen.”

No one spoke until a boy, his hair burned off one side of his head, came to relieve Greta. He sat on the stool and immediately began writing in the huge tome on the desk.

Their prissy guardian pulled a number of levers on the side of the door near the wall. The wide metal drawer,
presumably laden with their weapons, popped out of it. Cleverly attached wheels hinged down and turned it into a rolling cart. The tiny girl set off down the hallway, pushing the cart in front of her at a brisk clip. They had no choice but to follow. The passage continued on into an oblong room that had several other hallways entering it from different directions.

Its only furniture was a rough wooden table in front of another carved bronze door. Behind the table sat two hard men, both wearing masks. They were cloth affairs that covered the nose and eyes. They were indigo, and each was inscribed with a drawing. One bore an ax, and the other a flame. A nasty-looking ax lay in front of its namesake, and several envelopes, ceramic vials, and an iron box in front of the flame. Greta stopped at the opening of the room and said, “Greetings, Sir Ax.”

He grumbled, “With whom do you pass?”

“I pass with Bishop's Yellow.”

A swollen boil on his nose peeked out from under the mask. He nodded and said, “Come forward.” The two men examined the contents of the rolling case carefully.
Flame, skinny with a heavy beard, whistled when he pulled Athena's sword out of its sheath. He cataloged the items and then put them in a large locked chest set into the floor beside the table. His deep voice surprised Ruby. “These will be returned to you upon your exit.”

Ax looked Ruby up and down and prodded at her left coat pocket with the long haft of his weapon. “What's in there?” She counted to five before she moved her hand. It would not be good for them to see her shaking. She slipped a finger through the loop and fished her picks out into the light. He shrugged. “We take only weapons, but use those inside, and you'll get more than a whipping.”

He wrote Athena a receipt. Flame opened the iron box and produced a stained wood carving shaped like the snout of a pig. It was the size of a fist and chased all over with pewter swirls.

“What is that?” Ruby whispered to Athena.

“It is an olfactor,” the man said as he poured a drop of orange liquid into one of the nostrils of the carving. “Stand very still, if you please,” he murmured. He slowly passed the hog snout over Athena and then Cram, front
and back, top to bottom. Ruby was next. When the snout passed over her right shoulder, the pewter swirls changed to black.

Flame held his hand very still. “Ax,” he murmured. The big man lifted the heavy ax as if it were a hatchet. It glinted in the dim light. A pistol appeared in his other hand.

Ruby applied Gwath Maxim Eleven: “If They Are Twitchy, Do Not Twitch.”

Flame cocked his head. “Boy,” he said, “is there something you wish to tell us?”

“I don't understand,” Ruby said.

He moved the olfactor away, and the pattern carved into the pig snout returned to its original pewter gray. When he passed it back close to her shoulder, the gray turned black once again. “We use this to detect chemystral markers that might lead others to our door.” His eyes were cold behind his mask. “You bearing breadcrumbs, little Hansel?”

Her stomach dropped through the floor. The mark Henry had told her about. “Um, yes.” The two men
tensed. “But I don't know where it is.”

Ax's knuckles were white. “You give it to us, now, boy, or we'll take it.”

Athena spoke up. “I may be able to help.”

“You had best, journeyman.” Ax adjusted his grip. “This runt is here under your ward.”

Athena ignored the big man. “May I come forward?” Flame nodded. Athena moved next to Ruby. Her hair smelled like hay. “Robby, would you mind taking off your coat, please?” Ruby did as she was told. Without a moment's hesitation, Athena peeled the little trail of green goo off the back of her shirt, the goo that had splashed on Ruby as she escaped down the trap at the town house. “I wager that this is the object of your inquiry.” She held it out to Flame, but he refused and motioned for her to set it on the table instead. He passed the olfactor over the little pile of rubbery stuff, and the color indeed flashed black. Ruby was thunderstruck.

“Explain,” the bearded man murmured.

“This boy here was my quarry, and he is a slippery one. I had to mark him, so I could find him if he bolted.”

Ruby dug her toes into her boots. It was the only way she could stay quiet.
Athena
had marked her? Not Rool?

Flame nodded. “I see. You know it is part of the compact that you should reveal any chemystral flares before entering another chapter house.” It was not a question.

Athena shrugged. “I did not. My apologies.” She said it as if she had bumped into him in a coffeehouse. “In my part of the world it is not a requirement, rather only a courtesy.”

“So you show us no courtesy?” Ax slammed his weapon onto the wooden table. Athena shrugged again. “You are in our part of the world, you jumped-up dandy. We scratch and scrabble for what we get this side of the water, and if you got no courtesy, you got no respect. I'll wager that—”

“Thank you for your cooperation, journeyman,” Flame interrupted.

“Thank you for your vigilance, sir.” Athena nodded him a bow.

Flame avoided Athena's eyes and pulled a medallion
out of the thicket of his beard. He touched it to a carving of a willow on the door. It swung silently open. He motioned over his shoulder and said, “Welcome to the Warren.”

The door closed silently behind them. The corridor beyond was like the ones before it, smooth and featureless. Ruby's heart was battering at her chest, and the scar below her eye was throbbing. Athena had marked her. Twice. The first time in the carriage was for amusement, surely. But now this.

Yet the marker must have been how Athena and Cram had found her. She might have been trapped in a cell or hung from a hook in Wisdom Rool's study or worse. She owed Athena for that. But Ruby thought that Athena had revealed everything to her. The thought of still more secrets jabbed at her, an ugly thistle in her side.

At the same time, she could not help catching the looks that Greta was giving Athena. She was a fierce mooncalf, to be sure, and whatever had “not happened” in London had ended in Miss Van Huffridge's hating Athena, but like an angry puppy. A worm gnawed at
Ruby's chest whenever she caught the looks and sighs and mooning.

Athena treated Ruby just as Greta had said. She was baggage. Valuable baggage, to be sure, but goods to be handled and delivered. Wherever this passage was leading, she was not certain she wanted to discover where it ended.

Athena seemed comfortable with all these doors and guards, but Ruby could not help wondering if the measures were to keep people in, not out. Gwath Maxim Number Twenty-two said, “Always Look for the Chimney,” but as far as she could see, there was no chimney. It was tight as a drum. An ant would have trouble breaking into this place.

Greta led them briskly past laboratories, workrooms, and people. They clipped past a classroom where a boy who might have been from China was reciting to a small group of other children while a woman watched, her blue badger mask bright against dark, African features. Most were dressed more like her and Cram than Athena and Greta: roughspun woolens and mended elbows. All the adults, every one, wore a mask.

Everyone they passed in the hall was busy, and
everyone was carrying some sort of contraption: tools, a tray of ceramic bottles, a disassembled set of gears that looked as if they were made of glass.

Greta led them to a small side passage, which angled off from a shadowy corner between two tinker's lamps. It felt older than the rest of the complex. Cobwebs hung in the corners. Angry voices bounced down the hallway from the door at the end. Ruby stepped more quietly and strained to hear. Gwath Maxim Number Six: “Pay Attention to the Private, not the Public.”

“We cannot take this on!” one voice insisted. It was a woman. Her voice cut timber.

Another woman responded, higher, a glass hammer. “We have our role to play. We are sworn to it.”

“I swore my obedience to the order, not to Godfrey Boyle. This is a dangerous game to play. We are exposed,” said a man's voice.

“Yes, exactly.” This was the first woman again.

Greta pushed open the door at the end of the passage, into a cozy room dominated by a large oak table. Around it sat five people, all masked.

The room went silent. Even in their masks, two of the people hid their faces: One turned away from the door, and one grabbed a book and held it over his features with a beefy hand.

One of the women spoke. She had plain brown hair and a plain brown frock, and her mask bore a burning fireplace. “What is the meaning of this?” It was the glass hammer.

Greta Van Huffridge offered a stiff curtsy. “I beg your pardon, Madame Hearth. Our orders are to bring these as soon as we find them.”

The woman made a face. “Bring them, yes, Van Huffridge, but to the door, not into the study. The Penta's business is not for your ears.”

One of the men, who was looking away, added, “Or your eyes.” He obviously did not want to be seen, but Ruby had caught dark green eyes and a tiny hammer under his right eye before he had turned his back.