The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  The woman walked over to Athena; the little boy stayed perched on his rock. “Not my fault you came up our hill.”

  “No, it is not. It is ours.” Athena’s words came slowly and full of care. “It is our fault, and I would like to apologize for myself and on behalf of my companion for our trespass. It was not . . .” She was searching.

  “Neighborly,” Cram finished.

  “No, it was not neighborly.” The woman reversed her spear and stabbed it into the ground. “However, it would neither be neighborly to eat you for breakfast before hearing why you come up all this way. And bring me that Wayland Teach; I have not set my eyes on a good liar in years. By the by, we don’t actually eat folk. That’s just Cubbins’s way of saying hello.”

  Cubbins threw his arms in the air and blew out his cheeks in frustration.

  CHAPTER 8

  A quinsy is a Fever attended with Difficulty of Swallowing, and often Breathing. For curing, place a large White-bread Toast, half an Inch thick, dipt in Brandy, to the crown of the Head till it dries.

  —John Wesley, Primitive Physick

  “When a reeve makes a Work, it is an expression of one’s duty. A gift, if you will.” Ward Corson tapped her two jade fingers on the gray wood ledge that ran around the roof of Fort Scoria’s keep. They were actual jade, rumored to be souvenirs from some dustup with shamans in the Far East. Ruby sat on the balls of her feet with the rest of the cadets, crouched around Corson in a loose semicircle. She had made certain to place herself as far as possible from Avid. A fierce wind blew up this high, and it stung the cuts on Ruby’s face. There were no mirrors here, but from poking and prodding, Ruby was fairly certain she had a blooming black eye. Her back, though, where Cole had done that thing to it, felt only a little sore. Ruby stifled a yawn. The flame-haired ward looked at her. “Teach.”

  Caution burned away any trace of tiredness. “Yes, Ward?”

  “You are new to our company, so you may not understand a Work. Is that correct?”

  Should she talk about what happened the night before with Ward Cole? “Well—”

  “Very good. A practical demonstration. And a refresher for the entire group. Ward Burk?”

  Another ward stood up from her place behind the class. The one sparring the big reeve on Ruby’s first day. Her short black hair ruffled in the wind as her eyes searched the rooftop, passing over Ruby’s for a moment with a flicker and then coming to rest on the roof in front of her. She held up two fingers. Then she began to breathe out: long, deep breaths. She placed the two fingers, tips first, on the roof.

  Then, quietly and slowly, she pressed herself into a handstand! A fingerstand? It was impossible, but there she was, arm fully extended, feet up in the air, staying upright on only two of her fingers.

  Corson’s voice wound into Ruby’s ears. “A Work of Flesh such as this helps to position yourself or to smite your enemies. A Work of Spirit could heal your wounds or even enable you to walk through walls. They all require you to give a piece of yourself, to sacrifice for your cause. But you must first empty yourself of your life before this time and place—”

  Ward Burk was still doing a fingerstand in the back of the group, and her face was like glass. Empty, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Like Wisdom Rool’s eyes.

  Empty yourself? Of what?

  Someone knocked on the trapdoor.

  Ward Burk flowed back to her feet and opened it.

  Mouse brown hair and pale olive eyes stuck up through the trap. It was the boy Hale, who had tended her wounds from the fight with Avid. The rest of him remained hidden, as if he didn’t want to expose himself to the sunlight. Cadets giggled.

  “Yes, Hale?” Corson said.

  His voice was muffled by the wood of the roof. “The doctor has sent me for Ruby Teach.” Whispers broke out among the cadets.

  The doctor?

  Something flitted across Corson’s face, but it was too quick for Ruby to nail it down. “Very well,” she said. “Teach, you’re with Hale.”

  The smaller boy waited at the bottom of the ladder. He held out his hand, very grave. She shook it. He nodded. “I did not introduce myself last time. I am Evram.”

  Ruby followed Evram Hale into the depths of Fort Scoria. They soon passed from gray wood corridors down into the rock of the bluff, lit only intermittently by chem pots.

  “Where are we going?” Ruby asked.

  “The laboratory,” said Evram, and he wouldn’t say anything more.

  Ruby swallowed hard and took extra care to remember their route. Evram led her through a room occupied by a wide stone pool, filled entirely with sand. Double windows with strong storm shutters hung open, and a stout wind was sucked into the chamber. Two reeves—she recognized them from the walls—stood waist deep in the sand, both wearing muslin shifts, scrubbing themselves vigorously. She and Evram circled the sand pool close to the windows, and as they passed, Ruby took in a glimpse of what lay beyond: rock and sky.

  Evram unlocked a stout timber door, and after they went through, she helped him fight it closed against the wind. It cleaved into the door frame, and silence fell.

  They stood at the top of a little flight of stone stairs, which led down to a long, narrow corridor, two doors on each side. Instead of the restless chem pots that had lit the rest of the fort, tinker’s lamps of a style Ruby had not seen before hung at regular intervals, casting a harsh white glare over the hallway.

  “Evram—” Ruby said.

  “Follow me, please.”

  She did. The door at the end of the hall opened into a wide, bright room.

  The laboratory of Fort Scoria was the most orderly place Ruby had ever seen. It was big and windowless, and there were tinker’s lamps here, too, emitting the same bleak whiteness. Alloy and glass tables sparkled grimly, and the shining white walls were so deeply polished that Ruby’s blurry reflection stared back at her from several places. There were basins. There were drains in the floor. There were gleaming cages of many sizes, all of which were empty. Rows of spotless prods, pokers, and cutters lay in orderly array, marshaled for action. The air was very still, as though the room were waiting for something.

  A man worked at a counter across the room, back to Ruby and Evram. He was of medium height and wore a white frock coat, white breeches, white tights, white shoes with white buckles. He was the one who had been watching her the day of the ropes.

  Evram cleared his throat. “Doctor Swedenborg, I have brought Ruby Teach.”

  The man turned about. He had a handsome, symmetrical face, but most of the skin below the left cheek was gone, pocked and eaten down to the bone. He stared at Ruby. A pink tongue flicked out between his exposed teeth. Much of his neck on that left side was covered in a fine, silvery mesh. It made a tinkling, hissing sound when he breathed. He wore slim white leather gloves and looked her up and down as if she were made of sweetcakes.

  “So, Miss Teach. We meet at last.” Swedenborg’s voice, slightly accented, was an odd mixture of wind and sunshine. It was very pleasant, making things somehow worse.

  They sat across from each other at a brushed metal table. Evram set a bowl of watery broth that smelled of leeks in front of the doctor. Swedenborg did not offer her any, but he sipped a spoonful as he looked at her.

  “I am Doctor Emmanuel Swedenborg. I am an chemyst. You know what that is?”

  The soggy jingle of his breathing unnerved her. She waved her hand at the assembled equipment. “What do you take me for? You’re a Tinker.”

  “Well, yes”—he waved a finger—“but I am not fond of the term. It indicates a low person who sells his art for money.”

  She could not resist. “So what do you sell yours for?”

  It was a solid jab, well aimed, but he barely blinked. His eyes flared wider, and he smiled. “You have spirit. Excellent! I favor test subjects with a certain fire. They last longer.”

  Her heart leaped into her mouth. Test subject? Last longer? “What will you be doing to me?” She fought to keep
the quiver out of her voice.

  The spoon rang on the metal table, and Evram was immediately there, whisking away the bowl and delivering an inkwell, a feather pen, and a stack of pristine white parchment.

  “What will we be doing together, Ruby? That is the question.” He dipped the pen in the ink, and it hovered above the parchment.

  Did he expect her to just tell him the secret? Even if she could, she wouldn’t. A spark of defiance cut through the fear at the bottom of her belly. He expected absolute obedience from Evram. He said he liked spirit, but just how much would it take to spoil his soup?

  She smoothed her face to seamless innocence. “I don’t know. I thought maybe studying the hunting habits of the common river otter?”

  He smiled thinly. “No. I am waiting, pen in hand, for you to tell me all that you know about your passenger.”

  “Passenger?”

  “The famous secret, yes? I have a taste for secrets.” His pink tongue quested against the mesh on his jaw. “I have been told by folk at the highest levels of the crown that this chemystral secret can offer the world unparalleled fuel for invention, creation, and destruction.” He savored the last word. “And we shall discover it together, you and I. Doesn’t that sound delightful?”

  There really was only one acceptable response to such a strange and intense request.

  “Of course!” Ruby said. She didn’t need to force her smile. The highest level of the crown. Fuel. Small words. Tiny facts. But she had tricked those words out of him. She could not just sit here and give him secrets. She had to earn them, too.

  CHAPTER 9

  WANTED:

  Mountain Guide of No Small Measure

  for travel to Pointes West

  Ready Money for True Skill

  Inquire at Stores Room, Blistered Heel Inn

  Srs. inquiries only

  Athena covered her nose. Discreetly.

  Muttering under her breath, the beast woman had resplinted Henry Collins’s leg and plastered a mat of foul-smelling herbs and fir resin on top of it, then wrapped the whole biscuit in what was unmistakably her (filthy) shirt. The whole of this doctoring, if it could even be called doctoring, was worthy of suspicion. In point of fact the dwelling, if it could be called a dwelling, was equally worthy of suspicion.

  It was a cave with a front porch.

  The “cabin,” as the woodswoman called it, held a series of snug chambers, carpeted with furs and strewn with roughhewn furniture. A smoke hole peeked out of the ceiling of the largest chamber, referred to as the kitchen, and a fire burned hot in an oven made half of scraps of iron, half of a ring of stones. On the walls hung the skins of all manner of creatures, and various implements of forest travel and beast slaying lay strewn about in various states of disrepair.

  The woman had handled Henry gently enough, carrying him easily up the hill in her leather-clad arms. She had offered no such aid to the captain, who had followed wheezily and at a snail’s pace. The woman and her boy laid Henry on a pile of furs by the fire and then covered him with strangely patterned blankets before tending to his wound.

  “Dear lady—” Wayland Teach began from his stool in the corner, but the woman turned a ferocious look on him, and he raised his hands in surrender.

  “First, we eat,” she said, and Athena fought a brief spike of panic when she thought to herself: Eat whom? “You left me high and dry on a snake-riddled island, Teach, but it will not be said of Winnifred Pleasant Black that she was not hospitable.”

  “Winnie, we had to go. Three French man-of-wars bearing down on us—”

  She threw a pan at him. He ducked. “We eat!”

  The beast boy threw a pinecone at the captain. “We eat!”

  The woman doled out plates. On each lay a wooden cup. The steaming water inside was accompanied by a floating stick, possibly some weak mockery of tea. Next to it lay a chunk of what seemed to be spiced shoe leather. Well, a Boyle knew how to be a guest. She somehow downed the terrible tea and unchewable meat with gusto and a host of appreciative noises and nods. Cram did the same, but he meant it. Finally Winnifred Black sat in her rocking chair and lit up a corncob pipe. The boy crouched next to her, watching Athena, gnawing on something that had a tail.

  She released a gout of smoke from her nostrils. “So. What is your business here?”

  “Well, madam—” Teach said.

  “Not you, Wayland.” She waved the pipe at him. “You sent these babies up my hill to do your dirty work, so I’d soon as hear them say their piece, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine,” said the captain.

  “Babies?” Athena said.

  The woman slid her eyes over Henry, who was unconscious, and Cram, who was wrestling with Cubbins over the last piece of jerky (and losing), then back to bear on Athena. Now she knew what it was to stare down a mountain lion.

  “Babies.” She took another long, slow pull from the pipe. “Now, tell me true, young gentleman. What brings you here?”

  “We need a guide to travel west.”

  “You need a guide. I am a guide. Well, me and Cubbins here. We are a team. We can take you into the Endless Mountains, but your captain there is a man who can speak out of both sides of his mouth and many more besides, and I’ve had my dances with him.”

  “Now, Winnie—” said Teach.

  “Quiet, you.” She turned back to Athena. “It just so happens I need work. You may have noticed that my town has been completely rid of humans. I am bereft of a compelling avenue of financial advantage. However, I am also an impatient woman and have no truck with fools, so tell me true just why it is so urgent that you launch yourself and your friends here into the dangerous lands beyond.”

  Captain Teach waved his hand for Athena to proceed, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Athena nodded and tried not to think about their other options, which summed up very evenly to zero. Perhaps an appeal to her sympathy? Threats? Status? But these wilderness folk refused to be lorded over. If she tried to command as Lord Athen, this woman would be done with her before she finished her first sentence.

  So she tried a stranger tactic. She told the truth.

  “A friend is in danger, and we have to go into the mountains because apparently that is our only choice if we wish to save our friend.”

  “Your friend is in the mountains?” the woodswoman asked.

  “No, but information regarding her whereabouts is.”

  Black’s gaze bored through Athena. “I need more.”

  Was this a story that should be told? It was impossible to know who was with them and who was against them. Would the Reeve have just let them go? Athena had abandoned her father’s agents, the Bluestockings; would they just allow her to dissolve their association? Agents unknown had planned the attack on Henry and the burning of the Thrift. It would be the height of stupidity to think that they were not pursued. Leaves fluttered about on the floor. Was this some strange sort of ambush, created just so more information could be got out of them? Athena looked to Captain Teach, who nodded his permission.

  So she told the story. How she, Cram, and Ruby had met in a botched carriage robbery in Boston. Meeting again on the Thrift. The revelation that Athena was there to secure Teach and his daughter, Ruby, before the crown could get to them. Because Ruby was somehow special and had something that everyone wanted. Captain Teach’s capture at the hands of the Reeve and the navy. The three companions’ escape from Wisdom Rool. Hunted through the streets of Philadelphi. And further, and further, until Athena found her tale at the foot of this very hill and she and Cram hanging sausages from the trees.

  When she finished, Wayland Teach was yawning, Henry was listening, eyes half lidded, dawn was creeping through the window, and Cram and Cubbins were wound together, sleeping on the floor like two wolf cubs.

  Winnifred Pleasant Black, however, perched on the edge of her rocker.

  Black turned to the captain. “And this is your little girl?”

  The captain looked as if he might
crow or cry. “Well, not so little.”

  Black turned to Athena. “And the three of you,” she said, “you, Cram, and this Henry, without you they both—Teach and his girl—would be locked away right now.”

  Warmth crept up Athena’s spine, and she sat a little straighter. “I suppose that’s true.”

  The room was quiet, just the hiss of the ashes and the squeak of the rocking chair.

  Black refilled her pipe and set it alight. “May I see the diary?”

  Athena glanced at Henry. He stared into the hearth. Ever since the captain had given him the sacred journal, he had become a hermit indeed, locking himself away at all hours, refusing anyone access, mumbling under his breath about algorithms and temperate fluctuations. He reached into his coat and unlocked it with the button hanging around his neck, the button Ruby’s mother had left for her. He held the journal out in the dawn light, shadows playing across his chemystry-scarred hand.

  Black took it and paged through the procession of inscrutable equations. “What does it say?”

  Henry’s nose twitched. “There is a place over the mountains where three rivers meet. A city. That is all I have deciphered so far.”

  Winnifred Pleasant Black blew out three perfect smoke rings. “I know it.”

  She stood up and slung the sleeping Cubbins over her back like a rucksack. The boy blinked awake and giggled. Black said, “A friend in danger, hmm? And noble deeds? And peril in the lands beyond? Well then, you have yourself a guide.”

  “Excellent,” Teach said with a grin. “Shall we leave tomorrow? Or the next day, if you need to gather supplies?”

  Winnifred Pleasant Black walked to the heavy fur “door” that hung over the cave mouth. “Oh, no, Captain Teach.” She slung the fur aside, and the cold morning blew in on a swirl of snow. “There is no going into the mountains until winter has passed. No matter how deeply it stings, you must hunker down. We leave after the heavy snows are gone, but not until then.”

  “Winnifred—” Teach started.