The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  “You heard me. I know it hurts, but so does a musket ball when it needs to come out. If that boy tries to hoof it, he won’t make it to the bottom of this hill, let alone into the high places. He needs to heal; you know it and I know it, even if he don’t. And if you go out there in deep winter, even with me, you will die, and then what will happen to your daughter?”

  A quarter of a year, she was saying? All her life Athena had moved with purpose. Under her own power, teeth to the wind. Was she cursed, somehow?

  And what of Ruby? Athena’s heart clenched. What terror would the Reeve put her through before they even began their journey? What devilish experiments? Was she even alive?

  Athena smiled.

  It was the only way to stop from pulling her own ears off. Patience was not her strong suit, never had been, but if it must be, it must be. “Cards, anyone? Apparently we have a little time.”

  CHAPTER 10

  A man is the sum of his actions.

  —Halvard de Anjou, Bastionado

  Ruby grabbed the palisade wall, steadying her perch to look out over her shoulder and down into the valley. A midday flurry had sprinkled the trees with snow, and the wind kept up its endless assault. Islands of red and gold leaves struggled to stay afloat in a creeping sea of brown and white. Directly below her the trees washed up against the cliff face like a motionless tide. A gust of wind ruffled Ruby’s thick coat, and she steadied the pail on the thin plank that was her only seat. Just two weeks at the fort, and winter was already coming on hard. She stuck out her tongue to catch a few flakes, savoring the brief, clean coolness. Too brief, before the vinegar funk crept back into her nose from the pail. She dipped her rag into it, taking care to keep her hands clear, and spread more of the varnish onto the wall.

  “Up!” she yelled.

  Above, Levi Curtsie’s white head stuck out over the pointed top of the palisade, and then he gave an angry wave. Ruby had never thought that such a harmless gesture could be filled with rage, but that boy pulled it off. The ropes holding the plank in place creaked, and the whole getup began to rise. The huge shafts of timbers, sanded smooth by unknown Tinkers, rolled past until it stopped: a fresh patch of gray wood ready for a strengthening bath. The chemystrally hardened wood needed priming every six months. She rolled her eyes. Tinkers. Making more work for the rest of the world for a hundred years.

  She dipped her rag in and began again. Her eyes watered, and her stomach rumbled. Why did chemystry always smell so terrible? Couldn’t the Tinkers use their almighty skills to make their concoctions smell like rhubarb pie?

  Of course the new girl drew the plank duty. Hanging from a stick and two pieces of twine hundreds of feet high. You’d think they would protect her precious blood a bit more, even if they didn’t care about her. But Ruby didn’t mind. She liked it. It kept her away from the taxing pokings and proddings of the Swede. It was at least a few moments’ rest from Avid Wake’s endless badgering. Wake had named Ruby Sweetling—because she wasn’t an orphan—and the name had stuck. What could she do but keep her head down and try to stay out of their way? Ruby had sand, but she wasn’t in a hurry to catch another beating from some lanky giraffe with an ax to grind.

  Orphans. All of them. She had to hand it to the Reeve. What’s the best way to train a fierce, loyal, relentless crew? Fish up the ones without parents, with ties to nothing except you.

  “Up!” Ruby yelled again, and the plank rose, almost cresting the freshly sharpened points of the palisade.

  Hoofbeats hammered the road below. The plank was its own little crow’s nest, and Ruby had a clear view of the winding, narrow track that made its way up to the gate. A single horse and rider struggled up it, scattering puffs of fresh snow in their wake. The horse slowed, lathered and heaving, but the rider flicked the reins, urging it forward. It was Ward Dove, the pale, pockmarked reeve from the carriage ride.

  She disappeared into the gate, and only a few moments later the whole fort shook. Levi Curtsie popped his head over the palisade with a scowl. “That’s the summons. They want everyone.” He reached a hand down the wall.

  Ruby gave him the pail. He took it and wrinkled his nose.

  “Go on. I’m right behind you,” she said.

  Levi scowled but disappeared.

  Ruby climbed up over the palisade. The walls and yard buzzed with reeves and cadets, all moving with purpose. The whole of the fort crowded restlessly below one of the staircases. On the stairs’ first landing stood Ward Dove and Wisdom Rool.

  Rool raised his scarred hand, and all went silent.

  “Sisters and brothers, the crown has need of you.” He scanned the crowd. “Ismail?”

  Ward Cole raised his hand. “Lord Captain?”

  “Ready all the traveling packs and horses we have for long journeys. Cadets, you will aid Ward Cole. All reeves with me to the library.”

  The yard burst into activity, Ismail Cole shouting orders and cadets running to and fro, while the clump of reeves headed into the main fort.

  What did the crown need? Why were the Reeve on the move? Finally a chance to discover something useful. Ruby grabbed a sack of turnips from the wagon and hurried toward the keep. She waded into the crowd of cadets in the kitchens, all of them stuffing cheese, hardtack, and vegetables into an orderly line of traveling packs. Ruby dropped the turnips in the pile and then lost herself in the crowd, sliding over toward a side door.

  “Teach!”

  Ruby schooled her face: intent and hardworking. She turned to see Ward Cole standing in the other doorway, five packs across each shoulder. “Where are you headed?”

  “Summoned, Ward. Hale said the doctor needed me urgently.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Off you go then.” He turned away, shouting, “Someone take these packs to the stables!”

  Ruby slid out of the kitchen and into the empty passage down to the lab. As soon as she was certain no one followed her, she changed course for her true destination: the library. Scratch that: two reeves stood guard outside the door. She had to find a new spot, and quick. The roof! No time to double back for the climbing harness. She risked a trip back down to the kitchen and nicked a coil of rope from the traveling supplies. From there she hustled up the stairs and through the trap. The hall was built into the outer wall, and the palisade spikes were taller here, giving the roof a little fence of its own. She shucked her boots, tied off the rope on one of the spikes, and lowered herself to a spot right next to the open window of the library. She did not look down.

  Ruby rested her feet against the timber wall and edged herself as close as she dared. A jumble of black-clad elbows and shoulders and heads jammed the window, all facing inward. Someone was speaking, and it was impossible to mistake the deep gravel of its owner:Wisdom Rool.

  “Edwina, the door, please. This is no news for cadets.”

  Ward Corson said, “Yes, Lord Captain.” A door latched.

  Wisdom Rool let out a long sigh. “I will be brief, because you all must be on your way. Dove has brought fresh orders for every one of us, as well as difficult news. Boston is burning.”

  A chorus of questions competed for one another, along with calls for “quiet!”

  Rool said, “Ward Dove?”

  Dove took over. “Several chemystral incendiaries were set off in close timing throughout the city, including one inside the Reeve town house on Back Street.” She took a breath. “I was the only survivor. The chemystral fires have proved difficult to extinguish, and when I left, parts of the city still burned. The governor is contemplating evacuation.”

  Ward Corson said, “Do we have any idea who executed it?”

  “We do not,” said Rool. “But rumors are flying in the coffeehouses that orders written in French were found at one of the sites. Some of you will be traveling with me to Boston to look into it. The rest of you have been ordered into the countryside. Reports of militia activity and brigands are blossoming like mushrooms, far more quickly than they can be investigated by
our cadre in the field.”

  “Then Scoria will be defenseless, will it not?” It was Corson again.

  Wisdom Rool chuckled. “Edwina, you and Wards Cole and Burk will be staying to supervise the cadets’ training. Between the three of you and this fortress itself, I have very little worry for their safety. Doctor Swedenborg will also be staying behind, and I am certain his chemystral aid will be invaluable.”

  An uneasy murmur passed through the room. It wasn’t only Ruby whose skin crawled when the Swede was near.

  “That is all. Prepare yourselves for travel. Dove will bring you your orders by dawn. Read them, commit them to memory, and burn them.”

  The meeting broke up. The door opened, and the sounds of bodies shifting and receding commenced.

  The wind ruffled Ruby’s hair. A bomb. Bombs. And chemystral to boot. Boston on fire. Uninvited, the overturned tinker’s carriage popped into her mind, the foiled robbery where she had first met Athena. Did that street even exist now? Was it burned to bits, like the rest of her former life?

  A shaggy head popped out of the window.

  “Yah!” Ruby cursed under her breath.

  Wisdom Rool looked up at the rooftop. He looked down at the river below. Then he looked at Ruby. “My faith in you is well placed, Ruby Teach. Your initiative never ceases to impress me.”

  She got control of her breathing. “It’s here, isn’t it? The war. You said a war was coming. And you needed me to win it.”

  “So I did.” He shrugged. “You are correct. Of some concern to me is that I do not know who is waging this war. I must away for a while to put some work into that. I will return when I can.” He leaned even farther out the window and added in a whisper, “Study hard, Ruby Teach. I need you at your fighting weight. How fares your research?”

  “The Swede has said that it will provide unparalleled fuel for invention, creation, and destruction. Also, that he has that information from the highest levels of the crown. Oh, and one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “He is impossibly creepy.”

  “That is all you have?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I have no time for your buts.”

  Her frustration warred with her anger. “But what is the secret? Do you at least know something of it?”

  “I have been told that you carry something that could transform the function of this world.”

  Anger won out. “The same as the Swede. Could you be any more vague?”

  “I could, if you like.”

  “No. No.” She clenched her hands around the rope, wishing it were his neck.

  “Do what you are best at, Ruby Teach. Sneak and find. Sneak and find.” He patted her knee and looked down. “Off with you now. We don’t want you to catch your death.” Then he was gone.

  Ruby scaled the wall as quickly and quietly as she could, mind afire and stomach at sea. At the top a folded note lay tucked into the knot of rope.

  She opened it. It read, “Be careful.”

  She crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the canyon.

  CHAPTER 11

  Doubt is not a pleasant condition,

  but certainty is absurd.

  —Voltaire

  Emmanuel Swedenborg held Ruby’s earlobe as if it were a dead butterfly, delicately and with mild distaste. He murmured a little tune as he peered through a magnifying lens at the apparently fascinating goo inside her ear. Without looking up he said, “So you continue to deny any knowledge of the gift you carry?”

  Whatever his chemystral power, he couldn’t interrogate his way out of a piecrust. “To deny it would imply that I know the secret and I refuse to give it to you.”

  He tugged the ear a little harder. “You have not answered my question.”

  “Ow. No, Doctor, I don’t know the first thing about it. To be honest, I hope you’ll be able to discover it.” Charming him into telling her the secret was a long game, but one of her only plays at the moment.

  “I hope so, as well, Ruby. I hope so, as well. Hm. Your ears are splendid. Pity.” He pulled back from the lens and stared off into space.

  Ruby used the moment to take in the laboratory. There had to be something useful. Journal on the far table. Cages all about. Racks of tools, all neat and tidy. Blast. “What’s our next step, Doctor?”

  He cocked his head at her. “Excellent question. I believe we shall look into your interior. Mr. Hale, will you bring me that little octopoid, please?”

  Evram wheeled over a metal cart. On top of it, amid a scatter of probes, tubes, and vials, sat a water-filled case at the bottom of which lay a sad-looking squid. The creature had a small tube attached to it, running out of the case and into a coil on the cart. At the end of the tube was a little metal cup. The doctor moved to place the cup on Ruby’s neck.

  She pulled back. “What are you doing?”

  Swedenborg’s breathing rang through the mesh at his neck. “It is not dangerous. We are merely employing this little apparatus to ask more questions. Please observe.” He placed the cup on her neck. It was warm as flesh.

  Evram flicked a switch on the case, and the squid quivered. Suddenly its slick skin changed color to a deep crimson.

  “Focus, Mr. Hale.”

  On the red canvas of the squid’s body, shapes began to resolve.

  “What—what is that?”

  “Why, that is you, Ruby,” Swedenborg purred, gaze rapt on the little octopus. “Your internal fluids, to be precise. These creatures have astonishing mimicking properties, and our device here creates a sonic resonance that—well, suffice to say that for a short time I can look inside you.”

  Hairs rose on the back of Ruby’s neck. Every fiber of her wanted to run away, and it took all her will to stay still. This was what she wanted to know, wasn’t it? She schooled her voice to sound excited. “What do you see?”

  He ignored her. The squid’s body rippled, as if someone had thrown a stone into a pond, and then all at once it was clear. Something was moving around in there. “Evram, my journal. Now.”

  The boy hustled the journal and quill over.

  “What is it?” Ruby said. “What’s happening?” Were those animals? Ruby fought down a wave of bile at the thought. No, they weren’t animals. They were moving too regularly, in formation, like squadrons of ships floating inside her.

  Symbols.

  Swedenborg’s pen flew across the page, but the symbols would not stand still, pulsing and weaving in and out of the frame. There were hundreds of them, thousands even.

  “Blast. They’re moving too quickly. I can’t see anything,” said Swedenborg.

  “Doctor,” Evram said, “it can’t—”

  “I know, Evram, but I need more—”

  Ridges marched across the body of the squid for a moment, obscuring the symbols, and then it quivered one last time before it went completely still. It was dead.

  Swedenborg turned back to Ruby, eyes gleaming. “Alas. He has passed on to the happy sea where squids go for eternity. He was our only specimen, but our plucky little companion has served us well.”

  Ruby’s mouth was dry. “How?” She didn’t need to pretend to be flabbergasted. “What?”

  Swedenborg grinned. “Well, Ruby, it seems we are gaining ground on our elusive quarry.”

  “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “Did you see those equations?”

  Equations. Like in her mother’s journal? “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” He sat himself up as if announcing someone’s birthday. “Here is my hypothesis. Your blood itself is carrying your secret!”

  “But I’ve told you I don’t know what it is.”

  “That is what makes this so exciting! I no longer need to converse with you at all! It is your tissue and your corpus that will show us the way.”

  Two sessions? He had discovered that much in two sessions? It had taken the magician Fermat—the greatest chemyst she knew—days to even suspect that the secret lay in
her blood. She had to do something. Events were moving far too quickly. The little squid floated up near the top of the tank unmoving, a grim reminder of just what might happen if he got to the answer first.

  Swedenborg closed and locked his journal and was already bustling about the laboratory as if Ruby and Evram were not even there.

  On her way off of the chair, Ruby stumbled into the cart with a clatter.

  Evram helped her up, but not before she had lifted two of the probes from the cart and secured them up her sleeve.

  “Thanks, Evram.”

  “You should be more careful, Ruby.”

  “I will.” And I hope you don’t find those two probes missing.

  Just as she made it to the door, the Swede called out, “Oh, and before you depart, Miss Teach?”

  “Yes?”

  “I shall need some of your blood.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Inaction is the devil’s plaything. Doubly so is Action.

  —Aquila Rose,

  adventurer and ne’er-do-well

  The stars shone later that night. Ruby sat in her windowsill, clouds of breath steaming in the chill mountain air. It was not enough to quiz the Swede and hope he dropped some key piece of information. He was far too clever for that. For more than a fortnight she had sat on her hands. She had been waiting for something to happen for far too long.

  For what, she knew not. Athena, Henry, Cram, her father, and the crew to storm the fort in a great tunneling automaton, digging up out of a hole in the middle of the yard, spitting streams of fire at the Reeve? The picture made her smile, but did they even know where she was?

  And what of Gwath? She chided herself. Her guardian had to be dead, killed by Rool on the Thrift long ago. Didn’t he? Even Gwath could not escape the man. Besides, they were all of them in the way of her focus. Ward Corson had said, up on the roof, that the Reeve had no attachments, that it helped them. If she was to seek out the truth of her secret and learn the ways of the Reeve, she had to let them go. Their ghosts crept in through the cellar of her heart or the attic of her mind, and she could not let that pass. No, she was a crew of one, and the storm was rising. Somebody had to climb the mast to reef in the sail.