The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  CHAPTER 15

  Emptiness is only the beginning. But it is the Only Beginning.

  —Training manual, Reeve of England

  Ruby picked up one bare foot after the other on the slick, cold grass. The mist coming from the lake mingled with the steam from the cadets’ mouths as they clumped together at dawn. Ismail Cole had rousted them out of their beds in the dark and led them down to the walled meadow that took up the rest of the outcropping. Why did this sort of training always need to happen before the sun came up or at darkest midnight? Ruby yawned and immediately regretted it. The beating she had gotten from Avid Wake the night before had even crept up her neck into her jaw. Avid was in the crowd, too, up front, desperate to be seen in the lead.

  “Awake?” Ward Cole smiled. He was never not smiling, and his eyes always opened just a little too wide, as if he’d smelled something surprising. He was dressed, as they all were, in a sleeveless muslin shirt and knee-length breeches. They hung from his thin frame like becalmed sails. The man was nothing but sinew and bone.

  “Well, if they are not, they will be soon,” said Ward Corson, as she pulled herself out of the lake behind him. Where Cole was thin, she was thick as a tree trunk, and knotty as well. Her dripping red hair lay flat on her head, framing her flat, severe face.

  Behind her, a line of square boards stretched out for fifteen yards or so into the lake. They floated very closely together, connected to one another by a thin cord that ran under the center of each. Ward Burk was treading water at the end of the line of boards, holding it straight.

  “Right,” Corson said. She turned to Cole. “Show them.”

  Cole turned toward the lake and went still as a stone.

  He shook his arms out. His hands struck his legs with a clap.

  Then he sprinted down the shore. Providence, he was fast.

  He didn’t stop at the edge of the water. He gave a joyful whoop, and his bare feet slapped the boards as he ran high-stepping across, arms out like a wire walker. At the last board he teetered off to the side, tucked his feet, and sliced into the water with a perfect dive. The boards behind sloshed up and down like ships in a storm, and Cole swam to a point halfway down the line. Cadets murmured all around Ruby.

  “Quiet,” Ward Corson said.

  The murmuring stopped.

  “A reeve needs quiet,” she continued. “Not necessarily about you. That may well be impossible. You will be surrounded by noise all your life. Clocklocks firing. Citizens screaming. Foes threatening. Children, machines, animals.” She flashed her two jade fingers in the half-light. “Torturers.”

  A fish splashed, somewhere out on the lake.

  “We are the arm of the crown when the army will not do, yet neither will diplomats. Our work is in the shadows, in silent studies and secluded forests, in alleys and on rooftops. So we must create quiet. In ourselves. If there is a fracas inside, you will not arrive at your destination. A Work of Flesh—for example, lightening yourself as Ward Cole just did—requires deep quiet inside you.” She stepped aside, leaving the path to the boards open. “Who will be first?”

  “I will,” Ruby said. She stepped out of the crowd.

  Ruby Maxim Eight said, “If They Cast You Out, Make Them Respect the Outcast.” So she ran at the boards with a wild yell of her own. Her feet pounded on the grass, and she almost slipped twice before she got to the shore. She reached down inside of her for that quiet. In a flash she knew what Corson was talking about. It had become a habit when she was working locks with Gwath. He had been a Changer. Had he been teaching her already? Had the years of lessons not just been for thievery but to unlock this birthright? She could do this. She would do this. She found a kernel of fire in her belly. She grabbed it and lifted herself high with all her might. She would carry herself across.

  She got to the second board.

  The lake was warm, at least. Hot springs feeding it.

  As she swam back, Corson called out: “Good, Teach. You’re reaching for something.” Ruby pulled herself out of the water, and Corson squatted down next to her. “You know the problem?”

  “What is it?” Ruby said, water streaming from her nose.

  “You’re reaching for something.”

  Ruby swallowed the selection of curses that came to mind and nodded as if she knew what Corson was talking about.

  She tried two more times, with Corson giving her less and less advice each attempt. Ruby didn’t even get to the second board either time. She could barely contain her fury. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe that she could do it. It was failing. Failing in front of this group of cods-heads. They hated her, and that just made her want to stick it in their collective eye. She was more than just some package. She was. Their stares bored into the back of her head.

  “All right, Teach. That’s enough for you. Let’s give someone else a chance,” called Corson. “Into the drink with you, and monitor the boards halfway down.” Ruby gladly dunked her head back in the lake; it was warmer than the chilly air. The smelly water from the springs crept into her nose as she swam out to replace Ward Cole. As the morning warmed, she didn’t know whether to be angry or pleased that few of the cadets did much better than she. Levi Curtsie went completely silent and made it to the third board before falling in. His sister, Never, jumped up and down, whooping much as Cole had done, but she never made it past the first board. Elvina Moats did a strange little high-stepping dance, complete with an off-color shanty, but she went in the drink as well.

  None of them called to her or even spoke to her when they landed in the water. Not even Levi or Never. Ruby splashed her hand gently. Ripples cast out from her palm back toward the shore. She did not mind the isolation. She had much to think about.

  Avid Wake stepped down to the water, preparing to race onto the boards. There were many more things than just the beatings that irked Ruby about Avid, but one of the most irksome was this: she was talented. In the exhausting sparring sessions in the practice yards, in the strange, painful postures they shoehorned them into day after day. The point—or so the reeves said—was that occasionally, in the absolute exhaustion, pushed past all endurance, one of the cadets would feel it. The Void, the emptiness, the nothing inside them that could fuel them on to astonishing things. Not only were the Reeve a disciplined fighting force, but they had unleashed in themselves a kind of chemystry of the body, and Avid, more than any of the rest, seemed close to unlocking it.

  Avid had run back up the hill a bit and sprinted toward the water. As her foot hit the first board, she opened her mouth to holler like the others, but no sound came out. Instead, she looked mildly surprised, as if she had walked around a street corner and seen a dancing dolphin.

  She stepped onto the next board.

  And the next.

  It was all very fast, one foot for each board, and before you knew it, she was coming up on Ruby halfway across the spring. The cadets on the shore began to cheer.

  It was a beautiful thing to see.

  Which may have been why right before Avid reached her, Ruby tugged, in the slightest way possible, the edge of the board. Avid’s foot slapped against water, not wood, and she careened off of the trail and sailed headfirst past Ruby into the lake. Avid’s face shifted from peaceful surprise to a mask of anger. Ruby saw, too late, the large rock that lurked under the surface, and Avid’s upper body snapped back as she slammed facefirst into the rock.

  Avid’s arms whipped out in a strange parody of Ismail Cole’s, and then she was still and senseless in the water, blood seeping from the deep gash on her forehead. She began to sink.

  Ruby was the only person remotely close enough to do anything. She grabbed at Avid and tried to keep her from sinking, but the bigger girl was dead weight. Ruby stuck her head into Avid’s back and her hands in the other girl’s armpits, and her feet got purchase on the rock for a hopeful moment but then slipped out from under her. She slammed back onto the rock itself, and the wind went out from her. She struggled, unsure which way was
up. Her hands got tangled in the cloud of Wake’s hair, and Ruby floundered more frantically as the pair of them sank further.

  She needed to breathe.

  She was seeing stars.

  A pair of hands grabbed her from below.

  Had Gwath finally come for her?

  But no, the hands were from above. She was moving up. And then her feet and then her head broke the surface, wrapped though it was in Wake’s jerkin. She caught a brief blink of a network of thick scars, all over the girl’s back; but then Ruby was free and gulping in great gouts of air. She got her feet under her and rested them on the rock, arms moving in the warm water to keep her steady.

  Ward Burk had somehow arrived there from the other end of the lake, and she was treading water and supporting Wake. As the other two wards swam out to help, she smiled at her. “Well done, Teach. That was a near thing.”

  Ruby tried to control her breathing, and all she could do was nod. It had been a near thing. Ruby had almost killed Avid, and herself in the bargain. The worst part? She didn’t feel scared.

  Or sad.

  Or sorry.

  What was she changing into?

  CHAPTER 16

  Loyalty not to women or men.

  Nor to power.

  Loyalty to an ideal.

  —Training manual, Reeve of England

  Evram held two sapphires in his hand. The jewels twinkled brightly under the harsh white light of the tinker’s lamps.

  Ruby sat on the stool in the corner of his workroom, one foot tucked under her leg.

  “I am glad you are here, Ruby.”

  “I am, too, Evram. Why are there two gemstones in your hand?”

  He bobbed from one foot to the other. “Because! The doctor has finally approved my plan for Sleipnir! I can activate her!”

  “Really?” The eight-legged horse automaton stood behind them, shining in the light. And he had made that. Evram was not charming or strong, but making a thing like this: that was something altogether more special. He had a feel for automatons. Even the gearbeasts seemed more . . . present when they were around him. It gave her a pang. She looked about the workroom, tools scattered everywhere, a half-eaten plate of bread and jam forgotten on the table. He was in his place, doing a thing that he loved. And that thing was extraordinary. Ruby, on the other hand: what was she?

  “Will you help me?”

  “Sorry?” The question pulled her out of her daydream.

  He stood on a table on the other side of Sleipnir’s muzzle, at eye level. Ruby pulled over a stool and stood on the other side. He handed her one of the blue gems.

  “Where did you even get these?” she asked.

  “They were tucked in my crib, left with me on the doorstep of the town hall.”

  “Oh.”

  Evram stroked the braided brass mane. “They need to be put in the sockets at the same time. Their presence should complete the circuit, and that should wake her up.”

  “Should? Should the doctor be here, so he can see?” And perhaps let slip something more about me?

  “He is sleeping, and I want to make certain that she functions properly before I show him.” Evram blushed. “Besides, I thought you might want to see it.”

  “I do!” Ruby kicked herself. He was so nice, and she was using him. It was terrible, but she had to if she was to survive. Her heart did beat quickly at the thought of seeing Sleipnir awakened.

  “On the count of three.” Evram’s hand shook a little. “One. Two.”

  “Three,” Ruby said. The sapphires fitted into the sockets as if they had been made to house them. Which, of course, they were.

  Nothing happened.

  Ruby leaned in and whispered. She had no idea why she was whispering. “Evram, what is supposed to—”

  Sleipnir snorted.

  The shock sent them both backward, Evram into the wall and Ruby all the way off her stool. Sleipnir chuffed, a deep metal but ever so horsey sound. Ruby couldn’t move. Suddenly this thing, this statue: it seemed very much alive.

  Evram laughed. He never laughed.

  The sound shocked the gearhorse, and it backed up a step, burnished hooves sounding on the stone. How was it that metal could look startled? Evram moved forward, ever so slowly. “Easy, girl. Easy.” All trace of hesitation was gone. He was sure of hand and tone. He stroked Sleipnir on her muscular neck, and she moved forward tentatively. “That’s right.” Evram turned to Ruby. The look on his face was hard to describe. Ruby settled on “profound peace.” “Would you like to?” he asked her.

  Ruby walked forward carefully, and the gearhorse watched her out of the corner of its eye. She put her hand out slowly and then finally her palm on its neck. It didn’t feel like fur. But it didn’t feel like hard metal, either. Evram had done something to it that made it fall somewhere in between. It was wonderful. She took her hand off to look at Evram, but Sleipnir wasn’t having any of that. She butted Ruby softly on the arm.

  “She wants more,” Evram said. “She likes you.”

  They cared for the gearhorse that night. As they rubbed her skin down with a kind of curry comb that applied oil and buffed it at the same time, Evram said, “The form of the metal lends itself to behavior. Gearbeasts are crafted savage, so they act that way. But if something is alive, it needs reminders of its intended nature. I hope things like this will help Sleipnir.”

  Ruby hoped so, too. It felt right to be helping someone with something good. So much lying. Lying to Evram. Corson. Swedenborg. But what choice did she have? If she did not lie, this place would carve her up. She put another squirt of oil on the brush and tried not to think about it.

  “Ruby?”

  “Yes, Evram?”

  “Sleipnir has words. They will let you take control of her, aside from any other orders from the Reeve.”

  Why would he tell her that? “Why would you tell me that?”

  “Because she likes you.” Evram set his teeth. “And because I do not like what they are doing to you, and this is mine to give.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Sea and Sky.”

  That night Ruby put her bare foot upon the wall of her cell. She wobbled. Her other leg could barely hold her up. It was a Work of Flesh she tried, to connect herself to the wall, to stand upon it like a floor, as Ward Burk had on Ruby’s first day at the fort.

  Her knees were skinned, and she tried again. Seeing Evram make such an amazing thing drove her on. She told the people in her heart to go farther away. They finally obliged, walking away down the halls of her memory to the quiet places, slipping out the doors of her heart as she unlocked them one by one.

  The last ones to go were Athena and Henry. They looked at each other, then bowed as one.

  Inside her all was as quiet as snow at dawn.

  She launched her foot up next to the other.

  Pain seared through her foot, and then she fell to the ground in the moonlight. Had she twisted it? Or broken it? She held her leg up, and it was easy to see. All five of her toes were the color of storm clouds, with whorls and grain running through them, made entirely of gray wood.

  It was not a Work, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it was something else, something better. The Void, the key to the power of the Reeve, had unlocked something unexpected in her. Something she had never been able to accomplish on her own. She had changed.

  CHAPTER 17

  I have heard of French trappers who made some Deal with the Devil for a flying canoe, for the purpose of Visiting their Sweethearts back home. We are not so lucky.

  —Nestor Graham, lead trapper, Rupert’s Bay Company

  “Careful there.” Winnie Black held out a calloused hand, and Athena grabbed it, grateful for the help off the ferry. The river, swollen with spring melt, had bucked and roiled as if it were as happy as any of them to finally be on their way.

  It had been a long winter in the cabin above Harris’s Ferry, which had all the amusements and lovely qualities of an abandoned small town on
the edge of the wilderness. That is to say, nothing.

  Cram popped up from a stand of bushes across the field, a rooty mass in his hand. “Miss Winnie!” he called. “Look! I found some turtlehead!”

  Cram and the woodswoman had struck up an odd friendship, wandering the hills together, digging in the snow for strange herbs, and staring sagely at rabbit droppings. Still, at least he had been doing something. While they had ranged the hills, Wayland Teach made a second profession of staring moodily into the fire, Henry had eyes only for his journal, and Athena? Well, she fought herself. She spent hours a day in front of the walls of the little barn, parrying, thrusting, working tempo and form against that most tireless of opponents: her shadow. It galled her to wait. Ever since she was a child. That terrible feeling that while she was doing absolutely nothing, great events sparked and fired all over the world, leaving her behind in the dust. Ruby Teach needed to be saved, and that saving was Athena’s business.

  The captain stood next to one of the stocky pack mules, patting it with exaggerated care. He was a different man on the land: uncertain, jagged.

  Henry Collins glanced up briefly, and their eyes met. He ducked his head back down into the journal. Over the winter the leather-bound book had grown fins and wings of parchment paper, sticking out from all angles, and the young Tinker had worn out twenty grease pencils scribbling notes everywhere. Winnifred Black said his leg had healed as well as it would, but it would never be as it had been. He had rarely set foot outside the cave. He had a wild look about him, his hair unkempt and matted, and he was always tapping the pencils or chewing on them, muttering under his breath. They had not spoken much since the escape from the Grail, but she often caught him looking at her.

  Cram trotted back to the rest of them, his ridiculous tailed fur cap bobbing atop his head. Apparently there was some manner of rat’s cousin called a raccoon. He produced from somewhere a pigeon leg and gnawed on it as he sorted through his rucksack with the other hand. The white mule called Constance, the one with red eyes, peered over his shoulder.