The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  “Of course, Lord Captain. I will protect you from the dangerous cadets.” Corson bowed and left, shutting the door behind her.

  Rool pursed his lips. “I see where the bows and scrapes come from. Edwina and I came up together. She was quite the joker then. She has . . . hardened.” He traced the trail of scars that ran over his neck. “I suppose we all have. Well.” He sat on the floor, stuck his legs over the edge, and patted the polished floor next to him. “Come speak with me, Ruby Teach.”

  What had her world come to when she was relieved to see her old enemy? She eased herself down next to him, favoring the bruises.

  He watched her out of the corner of his eye. “Training going well, I see.”

  “Ah, yes, O Lord Captain. I am being molded into the image of a reeve. The molder uses her fists, her feet, and once, in the pantry, a meat tenderizer.”

  “Avid Wake.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Reeve recruit only children without family. England is our family, and you”—he raised an eyebrow— “your loyalty is to a different kin.”

  “And what about you? You have me sneaking about behind everyone’s back, pursuing some sort of secret agenda. . . . Ward Corson will roast me over the spit if she catches me lying again, let alone—” She caught herself right before she spilled the grog. Rool didn’t know about—

  “Your transformation?” Barnacles. “Edwina told me about it. And I daresay it makes you ever more interesting to me, my apprentice.”

  The heat drained from her face. “Don’t you dare call me that.”

  He raised his eyebrows, all sham surprise. “But you are, are you not? You are my agent inside my own house, hunting hidden Swedish rats.”

  “No, I am not.”

  “So you have made no progress in your search for the good doctor’s research?”

  He was moving too fast, dancing from point to point. “No. I mean, yes, I have, but—” Her hand curled into a fist. “My blood is a blueprint. He is making a machine from it, down in the laboratory.” She swallowed. “When it’s finished, I think he’s going to kill me.”

  “What will the machine do?”

  “I don’t know. I can get to his notes, but they are in a chemystrally locked journal.”

  “But you pick locks for breakfast, do you not?”

  “I could pick it before you woke up to start making breakfast, Lord Captain, but not with two blasted stolen probes. It’s like using a ham hock to do needlepoint.”

  “I can get you a ham hock, if you like.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “I know it. I know it.” He chuckled and then sighed.

  He stared out over the valley. It was easily five hundred feet down to the river below. A hawk flew by under their feet. How would it feel to fall all that way? Flying like a bird. Of course the flight would be quick, and the ending less pleasant. She looked over at Rool. Gray shot through the blond at his temples, and bags hung under his eyes. He looked exhausted, and she momentarily terrified herself by trying to imagine what could possibly exhaust him.

  “What is happening out there? We have no news.”

  “It is as I feared, Ruby. The incendiaries in Boston were only the beginning. Out on the frontier it has already begun. English militia burning French settlements. French militia tearing up English farmsteads.”

  “War.”

  “Yes, and both countries are sending their armies to defend their territory. Colonial leaders—Van Huffridge of the Rupert’s Bay Company, Governor Keith—howl that we do nothing to protect them. But Ruby, riddle me this.” He narrowed his eyes. “I spoke with some gentlemen of an English militia company, and they claimed to have no knowledge of these actions.”

  “Were they lying?”

  He showed his teeth. “They spoke under a great deal of duress, so I have a deal of faith in their truthfulness.”

  Ruby shuddered. “Very well.”

  “Further, I came upon the . . . remains of a French militia unit, but, and I find this quite fascinating, they bore weapons marked with the sign of an English arms merchant, and their brand-new uniforms were crafted from a fine strain of wool found only in East Anglia, in the heart of England. What do you make of that?”

  She momentarily forgot her anger. “They are all fakes.”

  He winked. “And where does that knowledge take you?”

  It was dead clever. “Someone else is starting this war.”

  “And?”

  “Someone not the English or the French.” She whistled in admiration. “Do you know who it is?”

  “I do not, Ruby Teach, and the skill with which the puppeteer’s hand has been hidden has caused me no end of vexation.” He snapped his scarred fingers. “That was some high-order thinking, my apprentice.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “As you say.” The wind ruffled through his hair. “But I hope you can see that given the currents of skulduggery in the waters all around us, it is difficult for me to trust anyone, even my sister and brother reeves.”

  Division in the ranks? Could she use this to her advantage somehow? But why tell her this? “Is that why you asked me here?”

  “Indeed, Ruby Teach. I find myself in an intriguing position where one of the few people I can trust . . .”

  “Is me.”

  “Is you.”

  “Well, that’s quite a pickle, Lord Captain.”

  “You have no idea.”

  She looked at him, staring at her. She could not read him. She had never been able to read him, and a thought struck her. That emptiness she had been searching for? He was the embodiment of it. No regret, no fear, no uncertainty. She found herself admiring it. Just a little.

  “Here is what I propose. Soon you will be presented with a mission. I would ask that you agree to it and pursue it to its end with your typical ferocity.”

  “In exchange?”

  He laughed. “Well, you’ll still have your life. But second, I will say that if you do me this favor, you will likely become closer to the denizens of the fort and thus more able to spy for me.”

  “How?”

  “I will finish. Thirdly”—he stood—“I will offer you my full protection from the good doctor. If he plans to do you in as soon as he understands the secret you bear, then it might benefit you if I was standing between you and him.”

  “I have your word?”

  He laughed. “If you wish. But if I am lying, you are doomed in any case. You need me more than I need you, Ruby. I need you for information, but you need me to survive. Will you do this thing for me?”

  “What is it?”

  “Yes or no?”

  He was right. It made her teeth ache, but she had to do as he asked. Whatever that was. “Yes.”

  “Good. Thank you. Someone will come to you. Do not speak of this conversation to anyone. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Lord Captain.”

  He gestured in the direction of the door and turned back to his vista. “See yourself out.”

  Well, good-bye and thank you to you, too.

  “Ruby, you’ll need these.”

  She turned on instinct to pull out of the air what he had thrown at her.

  Her lockpicks. The weight in her hand, it made her feel something that she hadn’t in months: she felt whole.

  CHAPTER 27

  Hypothesis: The pressure exerted by a given mass of a gas is inversely proportional to the volume it occupies. Correlations to sentient gases?

  —Robert Boyle, Sc.D., FRS, fellow,

  Royal Society and Invisible College, London

  Henry could not take it anymore.

  He had been traveling at the front of the group, with Cram, but there was something coming out of the serving boy. A combination of sulfur and acid. A gaseous emission that no devil’s chemystry might have created. Cram seemed not to notice or pretended not to, but Henry could not bear it a moment longer. Without really thinking about it, he drifted to his other companion, and took to f
orging through the closely packed underbrush with their rearguard, Athena Boyle.

  She had stared at him when he fell into step beside her and given him a dulled-down version of her customary smirk, but she didn’t complain. They walked on in silence together for most of the day, until he tripped over a hidden root and planted his face in a patch of clover. He cursed. He did not want her to see him on the ground. He went to scramble up, but a gloved hand hovered in his peripheral vision.

  Without really thinking, he took it.

  Athena helped him up onto his feet and turned back to the path without a word.

  Henry kept up. Something had changed with her that night before they left. After their difficult talk down by the lake, she had blown up with rage around the fire, but the next morning she had drawn into herself. Without her constant pressure, it was only a few more days before Henry also came to accept that Winnifred Black and Captain Teach were not coming. They were on their own.

  So they asked Sutherland for help. It didn’t take long. The yeti doctor turned about, squinted up at the early-morning sun, turned again, and pointed. “It’s that way. The three rivers. Two valleys over, and you’re right there. Can’t miss it. Take care around the Algonkin. They enforce their privacy fiercely. With weapons.”

  And that was that.

  It had been a strangely peaceful trek up until this point. Henry could not for the life of him understand why given this smooth passage, he had decided to take a whacking stick to a hornet’s nest.

  “Is the rear of our column to your liking?” he asked.

  Athena ignored the question. But she said, “You’re getting stronger.”

  “No thanks to you” was the response he swallowed. Instead, he said, “Yes.” He left the twitching pain and the worry about whether he would ever walk without a hitch back among the clover. What was the use really?

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  “I’m not slowing you down anymore?”

  Her lips tightened, and she gave him a suspicious look.

  “I can jest, too,” he said.

  That quieted her for another two ridges.

  He did not speak of forgiveness. Something hard that had not dissolved still stuck in his chest: a fixed geode or a strain of hidden ore.

  Eventually they stopped for a rest. Henry noticed several concerned glances cast their way from Cram; but he ignored them, and Cram kept his distance.

  Athena handed him a waterskin. “You know I am a Grocer, yes?”

  “Yes.” The leather clothing kept much of the heat off, but the sun beat down. The water sloshed down his throat, and then its cooling threads crept all through his chest.

  “Well, what are you then?”

  “What am I?” said Henry.

  “Yes. I am a journeyman sentinel in the Worshipful Order of Grocers. An ancient society that watches from the shadows, looking to bring balance to the world. This is privileged knowledge, known to only a very few, and you had it before you met us. That night at Grundwidge Fen’s after you saved us—you did save us, by the way—Cram said you told Ruby that you were part of a secret society that watched the Grocers.”

  He coughed. “I may have said that.”

  “Well?”

  This was not a road he had expected to go down. It shook him. “It is secret.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  That was a thorny question. Anger, yes. Frustration, yes. Fear, no. Respect, yes. Friendship, uncertain. But trust? “I do. I do trust you. Oddly.”

  She waved her hand about, encompassing the silent forest. “Well, I don’t think anyone will overhear.”

  A dusting of freckles marched across her nose. He focused on that as she took a drink.

  “The Pepper Clerks.”

  The water sprayed across a stretch of underbrush.

  “Pepper Clerks?”

  “Yes?”

  “I did not think there could be a name less, well, imposing than Worshipful Order of Grocers.”

  Henry’s back stiffened. “It is three chemysts; I do not even know the other two. Fermat said they came to an agreement that the watchers should be watched, and when they came to that agreement, they were . . .”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Well, they were snacking on peppers.”

  She nodded sagely. An honest smile, not that confounded smirk, played about her lips. It changed her face. “And your position?”

  “Sometimes he would call me Stock Boy.”

  “Ah.” She made a claw with her hand and grabbed her forehead, groaning. “They can’t resist, can they? Old folks with their impossible claptrap.” She snickered.

  He could not help joining in.

  “It does lack a certain, well, gravity.”

  “Oh, indeed?” she said, and then he could not stop laughing. Cram studiously avoided looking back at them.

  The solid deposit in his chest loosened, just a bit. So he asked her, for the second time, “Why are you on this journey, Boyle?”

  “I could tell you that it is for the Grocers, and it is because of my duty. But honestly? I don’t know that that’s the case.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  She looked at him, tender and hard at once. “Ruby.” She took a shuddering breath. “She is not safe, and that tears at me every waking moment.”

  Henry handed her the water skin. She drank. Finally he said, “You are a good friend.”

  A few hours later Athena and Henry rounded a bend up the slope, and Cram was hunkered down behind a stand of trees. He put a finger to his lips.

  A structure loomed above them on a high hill, surrounded by grass shivering in the wind. It was made of timber, as far as Henry could see: a long, low, sturdy thing surrounded by sharpened wooden stakes. Shapes moved in and out of the shadows up there in the dusk. Henry swallowed. Anticipation sharpened his senses.

  “That is a well-maintained sentry fort,” Athena whispered. “See the way the hill is cleared of forest, and the land behind? If we pass within a half a mile of here, whoever is on that elevation will be able to see.”

  “What about farther along the hills?” Henry asked.

  Athena shook her head. “With luck we can find a gap in the patrols.” Just then four shapes set out from the fort. They strode down across the ridge, parallel to the watchers. “If I were coordinating this outpost, there would be many of them, just like that.”

  Cram led them back into the forest a ways, before squatting in a depression by a little pond. “Could we tickle through by night?” he asked.

  “We could, but how do we hide in the daytime?” Athena said. “If it’s more grassland beyond, we’re easy targets.”

  “Could we just try diplomacy? Travelers from the east, here to pay our respects, that sort of thing?” said Henry.

  “Miss Winnie said the Algonkin do not look kindly on colonials of any sort: Frenchies, English, whoever. These little forts are here to keep us out.” Cram sucked on his teeth. “And don’t forget about the weapons. Doctor Yeti said ‘weapons.’ “

  “Why do they keep so close?” Henry asked. All he knew was that the Algonkin and the other peoples beyond the mountains had pulled back behind the mountains years ago, ending trade and any kinds of relationships with colonials almost overnight. Entire villages had been abandoned.

  “They say that the pox we brought with us killed legions of them afore they abandoned the coast. Mayhap they don’t take kindly to dying,” Cram said. Henry looked at his boots, and blood rushed to his face. Why could the Grocers or Pepper Clerks not have stopped that?

  It took the better part of a day, but Cram sniffed out a steep little ravine that cut across the land in the direction they were going. After watching it for a day, Athena said that she had timed the patrols for their best chance. Under cover of darkness, accompanied by a shooting star, the three companions crossed the frontier into Algonkin lands.

  CHAPTER 28

  Privateers? I don’t truck with the like, old son. You can
’t serve two masters. Never trust a man who pirates for a king.

  —Precious Nel, scourge of the Seven Seas

  Ruby’s shoulders gave up and ran away. She crashed facefirst to the ground. The earth of the yard tasted of failure. Her legs were still wound with Avid Wake’s, shins across each other’s hips, hands on the ground, holding up the chest and the rest of the body. The Reeve called it the Crab, and the two girls had been given it as a reward after yet another scuffle.

  Wake’s arms quivered. “Up!” she managed to say through her gritted teeth. Ruby levered one hand back under her shoulder, then the other.

  She pushed, and her elbows came up off the ground. Every part of her shoulders and her arms screamed.

  Then she fell again. Dirt got in her windpipe. She started coughing.

  “Up!” Avid grunted. Ruby shook her head into the ground. She couldn’t. It was too hard. A week of sleepless nights, and even with her picks, the lock of the doctor’s journal resisted her efforts.

  “Up, Sweetling!”

  The slight didn’t make Ruby feel smaller or more vulnerable or scared. It emptied her out, the way a hole would a bucket.

  She put her hands under her shoulders.

  And it felt as if someone had grabbed the belt of her breeches and pulled. It wasn’t a huge pull, more like a bird tugging. But it was enough. Sparks flared behind her eyes as she slowly, ever so slowly willed herself up. She and Avid set off across the yard, hand by hand, inch by inch. She heard grunting, and then she realized it came from her.

  Ward Corson had drawn a line in the earth with her heel on the other side of the yard. Ruby might have aged twenty years by the time they reached it. But they did. She and Avid collapsed together, heaving.

  Avid rolled onto her back, curls plastered to her scalp, arms flung out like a scarecrow.

  Ward Corson blocked out the setting sun. “Wake, with me. Teach, to your room. Get your things, and then meet us in the sand chamber.” The two set out across the yard without another word from the ward.