by Kent Davis
He turned to her slowly, no expression on his face. His mouth opened, and a withered tongue lay there, like a spoiled carrot. The sound that came from his throat would haunt her dreams for a very long time. Before him, ignored on the worktable, lay an almost finished automaton. It was just a little longer than her forearm. Its shape was that of an otter, but its fur shone of brass. It had sapphire eyes. Next to it lay a slip of paper. A word was scrawled on it, as if by a child: Ruby. He must have been crafting it before this happened. She felt she might almost go blind again. His eyes followed her as she found a sack in the corner and laid the otter inside. She took it. Deep inside her something wailed.
Rool pulled her back into the hall and shut the door. “Told you it wasn’t a good idea.” He hurried her along the hall. “Doctor Swedenborg has added his own properties to your famous machine. It removes the will now as well.”
The door at the top of the steps was firmly locked. The wood was gray and glistened. Cram got a picture in his head of a greasy, spoiled steak. His belly rumbled in hunger.
The professor looked back at them; Vera, Alaia, Lady Athena, the captain. Los Jabalís had insisted that the masked chemyst stay with them. Henry had the leftovers of Miss Marise’s laboratory spread out on the stone in front of him, and he had an air about him. As if he were shoeing a mule from behind. “The lock and the door are chemystral make, and I have not seen either of their like before. Move back.” They scarpered around the corners of the door, backs against the rock. Cram put his fingers in his ears.
Lady Athena looked at him. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Seemed apropos.”
His lady mouthed “apropos,” but Cram didn’t hear it because just then a loud pop rang out. The professor flew across the cavern and rolled to a stop.
He picked himself up, dusted himself off, and said, “That wasn’t it,” and hurried back to the completely undamaged door.
Lady Athena bared her sword. “Well, they know someone is knocking. I hope Los Jabalís are keeping them occupied on the walls.”
From across the chamber, Alaia whispered hoarsely, “They’ll be all worrying about the armed party down on the plain, never fear!”
Cram tried to keep it straight in his head. Strategery. The rest of Los Jabalís had circled the fort and were marching about with a big to-do, making like they had an interest in attacking. Alla Ferra had said something about a catapult, a flaming catapult. He shook his head. All a ruse, howeverward. The captain had called it a sharp. Draw their attention one place, while you dig into them in another.
The professor, muttering and cursing, finally applied two vials at once to the door, then flailed his hands over his head in protection. Cram closed his eyes. There was a fizzing and a smell of rutabaga. Cram opened his eyes. The door had a hole in it, the size of a mastiff. The professor’s hair was smoking.
“Come on!” he whispered, hauling the Ferret compass out of his pack. “We’re in!”
Rool hurried Ruby up into the sand room. A warm, wet wind whirled back and forth up from the river and down from the clouds. Rool pulled a coil of rope from his shoulder. “Your plan is still sound, and a legend will spread about your climbing down blind. Tie this off, will you?”
Ruby wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. “I have to go back for him.”
He looked up from the rope, a mad sail mender. “Do you not hear me? Evram Hale is gone, as surely as if you had thrown him from this ledge. You must accept this, Ruby Teach. Now. I am giving you a chance to live. You are a survivor. I saw you hesitate outside the workshop. You could have sacrificed yourself nobly, destroying the machine and damning yourself. I saw you pass Hale’s door the first time, and you would have left him on his wee stool if I had not given you back your eyes. This is your chance to live. If you do not take it, I wager you will be sitting right next to your little inventor before the next day is out. Is that what you want?”
She shook her head. “But what if this is some trick?”
“Then you will slip it.”
“I don’t know what to do, where to go.”
He chuckled and took her by the shoulders. “You are like me, my apprentice. You are a wild wind, a fire in the field. Destruction follows you wherever you go. That is your legacy. Hale is just another name to add to the list.” He cocked his head. “Is it so hard to understand that I want you to live?” She had never seen him hesitate. “I have grown . . . fond of you, Ruby. And I wager your hatred for Swedenborg far outstrips your hate for me, and I cannot imagine that you will not do your utmost to stop him. Do you think he will be satisfied with young Evram? Give a man like that a sniff of power, and he will never stop searching for more.”
“But how?”
“Follow your nose.” His glance flicked down to the picks emerging from her fingers. “Besides, your solutions are becoming much more interesting than mine.”
As he finished tying the rope, all she could do was look at him. He tested the knot and tossed it over the edge. It flopped down the rocks into the dark and mist below.
Rool cocked an ear. “You have guests coming. You may want to shimmy down that rope. Then again, you may not. The choice is yours. I will see you again, Ruby Teach.” Then he sauntered around the corner to the changing room and was gone.
Whispers came down the hallway. She could not be discovered, not now, not so close to freedom. She threw all that had happened into the chasm before her and then lowered herself over the edge. One slip, one missed foothold, and she would be gone. The rocks cut slippery and sharp into her bare feet, but she made the best time she could. The wind whipped through her hair, and the rain was cool and clean. The task was pure. Climb down. If anyone died, it would be her. She was responsible for no one else.
The sound of hushed voices filtered over the edge. She went still. There was a tiny ledge, a shelf made by Providence in the side of the cliff, and she huddled in it, letting the rope twist freely. The wind and rain lashed hard enough that she might have been washed right off.
A head popped over the ledge, backlit, shadowed.
“Ruby?” Henry Collins called into the wind.
She did not move. She did not make a sound. Against all odds they had found her. But what was it they had finally found?
She called, “Here,” and grabbed the rope, to start the slow climb back up.
They all were there at the top: Cram, Athena, Henry, and her father. They stared at each other a moment, the fort shuddering the alarm. They had changed. Sun browned. Lean. Cram looked like a wolf, and Athena had a wild gleam in her eye. Henry was beaming, but there was something hard in his face. Her father, too. He looked almost shy. Two girls were with them, tough, with clocklocks and hand weapons. They all stared back at her. How had she changed? She hid her hands behind her back.
The happiness blooming inside her struggled to overcome a crippling wall of fear. Rool’s words hung around her neck. A wild wind, a fire in the field. Destruction follows you wherever you go. Her words, though, tumbled out: “You shouldn’t have come.”
They were breathing heavily, just seconds ahead of the hunt. It was Athena who said, after checking over her shoulder, “What?”
“You shouldn’t have come. You’re all putting yourselves in deadly danger.” She thumped her chest. “I’m a threat to you. You should just let me go.” She stepped back toward the ledge.
They looked at her as if she had just grown an extra head.
It was Cram who broke the tense silence. He stepped forward and took her hand. “Ferret. We don’t care about no threats, and we don’t care about no danger. We’re here for you, and if you climb back down that cliff, well, I guess we’ll just have to follow you down it.” He squeezed her hand. “We came for you.”
That little squeeze, the looks on all their faces: they chased away the fear. At least for now. Corson’s words came back to her. You have to get empty only so you can know what to fill it with. Emptiness—loneliness—was never where she would find her streng
th. This was her power. These people. This strange, courageous family. She wrapped herself in thoughts of them, and the picks molded back into her fingers as slick as summer sunshine.
“Well then, let’s be about it. I’d prefer you didn’t meet my recent acquaintances. At least one of them wants to turn this whole continent on its head.”
Athena raised an eyebrow. “Well, we can’t have that. By the way, there’s someone down below you should probably meet.” She grinned. They all did.
Ruby could not help grinning back. Then they all were grinning at one another like fools at a fair.
Wayland Teach cast a look behind them. “About that meeting—” he said.
Ruby cut him off. “I’m sure they’re lovely, whoever they are, but we really must be going, don’t you think?”
Captain Teach took a breath and then nodded.
She threw herself into her father’s arms just for a moment. “At last,” he said, and then they tore down the gray wood hallways, toward escape, spiraling ever deeper away from the madness that lay behind.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Recipe for a story:
Begin with a base of Anna and Bobo, the touchstones. Refer back to Dianne, a mother as ferocious as Marise, but who is always there. Tony, who taught me about stories. Julie, who taught me about people. Chris, who showed me that heroes are born in the forge of the wager.
Fold in The Gamers, who first witnessed Ruby’s world: Crazystones, Aloysious Pleasant Black, Hieronymous Wodehouse, Violet McTavish, and Coldbrook McBiggerstaff. Add percolaters: Valerie Roche and Emmy Laybourne.
Catalyze with a brilliant agent, Susanna Einstein. Count yourself lucky. Refine and then explode and then refine and then explode and then weep and then do a jig with Editrix Adept Martha Mihalick. Count yourself thrice lucky. Further hone through the centrifuge of fantasticness known as Greenwillow Books: Sylvie Le Floc’h, Tim Smith, Katie Heit, Virginia Duncan, Gina Rizzo, Preeti Chhibber, and the rest of a small yet mighty army.
And then add people like you, who like stories like this. Drink the potion down.
Special thanks to those who helped me speculate about the fictional Algonkin: Joe Coulter, and the tome to which he referred me, The Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, ed. Helen Hornbeck Tanner.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KENT DAVIS is the author of A Riddle in Ruby. He is also an actor, a game designer, and a teacher. He lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife and a wily dog ninja named Bobo.
www.kentishdavis.com
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
CREDITS
Cover art © 2016 by Petur Antonsson
Lettering © 2016 by Ryan O’Rourke
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc’h
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
A RIDDLE IN RUBY: THE CHANGER’S KEY. Copyright © 2016 by Kent Davis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950344
EPub Edition © August 2016 ISBN 9780062368393
ISBN 978-0-06-236837-9 (hardback)
16 17 18 19 20 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Greenwillow Books
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