A Riddle in Ruby (12 page)

Bravos, Cudgeliers, and Crumps, Enter Here. Bottleheads, Clapperdogeons, Spungers, and Trugs, Round Back. Lily Whites Need Not Apply.

—Employment notice, Spruce Street Hooligans

T
he door to the Smelted Grouse did not budge. Ruby cursed under her breath and pulled the collar of the worn coat up to meet the bottom of the cap she had scrounged from a line in an alley. She had been hoping for something more, well, anonymous, but all she had been able to find was a patchwork covering that must have belonged to a junior pastor or a failed mushroom broker. It was the smelly green-brown of something you'd find on the
bottom of your boot. At least it helped her fit in in the neighborhood. She checked over her shoulder again.

It was very early in the morning. The street was dark here in the deep shadows where the Lid angled down to meet the ground, but she felt exposed.

It had been a difficult night.

Word had spread that the crown was after her. Posters with her picture were up all over the Shambles, and no one would take her in. At least they had not tried to turn her in for themselves. Fernanda Gaioso, who led the Spruce Street Hooligans, would not even see her. Abigail Whelk took her in the front door of her crawfish shack and then shuttled her out the back just as quickly. Kevin the Walrus at least offered to smuggle her up to Acadia and out of England's reach, but she refused.

She could not, would not leave this city. Not while her father and her crew might be here. They were in danger, and it was up to her to save them. So here she was, at the Smelted Grouse, a run-down tavern that both Gwath and her father had counseled she never go to alone or out of disguise.

She rapped lightly on the door, and there was still no answer. The shift change was nigh, and workers coming to and from the Benzene Yards would soon fill the street. She hitched up her breeches and made her way down the alley to the back door, past the clunking clockwork still that bulged out of the wall like a metal pimple. She knocked lightly on the back door as well. This one was stout metal, where the front door was worn wood. No response.

Ruby dug deeply and with palpable interest into her left nasal cavity. She was known in this part of the Shambles as Robby Thatch, a homeless waif and ne'er-do-well, and Robby had an unfortunate preoccupation with the internal contents of his nose. She craned her neck over her left and right shoulders, to be certain there were no passersby.

She placed the bag on the worn wooden step in front of the door and pulled her ring of slim picks from the coat's inner pocket. She knelt and peered into the intricate lock for a moment, then eased two strong slivers of wire into the square keyhole. The lock was one of the newer
tinker-forged ones with all the tiny fiddly bits.

It took her fifteen seconds.

It had been a bit challenging with her wrist, but the brace helped. After oiling the handle, she eased it down and pushed the door open silently.

She glided in, closed the door behind her, and turned to come face-to-face with something unexpected, the barrel of a very large blunderbuss. Ruby dropped her bag, raising her hands in the air.

“Robby Thatch,” the man at the happier end of the blunderbuss rasped. “I did not know you was back in town.”

Ruby took a step to the side. The barrel followed her, but at least she had a better view of Grundwidge Fen. He was a small man, about Ruby's height, but almost square, and had embraced the Tinker's way more than most in the Shambles. He was smiling now, and his iron teeth glimmered in the shadows. “Why did you wander in to my back room, Robby? I do wonder that.”

“Hello, Mr. Fen,” Ruby said.

“Do not ‘Hello, Mister Fen' me, young Robby, until
you tell me where your partner is. I do not want some giant African pounding in my portal when he gets it into his thick head that you might have been less than sneaky.”

Grundwidge Fen knew Ruby as a sneak thief and errand boy, who often made a team with Jim Stout, a big escaped slave. They had used Fen several times as a fence, as he was the only one in UnderTown who would buy the clockwork keepsakes or alchemycal reagents that they had fleeced from Tinkers. He was obsessive, cheap, and paranoid, but he was smitten with all things chemystral. He also knew more about both Up- and UnderTown than three friendlier, saner fences.

She kicked at a split knot in the scrap wood floor. “Jim is dead,” she said. “And I am in a pile of trouble, Mister Fen. It does not get much more simple.”

Fen fiddled with the brass and quartz monocle he wore over his rheumy right eye. “So you are not come to rob old Fen?”

“No, sir.” She groveled. Robby Thatch was a fine groveler. “I need to know some things, and the Deep Well of Fen is known throughout the Shambles as the Man
Who Knows Things.” Robby had also been known to flatter.

The little penguin flapped his arms around the stock of his gun. “But why not come in the front door or knock?”

She blushed. It was only mostly fakery. “The street ain't no place for a boy like me right now.” Fen frowned, and Ruby rushed on before he had a chance to interrupt. “I have money.”

Grundwidge Fen clicked his tongue behind his iron molars and smiled. “Well, then, young master, sit down if you please. We shall jabber, and you may even have some pie.”

The pie was good. Ruby did not realize how hungry she was until she bit into it. The pigeon was soft and gooey and there were roast vegetables and it was warm. She had been living for days on salt pork and whatever else they had scrounged from the ruined corners of the
Thrift
.

She popped the last piece of pie into her mouth, sad to say good-bye to such a wonder of sage, juice, and smoky
goodness. Ruby licked her fingers. “This was delicious,” she said. “Thank you.”

Fen perched on a high stool with his blunderbuss, legs splayed and slippers flopped. The wall behind him was covered with little shelves and cubbyholes, one full of square cobalt gears, the next with a scattering of wooden hammers and awls, an antimony butter churn, and a host of stranger pots and urns, racks and chests, spilling harsh odors and granules that glinted in the half-light. It was a floor-to-ceiling catalog of Philadelphi's history. Fen had been one of the first settlers to set foot on the shore of the Delaware, and no one knew how old he was.

He was just sitting there on his stool, looking at her: a staring, gun-toting sloth.

Ruby giggled, and then she clapped her hand over her mouth. Why did she do that?

That was funny, too, so she chuckled again. She pointed at Fen, who had climbed a ladder to drag a coil of rope off the top shelf. He staggered back from the weight and fell out of Ruby's vision behind a work cabinet with a thump and a squeak.

When Ruby finally stopped laughing and rubbed the tears from her eyes, Grundwidge Fen was advancing on her with the heavy rope.

Ruby jumped up and danced out of his way. Or she wanted to, but really all her legs did was sort of twitch and flop around like fish dying in the bottom of a boat.

Fen clicked his tongue behind his iron smile and began winding the rope around her waist and shoulders, tying her to the chair.

“Pie.” She finally got the word from her brain to her mouth, which no longer seemed to care what she wanted it to do.

She could not see Fen behind her because she could not move her head. He tittered. “Yes, young Ruby. That pigeon pie has a very special set of seasonings, and this one rises very early every morning to prepare it for unruly folks who might come into Fen's place and stir up some trouble.”

“R-Robby,” she managed to get out.

Fen poked his head back into her field of vision and squinted at her through the brass monocle. “Oh, forgive
me, young master. Robby. Of course. Robby.” From the way he said her name, she knew that she was cooked as sure as that pie.

Her ropes secure, the little man hopped up onto the stool at his workbench and began dissecting some mechanism that kept flaring in and out of Ruby's focus. She realized that it was the room and everything in it that was wavering, and she threw all her considerable will into getting a final word out.

“Why?”

Fen glanced up from the disassembled wreckage on his worktable, as if to swat at a fly. “Because, young Robby Ruby, people are looking for you. People more important than you. And your sweet pa is caught, and his not-so-sweet past is coming home to roost. He cannot touch me, and Grundwidge Fen knows which way the wind blows.” He went back to his work. “Go to sleep. I know not what the future holds for you, but I am certain that whatever it may be, you will need your rest.” Grundwidge Fen and his chemystral workshop faded into darkness.

She slept.

She woke.

She did not open her eyes. Gwath had taught her better than that.

She was no longer in the chair. The rough, splintered wood of Fen's floor was harsh against her face, and new, tighter bonds gripped her chest and wrists. Ruby inhaled slowly and caught the unmistakable odor of bootblack, masking a subtler hint of sweat and bad cologne. The creaking of the floorboards told a story of at least five standing around her. It could only be English naval officers.

She chanced opening her bottom eye, the one nearest the floor. There were two sets of boots that she could see without moving her head.

Behind her, a man said, “Fen, this had best not be a jape.”

“Of course not, leftenant!” Grundwidge Fen replied, “Fen is the soul of honor. This scrofulous waif is the Teach girl. I am certain.”

“Fair enough. But if this is not the girl we want, you
will not spend a tenth of that reward before the Reeve finds you, whatever forsaken rock you hide under.”

Fen gasped.

The leftenant continued. “I trust I need not sing the praises of the Reeve to you, sir?”

“No! Of course not!” Grundwidge Fen groveled. “His Majesty's most fierce and loyal agents need no compliments in this wee shack. Nor do I wish to have anything to do with, er—” He began to stammer. “That is to say, I have no wish to be
observed
by the forces of—ha, my meaning is that I am only guilty of other, er, my words do not indicate—oh, dear.” He inhaled like a forge bellows. “Leftenant Potts, please leave my words from any official report you may—”

The leftenant interrupted. “Mister Collins, if you would collect this package? It is time we were on our way.”

“Yes, sir,” replied a younger, lighter voice, and solid, gentle hands lifted her underneath her shoulders and hauled her up. There was a whiff of sulfur. She made sure to hang limp and heavy. She caught a glimpse of a sharp nose and an overlarge forehead as she rolled her head
around. This midshipman who held her, Collins, was very tall but slim. She shifted her weight as he stepped forward, overbalancing him. He cursed under his breath and almost dropped her. She had one leg free, and if she could disengage the other—

“She is heavier than she looks. Billings, Chaw, help me here.” The hands that grabbed her from behind were big, rough, and hard as horn. She smelled salt. Seamen's paws, she was certain.

“Here, put her in this. Less commotion in the street.” That was the one Fen had called the leftenant. Ruby risked opening her eyes a slit further. Two big men had her in the air above a large burlap sack, held by a blond, flat-faced thug stuffed into a naval lieutenant's uniform.

Something snapped inside her. Ruby struggled in her captors' arms. Surprise got her almost free, but the men were too strong, and they regained their grip.

“Careful, boys,” the leftenant said. “Rool said this one was a wildcat.”

Rool! Ruby redoubled her efforts. One of the men twisted her arm, and the skin burned.

She poked one with bulldog jowls in the eye. “Gah! Into the sack with her,” he grunted, and they wrestled her legs into the burlap. It was a large one, like a seaman's duffel. A seaman who did not bathe. As they got her waist and shoulders into the sack, she realized what it truly was: a shroud. They used shrouds to bury bodies at sea. And indeed, over her shoulder, the other seaman produced the tough needle and the rawhide used to sew the shroud closed.

She almost made it out of the sack then, but the bulldog, a big, strong man with loose skin, wrestled her down onto the floor. The one with the needle knelt next to them. “Don't move, girl,” he counseled through bushy eyebrows with the calm of a massive milk cow. “You don't want to get stuck.”

“My goodness!” someone said.

The voice rang from the far side of the room, the door back into the common area. Everyone froze. A young woman stood in the doorway, in the ugliest flounciest dress Ruby had ever seen. It was a nightmare of lace, gingham, and forty other fabrics, and it looked
as though it went on forever. A serving man stood next to her, holding the oversize train and a parasol. He could have been Cram's brother, though he sported a dead caterpillar of a mustache. Stranger still, the beautiful girl trapped in the horrible dress bore a striking resemblance to Lord Athen. Ruby squinted. Cheekbones, gray eyes, that nick in the ear. An exact resemblance to Lord Athen.