A Riddle in Ruby (3 page)

THROW DOWN THE PLOW.

TAKE UP THE FLASK.

A YOUNG MAN'S FUTURE

IS THE ALCHEMYST'S TASK.

—Poster searching for workers,

Tinkers' Compound, New Jamestown

G
wath was hurting her. He was shaking Ruby by the neck like a ferret shakes a field mouse and yelling at the top of his lungs.

“You daft boy! You left the mortar out, and now it's hard as stone,” he bellowed. “The wall is ruined! The orphans will have no place to play!”

The carriage careened closer, moving far too fast.

She cursed. This was the test. This was it.

Atop the massive carriage a rat-faced young rascal in clothes too high for his pockmarked features reached down beside him, perhaps to hold on as he flattened two victims into griddle cakes.

Gwath turned to watch their oncoming doom, but Ruby couldn't. She closed her eyes.

FOOOMP
.

The sound was one-half cannon and one-half geyser, and it blasted her eyes open. A cloud of soft blue mist billowed out of the carriage, eclipsing its lower half. The gas thickened in a heartbeat into what looked for all the world to be a giant pat of blue butter. The goo somehow held the wheels and axles motionless. The carriage hung, midroll, in the air for a moment, impossible, until the groaning mass of wood and metal cracked at the front axle, and the whole mess toppled onto its side in the street.

The street was silent. Then it erupted in bedlam. There was yelling. There was praying.

You could hop across the cobblestones between the front edge of the carriage and where she hung from
Gwath's hand. He gave her a look and dropped her on the cobblestones, where she lay in a heap.

The driver, a boy of her age and all eyebrows and corncob chin, was shouting at Gwath. He was struggling out of a contraption of straps and ribbons that was dangling him upside down from the coachman's bench.

Gwath pulled him out of the harness and back into the crowd, numbering his injuries, accusing the boy of incompetence, and spouting whatever nonsense might keep the crowd interested. Tra-la-la.

Nothing else had gone right. Instead of being docked in a concealing sea of market day shoppers, the carriage floated alone in a wide, empty circle, surrounded by curious eyes. The crash was too much of a novelty, and far too many were ignoring the dustup between Gwath and the driver. Ruby was the only other sight within the ring of the crowd. In moments some well-meaning soul would run to her aid. Nothing for it. She had to turn into the wind.

She pulled her cap down over her eyes. The Injured Stonemason's Boy limped over to the coach and scrambled
up onto the top of the exposed side, opening the side door, obviously concerned for whatever passengers were still inside.

Ruby levered the door up and leaned down into the dark, well-appointed travelers' chamber. There was only one passenger, an older boy lying at ease in a jumble of cushions and curtains, with what appeared to be a blend of currant jelly and gooseberry tart stuck in his black hair and covering his face.

She flashed her fiercest smile, produced a knife out of her sleeve, and said, “Stand and deliver, sir. Your money or your life.”

Normally the victims cringed and babbled, called for their coachman, who had usually just chased off after Gwath, and then obligingly produced their ready money and precious things.

This boy, however, stared at her, and he laughed.

Then he drew, very quickly, truly very quickly, a dueling sword out of his embroidered waistcoat. The blade was just long enough that the point pressed against a spot just under Ruby's left eye.

“You don't want to use that knife on me, boy,” he said. “Now make your way. I have places to be and people to see, and your life is worth more than all the shillings you might loot from passersby.” And then he winked at her. He
winked
at her, and his wrist flicked and Ruby felt a sting beneath her eye.

She reared back and vaulted down from the upended coach. She ran, bare feet slapping on the cobblestones, into the crowd, into an alley, and over a garden wall, hotfooting it into the maze of alleys and secret spaces that could hide her from anyone who might think to follow.

Just after midday, cleaned up and ready to return home, she emerged from Whistler's Alley onto the wharf. She once again wore the sensible frock her father insisted she wear on excursions into port. These days this felt more like a costume: the faded secondhand dress, the long sleeves to protect her tanned arms, the demure black braid, the pinching shoes.

As planned, Gwath was waiting for her on the back
stoop of the whale blubber works, working on a steaming meat pie.

He eyed her as she plopped down beside him. The bushy blond stonemason was gone, replaced by the dark olive skin and shaven skull of his true face. Gwath was a mystery. “No loot,” she said.

He grunted. “No pie for you, then.” He popped the last bite into his mouth and stood. “Keep working, and it will come. Come on. Thirteen summers doesn't mean your father won't worry if you ain't home by three bells.”

They walked around the corner of the blubber works and into the early-afternoon lull of the wharf. The smell of salt and tarred wood welcomed her home.

“You think Skillet or my father found passengers for the southern leg?” A crowd of sailors rolling barrels up the gangway of a man-'o-war caught her eye.

Gwath said nothing. Indeed, he had stopped short, standing in the middle of the wharf, staring.

“Yes,” Gwath replied.

She followed his gaze to the gangway of her father's ship, the
Thrift
, and saw two figures bargaining furiously
with her father, hemmed in by a precarious tower of steamer trunks and a donkey covered in flour.

One was a rat-faced boy wearing a blue sash, with a bandage wrapped around his head. The other wore a tricorne and fashionable shoes, and sported a familiar rapier at his hip.

“Well, it certainly won't be a boring trip to Philadelphi,” Ruby breathed, and she tucked herself behind Gwath as they hurried toward the other gangplank.

It is the inner spirit that fuels chemystral science. Without that spirit, I shall fail at the simplest chemystral task.

If I have enough fuel? I can tear the world asunder or steal fire from the gods themselves.

—Robert Boyle, ed., FRS,
Principia Chymia
, 1666

LONDON, ENGLAND—ONE MONTH BEFORE

T
he automaton was the spitting image of a mouse. It perched on the sign above the Clove and Camel and fixed its whirling eyes on a young lone figure hurrying into the venerable coffeehouse. This was nothing new. This particular mouse had stood vigil atop this particular sign for more than fifty years, since the night it was fabricated, the same night Grocers' Hall had burned to the ground in the Great London Fire of 1666. On a normal day it would
have quick-burned a chemystral image of the visitor into the record in its tail, and that would have been that. The creature's masters had a long-standing interest in the inventors, tinkers, and alchemysts of the district, which was quickly becoming one of the greatest centers of tinkercraft in the world, and wanted their news updated daily.

Today was not a normal day, however. The tiny levers and interlocking gears inside the mouse had been delicately reconfigured. Its tiny chemystral brain ordered it to vacate its post and follow this visitor through the Clove and Camel. So it turned on its little carbon claws and skittered through a hole in the old brick wall to scamper unseen on beams above a group of men and women engaged in a debate over whether liquid silver could think for itself.

The visitor was simple to track as he hurried through the main common room and into the bustling kitchen. He retained his fashionable cloak and tricorne, as well as the richly embroidered waistcoat, sword, intricately carved sheath, and buckled shoes that would indicate a gentleman of some means to other passersby. He wore
no wig and gathered his black hair in a queue. This data indicated a high likelihood that the visitor was under sixteen years of age. The mouse had no room in its bubbling brain for social analysis, but the visitor's silhouette in the guttering light had a certain
weight
that separated him from the shapes of the cooks, servers, and coffee hawks that he passed.

The visitor stopped on a small landing at the bottom of a flight of narrow stairs in the back of the kitchen. A stout, anonymous door barred the way forward, guarded by a stout, anonymous man. The mouse's chemystral cache recorded a sword and two clocklock pistols at the guard's hip.

The visitor began: “Thought, grant us grace.”

The big man said, “Grace, protect us all.” His eyes lingered on the dueling sword, and he snorted, “Your business here?”

“I am to see Lord Godfrey Boyle. I am expected.” The visitor bowed deeply.

“Your scraping won't do you much good here. You are the sprat called Lord Athen?”

“I am.”

“Welcome to Grocers' Hall. You are expected.”

The man took a large silver key from the leather string around his neck and placed it in the sturdy, anonymous lock under the doorknob of the sturdy, anonymous door. The silver key, which was large and wide, appeared to have no chance whatsoever at fitting into the small, narrow keyhole. It did indeed fit, however. The key and the lock
adjusted
themselves, living metal flowing into agreement. The door swung open with a creak.

The figure—Lord Athen—hurried through the door. As the guard turned his back and began to close the door, the little mouse jumped through the air, landed with a very soft clink, and scurried between the man's legs.

On the other side was another landing graced with a little iron table. The table supported two or three artifacts that looked like oil lamps, if oil lamps were also made of gray, dappled metal topped with some kind of smoky crystal instead of glass. As the door closed and light disappeared, Lord Athen picked up a lamp by its base and turned a small wheel. The growing light
revealed a delicate nose and a resolute chin. It also filled the landing and a stairway below it with unwavering pale blue illumination.

The stairs were much older than the polished cherry floors of the coffeehouse. Furrows made by the feet of generations of travelers had cut into the stone of the steps, and the ancient walls wept moisture. At the bottom waited an even more stout, but emphatically unanonymous door. It was bronze, triple braced, and covered in signs and equations that would deflect a warship's broadside with the indifference of a mountain. It had no keyhole and no handle. Lord Athen hesitated, then removed his sword from its sheath. He searched the door for a moment and then pressed the hilt into a small hole in the upper right of the portal. The mouse registered a small click. The bronze door swung open silently.

Beyond was a large circular room with a very old mosaic on its floor. It was not a picture of a knight slaying a dragon. Nor was it a scene of grand armies or ancient kings and queens. It was of a pepper mill, and it seemed very well taken care of.

Eight corridors flared off from the circular room, and Lord Athen walked to the one opposite the bronze door. The other corridors opened onto high-ceilinged laboratories, and the mouse glimpsed beakers, forges, scales, burners, and innumerable gears. This corridor ended at a plain stained wooden door, upon which Lord Athen knocked.

A voice from behind the door called, “Enter.”

Beyond the door was another circular room, made from ancient brick. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered every wall. An older man in plain breeches and waistcoat, an open collar, and rolled-up sleeves stood with his back to the door at a long table, also filled with books, burners, and an ivory scale.

The mouse hid under a bust of Zosimos of Panopolis, a classical scholar of chemystral science, of whose rich role in alchemycal history it was completely unaware.

The boy scuffed his heel against the stone floor and looked about. “So this is where you spend your days now that the hierophants have shown you the door.”

Snapping his book shut with a clap, the old man
turned to face the visitor. He had a rough egg of a face, with a fringe of white hair. “The work we do here is essential. You know this.”

“I know no such thing,” Athen replied. “Though I am certain the wardens of the Royal Society would be most intrigued to discover unlicensed, unsupervised alchemy not a quarter mile from the palace.”

“We have maintained balance for hundreds of years.”

The man leaned back against the table, popped open a small crystal bottle of oil, and began rubbing it into his hands, which were stained and burned along the fingers and palms.

“Your tinker's claws betray you, Lord Godfrey,” Athen said. “How long until you are found by the Reeve?”

Lord Godfrey Boyle, high alchemyst of the Worshipful Order of Grocers, ignored the question. “And yours?” He nodded at Athen's gloves and asked, “Why the finery?”

Athen answered, “Delicate skin requires protection, you know.”

The man sniffed. It was eloquent.

“You sent word that I should prepare for a trip, did you not?”

They stared at each other. The mouse was not uneasy, but only because it had no social sensibility or access to human feeling. At this particular juncture, it could be considered lucky.

Lord Godfrey broke the silence. “Yes. I require you to travel to the colonies in the Americas.”

“The Americas? It is a land of wood, mud, and odiferous mountain men. I shall be bored past all endurance.”

“Nevertheless, I require you to travel there. You will seek out two individuals and escort them to the safety of the house of the Bluestockings.”

Athen snorted. “The Bluestockings?”

“They have more power than you know, they are part of our order, and they will be your only allies in the colonies. You will find these two individuals, and you will escort them to safety. For many years they have hidden a secret of great value to us, and it may have been discovered.”

Athen raised an eyebrow. “What secret?”

Boyle ignored the question. He handed Athen a letter, camel and pepper mill on the waxen seal. “See that you use this wisely.”

The boy examined the letter. “Why not one of your students?”

“I need courage and loyalty, and you have those, despite your flaws,” Godfrey said.

“Ah! Danger then? Perhaps it will not be so tedious a journey after all.”

“Enough!” He reddened. “This is no jest. Great danger will follow you.”

Athen looked aside. “You are concerned for my welfare? I am touched.”

The old man turned back to his book. “Your welfare is immaterial. You will sacrifice it for your duty and your mission, if necessary. Your ship leaves at first light. Say your good-byes and be on it.”

The mouse's sensitive visual mechanisms barely detected the flicker on Athen's face, masked by a bow. “I am a Boyle, and my duty is my life. Good-bye, Father.”