The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  “Fox, I think. Have to ask Cram, I suppose.” A wisp of a smile fluttered.

  She would have preferred to face a pack of ball-tails than this. “You saved my life, you know. With the cats. Even if you say you didn’t. I owe you a debt.” He started to protest, but she cut him off. “Let me finish, please. I am sorry about your leg. I would do it again, but I ask your forgiveness.”

  “How can I forgive you if you would do it again?”

  “I don’t know, but that is what I have.”

  “Well.”

  “I like you, Henry. You are strong, and you are brave, and you are smarter than I will ever be, and, well.” She straightened her shoulders. “And you are honorable. I think you are a better person than I, sometimes by far. I have never had many friends. Save Cram, and Ruby perhaps, at one time, I have never had any friends. And Cram is my servant, and Ruby is my responsibility, and I am not certain if that matters or—” She was dancing, feinting. She had to extend to strike. “If you could find it in yourself to forgive me, I would like to try to be your friend.”

  He did not answer. He looked down at the journal and flipped through several pages. He showed her one. It was forested with equations and symbols, so thick you could barely see the page. The symbols were all in one knifelike, cramped hand. Over it Henry had scrawled emendations and partial bits and pieces in looping letters. “Here,” he said.

  “What is it?” Athena said.

  “I think I have discovered it, the question of the journal. I believe Ruby’s blood carries some manner of cipher or code.”

  “Her blood? How? What is it?”

  “I think it is the plans for some kind of artifice or mechanism.”

  “An engine of some kind? Or an automaton? What does it do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He looked at her for a moment, about to say something? But then the Henry door closed. He went back to the book. It was his way. Going back to the book, closing out the world. This time she did not accept it.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said.

  “What?”

  “The whole thing. The journey. The code.” Anger, a strange anger, flared inside her. “Burned, trapped, ball-tailed. You have nearly died three times, to my knowledge. You bang your head on that book until your brains must be bruised and bloody. Why are you doing all this? What is Ruby Teach to you?”

  He cocked his head at her. “She saved my life.”

  The force of it stopped her in the street.

  “She saved my life, Boyle. And so did you, down in that brig on the Grail. If you three had not found me and taken me out of there, they would have hanged me from the yardarm for a traitor.”

  “But you saved my life, and Cram’s, twice even. Once at Fen’s and the other—”

  “With the cats, yes, and then I lit the forest on fire—”

  She laughed.

  The humor left his face, and an ancient sage remained. “And so we are bound, the four of us. We are bound together by fire and blood.” He looked down at the journal. “But I would be lying to you if I did not say that this”—he tapped it with one long finger—“this has bound me, too. It is a work of genius, I think, and it contains something bigger perhaps than all of us. I want, I need, to solve it.” He looked about, as if there might be other reasons in the meadow. “That is why I am on this mission.”

  They sat for a while, and she tried to think of something else to say. “Thank you.” She stood up slowly, uncertain of the terrain. “Henry?”

  “Yes?”

  “The other thing?”

  He looked at her, much as she imagined she had looked at the fox or at one of the ball-tails, trying to decide what to make of it. “I do not know, Boyle. I do not know if I can forgive you. I will try.”

  It was something. She went to go.

  “Boyle?”

  “Yes, Henry?”

  “Why are you on this quest?”

  She thought for a while. “I honestly don’t know.” She did know. But she could not say it. If she named it, it would make it real.

  CHAPTER 25

  The rules be different up in them mountains. You hain’t seen what I seen. And I hope you never do.

  —Jimmy Two Hands, tracker

  The sun was creeping behind a wall of pink and orange, and they built a fire. The doctor broke out a crock of aged honey, flavored with elderflower. The flower part tasted funny, but Cram liked it enough that he kept on slathering it all over an acre of acorn hard bread.

  “More honey, Cram?” Dr. Sutherland asked.

  “Yes, please!”

  Dr. Sutherland was a right kindly host, and it hadn’t taken Cram long to ken that he didn’t mean them no harm. If he had, well, they’d a been in his furry belly by now. He shrugged and snuggled up next to the fire. Like Mam always said, “Worry about tomorrow when tomorrow sneaks up behind you in the morning and pushes you out the window.”

  Lady Athena stood up. “They’re late.”

  The professor looked up from the diary. He had run out of paper days back, and now it sprouted so many bark bookmarks it looked as if it might walk away on barky spider legs at any moment. “Your point?”

  “They are late!” Lady Athena repeated. “More than a week now. We have put this off for too long. We need to go.”

  Henry closed the journal. “Athena, what can we do? We have to wait for them. Without Winnie Black, we will never make it to the river valley.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. It was her “lend-me-patience-so-I-do-not-skewer-this-chemyst-with-my-sword” look. “Henry, time is wasting. We cannot be certain that they even survived.”

  That didn’t sit well. You had to believe folk were still alive. Cram’s other voice wondered to him if that believing might be what kept someone among the living, even if all hope was lost. That’s why he kept that candle flame of hope alive for old Gwath. And that’s why he had to speak up now. “Here now, milady. Miss Winnie could navigate her way through a tunnel at midnight with Cubbins lying across her eyes!”

  “I know that, Cram, but they might have run afoul of extenuating circumstances.”

  “Such as?” Henry said.

  Athena whirled on him. “Such as a massive sheet of horizon-to-horizon chemystral fire. For example.”

  “Aha, so this is my fault!”

  “I am not saying that. Winnie Black absolutely is a masterful tracker. And Wayland Teach absolutely is a masterful man.” She clenched her fists. “And if they were able to, they absolutely would have made their way here by now!”

  Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Ruby Teach is in some unknown danger, and we cannot drag our feet any longer. I feel I am going mad. We must finish this fool’s errand and salvage whatever strange goal is at the end of it. The sooner we accomplish that, the sooner we get on to our real business.” She gripped her sword hilt. “We should leave tomorrow.”

  Henry chewed on his lip and held her gaze. “We have no guidance. I will wait.”

  “A pox on your waiting!” Athena stalked into the night.

  Cram found her on top of the hill, perched on a large rock. The rolling land spread out in a forested carpet below to the . . . West? East? Hang it. “Philadelphi ain’t nearby, that’s for certain.”

  “Not nearly so far as England.”

  He sat down on a smaller rock next to the big one, and they stayed like that for quite a while. She had to breathe, she had to simmer; that much he knew from the months he had spent in her company. He had to time it just right. Too soon, and she would blow up again. Too late, and she would be lost to stony silence. There it was, a tiny shift in the set of her shoulders. He made a prayer to Providence and jumped in. “Milady . . .”

  She let out a big breath. “Yes, Cram?”

  “I don’t mean to intrude, but—”

  “But I am a horse’s ass?”

  “Only occasionally and with great legitimacy.”

  Her profile was lost in shadow, but he could hear the str
ain. “This adventure, this— It is useless. We stumble ever deeper into this forsaken wasteland, searching for something impossible, guided by folly and whimsy.”

  Cram licked his lips. “Yes, milady. Am I folly or whimsy?”

  She laughed a moment, but then the laugh broke off in the dark. “You are a brave companion, my friend, and I am lucky to have you. Never forget that.” Cram’s chest swelled. “But the whole of this thing is a fool’s errand, taking us ever farther away from the main chance: to save Ruby!” She threw a rock over the edge of the hill. After a few moments there was a far-off clatter.

  Her voice went all soft. Not moony. Just not steel, as it mostly was. “You know, a few days ago . . .”

  “Yes, milady?”

  “Henry Collins asked me why I was on this journey.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Cram waited.

  “I do not have the words for it. It is concrete in my body, like my pulse or my tears. It is this: I cannot rest until Ruby Teach is safe. And to that end I have cast my lot in this venture, and I am desperately uncertain of it.”

  It hurt him to see her like this. “Should we go, miss?”

  “Where, Cram? Where could we go?”

  “Well, back to Philadelphi? Start the search there? The trail might be a wee bit cold, but mayhap we could get back with the Bluestockings, or Mr. Fermat—”

  “No, no. I defied their orders; I deserted them. Those doors are closed to me. I have cast my lot with this . . .”

  “Adventure? Heroic journey? Tale of great doings?”

  She sighed. “As you say. I am certain there are orders from my father for my return in every Grocer safe house from here to the kingdom of Sweden. I cannot go back in disgrace. We must go forward into madness.”

  “At least we go together, milady.”

  “Together with Henry, who hates me.”

  “Well—”

  “Cram.”

  That was her signal for his silence, but this time he would not be silent. He could not. “Milady, I think you may be mistook.” She moved to speak, but he soldiered on. “But even if you ain’t, are you going to let that stop you? You going to lie down on this hilltop and watch the stars circle around until you grow roots? No, you ain’t. Because you are my lady, and you’re one part leather and two parts steel, and you don’t lie down for no one.”

  She said nothing. He had overstepped; he knew it. His other voice was tanning him something fierce right now. Mam always said, “Tell the high folks what they want to hear, not what they need. ’Cause if you tell ’em what they need, they gonna decide they don’t need you.”

  She turned to him, a shadow in the starlight. “You are not an excellent servant, Cram,” she said. “But you are a good friend.” She took his hand and shook it. He felt lucky it was dark because the size of his grin was unseemly. “I think I’ll stay up here for a while longer. Will you sit with me?”

  “Of course, milady.”

  “But not talk?”

  “Of course, milady. I am most excellent at not talking. Why, once Mam said—”

  “Cram.”

  “Yes, milady.”

  The stars spun about, and Cram got lost in their stories.

  CHAPTER 26

  Our ancient Greek brothers and sisters had a word: Dynamis. Dynamis is your heart, your spirit, your will to victory. Is there a link between your dynamis and your ability to access the Source? Ask me instead, “Does the basket shape the apples?”

  —Pierre de Fermat, lecture to the Acadamie Philosophie, 1677

  The sun woke Ruby in her windowsill, creeping in over the top of her scratchy sheet. A little bird had landed on the sill and sang her a sweet song. Birds made her nervous. They were pretty, but their eyes were dead. She shooed it away and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She had spent the whole of the previous night trying to grow a sixth toe. She looked down. Still five toes. Another failure. She turned just slightly and groaned. The bruises from training the day before had melded into a single winding track of pain across her entire body. Body pounded into mush, and no progress on the Works front, either. She was certain that she was the worst reeve in the colonies.

  It took a few minutes to unkink enough to get a foot down onto the floor. Slipping on her boots was a heroic feat. She had to rest for a few moments after that. The blood was flowing by then, however, and she could at least stand up straight as she headed out through the door.

  Ruby Maxim Nine: “Never Show Them Your Pain.”

  The sand baths were mostly empty. A few stragglers were scrubbing themselves vigorously. The sand was just as good as water for cleaning, and the wards claimed that it toughened your skin. Thank Providence Evram did something tinkery with herbs and powders to freshen it each night. The tall storm shutters were thrown wide, and a warm wind was pushing the first hints of summer into the room from across the canyon.

  Ward Edwina Corson perched on the windowsill: a jaguar on a branch. The wind ruffled her shaggy red hair. “Clean up and then meet me in the changing room, Teach.”

  Ruby hesitated: “I’m near late now for Assembly, Ward. Should I—”

  “You are with me today,” Corson said, and walked out. No footprints followed her across the sand.

  Ruby started scrubbing. Rubbing the sand into the bruises across her back and belly was a special kind of awful, but she knew it would be worse tomorrow if she didn’t. The herbs and such added to the sand worked wonders.

  Ward Corson stood in the changing room, a tiny book cradled in her hand. She trailed her jade fingers over the lines as she read. She favored the long, divided skirts worn by many of the women in the Reeve, and her vest and tunic were spotted with yesterday evening’s meal, goat and beets. The ward had an arm’s-length relationship with neatness.

  Ruby dressed, and Corson read her book. It took Ruby a while, though she counted it a great victory that she did not groan once. But what was Corson doing here?

  As soon as Ruby was dressed, Corson said, “Walk with me, Teach,” and stalked down the hallway. A back stairway changed from stone to rough-hewn wood several flights up, and then Corson led her out onto the walkway on top of the palisade. The trees in the valley beyond the river shimmered in the humid April air.

  In the courtyard the cadets were already at Stairs, a sinuous line of tortured bodies, walking on hands and toes. From a press-up position, head first, you walked up the stairs, then back down. Keep your back like a plank, or start over again.

  Corson caught Ruby’s glance. “You don’t like crawling stairs?”

  Ruby shook her head. “No, Ward.”

  “Neither did I.” She stopped at a corner of the palisade.

  Corson tapped her jade fingers on the grayed wood of the wall. “I hated Stairs. I trained here, you know, one of the first. Younger than you. Fifteen years ago. My ma died in a fire in our hayloft, and lucky for me she took my pa with her. So I came with the first shipment when the Reeve took this place. Oh, I hated Stairs. The pain in your forearms, yes? Like tiny spears.” Ruby nodded. Corson looked down at her crystal digits. “So you know what I did?”

  “No, Ward,” Ruby said.

  Corson numbered on her fingers. “I finished all the tasks. I mastered all the tests. I took the Oath. And then I never did Stairs again.” She gently prodded Ruby’s shoulder. “You’re running out of time, Ruby.”

  Ruby’s mouth went dry. Did Corson have Rool’s confidence? Did she know of the Swede’s progress? Did she know about her spying? Possibly, but what if she did not? Ruby would be admitting to sabotage and worse. “Ward, I am working at the training,” Ruby said.

  “And the other thing?”

  Cautiously Ruby said, “The changing?”

  “The changing. Have you made any progress?”

  “Very little.” It galled her to say it.

  Corson nodded. “Something holds you back. Something is in the way. I see it. Do you not feel that? Perhaps you must give yourself
fully to the Works or the changing. Perhaps they will not accept divided loyalty.”

  “Loyalty to those who beat me?”

  Corson snaked her head, side to side. “Chart your own course. They will continue to beat you, I’m sure. Until you finish the tasks. Until you master the tests. Until you take the Oath. Or until the Swede gets what he wants from you. Or the lord captain.” She turned and walked on. “Come. We’re late.”

  Corson led Ruby over the gates along the palisade. Below them the narrow, winding road, almost a tunnel—the same one Ruby had trailed Corson down months ago—cut deep into the rock and wound steeply down from the gates around the side of the bluff to the plain. An enclosed bridge stretched over the road to another crag and a smaller building. The close, warm interior of the bridge was dark, lit by only a few arrow slits and slots in the wall. Ruby peeked through one, and the road lay directly below, in easy spitting range. Or shooting range. Or hot oil range. She did not envy anyone who might try to storm this place, even when manned by a skeleton crew of cadets.

  “Keep up, Teach,” Corson said. She had already reached a door on the other side. Ruby hurried through and gasped.

  A wide circular room opened in front of her, tall as well, and domed at the top. Windows marched all the way around, or doors more like: the frames extended down to the floor. Nothing but air lay beyond. The thick storm shutters had been opened, and fresh, clean wind whipped through them, cutting through the heat of the day. In the room’s center crouched a riot of cranks and gears, all supporting a massive telescope. Ruby had seen many telescopes in her time on the sea, but this one was the size and girth of a tinker’s carriage. It peeked out through a wide slot in the domed ceiling. In its sizable shadow, staring out of one of the floor-to-ceiling openings, stood a heavy cat of a man with a haystack of blond hair.

  Wisdom Rool turned to greet her, empty eyes full of nothing. He smiled. “Hello, Ruby Teach. I have missed you.”

  Ruby bowed correctly, as she had been taught. “Lord Captain.”

  Rool sighed. “I see you have been inducted into the habits of our fellowship. I have never understood the scraping and the bowing and the flourishing. We are hammers and saws. No need for formality.” He turned to Corson. “Thank you, Edwina. I should like to speak to this one alone, if you don’t mind guarding the door?”