The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  She laughed. “Oho! Fermat, is it?” She leaned in across the worktable. “So we are like cousins, you and I! Apples from the same chemystral tree! How is he? You must tell me. I do miss the old man so.”

  “Well, I have heard from my companions that he may be in some danger—”

  “I am certain he will come out of whatever it may be smelling sweet. Always has.” She brushed the subject away. It was a little unsettling. She gave him a look full of mischief. “Would you like to see the compass? I suspect the others would not care for it, but you, as a fellow practitioner—”

  “Of course!”

  It hung on a fine steel chain she drew from within her smock. Her hand was as stained and scorched as his, and the artifice was dented and scratched with age. The size of her palm, the silvery white antimony disk carried no north or south but was most definitely a compass. An arrow wavered back and forth very slightly as Marise moved it widely from side to side. She looked at him, and there was something in the look. All at once he felt back in Fermat’s study, the old man ogling him like an owl with a mouse. He realized he was to observe and inform. A test.

  “The color identifies it as antimony.”

  “Melting point?”

  “Incredibly high.”

  “You should see my forge. Observe further, please.”

  Henry turned about, then looked back down at the artifice. “It is not fixed on cardinal north.”

  “At least one of you knows his directions.”

  He cleared his throat. “By the amplitude of the swings and the fact that the arrow is not moving at all, whatever it is fixed on must still be very far from here.”

  She snapped her fingers shut over it. “Good. Do you know how it functions?”

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “But if I might guess—” She nodded permission. “I would wager it is attuned to the blood of your daughter.”

  Marise smiled. “Yes. Well done. Now. Why did you come knocking on my door in the wee hours of the morning?”

  Henry chewed his lip. He had rehearsed the speech in his mind until he had gotten it just right, but all the words disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Your journal.”

  “Yes?”

  “May I please continue to work on it?”

  Marise cocked an eyebrow and pulled the journal out from a lower shelf, then laid it on the worktable. “This is cursed.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Cursed, I say, Henry.” She tapped her fingers on it. “I made it as a way to guide my daughter to me when she was old enough and had enough skill or to unlock her own secrets if I was gone. Instead, the Bluestockings kept it for themselves and tried to kidnap my daughter. Now she’s been taken by the Reeve. It sounds from your stories that once you acquired the journal you, too, have been pursued, by unknown agents and also apparently by two homicidal Catalan girls.”

  Henry swallowed.

  “Nations may rise and fall for this information, Henry Collins. People will kill and people will die for it. You should be glad to be rid of it. Why on earth would you want to have anything to do with it?”

  The aqua regia bubbled.

  “Because I have to know,” Henry said. His fingers tingled. “I understand all those things you just said, but the reason I could not sleep tonight is that I keep thinking about it. There is genius here, and I am on the very edge of comprehending it. I must know.”

  “I could tell you.”

  “Thank you, but I want to understand for myself.”

  She took a breath, and the mischief fell away for a moment, leaving deadly earnestness. “If you do manage to work it out, you will be just as hunted as Ruby. For what you know.”

  “I am already.”

  She laughed. “That is nothing. Why do you think I moved to the end of the world?”

  There was only the thirst. “I want to know.”

  She slid the journal across the worktable, her eyes never leaving his. “Come find me when you finish.”

  Henry spent every available hour working at the problem of the journal. With Marise’s aid his progress increased geometrically. She had also advised him he needed to make up his own traveling kit and had offered her stores freely for his use. He could barely contain himself. The breadth and depth of the reagents tucked into all the racks and drawers were difficult to comprehend. He had cut apart a stained and weathered leather apron to serve as a carrying pouch, and he was carefully arranging a series of small ceramic pots that he found particularly promising.

  “Mademoiselle— er, Madam—”

  “Master will be fine.”

  And there it was. Easy and free, an invitation to apprentice with her. “Thank you, but I have a master.”

  She laughed. The heartiness of it took him off guard. “But he was my master, was he not? You will not betray your lineage or your commitment if you serve under me as well.”

  He licked his lips. “Well—”

  She rolled her eyes. “I am teaching you, am I not?

  “Yes.”

  She looked askance at the journal. “I have provided you with a task, have I not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I will not be Madame’d or Mademoiselle’d, nor will I have you call me Marise.”

  It was all true, and she was brilliant. It simply fitted, didn’t it? “Very well. Master.”

  She passed him a skin of rainwater, harvested from the catcher on the roof of the cottage. They shared a smile. Perhaps it was the fresh water on his lips, or perhaps it was his own new secret; but he felt strangely light. So he told her.

  “Master.”

  “Yes, Henry?”

  “Last night I solved the final equation. I know the secret.”

  She turned to him softly, almost scared. “Do you?”

  “It is a schema, a method for the creation of a machine.”

  A few strands of hair flared white in the light of the moon through the window. “Tell me.”

  Where to begin? “Alchemysts all have Source. You have it. I have it. An internal reservoir of fuel that an alchemyst uses to break or unite the bonds of gas, liquids, solids, and catalyzers. If you pull too hard on it, or if you try to do too large a working, you can be seriously hurt or die.”

  “Yes, good. But this is common knowledge.”

  His mouth went dry. He could not say it all in one burst. “But what if everyone has that Source, that quintessence, they just cannot access it as chemysts can?” Tapping the Source was something that one in two hundred people could do.

  She nodded, intent. “Indeed, and just imagine what great works some chemysts could do if they had access to all of that Source, to all that energy and power. Works the like of which the world has never seen.” Then she asked him the question, even though she knew the answer. “So this machine. Is it a way to identify the Source?”

  “Partly.” He matched her smile and shook his head in wonder. “It is a way to harvest it.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Betrayal is an Art of Life.

  —Petra alla Ferra

  It was a sharp they were running, Ruby was sure of it.

  In the first place, they kept to the roads, in plain view of every Tom, Dick, and Winston. The path was filled with folk running from the troubles on the frontier in carts, or riding mules, or even on foot, weighed down with whatever they could carry, toting their lives back to the cities on the coast. At every opportunity Ismail crowed on about how hard it was back in Philadelphi and how glad they were to have gotten out of that “den of iniquity.”

  It was a classic old sharp, a play on the Sheepherder’s Daughter, and Cole brought it off well, if a bit overdone. He wanted the refugees to think that they had come from Philadelphi and not the fort. Still, folk treated them with a great deal of suspicion. “Izzie the Weed Doctor” got never a whiff of custom for his herbal foot oil or palsy remedies, and travelers had only dark looks for his strange metal horse and his troupe of feral urchins.

  They hucked on hard
after lunch and made a camp just off the road, complete with a merry fire. Even though she had spent only a handful of nights with Gwath and the crew on island beaches, it didn’t take long for Ruby to see that she was the one most used to bedding down under the open sky. Gideon Stump, in particular, jumped at every tiny crack or rustle out beyond the circle of the fire. For Ruby, the lack of walls and the bright stars twinkling above the canopy of leaves more than made up for any creepy-crawly intruders.

  Avid Wake plunked down next to Ruby, close enough that their knees touched. Ruby didn’t move, and Avid stared a hole in her head. She bolted her hardtack and jerky, never looking away. When Wake wasn’t chewing, she talked. “Stump is the strongest, the Curtsies are the meanest, and I’m, well, I’m me.”

  Ruby met her gaze. “The most puffed up? The smelliest?”

  Wake chuckled, and she tapped Ruby on the knee rhythmically. “The one who can tap the Void.”

  It was true, and it galled Ruby that this jumped-up peacock had some deeper connection than she. Whether it was to change or do Works or just fly away, she didn’t care. Cole lay on the other side of the fire, napping after dinner. “And?” Ruby said.

  “Well, Sweetling, we are the best and brightest students at the fort. And I’m wondering, out of all this august company, what in the name of Providence you are doing here?”

  “Leave off, Avid.” Never Curtsie’s lilt barely cleared the crackle of the fire. “She had as much choice as the rest of us.”

  “And she has to take your sass in the bargain.” That was Levi Curtsie, his voice coming from . . . somewhere.

  “Truth, Curtsies”—Avid hadn’t stopped tapping Ruby’s leg—“but we were chosen for our skills. What about you, Ruby? What do you have to offer?”

  “It’s simple, Avid. I’m surprised you haven’t sussed out the thing you’re all missing.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Brains, dear girl.” Ruby tapped Avid’s temple. “Brains.”

  Avid grabbed Ruby’s wrist.

  Ruby grabbed Avid’s wrist.

  “That’s enough, children!” Ward Cole rolled up to sitting. “Stop your wailing, gather your bedrolls ’round the fire, and Doctor Izzie will tell you a story.” His brown eyes gleamed in the firelight.

  Ruby scrunched closer, eager to fight off the east wind and, truth be told, to put a bit of space between her and Avid.

  In the shadows loomed the motionless Sleipnir, her breathing deep and even. She loomed over Cole like a vengeful spirit in the dark. Cole wore the most ridiculous outfit of them all, a riot of color and ribbons, half gentleman’s suit and half mender’s storeroom. Menders traveled the high roads and low, moving from settlement to settlement, fixing a bucket here, mending a sprained ankle there. Hooks hung from every possible seam on Cole’s body, and a wild variety of flasks and utensils hung from the hooks. He clanked when he walked. He did well at disguise. If she had run into him in the street, would Ruby have known this man as the one who ran across the water so quickly and quietly?

  His smile was as warm as Rool’s was chilling. Ruby strained to hear his low voice over the crackle of the fire. “We have been asked to retrieve a set of documents,” he said. “After a good long look our sisters and brothers have discovered the cowards who burned half of Boston this past winter. They are organized, and we fear they wish to do harm to the colonies and therefore the crown. Our job is to deal with that threat.” The rest of the group leaned in, eager. This was what they had trained for.

  Cole flipped a tin whistle around his fingers. “We’ve traced a few of them to a salt metal mine near a village a few miles from here, and it’s come to us that they have a list of schemers that goes much farther afield than that little hamlet, apparently as far north as New France and farther south than Georgia. If we can get that list and any other information they might have, we can be ahead of them. We can find them before they do more evil. There may be some danger involved, but if all goes well, the threat will be small.”

  Avid raised her hand. “Why us, Ward, er, Izzie?”

  Cole nodded. “Because we have been tasked with it. That should be enough for you.” But Ruby wondered. Rool had already said that he didn’t trust all of the Reeve. Was he sending the cadets because they might not have been corrupted yet? Cole rubbed his hands together over the fire. “The list we must snake lies behind a back door to a mine outside Parkersburg. And that door . . .” He paused. Cole had a flair for the dramatic. “Our sources say that door is reached through the root cellar of the Parkersburg Home for Mislaid Children.”

  Never cocked her head. “An orphanage?”

  “That’s right,” Cole said. “Which is the cause of the getups. If anyone asks, I’m taking you there to find you a place to make a life. Once we get into the cellar, they’ve dug tunnels that connect to the mine. Somewhere in those tunnels sits a chemystral safe with an alchemycal lock. That is where our friends keep their contact list, and where Robby Thatch here”—he nodded at Ruby—“will earn his keep. He’s a wizard with locks.” Cole smiled ruefully. “A fact that I know firsthand. Now, take care around the sodium metal from the mine. It is extremely volatile.” He turned to Wake and held out the whistle. “Here. When we get to the cellar, blow it. The door to the root cellar—” A tree branch cracked loudly, and Stump jumped.

  “It’s not a ghost story, Stump,” Ruby said.

  But Cole didn’t continue. The whistle fell from his fingers, and he looked down.

  Red blood streamed down his buckskin shirt from the musketball wound in his chest.

  Cole’s mouth moved, as if he were trying to continue the story. There was a ruckus in the trees behind them, and the others leaped to their feet as shapes rushed at them out of the dark.

  It was an ambuscade.

  Never traded punches with a masked man twice her size. From the shadows, Levi started screaming. When she heard him, Never screamed as well: a terrifying banshee’s wail.

  Avid faced a big fellow with a cutlass in his hand. Ruby’s father come to save her? But no, stupid girl, the blade was rusty, and this man was more muscle than fat. Piggy eyes shot out from over a greasy mask. He lashed out with the cutlass, and Avid dived under it and came up in a roll.

  Out of the corner of her eye Ruby saw Stump take a wicked blow from a club and go down. Before she knew what she was doing, she had jumped up on a rock behind the woman with the club. She grabbed the neck of the woman’s coat and held a spoon at the base of her neck. “Move and I’ll cut ye!” Ruby whispered in her best Skillet voice. The woman—her mask was a red kerchief—raised her hands and dropped the club. Stump struggled on hands and knees, trying to get up.

  It was getting ugly. The masked man had wrapped Never in a bear hug, her feet off the ground, and she wriggled like a fish, trying to bash him with the back of her head. Levi was still screaming from somewhere. The man with the cutlass had backed Avid up against a big shelf of rock, and she was bleeding from her arm.

  Ruby risked a glance back at Cole. He didn’t reach up and grab at his panniers for a weapon. He didn’t yell orders for defensive tactics. He was still sitting in the same place. His brow furrowed, sweat all across it, and then the word came. He threw it over his shoulder at the motionless Sleipnir just before his eyes rolled up in their sockets.

  “Aegis,” he called.

  With an iron roar, the gearhorse sprang over Cole and smashed chest first into Wake’s opponent. There was a thump and then a groan, and the man did not move. Sleipnir’s muzzle snaked forward, and her brass teeth crunched down on the shoulder of the man holding Never. He yelled and dropped her; then the horse, with a flick of her neck, threw him through the air into the trunk of an oak tree. He fell to the ground.

  The woman whirled, wickedly quick, and her hand closed on Ruby’s arm. “Clever, little reeve,” rasped the woman, who had savvied the spoon. That voice. Did she know it? “But now you need to come with me.” She had an iron grasp, and she spun Ruby, holding her to her chest as a sh
ield. Sleipnir charged forward. “Stop!” the woman yelled. She drew a knife, and the blade pricked at Ruby’s neck. The gearhorse skidded to a halt, just feet in front of them. Sleipnir’s warm breath washed over her: the odor of sand on a sunny beach.

  The clearing was still, save the woman’s labored breathing.

  “Very well,” she said. It was a low voice, but it didn’t stay regular. She was putting it on, pretending to be someone else. “Your pet there, she is a protector. Good. Step back, all of you, or I smash this one’s head to jelly!” Avid and Never stepped back, hands in the air. Levi appeared from the brush, ear all bloody. A body and a musket lay on the ground behind him. Sleipnir did not move. “You, too, beast!” she yelled. “I know you don’t want harm to come to your charges, so I’ll just take my little shield here and bid you—”

  Quick and dainty, Sleipnir lashed out a forehoof and clipped the woman square in the face. She collapsed without a word.

  The mask slipped from her face. It was Ward Burk.

  “Ward Cole!” Gideon cried. They all rushed over to their fallen teacher.

  He was lying under the oak tree as if he were taking a nap, a contented smile across his face. But his eyes were open, and his chest did not move.

  Ismail Cole was dead.

  CHAPTER 34

  Your brief, in short. Obtain tome and, upon your judgment, the holder, H.C. Transport to London with utmost urgency. With the coming troubles, nowhere in the Colonies is safe.

  —Godfrey Boyle,

  Worshipful Order of Grocers

  They buried Ismail Cole under a willow.

  They did it that very night, with the picks, spades, and shovels Cole had packed as part of their menders’ disguise. After some discussion, they dug a trench for Ward Burk and the brigands as well. The soil was rocky and tight, and it took them until dawn to hack out the shallow resting places. The new-turned earth smelled fresh, but Ruby’s mouth tasted of ash.

  Levi Curtsie summed it up well. “What in the heavens is happening? This is absolute madness!”

  “Levi—” Avid said.