The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  With her eyes closed, it felt quieter. More and more smoke crept into her chest. Her throat tickled. The tickle grew into a scratch. She couldn’t give in to it. If she moved, she died. She desperately tried to control it, but the scratch blossomed into a demand. She couldn’t stop it.

  She coughed.

  It was a hacking cough, a good gut-buster that went on for five heartbeats or so. It felt loud, though it still sounded as if it were behind a mile of alchemycal glass.

  But there was no telltale stream of poison and no melting of hands or faces.

  How had she survived? Mad, impossible luck? Maybe a fever dream?

  The coughing subsided, Ruby said a thank-you to Providence and went to finish off the lock. That was when she knew. She could move her fingers, but her arms dangled from her shoulders as if their puppet strings had been cut. Changed. Some hidden urge had protected her, stopped the shaking of the cough from being transferred into the arms.

  She finished the lock off with one hand propped in place and the alloyed glass pick in her teeth. The door eased open into darkness.

  CHAPTER 36

  Pigeon huntin’, By Jimmy. Writ down by Carl.

  1. Head up that hill with a club.

  2. Wait for a flock to come down on ye.

  3. Close yer eyes.

  4. Flail that club in the air.

  5. You just hunted pigeons!

  —Jimmy Two Hands, tracker

  “Master, what do you make of those clouds? Should we set down before the storm reaches us?” The normally spectacular view through the back window was a wall of angry-looking clouds.

  Something lit up Marise Fermat’s face. Something Henry had never seen there before.

  Fear.

  Henry looked again, and the clouds had already come closer. Much closer. The sky behind them was solid black, eating up the sunset sky. But the blackness pulsed and swirled, like smoke with an ax to grind.

  “Henry, those aren’t clouds.”

  “What then?”

  “Pigeons.”

  Marise cursed and then hauled on the wheel that controlled their altitude, spinning it like a mad dervish. She looked over her shoulder and sucked the breath in through her perfect teeth. “Secure the storm shutters.”

  “Because a few birds might foul up the gear works?”

  She kept looking behind her. “Henry, pigeon flocks out here run ten miles by ten miles. They tear down trees and flatten barns, and we are floating hundreds of feet in the air in a chemystrally lightened and therefore dramatically weakened container of wood. If that storm catches us, we’ll be torn apart.”

  The flock grew as Henry watched. It was spellbinding.

  “Secure the shutters now, boy!” Marise leaned down into the spiral staircase. “Cram! Athen! Strap yourselves down! Now!”

  Henry hurried down the shutters that ran the length of the room, slamming and barring them. The wood felt light as air, literally.

  “No, leave the rear shutter. I need to see the storm,” she said. She slid a clever slat open in the one before her, allowing her to see just a little bit forward as well.

  Calls, yells, bumps, and thumps came from below as the other two strapped in.

  Marise looked back and forth between the rear window and the fore, muttering calculations under her breath.

  “Henry, I need you to do something for me.”

  “What is it?” His pulse pounded in his ears.

  “Take that.” She nodded at a long spear, lying flat on the floor along the cabinet. The point was elaborate, bearing some kind of tapered alchemycal envelope in a reservoir behind the point.

  He grabbed it.

  “Good.” The cottage yawed as she steered toward a hilltop, about a mile away. “Now I need you to take that through the trap in the roof and stab a hole in the vesicle.”

  She was mad. “I’m sorry?”

  She did not look over her shoulder. “We need to drop more quickly, or the storm will catch us in the air. Oh, and be very careful with the tip of the spear. Don’t let it strike anything else.”

  A thousand arguments for why he should not do it ran lightning speed through his skull, but he climbed up the little flimsy ladder and flipped the latch.

  The door burst open, and a howling wind tore past. It was a storm in earnest. He inched his head up above the roofline, and the whirling air spun about him. Evenly spaced lanyards attached to the roof hung taut between the cottage and the gas-filled vesicle, floating a good twenty feet above. A shoulder-wide hole stared from the base of the vesicle, surrounded by a thin border of wood. From the border, flapping wildly in the whirling wind, hung a cloth rope ladder.

  “Surely you jest,” Henry breathed.

  “Now, Henry Collins!” Marise’s call filtered up from below.

  Smothering a curse, he pulled himself up crablike up onto the roof, knuckles white about the spear and on the lip of the trap. He pulled his eyes away from the edge of the roof and the ground far, far below. The cloud was definitely closer now. Marise was right. It had to be ten miles wide if it was an inch.

  The bottom of the rope ladder flailed about above him, out of reach. He pried his hand loose from the trap and pushed himself up onto his knees. The wind tore at his eyes so fiercely tears leaked from them.

  He stood on the swaying roof in a windstorm half a mile above the forest.

  The sky behind had gone completely black now, a pulsing, whirling curtain of beaks and claws. The wind howled even faster, whipping at his clothing. The ladder twisted about, as did the cottage below, ominous groans and cracks echoing up through the wailing wind.

  He levered himself up one rung, then wrenched his elbow over the next. He pulled his knees up, muscles screaming, and then heaved his foot into the next rung. His bad foot. It twisted and then lost purchase, flying out into the air, with only his elbow between him and doom. He cried out, and a faint call echoed him. Marise Fermat was below, waving urgently.

  He nodded as if he understood her and then found the strength to wrench his trembling limbs up two more rungs.

  From below, fainter still, Marise yelled again. She pointed a vial upward, and a swirl of yellow gas tore up the ladder and wrapped itself about him.

  Quiet. The wind was somehow gone. He could think. He was just under the vesicle. But if he stabbed its bottom, that would do nothing. Any gas above the level of the hole would still stay in the vesicle. So he gripped the spear by its haft, cocked his arm, and hurled it hard as he could up through the inside of the bag.

  It flew straight and true in the silence.

  It struck the top. A red cloud blossomed from the envelope. And then suddenly blue sky shone through the canvas, like a window back to another world. His stomach lurched. They were falling. He had done it.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The storm of birds was upon them. Its curtain blocked out the sky, eclipsed the setting sun, a wall of wings rushing at him. He could see them now, individual shapes dancing inside the cloud. It was beautiful. It was pure math. It took him.

  CHAPTER 37

  The chemycal fires Blazed most Terribly, and Burnt all the town in the space of half an hour. The French brigands are everywhere. I implore you. Without soldiers from the Crown, we cannot count ourselves Safe.

  —Letter from Esmerelda Williams to Governor William Keith, April 1719

  Inside the safe, among a jumble of artifices and lumps of metal, lay a rolled parchment secured by a wax seal. Ruby flopped her arm onto the shelf and grabbed it. She had to be certain. She popped the seal.

  In the smoky flicker of chem pot light the title read:

  “Use the Utmost Restraint and Care When Contacting.”

  A cramped list of names and scratched notations marched down the parchment.

  Of the Reeve

  Charlotte Dove—Reeve House, Boston

  Kyra Burk—Fort Scoria

  Of the Bluestockings, Philadelphi

  Alice Dorn (Hearth)—Frayed Hem Roominghouse

  A
quila Gaioso (Fish) —Chem ship Deviltry

  Lazarus Cooper (Wagon)—Lazarus’s Dry Goods

  Name Unknown (Hammer)—Benzene Yards

  Mary Nickerson (Badger)—Alembic Coffeehouse

  Abel Ward (Long Gun)—Arden Farm smoke shack

  Greta Van Huffridge (Scales)—Daughter of Lothor

  Philadelphi

  Elias Fell—Quaker Meeting House

  Thandie Paine—Polus Library

  London

  Mary Tills—Invisible College

  Godfrey Boyle —Clove and Camel

  She knew those names. So many of them. The two reeves: had Burk engineered that ambush for the Grocers? The Bluestockings from Philadelphi, who had tried to keep her in their secret school. Godfrey Boyle, Athena’s father. More names followed, many more, in Boston, in Charles Town, in Montreal. In Algiers, Lisbon, and Paris, by Providence.

  They were the conspirators? The ones who set off bombs in Boston? The ones who were spurring the colonies, not to mention their parent countries, to war?

  She flipped the parchment. On the cracked seal lay two symbols: a camel and a pepper mill. The symbols of the Worshipful Order of Grocers.

  Another wave of coughs racked through Ruby, but she wrestled them to a stop. These names. People that she knew. Revealing them to the Reeve would be dooming them to unending pursuit and danger. For Ruby, it would mean success, a respite from the Swede, a chance for survival. If she did not bring back the list . . . the future tore at her.

  Given the names on the list, might they not be trying to do something good?

  But these people were starting a war. Burning cities. Destroying farms. How could she support that?

  Yet, if she gave Godfrey Boyle’s name to the Reeve, could she ever look Athena in the face again? Or Henry? Or Cram?

  No reeve could ever see these names.

  She took the chem pot and lit the paper on fire.

  She pull-crawled her way back down the smoky passageway, dark as a hold in a thunderstorm, her only company the unmoving shapes of the left-behind miners. She could barely haul her own weight on her jellied shoulders. Whether they were brigands and spies or fighters for freedom, they had to get out for themselves. She could not help them.

  She scuttled up the ramp. In the center of the field, lit up by the burning house, the Reeve cadets crouched with Sleipnir, imps around a horse from hell. All Ruby could do was make certain that one foot landed somewhere near the other in the drifts of apple blossoms that had been blown to the ground in the explosion, their rustle a faint whisper in her head from miles away. A distant voice called out behind her, an ant yelling at her from a faraway mountain. A heavily muscled man emerged from the mine covered in soot, a huge mattock held easily in his hand. Ruby staggered backward, and he began running toward her.

  She turned to run; but her leg caught on a root under the blossoms, and she fell to the ground.

  The man with the pickax closed, veins bulging.

  Shapes flitted past, one, two, three, four, and the cadets were on him, diving, rolling, punching, kicking. They were fighting for her. Avid had picked up a thick branch somewhere and came at him hard, overhand, but he easily sidestepped the blow, sending her reeling with the stock of the ax, full in her chest. She fell on her back like a stone. The Curtsie twins swooped in from both sides, bobbing and weaving, but Never went down with a gash in her forearm and Levi from a knee to his fruits. Gideon Stump caught the man a hard kick right in the chest, and the brute actually took a step back; but then the haft of the mattock came hurtling around from behind, clipping the big boy cleanly on the temple.

  The man kept coming.

  Ruby could barely get a full breath, let alone get to her feet. Red flashed in the sides of her eyes, and pain crept up from her arms as the shoulders ever so slowly began to harden. She vainly tried to hide in the blossoms behind her.

  A shadow leaped over her from behind, topped by a cloud of red. Three strikes, one to the chest, one to the knee, one to the neck, and the man was down.

  Edwina Corson turned to Ruby, concern plain on her face. “Wooh hef de liss?” she said.

  Ruby shook her head. Pointed to her ear.

  Corson repeated, louder and clearer, “You have the list?”

  Ruby shook her head again. “It wasn’t there.”

  Corson looked to the heavens, as if for guidance.

  Satisfaction and guilt tore at Ruby in equal measure. Why did she feel guilty?

  “Hold here and we’ll go back in!”

  The ward moved on to tend to the cadets, kneeling next to Avid. No one else’s attention was on Ruby. She had some of her wind back, and with that wind came a desperate revelation. They would not find the list. Rool would cast her off. There would be no protection from the Swede. She eased herself to her feet, ever so slowly, then climbed on Sleipnir’s back and whispered into her beautiful bronze ear, “Sea and Sky.”

  The horse’s shuddering breath almost threw Ruby to the ground. Sleipnir craned her muzzle over her shoulder at Ruby, and her sapphire eyes shone warm with curiosity. She whickered.

  Ruby wrapped her fingers in the braided brass mane. “Go, girl,” she said, and they leapt together into the dark.

  Sleipnir’s eight galloping hooves rang out in the night. The gearhorse weaved in and out of the trees, veering past the trunks before Ruby could even see them. Ruby craned her head back to see if anyone was following, but there was nothing but shadow and moonlight. A branch stabbed at her shoulder, hard, and she twisted with its force, one leg flailing in the air. Still woozy from the smoke, she managed to wrench herself back up onto Sleipnir’s back, but just then another shadow swooped down out of the night. Ruby ducked her head into the gearhorse’s mane. The low-hanging tree limb cracked and smashed, and Sleipnir just kept going.

  Ruby tried to get her thoughts straight, tried to get back on an even keel, but the images just kept plowing through her mind so fast it was hard to even see them. The explosion, the searing smoke in the mine, the list burning to ash, the cadets flying to her side. Corson.

  Movement pulled her back to the present. Something was out there. A flicker in the dark, behind and to the left. Her imagination? No, there it was again. Something was pacing them, following.

  “Faster, girl,” Ruby whispered. And even through the whistling wind, Sleipnir heard. The gearhorse whuffed and craned out her neck, surging forward. Sleipnir cut left sharply, and it was all Ruby could do to hold on. If she fell, the horse could not protect her, though if she were paste smashed into the side of a tree, she would need very little protection. The wind bored into her ears, punctuated distantly by Sleipnir’s hooves.

  She let the wind in.

  The whirling gusts were so loud they made a kind of quiet, and then something happened. It was almost as if her thighs had lengthened or widened about the metal flanks of her steed. She no longer had to struggle to stay on the horse. She gave up trying to guess which way Sleipnir would turn, and she realized she did not need to. She leaned further into her steed’s back and plastered herself to it.

  Ruby’s senses fell into Sleipnir’s.

  The pistons pounded inside her chest, a gully came up out of nowhere, and the muscle in her back legs bunched up, then snapped open to launch her and the little thing on her back safely over. It felt good to run. There had been something holding her back, like a halter, hemming her in, but now she was free. A deep canyon appeared in front of her, so she turned back toward the eaves, racing along between the gorge and the edge of the forest.

  An instinct, an inkling ripped Ruby out of her trance. The shape was back, in and out of the shadows, keeping pace with them through the trees. A person! It was impossible, but someone was running behind Sleipnir and gaining on them. It swerved around thorn brakes, disappeared into the gully they had just jumped, and then somehow ran out of the other side. The shape leaped up to vault over an outcropping, but it must have misjudged; its foot struck the top of the rock.

  No. It used
the top of the rock to plant its foot and then launched itself upward.

  Flying through the air, hair wild and streaming, straight toward Ruby, the shape resolved itself out of the dark into Edwina Corson.

  Ruby tried to duck, but strong hands wrapped around her torso and tore her from Sleipnir’s back. Dark shapes of tree trunks flashed past, but somehow Ruby was deposited in a pile of leaves, Corson rolling to a stop a few paces away.

  Her hair flamed like a halo above her blacks. She was breathing heavily. She put up her hand. “Ruby.”

  Ruby said, “Aegis.”

  A brass streak burned the air. Sleipnir came to a stop ten yards away and then cantered back to stand in between Ruby and Edwina. Ward Corson crouched on the ground. Just behind where she had been standing, a medium-size oak tree had been sheared off at waist height.

  Corson held up her hands, and her words were slow. “Ruby. Tell me why.”

  “I didn’t know.” Rage and fear warred inside her.

  “Didn’t know what?”

  That I would know these people. If I gave that list to you, you would hunt them. And then it would be my fault. She could not say that. “You need to let me go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Where did you come from? You weren’t even supposed to be there.”

  “Burk disappeared, so I came after you. I found Ismail. And Burk. Give me the list.”

  “There is no list.”

  “Think of those who died in the bombs and fire. The men and women on that list are murderers, Ruby Teach. They were going to use that salt metal to create more chemystral incendiaries. Setting fire to barracks, to schools, to churches, killing innocents.”

  Was that who the Bluestockings were? Burk and Dove? Athen’s father? Murderers? “But why?”

  “Because they want to start a war.”

  “Why?”

  “So there can be a new king in America.”

  “Well, I don’t care about any of that,” Ruby said.

  In the dawn tree branches cast shadows across Corson’s face. “If you wish to be a reeve, Ruby Teach, you must care about all of that. It is our Oath.”

  “I was never one of you.”