The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  “But you could be.” Corson took a step forward. “I could teach you to protect those you love. A place in the Reeve means I can protect you from those who wish to harm you. It is a hard life, I agree, but you cannot stand alone.”

  “You all stand alone. Ward Burk killed Ward Cole! You saw it! I can’t be empty like you.”

  Corson’s eyes softened. “It’s not the Void that powers me, Ruby. Or Cole. Or even Wisdom Rool. Cole had joy. Rool has duty. I have—” She grimaced. “You have to get empty only so you can know what to fill it with. I can teach you.” She held out her hand.

  “Stay back,” Ruby said, and Sleipnir took a step forward.

  “Aegis.” It was Corson who said it this time. The gearhorse made no move. Corson’s eyes widened in surprise. “You have made a friend, it seems.”

  Corson had attempted to take control over Sleipnir. Ruby thanked her stars for Evram Hale.

  Instead of tensing, the ward relaxed even more. She was utterly still. “I do not wish to harm you, Ruby, or this mechanical.”

  Ruby stepped behind Sleipnir’s flank. “That makes two of us. On your way then, Ward Corson. I hold you no ill will; you have been kind to me this last few months. But I must be going.”

  “I cannot let you do that.”

  “Watch me.” Ruby reached for Sleipnir’s mane, but it wasn’t there. The gearhorse swung around, aiming a rear kick at Edwina Corson, who was sprinting at Ruby. Corson threw herself to her knees, flying forward, and arched her back. The rough metal hooves flashed through the air just inches above her nose. Her hand flashed toward Ruby’s leg, but Sleipnir’s body crashed down between them. Corson whirled and smashed her doubled fists into the gearhorse’s face. It rang like a bell. A deep dent appeared in Sleipnir’s cheek, but she just looked down at Edwina and let out a metallic snort. Corson shook her hands out and flexed them, bobbing back and forth. The gearhorse tore at the ward with her bronze teeth, and Corson cartwheeled away. Sleipnir charged right behind, all eight hooves tearing at the ground. The battle was joined, and Ruby’s throat caught at the thought of either opponent losing.

  For it was an even match. As hard as it was to believe, Edwina Corson held her own against the gearhorse. It was a dance of grace against fury. Sleipnir kept coming like a tidal wave, bucking and thrashing, hooves cutting through the air. But Corson was always a half step ahead, always a hand’s width clear. A dozen times the mechanical had her cornered, and a dozen times she slipped out of reach.

  Ruby’s nails dug ever deeper into her palms. What could she do? She couldn’t run. Corson would just keep coming.

  Just then the inevitable happened. In a game of so many narrow escapes, so many little things can go wrong. It just takes one to send you down to the bottom. The gearhorse had maneuvered Corson to the edge of the gorge, feinting and dodging, rearing up and slamming down over and over again. At last the ward seemed to be tiring. Her limbs were heavier, her twisting escapes ever more perilous. Sleipnir reared again, and Corson rolled back, just out of reach of the gearhorse’s hooves.

  But she was caught. It was an island of land that jutted out over the gorge, and she was boxed in by the gearhorse’s big body. The mechanical reared once again, and Ruby could not tear her eyes away. Ruby was killing Edwina Corson, just as surely as the Reeve would kill all the people on that list. Was it just as she said? Kill or be killed?

  So be it.

  The hooves came down.

  But just before they landed, Edwina Corson let out a cry that shook the leaves on the trees. The reeve’s foot shot down into the ground, and a crack opened up. She leaped up and swung around the great gearhorse’s neck to stand on its shoulders. All four of the front hooves came down with the full weight of woman and mechanical behind them. The crack in the ground opened, and the island slid forward. Corson ran up Sleipnir’s spine as she was teetering, jumped into the air, and landed softly on the grass at the edge of the gorge. The great gearhorse scrabbled backward; but its momentum was too great, and Sleipnir tumbled out of sight with a confused whinny.

  There was a terrible jangling crash.

  Ruby could not see. Her eyes were clouded with tears. Edwina Corson approached her slowly, heaving and stumbling, barely able to keep her feet. Ruby did not run. A howling hole broke open in her chest. Sleipnir was gone, and by Ruby’s hand, as surely as if she had ridden her over that cliff herself.

  Corson put her hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Then she did something with her hand, and Ruby’s world went dark.

  She didn’t mind one bit.

  CHAPTER 38

  Your mind is a prison. I am here to break you free.

  —Halvard de Anjou, Bastionado

  Henry woke in a sea of white. He was alive. He rested snug in the fork of a tree, the ruins of the vesicle collapsed on branches all about him. The cushion of gas Marise Fermat had cast about him had been formidable indeed. He had fallen from the sky and had only a few bumps and bruises to show for it.

  The white carpet lay across the trees and grass as far as the eye could see. But it stank. It wasn’t snow. It was poo. Pigeon leavings. He flailed at the pigeony covering, flinging it down to the ground below.

  Henry’s heart caught in his throat. The cottage sat broken at the base of the tree, just feet from smashing into the wall of forest behind him. Marise had landed it somehow, but it would be a long time before it flew again. The roof was staved in, and the whole house listed to the side on broken beams like a drunken parson.

  “Greetings, Henry Collins.”

  Henry looked down. He then wished himself anywhere but here.

  At the base of the tree stood two people he had hoped to never see again: the girls from StiltTown. It was the tall one who had spoken, the one with black hair and buskins. She held an ax in one hand and a dagger in the other. “I did not have the opportunity to introduce myself when last we met. My name is Vera Medina, and my captain would like a word with you.”

  The serving girl from the King’s Bum stood by her side, pistol leveled, wiping fresh pigeon stuff from her forehead with the other hand. She cocked her clocklock. “Alaia Calderon. You pushed me into a swamp, and for that alone I would be happy to kill you. Please refuse to climb down.”

  Henry stared. “This is . . . well, it’s not impossible, but it is highly improbable.”

  Alaia laughed. “Isn’t it? You had given us the slip, dissolved into burning forest. We had abandoned all hope of finding you, but then something wonderful happened.”

  “What is that?”

  “It was the strangest thing. A house flew across the sky, right in front of us.”

  They thrust him to the dirt floor. He twisted to land on his shoulder, protecting his bound hands. His captors had marched him down the hill to a no-longer-abandoned farmstead, a sturdy little house and barn out on the now guano-covered plains. Shapes moved about in the house. A hard-bitten man and woman guarded the barn, both clad in heavily used leathers and bristling with weapons. Shafts of light cut through gaps in the walls of the barn, and ancient hay lay strewn about, like the last hairs on a bald man’s head.

  “Well met, hero.” The voice emerged from the shadows at the back of the barn.

  Henry scrambled to sit up. “Captain Teach?”

  Wayland Teach edged his drawn, weary face into a sunbeam. “Marise told us of your dashing maneuver. I never pegged you for a crow’s nest man.” The Blacks were there as well, Cubbins on the ground next to his mother.

  “What happened?” Henry asked.

  The captain gave a sad grin. “Suffice to say that while you are making a habit of saving folk, I am growing to be somewhat expert in being captured.”

  Cram, Athena, and Marise had been caught as well, escaping the crash with only scrapes and bruises. Except for Marise, the whole company had their bonds secured to hooks on the wall, hands above their heads. The alchemyst, however, wore something new upon her shoulders and head: a mask, or rather a helmet with two short chains
attached to the chin. The chains ended in two manacles, pulling her wrists up to the bottom of her neck. The helmet had no eyeholes and only a small slit for food. A formidable lock secured the visor. It was a beautiful artifact, engraved with images of angels fighting flask-wielding demons, but designed to keep a Tinker pacified. For Henry the two girls had rigged up a halter around his neck, binding his hands at his chest in similar fashion. The cord was basalt, tight yet damnably slippery.

  The blond girl, Alaia—no longer Jenny—smiled, a gap between her two middle teeth. “Count yourself lucky.” She nodded over to the mask. “That was meant for you.”

  He counted himself very lucky. The conversation back in the laboratory haunted his thoughts. “Master, are you all right?”

  Marise remained silent. The girls sauntered out, snickering to each other.

  Captain Teach said, “Marise, they’re gone. Are you all right?”

  Her voice rang hollow from inside the mask. “Yes, dear Wayland. I’m dandy, in the way most chemysts are when they happen upon a friendly party of Tinker hunters. Your band of urchins lured me out of safety. Now what do you have in that legendary bag of tricks? What are you going to do to get me out of this?”

  “Indeed. What are you going to do, Wayland?” The low voice crept in from outside, the other side of the barn wall. They all went silent. A shadow passed across the gaps in the boards. The speaker was coming around to the front door. “You all speak so freely of your lives, you know.” The voice had a slight accent, Catalonian, like the girls’. “Your conversation was so intriguing that I could not help listening. Perhaps you should take greater care with your words.” The shape, framed in the sunlight, opened the door. The two girls stood behind her, weapons drawn. The woman was neither short nor tall, in gray- and green-dyed buskins, shirt, breeches, and moccasins, her long black hair braided behind her in an intricately tied ponytail. A streak of silver shot through the black at one temple. She crouched down on the balls of her feet and looked Henry straight in the eye. She held the journal in her hand, loosely, as if it might bite her. “Is this yours?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  She nodded for a while. Then she smiled. “I admire your courage. The scarring on your hands certainly gives you away as a practitioner of chemystry, and so this journal could be yours, but you lie. I can smell it.” She put her finger to her nose. Then she pointed it at Marise. “I think it is hers.”

  “Why?” he could not help asking.

  “Because of the way your eyes darted over to her just now when I asked you and because of the other damned instruments my people found on her.” She handed the journal to Alaia, with the pistol. She used a sweat-stained handkerchief to remove Marise Fermat’s “hairpin” from her pocket. She spun the hand-size length of black metal around her fingers. “This is a chemyst’s weapon. I have seen its like do terrible things to people I love. And it is powerful, too. Perhaps too powerful for you to wield.”

  “How do you know?”

  She flipped it and held it out gingerly.

  “Am I wrong? You might be able to use this innocent hairpin to even the odds, at the very least. Take down your captors, no?”

  A twitch of her hand, and Marise had almost made the earth swallow them up with that thing. But she had never spoken of it or let him touch it.

  He opened his hands in their bonds, and the woman put it in his palm. It called to him. It yearned for his Source. Then nausea hit him: brutal, overwhelming. He had to get it out of his hands. He dropped it. He retched.

  The barn was quiet.

  The woman’s eyes were midnight. She reached out with her kerchief and gingerly maneuvered the wand back into her jacket. “Yes, it is a difficult thing to hold, is it not? The truly powerful chemyst must cultivate an iron will to master the forces inside such a tool. So, Vera, you were right in your choice to use the mask. The woman is the one we must fear. And now we know that she is called Marise. It is not an uncommon name. But I heard stories, years ago, of a powerful chemyst with that name. She disappeared, if I recall. I wonder if this could be her?” She turned back to Henry. “Forgive me. You are Henry Collins, are you not?

  Henry saw no benefit in lying. He shrugged.

  “My name is Petra alla Ferra. My people and I have been hired to bring you and this book to certain parties.”

  “What parties?” asked Wayland Teach.

  She ignored his question. “You held this journal for a while, but you were traveling to attempt to find its owner, were you not?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Please do not dissemble. If you are Henry Collins, then this is Athen Boyle, this the serving boy Cram.” If these people knew them, it was likely they had access to the Royal Navy or the Grocers. Either way, it was not a position in which he wanted to stay. Alla Ferra pointed at Winnifred Black and Cubbins. “These I do not know.” She turned to Marise Fermat. “But for this one, I think, ladies . . . I think for her, our employers may give us a very large bonus.” She stood.

  Marise Fermat’s voice rang hollow from inside the mask. “If you let me out of this thing, I would show you just who I am.”

  “Oh, I know!” Alla Ferra unsheathed from her belt the biggest hunting knife Henry had ever seen. She held it to Marise’s neck. “You would pull the sky down upon our heads or burn us from the inside out. That is exactly why you will stay inside this.” She tapped the mask. It rang like a bell. She turned to the rest of them. “Make yourselves ready. We will move with speed tomorrow, and I do not like waiting.” She whirled to go, and Henry saw a green key hanging from a chain around her neck.

  After alla Ferra had left with the two girls, the companions inched near each other as best they could and held a whispered council.

  “I have heard of her,” Marise said. “As a very young girl she helped lead a New Inquisition unit during the Tinker purges in Catalonia. They cut a bloody line from hidden workshop to hidden workshop up and down the coast.”

  “Who do they work for?” Cram asked.

  “They are elite. Whoever hired them has a very large sum of money or very powerful friends.”

  “Purges?” Cram whispered.

  Henry nodded, wide-eyed. “There was a fight, a bloody one, between the church and the chemysts in Catalonia.”

  “Who won?”

  “Chemystry is no longer practiced there.”

  “Ah.”

  Vectors of possibility flashed through Henry’s mind. Their future. These people were obviously after the plans embedded in the journal. Alla Ferra would question Marise. His previous master, Fermat, had told him of this “questioning.” Either she would describe the machine after a great deal of pain, or she would refuse and die. Then they would question Henry. Or Athena, or Cram first, if they thought Henry himself was strong enough to resist. Or Cubbins. They would not stop until they knew the secret Marise had left in Ruby’s blood or until they all were dead.

  Henry called through the door, “Guard.”

  Athena whispered. “Henry, what—”

  “Guard!” he called again.

  The door opened, and a guard stood across the doorway, pistol leveled. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Take me to alla Ferra. I have something she wants.”

  Captain Teach leaned forward. “Lad, what are you doing?”

  “Saving us,” Henry said.

  The guard smiled, as if she were used to this kind of thing. “Come on then.” She grabbed him under the arm and hustled him across the barnyard while Henry did his best to ignore the fierce, insistent whispers behind him.

  CHAPTER 39

  History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.

  —Voltaire

  Something poked Ruby. She woke.

  She opened her eyes a slit, but there was nothing to see. Even with her eyes wide open, not a trace of light. She lay on a cool platform of some sort. She rolled over and reached out her hands. Her fingers brushed up against cold metal. Bars. She laughed. It was funny, she had
to admit, that after so much—storming onto the Grail, sacrificing herself for her crew, training with the Reeve, secret missions, midnight bombings, and, let us not forget, killing magnificent chemystral horses—she was back in a cage. But this was not Fermat’s cage, with its bouncy floor and genial keeper. No, Ruby could guess who held the key to this lock, and he was another thing altogether.

  “It is amusing, isn’t it, Miss Teach?” Swedenborg’s breath jangled through the fine silver mesh. He was close, just on the other side of the bars. Fabric shifted on metal. Ruby’s memory flashed to a small chair that lurked in a corner of the laboratory, but the Swede almost never sat. Was there someone else in the room?

  She had to play for time. “What’s that? Forgive me, I am still groggy. What is amusing?”

  Swedenborg’s mesh echoed wetly when he chuckled. “Why, that you squandered your opportunity so spectacularly.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “The powers that be in our little fort gave you an opportunity to prove your loyalty. That loyalty might have kept you out of this cage. You carried out your task very well, by all reports. But then, and here is the part that just tickles me, after you had succeeded with your picking, even though there was no list—surely you could not be blamed for that—you still ran away and then, when caught, refused to return. Oh, yes. I know all the sordid little details, even the subversion of my poor Evram. Convincing him to give you the overcommand word was quite a feat.”

  Fear blossomed in her chest. “He did nothing intentional. I tricked him. You can’t—”

  Metal dinged, as if he had flicked one of the bars. “What I can and cannot do is none of your concern. The matter is between me and my apprentice.”

  It was no use fencing with this man. “Fine,” Ruby said. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “So fierce, Miss Teach. Beware your impulsiveness. It may be your undoing. Or, forgive me, it has already been your undoing.” The metal scritch of fabric on the chair in the corner sounded again. There was someone else in the room with them. “Since you will no longer train with our fine cadets, we will accelerate our program of experimentation.” Dread crept up Ruby’s spine. “Our little laboratory here will be your home for the forseeable future. Do not worry, we will take excellent care of you. Your blood is, after all, of primary importance.”