The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

  Athena stared into the coals for a long time.

  CHAPTER 41

  Everyone feels the evil, but no one has the courage or energy to seek the cure.

  —Elizabeth de Tocqueville, Travels in the Colonies

  The days passed in a haze, or it would have been a haze if she could have seen a single blasted thing. Ruby got to know the inside of the cage very well, and the sounds of the laboratory grew as familiar as the hidden reefs off the coast of the colonies. Evram had a small hitch in his step, and he never took any care to make his passage quiet. Swedenborg came daily for blood samples and to gloat. He also occasionally followed Evram on his visits, lurking silently as he could near the doorway. He could not mask the jangle of his breathing. The Swede was watching her, and she took care to give him no cause for offense. She ate her porridge, did her stretches, and tried to be a model prisoner.

  She had to stay hopeful. Her tools were gone: her picks, her status with Rool, her sight. Was it even possible to change some piece of this nightmare? She had to try. She held the pain close in her hands.

  One time (she had no clue whether it was day or night) Evram came by himself. He fed her in silence; she put the low chamber pot through the slot near the floor, and he gave her a fresh one.

  As he was going, she whispered, “Evram?”

  “Yes, Ruby Teach?”

  “Can you stay and talk for a moment?”

  “Doctor Swedenborg was cross with me after we spoke on the first day.”

  “Just for a moment.”

  He paused in the dark. So. He still was not entirely committed to the Swede.

  “How are you?”

  Evram sighed. “I cannot work on reanimating Sleipnir. He says her independence made her fundamentally flawed. Besides, he has me working on the machine.”

  Ruby tried to sound casual. “How is it proceeding?”

  “It is almost complete.” Evram hesitated. “We will test it soon.”

  “Evram—”

  “I must go, Ruby Teach.”

  “Just call me Ruby, Evram.” She forced herself to smile.

  “All right. Ruby. Good night.”

  Night. It was night. Evram’s footsteps retreated, and she was alone with her thoughts. And the failing candle of her hope. She nursed it until it burned her fingers.

  She slept.

  After the next sleep the Swede came to see her. She rolled her fingers into a fist.

  “Hello, Ruby Teach.” He sounded absolutely jovial. She presented her left arm through the bars.

  “Oh, no, thank you, Ruby.” Swedenborg tittered. “I have no need of your blood anymore.”

  Ruby kept her face as flat as she could. “Why not?”

  “It is exciting, is it not? My dear little repository of secrets, I finally have a secret to keep from you.” His fingernails trailed across the metal bars and played a little piano on her forearm. She snatched it back. He laughed again. “Discovery is strong tonic to the system, Ruby. Perhaps you will have your own opportunity to experience discovery sometime soon.” He walked away, whistling a jaunty tune.

  The machine was finished. The Swede had come to her to gloat. Soon. He had said “soon.” If he no longer needed her blood, then he no longer needed her alive.

  She tried to count her breaths, but they came quickly and irregularly. She flexed her fingers and nurtured her hope, redoubling her focus. Would the Swede return to take her? Did she have any time left?

  Later that day, Evram returned alone.

  “Ready for my snack, O Keeper of Gruel,” Ruby said, and forced a laugh.

  The spoon scraped across the bowl. Ruby opened her mouth and ate the porridge. She swallowed. “Evram?”

  His only response was the rasp of the next spoonful. She ate it.

  “Evram?”

  Nothing.

  “Evram— If I have done something to make you angry, I am sorry. Have I done something wrong?” She racked her mind, going over everything she had said in the past days, even the way she had said it. There was nothing, no hint that he was angry or upset about any of it. Cold fear washed over her. “Are you all right, Evram? Has something happened?” After the next spoonful she grabbed his wrist with her left hand. “Evram, please. Talk to me. Say anything.” He gently pulled his wrist away, and she let it go. “Well, I am sorry. For whatever I have done, Evram. I am truly sorry.” His footsteps were slower than usual, but they walked away, just the same. The door opened and closed, and then the laboratory’s quiet washed over her.

  It was impossible to deny. She was now truly alone.

  She let the emptiness take her.

  The hours passed, and Evram returned to feed her, silent as the last time. He left, and the time, and the pain, stretched out until she found she was done with it.

  She opened her hands and reached through the bars and found the keyhole. She found the keyhole with the thin, sharp brass picks she had grown out of her index fingers.

  CHAPTER 42

  Across the mountains they are neither beasts nor spirits. They are as we are. And so I fear them.

  —Mother Green Foot,

  Exodus Council, Keepers of the Western Door, 1702

  In the days to come Athena discovered that she could smell worse. It might have been the constant running. Petra alla Ferra called her company Los Jabalís, the boars, and they certainly knew their way about a forest. They numbered somewhere between fifteen and twenty—Athena could never get a solid count—and at any time some of them were prowling about on the flanks and ahead, screening their passage through the forest. Los Jabalís were hard and wild, and she counted her blessings that the company no longer held them prisoner.

  To her surprise, Athena spent most of her time marching along next to Marise Fermat. Ruby’s mother needed continual help navigating the treacherous roots and rocks. First it was Athena and Cram, but after a few hours Henry, the Blacks, and even Captain Teach himself took turns helping guide her through the forest. Such an odd group, and all united in the pursuit of this single girl. But what would happen if they ever found her? Henry had his allegiances. She had her own to the Worshipful Order, and what of her father, the mysterious employer alla Ferra had been going on about? Wayland Teach wanted nothing to do with any of them, and who knew what his wife wanted? And what of the Blacks? This forest, this land, was a place out of time; but she suspected that time had been passing in the rest of the world, and Athena feared its shape if they ever finally came back to it.

  A few days later Athena was summoned to a point outside their most recent camp. The mercenaries had accepted her true gender without a moment’s hesitation. Athena had told no one of their late-night chat, but she suspected that her status as the boss’s daughter might have had something to do with her constant inclusion in alla Ferra’s counsels. She found she did not mind. With the bonds off her wrists they could call her a duck, for all she cared.

  “Girl.”

  The voice called from the cook’s lean-to, pitched back in the woods. The shadows were deep in the trees, and the big cook, Rafa, loomed over a bubbling cauldron. The smell of garlic and spices drifted out into the leaves and set Athena’s eyes to tearing. Los Jabalís loved their food murderously hot.

  “Girl, come in here and help me for a moment, would you?”

  Athena ducked under the lean-to and into the warm shelter. “What is it, Rafa?”

  “Does this need salt?” he rumbled, and passed her a spoon.

  She tasted it. It flowered and looped in her mouth, and then attacked her taste buds, in the most pleasant of attacking ways. “No,” she gasped. “It needs nothing at all. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I just wanted you to have a hint of flavor, some reinforcements against the conditions. It looks like rain out there.”

  Why would she care about the rain? “Er, thank you.”

  He moved his head out of the shadows. It was not Rafa’s face that hung there, but a smooth olive pate, with a stone earring in one ear.
Ruby’s teacher.

  Gwath.

  “Gw—”

  He cut her off. “You have been summoned, have you not? You should get moving.” The face moved back into the shadows. “I wanted you to know I am here if you need me. Be careful of boars. They are wildly unpredictable. You can’t be too careful these days. Or patient.”

  “Yes. Thank you. I will.”

  Care and patience, he counseled. What in the name of Providence was happening? The last time she had been near that man, he had chucked Wisdom Rool over the side of a ship. Ruby had said he was dead, but he most obviously was not. She resolved to keep quiet, and she would indeed be careful of boars. She certainly could not tell Los Jabalís they had a spy in their midst, especially if it was a spy helping her.

  A light rain did indeed begin to fall as she threaded her way, mind reeling, through the company to the base of a little hill. Vera and Alaia stood at the bottom. Vera tossed her black hair. “Up there.”

  Alla Ferra crouched in the underbrush with Wayland Teach and Henry Collins, and they passed Teach’s chemystral monocle back and forth.

  “Here,” said Teach, and handed it to her as she knelt down beside them. “Up there, on the top of that bluff across the valley.”

  She fixed the monocle on the high bluff. It stood impressive and alone like a pillar in the river valley, and at the top, a fortress. A castle on a crag, just as sure as they had in the Scottish Highlands, and just as remote. “Stout walls, well patrolled, only one visible road up, exposed all the way to gunners or chemystry from above.”

  “And don’t forget about the Reeve themselves,” said Teach.

  Athena lowered the monocle to look at the other three. “We know she is in there?”

  Henry nodded and showed her Marise’s compass. It pointed straight at the bluff.

  Athena ran several possible tactics through her head. She turned to alla Ferra. “If we try to take that place in a frontal assault, many of us, your people included, will not be coming back.”

  The hunter shifted on the balls of her feet. “I choose to not have my people die when it is unnecessary.”

  Henry frowned. “But our agreement—”

  “Be easy, my friend. Los Jabalís are not abandoning you. We are committed with great passion to your cause, and besides, I need to keep all of you safe if I want my money. I agree with Lady Athena that a frontal assault will be a suicide.”

  Something dangerous flashed in Teach’s face. “Make your meaning plain.”

  “I do not like plain meanings, sir. But I will force myself for your sake.” She raised a finger. “What if we did not need to use the front door?”

  CHAPTER 43

  We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

  —Wayland Teach

  The hallway beyond the door lay quiet. Ruby wrapped it around her, a blanket of air, and trailed her fingers along the wall with the lightest of touches. Impossible to think of risk now or of foolhardiness. She had to trust that she had judged the time correctly and that it was deepest night. If a cadet passed by, barnacles, if Swedenborg had to use the loo, she was done and dusted. But she would not stay in that cage anymore. The Swede had made his intentions clear. Do what they might to her, she would not just sit and let it happen. If that meant flailing her way out of this madhouse blind, then so be it.

  A new sound filled the hallway, from the left, past the first door. A ticking kind of hum. It actually pressed against her skin as it pulsed. It moved the air. It had to be the machine. Could she destroy it? Perhaps. If she could even see—ha—how it worked. Gum up the gears or knock it over, but then what? He builds another one, and Ruby is back in the cage.

  Her fingers trailed over Evram’s door, but there was no singing behind it. Steady breathing. That was all. She passed it by.

  The door to the room with the desk opened easily to her finger picks. She navigated the trip wires, slipped the lock on the desk, and felt about carefully until her hands landed on the Swede’s journal. Now that he had built what she carried, his notes might be less important to him, but they might be of great importance to his enemies. If he had any, Ruby would find them and help them in whatever way she could.

  Back in the hall the thump of the machine was still there. Like a heart. She was inside a heart. But what beast was it powering? More important, how could she escape this beast of a place? Into the sand room and down the impossibly slick cliff face? Or slinking through the yard and out the main gate, under all their noses? A mad grin crept across her face. What else was there to do but move forward?

  But there was something else she needed to do.

  She made her way back to Evram’s door. She had to say something. She could not just leave him.

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  Cold rain fell in a little waterfall out the front of Athena’s tricorne. Alaia had taken them by cover of night out of the Jabalís camp through the forest, and now she called them to a halt at the foot of a very steep slope rising up into the night.

  “That’s too steep to climb”—Athena kept her voice low—“and too slippery in this weather.” She cast a sidelong glance at Henry Collins. “I don’t think we could get three feet up that.”

  With a bow and a flourish Alaia pulled aside a curtain of weeds and roots to reveal a narrow ramp curving upward.

  Cram whistled. “How did you—”

  “Miss Black is not the only one in the world gifted at tracking,” Vera said over her shoulder as she started up the slope. “We’ve had our forward scouts all over this cliff as soon as we found it.”

  Cram muttered under his breath, “If Los Jabalís and the Reeve tangle, I want to be on an island far, far away.”

  “Agreed,” said Wayland Teach.

  Athena said a prayer to Providence that Henry’s deal would hold up. Once this was all done, she just hoped the mercenaries would not sell them again to the highest bidder.

  Ruby whipped around, but the hand that had grabbed her had done its work too quickly.

  Light blinded her. She ground her eyes closed, bit her tongue to stop herself from yowling, and backed against the wall. She lashed out with her hand, and it hit a wrist. A bone-hard hand clamped down on her own, and another shot over her mouth. She struggled but could not move. She opened her eyes a crack.

  Wisdom Rool stared back at her. “Shhhhhh.”

  He was a spirit. A ghost. A demon. Whenever Ruby found hope, Rool appeared to dash it to pieces.

  He had brought one of Swedenborg’s lamps with him, and it lay on the floor. Dim white light filled the hallway. “You do not have much time,” he whispered in her ear. “The good doctor could wake at any moment.”

  Wasn’t he there to foil her? The scars on his hand chafed her shoulder. “How did you cure me?”

  He wiggled his fingers. “Edwina performed a simple trick on you. Has to do with the fibers in your neck. You would have learned it in a year or two.”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Almost since I left you with the Swede.” His eyes flicked to her brass fingertips. “Better than pumpkins, I suppose.”

  The ground was shifting under her feet, and she knew not where.

  “Why did you let me get this far?” she said.

  “I have a fondness for you Ruby. Also, you still owe me a task.” Rool smiled down at Swedenborg’s journal in her hand. “And look at you. You kept to your word. Open it, please.”

  Sweat trickled down her back. “But you said—the Swede—any moment—”

  “Well, you had better get cracking.” He plopped down on the floor in front of her.

  And so Ruby Teach sat down in the belly of a Reeve fortress and picked a chemystral lock, while her greatest enemy looked on.

  Was he her greatest enemy?

  The lock was no match for the picks on her fingers. They were breathtakingly sensitive. The clasp popped open. Rool’s paw swallowed the journal in one quick grab, and he stowed it away in his vest.

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nbsp; Ruby stared at him. “What now?” she whispered.

  He frowned, puzzled. “Well, now you are free to go, Ruby Teach.” He patted his vest. “You kept your side of the bargain, and as you know, I am a man of honor.”

  “But you said I could no longer be a reeve. You said you were done with me.”

  “And so I am. You would never make a reeve.” He put a finger on his chest. “What I am is Duty to Country.” He rested the finger on her shoulder. “Your loyalties lie elsewhere.”

  “Then why not just leave me to Swedenborg?”

  “Do you think me a monster?”

  “Well—”

  “I can’t have the good doctor ruining you. He would never have agreed to your release.”

  “You are lord captain.”

  “Even I must answer to higher powers. Besides, an open battle with our resident chemyst is one I am not certain I could win. Your escaping on his watch will cause him a great deal of trouble with our masters, as will the loss of his notes.”

  The ground was no longer shifting. It had dropped away entirely, and she was spinning through the air. But Ruby was no dummy. She knew an opportunity when it grabbed her by the throat. She nodded, and Rool released her.

  It all had happened in near silence, the space just below whispers.

  She went toward Evram’s door.

  “Not a good idea,” Rool said.

  “I have to say good-bye.” He shrugged. What she did not say was that Evram was in danger, too. Perhaps Rool would let him escape as well. She eased the door open. The white light from Rool’s lamp crept in with her. A shape sat upright in the chair, wreathed in shadow. It was breathing easily.

  “Evram, I am so sorry. I know you hate me, but I think you should come with me. The Swede has it in for you, and I’m making a run for it. Will you come with me?”

  Rool shifted behind her, and the light hit Evram.

  Black veins crept up his neck from underneath his shirt and into his hair, cradling his ears. His eyes were bloodshot as well, except with tendrils of dark gray.

  “Evram,” she whispered.