A Riddle in Ruby Read Free

knife out of her sleeve, and said, “Stand and deliver, sir. Your money or your life.”
    Normally the victims cringed and babbled, called for their coachman, who had usually just chased off after Gwath, and then obligingly produced their ready money and precious things.
    This boy, however, stared at her, and he laughed.
    Then he drew, very quickly, truly very quickly, a dueling sword out of his embroidered waistcoat. The blade was just long enough that the point pressed against a spot just under Ruby’s left eye.
    â€œYou don’t want to use that knife on me, boy,” he said. “Now make your way. I have places to be and people to see, and your life is worth more than all the shillings you might loot from passersby.” And then he winked at her. He winked at her, and his wrist flicked and Ruby felt a sting beneath her eye.
    She reared back and vaulted down from the upended coach. She ran, bare feet slapping on the cobblestones, into the crowd, into an alley, and over a garden wall, hotfooting it into the maze of alleys and secret spaces that could hide her from anyone who might think to follow.
    Just after midday, cleaned up and ready to return home, she emerged from Whistler’s Alley onto the wharf. She once again wore the sensible frock her father insisted she wear on excursions into port. These days this felt more like a costume: the faded secondhand dress, the long sleeves to protect her tanned arms, the demure black braid, the pinching shoes.
    As planned, Gwath was waiting for her on the backstoop of the whale blubber works, working on a steaming meat pie.
    He eyed her as she plopped down beside him. The bushy blond stonemason was gone, replaced by the dark olive skin and shaven skull of his true face. Gwath was a mystery. “No loot,” she said.
    He grunted. “No pie for you, then.” He popped the last bite into his mouth and stood. “Keep working, and it will come. Come on. Thirteen summers doesn’t mean your father won’t worry if you ain’t home by three bells.”
    They walked around the corner of the blubber works and into the early-afternoon lull of the wharf. The smell of salt and tarred wood welcomed her home.
    â€œYou think Skillet or my father found passengers for the southern leg?” A crowd of sailors rolling barrels up the gangway of a man-’o-war caught her eye.
    Gwath said nothing. Indeed, he had stopped short, standing in the middle of the wharf, staring.
    â€œYes,” Gwath replied.
    She followed his gaze to the gangway of her father’s ship, the Thrift , and saw two figures bargaining furiouslywith her father, hemmed in by a precarious tower of steamer trunks and a donkey covered in flour.
    One was a rat-faced boy wearing a blue sash, with a bandage wrapped around his head. The other wore a tricorne and fashionable shoes, and sported a familiar rapier at his hip.
    â€œWell, it certainly won’t be a boring trip to Philadelphi,” Ruby breathed, and she tucked herself behind Gwath as they hurried toward the other gangplank.

CHAPTER 4
    It is the inner spirit that fuels chemystral science. Without that spirit, I shall fail at the simplest chemystral task.
    If I have enough fuel? I can tear the world asunder or steal fire from the gods themselves.
    â€”Robert Boyle, ed., FRS, Principia Chymia , 1666
    LONDON, ENGLAND—ONE MONTH BEFORE
    T he automaton was the spitting image of a mouse. It perched on the sign above the Clove and Camel and fixed its whirling eyes on a young lone figure hurrying into the venerable coffeehouse. This was nothing new. This particular mouse had stood vigil atop this particular sign for more than fifty years, since the night it was fabricated, the same night Grocers’ Hall had burned to the ground in the Great London Fire of 1666. On a normal day it wouldhave quick-burned a chemystral image of the visitor into the record in its tail, and that would have been that. The creature’s