Free A Riddle in Ruby by Kent Davis Page A

her throbbing head smelled of sawdust from the carpenter’s shop. They hadbags of the stuff down there. She knew the feel of the Thrift’ s deck against her hands the way other children knew sums or Bible passages. She breathed in the sea, wrapped herself in the bass creak of the masts, and relaxed into the timbers. She was still home at least.
    The moments before her blackout danced away from her stumbling thoughts. There had been a fight. Athen hurt. Rool had thrown her. She had smashed her head against the rail. Then what? The terrifying man flew through the air over the rail. And Gwath. Gwath had been there! The whole series of events flew back into her mind, and she forced her eyes open, propping herself up on her elbow, steeling herself against the pain.
    â€œGwath?” she rasped. Thunder in her skull. Her throat was dry.
    Someone groaned behind her. She turned slowly, wincing, to see Athen, propped up against a sack of cornmeal. He looked like a sack of flesh himself, a broken marionette flopped there in the moonlight.
    â€œWhat happened?” he muttered, reaching up to rub his temples but stopping with a hiss. “Where is Rool?Did you fight him? Are we captives?”
    A small part of her thanked him for even thinking that she might have been able to hold off that force of nature. The larger part of her, however, focused on the small piece of parchment she found tucked under the bag of sawdust.
    It was one of Gwath’s drawings, sketched lines that suggested shape, rather than defined it. Two figures stood back to back on a ship, weapons drawn, and one cowered in the hold. Circling the ship was a shark, covered with ropy scars. A shadowy squid stalked the shark. Rool was alive, and Gwath was hiding, hoping to flush him out.
    â€œMiss Teach?” Athen pressed.
    â€œIt was Gwath.”
    â€œThe cook? Where is he?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Where had he come from? Why had he hidden himself from her?
    â€œWhere did you go?” Ruby asked.
    â€œTo the hold, to get my cloak.”
    She gave him a look.
    â€œYou would be surprised what a skilled duelist can accomplish with a cloak in the off hand.”
    â€œI will be sure to keep an eye out when I meet a skilled duelist,” she snapped.
    Athen tightened his lips and did not respond.
    â€œWe should get out of the open,” she whispered. “This feels too exposed.”
    He tensed. “You think that—”
    â€œI am not sure, but I would just as soon not have some demon man drop out of the rigging on me like a sack of coal.”
    He cast a glance over his shoulder and levered himself slowly up to standing. “Come on.” She grabbed the hand he offered and pulled herself up next to him.
    Athen was not a brute of a boy, perhaps a head taller than she. But he had fought beside her, against a terrible opponent. He had a weight about him. He carved space somehow. He was more here than anyone she had known, even Gwath or her father. And there was something else, too, right now, prowling about behind the stars reflected in his eyes—
    Wait.
    Ruby pushed Athen away to get a better look at the lights in the distance.
    â€œThose are not stars.” She pointed at the base of the horizon.
    â€œRuby—” Athen turned to her. “Wait, what?” He followed her arm and stared at the cluster of sparkles, wavering in the mist. “That is a city.”
    They had turned up a wide river. Ruby checked the shoreline, casting about for a landmark. She recognized nothing. She felt a little dizzy. “Yes, and even though this tug is slow, I’d say we’ll be there by morning. Come on.” She pulled his arm toward the hold.
    She hurt all over. She pushed the pain and the moment from her mind, and they tottered toward the steps of the deck, clinging to each other like an old couple she had seen once on the courthouse steps in Charles Towne.
    Athen stopped for a moment at the top of the