A Riddle in Ruby by Kent Davis Page B

the bottom like a scab.
    Athen grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”
    Cram said, “I think she be sinking the evidence, sir. We don’t want no one picking up our trail.” Athen nodded.
    Ruby turned to Athen. “Give me your cloak.”
    He hesitated, “I need it, Miss Teach.”
    â€œFor what purpose, to protect me?” The boy nodded. “If I need someone to crumple at the feet of a brigand, I know where to turn.” Cram coughed. Athen blushed in the dim.
    He threw it at her. She reached out her hand and grabbed it out of the air. It would have been impressive, but she used the hand with the bad wrist. The cloak dropped to the ground and lay there. The other two looked at her, and no one bent down to help. After a moment she picked it up with her good hand and wrapped it about her face.
    â€œWelcome to Philadelphi,” Ruby said. They pushedthe boat back into the river. It sank into the dark. “Come on,” she said, and started down the strand. “It’s not far.” Thankfully they did not argue.
    Ruby had faint memories of sun on the cobblestones in New Market, which is what the neighborhood had been called before they put a roof on it.
    Now it was the Shambles. Away from the harbor opening, it was always just past dusk. The constant half-light came from cheap, smoky chem pots hanging from pillars or pipes on the main streets. In the alleys, well, you took to the alleys at your own risk. They were clogged with pipes and steam holes and refuse and chem waste. The pots hung farther apart, and danger lurked in the dark. If you brought your own light or weren’t from the neighborhood? Well, the runagates and bullyboys would thank you kindly for pointing yourself out to them and offering them the bounty of your purse. If you were lucky, that was all they took.
    The lifeblood of the docks and the Benzene Yards lived in the Shambles, crowded together, scrapping andfighting. People here lived on top of one another in makeshift shacks at the end of blind alleys or in camps on old rooftops with the Lid (that’s what they called the roof) as a ceiling. Two, three, four families in flats built for one. Boardinghouses for thirty in mansions abandoned by the high folk who now lived Up There.
    Very fine neighborhoods had been covered by the Lid. Instead of relocating, some of the most influential families had been allowed to stay, and their big houses went all the way up, through attics and storerooms dug right into the Lid.
    Above the Lid were salons, bedrooms, dining rooms, and great halls, and below was everything that made all that possible. Down here the kitchens cooked, the shoes were shined, and the gears were greased. In a way, Ruby thought, it was like other cities, just more so: a few folk that sat in the wheelhouse, and a whole mess of people down below, rowing as fast as they could.
    She cut right and led them between two swanky town houses into an ill-lit alley. Haphazardly placed chem pots hung from support pillars or the corner of a fence.
    On this particular block the people had abandoned their houses and gone who-knows-where or had just closed up below and built anew on top of the Lid. But they had closed them up tight with solder and chem, with bars on the windows and stout locks on the doors. It was still deserted.
    Ruby led them to a gap in a high brick wall. A wheelless carriage was the only occupant of the back lot on the other side of the crack, and an empty town house loomed, waiting for them.
    â€œWelcome to our home,” she said as she slipped through the gap.

CHAPTER 17
    Gray lung, black scale, pickle, and sweat,
    Lost them fingers to the saw today,
    Save your pennies and duck your head,
    So your boys and girls climb UpTown way!
    â€”UnderTown drinking song
    T he next morning Ruby struggled up to the roof and shouldered the trapdoor open with her good arm. Cram was there in the dim half-light of UnderTown, pushing against the sky of