The Fourth Ruby Read online

  When the ministry had sent John away to America, Mary snuck away and followed. She changed her name, pretending to be American, and they married in secret, crossing the Buckles and Fowler bloodlines. Jack and Sadie were the result. The merger of tracker bloodlines terrified some in the ministry so much that the Buckles siblings were never allowed beyond the walls of the Keep without an escort. Jack was both a Section Eight and a Section Thirteen.

  Freak.

  His sudden appearance at the Keep the previous year had led to the outing of his parents’ secret. But their punishment had been delayed pending a trial. As soon as Jack’s dad woke up, the two would be judged and most assuredly locked away in a cell deep within the Keep. So, strangely enough, the same coma that separated Jack from his dad was the only thing keeping his family together. Jack was pretty sure his life was a textbook example of a catch-22.

  “Will you come down and read with me before bed?” asked Sadie, peeking around the door.

  She asked him that every night, and every night he gave her the same answer. Jack sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I need to be with Dad. Just in case. You know.”

  “Yeah. I know.” Sadie pushed into the room, carrying a blanket and a pillow. She cast the one across his lap and tucked the other behind his head. As she straightened, she clutched a big gold pendant that hung from a chain around her neck, embossed with a dove flying upward into starlight. It was an heirloom, a gift from their mother, and it was far too big for her little frame.

  Jack leaned his head back into the pillow. “Take that off, okay? You don’t want it to choke you in your sleep.”

  She didn’t argue. She unclasped the necklace as she walked out into the hall. “You’re going to save him, Jack,” she said, looking back through the door. “I know it.”

  He rolled his head over on the pillow to look at his father and the big scary tube going down his throat. “You always say that.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  Chapter Eight

  CLUTCHING A NOTEBOOK and a full thermos of breakfast tea, Jack trudged up a narrow stair, heading for Tanner’s office. The steps and railing were chestnut, the picture frames oak and ash. With the exception of the arena, the vast inner workings of the Keep were made of wood and cloth, and the occasional bit of carbon fiber. No stone. No metal. No sense in a tracker getting a vision every time he leaned against a wall.

  Jack left the stairwell on Sublevel Four, which was all mahogany, his least favorite of all the woods because it made everything so dark. Ash was only a few strides away, walking the other direction with Sullivan. Ash’s swollen cheek was mottled with bruises. He wouldn’t even look Jack’s way.

  Sullivan, on the other hand, gave Jack an I’m-sorry-you’re-stuck-being-you-today shrug.

  Jack hugged his thermos and notebook a little tighter and kept on walking.

  “Ah, Jack.” Edward Tanner rolled into view from an intersecting hallway, lifting a long, liver-spotted finger to tug his spectacles down his nose. “You’re looking particularly ragged this morning.”

  Jack would have laughed if he had the energy.

  The professor wheeled himself alongside his student. “Might that have anything to do with the Hunt?”

  “You heard?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “Great.” Jack glanced down at the threadbare blanket across Tanner’s knees, remembering the strange encounter the night before. “How was . . . Cambridge?”

  “The usual.” Tanner gave no sign that he knew what Jack was fishing for. Maybe it hadn’t been a spark after all. “Lots of students. None as bright as you. I do wish I could have joined you, though—whatever the outcome.” He slowed, touching Jack’s arm. “There’s no shame in it, boy. It wouldn’t be a game if you couldn’t lose once in a while.”

  Jack nodded, and the professor gave his wheels a push, continuing on. “Every tracker’s skills ebb and flow over the years. And remember, you started five years earlier than anyone else.” He let out a little chuckle. “Come to think of it, the warden team defeated your grandfather and his quartermaster during his first Hunt. It took me weeks to nurse his ego back to health.”

  Thanks to his parents’ violation of Section Eight, Jack had not one but two tracker grandfathers. He knew which one Tanner was referring to. Joseph Fowler the Eleventh had been the professor’s best friend.

  The old man grinned, shifting his gaze to the far end of the hall. “I was always dragging Joe out of one crisis or another.” And then his smile faded. “Until the day I failed.”

  Again, Jack knew what he meant. The professor had lost the use of his legs in an attempt to save his friend on the day Joe the Eleventh died. Jack had never built up the gumption to ask him for the story, but the moment’s pause felt like an invitation. “H-how?” he asked, stumbling over the delicate question. “How did it happen?”

  The two entered a mahogany elevator—or what looked like an elevator—and turned around. The doors slid closed and the box shot sideways so that Jack had to steady himself against the railing.

  The professor glanced up at him. “It was a terrible winter, boy. Terrible indeed. Bill Shepherd the Eleventh was hit by a train while searching for the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Not two weeks later, the eleventh John Buckles tumbled off a cliff outside of Salzburg. So they say. But Joe . . . Joe was the first to fall, and I’m to blame.

  “You?” Jack had never heard that part. “But you were the one who tried to save him.”

  “Yes. That’s true. I tried to save him. I was also the one who dragged him off on that fool quest in the first place.”

  Centrifugal force pressed Jack into the rail as the side-a-vator entered a wide turn, working its way around the giant underground tower.

  “You must understand, Jack. It was a time of transition.” Tanner gripped his wheels to keep his chair from rolling backward into the rail. “The twelves and their quartermasters were coming into their own—field-ready, as they called it—and the ministry had little use for the old elevens. Old.” He laughed. “Some of us hadn’t yet breached fifty. We all had unsolved mysteries we’d gathered over the years, and so we dove into them. Unsanctioned missions—without the aid of quartermasters. John and Bill each went off on their own. I roped Joe into joining me. I had caught the trail of the Timur Ruby.”

  The side-a-vator jerked to a stop, and the doors parted. Tanner rolled himself out into a long lecture room, passing between mahogany risers on either side.

  “Timur?” asked Jack, following behind. He remembered the name from his history courses, of which he had plenty during the ministry school year. “As in Timur the Lame? Tamerlane?” Jack had found Tamerlane to be a terrifying figure. The fourteenth-century tyrant had built an empire stretching from Turkey to India, and in the process, he had slaughtered seventeen million people.

  “Yes. Tamerlane. Well done, my boy.” Tanner slowed to let him catch up. “It was said that his ruby was the source of his success, that it held the power to command men, so you can understand my interest. Over the years, I had traced its history to an East India Company ship that was lost with all hands in the mid-1800s. With your grandfather’s help, I found it, run aground in an island cave at the edge of the Mariana Trench.”

  The professor halted his chair and turned to face his pupil. He raised his hands, cupped together. “There it was, boy, the famous jewel, resting in a silver bowl in the ruins of the captain’s cabin. All we had to do was take it.”

  Jack leaned unconsciously forward. “And?”

  “And your grandfather didn’t hesitate.” Tanner dropped his hands to his lap. “In his rush, Joe unbalanced the ship. It tipped into the sea, breaking apart, and before I knew it, a cannon had smashed through the cabin wall and pinned him down.” With a sigh, the professor turned and rolled onward. “I dove in after him, kicking with all I had as half the ship slid down into the endless dark of the trench. The pressure was immense, threatening to rob me of consciousness. And then a piece of mast slammed i
nto my back and it was all over. I woke up in a hospital weeks later without use of my legs. My friend, your grandfather, was gone.”

  Chapter Nine

  JACK AND THE PROFESSOR stopped at the far end of the classroom, at a half circle of steps leading down to a set of double doors. “On to happier topics, eh?” Tanner slapped the arm of his chair. “Ready to rev this baby up?”

  Jack mustered a smile. “I don’t know why you waited this long.”

  The professor flipped up his armrest and pressed a red button, unleashing a hum like that of the QEDs, and the wheelchair rose up on a blue cushion of light. As Jack jumped ahead to open the doors, his mentor ghosted down the steps. “Can’t tell you how often I’ve wished I could use my thrusters instead of those ramps in the Tube stations. But secrets must be kept.”

  They entered an octagonal study, its eight sides a mix of bookshelves, desks, and cabinets all built into the mahogany walls. Most areas of the Keep minimized sensory distractions, but the professor’s office was full of them. Water trickled through the bamboo pipes of a desk fountain. A pair of clockwork zeppelins buzzed back and forth between the bookcases in a perpetual chase.

  And there were spheres everywhere.

  Polished spheres of every size and color sat on every shelf and desktop, some as big as bowling balls. They were samples of stone and metal, designed to teach young trackers how to spark. Over the course of the year, Jack had tried them all and seen the shadows and faces of Edward Tanners from generations past. Somewhere in the Keep there were other spheres, used by Jack’s own ancestors, but Jack had never seen them. The Buckles office had been sealed, pending his father’s post-coma trial.

  Jack paused a few feet past the doors to lay a hand on his favorite sphere, a baseball-size orb sculpted from dragonite, so dark it was almost black, with deep rivers of iridescent red and blue. All the dragonite in London had been mined a thousand years before from a deep well fortress at the center of the city. Once a stronghold of the Ministry of Dragons, now it was the Archive of the Elder Ministries—the world’s strangest library. Jack had no fear of sparking off the sphere. No tracker had ever sparked off dragonite. But whenever he touched it, he felt a golden wave of warmth pass up his arm.

  “Your coat,” said Tanner, snapping his fingers as his wheels settled to the rug. “We do have standards here, after all.”

  Jack let go of the sphere and relinquished his leather jacket. He wore a waistcoat and tie beneath, the uniform of all apprentice clerks at the ministry. He preferred the blue jeans and T-shirt he had worn in the arena, but Tanner wouldn’t stand for it.

  As the professor spun his chair around to hang up the coat, he knocked a paper from his desk. Jack saw a triangle with four circles—one at each corner and one at the center, with lines connecting them all. A scribble in Tanner’s handwriting read 49 Divers. Jack’s mind jumped to the professor’s story about the East India Company ship falling into the Mariana Trench. “Are you . . . still looking for the Timur Ruby?”

  “It’s become a bit of a hobby horse. You understand.” The old man gave him a quick smile, tucking the paper into a drawer. “Now, I think we need to build your confidence after last night’s . . . well . . . fiasco, not to put too fine a point on it. I have something new for you to try. Something quite advanced.”

  The professor slid a walnut box to the center of his desk. Inside, mounted on an onyx base, was a silver rod with golden baskets fused to either end. Each basket held a yellow gem the size of a golf ball.

  Jack eyed the stones. Large, clear gems captured light and sound better than other minerals, making it easy for trackers to draw out the visions. Such gems were used for beginner spark training. He sighed. Tanner was patronizing him. “Professor, I know how to spark. Last night I just—”

  “Do you?” The professor wheeled back, glancing up at him. “Do you know what sparking truly is?”

  Jack shrugged. He thought he did. “The molecules vibrate against my nerve endings,” he said, wiggling his fingers, “sending visions to my brain.”

  “Ehh.” The professor bobbled his head back and forth. “That is a vastly simplified explanation.” He gestured at the bamboo fountain on the corner of his desk. “By that logic, a spark flows through your nervous system like water through a pipe, moving in one direction, from point A to point B.” Without warning, he caught Jack’s wrist. “But this”—he flopped Jack’s arm back and forth—“this is no mere pipe. A tracker’s arm is a cable, Jack. And how does data travel through a cable?”

  Jack was beginning to catch on. “In both directions.”

  “Exactly. We’re talking about two-way communication, boy. Interaction.” Still holding Jack’s wrist, the professor steered him toward a yellow gem. “It’s time to reach beyond mere observation.”

  “Wait.” Jack resisted the professor’s pull, stalling. He eyed his jacket, but both it and the zed were well out of reach. “Um . . . why haven’t you ever shown me this before?”

  Tanner chuckled. “Because interacting with a spark is incredibly dangerous.” With that, he pressed Jack’s hand down onto the stone.

  Chapter Ten

  JACK STARED UP through a break in the fingers covering the gem—his fingers.

  “Take a step, Jack.”

  He could see Tanner towering above, as if the professor were looking down at a figurine on his desk. But Jack couldn’t answer, let alone move—just like any other spark.

  “A leap of faith, my boy. That’s what I’m asking of you. Take a single step out of that very comfortable spot you’re in. Take the leap from observation to action.” Giant Tanner’s lips never moved, but Jack could hear him crisp and clear. He struggled to obey.

  “No. No. Stop trying to move your muscles, child. You don’t have any. Separate consciousness from physicality and step out of there.”

  “Out of where?” The words were Jack’s. He couldn’t believe the sound of his own voice. He had never been able to speak during a vision.

  “Well done! You’re onto it. Now, let your mind wander.”

  Jack let go of the concept of legs and feet, of hamstrings and quadriceps, and urged his conscious self out into the room. In the next instant, he was standing at the center of the octagonal office. For a moment, he thought he’d lost the spark, but when he turned back toward the desk, he saw himself standing there, right next to the professor, fingers still resting on the jewel.

  Freaky.

  Tanner gave him no time to settle in. “Now, Jack, come and find me.”

  “I did. I’m right here, standing behind you.”

  “Not that me, you ninny. The other me.”

  Jack turned in a slow circle, feeling vertigo, like walking in virtual reality for the first time. The room shimmered as he turned. Everything had a micro-thin crystalline coating. There were two Jacks, him and the other him, but the office was short one professor. “I don’t see any other yous.”

  “That’s because I’m not in your gem, boy. Do you see the exit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take it.”

  Jack headed for the double doors on wobbly legs.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped, throwing his arms out for balance. The office tilted and rolled like a ship on the waves.

  “I almost forgot,” said Tanner as the room finally settled. “Don’t think about leaving. Think about going to another place instead. Do you understand the difference?”

  “Um . . . yes?”

  “That wasn’t an answer. It was a question.”

  Jack frowned at himself and set his jaw, trying to look more confident than he felt. “Yes.”

  “Better. Go ahead.”

  With the next step, the door came rushing at him. There was a white flash, and once again, he found himself at the center of the office. “Um . . . Professor?”

  “Don’t talk to him-me. Talk to me-me.”

  Jack spun around. A man stood between him and the exit, wearing the same hound’s-tooth coat and the same
brown wingtips as the professor, but he was not bound to any wheelchair, quantum or otherwise. He stood tall, with light brown hair and a smooth complexion, free of liver spots and crow’s feet—a younger version of Tanner.

  Young Tanner laughed. “Don’t look so shocked, boy. I wasn’t always old, you know.”

  Jack blinked and swallowed. He could only manage one word. “How?”

  Young Tanner patted Jack’s arm. “Networking, my boy. Good for the career. Good for the soul.” He pointed at the silver rod between the gems. “Silver is a superb conductor. It allows us to share the spark even though we’re each touching a separate gem.” He wandered over to a bookcase, clockwork zeppelins shimmering as they passed above him. “Mind you, we can only interact in here with items the gems themselves have seen. But over the generations those two beauties have seen every jot and tittle in this office.” He pulled down a book and tossed it to Jack.

  After a bit of fumbling, Jack settled the book in his hands. He could feel the compacted leather of its cover against his fingertips, even though he knew he wasn’t actually standing there. All of this was in his mind. The real Jack—his physical self—was still at the desk, one hand on the jewel. On a whim, Jack held the book up to his nose, jerking his head back in surprise when he smelled the old ink and the musty pages. “So this—everything I’m experiencing—it’s all . . .”

  “Data.” Young Tanner retrieved the book and slid it back onto the shelf. “These gems are silicates and carbon—the same building blocks used in the latest high-tech gadgets. Think of them as the world’s oldest computers.” He lifted a black-and-white photo—four men standing in front of a pyramid, wearing tweed suits and knee-high boots. “And trackers from the four families can access them. A few have even done it without physical contact.”