Ruby Ruins

Ruby Ruins
Secret of the Jewels Book Two
by
J.M.D. Reid


Copyright © 2020 by J.M.D. Reid
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published in the United States of America, 2020
Cover art by Steam Power Studios
Edited by Poppy Reid
Dreaming Between Worlds Publishing LLC
www.JMD-Reid.com
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Ruby Ruins
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Exciting Peek at “Dual”
About the Author


Dedication
To my Uncle Dave for slipping me a copy of the Hobbit and opening up my love for fantasy!


Chapter One
Forty-Third Day of Forgiveness, 755 EU
Ōbhin’s black-gloved hands flexed and relaxed with building excitement.
He marched along the sluggish flow of the Greenwine through the northwestern neighborhood of Kash. The stench of the waste dumped into the river from the canneries on the west bank filled his nose. The day’s heat, summer having started three days earlier with the Feast of Restitution, ripened the foul odors. His boots thudded on the uneven cobblestones, his chainmail coat ringing about him. The locals, the poor who lived in the slums, gave him strange glances. His eastern blood, giving him dusky-brown cheeks, caused him to stand out in the mostly Lothonian neighborhood of pale faces.
The woman at his side didn’t help him blend in.
Avena had eschewed the traditional garb of women in Kash and the rest of the Kingdom of Lothon. She didn’t wear one of her dresses—dark brown or blue or soft gray—with their layers of rustling petticoats. She wore a man’s trousers, hand-me-downs from Bran, and a man’s long shirt beneath a padded gambeson. The quilted tunic was often worn under armor. However, its layers of cloth provided some protection against weapons both edged and blunted.
“Do you really think Creg knows something about what happened to Carstin?” Avena asked as she pulled out the heavy linen glove from a satchel she wore on her left hip. A binder, a rod of metal, hung on her right. The glove was long, its cuff extending to well past her elbow. It had small emeralds embedded in it, and a mesh of copper wire woven into the fabric’s weave to connect the gems.
“Don’t know,” Ōbhin said as he marched with purpose. His face was set, the scar on his right cheek stretched taut. She matched his stride. “But only he and Handsome Baill will know, and Creg’s the one we’ve found.”
For nearly a Lothonian month, the last fifty-two days, Ōbhin had been looking for the survivors of his old gang of bandits. Most were dead, killed when their leader, Ust, had attacked Dualayn’s manor that terrifying night. A few had escaped. Whiner Creg, as the skinny man was nicknamed, might be stained Black with his crimes, but he was a survivor.
Facing pain, he’d talk. Give answers.
Avena pulled the glove over her right arm. It was her prototype, a jewelchine invention of her own. They both worked for one of the most renowned inventors of jewel machines in Lothon. His skills had embroiled him in the machinations of the Brotherhood crime syndicate when he’d uncovered a lost relic from the blood-stained ruins. The organization needed something from that Recorder.
Ōbhin feared what would happen to his employer when Dualayn found it.
Avena worked the glove up beneath the sleeve of her long shirt, tugging with care as they marched ahead. The road left the Greenwine behind as they moved deeper into the heart of Greenlet, as the slum was called. It was one of the many villages the expanding borders of Kash had swallowed in the last few decades. Remnants of the original buildings, made of frames of wooden beams with wattle and daub walls covered in whitewash, stood between cheap tenements raised of mud-fired brick and factories belching black smoke into the air as they produced everything from textiles to canned food.
Jewelchines revolutionized the world with a headlong rush.
“I hope that works as you promise,” Ōbhin said.
“It has its limitations,” she said, “but it’ll make my arm as strong as yours. Stronger.” She flashed him a broad grin, her cheeks pale and fair. She was Lothonian and went around with her face uncovered like it was nothing improper.
In Ōbhin’s distant home of Qoth, women guarded their faces with the same modesty a Lothonian lady did her breasts.
Avena wore her brown hair in a braid down her back, mauve ribbons entwined through them, leaving her round features exposed. She was youthful, twenty springs, a few years younger than Ōbhin. Her girlishness faded as she pressed two fingers into the heel of her palm. Green light glowed from the network of embedded jewelchines.
“I never would have thought of connecting a chain of smaller jewelchines to make a unified effect,” she said. “The Recorder holds so much. Dualayn is so close to unearthing something important.”
“Good,” Ōbhin