“Girls, we’ll take a break for a few minutes,” said Aunt Helen. She nodded at Dorie. “Could you help me bring in the chocolates, please?”
Dorie clomped her way over, following Aunt Helen into the kitchen. As the door swung shut behind them, she was surprised to find her aunt enveloping her in a tight hug. Tears hovered in the corners of her aunt’s eyes. “What is it?” Dorie started, but Helen put a finger to her lips, pulling away.
“Help me sift the powdered sugar,” she said in a loud voice, and then, bent next to Dorie’s ear as they worked. “We’re leaving tonight,” she said. “Rook’s under investigation under Subversive Activities.” Her fingers shook the sugar. “Ever since he got elected he’s been a thorn in the establishment’s side. He’s been too prominently working against this bill that would roll back many of the protections for women that have been passed in the last twenty years. He got a tip-off that they’re trumping up charges against him and he could be hauled in any day—officially they can only hold you for forty-eight hours, but we know several people who’ve disappeared into the system. We have the girls to think of—we can’t risk it.”
Dumbfounded, Dorie nodded.
Helen’s face softened. “I tried to get your parents to come, but they won’t. If you want to go, be here at eleven. We can’t wait—Rook has dwarvven contacts on the border to meet us. If you’re not here, we go.”
The misery Dorie felt at the idea of losing her city family must have showed on her face. All she could do was run her finger back and forth under the pink lace, searching for relief.
Helen took a second look at her niece, and then a laugh suddenly broke through the worry. “Oh, honey, did I really saddle you with that dress? You look like … I don’t know, a greyhound wearing bows. There’s a reason it didn’t sell five years ago. Promise me you’ll get rid of it before you bring shame on my shop.”
Dorie nodded. She stared at her aunt, willing her to change her mind and stay, but she could not find words, here in her aunt’s kitchen, surrounded by several dozen girls. The swinging doors opened as two girls whisked in. One pulled a stack of cocktail napkins from a drawer, the other reached for a spritzer bottle and dishcloth, both with the ease of long familiarity. “Out of napkins, Ms. E.,” said one, and, “Julia’s spilled her wine again,” said the other, as they whisked back out.
Dorie stared after them, feeling that they had usurped some role in her aunt’s life that she should have been there for. And now her aunt was leaving.
“Is Tam going, too?” was all she could think to say.
Her aunt looked at her sharply, as if discerning what was really going through Dorie’s mind. “No,” she said. “I asked him tonight, but he says he’s found his own good fight. He looks happier than I’ve seen him since that summer you two were fifteen and went camping in the woods for three months. Drove all the grown-ups wild, you scamps,” she added with a laugh. “But Rook and I know what it’s like, to finally find something worth fighting for. We can’t make him leave it.”
Leave the ironskin? Or leave Annika? Dorie did not dare guess which.
* * *
Conversation billowed around the room as Dorie returned to her seat, and she sat for a moment and just watched her cousin. He was bookish but not shy, not awkward like she was. He was more comfortable by himself in the woods—he did not gladhand or crack jokes as he handed around the drinks, but he had an innate kindness and gentleness that was clearly very attractive to the more perspicacious unattached girls.
Dorie’s heart beat in her throat and she kept a firm grasp on her woglet-filled purse as Tam bent to offer her the silver tray. From across the room she could feel Aunt Helen’s eyes on them—Aunt Helen knew none of the details, but she certainly knew they hadn’t spoken in years. His sweet brown eyes met hers as he handed the champagne coupe to her.
And then, there. There was that moment of recognition she had been expecting in the forest that first day.
He knew her.
Seven years were nothing. Her blonde curls and blue eyes were the same and he knew her.
There was a moment of stillness, when time seemed to slow just as it did in fey time. And then the champagne coupe passed into her fingers, he nodded briefly at her, and passed on.
Her heartbeat refused to slow. She clutched her champagne coupe. No one was looking at her, not even Aunt Helen now, but she felt as though all eyes in the room were looking at her from the inside out: her boots, her woglet, her beating heart.
Time stayed slow until he passed out of the room with the champagne coupes. She reminded herself that she was starving, and felt her senses slowly calm as she ate another sandwich, then two. He was gone, he was going, he was gone. She could never tell him who she really was. He despised her. Eat another sandwich, Dorie. Smile.
Fifth tiny sandwich in hand, Dorie looked around and remembered why Aunt Helen had wanted her to come. Nearly all the women laughing and holding champagne coupes were around Dorie’s age—the Young Women’s League. She wondered how many of them had to work in the morning. There were a few older women, like Aunt Helen, who were included as mentors for the group—women familiar with fund-raising and charity work. She remembered her aunt saying she wanted Dorie to meet some of her peers who were also interested in doing Good Things. So here she was, finally at one—and it sounded like it would be the last. Not that she would have come back anyway. Not with him here.
Oh, it was miserable. So hot and stuffy, and that damned lace shoulder blanket scritch-scritching on her neck. Dorie ran her nails under it, squirmed in her seat like she was one of the twins. Why did doing good have to be so … so … indoors?
“I had the best Dead Dwarf at this quaint little hotel in Varee,” someone was saying.
Several pairs of eyes turned on the woman. “We don’t call them that anymore,” scolded one. “Nowadays you say ‘Spicy Tomato Cocktail.’”
“Oh, poo. They still call it a douarven mort in Varee. Slightly more evocative.”
“Why do you want to build a new wing?” said Dorie suddenly.
All eyes turned on her. “Excuse me?” said one woman.
She stopped and swallowed the bite of her sandwich and tried again. “I mean. If the problem is overcrowding, maybe we’re attacking this at the wrong end. Maybe there’s a way to stop people from needing the hospital to begin with.”
“We can’t just turn people away,” said one.
“No, wait. She means we should prevent people from getting sick.”
Someone laughed in disbelief. “Nice trick, that.”
The wall of mute frustration started rising up. Dorie tried to swallow it back down and let the words come out. “Crimson fever,” she mumbled.
“Is solved.”
“Not among the poor,” said Dorie obstinately.
“She’s right,” put in another woman, someone Dorie didn’t know. “There have been bad outbreaks this summer. Didn’t you read the figures I obtained from the hospital? That’s part of this overcrowding we’re seeing.”
“And thus the long hours, and then the nurses’ strike. Did you hear they sent in police to break it up? And scabs.”
“Who’d want a scab nurse?”
“Who’d want the city hospital?” came the sarcastic dismissal.
“We’re getting off track,” complained the blonde across the room. “We’re here to discuss funding the new wing.”
“This isn’t about what would be nice in a perfect world,” someone said condescendingly. “It’s about what we have the ability to accomplish. The government is doing everything they can with the feywort they’ve got. It’s carefully monitored and controlled. We can’t just make more feywort out of thin air if there’s a run on it.”
“But why is there a run on it?” said Dorie, but no one was listening at that point. Woglet was stirring in the purse from all the chatter rising above them. Any minute he would poke his head up and they would all see a baby wyvern. Dorie wedged the empty sandwich plate on to
p of the purse opening.
Across the room she heard the blonde say to her neighbor, “Bother this. It was all going so smoothly until the peasantry walked in.” Dorie’s face flamed.
“This is all irrelevant,” cut in someone. “Let’s get back to planning the menu and drinks.”
“Damn the drinks,” said Dorie, way too loudly. It cut through the din. Woglet reared his head, knocking the plate onto the floor with a crash. Dorie pushed him back into the purse. The feywort for Colin was in there and she pulled it out, waving it. “There used to be acres of this stuff growing wild—why on earth should it be hard to get?”
A trim brunette who until then had been silent stood. “That’s interdicted,” she said quietly. “All feywort is the property of the Crown.” She came toward Dorie, peeling off a short white glove as she did so and flashing the palm of her hand around the room.
Inscribed on her palm was a silver oval with a circle in the middle.
Everyone was shocked into silence, looking at the two of them—some with confusion, some with vicarious enjoyment at Dorie’s predicament. The brunette’s occupation didn’t appear to be common knowledge. Someone reached for the brunette to pull her back and then stopped, realizing her friend was different than she had thought.
Dorie backed up, knocking the little chair over. “Acres and acres, all gone from the mountain.… You don’t understand the first thing about making a difference. You’re not out there on the front lines. You don’t have a clue.…” Woglet began pushing his head through her fingers. He grew warmer, building up a head of steam. She wasn’t going to be able to keep him hidden much longer, and the brunette was advancing. Desperate, Dorie said, “Is that a mouse?” and with her mental focus made a fallen napkin twitch and scurry from under its chair to under the blonde’s chair.
The blonde screeched, and pandemonium ensued as half the women tried to get away from the supposed mouse and the other half tried to catch it. A wall of women filled the space between Dorie and the approaching brunette. Annika looked at them as if they were all mad.
Dorie used the chaos to slip out the front door. She caught sight of Aunt Helen as she made her escape. Helen watched her niece go with a rueful expression. “Sorry,” Dorie mouthed. “Sorry.”
* * *
After all that, it was a relief to change back into Dorian. She found a secluded spot in the park, and with her best don’t look at me on, stuffed the lacy pink dress into her purse with Woglet and put on her boy’s clothes even as she reshaped herself. The clothes were dirtier than she was—was that smudge mouse guts from Woglet’s meal?—and she thought that she was really going to have to get a change of clothes for her alter ego. She sighed as she realized she had not asked Aunt Helen for rent money. But how could she, with her aunt and uncle fleeing the country? They had far bigger concerns than where Dorie was going to live next month. Maybe she could bring herself to sell the woglet that was going to hatch tonight, though she felt sick at the thought. But to whom would she take it? Malcolm only wanted eggs, and he wasn’t likely to hand over his sources. Besides, how could she do it without Tam knowing?
Colin was first to their meeting place. Dorie pulled out the feywort as she approached, holding the blue flowers up like a trophy of war. The relief on his hefty face was palpable.
“Better tuck it away until you have a chance to use it,” she said. “I don’t think the average joe on the street can tell one herb from another, but if you run into one of those silverpalm goons…”
Colin nodded soberly and the feywort disappeared into his satchel. “If you’re able to get any more, I can take them where they’d be most help.”
“Next time out, I’ll bring you all I find,” Dorie promised. Woglet poked his head out of the purse, peering around at the wharf. Colin extended a finger, but Woglet ignored it.
“Shall we go then?” said Colin.
“We have to wait for my colleague,” Dorie said.
“You told someone else?”
“He’s trustworthy,” Dorie said. “And he has better access to the lab equipment than I do. He’s got the portable incubator, and a cage for the new chick.” She lowered her voice. “We have four eggs for you. We’ll be able to do three more people tomorrow night, if you have them.”
“They’ll be ready,” Colin said. He lowered his voice as well. “Be careful. Think someone was following me when I left the Pig last night.” He shook his head at her expression. “Haven’t told anyone, of course not. But I’m afraid I took off my brace—didn’t occur to me anyone would be watching a cook at the University tavern. But if someone were paying attention, and if they put two and two together…”
Dorie nodded. “So far you and Tam are the only people that know. And the other ironskin you’ve told, of course.” She cocked her head. “You didn’t tell them how it’s done, did you?”
He shook his head as Tam appeared out of the mist and Dorie lost track of whatever Colin was about to say. Tam was back in his explorer clothes, his hat tilted down against the humid fog. “You must be our contact,” he said as he approached. “I’m Tam.” Dorie noticed he left off his last name, presumably as protection.
“Colin.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Woglet flew to Tam’s bag with the incubator in it, perched on top of it as if he knew his kin were inside. Maybe he did. Dorie returned Woglet to the handbag, wishing for the moment that everyone in town had a woglet, so no one would notice hers. It suddenly occurred to her that boys didn’t carry purses, either, but neither Colin nor Tam had appeared to notice. Of course, Tam had the practical focus of the absentminded scientist. If he had noticed that Dorian was carrying a handbag, he had probably thought, what a clever vehicle for woglet transportation.
She thought that he must be upset about his parents fleeing town. She looked sideways at him, wishing there were a way that Dorian could find out about it, so he could sympathize, lend a friendly ear. Yes, and then after that, she could find out about how he’d seen Dorie tonight, and did he still hate her, and so on. The flights of fancy grew elaborate. But Tam’s face was closed off.
They followed Colin along the water to an even grungier and nastier section of the city. In sharp contrast to Colin’s flat, this girl’s place was filthy. She apparently shared the small room with three other people and a crying infant. A large man in an armchair—a father? a boyfriend?—eyed them suspiciously as Colin explained what they had come for, but he made no move to stop them. The two other people—an old woman and a pre-adolescent boy—were noisily playing a card game while the woman rocked the cradle with her foot.
The man grunted and jerked his head toward the back, apparently not caring what three boys were there to talk to the girl for. They picked their way around rotting floorboards till they reached a flowered yellow sheet hung as a curtain across one corner of the room. Two shapeless mattresses lay on the floor behind it, and sitting on one with her knees tucked up in her worn dress was a girl.
Colin knelt and took her hand. “Alice,” he said gently. “Alice girl, these people are here to help you.”
Like Colin, the girl was young to be ironskin—she must have been an infant when she was cursed. She was like a baby bird, all bony and fragile, unaware of the wider world. Her hair was uncut, snarled in long blond loops.
“What’s her curse?” Dorie said quietly to Colin. Not that they could be heard over the wailing baby and the arguments from the card game.
He rubbed his jaw. “Alice hears voices. People who aren’t there.”
“And she’s been like this for twenty years? Since she was a baby?” Dorie sucked in her breath. Did this girl even have a chance of getting better?
“You have to help her,” said Colin, perhaps seeing her dubious expression. “Please.”
Dorie nodded, and Tam said, “Where’s the scar?”
“Neck and back.” Colin blushed a bit as he stood. “Look, you’re the doctors. I’ll duck out and find some food for the chick.”
> “Shouldn’t be too hard around here,” Dorie muttered.
“Be brave, Alice girl,” Colin said. He hesitated as if he wanted to add something else, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He pushed his way out of the yellow curtain, leaving Tam and Dorie alone with the girl.
Tam hiked up the knees of his trousers and sat down cross-legged with the incubator. He brought out the well-made implements Dorie had seen at the lab—copper spoon and vials and so forth—and began preparing a little nest for the egg to hatch in. Dorie turned her attention to the girl huddled on the mattress. She set down her handbag and Woglet poked out a curious head. “Can I look at your back?” Dorie said gently.
“They march in,” said the girl. “They march in with their spikes and cages and they glow with silver eyes.”
Dorie narrowed her eyes. “Who marches in?” she said. “Is this something you’re seeing right now?”
Alice turned vacant blue eyes on her. “Your egg is talking to me.” She reached a hand toward Dorie’s stomach.
“Whoa,” said Dorie. She sighed. “Can I look at your back?” The girl turned to the wall but made no other reply. Dorie carefully unbuttoned the top few buttons of the back of the girl’s dress to see her shoulder blades. The scar wrapped around from the front of her neck and ran down the length of her spine, as if it were a snake coiling around her throat. As with Colin’s, it writhed along its length. Dorie let her hand fall away. “When this egg hatches, I can fix your curse,” she said. “But it will hurt a lot. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“The cages hurt,” said the girl. “The men leave them in the cages. They chase the basilisk through the mountains.”
“Wait a minute,” said Tam. “Are you seeing a basilisk?” He set down the copper bowl and looked carefully at Alice. “What does it look like?”
Dorie stopped herself from saying, what does it matter what this girl’s imaginary basilisk looks like? Because this girl did have a fey curse, after all. And as tempting as it was to dismiss her ravings as madness, Dorie had far too much experience with the strange possibilities that fey substance could bring you.
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