Night turned into predawn as she cradled the baby woglet. The first blues streaked the sky above. Woglet lifted his head to the sky and yodeled. It was a new sound she had never heard before, a hollow cry as the black became dawn.
Chapter 12
SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES
Nov. 3rd: Sometimes the subject switches from the stories about the extinction of the fey to stories about the extinction of wyverns. Or feywort, or goldmoths, or copperhead hydras. I need hardly mention that none of these have existed since much after the Great War.
Sometimes the subject finds a happier note. This morning she spun a long tale of lonely ice monsters who come down from the mountains at night to dance with pretty girls, and where their dance takes them, they leave footsteps of bluebells and snowdrops.
It is hard to say which of these visions is more fantastical.
—Dr. Tamlane Grimmsby, What Alice Saw
* * *
Dorie managed to hitch on the Monday morning milk train—after changing back into boyshape—and it was still early when she reached the city, eyes burnt and hollow. She had thought it through on the train, and the only way to get the rest of those eggs finished was to warn Colin to prepare. Presuming Tam didn’t hate her so much that he would refuse to give her the ones they had collected. She rubbed her eyes. She should tell Tam about the basilisk. She owed him that much.
If he believed her.
The misty morning air swirled around her as she banged on Colin’s door.
“Dorian,” he said with surprise, blinking sleep away. “Do you have something about to hatch?”
“Sort of,” she said. “Can I come in?”
He ushered her into the small place and she sat wearily down at the table. Her shirt, which had been briefly clean, was now streaked with dirt and wyvern blood. It rustled as she sat, and she remembered that in the midst of that awful descent, she had stumbled on some feywort and tucked it in her button-down for safekeeping. She pulled the blue flowers out now and gave them to him, and he put them in a jar of water.
Woglet curled in Dorie’s elbow, head drooping against her shoulder. “We have all the rest of the eggs,” Dorie said quietly. Colin sucked in breath. “But five of them are hatching tonight, and we won’t be able to make it around to everyone’s in time. Can I trust you to gather the next group of ironskin together?”
“’Course,” he said.
“But listen, I want you to know what you’re in for. You know how dangerous this is getting? They found the doctor’s the other day. The goons raided us. We got away, but…”
Colin nodded soberly. “I’ll be careful.”
“I don’t know,” Dorie said. “Have they noticed at your work? Maybe you should put your brace back on till this is all over.”
Colin shook his head. “A good idea, but when I woke up the morning after you fixed me and I weren’t hungry, I sold the iron for scrap. And good riddance.” He stood and paced. “If the last few days have taught me anything, it’s that you have to stand and fight. Hope comes along when you least expect it. You have to fight for your cause.”
“I understand,” she said. She stood and shook his hand. “I’ll see you an hour after midnight.”
* * *
After that, she went straight to the central police station to try to find out where they had taken her parents. She plunked Woglet in the shrubbery across the street so he could find some breakfast and hoped he had the sense to stay in the shade. She dusted her hands, preparing to cross the street with her nice, easy, boy stride, head held as high as if she couldn’t possibly be the least subversive—and then she saw herself.
It couldn’t be her, of course.
She peered through the morning traffic, the passersby, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl descending the station steps. It really did look like her—Dorie, not Dorian, no less—in a blue dress and corkscrew curls, looking satisfied.
Dorie ran across the street, insouciance forgotten. Who was that? It wasn’t her, obviously. She was currently Dorian and that—That Dorie was nothing, nothing—some trick of the light that made some passerby look like her. She wheeled, searching—but That Dorie was gone, disappeared into the crowd.
Had going into that strange circle in the forest left her with aftereffects? Had hurting her finger hurt her mentally, that now she was seeing things? This Dorie shook her head, trying to clear it. She had been awake too long, was all.
The bored clerk inside the station looked down at her and said that he couldn’t give that information out to just anyone, and what was the young man’s relationship to the people about whom he was inquiring?
“I’m their—” But she stopped short. “I’m their nephew?”
He peered dubiously over his spectacles. “Well, ‘nephew,’ the best I can tell you is that those detained for questioning under Subversive Activities are not being charged with a crime. They are merely being housed in a comfortable space to answer a few questions. The Rocharts will be released within forty-eight hours—provided, of course, that they are not charged with activities against the Crown.” He shut his book with a snap. “And with that you will have to be content.”
And with that she would have to be. Unless, of course, she whisked that book away from him to see if it had any further information. Or dumped his tea down his jacket, just because. Or even went outside and came back as Dorie to see if, in this case, being a girl would get her further than being a boy. She suddenly looked hard at the clerk. “Did a girl with blond curls just come in here?”
“No.”
A trick of the light. She eyed that book, but it was under his hands and chained down besides.
“Forty-eight hours?” she said.
He looked sternly at her and repeated his admonition. “Provided they are not charged with activities against the Crown.”
* * *
The lab was quiet when she walked in. Two hours late. Heads turned to track her dusty progress and she thought, what? Perhaps I should have taken a shower. If the landlady hasn’t kicked us out completely. She looked down at her boy’s clothes and saw besides the dirt and blood on the shirt, there was smeared blood on her right pantleg. She wondered what the clerk at the police station had thought about that.
But no, it was more than that. Whispers followed her down the hall as she passed open doors. Her night had been horrible, but surely no one knew about it. Her hand sneaked up to feel her rough chin, her cheeks—wasn’t she still Dorian?
It was Annika, of all people, who pulled Dorie into her closet of an office and made her sit. “Where have you been?” she whispered.
“Field work?” said Dorie.
“The lab’s in an uproar,” said Annika. “There was a contraband egg given out over the weekend—they traced it to a women’s clinic by the wharf, but the trail has gone cold. They think the doctor might have been administering the albumen to a patient—but they encouraged her to return to answer a few questions, and the word is that she’s been most unhelpful.”
All they have to do is pull up her shirt to find the truth, thought Dorie, but she was glad to hear things hadn’t come to that pass. “So what’s the problem?” she said, heart heating up her chest. “The egg could have come from anywhere.”
“Sure,” said Annika. “Except Dr. Pearce checked his sources and they all claim not to know about it. And since they’re only in it for financial gain, they are probably telling the truth when it comes to charity clinics, so that points the trail back here. Anyway, there’s more.”
“More.”
“Well, that was Saturday, you see. A reward was put out. All this happened very quickly. And then a father brought his daughter in last night—turned her over. Said she was a former ironskin. Wouldn’t say anything else—took his money and ran. Not exactly the sort of civic-minded poster child one could hope for, is it? The girl’s really out of it—poor thing. Keeps rambling about these strange dreams she used to have. Shameful treatment. I don’t think she really knows she’s cur
ed. But she says two boys and a girl came to her. The girl was beautiful and half-fey.”
The room wheeled around her. Dorie gripped the back of the chair and said casually, with everything she could muster, “But what does that have to do with the lab?”
“Already marked me,” Annika said ruefully. “I’m the only girl; better check that I’m not half-fey, ja?” She held out her hand to Dorie. Inscribed on it was a silver eye. Her palm was red and angry from the process. “And because the three of us have been so busy together gathering eggs—”
Dorie could not process the irony of this. Somehow that fey-touched girl, Alice, knew Dorian was a girl. Thus two boys and a girl. Tam, Colin, and Dorie. Not Tam, Dorian, and Annika. And here she was being suspected of the very thing she had done, simply for the quirk of fate that had put those two trios together.
“Tam’s in there now,” Annika said. “Next you, and then you will be safe from the fey, too.”
Dorie nodded numbly. “Of course,” she said, and her tongue stopped there. She should run. She should hide. But Dr. Pearce walked past and saw her, and seized her shoulder.
“Excellent. Thank you for finding our lost sheep, Annika.” Annika smiled tightly at the director and Dorie could not then have said whether Annika had been trying to drop her a friendly warning, or whether she was simply holding Dorian for Dr. Pearce. Or both. “You’re up, Mr. Eliot. Young Grimsby’s all done and busy healing. No fey in him.”
“Healing?”
Dr. Pearce propelled Dorie down to the main lab room, where a number of young men in white coats whisked around and pretended to be busy so they could stay and watch. A new baby wyvern strutted around in a cage, yodeling its displeasure. I could have taken you back to the forest, thought Dorie. And now … Did the lab even know what had been done out on Black Rock? It couldn’t have been the lab; it must have been someone sent by an angry Malcolm, determined not to be cheated. The desecration …
“Right hand,” someone said, and she held out her bandaged hand and Dr. Pearce demurred. “Left, then.”
Two men spread Dorie’s hand open on the table and held it there. “We’ve tried this on someone who was fey-ridden,” Dr. Pearce said conversationally. “It was quite dramatic. Everywhere we tattooed the silver, the fey began to leak out as if bleeding out through a wound. It smoked away as it hit the air, destroyed for good. Of course, it was too late for the poor human it had taken over.”
“I suppose it would be,” said Dorie. She was not fey-ridden, she was half-fey. She had carried the egg in her belly and caused no harm. She had touched the albumen with a human finger and had no problem. If she focused hard and kept her hand human, she could make it through this.
She thought.
Besides, there were ten of them, and all her chandelier-crashing tricks would only get her so far.
Could she go half-fey and squirm her hand free? But that would blow her cover and they would haul her off for sure. They likely had their suspicions about Dorie Rochart, after that incident last night. But no one yet knew about Dorian Eliot. If she wanted to stay free, wanted to finish curing the ironskin …
The metal tattoo gun lowered itself to her palm.
Desperate, the bottled-up words leaked out. “I saw traces of a basilisk.”
The tattoo gun was lowered for a second. “Go on,” said Dr. Pearce.
Ugh. She hadn’t meant to tell him. It was Tam’s basilisk to study. At least Pearce had lowered the tattoo gun. “Large wings, mirrored eyes—it couldn’t be anything else. High up the mountains. Nearly impassable.” Eggs due to hatch tomorrow—but no, perhaps she wouldn’t say that quite yet. She didn’t want him to send a team of twenty up the mountain. “You won’t be able to find it without me. I’ll need my team.”
He drummed his fingers on the desk. They were still pretending that this process was routine. He wasn’t sure there was anything feyish about her, after all—he would hardly like to falsely accuse his brilliant new naturalist. And now she had something he dearly wanted, presuming she wasn’t lying. Of course, if she were fey-ridden, she’d be likely to lie, wouldn’t she? She saw all that pass through his head, and her gambit fail.
“Fantastic,” he said smoothly. “You and Annika and Tam can go first thing tomorrow morning. Just as soon as we make you safe.”
And then the silver tool pressed down.
It hurt like a needle, like a shot, like being jabbed with a tiny hot knife.
But it was a tattoo. And she presumed that was how it hurt everybody. She focused on her palm, focused on keeping it solid. The pain ebbed and flowed as the needles thrummed more easily over fatty flesh, then bit into tendons, outlining the eye. She was human, she was human, she was human.
Nevertheless, she stared at her hand as if expecting to see her other half leak out the silver eye.
They were halfway through the tattoo before it became clear that nothing untoward was going to happen. No fey was going to burst out of her hand, thin and blue. Dr. Pearce clapped her on the back. Their eyes met and there was disappointment there behind the smile. He really didn’t like her, did he. Perhaps he didn’t like anybody, only what they could do for him. “Excellent,” he said blandly to Dorian’s smirk, as if there had never been any doubt about her humanity. “Henderson will supply you with ointment for it. Looking forward to hearing the news about the basilisk, what?” He moved off, and so did the surreptitious watchers.
Dorie held on until the tattoo finished, then struggled down from the stool. Woglet balanced on her shoulder as she made her unsteady way out of the lab room, out of the lab. She held out her red and silver hand as she went, and those who had silently watched her come in now silently watched her leave, “proof” that she was human writ clear on her palm. She met Annika’s eyes, but Annika made no move to talk to her.
Tam was waiting for her outside. He seized her arm and walked her down the street, away from the building. Cheerfully waved at a fellow lab guy: “We’re off to lunch.” Boys did not really grip each other’s arms like that; they gripped shoulders, and suddenly she thought that perhaps he might believe her.
“Look,” Tam said in a low voice as they got out of sight. “I couldn’t stop Pearce from grabbing you. You must believe me.”
Dorie nodded.
“I mean. If you are my cousin—” He sighed. “Dorie and I have had our problems, but I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. When she left me in that forest…” His hat was off and he ran his fingers through his wild blond hair till it stood straight up.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said hoarsely. “I mean I did, I but I repented. Oh, how I repented.”
He looked down at her, his eyes full of an old misery.
“I hated being human. I wanted to be one of them. They said I could if I brought you, and you wanted to go.”
“For a day! A week! Not for three months. And time passes so strangely there, it felt like a year, and as far as I knew I was there forever, with nothing to think over but how much you must despise me to have done it.”
“I know! I know,” she said in a rush. “I was stupid. I was wrong. It didn’t even get me what I wanted, which was to be all blue and vanish into the forest with you, and never come back.” He looked startled at that thought. “The fey haven’t had a real leader since we were little, but the strongest ones, the ones who made me the offer for you, basically said, congratulations, your cold betrayal makes you more like us.” She slumped, her fingers curling against the memory. “They were going to take you for a year, a real year. I played along like I was cold and careless until I learned how to split all the fey out of me. Then I told them your parents were going to murder me and I’d better trade to get you back. They said in exchange, they would take your love for me.…”
Tam rounded on her. “How could you know all that?” He seized her arms. “How could you know all that, and still not know that they couldn’t possibly take—” He broke off. “You have to be Dorie. You have to.”
Her heart t
ook a sudden irrational leap. “I am,” she said. Her hands were shaking from the tension.
Tam wheeled her off into the trees in the park. His dear brown eyes looked down into hers. “Prove it then,” he said hoarsely. “Show me.”
“All right.” She held out her left hand and willed it to change back to Dorie’s dainty one.
Nothing happened.
He kept watching. She consciously relaxed, took a breath, tried again. “It’s not working—” And then sudden realization struck her. She turned her hand over to show the silver eye on her reddened palm. “I … I can’t,” she said. “I think … I think the wyvern goo stops me.”
The softening vanished; he was hardened to her again. None of what she’d said meant anything. She was some boy, playing a joke on him, making him look like a fool. “Convenient.”
“Oh no oh no oh no,” she said. Did it block everything? She whirled, reached out mentally to flip a park bench and nothing happened. Ruffle the elm leaves. No. Her hand again, the other, bandaged hand. A foot. No.
Another breath. She could deal with the loss of lifting trolley tickets and scooting things along—she had done without most of her fey self for seven years.
But if she couldn’t change back? If she was stuck as Dorian forever? “I don’t want to be a boy,” she burst out, and watched him take a step back. She shook her head. “I know you don’t believe me. Why should you. But I am Dorie. It’s all true. I know everything. I know you saw me in Dorie form at Aunt Helen’s the other night. I know how Dorie showed up in a nice dress and these old boots, and caused a riot while trying to hide the fact that she had Woglet. I know you ignored me.”
“You’re well coached,” he said.
“I know how we grew up together,” she said, the words flying out. “Summer after summer. I know the stories we told about the fey. I know how after I betrayed you, I hated myself for years and years. I locked my fey half away the day you were freed. I locked it away so I could never hurt anybody again.” Her hands curled on the memory of all those years without half of her self. Tam just looked at her, and she said softly, “I know that my parents were taken by the silvermen last night. They should have left town with yours.”
Silverblind (Ironskin) Page 21