Silverblind (Ironskin)

by Tina Connolly

  He started then, for no one knew that Helen and Rook were on anything but a vacation at the shore. But then he shook his head. “Dorie told you that, too? She must think more highly of you than you deserve.”

  “It’s true! I’m Dorie, I am.”

  “And I’m a three-legged albatross, and I almost believed you,” Tam said coldly. “Guess you’re a better liar than I am.”

  He turned to go and she stopped him and said, “But wait. Aren’t we still a team?” She lowered her voice. “Five of those eggs are going to hatch tonight.”

  He stood a moment, thinking, his eyes hidden behind his glasses. Then, “I think we’d better divide and conquer.”

  Except you can’t test to make sure the fey is all gone, she thought, but she stopped herself. Who knew if she could do that anymore. Anyway, “We can’t,” she said. “Need one person to do the albumen, other to be on wyvern duty.” Sure, she had done Colin all by herself, but now—? “We can’t risk anything going wrong.”

  Tam nodded reluctantly. “Do you have the next address?”

  “Colin’s gathering them,” she said. “One hour after midnight.”

  “Don’t think it means I want anything else to do with you,” Tam said. “I just want to see the ironskin taken care of. Before everyone’s thrown in jail. Then we can comfortably avoid each other for the rest of our lives.”

  He stalked off and she sank to the park bench, Woglet crawling around her shoulders. Her hands hurt and she didn’t feel as though she had the energy to move one centimeter.

  That’s when she saw them.

  Herself. And Tam.

  She saw the two of them walking along the meandering path in front of her, hand in hand. She rubbed her eyes, staring. What were these visions? She must be going mad. That Dorie had not made any changes to her face, but her hair was straight and dark brown, like Jane’s. That Tam had his explorer hat tipped back, and they were laughing.

  They stayed on the path, but they walked right through a couple strolling by. Dodged some invisible couple she could not see. That Dorie turned toward Tam, letting go of his hand for a minute, and Tam winked out. Then she touched him again and there he was, pulling That Dorie close into his arms.

  Could she hear them if she went closer? What would happen if they overlapped? Could That Dorie see her?

  This Dorie crept off her bench. She reached them, reached to touch That Dorie’s arm, but her fingers passed right through. That Dorie did not even notice her. The couple kissed, and That Tam touched That Dorie’s cheek, gently. Holding hands, they turned down the path until they rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

  Dorie ran all the way home.

  She needed a friend right now. She needed someone’s shoulder to cry on, not that Dorie Rochart cried. But Jack was not there. There was a note saying that she was on duty at the club and Dorie could mooch dinner if she came. But she had nothing better to wear, and her one pair of Dorian clothes were disgraceful, and she couldn’t be Dorie.… Lost in a fugue of despair, she exchanged her field jacket and shirt for an unfitted striped button-down of Jack’s. Tucked in with a belt, her hair combed, she thought Dorian could pass muster. It didn’t matter. She was losing Tam. She had lost him. She made it to the club, where all the men were handing hats to the hat lady, and she certainly didn’t have a hat, and she stood, stuck in the lobby, unable to decide what to do next, because her head was only filled with Tam, Tam, Tam, and there was nothing left to make a decision about nonexistent hats.

  Jack was working the front of the club and she said, “Oh, honestly, not like that, really?” and hustled Dorie back to the hat lady, and informed her to fit Dorie with one of the spare jackets and ties they kept around. A humiliated Dorie watched in the mirror as the hat lady even tied the tie for her. The Tam loss was supplanted with Dorie loss as she watched her identity dissolve in front of her, into squared shoulders and sober navy ties.

  If there wasn’t a way to get the goo out … she didn’t want to be Dorian all her life. She didn’t want to be a boy all her life. It had started as almost a lark, a lark with a serious purpose. She was always going to go back to being Dorie. Even with her plans to adjust Dorie’s face a bit—that was her, that was Dorie. What would she do if she stayed stuck as a boy? She looked at herself in the mirror, the fine but boyish features. Ever-youthful. It seemed entirely possible her face would never age; that she would always look like the portrait Jack had done of her to refer back to.

  But more—what kind of life would it be to be stuck as a boy, a human boy? Would she be always alone? She quelled the rising panic and tried to think rationally. Stella liked her. Could she marry Stella, live with her? No, she could hardly imagine it. Besides the fact that Stella was her next-closest friend after Jack, there was just simply the fact that Dorie didn’t like girls, not like Jack did. Could she find a boy who liked boys then? More precisely, some boy who liked a boy who was really a girl? Perhaps, but the law was not fond of that sort of thing, not to mention society. She had blithely told Jack no one would care, but it was a different thing to be facing it herself. It would mean hiding out forever, or being brave forever, fighting a fight she had never expected to have.

  She crumpled. It would be slightly ironic to go from hiding one thing to hiding another. Not to mention that the only person she had ever liked that way was Tam, and he didn’t like her in any iteration, and that was that.

  A waitress showed her to a table way in the very back corner and said, “You can have anything on the cheap section of the menu here, as well as the house ales or wine. Also Jack says keep that lizard out of sight.” Dorie ordered a stout and tried to focus on her three entrée choices, each of which cost more than she’d ever paid for a meal. She curled up her napkin and set it on the chair next to her for Woglet and told him sternly to go to sleep. Someone was playing piano, beautifully but not near as interestingly as Tam. She downed her ale and her food and some more ale and tried to figure out where they had taken her parents, and if Tam was going to hate her forever, and oh, stars, please stop remembering that you’re stuck as a freaking boy.

  Jack and Stella arrived before Dorie’s meal was finished, but well after three ales had been consumed. “Ugh, I’m taking a break for five minutes,” Jack said, shaking her bangles. “Aunt Alberta didn’t say there was this much standing.”

  “You stand when you paint.”

  “Time flies then.”

  Stella lugged a barstool over from the wall and cozied up next to Dorie. This is it, thought Dorie tipsily. You’re stuck as a boy forever. Maybe this is what’s supposed to happen. Could you possibly like Stella?

  She tried looking at Stella through someone else’s eyes, some imaginary macho man. The girlie magazine guy, perhaps. Stella was tiny and curvaceous, and those were traits that men supposedly appreciated, at least, judging by Stella’s raft of boyfriends. She had fine features and big black eyes, and certainly she was not lacking in the brain department, either.

  Stella leaned on her shoulder and Dorie tried hard to find it appealing. She looked across the table at Jack, who was exploding with suppressed laughter.

  That didn’t help.

  Gently she set Stella straight on her barstool. “I’m sorry,” she said helplessly.

  Stella looked confused for a second—such things did not happen to her—and then she brightened. “Oh,” she said. “You like boys. That’s all right, then. I have the perfect person to introduce you to.” She waved across the room to a slender, good-looking young man laughing with his friends. He waved back. Stella started to wave him over, but Dorie grabbed her arm and stopped her.

  “It’s no use,” said Dorie, because as cute as the boy was, he also did nothing for her. She could not imagine kissing him any more than Stella. All those years in prep school when Stella had picked up a new boy from who-knows-where every week, and Jack had nursed a hopeless crush on Stella while simultaneously having year-long intense and argumentative relationships with some girl from th
e hockey team or debate squad—Dorie had just never gotten it. Perhaps, she thought wistfully, she had imprinted on Tam just as Woglet had imprinted on her, and there was nothing more to be done.

  “Look, Stella,” Dorie said finally to her puzzled expression. “There’s something I should have told you a week ago.” Jack coughed and Dorie amended. “Something I should have told you years ago. But I’ve been chicken my whole life.”

  “I didn’t know you years ago…?” said Stella.

  “Hush,” said Jack. “She’s coming out of the closet.”

  “She?”

  “I’m Dorie,” said Dorie. “And I’m half-fey.”

  There were a lot more drinks after that, as Stella digested the news with a great many exclamations and “oh, that explains this one thing that one time.” Jack had to drift in and out, checking on the front of the room, but she seemed amused enough by the situation to want to come back and catch the next round of exclamations.

  “But you can’t tell anyone,” Dorie cautioned. “This silver eyeball on my hand is supposed to prevent fey from walking among us. At least from taking us over. That’s not me, of course, and I guess I have my answer on what it does to someone half-fey.” She looked at her hand ruefully. “It stops me from using any of my abilities—including changing back to Dorie.”

  Jack came back then, just in time to hear this last bit of news. “Really,” she said. “Dorian forever? How horrible.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I mean, Dorian’s all right for a lark. But to be stuck that way? Ugh, I’d go insane.”

  “You’re not helping,” said Dorie.

  “Sorry,” Jack said contritely, and cast around for a new subject. “So I just heard from one of the artists in my collective. The authorities checked our confiscated work and decided we all pass muster, though we were strongly cautioned about aligning ourselves with ‘radicals’ in the future. So, the new opening is Wednesday night, and the publicity should be great.” She put down her sketchpad and looked sidelong at it. “But, uh, I have some new pieces to put in the show.”

  “That’s wonderful news,” said Dorie.

  Stella chimed in agreement. “Can we see?”

  “Mm,” said Jack. “Two days from now.”

  Jack must be working on the pieces at her aunt’s, if they’re that private, Dorie thought. Speaking of … “You should probably stay at your aunt’s for a couple of days,” she said, rubbing her fingers through a water ring on the table, not looking at her roommate. “Just … just in case.”

  Jack raised eyebrows. “And you?” she said.

  Dorie shrugged. “I can jump out of three-story windows. You can’t.” A lurch in her belly reminded her that this was no longer true and she hastily continued before Jack realized. She wasn’t going to bring doom to Alberta’s house, too. “Club management and new paintings.” She looked carefully at her oldest, dearest friend. “Are you getting any sleep?”

  Jack snorted. “What’s that?”

  “You know. It hems up the raveled pant leg of et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Maybe once I get this maraschino cherry nonsense sorted,” Jack said with a sigh. “I keep doing the sums and they keep coming out nonsense.”

  “Gosh, I’ll help you with that,” said Stella. “Why didn’t you say the word?”

  Jack’s eyes brightened with realization. “You. Are a lifesaver. Look, if you could do some work for me each week, I’d comp you all your meals. And send you home doggie bags for breakfast.”

  Stella got the look of doing sums in her head before she said, “Done.” Followed with the caution, “Don’t expect I don’t eat a lot just because I’m a cute little dwarvven.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Jack.

  After all that it was after midnight, and Dorie made her tipsy way through the streets to Colin’s flat. Five ironskin would be cured tonight, and they would be that much closer to their goal. The rest of the eggs were safely at Tam’s flat—this whole project could be wrapped up by the time her parents were released from jail. They would all go home and Dorie would settle down to a nice career as Dorian. She would get the hand thing figured out in due course. When your options kept getting more and more limited, the choices left to you looked pretty good, and right now, getting everyone out of jail and being done with illicit activities sounded pretty good.

  Two more days. That’s all she needed.

  That’s when she saw that the door to Colin’s flat was wide open, torn from its hinges, smashed on the ground. Beyond it lay a body, still as ice.

  Chapter 13

  BASILISK

  Of all blows this was the worst, for she had led Colin into this trap, as surely as she had led Tam into his.

  —Thomas Lane Grimsby, Silverblind: The Story of Adora Rochart

  * * *

  Despair came first. She stepped over wreckage, her gaze sweeping the room. The table was broken; the jar that had held the feywort lay broken and spilled on the floor. The feywort was gone. There was only one body. He lay in the middle of the room, sprawled back. He had been defending the room when he went down.

  The body was tall and hefty.

  It had ginger hair.

  She knelt beside him. “Wake up, Colin. Oh, please, wake up.” His hands were bloodied—he had fought. Her fingers hovered under his nostrils—nothing. She touched his hair and her hand came away wet with blood. Whoever had smashed in his skull had done a good job of it. All that remained was to verify the pulse, and it was gone.

  Anger came next, sweeping away the despair like a summer storm. She wanted desperately to mentally reach out and smash things, to wreak her anger on the room. But she could not, stymied by that silver eye in her palm. Slowly she rose. The table had broken during the fight but the chair had not, and that was about all that had belonged to Colin. Methodically she reached for the chair, picked it up in her two hurting hands, and slammed it into the broken table. Again, and again, until the manic energy wore out and she crumpled down in a heap in the middle of the wreckage.

  There was a broken sprig of feywort under the chair. The blue bells trembled as she picked it up and then at last the tears started to come. Dorie Rochart did not cry. But perhaps Dorian was strong enough to.

  It was in the middle of her weeping when Tam walked in.

  He had the incubator with him.

  Unthinking, she ran to him, flinging her arms around his neck. He stiffened, startled for a moment, and then gently he stroked her short hair. Then he stepped back and held out the incubator to her. “I got here early,” he said soberly. “We got the five eggs that were rocking out and set them in a towel nest. The ironskin were all here—nervous as you might expect. I realized I was short one mouse and I stepped outside to look for one—taking the incubator with the other thirteen eggs with me. I got back, and—” He gestured around. “I was too late. I saw the goons hauling away the five ironskin for ‘questioning.’”

  “He said he wanted to fight,” Dorie said. She rubbed away the tear streaks on her face. “He did.”

  “Are my aunt and uncle really detained as well?” Tam said. He did not say “your parents,” but he did not say “Dorie’s parents,” either. Perhaps he was meeting her halfway.

  “Forty-eight hours,” she said. “From last night.”

  “We’ll hope they hold to that,” he said. He looked down at Colin again. “I wish there were something we could do for him.… But the best we can do is make an anonymous tip-off to the police.”

  “In case the goons don’t report their own dirty work,” she said bitterly.

  Tam looked at her. “Were you two … close?”

  She shook her head. “I just met him a week ago.” She sighed, for she did care a great deal about Colin, even though she had only just met him. His bravery and spirit had worked its way into her affections, and she was sobbing about him the way she might have about Stella. She knelt down next to the still body and gently tucked the broken feywort between his hand
s.

  Cared for him, yes. But the way Tam meant? No, there was only one person whom she cared about like that. “No,” she said, looking up at Tam. “Not like that.”

  In the near-darkness Tam looked at her for a long time, but all he said was, “We’d better get out of here before they come back.”

  * * *

  Dorie stayed awake long enough to mark the approximate time on each egg with Jack’s paints, and then when morning arrived she went through the streets to Dr. O’Donnell’s clinic. She was relieved to find the ginger-haired doctor had been released from questioning and was back on the job. She waited in a back room, not very long, for Moira to come in.

  Moira’s gaze went immediately to the incubator, and the whole tale spilled out.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about Colin,” she said when Dorie reached that part.

  “Well, and he was the focal point of this,” said Dorie. She rubbed her eyes. “He was the one organizing all the ironskin. But he said that each of you knew a few; that together everyone was known. I’m hoping you might know a place to start.”

  Dr. O’Donnell slowly nodded. “I do know most of them,” she said. “Maybe all. I’ve treated a number of them over the years. Who did you say was picked up last night?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Dorie. “I never met them.” She named off the other ones they had done, and the doctor nodded that she knew each of them.

  Finally Moira said, “Here’s what I can do. I will use my contacts and get you a name and address for each of the remaining ironskin. But I can’t let them be treated here and have thirteen wyverns here. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand,” said Dorie, who did, but was still disappointed. “But the information will be invaluable. Thank you.”