Copperhead

by Tina Connolly

  Shouts rose and Helen raised her head, looking around for Jane. As if in a dream everything seemed to quiet and slow, the open screaming faces, the shouts, the running. Men, women, dwarvven, running, running, running. The fire and smoke behind them, on the trolley, in a long slow build.

  In slow motion Helen saw the trolley slide off the tracks and skid toward her.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter 11

  SHRAPNEL

  “Helen. Helen.”

  Jane was shaking her and she didn’t want to get out of bed. No, she was dreaming. Jane hadn’t lived with her in almost a year. But this was not that time, it was another time. This was at home, in the little shack of a home they shared after the war, after no Charlie. Mother was ill, had been ill for a while, and now here it was in the wee small hours and Jane was shaking Helen to say she was leaving. That fey blight on Jane’s face writhed and curled as Jane’s words tumbled from her lips and Helen thought like a lost thing inside, don’t leave me here to watch Mother die. Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me.…

  “Helen!”

  The sound of her name came through a great many layers of cotton. She opened eyes to find Rook bending over her. His lively hazel eyes were dark with concern as he worked over her arm.

  “Thank goodness,” he said, and she had to carefully sift through the ringing cotton to pick out the words. Their eyes met, and she had the funny thought that she was home again, as in that dream. Then the wicked light flashed in them, and he said, “On second thought, perhaps you don’t want to know what I did to your dress.”

  Helen looked down to see a strip taken from the peacock blue hem. “Aaaand now it’s the right length for me,” she said dryly. A dress for Frye, a drink for Alberta, a jar of slugs for Tam—her debts were mounting.

  “Thought you’d rather have the blood in than out,” Rook said as he wrapped the strip of peacock blue around her arm, where it looked like a badge of war. Sound was returning now, and with it the realization that her upper arm was throbbing. Her mouth tasted of dust and hot metal. “Be glad this didn’t hit higher,” he said, and he showed her a bloody bit of sharp thing that might have made her feel faint, except she had the funny feeling that she didn’t want to feel faint in front of him.

  “The trolley,” Helen said, remembering. “I was standing here, and then—Tam. Where’s Tam. And Jane?”

  “They’re all right. I took them to my quarters,” Rook said. “Up we go. You can manage on your own now, can’t you?”

  “I can,” she said, and a horrible dark thing opened up inside her, an echo, a voice. It was Morse’s offhand spiteful comment. Are you going to help him blow up the slums?

  It couldn’t be. She refused to believe it. Rook could not possibly be that cold inside.

  He was watching her, wavering there, and he did not put out hands to steady her.

  “What are you doing then?” she said.

  “Going in to help,” Rook said.

  “I’m going, too,” Helen said. She did not know what possessed her to say it. And yet she thought she saw his hazel eyes glimmer with respect.

  “Let’s go then,” he said, and with a trace of his usual levity added, “You can make a fine number of bandages with that skirt.”

  “Not as many as you’re thinking,” she shot back, and the wit and raillery lay like a bright warm thing over the cold gulf that separated them.

  They plunged into the destruction. It was dark and snowing and utter chaos. Frightened men and women ran through the rubble calling the names of friends, lovers, children—answered by terrible sounds of pain from those that had been hit. A woman was trying to move a smoking piece of metal off of someone with her bare hands. Several men were working to safely move the downed wires from the tracks. Ahead of her, in the shadow cast by the destruction, lay a tiny woman in a brightly flowered skirt like Helen’s mother used to wear.

  Helen made a beeline to her, moving with a purpose and energy she had not felt in a long time. A metal bar lay half on top of the dwarvven woman, pinning her down. She was moaning.

  Helen bent down. “Are you all right?”

  The woman grunted. “Just my leg,” she managed, trying to sit up.

  Helen wrapped her gloved hands in the knit skirt and shoved the twisted beam the few inches off of the woman. She saw the torn flesh and shuddered. The woman must be in too much shock to fully register the pain. “Lean on me,” Helen said, and, hoping she wasn’t making things worse, she helped the woman hobble the short distance to where a makeshift field hospital had arisen. Helen helped the woman sit down, patiently waiting her turn in the line, and thought, This is what I could do to help. She had done it before, so long ago, when she couldn’t raise a shovel herself and head onto the field.…

  “Wait,” Helen promised the woman, and went to where several dwarvven were ferrying in supplies from their nearby home.

  “Just get them patched so they can get home,” one was saying rapidly as he unloaded buckets of supplies from a makeshift wagon. “Fimn’s running the stretchers back and forth.”

  “Broken bones are one thing,” said another. “But some are going to need the city hospital.”

  “If they’ll take us,” muttered a third. “If they’re not overjoyed to hear this.”

  “I hardly think—,” said the first, but then the third noticed Helen and nudged the others.

  “Can I help?” said Helen. All three looked up, eyed her with suspicion. “I can clean wounds and apply dressings. I did it in the war. Debride, probe for shrapnel … if I can’t stop the bleeding or there’s a fracture I’ll call for a surgeon. I know when I’m in over my head.”

  The first looked at her carefully. After what seemed like a long time but was in reality probably a very short time due to the speed at which they were working, said, “Over there with Nolle’s crew.”

  “Thank you,” said Helen. She could feel them watching her as she walked in the indicated direction, stripping off her gloves.

  It was still chaos there, but a controlled chaos. The groans of the wounded mingled with the bangs and thumps of people sifting through the destruction, bringing in supplies. Nolle, a sturdy dark-skinned dwarvven woman with long wavy hair, wasted no time letting Helen start working on the people being brought in. She pushed Helen toward a dwarvven man who had been struck just above his ear, the skin torn back. Helen swallowed, picked up the carbolic disinfectant, and stepped toward him. This was a thing she could do. “This is going to sting,” she said.

  Nolle did not slow her own work, but gave a brief nod of approval in Helen’s direction. Despite the trouble that Copperhead was stirring up between the races, it was equal opportunity here, Helen was pleased to see, and they patched up dwarvven and humans with equal care.

  It was full night now. The makeshift work lights had dimmed and been replaced three times by the time the line of people slowed. Helen’s fingers were numb as she bent mechanically for a next victim that didn’t come.

  Nolle left what she was doing and touched Helen’s arm. “You should know we saved nearly everybody,” she said. “You have done well.” And then, as if it was something formal, she said, “I acknowledge our debt to you and take it on. Now sit down.”

  Helen nodded, and found herself wavering, toddling out from the tented area into the wreckage, which was now quite covered in snow. It was starkly quiet after the time in the tent with the wounded. It was peaceful, almost beautiful, like something that had happened a million years ago to someone else. The people were mostly gone now, either helped in the tent or stumbled on home. It was down to a few figures still searching the wreckage to make sure they hadn’t missed anybody. Perhaps it hadn’t even really been all that long since the explosion, and yet it seemed a lifetime. A lean shadowy figure came through the snow from the other end of the trolley, a crowbar over his shoulder. The cold and fatigue suddenly got to her and she sat down, hard.

  “Helen!” she heard from a distance, and saw him drop the crowbar
and hurry toward her, and she thought, so maybe he cares a little if I faint?

  The snow fell in white clumps, blotting out him and the smoking wreckage. She didn’t see the trolley; she saw the battlefield that she did not enter. She stood there with Mother as Charlie and Jane marched into the field and all they could do was watch and let them go. There were farmers to bandage and wounds to tend and she did that all day and into the night, worked straight through the numb shock while mother wept and Jane keened.

  All of this flashed in front of her eyes, superimposed on the twisted struts and billowing blue smoke. Her legs were wet with snow, everything was wet with snow and she was so cold, or perhaps so warm.…

  Then gentle arms were picking her up and now she was the one being helped along. “Didn’t you know you have to take it easy after you have a concussion?”

  “No one told me that,” murmured Helen.

  “I’ll have a word with Nolle,” Rook promised. “Basic medical training.” This and similar nonsense kept her awake, got her through the junk store and down the stairs to the tunnels below the surface. “You need to come see Jane and Tam,” he said. “Reassure yourself that they’re all right.”

  She was shivering now as she warmed up. The tunnels were not warm, but the wind had been fierce, she only now realized. “C-c-cold,” she managed. They walked along the occasionally lit cement pathways and she studied the different painted symbols marking the tunnels, tried to keep a map in her head. Tunnels were not for her.

  “They’ve commandeered all the blankets but I wouldn’t let them touch mine,” Rook said. “Jane will share with you. She’s been warm and safe—if not sane—the whole time.”

  “She’s still … out of it?”

  Rook shrugged. “She’s not the Jane that Frye told me about,” he said. “That Jane sounded on top of things. Frye always spoke of her as if she could rule the world.”

  Helen drew back from his arm. “Maybe she can,” she said to the awe in his voice.

  His arm fell away as she moved, as if he was ready for them to walk on their own, apart. “But your sister seems different than I expected,” he said carefully. “I know you said there’d been trouble since the warehouse. But … frankly, I’m somewhat worried about her motives.” They turned into a larger hollowed-out space that had been chopped up into many small chambers, with dividers made of grates and bricks and scraps of tin.

  “Her motives?” Helen said wonderingly. “She’s dazed from whatever they did to her, but Jane means well.”

  They stopped outside the very last chamber, a fully walled brick one set farther down the tunnel, a good deal apart from the rest. It made her wonder if he’d managed to obtain a nicer one simply by virtue of being havlen, and therefore no one had wanted him as a direct neighbor. “Helen,” he said, and stopped so she had to face him. Her eyes were level with his. Quietly he said in her ear, “Some think the trolley was no accident.”

  “No accident?” She sucked air across her teeth. This was what Morse had implied, but why was he telling her this? “What are you saying?” she whispered back.

  “In the front cabin. There appear to be traces of some sort of bomb.”

  “And you don’t know a thing about it.”

  “No, I do.” Rook looked down at her. “I was the one to pull the driver out of the wreckage. He … didn’t make it. But he told me he saw a girl in a grey dress come into the cabin and take something out of a large bag.”

  “What? No.”

  “I know you thought she was kidnapped,” he said. “What if she’s actually … working with them?” Quickly he added, “I haven’t told anyone but you. You need to help me figure out what to do with her.”

  Instinctively Helen backed away from his words, flattened against the door to his bunk. “Maybe she was lost. She’s confused but she’s not militant. Not like that. You don’t know.”

  Rook sighed. “I’ve locked her in my room for now. Go in and talk to her. I’ll come right back and meet you. I think there are a couple people that are suspicious, but no one would harm her because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “The way you helped us.”

  “Anyone would have,” Helen demurred.

  Rook shook his head silently, then touched her shoulder. “Don’t let your love blind you,” he said, and then turned and vanished into the dark of the tunnels.

  Fingers shaking, Helen turned the doorknob and pressed into the room. What did he think he was saying? How could they possibly suspect Jane? It was Rook who was supposed to attack the dwarvven—Morse had said so. Rook had orders from Grimsby. That was the business he’d been doing there, the double-crossing he’d frankly admitted to. Jane was a red herring, an outsider he had seized on to blame.

  Helen was adrift. She could not trust any of them, and she had led Jane and Tam into this rats’ nest. Besides, what did he mean, they would turn on Jane if not for her help? Her help was nothing, insignificant. The barest of candle-flame breaths and the dwarvven would blow the other way, come and roust them from their room into the snow. Or worse.

  Helen sat down on a small trunk beside the bed, shrugging her coat off. The wet wool stank of smoke and blood. Tam was snoring peacefully on a cushioned chair in the corner, his explorer hat shading his eyes and his binoculars tight in his hands. Jane lay under the covers, dark hair spread around her pale face with its red lines. Yet her cheeks were pinker than they had been; she breathed.

  Helen took Jane’s hand in her own, looking around the tiny brick room. The floor was a wood platform, raised off the cement below, and the ceiling was open at the top to the tunnel. A faded brown quilt hung on the wall, and when she flicked aside the edge of it she saw there was a short tunnel there, a back escape hatch. The only things in the room were the bed, chair, and trunk, and it was as neat as a pin. No ornaments or mementos. It was not the room of someone who intended to be there for long; it was not the room of someone who felt at home.

  She was suddenly curious what was in the trunk.

  She should not look, of course, but if she did everything she was supposed to she wouldn’t be here in the first place. She released Jane’s fingers and rose, swiftly knelt and pushed the lid back. She had a sudden thought that perhaps this wasn’t even Rook’s room at all, despite what he had said.

  But there was a thin black jacket folded on top, and she thought that perhaps it was Rook’s after all. Carefully she lifted it off. A few more items of clothing, all dark. A knife. A stack of books. She lifted the top one out, curious.

  Jane stirred and instantly Helen was there, seizing her hand, crushing it. “You’re back,” Helen said. She shoved the jacket back into the trunk and sat down.

  Jane smiled and she was there in her eyes. “I am,” she said.

  Helen squeezed her hand tighter. “What’s been happening to you, Jane? Do you know how strange you’ve been?” The tactless words tumbled out.

  Jane sobered. “I have felt so strange, Helen,” she said. “I remember you finding me at the warehouse and leading me around. But large gaps are missing. It’s like a dream, that fades when you awake, and you only see snatches.”

  “But you’re back now, really back,” said Helen, as if repeating it enough could keep Jane with her. She thought of what Rook had said and cast it aside. Jane could not hurt a fly, even if Grimsby’s machine had damaged her mind. Sleepwalking did not change who you were. She stared into her older sister’s face, reassuring herself over and over that Jane was Jane was Jane.

  Jane seemed not to notice. “What are you reading?” she said, nodding at the book Helen still held.

  “It’s Rook’s,” said Helen. She turned it over in her hands. It was a crackled black book, quite weathered.

  “Is he the man who brought me here? I almost wonder if he’s part dwarvven.”

  “He is,” said Helen, and read off the spine, “Lady Adelaide’s Secret. I have heard of it, but I never did read all those books I was supposed to in school—did you?”

&n
bsp; Jane raised amused eyebrows at the title. “Yes, but it’s not a school assignment book. It’s a scandalous thing about a man who accidentally marries two women. You’d probably like it. The man tries to do the right thing and leave the second wife, the one he really loves, but…”

  “But?” said Helen.

  “But the first wife is actually a murderess, and the second one is a detective tracking her down. And then it turns out the husband’s really been dead since about halfway through the book, and you don’t even know it even though he’s been telling you the whole story.” Jane put a hand to mouth. “I might have ruined it for you.”

  “Thus marking the first time I tell you to think before you speak,” said Helen. She sighed and carefully replaced it in the trunk. Not a clue then, except to the fact that he really was half-dwarvven, as they had notoriously lurid taste in fiction. “Jane,” she said. “I’m worried that Rook was involved in the accident.”

  “The trolley?” said Jane. “But the detonation happened at a dwarvven stop. And he went in to save people.”

  “Oh, but I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything,” Helen said in a low voice. “Alistair told me Rook was working for Grimsby, and Rook confirmed it. That he was like a double agent or something. And then, tonight, Morse said something about how Rook was going to blow up this compound.”

  “Was he very drunk?” said Jane.

  “As always,” Helen admitted.

  Jane shook her head. “There has to be another explanation. The dwarvven I know are not like that. They’re strict. They’re fair. They love scandalous books and dancing.”

  “Rook said they were having one tonight,” said Helen. She smiled ruefully. “I put a dress in your carpetbag just so I could go.”

  “You should go meet him there and feel out his motives.”

  “Nonsense,” said Helen. “They couldn’t possibly be dancing now. Not after the trolley.”