Silverblind (Ironskin)

by Tina Connolly

  “Yes,” she said. The laced fingers weren’t working as well as she had hoped. She sat firmly on one hand and gripped the leg of her chair with the other. It would be terribly bad form to make that porcelain cup of tea with the gold rim levitate off the desk and dump itself down his front. “I understood that information to be private?”

  “Oh, there are so few of us in this business, you understand. We are all old friends, all interested in what the new crop of graduates is doing.” He smiled paternally at her. “And your name came up several times over lunch today.”

  “Yes?”

  “Again, Adora—Dorie—let’s cut to the chase. My colleagues were most amused to tell me of the pretty young girl who thought she could slay basilisks.”

  “I see,” said Dorie. “Thank you for your time, then.” She began to rise before her hands would do something that would betray her fey heritage and have her thrown in jail—or worse.

  “No no, you misunderstand,” he said, and he came to take her shoulders and gently guide her back to the chair. “My colleagues are living in the past. They didn’t understand what an opportunity they had in front of them. But I understand.”

  “Yes?” Her heartbeat quickened. Was he on her side after all? A rosy future opened up once more. The Queen’s Lab—a stepping-stone to really do some good. So much knowledge had been lost since the Great War two decades ago, since people started staying away from the forest. Simple things like what to do with feywort and goldmoths and yellowbonnet. She could continue her research into the wild, fey-touched plants and animals of the forest—species were disappearing at an alarming rate, and that couldn’t be good for the fey or humans. And then, the last several times she’d been home, she’d hardly been able to find the fey in the woods behind her home. When she did, they were only thin drifts of blue.

  But Dorie could help the humans. She could help the fey.

  She was the perfect person to be the synthesis—and this was the perfect spot to do it. The Queen’s Lab was the most prominent research facility in the city. If she could get in here, she could solve things from the inside.

  Surely even Jane would approve of that.

  Dr. Pearce smiled, one hand still on her shoulder. “If you’ve met any of the young men who do field work for us, you know they grew up dreaming of facing down mythical monsters.” He gestured expansively, illustrating the young boys’ fervent imaginations. “Squaring off against the legendary basilisk, armed with only a mirror! Luring a copperhead hydra out of its lair, seizing it by the tail before it can twist around to bite you with its seven heads! Sneaking past a pair of steam-blowing silvertail wyverns, capturing their eggs and returning to tell the tale!”

  “Yes,” breathed Dorie. She put her hands firmly in her pockets.

  “Those boys grow up,” Dr. Pearce said. “Some of them still want to fight basilisks. But many of them settle down and realize that the work we do right here in the lab is just as important as risking your neck in the field.” He perched on his desk and looked right at her. “Our country is mired in the dark ages of myth and superstition, Dorie. When we lost our fey trade three decades ago, we lost all of our easy, clean energy—all of our pride. We’ve been clawing our way back to bring our country in line with the technology of the rest of the world. We need some bold strokes to align us once more among the great nations of the world. And we can only do that with smart men—and women—like you.”

  She heard the ringing echo of a well-rehearsed speech, and still, she was carried away, for this was what she wanted, and more. “And think of all the good we could do with the knowledge we acquire in the field!” she jumped in, even though she had not planned to tip her hand till she was hired. “Sharing the benefits of all we achieve with everyone who truly needs them. Why, the good that can be accomplished from one pair of goldmoth wings! From a tincture of copperhead hydra venom! Do you remember the outbreak of spotted hallucinations last summer? My stepmother was the one who realized that the city hospitals no longer knew the country remedy of a mash of goldmoths and yellowbonnet. We worked together—she educating hospital staff, me in the field collecting. With the backing of someone like the Queen’s Lab, I could continue this kind of work. We could make a difference. Together.” She was ordinarily not good with words, but she had recited her plans to her roommate over and over, waiting for the key moment to tell someone who could really help her.

  “Ah, a social redeemer,” Dr. Pearce said, and a fatherly smile smeared his face at her youthful enthusiasms.

  This was not the key moment.

  “But more seriously, Dorie,” he went on, and his voice deepened. “I would like to create a special position in the Queen’s Lab, just for you. A smart, clever, lady scientist like you is an asset that my colleagues were foolish enough to overlook.” He fanned out her credentials. “Your grades and letters of recommendation are exemplary.” He wagged a finger at her. “You know, if you had been born a boy we would never have had this meeting. You would have been snapped up this morning at your very first interview.”

  “The Queen’s Lab has always been my first choice,” said Dorie, because it seemed to be expected, and because it was true.

  He smiled kindly, secure in his position as leader of the foremost biological research institution in the country. “Dorie, I would like you to be our special liaison to our donors. It is not false praise to assert how important you would be to our cause. The lab cannot exist without funding. Science cannot prosper. We need people like you, people who can stand on the bridge between the bookish boy scientist with a pencil behind his ear and the wealthy citizens that can be convinced to part with their family money; someone, in fact, exactly like you.”

  Her hands rose up, went back down. A profusion of thoughts pressed on her throat—with effort she focused to make a clear sentence come out. “And I would be doing what, exactly? Attending luncheons, giving teas?” He nodded. “Greasing palms at special late-night functions for very select donors?”

  “You have it exactly.”

  “A figurehead, of sorts,” said Dorie. Figurehead was a substitute for the real word she felt.

  “If you like.”

  “Not doing field work,” she said flatly.

  “You must see that we couldn’t risk you. I am perfectly serious when I say the work done here in the lab is as important—more important—than the work done by the hotheads out gathering hydras. You would be a key member of the team right here, away from the dust and mud and silvertail burns.”

  “I applied for the field work position,” said Dorie, even though her hopes were fading fast. In the terrarium behind him, the adolescent wyvern was awake now, pacing back and forth and warbling. The large terrarium was overkill—their steam was more like mist at this age. It could as easily be pacing around Dr. Pearce’s desk, or enjoying the windowsill. All it would take was a little flicker of the fingers, a little mental nudge on that bolt.…

  Dr. Pearce brought his chair right next to hers and put a fatherly arm on her shoulder. She watched the wyvern and did not shove the arm away, still hoping against hope that the position she wanted was in her grasp. “Let me tell you about Wilberforce Browne,” Dr. Pearce said. “Big strapping guy, big as three of you probably—one of our top field scientists. He was out last week trying to bring in a wyvern egg—very important to the Crown, wyvern eggs.”

  Dorie looked up at that. “Wyvern eggs?” she said, trying to look innocent. This is what she had just seen. But she could not think what would be so important about the eggs—except to the wyvern chick itself, of course.

  Dr. Pearce wagged a finger at her. “You see what secrets you would be privy to if you came to work for us. Well, Wilberforce. He stumbled into a nest of the fey.”

  “But the fey don’t attack unless provoked—”

  “I wish I had your misplaced confidence,” Dr. Pearce said. “The fey attacked, and in his escape Wilberforce stumbled into the clearing where his target nest lay. Alerted, the mated pair of
wyverns attacked with steam and claws. He lost a significant amount of blood, part of his ear—and one eye.”

  “Goodness,” murmured Dorie, because it seemed to be expected. “He must have been an idiot,” which was not.

  Dr. Pearce harrumphed and carried on. “So you see, your pretty blue eyes are far too valuable to risk in the field. Not that one cares to mention something as sordid as money”—and he took a piece of paper from his breast pocket and laid it on the desk so he could slide it over to her—“but as it happens, I think that you’ll find that sum to be very adequate, and in fact, well more than the field work position would have paid.”

  Dorie barely glanced at the paper. Her tongue could not find any more pretty words; she could stare at him mutely or say the ones that beat against her lips. “As it happens, I have personal information on what your male field scientists get paid, and it is more than that number.” It was a lie—but one she was certain was true.

  Shock crossed his face—either that she would dare to question him, or that she would dare talk about money, she didn’t know which.

  Dorie stood, the violent movement knocking her chair backward. Her fey-infused hands were out and moving, helping the words, the wrong words, come pouring out of her mouth. “As it happens, I do not care to have my time wasted in this fashion. Look, if you did give me the field job and it didn’t work out, you could always fire me. And what would you have wasted? A couple weeks.”

  Dr. Pearce stood, too, retrieving her chair. “And our reputation, for risking the safety of the fairer sex in such dangerous operations. No, I could not think of such a thing. You would need a guard with you wherever you went, and that would double the cost. Besides, I couldn’t possibly ask one of our male scientists to be with you in the field, unchaperoned.…” His eyebrows rose significantly. “The Queen’s Lab is above such scandal.”

  “Is that your final word on the subject?” Her long fingers made delicate turning motions; behind him the copper bolt on the glass cage wiggled free. The silver wyvern put one foot toward the door, then another.

  “It is, sweetheart.”

  The triangular head poked through the opening as the glass door swung wide. Step by step …

  “Thank you for your time then,” Dorie said crisply. “Oh, and you might want to look into the safety equipment on your cages.” She pointed behind him.

  The expression on his face as he turned was priceless. Paternal condescension melted into shock as a yodeling teenage wyvern launched itself at his head. Dorie was not worried for his safety—the worst that could happen was a complete loss of dignity, and that was happening now.

  “I’ll see myself out, shall I?” said Dorie. She strolled to the office door and through, leaving it wide open for all to see Dr. Pearce squealing and batting at his hair as he ran around the wide, beautiful office.

  Chapter 2

  A CUNNING PLAN

  Unless there is a strong leader to shape and mold them, the fey are not by nature violent. But they are very fond of pranks, especially when irritated. They don’t seem to be able to help themselves—or more likely, don’t want to. Many of the stories I gathered—from the humans, at least—are based around some particular fey who tipped over someone’s butter churn once.

  —Thomas Grimsby, Collected Fey Tales (foreword)

  * * *

  “He was just so … argh,” said Dorie. “Argh!” She had spent the last coin in her purse on an ale at The Wet Pig and was making it last as long as possible while she drowned out the horrible Monday. “All those years at the University. All that time spent preparing for real interview questions. All those actual plans of what I want to do with the kind of work they’re doing, and I didn’t even get to tell anyone about my ideas to help people. I even told him about the work Jane and I did on spotted hallucinations last summer, and does he care? No! Argh!”

  “Tell me again how you sicced the wyvern on him,” said Jack, and she gestured with a bit of charcoal pencil. With her other hand, she smeared a chunk of fried fish through the vinegar on her plate and popped it into her mouth, licking her fingers. “In loving detail, please.”

  “So I could see that the bolt was copper, so I knew I could finesse it,” said Dorie. She looked longingly at Jack’s last piece of fish, but pride forbade her from begging her roommate for food. The mustard greens she had scavenged in the park would hold her until she could stop by those wild blackberry bushes by the pond on the way home from the bar. She went through the story one more time for her best friend, stopping to thoroughly capture the expression on the lab director’s face. Dorie snickered, then stopped, a little worried. “Is it terribly cold-hearted of me to say that that was the best part of the day?”

  “No, any human would say the same,” Jack assured her.

  Jack was the only friend Dorie had entrusted with her deepest secret—that she was half-fey. There were only a few people in the whole world who knew. But Jack had been an old family friend since Dorie was little, and back then Dorie wasn’t always as good at keeping her secret as she was now.

  Jack—Jacqueline—was the foster daughter of Alberta, a friend of Dorie’s aunt Helen. Jack’s parents had died abroad, and Jack had gone to live with her aunt Alberta, who had raised her as her own. Jack was attractive, with dark skin and curly dark hair that she kept cropped about an inch from her head, and she mostly got along with her aunt except that her aunt wanted her to be practical. Alberta had been a musician long ago, but had given it up when she took in Jack, in order to settle down and have a stable life. She had transferred into the business side of things, and worked fiendishly hard, worked her way up until now she owned one of the very nightclubs she used to perform in. It had a sterling reputation for booking the very best established musicians—it was not a place you went to hear what was new, but a place you would happily take the new girl you were wooing, or your fiancée’s parents, and everything would be beautiful and perfect and unobjectionable. This was the business Alberta wanted Jack to take over.

  Jack wanted to be an artist.

  “Anyway, surely it wasn’t the only good part of the day,” Jack was saying. “Tea on the lap? Spiders down the collar?” She held up the sketch she had been making. It showed a cartoon of a curly-haired girl knocking a baboon across the room with her uppercut. “Of course, that’s what you should have done.” Dorie chuckled as Jack raised her pencil to the bartender. “Another round, please.”

  “No, wait. I’m flat,” interjected Dorie. “Completely stinking goners. And the rent is five days past, and I still owe you my half from last time—”

  Jack waved aside these objections. “We’re too far in, Dorie. If I don’t sell a good-sized piece at my show tomorrow—or you come up with some way to make the whole rent—it’s curtains for us and I have to go back to my aunt, who’ll say I told you so and then make me learn how to do sums so I can figure out how to get the best price on bulk orders of tuna fish.” She pulled a note from her canvas bag and slapped it on the table. “I have a tenner to my name and that’s only because I caved this morning and drew a dirty picture for that laddie pamphlet that keeps pestering me. It’s blood money that can never be used for the rent and only be used for buying drinks and fried fish.”

  “Well, all right,” said Dorie with resignation. “If we’re up a creek without a paddle we might as well enjoy it.” The two of them had been scrimping for years. Jack had won a scholarship to her art school, and Dorie’s aunt Helen had paid for her tuition, as her own parents had no money. But that still meant plenty of odd jobs for both of them to pay for room and board. And now here they were, a month post-school, and everything had finally run out, right down to emptying the old vase they had been throwing pennies in to save against a rainy day. Dorie sighed, for Jack was talented, if she could just get her foot in the door. And as for her, researching things that could potentially save thousands of lives was plenty practical—if someone would just let her do it.

  Dorie pointed to Jack’s cartoon.
“I want that for my bedroom wall.” She downed the last of her drink and grinned. “You know, if I had done that, it would never have come back to haunt me. If there’s a perk to being a girl that might be it. That boy would never, never tell.”

  “An unexplained rash of men walking into doorknobs sweeps the campus,” said Jack dramatically, gesturing with her pad as though she were reading a newspaper headline.

  “And I did get to see a wyvern hatch,” said Dorie. “That was also pretty good. Except…”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s interesting,” said Dorie. “The Queen’s Lab is clearly using the eggshell for something. Or, rather, the goo left inside the eggshell, right as it hatches. But what? This isn’t something I’ve ever heard of—at least not from the herbalists in the village.”

  “What about from the fey?” said Jack, who knew that Dorie had spent some time as a child going quite wild in the forest, studying the fey and just being with them. She did not know all the details, though.

  “Fey don’t like the wyverns much,” Dorie said. “I don’t remember them talking about them beyond that.” She pondered. “Makes me want to go into the forest and get an egg, so I can experiment. Except I hate the idea of taking the chicks away from their parents.”

  “Ugh,” said Jack. “If you want to mess around with wyverns. Aren’t they, like, the baby great-great-grandchildren of basilisks?”

  “If they ever existed,” said Dorie.

  Jack’s fingers flashed over the pad again. Dorie zoned out and thought about how she would catch a wyvern, until Jack held up the pad to show another cartoon of Dorie staring lovingly into an enormous basilisk’s eyes, each of them with bugged-out eyes hypnotizing the other. Little hearts floated above their heads.

  “You goon,” Dorie said with love.

  The waiter brought over their drinks—ale for Dorie and some gin thing for Jack. He was rather stout, and had a funny walk—one leg was held completely straight. It didn’t cause him to spill the drinks, though—he was obviously used to it and swung his leg along with a practiced gait.