Silverblind (Ironskin)

by Tina Connolly

  Tam looked puzzled, then lit up. “Oh. You want a job at the Queen’s Lab.” He leaned in. “Look, Killingsworth just left. Well, not left…”

  Dorie’s eyebrows rose.

  “Tangled up with a giant tortua while overseas,” he admitted. “Came back with several bits missing. He’ll be learning how to walk for a year. It’s perfect timing.” He pointed at the silver egg. “Let me see how close it is to hatching. It looks like it’s started to darken a bit. A day, don’t you think?”

  “Less,” said Dorie, relying on her fey intuition. She couldn’t have said how she knew, only that she could tell from the way it thrummed in her hand.

  “You bring that in this afternoon and I can nearly guarantee you Killingsworth’s old job. At least for temporary—but you’d have a year to prove yourself and I don’t see why you couldn’t. I mean, heck, I didn’t even see you up in that tree when I arrived, that’s how good you were.”

  Breath caught. The Queen’s Lab. Her, Dorie—Dorian, but small matter, she could proudly reveal herself to Dr. Pearce well after she had brought everyone around to her way of doing things. She briefly entertained a fantasy of leading a team of recruits into the northern mountains a year from now, on the trail of the mythical cave-dwelling ice monster.…

  “Bother, social niceties,” Tam said. He rubbed his hands on his trousers and stuck out his hand. She took it, feeling rather odd about the whole thing. “Here I am trying to offer you a job and I haven’t even introduced myself. Thomas Grimsby. But everyone calls me Tam.”

  “Dorian,” said Dorie. She had told Malcolm that her last name was Eliot—her stepmother’s maiden name—but she thought she might as well avoid mentioning that for now, as it was Tam’s mother’s name, too. She changed the subject by saying, “What are you finding that can be done with the eggs? I mean, I know they’re poison to fey.”

  “Well, you know the silvermen, I suppose? The silver eye in their palm—that compound came from us. The albumen left in the wyvern egg is part of the secret compound.”

  “That comes from you,” Dorie stated, that heartbreak rising again. No wonder the lab had suddenly become so wealthy in the past year. What a fool she was to think they would hire her to do anything that might help the fey.

  “From the lab, yes. The silvermen use it to drive the fey out of others, but regular folks are using it to keep themselves from being taken over. Defense, not offense. The fey aren’t all evil—but the ones that are…” His face twisted with hatred, and her heart twisted in response. But it only made sense. Even without her mistakes, he had more reason to hate the fey than the average person—one had destroyed his father.

  “They leave scars,” she said softly. She was thinking of Tam, but she was also thinking of the ironskin.

  Tam nodded, his eyes lighting again. “Yeah, you know about the ironskin? Get this.” He adjusted his glasses and flipped open his journal to a page where he had pasted a photo—the modern black-and-white photos, not the blue-and-white of the old fey tech. It showed an expanse of skin—a belly, she thought—with an old, faded scar. “So the lab hired me for the wyvern research in my book, and stuck me in a lab where they were busy testing it on some captive fey.” He saw her repress a shudder and he said, “I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve since got them to stop it.”

  She was warmed by the thought that he could have gone through everything he’d been through and still be more logical about the fey than the average man on the street. Something unclenched a bit.

  “So the field work positions were still relatively new,” Tam continued. “They’d been relying on a few freelancers. And there was only one person capable of bringing them fey—a blacksmith. Old guy. Massive. I told him how the wyvern albumen was dissolving the fey he’d brought. And he asked if he could watch the next set of tests—I didn’t think much of it, except that he’s a fanatic, you know? I understand that. Us fanatics are how discoveries get made. So I snuck him in.

  “And then get this—apparently this blacksmith was ironskin himself. I was standing there with the freshly hatched egg and suddenly he hiked up his shirt. There was a horrible red scar—nasty looking. I’d never seen an ironskin scar but I knew it was fey all right. They seem to bubble and writhe. I was kind of stunned and then he took the albumen from me and he flat-out rubbed it on his scar. It steamed and hissed and I’m sure he would have been screaming if he weren’t this crazy stoic blacksmith guy. But it cleaned out the fey.” Tam showed her the picture again, of the faded scar that looked a decade old. “I took this the same day.”

  Dorie’s eyes were wide. “No.”

  “Yes. Weird, huh? So you can see we’d be happy to pay you for the egg.”

  “The scar is gone,” she said slowly. That the goo in the wyvern egg killed fey was disturbing, but this new implication was a sudden bright spot. If it could kill just the bit of fey remaining in a two-decades-old scar …

  “Well, his skin was still technically scarred,” said Tam, putting away the journal. “But there wasn’t any fey left in it. He no longer had the curse to deal with.”

  “What about the others?” she burst out suddenly.

  “What others?”

  “The other ironskin. Are you going to take care of them?”

  Slowly he turned to look at her. “Are there any others left? I mean, I only knew of one other, and she was fixed a long time ago.” Her stepmother, Jane, he meant. Jane still had a bit of fey in her face, but it was no longer cursed, and it could not be removed without harming her.

  Dorie nodded. “I know of at least one.” The server at The Wet Pig, with the curse on his leg, who was hungry every day. He could be helped after all.

  His lips twisted sardonically. “More important, could they pay?” She saw again the boy she had known, the boy who was somehow sweet and cynical all at once. He was the one who had explained to her that a little girl who was visiting would shun her if she tried to impress her with any of her fey tricks—and when she had done them, and the girl had indeed called her names and run home, he had comforted her, and let her show him the fey tricks he had seen many times, until she finally fell asleep, tear streaked and exhausted.

  “Oh,” Dorie said, crushed. Another reason she had hoped to join the Queen’s Lab, gone. She had wanted to find remedies for those who needed them. But what to do when the remedy was there … but not being given? She suddenly felt hopelessly naïve for not having realized that maybe research wouldn’t be enough. Cures shouldn’t be kept for those who could afford to pay. But how could she make those with control over the eggs see that? She cupped the precious egg in her shirt, keeping it warm. “Do you know—is any other part of the wyvern poisonous to fey? The outside of the egg?”

  Tam shook his head. “We sacrificed some eggs to studies. The anti-fey substance in the white and yolk increases in concentration right up to the moment of the wyvern’s hatching. So you don’t get any benefits by disturbing its birth. What’s left inside the eggshell as the wyvern steps out of it is the purest stuff there is. And yes, the only anti-fey substance appears to be the leftover albumen.”

  “What do you do with the wyverns afterward?” Dorie said.

  “Sell them,” Tam said, and his face darkened with conflict again. “They’ve never known anything but captivity, you know. If we can keep them alive past the first few days—which doesn’t always happen; they’re so stubborn and wary—then they go to zoos, mostly.”

  “And then no more eggs,” said Dorie.

  “They’ve never been bred in captivity, no,” agreed Tam. “Look, I promise you it’ll get a fair shake, though. More chance than if you sell it to some rich so-and-so who just wants to say he’s got one and doesn’t even know what to do when it hatches.”

  As usual, the inequity of everything stopped her words, dammed up her thoughts. She came up against the stupidity of the world and it was like someone had bashed her head into a wall. How could you think what to do in response to everything being unfair? Where did you start
?

  And why did it have to be Tam here, now, when she was failing to make things right in the world, as she had always told him so proudly she would do? She was out of things to say, which left her with wanting to shake his shoulders and say who she really was, and ask him if he still hated her. He couldn’t, could he? Oh, but the time in the forest had changed him. His wild eyes, his wary expression. The damage had been started by the fey who impersonated his father, and continued by the cousin who sold him off because she thought it was the only way to fully learn about her fey side. Well, she’d learned all right. Betrayal on betrayal.

  “Tam,” she started, and then she heard how soft and beseeching and stupidly girly that sounded, and she quickly stood, arranging herself in the most manly way she could think of. “I’ll think about your offer,” she said gruffly. She eased the egg back into her belly as if tucking it back into that hidden pouch.

  Tam jumped to his feet, too. “Let me give you my card,” he said. “I know I have one somewhere.” He patted his pockets. “Oh bother, is there a place I can ring you?”

  Reluctantly she gave him her landlady’s number and told him to leave the message in care of Jack. At the sight of the two of them standing, the wyvern grew suspicious again. Although Tam started his whistle, the wyvern tilted its head upward, opened its throat to let out the strange ululating cry that would call back its mate.

  “You’d better go,” said Dorie. “One will nest and the other fight. You won’t like that.”

  “You’re right,” Tam agreed ruefully. “Can we offer you a lift back to the city?”

  “We?” said Dorie, dusting off and looking back at the nest. She was watching the wyvern—graceful, proud, silver—and then the next moment she wasn’t. It was falling to the ground, a dart protruding from its scaled chest.

  A woman about their age strode into the clearing. She was tall and broad-shouldered, scrubbed and fresh-faced, and was dressed in a trim jacket and slacks that appeared both expensive and tailor-made for clambering around the forest. A whiff of clean soap came drifting into the forest behind her.

  “What was that?” Dorie spluttered.

  “Tranquilizer dart. It was going to attack you,” the woman said calmly. Her voice was crisp and educated, no nonsense. She reminded Dorie of the girls in the sporty clique in school—the sort with impeccable school spirit, top marks in every subject, stars in one or three sports and sadistically competent in the rest, and who occasionally could be found having panic attacks in one of the restroom stalls. “Clear sign of wyvern battle cry, ja? Next it would have torched Thomas’s face.” There was the barest hint of foreign lilt to her words.

  “I had it under control,” protested Dorie as she stormed over to the felled wyvern. “It might have broken its neck.” Or, almost worse for it—a wing.

  The woman did not bother to respond. She strode past Tam and swung herself easily up the tree. Grabbed the two remaining wyvern eggs and tucked them in a special pouch. She was as tall as Tam—taller than Dorie, who made a slight, skinny boy. She did not think she could bulk up further without losing some of her solidity. She was used to being short, but being short was not a thing when you were a girl—she suddenly felt odd, being at a disadvantage for her presumed sex.

  The woman swung carefully back down. Her casual athleticism felt like arrogance—she was not even breathing hard. Next she turned her attention to the felled wyvern, and ran her fingers along one wing while Dorie examined the other. She made a great show of double-checking Dorie’s checking, before easing the tranquilizer dart free and patching the wound with a bit of cloth tape. Dusting her hands, she turned to Dorie, dismissing the adult wyvern as no longer her problem. “There were three hollows in the nest,” she announced, looking straight at Dorie. “Did you already steal an egg?”

  “If I had, it would be half as many as you,” returned Dorie. She gently tugged the wyvern under some nearby bushes and arranged some fallen birch limbs in front of it.

  The woman was not amused. She stalked over to Dorie and held out her hand. “All wyvern eggs have been declared the property of the Crown,” she said, adding, “we will pay you a fair price.” Dorie turned from her work, looking at her calmly, stubbornly, and the woman added, “And we will fine you that same fair price if we find you in possession of one.” Still nothing, and the woman sighed, pulled out a medallion with a silver eye, and said, “Look. By the authority invested in me by the Queen’s Lab, I command you to surrender the egg you have stolen. That is official enough, ja?”

  Dorie gaped, words deserting her. “You? The Queen’s Lab?” What did this woman have that Dorie didn’t? Besides the ability to callously tranq wyverns, that was.

  The woman appeared to have waited long enough. She took advantage of Dorie’s shock to reach into Dorie’s egg pouch herself.

  But of course the egg was not there.

  Dorie smirked and the sharp annoyance on the woman’s face shuttered closed. She clearly felt she had been made a fool of, and detested it. Dorie was too impossible to deal with. “You might have said you didn’t have it,” she told Dorie, and then turned sharply to Tam, dismissing Dorie from her world. Dorie looked at Tam, wondering if he would say something, but although he gave her a puzzled expression, he did not. “Oh, Thomas, did you hurt yourself?” said the woman, finally seeing Tam’s arm.

  “I’m all right, Annika,” Tam said, waving her off. “Dorian helped.”

  “What a terrible bandage,” said the woman. “The University needs you in prime condition. You must return immediately.” She pulled Tam protectively into her, a move Dorie was perfectly well used to seeing when in girlshape. She was still a boy, she thought. Maybe her cover was slipping. The woman glanced back at Dorie. “I would leave before the mate comes,” she advised.

  “Of course,” Dorie said dryly. “Good-bye, Tam,” she said. “Pleasure meeting you.”

  “Stop by the lab sometime,” he said, still giving her that same puzzled face. He raised his eyebrows. “This afternoon would be an excellent time.” With the unhatched wyvern egg in tow, he meant. Or what? Would he tell on her? Dorie did not care if they tried to fine or punish her, although it would be a nuisance to ditch her Dorian face and start fresh learning a new pattern. But it was Tam, and he hadn’t told so far, and she owed him. He waited for her reluctant nod, and then turned to hurry along with the woman, their shoulders close and full of implication.

  Dorie snorted. Wheeled sharply about and stormed out of the forest.

  Chapter 5

  THE LAST OF THE IRONSKIN (NEARLY)

  Any other young woman would have sold the egg to pay the rent. But those young women had not had it drilled into them so thoroughly by their stepmothers that financial concerns must always come second to the right thing to do.

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

  * * *

  Dorie-as-Dorian hurried through the center of the city, through the heat and smog that choked the streets, thinking over that odd encounter with Tam. She had missed his requested appointment at the Queen’s Lab as it was already well past afternoon—the Crown might have an automobile for Tam and that girl to use to go out into the country whenever they wanted, but Dorie hitched, and that took time and patience. Still, he probably would be there now.…

  The newly built, concrete-and-steel Queen’s Lab was near the University. She stopped and hung back behind a tree, out of sight, looking up at the symbol of all her ambition.

  A job. Not just any job, but the most prestigious one in her field. Field work paid little enough—you were in it for the glory, weren’t you? Or at least to be in service of Truth and Learning, and in this case, the Crown. She rolled her eyes, for that was her least favorite bit of it. But set aside the fact that it would further her goals of helping people like the ironskin waiter for the moment. Be practical for once. It would mean a steady income, and no more swallowing her pride when her aunt offered her leftover clothes that hadn’t sold at her atelier
. No more poaching dandelions from city gardens—though truthfully, she didn’t mind that as much as scrounging off her aunt. But mostly, getting paid to do what she did anyway—roam through her beloved forests, finding and exploring what other creatures were in some ways like her. And then using that knowledge to set right the damage her fey ancestors had done, either directly as with the ironskin, or indirectly by causing people to stay away from the forests that held their potential remedies.

  And to get this job, all she had to do was show up, as Dorian, with the wyvern egg that was currently incubating in her belly.

  It would pay half the rent. She could get hired on, find them another one; pay the other half. She could play along with all this “all wyvern eggs are property of the Crown” business, as patently unfair as that was.

  Or she could help the ironskin.

  Right now.

  Now that Tam had told her what the wyvern eggs could do, she could see it. If that blacksmith had removed the fey in his skin, then she could too. Hadn’t Jane told her a story of an ironskin blacksmith who had helped—not just Jane, but a whole bunch of ironskin? There must be other ironskin left in the city besides that waiter boy, others who didn’t have the contacts or wealth to destroy the fey poison and return to a whole life.

  She knew what the blood racing through her veins told her. She wanted to try that goo for herself, help the ironskin right now. Her fingers tingled with it. She tried to think through what would be logical to do. Think of yourself first. Take this egg to the Queen’s Lab. Pay off your own rent, so you and Jack don’t end up homeless and eating dandelion stew.

  But was that only her amoral fey side talking?

  Because she could always take that waiter a different egg—couldn’t she? He had waited two decades—he could wait a week or three more. But that girl today had been so insistent that all wyvern eggs were now property of the Crown, which meant the eggs would just be harder and harder to come by. And Tam was right—the Lab wasn’t going to let their precious eggs go for free. The more she thought about it, the more the Queen’s Lab had acquired a tarnish it hadn’t had yesterday. Creating fey poison. Testing on fey. How could she look at it with the same blind eye?