Silverblind (Ironskin)

by Tina Connolly

  No, she knew what the right thing to do was. Even if they didn’t.

  Dorie set her jaw and turned toward the bar.

  * * *

  Dorie-as-Dorian found a clean table in the corner of The Wet Pig and dismissed a couple of waiters’ offers of assistance until she saw the young man with the ironskin leg limping out with an order for someone. He smiled at the customers, laughing and joking over the food, and she saw him filch a fried potato as he turned away. He shoved it in his mouth with a hunger she could easily feel, even if his curse was covered and technically not leaking to anyone. She raised her hand to get his attention as he came back, and he veered over to her table, eyebrows raised to ask politely how he could help.

  “I’m not here to order,” said Dorie gruffly, because she didn’t have any more money than she had had yesterday. “I wanted to talk to you. Can you take a short break?”

  “Sorry, sir, but that’s not really my thing,” he said, his friendliness fading away behind a plastered-on smile. “Today’s choices are on the board up there. Molly will help you if you’re wanting to order.”

  Dorie reddened. “No, I mean. I’m here to help you. I had a tip-off, I mean. It’s about your ironskin.” She lowered her voice on the last word.

  He looked skeptically at her but he didn’t walk away. “Nothing to be done about that.”

  “Yes, there is,” she said. She sensed he would run if she tried to force him to listen, so she kept her voice low, forcing him to lean in. “I know of one person who’s been cured already.”

  “Come off it,” he said, and turned.

  “A blacksmith,” she called after him as he limped away. Dammit. It would be wrong to mentally flip over a table and block his path. So very wrong. She groaned. How could she fix wrongs if the wronged wouldn’t let her?

  But he turned at that. Came back and stood at her table. Leaned over it and started wiping, as if pretending he was busy. “Do you know his name?”

  Dorie shook her head. “But it was … it was a belly scar.”

  His cloth stopped moving. “Niklas,” he said, and he no longer seemed to be talking to her, but to himself. “He saved us all, you know. Gave us a place to come to. Told us what was happening. Haven’t seen him in years.… He’s really been cured, then?”

  “In the Queen’s Lab,” she said, hoping it would lend her credibility by association. “And I have the ability to fix you,” she added, with far more confidence than she felt. “But I need to talk to you privately about it first.” That was pulling her punches, because actually she thought the egg might hatch tonight, and in that case … But she couldn’t spring everything on him at once. Work up to that. “It has to be tonight, and it can’t be here. Do you have a flat?”

  He looked at her for a long time. She was not sure if he was weighing whether to trust her at all—or if he believed that she at least thought she spoke truth, and was weighing whether or not to risk his own, long-buried hope. It struck her then what sort of fire she was playing with. Not a lark, not just a science experiment. Twenty years of misery and hope, pinned on what you think you could do, your first time out. But at last he seemed to reach a decision, because he named an address. “I’ve been here all day. Get off soon, when the dinner rush dies down. You could meet me then.”

  And then somehow she would have to get back for Jack’s gallery opening. But that ran for several hours, so even if she missed the first few minutes, Jack would surely understand.…

  “Okay,” she said, and stuck out her hand. “My name’s Dorian, by the way.”

  “Colin,” he said. He didn’t seem to know what to say after that, so he turned and limped back to the kitchen, washrag trembling in his hand.

  * * *

  Dorie was still in boyshape as she made her way to the wharf. She had been in boyshape since six that morning and her nerves were quivering with the strain. She knew from long-ago experience that every extra minute spent in a different shape would make it easier in the long run, but in the short run, she was nearing her limit. She had never spent this long as another person in one stretch.

  Still, no point in changing back now. She was quickly realizing that half the point of boyshape was the wharf—the taverns, the back alleys, the slums. All those places she had avoided before, because don’t look at me would only get you so far when you were tiny and blond and in a dress. Dorian was a skinny, undersized boy—but he also looked, and was, quite fast. His physique would not threaten anybody—but it was nondescript in a way that golden curls and dresses were not.

  The silver wyvern egg was still nestled in her abdomen. Surely this was not how the other scientists transported their eggs. She grinned, imagining everyone at the lab with a belly full of yodeling eggs. Really, her belly was working surprisingly well as a carrier. She felt attuned to the egg in a strange way—she could feel its slow pulse as if it was considering hatching soon.

  <> she told it mentally, much as a pure fey would do. <> It seemed as though her belly purred in response.

  A cluster of rough-looking men spilled out of a tavern near her, heading to the next tavern. She took a breath and started sliding through. A hand reached out as if to clamp down on her skinny boywrist—looking for a violet to kick around a bit, no doubt. She fuzzed just a bit, turned her time sense into fast forward, took his hand, and pulled it just far enough to reach one of his fellow drunkards. She slithered through the group, turning back to laugh at the sight of the fellow drunkard’s expression when he found he was holding hands with his drinking buddy. She could hear a brawl starting as she turned the corner.

  The streets got rougher; the summer sun finally dropped into twilight, but there were no further incidents as she neared the wharf. The smell of sewage grew stronger as she approached the river, and she tried to dampen her fey senses back down. No need for fine precision now! Following Colin’s instructions, she passed the statue of Queen Maud, swung down the second alley after that, and fetched up against an old iron door, a ground-floor room in a ramshackle old building that stank of mildew. This was going to be exciting, she could feel it. A bit giddy with her first rebellion in years, she knocked a shave-and-a-haircut.

  Two bits were rapped back, which warmed her to him. The door swung open to reveal a hefty, ginger-haired man with a tooth-missing smile. His face was still guarded, but it was more open than she’d seen him since she had first said the word “ironskin.”

  “Dorian,” Colin said. “You came. Was starting to think I’d dreamed it.” He shook his head. “Stopped by Niklas’s smithy on the way home. He weren’t there, but a helper confirmed what you said. Can hardly believe it.” His ginger eyebrows furrowed. “He said it had something to do with some sort of egg?”

  “It does,” Dorie assured him. Fire ran around her veins. “It’s something the Queen’s Lab and your blacksmith solved. And what they can do, we can do.” She clapped him manfully on the back and followed him into his dim quarters. There was one dingy bulb hanging from the ceiling—the yellow electric light of human technology. In her parents’ day there had still been clean blue fey tech, but now there was smoke and smog and electricity. The small room was clean and empty except for a table, two chairs, and a pot-bellied stove. The table had a cheap yellow-backed paperback on it, its spine cracked open. She had brought a small birdcage for the wyvern—a prop left over from one of Jack’s paintings—and she set that on the table. Next to the stove was a stack of homemade shelves, piled high with various foodstuffs, and the scent of cooking grease lingered in the air.

  “Gonna make myself a cheese sandwich,” he said. “You want one?”

  “Yes,” said Dorie, for the last time she had eaten was foraging on the country roads between hitching back to the city. There was plenty to eat this time of year—mustard greens and blackberry bushes ran rampant through the ditches and you could always snag plums and apricots from someone’s orchard, if you were quick—but food grew sparse as the smog and cement of the city choked it out, and s
he was ravenous.

  “Good. Hate to eat alone and always am. Let me put my leg on then.” Colin sat on a chair and picked up two large curved pieces of iron, rags for padding nestled inside. With a few practiced motions he clamped the two pieces around his leg and lashed them together until the leg was enclosed in a stiff iron brace. It brought back memories from years ago, watching her then-governess Jane wrap her face in an iron mask to block her young charge from the curse.

  Ironskin.

  Colin swung his way to the stove with his stiff, awkward walk, and now with the practiced movements of a trained chef, he had the bread toasted and the cheese melting on it in the blink of an eye. She could only imagine how much food he went through in an effort to appease the curse, and she thought that probably only the fact that he worked at a place where he could filch leftover food kept him alive at all.

  “Busy day at the Pig,” he said, flipping the sandwiches over. “Been filling in for a sick server. Ready to get back behind the grill.”

  “You should keep your ironskin off while you’re serving,” Dorie said. “Make all the customers hungrier.”

  He barked laughter. “I should at that. Park me in the center of the room till the wallets are emptied and the food all gone.” If he wondered what the urgency for “talking” was tonight, what the timeline for his possible fix was, he was good at hiding it. He was too proud to ask, even though he knew she might have something that would change his life. Dorie respected that.

  Twenty-three years since the end of the Great War. Twenty-three years, or more, of covering his scar with iron, to stop the curse from affecting others. Dorie’s stepmother, Jane, had been cursed with rage when Dorie had first met her. Dorie had been five then, but she remembered Jane removing the mask for the first time. Even with her fey side to counteract it, she could still feel the waves of anger. Could feel how her human side wanted to rage against her governess in response. The ironskin were stuck with two choices: keep the ironskin off and poison everyone else with your particular misery; keep the ironskin on and poison yourself.

  For more than twenty years. A whole lifetime, for Colin.

  Small wonder most of the ironskin were gone now. Their curses had made them a casualty after the war—ignored, repelled. Hard to find reasons to keep going when you pushed everyone around you away. Immediately after the Great War, hundreds had gone to Jane’s friend for help, that blacksmith Tam and Colin had mentioned. And now—she hadn’t seen one in years, until Colin. There couldn’t be many left at all.

  Dorie looked at Colin again—despite the care lines etched in his face, he couldn’t be much older than she. He must have been only a baby when he was wounded.

  “Here you go, then,” he said, sliding a clean plate with the sandwich in front of her. “What?”

  “I was just wondering how old you were,” Dorie said haltingly. “When … when your leg was hurt.”

  “Three,” he said easily. “And just learned not to soil myself and now I was out of commission and back in nappies for two months till I could walk again. My mum was right pissed.”

  “Not to mention hungry,” Dorie said in a low voice. No one had known that iron would block others from the curse until the blacksmith discovered it after the war. And then later still, Jane had discovered that keeping the iron on made the curse worse for the one who was cursed—it kept the poison in.

  But here was Colin, wearing his brace to keep his guest at ease.

  “Hungry, yeah,” and he laughed. “My mum once took me to meet her employer when she was trying for a raise.” He looked at her with a bright twinkle. “After ten minutes with us he was so hungry he would have agreed to anything just to get us out of there so’s he could eat.”

  Dorie barked with laughter through bites of her sandwich. “The positive side to the curse! I never would have thought.”

  “Everything has a silver lining,” he said. “Or an iron one.”

  Dorie set her cheese sandwich down and looked at him soberly. She was quickly warming to this young man who seemed so determined to keep a positive outlook on life. Feelings made everything so difficult. Was she doing the right thing, putting him to this risk? Her fingers touched the egg nestled in her belly. It purred in response and she thought, no going back now. “Well, perhaps you’ve already guessed the news I have,” Dorie said. “Right here with me.”

  Colin sucked in air. “You want to fix me tonight.”

  Dorie nodded.

  He stood and clunked a few paces. Sat back down. “Never thought I would see the day,” he said. He shook his head. “Don’t even know what it will feel like. Always been hungry.”

  “Even when you’re eating?” said Dorie.

  Colin shook his head, temporizing. “There’s a few minutes right after I eat. I feel all right for a moment. Not full, I guess, if full means you don’t feel hunger. But I’m not very hungry. I can tell I’ll want to eat pretty soon. But just at that moment, I can manage.”

  “That’s a start,” said Dorie. “It’s like that, but … better than that.” She grinned. “There’s even too full, when you eat yourself silly and regret it. You might have that happen a few times before you realize you don’t have to eat cheese sandwiches every five minutes.”

  “I’d like to see that,” he said. He was controlling his excitement now, long fingers carefully positioned on the table. She felt a sudden rush of kinship with him. Though not cursed herself, she knew what it was to have to control a strange side of you, a ravenous, alien side. She had met an ironskin once, with Jane, long ago, on the street. She had only seen the poor man for a few minutes, but she remembered a miserable, barely coherent wretch. But Colin, she understood. He had found ways over the last two decades to stop the curse from poisoning his life completely. He had learned self-control far beyond what the average person had to do.

  Because if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be around anymore.

  Under cover of the table, Dorie pressed her fingers gently against the egg in her belly. It was thrumming inside her now. The tenuous connection she shared with it knew what that meant. “It’s getting close,” she said. “Maybe an hour or two. I’m told the goo only works when it’s fresh, so we’ll have to work fast.”

  “You’re told?” he said. He was sharp.

  “Yes,” she said, and silently watched him, waiting to see if he would back down from this experiment, tell her to get a new guinea pig. But he didn’t.

  “What about the little chick, then?” he said instead, which endeared him to her more. She hadn’t expected him to ask, or care.

  “We’ll need to get food ready for it,” she said. “Here’s the tricky part. They need to kill right at birth and then eat the meat. Rodents will work if we can’t get anything else, but ideally we’d get a bird.”

  He whistled. “Not a lot of time.” And in the same breath, leaned down to unlash his leg. “Landlady has rat traps in the garret,” he said. “I’ll check there first.”

  “Well, good!” said Dorie, surprise plain in her voice. “I’ll check outside. Be back in time, though, or it’s all for naught.”

  “Can’t have that, what?” he said, and loped through a door by the stove that apparently led to the rest of the building.

  Dorie went out the door into the alley, wondering if anybody else she knew would put the welfare of a wyvern chick before their own like that. Or maybe all humans would, and it was only her amoral fey side who kept reminding her about self-preservation. Regardless, she wouldn’t have faulted Colin if he hadn’t—she imagined the thought of being released from the curse would be overwhelming. And then there was the time constraint—you wouldn’t want to be off looking for a rat when the egg hatched, and miss your chance.

  So Dorie had expected she would be the one to find something. Which she was easily able to do. She went down to the wharf and sharpened her fey senses until she could pick up the rats scuttling underfoot and the pigeons and gulls circling overhead.

  Colin’s ironskin put her probl
ems into sharp relief. It was clearly far better to be half-fey than cursed by one. Dorie’s actual parentage was both disturbing and complicated—a powerful fey had had her human father in her clutches. She had taken over a female human body, and together they had produced Dorie. Dorie was half-fey—or a third? She was never quite sure how to do that math. Regardless, she was the only one she knew of. Until Jane had come, she had been quite wild as a child—as well as barely talking or using her hands. Even at five, she had been able to do some things a true fey could do—mostly odd parlor tricks like levitating objects and making pictures of blue light.

  Dorie had barely known her fey mother—had never known the human body she temporarily used. Later, after the Fey Queen’s death, Dorie had insisted that her father take her into the forest to learn from the other fey.

  That had been … different.

  Fey were not generally cruel—they had been pressed into the war by a determined leader. But they did not follow human morality, either. Perhaps she knew more about them than most, due to her time spent living with them, in her odd state as partially one of them. She had a certain understanding for some of their traits. They spent a lot of time drifting diffusely through the forests, enjoying the sun and rain and wind, but they also came together in more compressed states and amused themselves … sometimes with humans.

  Dorie had run wild with them for several summers. But she knew whose side they really saw her on, in the end.

  It was cooler down by the wharf, now that the sun had set. The sticky summer air made the city so miserable this time of year—the smog thickened, and the smells worsened. Especially down here, where the sanitation lagged behind the richer parts of the city. She could practically smell the individual rats and birds without the aid of her fey senses. A rat scuttled by, and it was so slow to her that she had plenty of time to consider grabbing it. But she let it go. She was feeling protective of the little wyvern in her belly. She wanted it to have a good first meal.