Silverblind (Ironskin)

by Tina Connolly

  Well. Perhaps she had done some good today. “I would need to find the rest of the ironskin,” she said. “I only stumbled on you by chance. Do you know of any more?”

  He nodded. “You meet over the years. You know each other. You lose some. But it’s not exactly a group that’s growing, is it? Bet there’s maybe twenty left in the city.”

  Twenty eggs to find. Were there even that many wyvern pairs on Black Rock? She had never seen that many at once.

  “Currently know the whereabouts of eleven or twelve of the ironskin,” he said. “But between us we can find everyone else. You keep tabs, you know. Those of us that are left.” He put the piece of bread down and leaned forward. “Let me bring them to you,” he said with quiet intensity. “I have one in particular that needs to be done straight off. The curse hit all along her spine. It’s a tough one. She can’t hold out much longer.”

  Dorie laced her fingers together. “I will warn you. Wyvern eggs are considered the property of the Crown now. Every one I bring you is illegal.”

  “I vouch for her that won’t matter.” He gripped the back of the chair. “Shoulda had you go to her first. Was too selfish … Please. As soon as you can. Promise?”

  “I promise,” Dorie said. What else could she do? “But look, it’s not just her. With eggs being black market now, every one of your friends will run the risk.”

  “And you?”

  “I would rather rot in jail than see those rich bastards make off with all our eggs,” she said. Her intensity surprised both of them, and he looked at her for a long time, thinking impenetrable thoughts.

  After a moment, he looked around and tried to smile with his usual manner. In a completely different voice said, “Did you know there’s a pigeon in my house?”

  A choke of laughter burst forth. “Damn, I forgot,” said Dorie. She picked up the cloth bag and went toward where the pigeon perched on the windowsill, wondering if she could convincingly capture it without going blue.

  And then a silver flash of wings streaked past.

  The pigeon startled—the little woglet wobbled. They both fell to the floor in a tangle of wings. Dorie stalked over, saying, “Look, you’re not hungry, silly thing. You have a whole rat you can work on. Let the pigeon go.” But even as she arrived on the scene, the pigeon was dying, its neck snapped, its eyes open and fixed on the little wyvern. “That’s nonsense,” Dorie scolded the woglet. “You shouldn’t kill what you can’t eat. Show some restraint.” The woglet looked up at her, green eyes liquid and warm. Then he sank his teeth into the pigeon’s neck.

  Dorie sat back down in the chair. “Um, sorry about the blood,” she said. “And rat guts. If you want to boil some more water I’ll help you clean up.”

  “What’s it doing?” said Colin.

  The woglet had his teeth firmly in the pigeon’s neck and was dragging it backward, straining mightily on his new legs and flapping his still-wet wings. Through his clenched teeth he was humming, but she did not know what it meant. He had to stop several times, exhausted, but the teeth stayed closed and the hum continued all the way up to Dorie’s feet, where the woglet finally let go of his prize and broke out into a full-throated warble.

  “I think it’s for you,” Colin said.

  Dorie looked at the woglet in shock, who was now attempting to climb her pant leg with his rather disgusting claws. The woglet warbled all the way up her leg in the pitch of a wounded yodeler. Once he reached her lap, he tucked his tail around his nose and folded his wings. The wounded yodel changed to a wounded snore. “It can’t be,” she said. “They hate everybody. I’m supposed to take it back to the forest and try to find its parents.”

  Colin grinned. “Think you’re the father now. Hope you didn’t have anywhere to go that don’t involve a baby wyvern.”

  Only the Queen’s Lab, Dorie thought in dismay as she watched the silver woglet snore. Only the Queen’s Lab.

  * * *

  Dorie hurried along the paths to the University, still in boyshape, woglet folded in the crook of her arm. It was dark now, and the black buildings rose around her. At the building where her flat was she stopped. What on earth was she going to do with a tiny wyvern on her arm? If the Queen’s Lab really was cracking down on them, then this baby was clear proof of her crime. She had not expected this problem. She had been expecting a cranky baby wyvern that she would have to stare down. Pop him all protesting into the birdcage, and take him back to the forest before he could get too cranky with the situation and steam his way out.

  She had not been expecting him to sleep in her arms.

  Dorie tucked her fingers under his belly, wondering if she could maneuver him into the birdcage after all. He could stay in their flat then.

  Woglet protested and dug his claws in tighter. Dorie yelped and let that bit of her elbow fuzz out to ease the pressure. She brought her whole arm toward the birdcage, and he yodeled ominously. That noise would have their landlady in their room in a heartbeat.

  She sighed. She could not miss Jack’s gallery opening. Her first one in the city. The one that would set the stage for her whole career—the one Dorie had sworn in blood to attend.

  There was no help for it. She was going to have a wyvern on her, and that’s how it was.

  * * *

  Jack was sharing the space with nine other artists. They had gone in together to rent a space near the University that catered to this sort of thing: art shows and avant-garde theatrical performances. Now as Dorie approached it she saw there was a large crowd outside, and she wondered if the opening time had been delayed, for she was rather late. She had not had time to change clothes or shape; she was still Dorian, still in hiking pants and muddy boots. But apparently it did not matter, for at the top of the steps a man in uniform was taping off the doors.

  Jack met her on the grass, ranting and out of breath. She was in red cigarette pants—Jack generally wore red—and a pile of handmade jewelry over a loose top. “One of the artists got us all shut down,” she said. “We were open for all of five minutes and then all these silvermen come in and force everyone out. No one even made it to the back where my work was.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dorie said. Curiosity overcame sympathy. “What did he show?” The men in Jack’s collective outnumbered the women eight to two, so she felt safe assuming it was a he.

  “I don’t even know; he’s been so secretive. I gather it was some sort of human figure but lit up with blue light.” Jack wrinkled her nose. “Well, and obviously that says fey takeover now that I think on it. No wonder—he’s been having a hard time of it since one of his mates got blued. I suppose that’s why the silvermen are involved with a rinky-dink art show.”

  “Jack,” said Dorie slowly. “Blue light. Like the artist was using a bluepack?”

  “You mean like the ones we learned about in history class?” said Jack. “The ones the fey made to trade with us?”

  “Not exactly made,” said Dorie, swallowing, for she knew the bluepacks’ disturbing history even if the textbooks had elided it. The bluepacks the fey had traded to humans had been split-up pieces of whole fey—punishments set by the Fey Queen. It wasn’t known how she did it—it wasn’t even known that that’s what the bluepacks really were until long after the war, and the trade, were over. At that point there was little reason for it to become common knowledge. People had moved on.

  But where could this artist have found a bluepack to light up his sculpture? Surely he hadn’t. Surely it was a gel or something. Otherwise … otherwise she did not know what to think.

  “If only his works had been at the back, and mine at the front,” said Jack, whose mind was working in quite a different channel. “We drew lots … ugh, this is so frustrating.”

  “So not fair,” Dorie agreed. Jack was quite talented, as far as she could tell. She only knew a dilettante’s smattering about the subject, but Jack’s technique seemed to her to be doing something new and interesting. She was mostly doing nudes, but her colors! They were rich and
flat all at once—you could not stop looking at them. “You shouldn’t be punished for his mess. What can we do about it? Look, I’ll go distract the silvermen, and we’ll take down the tape.”

  “No no no,” said Jack. She grabbed Dorie’s arm, her bracelets clanking. “None of your pranks. As maddening as it is, logically I know the publicity will be excellent. Let the men do their stuff. They’re confiscating all works to take back to the station. Supposedly the rest of us will get our pieces back tomorrow. I’m just keeping an eye out for when they start crating stuff up, because if they think they’re touching my paintings without me present, they’ve got another thing coming.” She sighed. “It’s not the worst thing, to be part of a show banned for public indecency. But why couldn’t it be at the end of the evening? Not to mention, then maybe someone would have had a chance to buy one, because our rent is due.” She eyed Dorie meaningfully.

  “Yeah,” said Dorie glumly.

  “How did the interview with the sleazeball go this morning?” said Jack.

  “Horrible,” said Dorie. She lowered her voice. “All he wants are wyvern eggs, and that’s all the Queen’s Lab wants, too.” She told Jack the price he was paying, and Jack whistled. “But they’re living creatures, Jack! Not to mention deadly to the fey. I just can’t take him anything living, and especially not wyvern eggs. I just can’t. I know, I know, the rent…”

  “Landlady actually showed someone our quarters today,” Jack said. “I think it was all for show, but who can say.”

  “Well,” said Dorie.

  “She made the usual threats about tattling on us to my aunt and then said there better not be any more suspicious noises at night or the rent that we haven’t paid would be going up. For someone who’s always going on about morals she sure has a dirty old mind.”

  Dorie tried to think of helpful things to say, but couldn’t come up with any. She thought it would improve her mood to sabotage the silvermen’s work, but it sounded like Jack was not in favor of that idea. “Let me change back into curls and we’ll go cadging free drinks to cheer ourselves up?” she offered. “After you crate?” She could feel her ethics slipping every moment.

  Jack drummed her fingers on her arm. “The thing is, I wish it were me, you know? The one being arrested.” She nodded at the inflammatory artist, who was being carefully handed into a black automobile, triumph on his face and flashbulbs bright around him.

  “Mm,” said Dorie. Like Jack, she was iffy on the value of the law, but she would rather escape to do whatever the heck she wanted another day. Jail did not appeal to her.

  “It’s really a wake-up call,” said Jack. “I’m not pushing the limits enough. My technique is really doing something, I think, but that’s not enough in modern times. It’s subject matter that really gets them. But something meaningful to me. I have to find something authentic.…”

  “Mm,” said Dorie again, who had never thought of searching her soul to share it with strangers. There were so many ways she and Jack were in lockstep that it always surprised her to find the gulfs she could not cross. As far as Dorie was concerned, strangers were entitled to exactly nothing from her. They didn’t need to know anything beyond what she presented.

  The woglet in her arm stirred and made sleepy coos of protest at the noise around them.

  “Is your arm … yodeling?” said Jack.

  “Ugh,” said Dorie. “I don’t even know.” Peering around for the silvermen, she pulled back the rags that covered her elbow and let Jack peek at the coiled ball of silver. “They’re not supposed to … cuddle.”

  Jack sucked in breath. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Dorie nodded as she covered Woglet.

  Jack threw up her hands. “Ugh. Dorie, you know I love you, but seriously. Was that thing in an egg a few hours ago? An egg that would cover our entire rent?” Dorie nodded again and Jack said, “Sometimes I could just…” She made strangling motions at her best friend.

  “And there’s more,” Dorie said in a small voice. “I saw Tam.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Jack. And then, looking again at Dorie-as-Dorian: “Like that? Oh, honey.” She put an arm on Dorie’s shoulder. “Did you tell him who you were?”

  Dorie shook her head miserably. After seven long years she had seen Tam, and he hadn’t known her, and she hadn’t told him. She didn’t know how to say the long-buried story here, on the street with all the students and silvermen. She didn’t think she could ever tell Jack what she had done. Jack knew Tam from way back, of course—Aunt Helen and Jack’s aunt were old friends. Jack knew Tam and Dorie hadn’t spoken since some fight at fifteen, but Dorie had never been able to tell her closest friend the details. She could still barely tell them to herself.

  Dorie pressed Jack’s hand where it sat on her shoulder. The sleepy chick was stretching now. Its cooing grew shriller. “He’s probably hungry again,” said Dorie. And silvermen everywhere. “I’d better get out of here.” But before she could take off, Woglet stood and yawned, fanned his wings, and swooped to the ground. He was blessedly silent while yawning, as apparently he could not yodel and yawn at the same time. And then, back into the yodel as he strutted around, no doubt scaring off all the prey for miles. A gallery-goer turned to look and Dorie mentally encouraged them: turn away, nothing here.

  Dorie lunged for Woglet, but he easily eluded her, then made a distinctly petulant yodel in her face that clearly demanded: feed me, Mom. No help for it. The little air raid siren would have to eat.

  “I have a roll I nicked from the cheese tray before they threw us out,” Jack said, searching her paint-splattered satchel.

  “Only if rolls can be hypnotized,” said Dorie. She closed her eyes and searched with the fey senses out around her. Something must be alive, warm, scuttling.… She tracked down a vole under a nearby bush, and, eyes closed to keep attuned to it, she moved unerringly around the edges of the crowd, Woglet screeching his silly head off as he strutted after her. In the back of her mind she thought how powerful that screech must be—maybe his eyes weren’t the only thing that was hypnotic!—to make her do anything fey-related at all, no matter how invisible, so near this enormous crowd. But she could not see any other way to make him shut up.

  “It’s there, near that bush,” she told Woglet, opening her eyes and pointing. She did not really think he could understand her, but this close he could probably sense the prey for himself. He quieted as he scuttled under the bush. The vole darted out, the woglet after it, and then he made a new sound, a warm cooing that one’s mother might make, if one were a small and timid vole, and the vole turned to look, and was caught. The woglet advanced, step by step, until it was even with the vole, and then it pounced.

  Belatedly Dorie realized that a small circle had formed around them—this interaction was rapidly becoming more interesting than arrested artists. Her encouragement to look away would only get her so far—she and the wyvern were being far too interesting. Woglet devoured the tasty parts of the vole in rapid succession, and Dorie knelt near him. “Come on back,” she said with mounting frustration and fear, and with something long and stringy dangling from his mouth, he obeyed, flapping back to her arm. He tipped his neck up and with one long slurp sucked down the last morsel. Dorie-as-Dorian looked at him, exasperated fondness lighting her face.

  And then all the flashbulbs went off.

  Chapter 6

  THE QUEEN’S LAB

  Dorie is nine, and so is Tam. The pair of them run wild through the broken-down house, the house with the bombed-out wing that there will never be enough money to have restored. Not in her parents’ lifetime, anyway. They run wild through the lawns, and then, as soon as they are sure Jane and Edward and Helen and Rook are no longer watching quite so closely, they go into the forest.

  Dorie treasures these brief visits with her city cousin. There is no one else who understands her. Not only does Tam truly know who she is, he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter to him. He doesn’t run away from her.

  F
or Tam, Dorie’s fey side falls under the category of parental damage. His father, his real father, was in a drunken car accident when he was five, an accident that killed his mother. Then a fey took over his father and impersonated him, eventually destroying its host. So Tam remembers his father as first a lax drunkard, then a rotten dictator, and though he tries to remind himself the second one wasn’t his father, it’s all jumbled up and impossible to sort out. Sure, he was later adopted by Helen and Rook. But you carry those scars. And he knows that she carries her scars, and they aren’t her fault any more than his are. In order to make peace with his own past, he has to make hers okay, too, or perhaps simply realizing that she, too, has a past, makes it easier for him to ignore his. He thinks that in some strange way her history is bound up in his, but he never says anything like this. All that happens on the surface, between them, is that they don’t give two bits for each other’s damage. They let it go.

  And if sometimes Tam wakes screaming in his bed, she goes in to comfort him, and they don’t wake any of the parents. And if sometimes Dorie pranks the maid or the postman, he just looks at her. And she makes it right again.

  —T. L. Grimsby, Dorie & Tam: A Mostly True Story

  * * *

  Jack rousted Dorie from a hard-won sleep. She had been dreaming of her childhood, running wild with Tam, and now those memories melted away as she sat up. It was morning and the summer sun was already baking her side of the room. So much for the temperate climate—would the heat wave never break? “Woglet!” Dorie said, and then found him curled in a sunbeam, in a nest around her feet. Girl feet—she must have shifted back in the night. Woglet seemed not to care what state she was in. Mother or father—it was all the same to him.

  “He woke me around six chasing down a mouse,” Jack said. “And that’s after the mouse he ate when we got home last night.”

  “Better than a cat?” offered Dorie hopefully.