Copperhead

by Tina Connolly

  “Things must be bad if they’re getting their name on official legislation,” Stephen said soberly.

  “Things as in the fey?” said Frye. “Or things as in the state of the men in this country trying to make us all frightened, using the fey as an excuse so they can run things?”

  “Both,” said Stephen.

  “Whose side are you on?” put in the Professor. “Don’t tar all men with this, it’s a class problem.…”

  The argument rose and the room blurred in her sights as Helen thought: Yes, Stephen is right that things are bad. It is like poor Millicent with the perfect face and the iron mask. It would be a real danger to go out, but that did not mean Grimsby had the right to make her a prisoner in her own house. Who is this Grimsby, that my indolent husband has turned to him? That this country gives him the right to tell half of us when we can leave our house, where we can and can’t work? She spread her fingers on the tablecloth, smoothing linen wrinkles out to her saucer.

  “Well, that’s that,” said the brunette. “I’m getting down to the theatre right now to get my cancellation pay before anyone else tries it.”

  “Surely there’ll be exceptions for people who are working,” said the blonde.

  “No exceptions,” said Alberta, pointing to the notice. “It’s almost like they want us to be stuck at home, unable to earn a living.”

  “It’s exactly like that,” said Frye, her face flushed with frustration and anger.

  “If Sturm und Drang think they can replace me with a man they have another think coming,” said Alberta.

  “Saucy Solstice Spectacular! won’t need a rehearsal pianist if this news holds true,” Stephen said glumly. “You can’t have the story of three leggy dance-hall girls looking for love on the darkest day of the year without the girls.”

  “Men,” said the Professor. “Recast it all with men.”

  “Ugh,” said Alberta.

  One by one they hurried out into the November air, till all that was left was Frye and Jane and Helen and the leftover scent of blackened bacon.

  Frye sank to one of the vacated chairs, her lanky frame collapsing. “From one perspective it hardly matters,” she said. “Ticket sales were down down down on Ahoy! This is just the death knell. Those silly actors aren’t even realizing they’ve lost half their audience as well. And how many men would go see an all-male Saucy Solstice Whatnot? Just the Professor and his sort of friends, and you can’t live off of that.” Frye rubbed the heels of her hands over tired eyes, smearing the remnants of olive eyeshadow around. Then she rocked her chair back and gently nudged Jane, who was still flat on the divan. “But I guess it’s finally a good time for me to do the facelift,” she said. “I’m so glad you’ve come home safe.”

  “Urggh,” said Jane, eyes still closed.

  “She’s not safe yet,” Helen said in a low voice to Frye. It felt odd, speaking for her older sister when she was right there, but Jane was not exactly standing up and taking charge of things, either.

  Frye took a closer look at the prone figure on the divan. “What happened?”

  “Lack of food, for starters,” said Helen. “I don’t think she’s eaten for three days.” She lowered her voice. “Which begs the question, why doesn’t she remember what happened during those three days.” To her sister she said, “Jane, tell Frye how you felt during the facelift. When the copper machine started.”

  “Like I was split in two,” Jane said hoarsely. “Torn right down the center like a paper doll. And no, I don’t remember much about the warehouse, but I can hear you talking about me.” She struggled to sit up. “I think I could try some water again.”

  Frye’s penciled eyebrows arched high at the sight of Jane’s bare face with the reddened lines where the iron strips had been. In the daylight the lines looked raised, scarred. Helen wondered if they would ever fade. Frye’s jade-green nails gripped Helen’s sleeve. “Do you think … could you have been taken over by a fey?”

  Jane glared. “No.”

  Helen shook her head as she gave Jane the water. “I don’t see how it could be. If a fey takes you over it’s stuck there till either you or it dies. It can’t go in and out. When a fey tried to take me over, it immediately started erasing me. In a matter of seconds I would have been gone for good.”

  Frye sighed. “It makes me wish I’d done that facelift when you asked,” she said. “But there’s always one more audition, one more show, one last party.…”

  “Facelift?” said Jane. She looked sharply at Helen. “You’ve been helping me, haven’t you?”

  Helen suddenly beamed, for she had. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve got you three convinced already. More to follow, I’m sure.”

  “Three in one day,” said Jane, and there was respect in her voice. “Good.” She clutched the water glass and her eyes grew fierce. “Yet not enough. We have to do all the facelifts. Immediately.”

  Helen and Frye looked at each other. “Jane, honey, you’re not well enough,” began Frye.

  Jane shook her head. “I will be. I have to. I need the women to go to the warehouse, where their faces are. I need everyone.”

  “How are their faces in the warehouse?” said Helen. “It looked as though they were stolen from your apartment.”

  “Nonsense; they’re not stolen. They’ve been taken to the warehouse,” said Jane positively. “Rows and rows and rows of them, looking at you with their black blank eyes. Now you must bring them to their faces. All The Hundred women. I need all of them, to match them up.”

  “Okay,” Helen soothed, for she had seen no such rows and rows as Jane described. “I know. They’re not safe, are they?”

  “You’re not listening,” said Jane, and she lurched to her feet, steadying herself on Helen’s chair. “They’re not safe, Helen, listen to what I’m saying. They’re not safe.”

  “I am listening,” said Helen. “Please sit back down.” She helped her sister back to the divan and said, “Oh, Jane, please be reasonable with yourself. You need food and rest. You don’t even know what happened to Millicent.…” She trailed off, thinking again that the shock would be too much for Jane.

  “Who, Mrs. Grimsby?” said Jane. “Oh, Mr. Grimsby has her. He’s taking good care of her. She’ll be right as rain.”

  “You mean … is she out of the fey sleep then? But she shouldn’t be with Mr. Grimsby. She was trying to get away from him,” Helen said. “We all were, and now there you were in a warehouse that he must know about, because it had his invention in it.” She rather thought she might like to lie down on a divan herself. “Now look. You said Millicent told you something. About a Fey King, and a plot, yes?”

  Jane looked sideways at her, rubbing her forehead. “How much did I tell you?”

  “Just that,” Helen said, thinking back. “That another fey might be following through on the dead queen’s plot to infiltrate the city.” Helen worried her fingers together. “Oh, but Jane, you don’t even know. Niklas and Edward both confirmed it. Maybe this fey is planning to invade one of The Hundred. Or already has. We need to get them changed back. But we need their old faces.”

  “At the warehouse,” said Jane. “Oh, my head.”

  “But why there? It doesn’t sound safe,” said Helen.

  Jane sank down into her chair, fingers gouging into her temples. “Don’t be silly, Helen. I know far more about this than you. The warehouse belongs to Mr. Grimsby alone. The rest of Copperhead doesn’t know anything about it. And Mr. Grimsby’s spending all of his days at Parliament now. So all you have to do is bring The Hundred to the warehouse tomorrow at noon. I’ll do them all at once. Safety in numbers.”

  Helen looked at Frye. Frye said, “Well, I don’t have a show to go to anymore.…”

  “If we get The Hundred,” said Helen to Jane, “will you stay here and sleep? You clearly haven’t recovered from whatever that horrible machine did to you.” She raised eyebrows at Frye in request.

  “Of course you can and will stay here,” said Frye. “F
ais comme chez toi.”

  “Mmm, and I already did,” said Helen, gesturing at the knit dress. “I hardly know you and here I am borrowing your clothes. But I split the seams of my skirt crawling in that warehouse.”

  “You should wear trousers,” said Frye.

  Helen laughed. “Well. Maybe.” Frye still looked at her, and so she finally said, “I don’t think yours would fit me, though, and even I know I shouldn’t spend today altering slacks.” It would be an interesting problem, she thought; she hadn’t ever attempted to adapt slacks to fit and flatter hips.

  Frye waved this aside. “Sometimes I think I’m storing half the theatrical wardrobes in the city,” she said. “I’ll see if I have something. Now Jane, I’m going to tuck you in the attic with toast and broth and a dirty book and then Helen and I will go find your women. I still have my fey face, so that extra charisma should help. I can be quite charming when I try.”

  Helen shook her head, slowly, resolutely. If this was going to work there was more to it than this. And sometimes, like fixing Alistair, maybe you just had to step in and start fixing situations, or at least sorting them out. “I can’t,” she said. “Frye, if you’ll let me direct you—?”

  “That’s what actors are for.”

  “I’ll give you Jane’s journal and explain everything I know about it. Then you’re in charge of getting all the women together. You and your charisma.” Helen looked at her sister dubiously. Jane was staring off into space, fingers delicately tracing the raised pink line on her jaw where the iron had been. “Hopefully Jane can help if anything in the journal needs interpreting.”

  “And you?” said Frye.

  “I’m going to the dwarvven slums,” Helen said. “And find out what a certain dwarvven spy knows about all this.”

  Chapter 10

  DWARFSLUM

  Helen went straight to the statue of Queen Maud on the pier. She was sure now it wasn’t coincidence that Rook had mentioned it at Frye’s party. Not when Alistair mentioned Jane being spotted there, and then Jane turning up at the factory a half-block away. Besides, there was Alistair’s insistence that Rook was a spy. That he was working for Grimsby all along—and more than the nebulous other business Rook had admitted to. Helen cringed, thinking of her frank admissions to Rook.

  Helen didn’t know if she could trust Rook—but him being a spy did not seem the sort of thing Alistair would lie about. Rook must be entangled with Copperhead somehow. He must know more than he was telling.

  The area was rough. Even Frye, who had cheerfully gone down to the section of the waterfront where Jane’s nasty flat was, had warned Helen not to go to the dwarvven slums. “It doesn’t matter what he did or didn’t know,” Frye said. “Stay here and feed Jane chicken broth. I’ll get those women for you.”

  Helen wished she could have taken Frye up on her offer. Yet something drove her on, so now she was here, walking through the rough alleys in a dress of peacock blue, carrying a little letter-opener of Frye’s as though it would protect her from harm.

  Dwarvven or human, the men mostly looked tired, she thought. Hopefully she wouldn’t encounter trouble, especially since there was no slim black-clad man walking beside her tonight to save her from her own folly.

  As if in response to that thought, a man sitting on a bench across the street looked over at her perfect face, caught her eye.

  Look away, she thought fiercely. Look away. She had loved the attention at first; she had loved suddenly having that power over every single person she saw. But now, when she was tired and miserable and afraid … look away.

  Perhaps her fierce expression warned the man off, for he went back to staring at his grimy hands, picking at them as if to worry some splinter free.

  But he wasn’t the only one.

  She stared some men down, boldly, trusted in the power of her face and warded them away. It was not a skillful application of the power, as she had done with Alistair, changing his motives, changing his soul. It was merely the fey glamour she’d had for six months, with a little extra oomph behind it. Let your gaze slide away.

  But she could feel the gazes pressing in from all sides, and finally she couldn’t take the tension anymore. She picked one out, a man leaning against a crumbling brick building. He was perhaps the roughest-looking of all—bigger and wider than Alistair, who was a tall man. His gaze flicked across the street, idling time, just waiting for a mark to come into his vicinity.

  Helen walked straight to him.

  The man looked down at her, his face an interesting cross between leering and disbelief. “Well, look what dropped into my lap,” he said in a soft rumble.

  Helen’s heart was a sledgehammer on her ribs. She had only tried something this complicated with Alistair, whom she knew intimately. What ridiculous thing was she doing now? Breathe. “I need protection from here to the dwarvven neighborhood,” she said. “I’m told it isn’t far. Here’s something for your trouble.” She took several coins from the inner pocket of her coat and dropped them into his palm. They disappeared inside his fist, but he made no further move.

  The leer intensified. “And what makes you think—?”

  Helen didn’t have time for this. “You will take me now,” she said, and put the full force of her will behind it. Her fingers closed around her copper hydra necklace, her talisman.

  The man straightened up. “Yes’m,” he said. “This way.”

  He strode stiffly down the block, as if his legs weren’t completely under his control. Which they weren’t, Helen reflected with satisfaction. Her knees shook with relief. She could get used to this. Fix anyone who threatened her or her friends. Fix Alistair to be the husband she had thought he would be. Perhaps after Jane restored Millicent to herself, Helen could even fix Grimsby, make him into a good husband for Millicent. Her power suffused her, overwhelmed her. Perhaps a great many of The Hundred could do with her help. Would she or Millicent have changed their faces without their husbands’ insistence? And now she could solve that for them. She could fix all those husbands, every last one.

  The man stopped at what looked like an entrance to a junk shop. “Right here, ma’am,” he said.

  “This is a store,” Helen said, suddenly worried that she had messed him up with her power.

  The big man actually grinned. “It is that.” He pointed. “Through the back.”

  Helen went inside the dim store with some trepidation. Maybe she just thought she had changed him but she hadn’t at all. Maybe there were men here ready to capture her and sell her off. Her mind created a million dramatic scenarios until she realized she was looking at a very small woman behind the dilapidated wooden counter.

  “Er,” said Helen. “I’m trying to find an acquaintance. He’s dwarvven. Part.”

  The woman shrugged. “So?” She crossed her arms and Helen saw the chain mail glint at her wrists.

  The store had no lighting, electric or otherwise—the only illumination came from the greasy windows. The back of the shop was curtained off in a patchwork of repurposed fabrics. As Helen watched, a line of ten short men came out from behind the curtain, stomped gruffly past, and vanished out the front door.

  She was sure they couldn’t have all been back there. The shop must indeed lead to where the dwarvven lived. But how …

  Helen’s eyes widened. “The compound’s underground,” she said.

  The woman shrugged again.

  “I need to speak with someone,” persisted Helen. “How do I do that? Can’t I go back there and find him?”

  “No.”

  “Can I leave him a note?” Helen’s gaze swept the shop. She realized that it actually was a shop, not just items in the windows for pretend. In the dim light it appeared to be all secondhand stuff—a lot of metal implements. But fully one quarter of the store was piled high with used books of all shapes and sizes for the dwarvven, who notoriously loved to read. It was hard to be frightened of a pint-size woman who ran a bookstore, but Helen figured she’d better stay on guard no
netheless.

  The woman finally came back with a full sentence. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Rook,” said Helen, aware that it might not do her any favors. The dwarvven weren’t any kinder to mixed race than the humans were.

  “I think you’d better leave,” said the woman.

  “He wants to see me,” said Helen, and though it was not strictly true she thought it might as well be.

  “I’ve no instructions on the matter,” said the woman, and her arms stayed folded. Knowing the stubbornness of the dwarvven, Helen thought she might stay there till doomsday. She almost turned, and then she remembered.

  She could fix this woman. She could make her change.

  It was for a good cause, wasn’t it? Helen bore down on the woman, saying with all her will, “You will let me in.”

  But the woman only snorted. “Think fey tactics will work on me? Now you’re never getting in.”

  Helen stopped, embarrassed at being caught. She did not even have the nerve to apologize. She turned to go—and then a young man came through the curtain. A man who suddenly seemed tall in comparison to the others. “Rook!” she said.

  “It’s okay, Looth,” he said. “She’s with me.”

  The woman watched Helen the whole way back past the booth and through the curtain.

  Rook led her around piles of junk, boxes and furniture and more stacks of books, until they reached a door that appeared to lead to an ordinary cellar. He motioned her in front of him and said under his breath, “I’m sorry for the way they act.”

  “You can’t blame them,” said Helen. She picked her way down the crumbling stone stairs. A few lights strung here and there lit patches of the tunnel with a faint yellow glow. They appeared to be getting into the remains of an old sewer system, long ago cut off from the new city plumbing. It was quite dank, but it did not smell any worse than mold. She put her wrist to her nose, breathing in the lavender scent of Frye’s dress, and below that, her own citrusy smell from Frye’s soap.

  “Of course you can,” said Rook. They reached the bottom of the stairs and he took her hand and pulled her along by the light of his electric flashlight. They were walking along a stone embankment; below them rainwater washed slowly along the old stone tunnels, heading out to sea. Marking the tunnels were painted symbols in different colors—they must form a map of sorts, but Helen could not see any pattern to them. “If they’re justified in hating you simply for being human, then you’re justified in hating them for being not,” Rook said. “Copperhead is justified in their hatred. You can’t legitimize hatred.”