Copperhead (3 page)

Helen did not like Mr. Grimsby one bit—the Copperhead leader seemed the coldest of any of Alistair’s friends—and heaven knows none of them were worth much; but still, she was shocked. “Leave her husband?”

A small tap on the door, and before the women could react, it opened and a little boy sidled around the splintering doorframe, a jar clutched in his hand.

“Oh dear, Tam,” said Millicent Grimsby, and she sat up and hurried to the small figure at the door. She bent down so he could whisper in her ear, his hand clenched on her dark skirts. In the flicker of candlelight, the contents of the other jar appeared to be moving.

“I’m sorry,” Millicent said, standing up again. “Tam is supposed to be asleep, but he saw Miss Eliot from the staircase and wanted to ask her about her iron. He’s really a sweet child—I’m so sorry, I know it’s quite inappropriate, but you have no idea how stubborn he gets.”

“I can imagine something of it,” said Jane with a rueful smile, and she knelt by the boy, one flickering taper in hand. “My face has iron in it,” she said. “Do you want to touch it?”

Tam put his free hand to Jane’s face, considering. “What does it do?” he said.

Helen saw Jane search for an explanation, not because she was flustered—Jane was much better with small children than Helen was—but because it was complicated to explain. Jane had been an “ironskin,” one of those hit with fey shrapnel during the war who wore iron to cover the grotesque, poisonous scars. Rochart had made her a new, fey-perfect face to replace her disfigurement. Now Jane had thin iron strips set right on top of the fey skin in her face to keep the fey from taking her over. At least Helen could remove her iron mask when she was indoors, but poor Jane would never look normal again.

“The iron helps keep me safe from the fey,” Jane said at last. “Like the iron strips around your door and windows.”

Tam looked up at Mrs. Grimsby, puzzled.

“This house was built post-war,” Millicent said to the boy. “It’s too new to have iron. Your father is working on the problem, but with the fey suddenly everywhere, iron’s gone short again.”

Helen saw Jane roll her eyes at that and she hastened to intervene before Jane could go off on one of her rants about how the city folk didn’t have any sense, building without iron in the first place. “I just realized that’s a bug jar,” said Helen to the small boy. “Are you collecting bugs?”

“For my snake,” he said. “I found a little garden snake. He’s green.”

Helen shuddered in delight. “And you collect live bugs for him? My goodness.”

Tam offered her a shy smile, possibly uncertain whether she was teasing him. “Do you want to feed him one?”

“Not now, Tam.” Millicent Grimsby shook her perfect face and Helen saw again how very young she was, younger than Helen herself, who was barely eighteen and a half. (Though she felt she had aged a lifetime in the last six months; it was a mercy her fey face didn’t show eye bags and wrinkles or she was sure she would have them.)

“After we visit with your mother,” promised Helen.

“Tam is not mine,” Millicent Grimsby said quietly in response. “His mother died in a motorcar accident, poor thing. I’m the second Mrs. Grimsby, you see. Married last winter. My mother thought he was such a catch.…” Her voice trailed off, lost, and Helen overflowed with sympathy again. What kind of mother would tell this poor girl to accept frightening, fanatic Mr. Grimsby, wealthy though he might be?

“Can I stay and play with the birdcages?” said Tam.

“Oh, sweetheart,” said Millicent. She led the boy to the door and whispered something in his ear. He nodded and squeezed her fingers before plodding back down the staircase. Millicent Grimsby stared after the small disappearing form, her fingers knotted together. She wheeled and turned on Jane, her mousy form straightening, filling with iron. “You need to make them all safe, Jane,” said Millicent. She moved into the light. “Make them listen to you.”

Jane pressed Millicent’s small hands. “That’s where Helen comes in,” she said. “She’s going to help win all of The Hundred over to our cause. And soon.”

Warmth flooded a tight knot in her chest. Jane did want her to help. Jane trusted her. Jane saw that Helen was worth something. And deeper, inside—
don’t screw up this time
.

Millicent turned her big brown eyes on Helen, and even Helen, with her own fey charm, felt the fey allure. “I’m so glad you’re on our side,” Millicent said. “You know what it’s really like to be attacked by the fey. You can be a real leader of the cause.”

Jane
was the real leader, thank goodness, but Helen was not about to rile up Millicent before the dangerous surgery. “Of course I will,” she said easily. “But did you say you’re going to run away?” She could see it now, little Millicent and her small frightened boy, in flight, on the run. A dangerous mission, fleeing through the cold winter winds …

“Not
run
away,” said Jane. “She is her own person and Mr. Grimsby does not own her. We are leaving for her own good.”

Helen waved semantics aside. “And it
must
be tonight,” she added, seizing onto the new plan. “Mr. Grimsby won’t let Millicent have her iron mask, so she can’t leave on her own. She needs your help.”

Jane nodded. “I must make her safe and then we need to go, now, while we still can. We’ll take Tam with us. You will go downstairs and pretend not to know a thing.”

“I am excellent at that,” said Helen. She turned back and said, “Wait, though. What’s this about convincing The Hundred
soon
? These things take time, you know.”

Millicent and Jane exchanged a significant glance as Millicent got back into position on the daybed. “There’s movement afoot,” Jane said. “Things are about to come to a head.”

“Things?”

Jane whispered over Millicent’s body. “The fey, Helen. The fey are rising again. Some follower of the dead Fey Queen, we think, has riled up the fey—is planning to infiltrate the city just as the Fey Queen had planned, by taking over the women. We can’t allow this opening for a foothold. We need every one of The Hundred safe as soon as possible.” Jane looked at Millicent for confirmation, who nodded. Jane stretched out a hand and laid it on Helen’s, a reverse of when Helen used to comfort her during times of ironskin stress. “But the walls have ears … and we must hurry to get Millicent and her son out of here. Come to my flat tonight after the meeting and I’ll tell you the rest. You promise?”

Helen was not at all sure how her plan to give Millicent back her face had snowballed into Helen going down to the wharf to find Jane’s flat in the frostbitten November night, but she nodded to quick skip over the part where people wanted her to promise things. Promises were such cold, hard-hearted, rigid things.

Millicent Grimsby lay down. Then she sat up, took Helen’s hands, and squeezed them. “You won’t let him find out you helped me escape, will you?”

“Who, Mr. Huntingdon?” said Helen, startled by the woman’s concern. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Millicent set her lips and nodded.

“Now just relax,” said Helen.

Millicent Grimsby lay back down, closing her eyes. Her thin hands clenched the sheets, the knuckles white.

Jane carefully took some of the precious fey-infused clay from the water bag inside the carpetbag and smeared a thin layer on her hands, adding to the power she could control. Jane placed one hand on Millicent’s forehead and one hand on her heart, till the woman’s eyes fluttered, and finally stopped. Her breathing and heartbeat slowed.

Then she was as still as marble.

“One hundred of them,” Helen said softly.

“And you’re key to this,” said Jane. “You have one purpose for the next week. Convince every last one of them. Be single-minded. I’ll do the rest.”

Helen swallowed. “But what if—?”

“No buts,” said Jane. “I’ve got my own plans that have to happen. Scalpel, please, and then you’d better go. You’ll need an alibi—isn’t that what the detectives call it?”

Helen wiped the scalpel with carbolic disinfectant and passed the handle to Jane. In her fey trance, the woman seemed like a lifeless doll, as if there had never been a mind activating that beautiful, silent face.

*   *   *

The crowd downstairs was on recess as Grimsby and stoop-shouldered Morse fiddled with the machine under the sheet. It might be a meeting, but it was still society. The earthy smell of liver pâté trickled by as more of the homely maids passed canapés and drinks. What was this fashion for unpleasant-faced girls? thought Helen. But she supposed it was Grimsby’s grim fanaticism again. Fey had always been drawn to beauty in humans—the faces that The Hundred wore were fey-beautiful. The ugliness of the serving girls was proof. No fey here. Grimsby himself was perhaps the perfect Copperhead leader in that regard. He had a hard, unfriendly look, and his features were too sharp and jutting to be at all pleasant.

No fey here.

Nervous energy coursed through her as she wended her way through the crowd, smiling and nodding. As she had told Alistair, going without the mask made her the prettiest woman there, and it was obvious in the way heads turned to track her passage. Normally she would have basked in the attention—the pleasure of it hadn’t completely worn off, when among these people who hadn’t been quick to welcome her after her marriage. But tonight she did not want attention. Tonight her heart beat a steady thrum at what her sister was doing upstairs.

Helen was determined to help Jane. She remembered full well the moment of fey takeover. Only Jane’s quick action plunging an iron spike into Helen’s arm had killed the fey inside her, saved her life. Helen had roused from her fey trance a day later to find a team of the best doctors in the city hovering over her bed, waiting for any movement.

But were things really as dire as Jane had said just now? Why the sudden haste? The earliest of The Hundred had received their fey faces several years ago. They were all being very careful these days, going out with their iron masks. But all the blue bits of fey did was sit there—well, mostly. Still, surely they weren’t gearing up for some takeover of The Hundred like Jane said, like Alistair and Copperhead thought. Frankly, it would be ridiculous. What no one seemed to remember was that the Fey Queen’s plan had been to have fey
secretly
infiltrate those women and men and land themselves in influential positions, ready to take over from the inside. You couldn’t secretly infiltrate if everyone knew you were coming, could you?

And Helen was determined to help Jane, to convince the women Jane couldn’t. But quickly? She thought through some of the women she knew off the top of her head—the self-absorbed wife of the prime minister, there in grey. (She had not sacrificed her apricot-hued shoes, though.) Stubborn Alice Pennyfeather. Close-minded Lady Dalrymple. All transformed from their workaday selves into ethereally beautiful women, and their social status similarly elevated. Even with the iron masks, The Hundred ran the social scene. No, as much as Helen liked a good intrigue, even she was sensible enough to know that she would need more time than a few days.

The men straightened up, the crowd herded back to their seats. They squashed onto the long benches, stood in the makeshift aisles, ranged long legs along the windowsill. There was silence, and in it Grimsby said quietly, “This is what you have come to see.”

The cloth was whisked away to reveal a strange device. The center was a large copper ball, full of ridges and rivets. It looked like claws clasping each other, or perhaps snakes that writhed over the copper ball. It was held firmly in an open cube of iron, crisscrossed with wrought iron that curlicued in a curious pattern. In the front of the box was a child-sized door.

“In this box,” said Grimsby, “I have trapped a fey.”

Murmurs, tremors. Men who would shout if it weren’t improper.

With a great creaking and grinding, the copper ball slowly opened its interlocking layers. Inside hovered a blue ball of light. When the copper was completely opened, the light burst out of the ball and flung itself at the open door of the iron box.

The guests shrieked and ducked.

But the blue light did not seem to be able to pass beyond the threshold. It thudded to a stop right at the boundary of the open door. Then it launched itself at the side wall, coming to a stop a hairsbreadth from the wrought iron. Back, forth, up and down, till it was spinning around and around the cage with savage ferocity.

“There, you see?” said Alistair. “Completely trapped.”

“And well-deserved,” shouted someone from a bench, someone who had had too much wine.

“It’s beautiful,” whispered Helen, so quietly that no one could hear her. No one must, or could have, and yet next to her was a slight man in black, and he gave one short sharp nod, not looking at her. But that could be about anything.

Her fingers twisted her handkerchief as if to tear it. How far along were Jane and Millicent? So long to carefully take off the current face, so long to press down the old face and bind it in place, so long to return Millicent from that still-as-death sleep. Helen’s fingers wanted to burst out of her hands, fly like birds to check on the women, flutter at Mr. Grimsby, claw his eyes out for being so hateful to poor Millicent.…

“I captured this fey by using one piece of a fey as a seed,” said Grimsby. “The machine finds all the other pieces of that particular fey and draws them in, restoring the whole fey to itself.” He grinned cruelly. “Ironically enough, it runs on fey power.”

“And then that fey you captured can be destroyed forever,” put in Alistair, his face sharp and blue in the glow. “Show them, Grimsby.”

A hint of malice crept across Grimsby’s face at Alistair’s words. Now he bent his tall bony frame to the machine. If he had made it, why didn’t he make it to measure, thought Helen, for Grimsby seemed like some kind of strange praying mantis folded around too-small prey.

A switch—a thrum as the machine turned on. The blue light keened with pain. It mutated wildly, turning itself into all manner of things—a frog, a tree, a sparrow. A face, shining out of the light—low gasps as it formed the face of a small child, tears running down its face. “Help me,” it said, and the words thrummed inside Helen’s skull. She felt a tremendous compulsion to run over and let that child free—and by the looks of it, many of the others felt that, too.