Silverblind (Ironskin) (21 page)

Dorie came in and shut the door behind her. “I need to borrow the incubator with the other three eggs,” she said. “For, um. Tests. Before tomorrow.”

Tam pointed a distracted finger at where the incubator was hidden behind a pile of papers. Just like that. “Let me know what you turn up.”

She couldn’t do anything but nod mutely. He trusted her. Oh, heavens, he trusted her.

“Tomorrow is Saturday, isn’t it?” said Tam. Dorie nodded. “Well then. We’ll take all four wyvern chicks back to the country and try the catch-and-release with unbonded woglets.” His eyes lit up behind his specs. “Such an opportunity. Do you mind if we poke around and see if we see anything matching that girl’s stories?”

About the basilisk, he meant. “Why not?” She picked up the incubator and moved to the door. She had promised herself last night she would tell him today. She should tell him now, before she left with those eggs in tow. Because he trusted her. “Buster still doing okay?” she said instead.

“Quite belligerent,” Tam said. “Only acknowledges me with hisses. Unresponsive to whistling, but he liked the piano.” He looked somewhere past the spider, unfocused. “I suppose if tomorrow is Saturday, today is Friday?”

“It must be.”

“If you’re sure the next egg won’t be ready till dawn, then I’m going to be out late tonight.” He did not look at her.

“No, dawn tomorrow it is,” Dorie managed. He must be meeting Annika. For a late, late date. Her heart sank to her ribs. “See you then.”

He whistled as she left the room, eggs in tow.

*   *   *

She couldn’t take an egg to Malcolm Stilby. She couldn’t.

But what else was she to do?

At eleven-thirty Dorie left the lab and walked all the way to Malcolm’s, fire raging over her choices. At the end of his block she stopped, sat down on a bench. She was a traitor if she took him an egg—a traitor to the Crown, to the fey, to the ironskin. To the wyverns. To Tam. To herself.

But if she didn’t take him one she was a traitor to Jack, who didn’t deserve to lose her apartment over Dorie’s moral conundrums.

She stood, walking briskly toward the front door before she could change her mind. She was at the bottom of Malcolm’s steps when she stopped again. Woglet cooed on her shoulder, rubbing her ear, and she reached up to pet him. Her fingers skritched behind his wings and he burbled, and she knew it was no use. She couldn’t go through with it.

She turned, and as she did, the door opened and the tall butler from the day before gestured her inside. Inside she could clearly see Malcolm Stilby.

Rage smeared his face at the sight of her wyvern, and as quickly was gone.

But Dorie knew what she had seen. She backed up a step.

“Come in, come in, Mr. Eliot,” he said. “I want to discuss with you the small matter of your picture in the newspaper.” His voice held implicit threat and she took one more step away.

“You can discuss it with me on the front step or not at all,” she said gruffly, trying not to let her voice shake. There was no way she was going in there, especially not with a baby wyvern and three eggs. Oh, why had she even tried this?

“Mr. Eliot, be reasonable,” Malcolm said. He came to the doorstep, wrapping his lounging robe tighter. Given that it was now lunchtime, she wondered if he ever changed out of it. “I am a perfectly understanding man. I do not own you, nor any of those who work for me. No contracts, no penalties like the Crown would impose. I just am curious why, if you were not interested in bringing me the … items we mentioned, that you would have come to me at all. I very much dislike the idea that someone is spying on me, you see.”

“I wasn’t,” said Dorie. With an effort she remained calm, careless. A sure-of-himself young man. “This was an accident,” she said, pointing at Woglet. “I was trying to bring you an egg I found, but he hatched before I could get back into town.”

“Ah,” Malcolm said. He looked calmer now—pulled a loose cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “You have to forgive me, Dorian. I heard an odd tale this morning from one of my other boys. Some drunk man came wheeling into a tavern where they were last night, going on about a couple of boys who’d just healed his daughter with some sort of flying lizard egg. But I suppose, come to think on it, I saw your picture with the wyvern in the paper on Wednesday morning, and this is Friday. So your wyvern could hardly be from the egg that hatched last night.”

“No, it couldn’t,” said Dorie. “Obviously.” She was relieved that she had had Woglet in the purse when they entered Alice’s flat last night. Angry at the girl’s father. Colin had sworn the family to secrecy—they had been there to
help
! And now …

“Well then,” Malcolm said. “Were you coming to bring me something?” He nodded at the incubator in her hand.

“Uh, no,” Dorie lied quickly. “I was just on my way out to the forest for the day to try again. Coming to ask you if you knew anything about, um”—she threw out the first creature that came to mind—“basilisks?”

Malcolm laughed. “Find me a basilisk and you can ask for the moon. They’ve been extinct for three hundred years. Wishful stories in that
Fey Tales
book to the contrary.”

“Oh,” said Dorie. She thought back to her conversations with Tam. “I heard there was a basilisk skeleton somewhere. In some collector’s house.”

Malcolm nodded. “Malformed wyvern, the scientists say these days. I think they’re wrong. It’s the real deal—just long dead. I mean, some people used to wonder if they hibernated. Because they would disappear for decades, and then be spotted, and then disappear. But this is my profession, to know what’s out there, eh? And I think two centuries without a basilisk seems like no more basilisks. But I’m always willing to be proven wrong … in this sort of matter, anyway. Hey, do you want me to unload that wyvern on your shoulder? Rate’s a good deal less than an egg, but he looks like a pretty healthy specimen.”

“No, I’m good,” said Dorie, taking one more step away. “I’m actually hoping he can help me find more eggs.”

Malcolm snorted. “Good luck with that,” he said. His eyes narrowed as she turned to go down the stairs, and she wondered if she had really covered her tracks. “Oh, Dorian,” he said, as she reached the bottom. “Do let me know if you need any help, won’t you? I’m always happy to organize a team to go into a prime location.”

She swallowed and nodded.

And as soon as she could, she blended into a crowd with her best
don’t-look-at-me
. Looked over her shoulder all the way back to the lab.

*   *   *

Dorie trudged back to her desk, despondent. The landlady’s deadline of noon had come and gone, and she had failed. Walking to Malcolm’s and back had taken more than a standard lunch hour. She had told the lab she was headed to the library for research after lunch, and nobody really checked up on you, but still, she should look like she cared about her new job. They had set aside a corner of an office for her and she should spread some papers around it or something. Not that any of it mattered. All she wanted from the Queen’s Lab was the chance to get back out in the field.

Well, that and the rent.

She was miserable enough that she thought telling Tam now couldn’t possibly make it any worse. She would return the incubator to him and tell him. But he wasn’t in his office—had gone off to do some research, she was told. She wondered if he’d gone to the Portrait Gallery to look at that basilisk.

Somehow she made it through the afternoon. She waved off offers from scientists heading out to enjoy the weekend, and tramped back to their flat. How much longer would it
be
their flat?

Dorie sighed as she trudged up the stairs to their room, the temperature rising as she climbed. The smell of linseed oil drifted into the hallway and she opened the door to find her roommate working on her latest canvas. The canvas only partially obscured the nude girl draped on the armchair in the middle of the room, asleep in the late afternoon sun.

A laugh broke through Dorie’s gloomy day as she shut the door. “And I just got reamed out for
my
morals, Jack. Our landlady only tolerates me because of that ‘nice Miss Jacqueline.’” Woglet launched himself from her shoulder and glided down to the armchair.

“I am a nice Miss Jacqueline,” Jack said calmly. “Don’t drop your foot, Stella.”

“Are you almost done, Jack?” Stella said sleepily. “I’ve got to get to my evening tutoring.” A coo from Woglet made her suddenly sit up and notice Dorie, and her look of shock made Dorie realize she was still in boyshape. Stella blushed as she grabbed her clothes, but all she said was, “You might have knocked.”

“I am so sorry,” Dorie said, embarrassed by her forgetfulness. She turned to face the door.

Jack snorted as she set down her brush. “Yes, yes. You can go. Can I get one more session tomorrow sometime?”

“Sunday I can,” Stella said. Dorie could hear her unhurried motions as she dressed. “Will you get the passes for me for next Friday, though? My mother’s in town and I swore in blood I’d take her to your aunt’s nightclub.”

“That should be easy, since I’ll have to be there all week,” said Jack in a voice packed with meaning. “I’ll even comp you a drink.”

Dorie wondered what exactly that meant. She didn’t like the sound of it.

“That would be lovely,” said Stella, and then in a raised pitch to Dorie she drawled, “You’re safe now.”

Dorie turned around to find the tiny girl fully clothed in shirt and skirt, patting Woglet on the head. Stella had regained her composure, and Dorie thought it likely that she was the red one now.

“Toodles,” Stella said, and sauntered past Dorie and out the door, waving her fingers.

“I think she likes you,” said Jack as the door closed.

Dorie reddened further. “You know what Stella’s like.”

“I do,” Jack said quietly, returning to her brushes.

Dorie went to look at Jack’s canvas. It was another beautifully rendered figure study, like all of Jack’s work. From the angle you couldn’t quite tell if Stella was
dwarvven
or if it was just a big armchair. “That’s funny,” said Dorie. “Because scale is such a thing with Stella—I mean, the Pig has stools, but not all places think about the
dwarvven,
you know? Like the post office, or the desks at school. And then does she need help with a trolley seat, or if we’re not around, is she going to bat her eyes at some man, and so on. But you can’t tell what the scale is here.”

“Hmm,” was all Jack said.

Woglet hopped over to the cabinets, where he had been having good luck finding mice. Dorie plopped down in the vacated armchair, thinking about their finances.

Finally Jack said, “My aunt stopped by this afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Miss Bates telephoned her about the rent. We’re through, Dorie.”

Dorie slumped.

“Aunt Alberta will cover our rent, but I have to start training under her.”

“You can’t do that. You’re so talented.”

Jack threw her brushes into the cup. “So what? I can’t get a break. Even the nudie mag won’t pay what we owe. I’ve been scrounging food off of friends, I’m out of Alizarin crimson and lampblack
and
white; how can you do anything without white now and then? I tried to go paint by the harbor but with the heat wave everyone who can afford to buy art fled the city for the shore, and I can’t afford fare to go to the shore. Forget trying to have a breakthrough. I can’t paint, period. We’re through.”

“I’m sorry,” Dorie said helplessly, over and over. She had had Jack’s salvation in her hands and she threw it away for her own pride. She might have broken down in tears, even, except Dorie Rochart did not cry. She gouged her temples with her fingers until the pressure behind her eyes subsided. She looked up to find Jack looking at her with reluctant sympathy.

“Well,” said Jack. “Water under the bridge. I can still paint in the afternoons when The Supper Club’s closed. And my aunt’s going to teach me to drive her ancient car—maybe we can borrow it and get out of this hot city for a day off.” She put a hand on Dorie’s shoulder. “I know you’ve been trying. You’re exhausted, too. And it’s got to be hard staying a boy all the time—isn’t it?”

Dorie nodded.

“Look. My aunt’s breaking me in easy,” Jack said. “She could have started me off today with maraschino cherry negotiations, but instead she wants me to go listen to a musician for the club. I mean, it’s not all altruism—she keeps promising Uncle Léon she’ll go on a date with him occasionally instead of putting out fires at the club and she never does. Point is, you’re coming with me. We’ll go get something to eat.”

“All right,” Dorie said with relief. She had not realized till that second how tense the strain had been. She let go, sagging, and her muscles and joints and bones melted, reshaped, softened back up into little blond Dorie. She had never been so happy to see her porcelain doll face, and at the same time, there was an overlay of regret as Dorian’s wry charm with its broken nose and banged-up leg melted away.

Perhaps, when all of this was over, and she was ready to be simply Dorie again, she could be not
simply
Dorie, but a changed Dorie. She could meld the best of both worlds: be a girl again but with the stamp of her heritage on her face, with the marks of her life visible.

“There,” she said to Jack, and Jack laughed.

“I know you’ve gotten used to Dorian’s clothes—and heaven knows
I
don’t care if you go in drag, but at least go in drag suitable for a club.”

“Ah,” said Dorie. “Right.” Jack herself was busy pulling a flared red dress out of the tiny shared closet, so it looked like dresses were the order of the day. Dorie grabbed the first dress she touched on her side of the closet and put it on. Another of Aunt Helen’s discards that hadn’t sold, but they all were. In the first place she didn’t care about fashion—even if she had had money she wouldn’t have spent it on clothes—and in the second, thanks to her fey mother, it didn’t matter whether she cared or not. Dresses reshaped themselves to her—or more accurately, her body reshaped itself to them. Minor adjustments, but enough to make anything remotely her size look tailored to her.