Silverblind (Ironskin) (33 page)

“They’re different,” he said. “The stories all say stronger, but that’s not really it. Wyvern albumen kills fey. But basilisk albumen controls them without harming them. I think that if you used it, you could control the fey in this building.”

“So I could control
me,
” she said sarcastically.

“You could control the lights. The power. The magnetized locks. The alarms. This whole building runs on fey power, Dorie. You call the fey to you and we can walk out that door.”

Dorie looked at him with astonishment.

Finally he sighed and said, “Annika and I have both been working for the government for a couple of months. Old Pearcey knows all about it. What he doesn’t know was that I was … a double agent, I guess you’d say, except that implies I have a team, which I don’t. Mother had gotten wind of this business with enslaving all the fey, and she and Dad encouraged me to get as close as I felt comfortable to try to find out what was going on.”

He uncapped the vial and she stared at it. “Even if you’re right.”
Even if you’re telling the truth.
“I don’t really
want
to have that power. I don’t want to be like Annika.”

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to walk out of this building without it,” he said. “The stairwell door is locked, and so is the door to Stella’s room.”

And they couldn’t leave without Stella. If Tam was telling the truth, he’d had her transferred here specifically so Dorie could rescue her friend. Her fingers closed on the glass.

She wanted to be convinced of his honesty, oh, how she wanted to. Her heart beat a mile a minute. Was this the ultimate betrayal? There was not much albumen left in the vial—he was probably telling the truth that he had tested it on the fey.

But what had he really found out?

She tilted her head back. One drop hovered on the tip of the vial.

Dorie watched it fall.

Chapter 15

THE WAY THROUGH

Fey substance is a mixed bag. It can be a curse, or a blessing, or both. When the fey took Adora’s cousin, they were bound to give him something in return. Perhaps she did not realize, for she was caught up in self-blame. But the fey work in their own ways, and they keep their old bargains. Everything had to be fairly paid for, including a young man with a voice like the birds whom they had tricked into staying with them.

—Thomas Lane Grimsby,
Silverblind: The Story of Adora Rochart

*   *   *

The basilisk albumen felt strangely cool in her eye, like putting aloe on a burn.

She did not grow dizzy, or faint, or die. It did not even sting, as it seemed to have done Annika. Small blessings.

Everything shimmered silver as the albumen settled in. Dorie shied away from her reflection in the mirror. One more step away from her self. She focused on the lights; located the bluepack running them. If these bluepacks were like the ones they had seen the men making in the forest, then they were different than the old bluepacks, which were not bound by anything other than honor, by the Fey Queen’s order to be split. These were enveloped in a coating of feywort and wyvern substance and who knows what else in such a way that the bit of fey could not wriggle free. It must be a very small proportion of the wyvern goo, she thought, to bind without killing. Or perhaps the coating
was
killing the bound-up fey, very slowly. Wouldn’t that just be ironic?

But basilisk goo controlled the fey. Controlled it when it could no longer control itself. She had to believe that—she had to believe in
him
. She focused on the bluepack that ran the bathroom lights, and
pulled
. The blue bit of fey wriggled free from the copper casing, from the wyvern coating.

As it did the lights flicked off and they were left in darkness, except for the faint blue shimmer of a bit of fey darting around, excited to be free.

They had done it. It would work.

Tam seized her arm in the darkness. “You’ve got it,” he said fiercely. “Now act natural.” He propelled her out of the restroom and down the hall to another locked door. “Call the fey out of that,” he said. She did, and the magnetic lock broke free. Tam pushed the door open to reveal a small girl perched neatly on a stool, writing busily in a notebook. One lock of her ponytail swung around her face, but otherwise she did not look a bit inconvenienced by being in confinement for a day.

Stella looked up as Dorie stepped inside the room. “’Bout time,” she said, pushing the lock of hair behind her ear. “Dorie—your eye!”

“Long story,” Dorie said awkwardly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Stella cocked her head at Tam as she shoved her notebook into a large purse. “I know you, don’t I?”

“This is Tam Grimsby,” said Dorie. “My cousin.”

“Technically,” said Tam. “Not by blood.”

“Of course,” said Stella. “You came by the school a few times. Boy, that was a long time ago. What were we, fourteen, fifteen? We all thought you were so cute.” She hopped off the stool, swung her heavy purse onto her shoulder. “I convinced them to let me keep my differential equations homework,” she said, “although they seemed to think I was writing secret codes. Honestly. Do they think the fey
cipher
?”

“When we leave the room, the stairway is to the left,” Tam put in. He looked a little blushy. “Dorie, you unlock it. Head down. We’re on the eighth floor—count your turns so you don’t end up in the basement. They don’t expect anyone to be able to leave this level, so if we make it to the stairwell we should be all right. There was only one man by the entrance when I came in. More of a greeter than a guard.”

“That’s all?” said Stella. “Where are the guys with guns?”

“That’s the old building. We wouldn’t stand a chance there,” said Tam. “This building is reserved for political detainees. No rough stuff.”

“Escaping would be so gauche,” muttered Dorie.

Tam poked his head out and then motioned them to hurry. They were at the stairwell when Dorie heard a noise from down the hall. A man from the room next to hers was just stepping out into the hallway. Their eyes met. “Hold up there,” he said. He started toward them.

“The stairwell, Dorie,” said Tam, but she ignored him. She reached out to all the lights in the hallway and began pulling on them as quickly as she could. She loosened them, one at a time, until the hallway was black, except for the flickers of darting blue.

Then she opened all the locks.

The doors buzzed as the locks broke open. Murmurs—shouts. People spilled out into the dark hallway, bumping into each other as they attempted to take advantage of the confusion to leave.

“Now,” Dorie said, and unlocked the stairwell door.

They tumbled through, and Dorie pulled the lights from the stairwell as they ran, so the man would have a harder time following them if he made it through the crowd. The three reached the bottom along with the sparkles of blue. Tam peeked out the door. The greeter was still sitting by the door—but standing around the desk were several silvermen, looking as though they had just come in. “The detainees’ floor,” one was saying politely, but firmly, to the greeter.

The man led them to the elevator, his medallion out. “They’re on eight,” he said. “I’ll buzz you through.”

“We should go when their backs are turned,” whispered Stella. Her set expression was lit by the dim fey light.

Dorie shook her head. “Better idea,” she said. The elevator door closed behind the men and the floor numbers began counting.

The bits of fey flickered around them as she concentrated. She had often maneuvered things she could not see before, using her fey senses to locate them. Now she extended those senses to catalogue all the fey in the building: lights, locks, elevators, everything. Eight might be the only detainees’ floor, but throwing the whole building into darkness would add to the confusion.

As would stopping the elevator between floors.

One by one Dorie pulled on the bits of fey and felt a mental pop as they came free.

Shouts rang out through the building.

“Let’s go,” Tam said grimly. He pulled the two of them through the stairwell door and out into to the dark lobby. Dorie bumped straight into the man from the front desk, and saw his eyes widen in fright at her blue halo of tiny lights. He yelped and ducked. Dorie called the bit of fey from the front door lock to them and they went through. The little bits swooshed out behind them, darted out into the night sky.

An ancient but impeccably maintained black auto was at the bottom of the steps. “This is us,” said Tam, and he held the front door for Stella, motioning Dorie-as-Dorian to get in the back. The rag around her palm was starting to redden, and she was careful not to place it on the ancient upholstery. The light of the streetlamps picked out Woglet, curled in a tiny silver ball on a towel in back, sound asleep and apparently none the worse for wear. The auto roared around the corner before Dorie registered who was driving.

Jack.

Dorie bounded up from the backseat, grabbing the back of Jack’s seat with her good hand. “Ugh, Jack, how could you? That painting! I mean, it’s tremendous, true—were you in the papers?—but didn’t you think what would happen to me?”

“Don’t grab the driver,” put in Tam. “She’s still learning. Jack, that’s a pedestrian.”

Jack was in fact still learning, but apparently her only concession to being a beginner was not to drive slowly but rather to swerve a great deal at the last second.

“And you were in the show, too,” said Dorie to Stella. “Did you see you? No, you couldn’t, you were already locked up.”

“Why, was I indecent?” said Stella.

“Turn left here,” said Tam. “No, not
here
here, wait for the road.”

“You
told
me to do it,” said Jack to Dorie in the rearview mirror. Her face was lit with the streetlamps as they flickered past. “Never compromise.” Her chin was out and there was a queer expression on her face that seemed to say she wanted to make up and be obstinate all at once.

“Around the lorry. Around!”

Dorie recognized the feeling because she felt the same. “Ugh, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

“Ugh,” returned Jack.

“Ugh!”

The two girls glared at each other in the darkness until suddenly they both burst out in giggles.

Tam looked at them as if wondering whether their laughter was hysterical, or contagious, and if so, should he do something about it. “Left again.”

Jack reached back with one hand and squeezed Dorie’s where it sat on the headrest. “But I
am
sorry,” she said. “I didn’t exactly think about the potential jail part. I was so focused on getting somewhere new. It was like I could see it all before me, what to do, unrolling like a carpet, and all I could do was run faster and faster down the carpet, trying to get to this
new
place. I ran so fast I didn’t stop to think.”

“You’re speeding,” said Tam.

Jack hushed him. “You’re being an old lady,” she said severely. “We’re in flight from the police. Who cares how many lampposts we bump into?”

“Your aunt, for one,” he retorted.

In the back, Dorie caught Stella’s eye and they laughed. “I’m sorry,” gasped out Dorie. “It’s just, it’s like old times. Those couple of years when we were fourteen and fifteen, and all in school together, and Tam’s school was only a quarter mile away—”

“The midnight feasts,” said Jack. “Tam snuck into one or two of those.”

“And never got caught, thank you very much,” said Tam. “Even the time I had to dress as a girl to get in. But I had to, because you’d forgotten—”

“—the cake!” put in Stella. “Of course, that was
you
! And it was Dorie’s birthday, and your father sent you something, something he’d made, what was it.…”

“Jane sent you a stack of books about inspiring women doing inspiring things,” said Jack. “I remember that.”

“A tiny book of flower pictures he’d painted,” said Stella. “All from the woods behind your home.”

“Say, I remember that,” said Tam. “What happened to that?”

“Those horrible girls from the west dormer happened to it,” said Stella. “‘Accidentally’ spilled tea on it. It was a soggy mess.”

“But then I ‘accidentally’ spilled molasses in their wardrobe,” said Dorie. “Do you remember them trying to figure out how I’d gotten in, when they were on the fourth floor, and one of them was always guarding the door?”

“
I
couldn’t figure it out,” said Stella. “I guess now I know.”

“Those days were fun,” said Jack with satisfaction.

“I remember I was sorry when we stopped seeing you,” Stella said to Tam, gently tapping on his shoulder.

There was silence. Dorie’s hand started to throb again.

Tam said, “Perhaps we should bring you two up to date on the ironskin and where we’re going.”

Jack stared hard at Dorie in the rearview mirror. “What have you done to your eye?”

“It’s a long story,” said Dorie. “We’ve been helping the ironskin, with the wyvern eggs.”

“The interdicted wyvern eggs, that cost as much as our rent? Those wyvern eggs?”

“Yes,” said Dorie.

“Just checking,” said Jack.

“But now we have to help the fey,” said Tam.

“The fey that we fought in the Great War? The fey that cursed those ironskin you’re helping?”

“Yes.”

“Just checking.”

Tam filled Jack and Stella in as they drove, simultaneously directing Jack. At last they stopped by the wharf, and Dorie saw they were at the clinic.

Tam led them up the fire escape to the apartment over the clinic. He knocked on the door, first quietly, then impatiently, until at last Dr. O’Donnell came to it. She shook her head at the gaggle on her doorstep. “I’m sorry, Dorian,” she said. “I thought we discussed this. I can’t shelter you all here.” But she didn’t close the door.

“Her hand,” said Tam.

Dorie held out the bloody rag, feeling embarrassed and hopeful.

Apparently that was all the excuse she needed to help them, for Moira barely glanced at it. “Downstairs,” she said. “Back door.” She disappeared back inside, and they trooped down the fire escape to the back. In a minute Moira was there, letting them in by the light of a small electric flashlight. Blackout drapes hung over all the windows, and she took them to a back room, similarly shaded. “You have made a mess of this, haven’t you?” she said to Dorie as she unwrapped the rag. “And your eye?”