Copperhead

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 nonetheless.

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.”

“Still,” she said. “I guess I didn’t expect a welcoming committee.”

“Closed to outsiders,” Rook said. He stopped and she looked up at him in the yellow flashlight glow. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t fit in with the dwarvven any better than I would in your world.” Helen looked at him wonderingly. “Not that they even accept me,” he said, and there was a touch of bitter to his voice. “Except I’m useful.”

“Rook,” she said, for this was why she had come. “What is your role in this? Someone told me you’re working for Grimsby as a spy. But you can’t possibly be … can you?”

Quietly he said, “I only do what’s necessary to get them to trust me.”

So Alistair had been telling the truth. “A double agent,” she said slowly. “You probably swear the same thing to Copperhead about your time here with the dwarvven.”

His face was in shadow; she could not read it. “I wish I weren’t working for either of them. But my history with the dwarvven is … complicated.”

“Tell me,” she said, remembering what he had said of his past two nights ago. “You know how I ended up on my path. Tell me how you went down yours.” There was silence for a long time, and finally the things he hadn’t said in the dark the other night came out now, in that cold quiet tunnel.

“It was almost six years ago,” said Rook. “I was seventeen and it was almost the end of the war. You know what it’s like when you’re seventeen.”

“Yes,” murmured Helen.

“I thought I knew everything. And … I was angry. I was tired of being laughed at for being havlen. At the same time, being havlen meant I could go among the humans, and pass.” He exhaled. “We were sick of the war dragging on, you know. The sensible ones hunkered down and figured it would be all over soon. But there are dwarvven who’ve hated humans for the last two hundred years, since Queen Maud’s son threw us all out. They’re not content to stay home and read books and invent things. They’ve had it in for humans. And after months and months of war … some of them started to believe they saw a way to make the humans pay. Chief among them was a girl named … Sorle.” Rook suddenly stopped and looked sideways at her. “You don’t really want to hear this, do you?”

“Tell me,” she said, for although she was not sure that she wanted to hear that his life revolved around this Sorle person, she wanted to know his story. What was he capable of? What was he involved in? Why did she feel in her bones she could trust him completely, even when he’d admitted that he was playing the dwarvven and the humans off each other? The answer to that last was that she was a fool, of course. She was here in the dwarvven compound to prove it. Helen took a breath and wrapped her coat tighter. “Tell me.”

Concern showed on his face. “You look tired,” he said. “You didn’t come here to hear this.”

“What’s that? It’s easier not to tell embarrassing stories about yourself? You’ve already told me how you made a fool of yourself over Frye; now tell me how you fell for Sorle. It’s the oldest story in the world, isn’t it? You did everything she asked to win her heart.”

Amusement flickered. “One usually does not tell the new lady about one’s past affairs.”

A delightful shudder danced along her bones, but she said lightly: “Not new, but old and married.” Affairs was right. He was the sort of man who had a million. He talked to every girl the way he did her—which was delightful, make no mistake, but not exactly something you could take to the bank. She let the conversation flow away from him having to admit terrible secrets and into things that were amusing to talk about. “So spill. How many past girls have there been? A dozen? A hundred? A whole harem, as in the stories of famous lovers? But come to that, I couldn’t possibly figure you for a famous lover, for we’ve already established that you have no idea of proper dancing nor etiquette.”

“Oh, I have a clever way to refute that,” he said.

“Which is?”

In the flashlight glow his hazel eyes looked into hers, light and laughing. His sandalwood scent curled around him. “Well,” he said.

But then there was a noise behind them and twenty, fifty dwarvven poured down the main stairs and hurried through the tunnel, some bumping past them, some splashing in the few inches of rainwater on the concrete floor. They appeared not to mind the cold and dank. One of them hallooed cheerfully to Rook. “Bringing your latest girl to the dance?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Rook. She watched his smile fade as he turned back to her.

For no reason she thought of Alistair. But things were going to be okay with Alistair now. She had the secret to making them okay. So it didn’t matter how many girls Rook had, or what his past was. Not to her. “Tell me then,” she said into the waiting silence. “What happened with Sorle?”

He walked a few more paces, pulled aside a curtain, and gestured her through. The new hallway seemed much the same in the cursory examination via flashlight, but the curtain dampened sound from the main tunnel. There was a stone ledge and they sat on it. The flashlight played around the puddles on the floor.

“Sorle,” he said at last, “wanted to blow up Parliament.”

Helen sucked air over teeth. “And?”

He stood the flashlight between them, where it caught the edges of his expression. “We aren’t quite as awful as you think,” he said, “even if we were all seventeen and a pack of thickwits. We were going to do it when they were out of session. My job, of course, was to pass as human, be charming—get the keys from the night watchman to a certain back door we needed. They had other jobs like gathering the supplies for the explosive. Many of those were things that dwarvven have, you know—but of course most adults weren’t going to be in favor of, or even informed of, this particular blow for justice till it was all safely over.

“I got the keys out safely. And then they all got caught on their end.” His jaw went tight. “I went in to put the keys back, so the man wouldn’t get into trouble. That’s when he caught me. Ran after me down to the wharf—fought me. I hit him too hard—he fell into the water—it was nighttime and he was gone instantly. I waded in, holding on to the pier—but he was gone.” He let out a long breath of air. “The problem with charming things out of people is that you have to understand them. And by the time you understand them, you care for them.…” He shook his head. “When his body washed up a couple weeks later, the human courts ruled it an accident.”

“Oh, Rook…,” said Helen. “How did the dwarvven find out?”

“I told them,” he said. “During the dwarvven trial. They censured the others and sent them home for community service for six months—by which time the war was over. But someone had actually died in my case—and then, I was havlen. I was officially told it was my bad blood showing. In public I was told off and sentenced to six years hard labor in the mines. I went there. It was … miserable. A month into it a man ‘unofficially’ came and told me I could better serve my people as a spy.…” He trailed off. “Sometimes I think it’s worse than the mines.”

She was silent and he said, “You see I’ve thoroughly managed to depress you. I propose all the secrets we share from now on be light and scandalous. Back in school, we did a production of The Pirate Who Loved Queen Maud, and I played the pirate—mostly because as the tallest I was best able to carry off our leading lady on my shoulder. All went well until I was required to leap from the set of the deck to the crocodile-infested waters. The boy playing the crocodile sat up and roared, and I tumbled end over end onto the deck, splitting my trousers in the process. Your turn.”

The gap between the two stories was so large that it took her breath away, and she could not immediately find her clever response.

And so he picked up the flashlight and shone it elsewhere, away from them, and said lightly, “Well, keep your secrets then.”

“I have no secrets,” she said, finally picking up her cue. “I was just wondering how well the rest of the dwarvven danced.”

“Come and find out,” he said immediately. “Goodness knows we could use a lift around here. Times are hard and getting harder. So many dwarvven let go from their employment. Finding work never used to be a problem, until Copperhead gained a foothold in the city. Some dwarvven have already headed back to our own country, deep in the mountains. Given up on the city for a generation. But come back tonight and dance. We will have fun.”

Helen sighed. “No, I was being silly. I have so much to do, now that I’ve found Jane. Frye’s helping me convince The Hundred, but she can’t do it all herself, even with her fey charisma. I should be doing that now, but I came down to ask you about your involvement with Copperhead. Which I guess if I believe you is nothing worse than I already knew. But after I found Jane at the warehouse I just didn’t know what to think or whom to trust.”

He stared at her. “What warehouse?”

“You mentioned the statue of Queen Maud,” Helen said, “I thought as a joke. But Alistair mentioned it, too, and that led me to Jane, who was wandering around this strange warehouse full of cages, and Grimsby’s invention; you know, from the meeting? Jane didn’t exactly seem to be trapped there, but she was certainly there. And the warehouse must belong to Grimsby—Jane thought so, too. And if you’re spying on them as well as for them, anyway … well. Tell me what you know.”

“You found the warehouse? I wasn’t sure there really was one. And you just, what, stumbled on it?”

“Well, it was kind of lit up blue,” Helen said. “Not exactly hard.”

“Lit up blue,” Rook repeated. “To you, you mean?”

She stared at him. “To me only? Is that what you mean? But why me? Because of my face?”

Rook shook his head. “I don’t know. Look, I need to find that place.”

“So you guys can blow it up?” He looked wounded and Helen raised her lilac-gloved hands. “Look, I’m tired of pretending I’m a scatterbrain, even if it’s generally true. If you’re spying for the dwarvven, then clearly you have a reason. So even if I trust you—which might be a big if—then still still still. You guys are after Copperhead and Copperhead is after you and you can’t just all go around acting tiresome and manly and declaring war.”

Rook slumped down. “I’m not,” he said. “But my history is against me.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Even with you and you barely know it. Look, I won’t make you show me the warehouse tonight. But I think you should bring Jane here, to me. If what you say is true, then Copperhead wants Jane for something she’s able to do. They must have put her there in the warehouse, right?”

Helen’s mind worked. “Or not all of Copperhead,” she said slowly. “Alistair thought Jane was still missing. He thought that’s why Grimsby and Morse and Boarham were mad at him. But this is Grimsby’s warehouse, so he must have known Jane was there. Or even put her there, without telling Alistair and the other top party members. Which means … which means that Jane didn’t run away after all. Jane said something about thinking there was a man in the attic.… Someone could have grabbed her.”

Rook looked sober. “We were both right there, watching that machine like fools. If it hadn’t gone haywire from interfering with Jane’s process, you wouldn’t have known she was missing for another hour.” He puzzled it over. “But most of the key Copperhead players were by the machine.”

Helen tried to focus, tried her damnedest to replay that scene in the attic, after the lights went out. Who was missing? “Boarham,” she said slowly. Hefty thug Boarham. One of the two right-hand men. “Grimsby must have planned all along to kidnap Jane. He must have sent Boarham to grab her. Take her out the garret window and down the fire escape. Take her to the warehouse. Ransack her flat for those faces while I was busy taking the trolley…”

“With a motorcar he would have had plenty of time to beat the trolley,” Rook agreed.

“But then, if Grimsby planned to take Jane, he must have known about my plan with Millicent to have Jane replace her face,” Helen said. She clutched Rook’s arm as her voice rose higher, connecting the dots. “He knew he was going to be leaving her in the fey sleep because of this. Where she might die. His own wife. His own wife.” She realized what she had done and let go.

“Has Millicent recovered?” said Rook, tactfully not flinching away from her grasp.

Helen shook her head, trying to shake off the rising sensations of guilt and fear. “I don’t know. I’m just now realizing that Jane was very vague on that point. And I don’t even know where Grimsby’s stashed her. He said someplace safe but … oh goodness. He could have just offed her and how would I know? She was trying to run away from him.”

“Maybe he knew that part, too.”

“And maybe she knew he knew. She told Jane something.” Helen flung up her hands. “Ugh, that man is awful. I didn’t know it was possible to hate him more.” She paced, thinking. “All right. So why kidnap Jane? I knew Copperhead disliked Jane but they claimed it was because she was working against them. What if, for Grimsby at least, that’s not entirely true? Jane did have extra powers before. She could actually use her fey substance in a way most women couldn’t.” Helen whirled, bits of gravel skidding off the walkway and down to the water below. “What if he took her to the warehouse to test his machine out on her? Three days of torture—that would make anyone lose it.”

“Where is she now?”

“I left her at Frye’s.”

“Frye’s trustworthy. No matter what you think of me.”

“Trustworthy but not there,” returned Helen. “Frye was going to try to find some of those women and win them to the cause. Jane’s all alone in the house. And she said—she said about the warehouse that things were patchy—going in and out. What if her mind’s gone again? What if she was just temporarily sane this morning, and not all the way better? And then, with no one watching her … anyone could just waltz in and take her away.”

Rook nodded, watching her come to the inevitable conclusion.

“I have to hide her where no one knows where she is,” Helen said. “I have to bring her here.”

“You can trust the dwarvven,” he said. “We might be grouchy, but we’re forthright. We always pay our debts, and we’ll always tell you when we hate you.”

Helen managed a weak smile. “Good to know.”

Heart in throat, Helen rang the bell at Frye’s for ten minutes before Jane finally answered the door, apparently all alone. Frye must have lent her clothes, too, for Jane now wore a bulky royal purple cardigan over her grey evening dress. Helen’s heart sank as she saw the vague expression on Jane’s face, just as she had been in the warehouse.

“Oh, Jane,” said Helen helplessly. “What took you so long to come to the door?”

“I was dancing,” said Jane.

“With whom? Who’s here?”

Jane shrugged. “I used to dance with Edward. And sometimes with Dorie. La, la…”

“Oh goodness, Mr. Rochart,” said Helen. “What if he’s finally arrived in the city and sent over a note?”

“Are we going somewhere?” said Jane.

“To safety,” said Helen. “Before someone comes and takes you away and you just let them.”

“My bag,” said Jane. “I need my bag.”

“Really?” said Helen. “You’ve managed just fine without it.”

“My bag,” repeated Jane. “My bag, my bag.”

“Ugh,” said Helen. She looked at the clock. “If we go all the way out to Alistair’s, we’re going to be late getting back to Rook. I told him an hour. And that new curfew’s at dusk, you know.”

Jane turned wide green eyes on Helen, stared at her as if this information had no possible meaning.

“On the other hand, maybe your fiancé has sent a note, and then maybe he’ll have an idea of what’s going on with you. He’s had a lot more experience with fey problems than any of us.”

“Fey problems?”

“Fine,” said Helen. She dragged Jane out of Frye’s and through the streets, eyes peeled for a cab. She swore several times. “This is no time to be taking the trolley,” she said. “Where are those damn cabs?”

Jane merely followed, eyes wide and lost in some other world of her own. She looked ethereal, otherworldly, wafting along behind Helen. But at last they made it to the theatre district, which, even with the new curfew, was busy enough to have cabs. Helen hailed one of them and bustled Jane into it. Through the window she could see the glut of frantic actors milling around and commiserating with one another.

Helen gave the driver the address and they hurried through the cold night till they reached the ugly row house on the good street that belonged to Alistair. That was when it occurred to Helen that, even though she had “fixed” Alistair, it might not be enough to withstand the sight of seeing Jane, who apparently he thought should be held for murder.

“I am not going to waste time yelling at myself,” muttered Helen.

“What’s that, lady?” said the driver.

“Look, drive around the street a couple times. I’ll be right back and we’ll go somewhere else.”

“It’s your coin,” he said.

“And don’t let her out,” said Helen, pointing to the pale figure in the back. Jane was pressed against the glass, long fingers moving slowly over it, tracing the lines of blue that covered the street.

“Look, lady, I don’t go in for restraining loonies.”

“If you lose my sister, I’m not paying you one penny,” said Helen, and she slammed the door before he could argue one more word.

She hurried inside, dashed up the steps to her room. There was the carpetbag. Grabbed it. Dumped out a little jar of dried lavender on her vanity until she found the notes stashed at the bottom. Hopefully it would be enough for the fare.Helen turned to run and then thought, suddenly, He said there would be a dance.

It seemed ridiculous to go to a dance in the middle of a war. It was ridiculous.

And yet.

If she was going to be there anyway, keeping Jane safe, figuring out exactly what had happened to her, exactly what Rook knew …

Couldn’t one as easily do that on the dance floor?

Just a waltz. Just a turn. Just …

Helen turned to her wardrobe and, knowing she only had a second, refused to let herself linger. She could try on outfits all day to find the perfect representation of what you wore to an unknown dance in a dwarvven slum when you didn’t want to look as though you were impressing anybody but still wanted to slay all of them (all of them? Yes, all of them) with your beauty.

But there was no time. She had a go-to dress, an apple green ruffled voile that could withstand being shoved in a carpetbag, and she grabbed it and started for her bedroom door, colliding into a pale, troubled-looking Mary. “Mary,” Helen said, seizing her hands. “Did any messages come for me? And am I in trouble for not coming home?”

Mary glanced behind her, down the open hallway. “I’m not sure he noticed exactly,” she began, but Helen forestalled that.

“Wait, messages first.”

“Yes,” said Mary, “That fiancé of your sister. You only missed him by an hour. He said he’d be back and that you should tell me where to find you.”

“Thank goodness he’s in town,” said Helen. Lowering her voice, she said, “Look, can you memorize the address to tell him? Copperhead mustn’t know who’s been helping us.” Mary nodded, and came all the way into the bedroom, silently closing the door behind her. Helen gave her Frye’s address, adding, “She’ll know how to get ahold of us.” She shook her head. “He must be terribly worried. Tell him we’ve found Jane if you see him first. Did he look all right?”

“A little wild-looking,” Mary said. “Hair on end. But more despairing-like than spoiling for a fight. I don’t think he wanted any trouble, but Mr. Morse came through the foyer just then and tried to pick a fight with Mr. Rochart, even with his crippled hand, and then he would have flattened him—flattened Mr. Rochart, I mean—but Mr. Hattersley came out and pulled them apart. The master didn’t seem to notice.”

“Oh no,” said Helen. “Poor Edward.”

In a hushed voice Mary added, “They were terrible, ma’am. They haven’t been this bad since before you came.”

“They used to be worse?”

“Well, after that terrible motorcar accident with Mr. Grimsby’s wife, you know,” said Mary. “They all got better for a little bit.”

Helen shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Except Alistair saying … “A dwarvven was at fault for his first wife’s death?”

Mary snorted. “Begging the master’s pardon, ma’am, but, no. You know them. They had been drinking all night, of course—and Mr. Grimsby was quite wild in those days. And the first Mrs. Grimsby was here, pleading with him to come home. He told her he wouldn’t be ordered about—of course they all cheered him on—and then he said he was fit to take them on a nice pleasure drive and they’d go where he wanted and so on. But of course he wasn’t in any kind of state to do that. They hit another car—the other driver was a dwarvven, you see, that’s where that comes in. Mrs. Grimsby was killed instantly. Mr. Grimsby went through the windshield. That’s when he got into all the Copperhead stuff about One People One Race and started warping all of them to it, even though the dwarvven driver didn’t do nothing. People go mad from guilt you know.”

“Yes, they do,” Helen said softly.

Mary shook her head. “I hate to say it, ma’am, but I don’t know if I can stay in this position much longer. I hate to leave you with them, but…”

“I know,” said Helen. “I’ll write you a recommendation. I will.”

She opened the door, and Mary added, “I really don’t think you want to go down there, ma’am. It’s not decent.”

Voices drifted down the hall from the games room and Helen remembered, with a shocking start, that Tam must be down there with them. Of course, she had laid the geis on Alistair to behave, but … “You go to bed, Mary,” she said. “Tell the housekeeper I said you could have the night off. George can go in if they need something.”

Helen strode past Mary and went firmly down the hall. The male voices were louder, raucous. On top of them a female laugh drifted out and Helen felt her bones freeze. They had women over, too? She opened the door to the games room and took it in. Men, slouched in chairs, muddy feet on tables. Musky cologne, lavender soap, cheap floral perfume. A woman perched on the arm of Boarham’s chair, another in Morse’s lap. And a small figure in an explorer hat, sliding half-off a footstool, holding a tumbler of beer.

Alistair and his friends were getting Tam drunk.

Helen dropped Jane’s bag and stormed into the room, a whirlwind of frustration at herself and them. “What are you doing? Absolutely not. What is this? What is…?” she spluttered off in frustration. She could not even handle the topic of the women for the moment; all her focus was on that small boy she had tried to protect. She had given Alistair specific instructions. Not specific enough?

Alistair furrowed his brow. “You said to entertain him and have a good time.”

“Not like this. I said—”

“Entertain him,” finished Alistair.

“And we’re doing that,” said Boarham. He squeezed the waist of the girl perched on his chair and Helen saw with rapidly growing distaste that the girl was wearing a mask of iron. Not a real mask of iron. A lacy half mask meant to mimic Helen’s own, but giving shape and allure to an ordinary set of features. Helen glanced at Morse, whose wife really did have a fey face. The girl in his lap was not his wife. She, too, wore a domino of grey silk.

Helen was left momentarily speechless.

“Look, Master Thomas, tell Miss Helen she can suck it,” said Boarham.

“You can suck it,” said Tam, sweet funny Tam.

Helen was a whirlwind of indecision. She couldn’t leave Tam. And yet, how safe was it in the dwarvven underground? They wouldn’t hurt a child, she was sure. That seemed a small hope to pin things on, and yet that small voice inside her told her she could still trust Rook.

She ran through her other options. Frye—gone. Jane—mentally gone. And she couldn’t stay here at Alistair’s house with Tam, because Jane was outside, circling in a cab, and if Jane came in these drunken louts would sober up and take her away for murder … or worse.

“You’re coming with me,” Helen said to Tam. At least he would be with her, and she could keep him safe, whatever happened.

“It was only one drink,” said Hattersley, offering her a tipsy smile. “Young man has to learn to hold his beer.”

“Get your coat,” she told Tam. He crossed his arms, trying to imitate Boarham’s pugnacious stance. “Now,” she said, and he went.

Morse looked sharply at her from his spot in the armchair, arm held firmly around the girl’s waist. He had always been a nasty sort of drunk, she remembered. It struck her for the first time how sad it was that she could recite the exact sort of way all these men got drunk. Emotional, sleepy, quarrelsome … “What about that new curfew Grimsby got passed, hey? I expect you’re supposed to be off the streets soon.”

“To stop walking them,” snorted Boarham, pleased with his wit. He tumbled the girl from the arm of the chair to his lap and she giggled.

Morse waved his glass of whiskey around with his free hand. “If she were my wife she’d know what’s what,” he told it.

“Some of us know how to sacrifice for the cause,” said Boarham in a self-satisfied way to Morse. Helen imagined him slinging an unconscious Jane over his shoulder and she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face.

“She has an escort,” Alistair said with a funny simpering smile. “That dwarf fellow of Grimsby’s.”

Morse barked laughter. “What, is she going to help him blow up the slums?” He smiled maliciously at Helen. “I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.”

“I’m going,” Helen said quietly, but firmly. She nodded at the quiet girl in Morse’s lap, the giggling one in Boarham’s. “You can come, too, if you want.” But they both shook their heads no, and truth was Helen had no idea what she would do if the men rose up against her. They were so big, so wild, so unpredictable in their drunken whims. And she did not think she could change them the way she had changed Alistair. It had felt with Alistair as though she knew him so well she could move things, make new things lock, pull out the Alistair she thought she knew. She had changed that man in the street through anger and fear. But a whole crowd of them, drunken and pressing in? No.

She looked at Alistair, relaxed in a chair with water in his hand. At least her power seemed to be holding. “You can go,” he said dreamily.

“Really,” said Morse.

Boarham snorted. “If he doesn’t care about his reputation, why should you? Pass the whiskey.”

“He cared about it the night we met those dancing girls from Varee,” said Morse. He smirked at Helen and her heart beat faster. Surely he was not telling her to her face that Alistair was even worse than she had imagined. That it was only chance that he didn’t have a girl captive in his chair, half-mask on her face.

Hattersley looked sideways at her. “Before your time,” he muttered. He had always been the nicest of the bunch, though Helen did not know if that meant he was telling her the truth, or a lie to make her feel better.

“Has it really been that long?” said Morse. Ostentatiously he counted back months on his fingers. “November, October…” He shrugged, dropping the game. “What about your little theatre piece, Hattersley? Bitty or Betty or some such?” His free hand inscribed suggestive lines an inch away from the girl he held.

“She’s fine,” Hattersley said neutrally.

Morse dipped a finger in his whiskey and sucked it off. “Consolation prize after you-know-who?”

All of Alistair’s friends suddenly stopped and looked at Helen, including Hattersley, who was frozen in shock. She felt her face flame bright red, and did not know exactly what had happened. She looked at Alistair, but he was staring off into nothing, a vacuous expression on his face.

Tam stumbled back in, his coat on upside down, laughing at himself. He had his jar of bugs in one hand and his binoculars strung around his neck. “Ready for an expodishon,” he said.

Helen seized his free hand with relief. “Come on,” she said gently. To the men she said, “Enjoy yourselves,” and then she took Tam’s hand and hurried out the door, eyes peeled for the circling cab. Had Hattersley been interested in her? She had never particularly thought about him. She hadn’t even met him till the wedding, she thought, so what did he mean consolation prize? If Betty was the Betty Helen had met at Frye’s party, they probably had been together longer than she had been married. Betty had mentioned a Richard, and she rather thought that might be Hattersley’s first name.

Helen paused at the foot of the stairs, realizing the absence of what she sought.

The cab was not there.

She turned left, thinking the driver’s circling might take him around that corner, and hurried Tam along down the street, watching. No moving cars; all was silent. It felt as though the city were preparing for the oncoming dusk and curfew. There was only a thin lone figure at the end of the road, walking slowly along and staring at the sky.

Jane.

Helen pulled Tam along until they caught up with Jane, and she seized her arm with her free hand. “What happened? Where’s the cabbie?”

“I have bugs,” said Tam. “They flyyyyy around.”

“Do they?” said Jane.

“Jane,” repeated Helen. “What happened?”

Jane turned those green eyes on her. “I was asking the driver if he’d ever touched one of the blue bits of fey and tried to see what it’s thinking. Because I wonder how many bits have to join together to cross over into being full-fledged fey. A whole fey can lose some pieces, but they don’t like it. When does it become just unthinking little bits, like we used to power our lights with? Do the small bits dream? One of the fey made me dream. And then the driver said any amount of money wasn’t worth it and he stopped the car and opened the door and I got out and walked around the block just as we were doing in the car and now I’m here.”

“Argh,” said Helen. She did not know how she had gotten in a mess that involved standing on a street corner with an addled sister and a drunk child, late for an appointment in the dwarvven slums with a citywide curfew about to fall any moment. In that moment it seemed just more proof of her inability to make good decisions, for who else would find themselves like this? The one good thing was that surely there was nothing else to go wrong right now.

“It’s snowing!” said Tam.

Really. Snowing?

“It’s like cotton,” Jane said dreamily.

“It’s like bug guts. White floaty bug guts.” Tam hiccuped. “I’m going to make snow pterodickle—pterodackle—snow man-eating butterflies.”

“I am, too,” said Jane.

“No, no, and no,” said Helen firmly, and she got one hand on each of them before they plopped down on the as-yet-unsnowy-but-certainly-muddy ground. “We are going to find Rook. We are going on the trolley.”

“Chugga chugga choo choo,” said Tam.

“That’s a train,” said Helen, reflecting that it was hard to tell which part was drunk and which was small child. It was not something she’d ever expected to have to puzzle out. “Come on.”

She tugged them both along through the falling snow. The wind was wet and the snow fell in big fat flakes that occupied both her charges, although her wrists grew sore from keeping a tight hold on them as they attempted to chase and eat snowflakes.

“The snow’s like polka dots against the sky,” said Jane.

“Doka pots,” said Tam. “Pots pots pots.”

“Your scarf is dragging,” Helen told Jane. “Hold your bug jar with two hands, Tam.”

“Then you’d be holding it,” he said gleefully, because of course she was still holding one hand.

Grant me patience and a nice hot bath, thought Helen. “Just be careful. It’s glass.”

“Glass pots. Pots pots pots.”

They rounded a corner and there was the trolley station. “Thank goodness,” muttered Helen. There was a wait for the next trolley, in which time the sky got darker and darker and the snow got fiercer. By the time the trolley finally pulled up it was undeniably dusk, and here were two women with fey faces out against the rules. Not to mention a small drunk child, who, though he was male, still probably fell on the needs-curfew side of the curfew law. Helen hustled them onto the trolley, thinking that she had been without her iron mask all this time and hadn’t even noticed. It was funny what a single-minded purpose and two lunatics would do for knocking worries right out of your head.

She hurried them on and sat them down on either side of her, knocking wet clumps of collecting snow from everybody’s coats and cardigans and explorer hats. You could still look nice when you were on the run.

Jane clutched her carpetbag, and Tam hung on to Helen’s coat pocket. He peered around, studying the passengers as if they were an unusual species of ant. Helen put a hand on both of theirs and tried to relax her shoulders and neck.

The trolley was wet from the snow and crowded from the bodies crammed into it. The crowds eased around Helen at every stop until she realized that there were very few people left in the spots designated for humans. But there were still people hurrying home. They spilled out from the back of the trolley—the dwarvven. Helen had not realized how many of them were in the city. She had not thought much of them at all until the last couple days. But now she saw them in the soot-coated greys and browns of the new factories and she thought they were surely too worn out to be a danger to anyone, regardless of what Copperhead relentlessly repeated about dwarvven unrest, dwarvven uprisings. She studied the notices around the trolley as if looking for clues to how far Copperhead had progressed. Again she saw: YOUR EYES ARE OUR EYES! And, over the door near the dwarvven end of the trolley: BE CIVIL, BE COURTEOUS, BE A CREDIT TO YOUR RACE.

Tam’s attention was caught as well by the short people at the end of the car. He looked at them through his binoculars, then turned round eyes on Helen. “They’re not even stuffed. They’re real dwarves.”

“The word is dwarvven,” said Helen in a low voice, “and hush.”

“Father says dwarf,” Tam said positively. “When he shot one he gave me a whole terrarium for not telling. But that dwarf was dead. I never got to see a live one.”

Helen felt a peculiar mixture of horror and mortification. “Tam, tell me later,” she said. She was grateful that although the pitch of his small voice carried, the words were slurred and did not. He was looking green around the gills and she found herself hoping he would pass out rather than incite a riot on the trolley.

“No, I can’t tell you,” he said. “I promised not to tell, and Father always knows what I say and do. You can’t lie to Father. Only for him. Like about the dead dwarf. Dead dead red dead head head dead…”

Thankfully, the trolley came to its final stop and Helen rose. “Here we are,” she said, and pulled Jane and Tam along with her out of the trolley car onto the cold snowy street. The passengers slowly streamed off, parting around the three of them. “My bag,” said Jane, and before Helen could stop her she turned and vanished back into the trolley.

“Jane,” said Helen, and started after her, but then Tam, who apparently didn’t feel so well after the trolley ride, turned and started emptying his stomach into the wet snow of a nearby bush.

Helen wanted to scream. She put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulders, waiting for him to finish.

She had rescued the boy, but now what? She was not cut out for this sort of responsibility. And what should she do with this new information from Tam? Would anyone take the word of a drunk child over a man with the ear of the Prime Minister? Well, get the boy to safety first. Push the rest of those thoughts aside for later.

Shouts rose and Helen raised her head, looking around for Jane. As if in a dream everything seemed to quiet and slow, the open screaming faces, the shouts, the running. Men, women, dwarvven, running, running, running. The fire and smoke behind them, on the trolley, in a long slow build.

In slow motion Helen saw the trolley slide off the tracks and skid toward her.

Then nothing.