Ironskin

Chapter 7 Hands of Iron

Jane woke the next morning with renewed purpose. She was almost joyful as she jumped from bed. The white walls of her room seemed fresh rather than sterile; the dark-paneled halls were warm and inviting. She munched the toast and tea that Martha left outside her door while she dressed and settled the iron mask and fresh padding on her face.

If this worked, she would have a way in. A way to reach Dorie, a way to convince the girl to learn things before she was hopelessly behind. Stubborn Dorie might be, but if her fey skills were taken from her, she would have few options. Jane ran scenarios of Dorie’s stubbornness in her head while she coiled and pinned her hair, looping locks of it over the leather straps of her mask. The one white lock outlined her skull, twisted a pattern in her coiled bun.

An hour past dawn, and Dorie would surely be up and eating breakfast.

Time to tackle the lion. The lion cub? No, no lion—just a mule.

Jane hurried down to the kitchen. Martha was fitting the teapot onto a loaded tray, talking over her shoulder at Cook. “If he’d keep those late hours for good. But no, now it’s up at dawn. It’s bell-rings. It’s Martha where’s my tea. He won’t eat the fish.”

“You just take the kippers along anyway,” said Cook. “Sure and you’d think we were in the poorhouse already from the way he starves himself. Tell him if he doesn’t eat those they’ll be going to the dogs and hang the expense.”

Martha shook her head at Jane as she bustled past her with the tray. “You. Put him in a good mood,” she said. “Don’t know as I like it.”

Jane grinned. Morning light lit the kitchen stone, softened the folds of her dress. She wondered if Martha were right, if she could possibly take credit for something so lofty and far-removed as the moods of Mr. Rochart. “He’s not an early riser?” she said.

“Stays up near to cockcrow, sleeps till lunch,” said Cook. “Unless he gets excited about something, then Katy bar the door.” She eyed Jane, but Jane turned to Dorie, who was waving her hand and wafting raisins from a blue-striped stoneware bowl into her mouth, one by one.

Last time for that.

Jane scooped up the bowl. “Come on, Dorie,” she said. She half expected a mental tug on the bowl, but Dorie was not an intractable child at heart. She was willing enough to see what they were going to do next. It was only when “next” involved “hands” that everything went to hell in a handbasket.

“Maybe I’ll take these, too,” said Jane, nodding at the raisins.

“Suit yourself,” said Cook.

They made their way up the stairs to Dorie’s playroom, Jane studying the girl as they went. As she had told Niklas, Dorie seemed to use her hands to direct her fey curse. Though she did not use her fingers in any dexterous sense, she often waved her stiff hands in the direction of what she was mentally moving, or to direct the light pictures she made.

It did not necessarily mean that that’s where the fey curse resided—especially since there were no visible signs of the curse—but it gave Jane hope. After all, if Dorie had to be entirely covered with paste from head to toe, that wasn’t a workable solution any more than Niklas’s trenchant suggestion of eyes or mind.

Once inside the white-and-silver playroom, Jane took the precious jar of iron-flecked tar paste out. Dorie looked interested, until her eye fell on her Mother doll. She wafted the doll through the air and started it turning somersaults.

Jane smeared paste on the back of her hand and studied it, considering. Iron was a barrier to fey—the iron on her face kept the poison sealed in just as the iron in the threshold kept the fey out. Or a feyjabber in a fey-ridden corpse killed it for good.

Jane realized her hand was shaking. Nonsense! Dorie went in and out all the time over iron. Mr. Rochart—Edward—had said it had no effect on her.

The experiment might fail, but it would not harm Dorie. Jane was really very sure of it, but it didn’t seem to calm her nerves.

“Dorie,” she said. “We’re going to try a little experiment. Does my hand feel cold to you? Touch it very carefully.”

Dorie looked suspicious at this directive, but curiosity trumped it. She touched the tar with her flat palm. “Funny,” she said. Jane regarded her closely, but she did not shriek or shudder, and when Jane picked up Dorie’s hand and studied her fingers, they were free of blisters and scars.

The iron on Jane’s own face didn’t hurt her at all. It merely stopped the fey poison from leaking its power past the barrier. If iron had the same effect on Dorie’s abilities, no one might have noticed. There were few enough people like Dorie, or like Jane—and so no real exploration into how they could live normal human lives, besides what they themselves figured out and shared with each other, what Niklas shared with those lost souls in the city. Besides, everything iron during the war had been melted down to make strips for windows and doors, for shields and feyjabbers. There was little enough of it for Dorie to come in contact with when she was sitting in the middle of her room playing with Mother.

Jane patted the brown tar all over Dorie’s hands, smoothing it around her fingers and up her arms, checking several times—“Does that burn? Does it feel cold?” But Dorie said no, interested in this messy new game.

Jane was dying to see if the tar worked. But if she asked Dorie to try her light pictures and she failed, Dorie would immediately connect that with the tar. Better to carry out her plan of distraction. She quickly cranked up the gramophone with Dorie’s favorite piece—a cheerful ditty from the Southern Continent with a bunch of made-up words like jumbuck. “Show me the dance you do,” she said to Dorie over the music. “I want to learn it.”

This remarkable novelty swung Dorie’s attention away from her sticky arms. She demonstrated her made-up dance for Jane, and even seemed faintly interested in Jane’s inability to do it properly on the first try. But Jane could tell the wheels in her head were turning.

Jane took them straight from the jolly jumbuck song into a Gaellish one about cockles and mussels, and then into another of Dorie’s favorites. About then, she saw Dorie’s steps fading, her attention growing focused on her arms. So she brought out her pièce de résistance: a new dance record her sister had been tired of. That caught Dorie’s attention.

“But first, some blocks,” said Jane. Her stomach tensed with the coming conflict. She got down the blocks and started forming pyramids. “Now your hands will make the blocks sticky. Isn’t that silly? It’s a new game.”

Dorie touched a block with her palm and saw that, indeed, the tar made the block sometimes stick to her hand without her moving her fingers at all. Her expression grew interested. For the moment she had completely forgotten their usual point of conflict, captivated by this game that was halfway between using her hands and not.

This was an unexpected bonus, and Jane made the most of it, encouraging, joking, distracting. For the rest of the morning, Dorie tried building with blocks with Jane. Jane alternated between triumph and tension—Dorie working with her hands was brilliant, but nothing had been proven one way or another.

And then Dorie’s block house fell. And then the next one. Her attention shifted, and Jane clearly saw the moment when Dorie’s inner eye focused, as she attempted to rebuild the blocks in her preferred way.

Breath held, world stopped.

Nothing happened.

Tension poured out, turned into cautious triumph as Dorie’s face blanked out, her focus caught by what was not happening. This time Jane saw the tiniest of blue lights scatter over the blocks and die away.

And still nothing happened.

Dorie’s mouth opened in a wordless, taut cry, and she kicked the blocks across the room in frustration.

“Dorie, bring those back, please,” said Jane.

Dorie stomped her feet and clacked. She kicked the remaining blocks, stack by stack, banging them across the room.

“Bring them back this instant,” repeated Jane. She levered the kicking girl to her feet. “Blocks. Now.”

Dorie kicked and squirmed, freeing herself, and Jane’s temper rose to match Dorie’s. She caught one of Dorie’s sticky angry arms and forced it down to pick up one block and bring it back. Another. “No more disobedience,” said Jane. “No more throwing blocks.”

Dorie’s mouth opened in a silent howl.

One by one Jane marched her to pick up every single block. Dorie was a sticky dead weight in her arms, her arms and legs stiff and her jaw set. When the last block was picked up Dorie collapsed on the floor, as if Jane had destroyed her.

Martha’s knock on the door was a relief. “Bean soup,” the maid said. “Cod in white sauce.”

Jane’s heart sank. She looked at the sauced fish and porcelain bowl of stew on the tray.

Dorie stared up mutinously. Jane knew that look. The look of trying to waft the tray through the air.

But the tray would not go.

Dorie looked down at her tar-covered arms and wailed, a thin miserable sound. She raised her arms—rubbed them furiously together, trying to scrape the paste away. But her motions were clumsy and the tar sticky. Her scrapings only smudged the paste around.

She lay down and starting yelling in earnest, drumming her feet on the side of the dresser.

“What’s wrong with her?” said Martha in disbelief. And then, “You put tar on my floor?”

“It’s an experiment,” Jane said briefly. “This food won’t work.”

“Won’t?”

“I need something she can eat with her hands,” Jane said. “Tell Cook I need plain cut-up vegetables, plain cut-up bread. Apologize from me for the extra work.”

Martha was still peering at screaming Dorie.

“I’ll tell you all about it after I tell Mr. Rochart tonight,” said Jane. “Lunch—please?”

Martha backed out with the tray, and Dorie’s howls and kicks redoubled. After a while, Jane heard Martha return and leave the new tray outside, but she did not open the door. Jane waited until the girl wore herself out, till the furious kicks became languid thumps of the heel, and the howls were just a rhythmic grunt in the back of her throat.

Perversely, Jane was almost glad to see the tantrum—it made Dorie seem more human, to see her throw a full-blown, audible tantrum that looked exactly like any other frustrated child might have thrown, rather than her usual trick of calmly walking to the window and ignoring Jane. No, this tantrum was real, even down to the petulant part of being too tired to continue, but too stubborn to totally give up. Jane watched the kicks die away. Then she brought the tray in and set it down in front of Dorie.

Dorie sat up, sniffling.

“I know this is hard,” said Jane to the tear-streaked face. “But I promise you it’s important. Your father wants you to use your hands. Will you try again for me?”

She wiped the tips of Dorie’s finger and thumb, pushed the tray toward Dorie and held her breath, hoping the promise of food would lure the girl into one more effort. Sniffling, Dorie ate most of the bread and all of the carrots.

That was the last thing she did as Jane asked.

The minute lunch was finished, Dorie plopped down in an afternoon sunbeam and lay on her stomach, her hands flat to her sides. Her eyes were open, her lips pressed shut, and she refused to budge. Finally Jane went and retrieved a book from the library, sat down with her back to the window, and calmly read. Or at least pretended to calmly read—the book she had grabbed turned out to be about the politics of the Ilhronian city-states in the 1600s, a subject she would’ve found dull at the best of times.

Twice Jane set down the book, got up, and built herself a castle from the blocks, hoping the game would lure Dorie back to life. But Dorie refused to budge.

Eventually Dorie fell asleep. Jane brought in warm water and towels and wiped the tar off the limp arms. She settled Dorie down for her nap. Dorie did not stir, and Jane gazed down at her, wondering how she could look so innocent in her sleep. Dorie’s fingers twitched on the coverlet.

Jane stepped from Dorie’s room, softly closing the door behind her. Martha was dusting in the foyer below, one ear cocked to the room above. Her eyes widened as a bedraggled Jane came down the stairs, covered in bits of tar from stem to stern, a book tucked under one arm and dirty towels in her hand.

“You lost the war,” Martha said.

“It’s a draw,” Jane said grimly. “Are there old clothes stored somewhere?”

Martha furrowed her brow in question.

“I need gloves for Dorie,” said Jane. “Long gloves, a lady’s gloves.”

“Won’t fit.”

“I know,” said Jane, grabbing for the last thread of her patience. “I don’t need them to look nice. Just an old pair.”

“Chests in the north roof,” said Martha. “You won’t go there ’less he says so.”

“Of course not,” said Jane. The rules and restrictions oppressed her, overwhelmed her for that moment with her insignificance. But she had expected nothing less.

She plopped down on the stairs for a moment, felt the tired muscle ache in every corner of her frame. She wasn’t sure how long the tar would last. Not long, clearly—and every day Dorie had it on was another day of more work for the maid and laundress. Jane would stand up to their wrath if she had to, but she was sorry to provide them with more work if there was a way around it. And how would she get more tar, anyway, without going to the city herself? The thought of Mr. Rochart going to Niklas’s foundry on one of his city trips made her grin.

But the question of where the ironskin needed to go was solved, and it certainly was all about the hands. Maybe it even made sense. Dorie’s curse was not rage or hunger or misery, but it was a variant of fey talent—fey technology, perhaps; who knew how bluepacks were made, after all—and so perhaps it made sense that it was directed by her hands.

Chainmail would work, she thought. Chainmail like the dwarves wore, but crafted into gloves. But no, immediately—how would chainmail allow delicate use of the fingers? Jane flexed and unflexed her fingers, pondering. Had Niklas ever tried chainmail for scarred hands? Perhaps there was a reason it didn’t work, or perhaps the chainmail was simply so bulky that those people lived with the curse rather than live in iron gloves.

No, keep thinking. Something with the tar she had, but that wouldn’t get on anything. Two pairs of gloves, perhaps, cut to fit Dorie, and the tar sandwiched in between. Leather—no, oilskin for the gloves. There’d be some evenings of stitching ahead, she foresaw.

But first there was an artist to tackle.

Jane retreated to her room to freshen up before reporting to Mr. Rochart. Her apron and dark day dress were grimy with bits of the iron-flecked tar. She would have to attempt to remove those tonight, and then hope that the hired laundress Martha had mentioned could do a better job on them. There was a reason that her small collection of dresses and skirts were all dark.

But now she had a couple things Helen had insisted she take. (“You must dress up occasionally, Jane. I don’t care two pence if you ‘get applesauce on them.’ That’s what life is for.”) The dark silver gown hung in her closet like a promise. It insisted that someday she would get to wear that gown again, though she couldn’t think why or when. Next to it hung a pressed sapphire blue linen, an old summer dress of Helen’s that she had always admired. It was simple and neat, with a boatneck and three-quarter sleeves, enlivened by embroidered white dots that Helen had done one week in a fit of boredom with the old dress. But it was new to Jane. And it was quite appropriate for a dinner dress at the end of a day chasing Dorie.

Or for bearding an artist in his den.

She unbuckled her mask and laid it on the bed. She scrubbed her face and arms scrupulously clean before stepping out of her dirty dress and into the sapphire blue one. She changed out the padding in her mask for fresh—and then rather than twist her hair up, she suddenly decided to leave it down. The brown and white locks did not hide, but they softened the side of her cheek, obscured the lines of the iron.

Her mood lifted as she cleaned up and changed. Helping Dorie was not going to be easy, no. But she had proved that the tar would work. She had a way to get through to the girl, to break her of her disturbing fey habits.

The rest was just going to be hard work for the two of them—but Jane knew what hard work was like. She could do this.

Jane brushed down her skirt, looked down at her boots. They suddenly looked unbearably workaday, and she tugged them off, replaced them with Helen’s castoff dance slippers, white and embroidered with silver thread. They were a touch too long, and she was overdressed, certainly—but it seemed to suit her expanding, lifting mood. The twilight sky with stars and clouds, that’s what she was, and the thought was light and joyful.

Jane checked on Dorie—still sleeping, exhausted—descended to the foyer, and slipped through the forest green curtains. The landing she had stood on a week ago should be in sight—yes, there it was. She flew up the stairs to Mr. Rochart’s studio and slipped trhough his open door, knocking on it as she entered.

He was just closing the far door behind him, entering the main studio. “Jane,” he said, surprise in his voice. “You—” He stopped. “You look different in colors.”

“Black is a color,” said Jane. “So is grey.”

Mr. Rochart snorted. “You’re laughing at me, and I’m the artist. You might show your elders some respect.”

“Indeed I had forgotten you must be almost thirty,” said Jane, and then added, laughing, “I will call you Grandfather Rochart henceforth.”

“Grandfather Edward,” he replied. He crossed to her and then the worry was back in his amber eyes. He touched her arm. “You look too cheerful to be up here with bad news—but tell me. How did your day go with Dorie?”

“It wasn’t entirely perfect,” Jane admitted, “but I think I have a way to reach her.” Briefly she explained the iron paste, and concluded, “It seems to stop her from using her fey abilities.” And that one tremendous success could offset even such a day as she had.

“Just like the iron on your cheek,” he said. He shook his head in wonder. “So simple, and yet it never occurred to me.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said, and daringly she touched his shoulder. She was unprepared for the tremor that ran through him, as if he was as unused to touch as she, as if a mere friendly gesture was enough to undo him. His hand rose even as she withdrew hers, and she didn’t know what to do with any of her limbs anymore. So she smoothed down the skirt of her sister’s dress, feeling the embroidered dots slide underneath her palms. That fluttering happiness went sharply through her chest. “She did not want to use her hands, of course,” Jane said, trying to sound casual. “She was quite frustrated.”

“I imagine.” He was not polished like the gentlemen at Helen’s wedding, but that did not matter to Jane. He was arresting, with those strange deep-set eyes that stayed in shadow, those amber eyes whose meaning she could rarely catch. “I will have a talk with her after dinner.”

“That would be helpful,” said Jane. “I believe the tar is a tool we can use to catch her up to where she should be. But she will still have to do the work.” She remembered the rest of her purpose and added, “And I need to get into the north attic. Martha said there might be some gloves I could use for Dorie. So she doesn’t get tar on everything. I also need some linen, and linseed oil to waterproof it.”

A shadow of pain drew across his face. “Yes, I believe Grace had some gloves. She always liked parties more than I did. Tell Martha I said you might look in her trunks. Have Poule find you everything else.”

Jane nodded. “Thank you.” To distract him from the memory of his deceased wife she said, “I didn’t like Helen and Alistair’s party very much either.”

“Nasty things,” said Mr. Rochart. “Parties, that is, not your sister and her husband.”

He smiled at her and she laughed, her heart warming. She realized that she was still poised on the threshold of the studio, and she let her laughter carry her boldly past him, into the studio where the natural light poured over the golden floors, the rough working table, the mounds of white clay. Her blue skirts floated around her, the fine linen weave brushing against her legs, the legs of the table.

Her momentum carried her all the way to the window and there she stood, the afternoon sun bathing the lines of her dress as she looked away from him. Alistair’s pointed comment about her figure flickered into her mind, and then she banished it. She was not trying to seduce Edward, not trying some ploy to entrap him in the night. No, it was more the thought that with her face turned away perhaps he would see her as she should’ve been, a girl in a blue dress with embroidered dots like stars. A glimmer of her metal reflection danced in the window, but she looked past it, out into the black woods.

“I used to paint back there,” Edward said. “In the woods.” The intimacy of his words lapped her ears, like he was spilling secrets meant for her alone.

“Wasn’t that dangerous?” Even before the Great War there had always been the stories. Don’t go into the woods past the last ray of sunlight. There was always someone’s cousin’s friend who knew a girl who chased a blue will o’ the wisp past the edge of sun and never was seen again.

“I didn’t get on well with my father,” he said. “I avoided him. I spent every possible hour outside, painting.” She could feel him moving closer, though he made no noise. It was implicit in the way the air moved, in the way soft eddies of warmth and scent curled past the wisps of her hair, changed the folds of her dress. “When I grew tired of painting the moor, I turned to the forest. It occurred to me that there were very few forest paintings around. An untapped niche.”

“Ah, a mercenary,” she said. With her head turned away she was a different Jane, a Jane who still had a brother and a mother, a Jane who had taken this job as a calling to help Dorie, and not also because she was desperate. This Jane could flirt, she could tease, she could even call him “Edward.” As long as she didn’t turn and look at him, the moment would hold.

“In my head I would be the bravest artist of them all—and the wealthiest besides,” he said, and there was laughter in his voice. “You don’t have to give up your artistic merit for riches if everyone knows you were tremendously brave to get that painting.”

“I thought people with ancestral estates and good family names were supposed to despise the acquisition of money,” said Jane.

“Ah, but I didn’t get on with my father, remember? I was going to show him—show them all.”

“Wicked child,” said Jane. “Won’t go to parties, defies his parents, goes into the woods … it’s impossible to see where Dorie gets it from.”

“And you?” he said. His voice was rough; it caught at her, intense and burred. “Where do you get your stubbornness from? Your independent streak? Your strange, fierce spirit? Where?”

There was a sound from behind the far door and she turned, startled, and her eyes met his. He did not turn to look for the source of the noise, but no matter. The instant he saw her face in its mask, the other Jane popped like a burst bubble and she was plain damaged Jane Eliot again.

“Are Martha’s quarters on this floor?” she said.

“No.” He leaned forward, urgency in his voice—deep, tense—passion in his simple words. “Tell me who you are.”

She started to speak, though not knowing what she’d say—but then the door opened and a lovely woman sailed out.

Her face was perfectly symmetrical, carefully chiseled, framed by a mane of red hair, by a chain of aquamarines at her white throat. She glanced in the mirror at her perfect reflection, then beamed at Edward. “In the pink of health, I knew it. You are divine, dear, but I must run.” She saw Jane and her fine eyes widened. “Is this a new one?” She crossed to them and leaned in confidentially to Jane. “You’ll just love him. We all do.” She kissed Edward on the cheek, whispered something in his ear. A flash of worry flickered on her pretty face, her shoulders tensed, as she told him something Jane couldn’t hear. Then she was sailing toward the door, all smiles again. “See you in a few weeks for that coming out you’ve promised me. Don’t worry about me, I can see myself out.”

Edward shook his head at Jane. “Just a moment.” He hurried after the beautiful woman and ushered her to the stairwell door, his head close to hers. Jane saw his finger touch the woman’s rose petal cheek before she managed to look away.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said as he returned. “Miss Ingel is a client. I didn’t want you to think—”

“There’s something familiar about her,” Jane interrupted. A familiar anger coiled around her heart, suffused her head.

“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d know her.”

“We’re not in the same social circle, no,” Jane said dryly. Though he had betrayed no covenant with her, she felt hideous and ashamed; humiliation made her hostile. “Did she buy one of your masks?”

“Yes,” he said.

“They are popular, then? I can’t understand it.”

“Yes. I take it you wouldn’t want one.”

“I wouldn’t want to bring more ugliness into the world.”

“I understand,” he said. “Jane…,” and he took her hand.

The familiarity of her first name on his lips infuriated her. He had the upper hand; people like him always would. People like her had to be grateful for crumbs. She had nothing, she was no one, and she was a great big fool in her sister’s dress and shoes, mooning out the window, feeling linen touch her thighs and dreaming of a different present.

“Of course you understand,” she said, and jerked away. “Why wouldn’t you?” The rows of masks watched her every move. “I like your daughter just fine. The house isn’t even that weird.” She licked dry lips as the orange rage erased all wit and tact from her tongue. “It’s you. You and your horrible artwork scare people off.”