Ironskin (32 page)

Deep down inside she knew that the Queen had not used all her force the first time. Jane’s proud words were only that—the last-ditch words of a victim.

No, not a victim.

A defeated warrior is not a victim.

Jane bent her knees, steadying herself, readying herself.

The orange light deepened, blotting out the blue, and there was sneering in that vibrating voice. “Only means I could have taken you anytime, you with fey on your cheek. Except you were hideous.”

“You caused it.”

“The original purpose of the fey bombs was to hook our substance into you so we had an entrance to slip into your dead forms and use them. By accident we discovered that the living maimed made more suitable, if more disgusting, bodies. Once we figured out how to attach small bits of our substance to you without killing you, we understood we could take you over alive.” She swirled. “Of course, there was still the problem of taste. My people wouldn’t wish to live a deformed life like you had. Hideous, disgusting … a half-life.”

“It was still a better life than you’ll ever have,” said Jane softly, for here at the last she knew it. “Mine was real.” It was real and I fought for every piece of it, she thought, and those other Janes that didn’t happen wavered in her sight.

“Do you think we like taking over your forms?” said the Queen. “All we want is our fair share of the land again. We lived in peace until you started to ruin the world. We gave you pieces of ourselves to get you to stop—but you humans never stay satisfied for long. Soon enough the factories were blazing once more, as if we had done wrong by granting you all your wishes. We were forced to fight.” The orange light was red now, and a thrumming crackled through the air which made it hard to think.

“Not forced,” said Jane. “You and I, we chose to fight.” She had chosen to make a stand for her village. She had chosen to stand with Charlie. And that Jane who had not been touched by war, that Jane who had never understood what it was to stand up and fight for herself, thinned out, turned insubstantial.

There was roaring in her ears, and the Fey Queen’s words seemed to enter by the base of her skull.

“The first step was infiltration, which Edward solved for us. The second, to get rid of all of you. Oh, you ridiculous thing, see how you stand, so frail, against me. If you think your tiny bit of fey can stop me, you’re a fool.”

And then the Fey Queen reared back and attacked again, and this time it was like a wave crashing over Jane, thick and hot and thrumming with power, and her slim defenses crumbled as the Fey Queen rushed into her body.

From a far-off distance the door opened. She was dimly aware of her own voice crying “Edward!”—but whether it was her or the Fey Queen calling through her lips she did not know.

“Edward, my love, my thanks,” said her voice again, and now she knew that was the Fey Queen, crackling through Jane, erasing her like a sponge crossing a chalkboard, rewriting the slate with the Queen’s thoughts, words, ideas.

From a long way off she saw terror on Edward’s face, despair. He was losing someone he loved, but Jane couldn’t bear to hope that person was her. If he had to make a choice between Jane and the Fey Queen, Jane shouldn’t give a fig for her own chances. That was what the Fey Queen, laughing, was telling her now, deep inside and all through her marrow.

It was up to her. The warrior.

The Jane who had chosen to be here.

Jane sent all her will into her fingers, still her own fingers, and dug her fingernails into the red line that surrounded her face. The Queen recoiled in surprise, and Jane used that tiny moment to summon all her internal strength, to compress the crackling, questing tendrils of the Queen back into the fey substance that Jane wore. With the lesser fey, Jane had been strong enough to shut it out completely. The Queen was far too powerful; but if Jane could just push her past a certain point, just into the mask only …

Push and shove, till her will met the Queen’s at the razor-thin line where the fey-infused mask met her blood and bone. Jane was all Jane; the mask was all fey.

And then Jane tore.

The mask wanted to adhere, but she pulled on all its edges, ripping the attack away. Surely it must hurt, but her adrenaline and fear were too high to notice. The new face peeled off, popping away from her eyelids, nostrils, lips. Slowly the fey was torn from her body.

And as she tore she lost all her strange fey sense. All knowledge of Edward’s feelings died away. Jane threw the fey-ridden mask from her and as it hit the floor it shattered into a million pieces.

“Jane!” Edward cried. He fell on his knees before her, cupped her face with his blue-lit hands, healing her. “Jane, stay with me, Jane, Jane…”

But using his gift was his undoing, because the disoriented Fey Queen went rushing from the mask into Edward, Edward who had fey thrumming in his fingertips, and Edward stiffened and lurched, his eyes rolling back in his head.

“Edward!” cried Jane. Time slowed for her then, and she saw everything through a blue-and-white haze of fey light.

He was putting up a fight, she realized. For the first time.

His decades spent with the Queen had not left him as unprepared as Nina, as Blanche. The Queen’s blue light went through the studio garret like waves as she poured herself into Edward in pulses of force.

Edward staggered toward the window and with a great effort lifted it up, tore it from its nailed roots into the sash. The iron nails stuck through the wood, long and spiked.

Yet there was enough space around the nails that an agile man could climb out and through, could squeeze past the iron to dash his brains on the flagstones below.

Then the Queen would be free to try again. To enter someone weaker, more docile. Was this the Queen trying to sacrifice Edward? Or Edward trying to sacrifice himself, preferring to die rather than be the Fey Queen’s pawn ever again?

Jane saw both possibilities flickering before her and she ran to Edward, even as his shoulder hefted the pane high and he placed his hands on the windowsill. His eyes as he turned—oh, those beloved amber eyes were thick and glassy as he fought the Queen for dominion over his own body. Her own face stung, but no more, her trauma held at bay by Edward’s momentary touch.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Jane, and then he drew his shoulder back from the window. Drew back the support, and the window, free and heavy with iron, fell. It slammed into his fey-cursed hands, and blood welled thick and fast from the cut veins and broken bones of his pierced palms.

His neck corded in pain, he slumped to his knees beneath the sill, hands caught above him, iron in his blood.

There was a noise—or maybe it was only a feeling, a feeling of shrieking. All the air in the room crackled and Edward’s cowlick jumped on end. The air seemed to rush into Edward and implode with a sharp bang, so that Jane’s ears popped and her vision blinked blue and white.

And then—nothing. The air cleared out and the room colorized.

The Fey Queen was dead.

Dorie ran to her father, threw herself onto his chest, and he gasped with pain. But he was alive, alive, and the glass in his eyes slowly receded. He levered himself to his feet, and his face was wet and streaked, and he was quite caught by the window, speared through his broken, mangled hands.

But alive.

Jane sunk to the floor, spitting clay dust that tasted like iron. The last of Edward’s fey touch on her face receded. Everything was red—but of course, that was just blood. Just blood. And then the pain rushed in at last, and she groped for one of Edward’s work cloths, put it to her face, where it instantly soaked itself. She was dizzy, and this was no good. “Dorie,” said Jane. “Run for Poule. Quickly.”

But the short woman appeared at the door, panting, taking in the situation. In her hand she held something white and metal, ovoid, and she beat a path to Jane, holding it up to Jane as she ran.

It was the beautiful Jane mask with the chipped forehead.

But different.

It was criss-crossed with a web of threaded iron, iron that went above the clay, through the clay, behind the clay. The fey substance in the mask was both exposed and trapped—iron ringed the mask’s edges, outlining its eyes and lips in metal.

“Dorie,” Poule said, from a distance. “I’m hoping you can do something your father could.” She nodded at Jane: Yes?

“Yes,” said Jane, and Poule pressed the mask to her face. Iron and clay? No, iron and
skin,
it would be soon enough. This was true ironskin at last. It was cold and stiff and yet felt like an old friend, warming to her touch. She could feel the power of the fey substance inside, already sensing the emotions in the room, feeling waves from Dorie, sadness, confusion, determination. This time she would not spurn the blessings of that curse.

Dorie reached up to Jane’s face, and her tiny hands molded the mask as if they knew instinctively what to do. Jane’s face throbbed, stung, but the blood running down her neck slowed to a trickle as Dorie fitted the mask in place. Even the pain lessened. Dorie was saving her.

“Help me to my feet,” said Jane. Dorie stood still while Jane put weighty hands on her shoulder, standing. Together they moved to the window where Edward still hung, pinned, and then Jane and Poule freed him. He sunk to the floor, defeat written all over him despite their victory over the Queen. His nimble, beautiful hands hung limp.

If Edward could mend faces with that clay, surely she had enough fey substance in her to do that now herself.

She pressed the fey-infused clay to his wounds and saw it start to mend, saw the broken bone wiggle under its touch, straightening. It thrummed under her fingers, and she felt suddenly what power that was, to mold something into the shape of life and have it walk and breathe.

“No,” he said, and jerked his arms away, rubbing the blood and clay from his limp hands on his shirt with a gasp at the pain. The thrum died. “I am not strong enough to hold their gifts, Jane. I am not as good as you.”

“But your hands…”

And they fell to his lap, trembling, even as Poule ran to his worktable for cloth and gauze and scalpel, and he said, “You were always too good for me, Jane. The Queen never really let me go—just sneaked into me after she returned me, manipulating me—and I refused to believe it. She ruined that poor village girl. And now I have not even a home to offer you, for not only do I have no talent, I no longer have any skill at all. For who knows when these shall mend, if ever.” The amber eyes were delirious with pain; he stared past her, half-blinded by it. “Now I am quite dependent on your goodwill and stubborn nature, you see?”

Quite helplessly, she laughed, a short distraught cry. “Of course, sir. You always were, you know.”

“No, no.” Heavy sigh. “I will not take your pity, Jane. You are too kind to leave if I do not make you. But you must.”

But the cold words didn’t fool her any longer.

Because she could feel his emotions behind the words, and now it was warmth alone—the chill gone. The fear of what his past could do to her was over, for it had done it, and there was no other way he could hurt her. All that was left was his own fear that she would leave him again, and he would be quite alone in that house, helpless and dependent on Poule and Cook to feed him and dress him and never leave him alone with his crippling despair.

She knew all this and he knew none of it, and she did not know how to convince him that she truly loved him.

But she knew how to provoke.

So she said, cruelly, “You are glad of an excuse to be rid of me, then.”

Poule straightened one of his bones at that moment, and that might have been what caused the cry.

She pressed on: “You are glad of such a convenient excuse to be rid of me. It’s more believable than an invented dying aunt.”

“Wicked Jane!” he said. “And wicked Poule, you are both murdering me together.”

“The splinters better come out sooner than later,” said Poule.

“I know the future, you see,” said Jane, pressing her advantage. “A return to public life, a long affair with each of your pretty ladies, starting with the clever and charming Prime Minister’s wife—”

“So help me, if I had to spend any more time with those silly women, I’d jump from that blasted window this instant,” he said, glaring at her.

She laughed joyfully at his reaction. Then gasped, suddenly dizzy, and he reached out to her, worry sharp on his features.

“Jane, my Jane, you’re bleeding—”

Her fingers touched her temple and came away wet.

“You’re crooked,” Poule said critically. “And you’re still leaking around the temple, because you’re more concerned about provoking this poor man you’re besotted with than your own face. Lie down and let Dorie finish. And you, Edward, stop grinning so foolishly, because this next bit is going to hurt.”

Jane obeyed, though crooked scarcely mattered now. She would always be this Jane and it would always be plain on her face. This Jane who had fought the fey and survived, this Jane who was taking their power for herself.

And the first thing she would do was restore human faces to all those pretty ladies, make them safe against the fey.

For on the wall above, those rows of masks still leered. A hundred faces, and each one a human, somewhere. A race between Jane and the dead Queen’s followers.

It was a mission. It was her purpose.

This Jane was meant to fight.

The red blood splattered the floor like drops of paint. Dorie’s fingers crept around, smoothing the ironskin mask of her face. Jane closed her eyes and let the girl adjust her eyelids, felt the cold iron, hard and comforting against the bone.

Her hand crept to her left just as Edward’s foot found hers. Her fingers touched his elbow, his ankle her ankle, as Poule and Dorie worked above them, deft and sure.

Soon, soon, she would be whole again.

Acknowledgments

Where to begin with this enormous pile of thanks? I feel very fortunate to have received so much help and advice and (constructive) criticism over the years, and I hope to continue to pay that forward.