Silverblind (Ironskin) (10 page)

Dorie had run wild with them for several summers. But she knew whose side they really saw her on, in the end.

It was cooler down by the wharf, now that the sun had set. The sticky summer air made the city so miserable this time of year—the smog thickened, and the smells worsened. Especially down here, where the sanitation lagged behind the richer parts of the city. She could practically smell the individual rats and birds without the aid of her fey senses. A rat scuttled by, and it was so slow to her that she had plenty of time to consider grabbing it. But she let it go. She was feeling protective of the little wyvern in her belly. She wanted it to have a good first meal.

And then what? she suddenly thought. And then what will you do with this chick?

Certainly she couldn’t keep it, even if they liked people, which they didn’t. She didn’t want to sell it, not to Malcolm or anybody else.

She would most like to take it back to the forest and give it back to its parents, and though that sounded ridiculous, she thought it might also have a chance of working. Wyverns weren’t bird-brained chickens or turkeys. They were sharp—and they had few eggs to begin with. When she was little she had found an egg that had rolled out of a nest, and a wyvern nearby was yodeling at it, trying to figure out how to get it back in. Using her most nonthreatening gestures and calming aura, she had managed to convince the wyvern to stand down while she put the egg in the nest. It seemed to understand—at least, it had settled happily back down on its only egg, and it had not steamed her while she crept carefully away. She came back to check on the nest a week later, and again the wyvern did not steam her, though it watched her warily.

It was a reach. But it was worth a try, especially since this would be this wyvern’s only chick left.

Except she didn’t know if the wyvern had made it through the tranqing. And if it hadn’t, then with the eggs gone, its mate would have no reason to hang around the nest. It would leave and start its life again.

This chick would have no home to go to.

Her belly thrummed harder and with a start, Dorie realized the egg was about to hatch. In sudden panic she wondered what would happen if it tried to hatch inside her. She could phase blue and let it out … but wouldn’t the albumen react poorly to her fey side? She shuddered.

Dorie phased into her half-there state—keeping her belly fully solid—and shimmied through time and space to the end of the dock. Up the railing she went, and then her canvas bag was swinging over the grey pigeon there, and now she had it. Her momentum carried her back down to the ground, and she rolled and came up, turning solid as she went.

The bag rustled and beat. She tied the cloth handles in a knot and carried it back to the slum.

She arrived back just as Colin did. He was holding up her birdcage with a sorry-looking rat inside. Crowed triumphantly, “Got one! Leg’s gone mangled in the trap but that’s all right, ain’t it?”

“The woglet won’t be picky,” Dorie assured him. “I’ve got a pigeon for backup.” She swung her moving bag down and set it on a corner of the floor. It would be all right there. “Start water boiling,” she said. “Drop this cloth in it. And hurry.” He set the pot going while she turned away, and with her back to him, eased the egg carefully out of her belly.

The egg glinted under the yellow glow of the lightbulb. Silver like mica, flecked with shine. A hairline crack was about to form around the top, she thought, and then watched it happen and wondered how she had known. But that was how the other egg had started—the woglet chipping away with its egg tooth—so perhaps that’s all it was. “Do you have some rags?” Dorie said. “Mine are in with the pigeon.”

Colin grabbed a holey towel that she thought was probably his only one and laid it on the table. She mounded up the edges to make a nest and set the rocking egg inside it.

“Now when the woglet comes out,” Dorie said, “it will have to rest for a couple of minutes. Get its strength back before it goes after the rat or pigeon. That’s the point where we will take the goo and apply it to your leg.” Her fey side took over from her human nerves, leaving her as steady as a rock and as cold as ice. “I need you to roll up your pant leg and wipe down the scarring with some alcohol, all right? Better be safe than sorry.” She had been thinking over the process all the way home from the forest. Just wiped the albumen on the scar, Tam had said. It would hurt. It was little enough to go on—but for Dorie, it was enough. Her fey side would do the rest.

Colin found a small measure of cheap brandy and did as she asked, then said as easily as possible, “Gonna hurt like a sonofabitch, right?” She nodded and he slugged the rest of the brandy. “Wouldn’t expect anything else from a twenty-year-old curse removal.” There was a swallow left in the bottle and he held it out to her, and she drank it, because she had decided Dorian would do such things, even though she had never acquired a taste for anything other than beer.

Dorie turned back to the egg, for this was the moment, this was the point, and suddenly the crack around the top widened and popped off, and a triangular, silver-white head poked through, questing for the outside. Its eyes were mottled green, like some cats’, and the bright silver scales ran sleekly over its head and neck, glistening with the precious substance used to grow it.

Colin sucked in air, and the head swung around, but it pointed at
her
. Suddenly the wyvern hatchling was looking at her with its large luminous eyes. No, not an it—a
him
. Wyverns were difficult to sex, and yet, somehow, locked in his gaze, she was sure. She remembered his parent catching her this morning. This wyvern was too little to really be able to trap her, but still, she felt the insidious pull. He made a low purring noise, turning his head, and the spell was broken. He went back to rocking, trying to get free of his shell prison.

“Is it … now?” Colin asked.

Dorie shook her head. If they didn’t care about the wyvern hatchling it would be now, could be anytime they wanted. But you couldn’t help a hatchling free itself without likely damaging it—that was true of any sort of chick or lizard she’d ever heard of. This little one had to free his own self from the yolk sac and the shell. It was a waiting game now, a knife’s edge of just the right moment.

She looked down at Colin’s leg, preparing herself for what she would need to do. She realized now that she had been slightly hungry ever since Colin came in with the rat, and now, in this close proximity to his curse, she was positively starving. No wonder he didn’t have a close relationship with anybody. Carefully she leaned down to gently touch the scar, let her fey side feel the fellow bit of fey that lurked within. Even after two decades, the poisonous scars were angry, red, and raised, and they ran down the inside of his leg, from knee to ankle. The scars seemed to twist and move as she stared at them. It was a long scar. It would need every last bit of the wyvern goo. And every last bit of Colin’s fortitude.

The woglet’s trills called her back to him. From her limited experience with wyverns, they apparently made a variety of yodelly ululations, each more annoying than the last. This one sounded like a high-pitched kazoo and clearly meant effort. The egg rocked wildly back and forth and the wet silver wings suddenly came poking out of the top. The wyvern got one of them outstretched, then, exhausted, rolled over on top of his triangular head. “C’mon,” crooned Dorie. “You can make it.” She thought that might sound too feminine, so gruffly she added, “Let’s go, sport.” She retrieved her bag with the annoyed pigeon in it and set it down next to the table. The rat in its cage limped back and forth.

The other wing waved back and forth and finally stretched all the way out. The wingspan was surprisingly long for such a little creature. Then the wings folded up again and the wyvern got one leg out. His head naturally curled up into a ball and he rolled over again. His little stomach panted in and out as he ululated his annoyance with the situation.

Dorie felt every inch of her tense with the waiting. Beside her she could feel that Colin felt the same.

The wyvern warbled in little pants that sounded like an air raid siren as he struggled to free his foot. He hopped forward on one leg, kicking—and finally the other leg came free, and the egg half rolled away behind him. He plopped down on the towel, cooing, exhausted again.

“Now,” said Dorie.

She grabbed the discarded egg. Stuck her solidly human fingers into it, cleaning it free of the albumen that had surrounded the wyvern—the yolk sac and leftover strands of nutrient goo. It felt like any normal egg, but she kept her fey side firmly locked away. Not a good time to discover what fey poison felt like to that side of her. “Now,” she repeated, and Colin closed his eyes and she touched the anti-fey wyvern goo to the top of the red scar.

He shuddered and clutched his leg with both hands, letting out a muffled oath. She had hoped he could keep still—too late now if he couldn’t. No time to tie him down.

Working as quickly as possible, she painted the raised red scar with the goo, working from top to bottom. The scar burned away in a puddle that was not quite goo or human or fey, but something strange in between, and she took the hot cloth she had boiled, and wiped it clean, as Colin gasped and his leg shook with the effort of holding it steady. As she wiped the ooze a blue steam roiled off the leg, lifted up and evaporated, eradicated. Colin pressed his lips shut as a thin whine escaped them.

When Dorie was done with the first pass she studied the leg. It wouldn’t do to stop too soon and leave any trace of fey behind. She had to be certain to get every last bit of blue out. Where the scar had been was now a shallow inverted scar, a smooth depression of skin. It was angry and red from the treatment, but it was whole, and she looked it up and down for any stray ridges of the old, writhing scar. When she thought she had it she wiped the whole leg one more time with the hot water, making sure to remove every bit of the anti-fey goo. And then carefully ran her fingers along the skin.

Hardly daring to breathe, she phased her fingers into fey state, just a little, not enough that anyone would know. Like a magnet calling to iron, the fey in her fingers quested to see if there was anything left on the leg. If there were any blue left, she would surely feel it.

But the skin was clean. The albumen had worked. Her fey side had done something useful.

Her atonement, for this human, at least, was done.

Colin stretched his leg out, wondering at it. Dorie rocked back on her heels. This was no longer about her; this was about him. His reclaiming of his own body.

“Does it still hurt?” she said.

He nodded no, then yes. “Like a day-old burn. But not like … a moment ago.”

It was a good sign, she thought. If it went like the blacksmith, then it sounded as though the scar and the ache would both fade. And of course, no more curse.

That would be its own sort of adjustment, of course.

Dorie turned her attention to the new thing that needed her—the woglet who was now realizing he was hungry, as hungry as Colin had been. Hungry—and fierce. The little wyvern raised his head, swaying, looking at Dorie for confirmation. She stroked his head—she didn’t mean to, but somehow she was there, doing it—and crooned, “Yes yes, little one. Kill something.” She reached down and unlatched the birdcage, setting the rat free to slowly limp out and look around. Then untied the bag, letting the disgruntled pigeon burst free with a rustle of wings.

The woglet’s head swung up, sensing the prey moving about the room. Unsteadily he spread his wings and crept to the edge of the table, looked down. The rat limped below.

The woglet flapped his wings and cried shrilly. Then he jumped off the table, gliding down on the new wings to land with an ungainly thump next to the rat.

The rat was twice the size of the baby wyvern and Dorie’s heart beat fast in her chest. The contest seemed so uneven, even with the rat’s injured leg. But the baby wyvern in the lab had done just fine, hadn’t it? The rat crept away from the woglet. Again the woglet looked at Dorie for confirmation. She felt oddly moved. It was so unlike the behavior she expected from witnessing the cranky hatchling in the lab. “Go on,” she urged him.

The woglet swung around to face the rat directly. Several lids around his eyes fanned open, expanding the apparent size of the woglet’s eyes like petals around a flower. But that was not all the lids did. The scales on the inside were as shiny as mirrors. This was where the basilisk heritage came into play. It whimpered, a funny sound that in another animal would have meant an injury. Unthinkingly the rat swung to look.

And was caught in the woglet’s gaze.

Powerless to move, the rat stood there as the tiny woglet advanced, step by step. The woglet trembled on the brink—he had never done such a thing, and the rat really was huge. “Go on,” Dorie said again, and the silver-white head sunk teeth into the rat’s neck for the kill.

There was a short sharp squeak, but the rat made no move to defend itself, even after the eye contact had broken and it lay dying. She felt a little sorry for the rat—it had never had a chance. The woglet had a strong power. His parents would have been proud. He would live.

“Bloody hell,” Colin said softly.

The silver head bent to feed as the rat’s eyes dimmed to flat black. The spell broken, Dorie turned back to find Colin avidly watching the scene, one hand absently massaging the skin around the old scar. The red was already fading to pink.

“Little savages,” she agreed.

“So hungry,” he said.

“And you?”

He shook his head and suddenly his eyes welled up. He harrumphed manfully and turned away, stomped toward his stove with the force of old habit. He slid a pan on the stove and stopped and looked at it wonderingly, and either the realization that he was not hungry or the brandy broke something inside, for the heretofore calm and collected Colin said, “Do you know what it’s like to think about food all day long? To always be wondering how far you are from when you’ll let yourself have your next meal? To turn down invitations ’cause you don’t know if there’ll be a way for you to get a sandwich at the right time, and if you don’t get it, then what’s the point of going anyway, ’cause you’ll spend the whole time thinking about
food
? I can scavenge slop with the best of them. Sure we was always broke, but me mum would be horrified if she knew how often I’ve et from bins. You see a bun and it doesn’t matter that it has ants crawling over it, you have to have it—” He broke off, swallowing more words, banged his pan on the stove, then flipped it over, let it go.