Silverblind (Ironskin) (2 page)

The little wyvern stalked along, its tiny claws clicking on the metal, its feet splaying out as it tried to learn balance. A man moved in front of her and by the time Dorie could see again the wyvern was comfortably gnawing on the mouse.

“Bloody-minded, aren’t they?” said someone.

The short man brought a shallow bowl of water to set on the table and the wyvern chick stopped eating long enough to flap its wings and hiss, causing much laughter as the short man jumped back, spilling the water. A tall man in a finely cut suit said, “Doesn’t like you much, does it?”

“Nasty little things don’t like anyone,” retorted the short man.

“And here I thought it was showing good taste,” said the tall man in a pretend-nice way. The other scientists laughed sycophantically and Dorie thought this must be someone with power. She dropped her eyes as she realized he was looking back at her, and turned to Simons.

“What now?” Dorie whispered to her interviewer. “Will they return the chick to its parents?”

“Oh, no,” Simons said. “We sell the hissy little things—to zoos and other research facilities, mostly. We’re only interested in the eggs here, and they don’t breed in captivity. Every so often someone makes arrangements with Pearce to purchase one as a pet—don’t ask me why people want them. They don’t like anybody. All they do is spit and scream at you, and when they’re older, steam, too.”

“Who’s that man?” said Dorie, for Simons seemed to be in a question-answering mood. “The one looking at us.”

Simons stiffened. Hurriedly he stepped in front of her as if to block the man’s view. “Come on, come on, let me show you out,” he said. “That’s the lab director, and if he’s cross about me showing you this I just don’t even know. Hurry, miss.”

Dorie started to the door, but stopped, Simons running into her. That boy, all the way in the corner, getting the wyvern chick more water. Wasn’t that Tam after all? Or was her mind playing tricks on her now? She had not seen him for seven years, but surely—

“Dr. Pearce,” said Simons, swallowing.

“Yes, this must be the one o’clock, correct?” The tall man was there, beaming down upon them in more of that faux-friendly way. “Showing her around a little bit?”

“Well, I—”

“Good, good. Miss Rochart, isn’t it? If you’ll come this way? I’d like to continue your interview in more comfortable quarters.”

Simons looked as startled as Dorie felt, as the lab director escorted her to his office.

In stark contrast to the underling’s office, this office was expansive and tidy. You could make seven or eight of Simons’s office from it, and everyone knew that guys like Simons were the ones who did the real work. The omnipresent barred windows were replaced with a large plate-glass window. The new security building was across the street—a twin of this one, in blocky concrete and steel. And here was that clear view of the old hospital—and yes, the women with their placards attempting to unionize:
FAIR PAY FOR FAIR WORK. A VICTORY FOR ONE IS A VICTORY FOR ALL
. Dorie strained to see if she could see her stepmother, Jane, who was not a nurse, but liked a good lost cause when she saw one.

The other significant object in the room was a large glass terrarium. Its sides were made of several glass panels set into copper, including a pair of doors fastened with a copper bolt. The top was vented with mesh, and the ceiling above the whole shebang was reinforced with anti-flammable panels of aluminum. Inside this massive display was an adolescent wyvern chick, about the size of a young cat. It was curled up in a silver ball on a nest of wool scraps and looked very comfortable.

Dorie wondered how secure the copper bolt was.

Dr. Pearce pulled out the chair for her, and leaned down to shake her hand. She realized now who he was—she had heard all the stories of his tailored suits, suave manner, and ice-chip eyes. Her hope bounded upward—talking to the lab director himself was an excellent sign. She had not gotten this far with the other two interviews.

Dr. Pearce had her sheaf of papers with him—her stellar academic record, her carefully acquired letters of recommendation. He smiled at Dorie—they always did—and sat down across from her. “The lovely Miss Rochart, I presume? So pleased to finally meet you.”

Dorie tightened her fingers together at the mention of her looks, but she did not stop smiling.
The Queen’s Lab. Focus on the goal. With this position you could really start to make a difference. Don’t drop spiders on the lab director.

She knew what she looked like—the curse of her beauty-obsessed fey mother. Blond ringlets, even, delicate features, rosebud lips. She could put the ringlets in a bun—which she had—and put on severe black spectacles—which she hadn’t; she couldn’t afford such nonsense—and still she would look like a porcelain doll. She had several times tried to tease the ringlets apart in hopes they would turn into a wild mop, which she always thought would suit her better. But no matter what she tried, she woke up every morning with her hair in careful, silken curls. Even now they were intent on escaping the bun, falling down to form softening ringlets around her face.

“And I you,” said Dorie. Her normal voice was high and dulcet, but through long practice she had trained herself to speak an octave lower than she should.

He steepled his fingers. “Let’s cut right to the chase, Miss Rochart—Adora. May I call you Adora? Such a lovely name.”

“I go by Dorie or Ms. Rochart,” she said, still smiling.

“Ah yes, the diminutive. I understand—after all, I don’t make my friends call me
Dr
. Pearce
all
the time.” He smiled at his joke. “Well, then, Dorie, let’s have at it. I understand this is your third interview today?”

“Yes,” she said. The laced fingers weren’t working as well as she had hoped. She sat firmly on one hand and gripped the leg of her chair with the other. It would be terribly bad form to make that porcelain cup of tea with the gold rim levitate off the desk and dump itself down his front. “I understood that information to be private?”

“Oh, there are so few of us in this business, you understand. We are all old friends, all interested in what the new crop of graduates is doing.” He smiled paternally at her. “And your name came up several times over lunch today.”

“Yes?”

“Again, Adora—Dorie—let’s cut to the chase. My colleagues were most amused to tell me of the pretty young girl who thought she could slay basilisks.”

“I see,” said Dorie. “Thank you for your time, then.” She began to rise before her hands would do something that would betray her fey heritage and have her thrown in jail—or worse.

“No no, you misunderstand,” he said, and he came to take her shoulders and gently guide her back to the chair. “My colleagues are living in the past. They didn’t understand what an opportunity they had in front of them. But I understand.”

“Yes?” Her heartbeat quickened. Was he on her side after all? A rosy future opened up once more. The Queen’s Lab—a stepping-stone to really do some good. So much knowledge had been lost since the Great War two decades ago, since people started staying away from the forest. Simple things like what to do with feywort and goldmoths and yellowbonnet. She could continue her research into the wild, fey-touched plants and animals of the forest—species were disappearing at an alarming rate, and that couldn’t be good for the fey
or
humans. And then, the last several times she’d been home, she’d hardly been able to
find
the fey in the woods behind her home. When she did, they were only thin drifts of blue.

But Dorie could help the humans. She could help the fey.

She was the perfect person to be the synthesis—and this was the perfect spot to do it. The Queen’s Lab was the most prominent research facility in the city. If she could get in here, she could solve things from the inside.

Surely even Jane would approve of that.

Dr. Pearce smiled, one hand still on her shoulder. “If you’ve met any of the young men who do field work for us, you know they grew up dreaming of facing down mythical monsters.” He gestured expansively, illustrating the young boys’ fervent imaginations. “Squaring off against the legendary basilisk, armed with only a mirror! Luring a copperhead hydra out of its lair, seizing it by the tail before it can twist around to bite you with its seven heads! Sneaking past a pair of steam-blowing silvertail wyverns, capturing their eggs and returning to tell the tale!”

“Yes,” breathed Dorie. She put her hands firmly in her pockets.

“Those boys grow up,” Dr. Pearce said. “Some of them still want to fight basilisks. But many of them settle down and realize that the work we do right here in the lab is just as important as risking your neck in the field.” He perched on his desk and looked right at her. “Our country is mired in the dark ages of myth and superstition, Dorie. When we lost our fey trade three decades ago, we lost all of our easy, clean energy—all of our pride. We’ve been clawing our way back to bring our country in line with the technology of the rest of the world. We need some bold strokes to align us once more among the great nations of the world. And we can only do that with smart men—and women—like you.”

She heard the ringing echo of a well-rehearsed speech, and still, she was carried away, for this
was
what she wanted, and more. “And think of all the good we could do with the knowledge we acquire in the field!” she jumped in, even though she had not planned to tip her hand till she was hired. “Sharing the benefits of all we achieve with everyone who truly needs them. Why, the good that can be accomplished from one pair of goldmoth wings! From a tincture of copperhead hydra venom! Do you remember the outbreak of spotted hallucinations last summer? My stepmother was the one who realized that the city hospitals no longer knew the country remedy of a mash of goldmoths and yellowbonnet. We worked together—she educating hospital staff, me in the field collecting. With the backing of someone like the Queen’s Lab, I could continue this kind of work. We could make a difference. Together.” She was ordinarily not good with words, but she had recited her plans to her roommate over and over, waiting for the key moment to tell someone who could really help her.

“Ah, a social redeemer,” Dr. Pearce said, and a fatherly smile smeared his face at her youthful enthusiasms.

This was not the key moment.

“But more seriously, Dorie,” he went on, and his voice deepened. “I would like to create a special position in the Queen’s Lab, just for you. A smart, clever, lady scientist like you is an asset that my colleagues were foolish enough to overlook.” He fanned out her credentials. “Your grades and letters of recommendation are exemplary.” He wagged a finger at her. “You know, if you had been born a boy we would never have had this meeting. You would have been snapped up this morning at your very first interview.”

“The Queen’s Lab has always been my first choice,” said Dorie, because it seemed to be expected, and because it was true.

He smiled kindly, secure in his position as leader of the foremost biological research institution in the country. “Dorie, I would like you to be our special liaison to our donors. It is not false praise to assert how important you would be to our cause. The lab cannot exist without funding. Science cannot prosper. We need people like you, people who can stand on the bridge between the bookish boy scientist with a pencil behind his ear and the wealthy citizens that can be convinced to part with their family money; someone, in fact, exactly like you.”

Her hands rose up, went back down. A profusion of thoughts pressed on her throat—with effort she focused to make a clear sentence come out. “And I would be doing what, exactly? Attending luncheons, giving teas?” He nodded. “Greasing palms at special late-night functions for very
select
donors?”

“You have it exactly.”

“A figurehead, of sorts,” said Dorie. Figurehead was a substitute for the real word she felt.

“If you like.”

“
Not
doing field work,” she said flatly.

“You must see that we couldn’t risk you. I am perfectly serious when I say the work done here in the lab is as important—
more
important—than the work done by the hotheads out gathering hydras. You would be a key member of the team right here, away from the dust and mud and silvertail burns.”

“I applied for the field work position,” said Dorie, even though her hopes were fading fast. In the terrarium behind him, the adolescent wyvern was awake now, pacing back and forth and warbling. The large terrarium was overkill—their steam was more like mist at this age. It could as easily be pacing around Dr. Pearce’s desk, or enjoying the windowsill. All it would take was a little flicker of the fingers, a little mental nudge on that bolt.…

Dr. Pearce brought his chair right next to hers and put a fatherly arm on her shoulder. She watched the wyvern and did not shove the arm away, still hoping against hope that the position she wanted was in her grasp. “Let me tell you about Wilberforce Browne,” Dr. Pearce said. “Big strapping guy, big as three of you probably—one of our top field scientists. He was out last week trying to bring in a wyvern egg—very important to the Crown, wyvern eggs.”

Dorie looked up at that. “Wyvern eggs?” she said, trying to look innocent. This is what she had just seen. But she could not think what would be so important about the eggs—except to the wyvern chick itself, of course.

Dr. Pearce wagged a finger at her. “You see what secrets you would be privy to if you came to work for us. Well, Wilberforce. He stumbled into a nest of the fey.”

“But the fey don’t attack unless provoked—”

“I wish I had your misplaced confidence,” Dr. Pearce said. “The fey attacked, and in his escape Wilberforce stumbled into the clearing where his target nest lay. Alerted, the mated pair of wyverns attacked with steam and claws. He lost a significant amount of blood, part of his ear—and one eye.”

“Goodness,” murmured Dorie, because it seemed to be expected. “He must have been an idiot,” which was not.

Dr. Pearce harrumphed and carried on. “So you see, your pretty blue eyes are far too valuable to risk in the field. Not that one cares to mention something as sordid as money”—and he took a piece of paper from his breast pocket and laid it on the desk so he could slide it over to her—“but as it happens, I think that you’ll find that sum to be very adequate, and in fact, well more than the field work position would have paid.”