Silverblind (Ironskin) (30 page)

“That’s five hours from here,” said Tam, working with his own spoon. “The most the copper has extended the five-minute shelf life is an hour. There won’t be anything left in five hours.”

“It’s a basilisk,” pointed out Dorie. “The albumen may have different properties—we know it’s probably stronger.”

They ignored this. “Someone had to be the first to try the wyvern albumen,” said Tam, “and someone is going to have to be the first to try this.”

“Thomas, it’s a story,” said Annika. “The basilisk albumen in the eye is just a
story
.”

Dorie sucked air between her teeth. He couldn’t really be suggesting that he put that stuff in his eye, could he?

Tam looked up at Annika, his face inscrutable behind his glasses. “I thought you believed in my stories,” he said.

Annika looked at him for a moment. Then, without turning her head, she said, “Dorian? Let’s cut to the chase. You’re clearly the best trapper of the three of us. Bring me a rabbit—and do not argue. Just do it.”

“But—” said Dorie. Annika just looked at her. Dorie sighed and went just out of sight so she could turn half-blue, and then remembered she couldn’t and kicked a tree stump, wondering just how she was supposed to catch a rabbit as a human. Behind her, the other two hurriedly scraped the goo into copper, looking around every other second for returning basilisks.

“You are too valuable to the Crown,” Annika said quietly but firmly to Tam. “I was hired to make sure you did not get into trouble.
I
will test the basilisk albumen.”

“I can’t let you do that,” said Tam.

“I believe in your research,” she said simply.

“They’re stories,” he cried out, suddenly finding himself on the other side of the argument. “They point the way. We can’t always take them literally. What if it burns your eyes; what if you go blind?”

“Thus the rabbit,” said Annika. “I will watch it for five minutes. Then I will take the test. I have eyewash with me if I think I need it.”

Dorie wasn’t that much of a trapper without her fey senses. Anyway, there wasn’t always a rabbit around when you needed one. She set Woglet down on the ground and said, “Find me something.” She didn’t have much hope that he actually understood her, but he was still growing like crazy and used every opportunity to hunt, so she hoped that it would work out regardless. She watched him watch the ground, and when his eyelids flicked out to fascinate something, Dorie swooped down and grabbed it. “Sorry,” she told Woglet. “Find another for yourself, okay?” She took the wriggling field mouse back to Annika and Tam, who had just finished cleaning out the egg. “Let’s get out of here though, can we?”

They hiked back down to a safe distance—downwind, just in case the basilisks were smellers, though Dorie didn’t think they were—and set up camp in a cave too small for a basilisk. Woglet swooped in after them, curious about what they were doing with his mouse.

“Not as reliable as the rabbit,” said Annika, “but it will do.” With her usual cold-as-ice expression she dipped her gloved finger into the egg and patiently waited for the right second to coat the mouse’s eyes with albumen. Dorie shuddered.

The mouse squealed, then went limp. Well, that’s done it, thought Dorie. But then the mouse started moving again. Annika set it down on the floor and it scampered around their feet and out the cave door, handily avoiding obstacles and seemingly none the worse for the experiment.

“Annika,” Tam tried again. “That’s hardly a valid field test.”

Annika smiled softly at him. “You can’t stop me, Thomas. If you try it, I will try it, too. It might as well be only one of us.” Her face was an implacable mask as she touched her finger to the egg and put one drop in the corner of her eye. She sucked in a painful breath, but Dorie never saw regret write itself across her face. Annika held her breath, eyes closed, counting out the length it had taken the mouse to calm down, while Tam readied the eyewash, seemingly prepared to force it on her in another second.

Annika opened her eyes. The left one was still pale blue against white. The right one was solid silver.

Dorie forced down a yelp, as well as the useless question burning on her lips:
Can you see?

Annika turned her disturbing gaze to Dorie, and Dorie was unable to look away. Was that due to its strangeness? Surely she could pull away if she wanted to. But she didn’t.

“I can see,” Annika said slowly. “I see … faint blue shimmers. Some far, some near.” She blinked at Dorie, her gaze remaining there for a moment. Then slowly she looked away. “I get a sense that there are fey across the ravine, in that direction.”

There
were
fey over there. Dorie could sense them, even without her other fey powers. She shivered. What new advantages was this going to bring to the city?

“Do you see regular things, too?” said Tam.

Annika closed her normal eye. “Regular things look a little less … solid,” she said. “The mountain is fairly solid, but the trees are a tiny bit blurry. Animals blurrier still.” She looked around. “Do you see any birds?”

Dorie silently pointed to the nearest, a jay half-hidden in a larch above them.

Annika was silent for a moment. Then she said, “So that’s what that red blur is.” She looked down at the two of them. “You’re a red blur, too, Tam.” She opened both eyes, closed the silver one, then went back to closing the blue one. “Can I opto-paralyze you?” Annika mused, turning the force of her silver eye on Tam.

Tam felt himself all over, a probing expression on his face. “I don’t think so,” he said, then suddenly laughed. “No, I’d have to be fey, wouldn’t I?” Now that the immediate danger for Annika had passed, he was giddy with another of his myths being proven. “We’ll have to find the fey and try.”

“That seems dangerous,” put in Dorie. She wasn’t sure she wanted Annika to have the chance to find out what the basilisk in her eye could do.

“No, we must,” said Annika. “Pack up and come on.”

Annika pushed her way through the forest and Dorie and Tam had to follow. Tam looked excited; Dorie felt ill. They reached the spot where they had seen the fey—the blue mist was still hanging around, minding its own business as far as Dorie could tell.

“Annika,” she said again, but Annika advanced on it, silver palm out just in case her eye should fail. The blue drifted, then stiffened. A mirror of Annika’s face formed, painfully slowly—the fey was attempting to talk to them, Dorie could tell, and it didn’t even have enough knowledge of human conventions, or images stored away, to form some other face. Sick horror twisted inside.

“Hellllp me,” it said slowly, the fey communication transmuting into a language the humans could understand. Woglet gripped Dorie’s shoulder, his pinprick claws digging in.

“Please, Annika,” Dorie managed again.

An unexpected source backed her up. “It doesn’t mean any harm,” Tam said. “I’ve been around enough of them to tell.”

“They all can cause harm,” Annika said coolly. “Anyway, it’s science.”

“I caaan goooo,” the fey said again. “Let me goooo.”

“Show me where there are more of you,” said Annika.

“Really, don’t you think we should—” said Dorie.

But Annika didn’t even bother to tell her to shut up. “Take notes for me, Thomas,” she said crisply. “Opto-paralyzing for more than five seconds appears to nearly immobilize the fey. The eye with the basilisk is fully open. Next I intend to see if I can release the paralyzation field just enough to have it obey a command. I will attempt to find out if this is a physical constraint—lowering the eyelid partway—or a mental one.”

The fey tried one more time. “Help uuusss,” it said, and the face turned toward Dorie, who felt her heart bottom out. She did not know what to do or say without exposing herself, so she did nothing. Slowly the fey turned away and started to drift through the trees.

They followed the blue mist. Annika’s eyes were at half-mast, the silver one a half-moon reflecting light. The fey moved slowly, painfully, and then it rounded a clearing and they saw hundreds of fey.

And a large silver machine.

“Duck,” said Tam immediately, and he pulled Annika under cover. It broke the connection between her and the fey, and she shot him a sour silver look as they crouched in the leaves. An act that could be parsed two ways, thought Dorie, but she could not try to analyze it further just now. All her attention was on the field: the fey, the machine, the silver-palmed men.

Like the basilisk tail, the machine had left a track through the forest. Trees and bushes were felled behind it as the men had bushwhacked a way for it to come into the fey-heavy clearing. The machine hissed and let off smoke, but the fey, who normally would be repulsed by both things, hung around it in the clearing as if held there by a magnet. One of the silvermen had a long hose with a funnel, and he was cautiously maneuvering it close to the fey.

“What do they think—” started Dorie.

Tam said angrily, “Down, I said,” and pulled a shaking Dorie back down behind the bush. She grabbed an unprotesting Woglet and cradled him close, keeping them hidden.

The man with the funnel had to get very close to the hovering fey to get them into the suction tube. It was a lengthy process even with the fey staying close to the clearing; maneuvering around the other hanging fey, carefully getting the hose to one particular fey. Eventually he got one, and with great whirs the blue was pulled into the machine. Horror filled Dorie’s chest. She wanted to run down there,
do something,
but Tam’s grip was tight. Another man stood at the back of the machine, where he carefully took small blue packages and tucked them away into a well-lined case. Dorie could hear the shriek of the fey death—no, not death, though perhaps it would be kinder—as the fey was split into bits, each bound with some sort of silvery substance to keep it contained.

Then one of the blue bits escaped from the back of the machine, wriggled free into the air.

The machine croaked to a halt and one of the silvermen shouted, “We need another egg!”

From a portable incubator just like Tam’s, the other man brought an egg out. He was wearing heavy gloves. “We’ve only got a few of these left,” he said. “Damn Stilby wants an outrageous sum for the haul he got. They were still negotiating when I left this morning.” He carried the egg over to the small copper funnel on the machine—and then cracked it on the side, dropping shell, goo, wyvern chick and all, straight into the hopper. Dorie shut her eyes, but she was too late to unsee it. Woglet struggled, and Dorie clamped him firmly under her armpit. She opened her eyes and stared the little wyvern down, willing him not to yodel his distress. Her mind could not stop replaying the scene and envisioning her Woglet being cracked into the hopper.

“Dammit,” said a man down below. “We’ll need twice as many eggs just for those we’ve captured today.” He gestured at the fey hanging around the clearing. The first man restarted the machine and they began pulling the fey again.

“The wyvern albumen,” said Dorie, her hands shaking. “It isn’t just for protection. That’s what they’re using to permanently split the fey.”

“Clean energy forever,” said Annika, and her voice rang with something so awed that Dorie knew then, if she hadn’t before, that they were on opposite sides of this issue. She looked down at the vials in her palm. “I expect the basilisk albumen might stretch farther,
ja
? Be many times as powerful?”

“You can’t,” said Tam.

Annika stood, looked down at the two of them. The silver eye reflected the one in her palm. She was a symbol of everything the Crown hoped to find—the beautiful girl channeling the legendary basilisk. A figurehead in truth. “There are moments,” she said, “when you are given the chance to prove whose side you are on. You cannot play both sides. You cannot hide,” and she threw a cold look at Dorie. She held out her hand to Tam. “You have the chance to come with me and be part of this. We will let them know we found it together. It is the missing piece they need—the basilisk albumen, more powerful than the wyvern albumen. Show them what you would do for your country.”

Tam looked at Annika for a long time. At last he said, “I think we have different ideas of what we should do for our country. I cannot lie, even for you. If you go down there, you are a different person than I thought you were.”

“Same to you,” she said softly. And then she marched out of the trees, down to the men, who stood, both repelled and fascinated by the pretty girl with the silver eye. They had no fey in them and yet they might as well have been paralyzed as she strode up to them and pledged her help.

Dorie looked down at Tam, who was still watching Annika, betrayal written on his face. “Come on,” she said gently. “We’d better get out of here.”

They trudged back to the burned-out circle to gather the rest of their things. Tam was silent the whole way. So was Woglet. “They’re wrong to do that,” Tam said at last.

“I know,” said Dorie.

They sat on a stump and looked at the vortex. “Do you think the circle lasts as long as the basilisk is here?” Tam said.

Dorie nodded. “I think it explains where they go to. They come to a safe hatching place, and then they return.”

“And this place was safe for thousands of years,” said Tam.

Dorie spun scenarios. “Do you think there are no humans where they come from? Or lots of them?”

“Perhaps there are lots of fey,” said Tam. “The way the fey and wyverns are enemies. Fey and basilisk surely are as well. They don’t seem to have a fear of man—that would lead me to think there aren’t any at home. But the question is, where is home?”

“Do you promise to believe me if I tell you?” said Dorie.

He looked at her and she knew what he saw. Scruffy, quirky Dorian—in looks completely unlike his porcelain cousin. Someone he had thought he could trust, when he had stopped trusting Dorie long ago. His life had been a series of betrayals—how could he trust one more time? “Perhaps,” he said.

“When I was here on Saturday,” Dorie said, “I went into the circle. But it was different than it was today for me. I saw so many things I felt sick. And then, I let my finger go all blue and touched the circle, and—this.” She unwrapped the bandage from her right hand and showed him the bloodless, perfectly healed missing tip of her finger. It had finally stopped itching.