Silverblind (Ironskin) (36 page)

He takes her hand and kisses her again and the world spins around and now she is back in The Supper Club, because all that is a real dream, a true dream that has happened long ago, and here she is at the table, watching a dear sweet man in glasses and a battered leather jacket take the stage. He sits down at the piano, and a little bit is her gift, but the rest is him, as the music swells around them and tells everyone a story of long ago.

It is the story of a Great War that split a country in two.

It is the story of a girl who was ironskin, and tried to help a small damaged child, and learned terrible secrets.

It is a story of a copper-haired girl who paid too much for beauty, and fell, and got up, and fought.

It is the story of a girl who was caught in the war, who paid to save a people with half of herself. Tears run down that girl’s face as she sits in The Supper Club, and listens to her love, and considers what next to fight.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Caroline Yoachim and David Levine for reading the earliest draft, to a bunch of folks on Codex for answering random questions like what a tattoo in your hand would feel like, Neile Graham who has not yet been thanked for catching errors in
Ironskin
, Tinatsu Wallace for the chained-up copperhead hydra, Super Agent Ginger Clark and the Curtis Brown team, Super Editor Melissa Frain, Amy Saxon, Leah Withers, Susannah Noel, Irene Gallo, Larry Rostant, and the rest of the Tor team, Rosalyn Landor for her incredible voice work on the audiobooks, Peter Honigstock for always making the Powell’s events go like clockwork, my family for giving me a week to hole up in Eugene and write while they toddler-wrangled, Dad for reading the third draft, Mom for catching typos, Eric for, really, just all kinds of help and support, and finally, sweet little baby #2 for only eating half of my brain and not all of it.

April 2014

Portland, Oregon

TOR BOOKS BY TINA CONNOLLY

Ironskin

Copperhead

Silverblind

About the Author

TINA CONNOLLY lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, in a house that came with a dragon in the basement and blackberry vines in the attic. Her stories have appeared all over, including in
Strange Horizons, Lightspeed,
and
Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
She is a frequent reader for
PodCastle,
and narrates the Parsec-winning flash fiction podcast
Toasted Cake
. In the summer, she works as a face painter, which means a glitter-filled house is an occupational hazard. Learn more at
www.tinaconnolly.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

SILVERBLIND

Copyright © 2014 by Christine Marie Connolly

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Larry Rostant

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7653-7514-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-4540-4 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466845404

First Edition: October 2014