Copperhead

He raised eyebrows at her.

“You make it sound so lovely, I can practically see it,” Helen said. “It makes me wish we could go.”

“Your Mr. Huntingdon could take you.”

“No, he won’t let me go out for the danger, and I owe him not to go for something frivolous.”

Rook stopped then, and looked at her. “Helen,” he said.

“What?” She was startled to hear her name on his lips.

He turned and walked faster. “You’re cold, we should hurry.”

She was confused. “What did I say?”

Rook wheeled back again, took her elbow. “Now look,” he said. “What do you mean you can’t go out? You’re here now.”

“I snuck,” Helen said. “Or is it sneaked?” She thought she could lighten the sudden tension, for she could not understand why he seemed to be angry.

“For Frye’s party?”

“To talk to those women. Alberta and Betty and Desiree. To convince them to let Jane restore their old faces.”

“Ah,” Rook said, but the thing that looked fierce in him did not go, and he said, “Now look, Helen. What do you mean, you owe him?”

“Oh,” said Helen. She did not know why, but she suddenly wanted to tell him, tell him more than she had ever told Jane, more than: I’m so desperately tired of being poor.

That was maybe half of the story. Maybe a tenth.

She turned away from his fierce gaze and started walking into the wind, opening her mouth before she lost her nerve. “My mother fell sick before she died,” Helen said. It was strange how hard the words were to get out, even as something inside said you can trust him with this. She had never told the story, not to anyone. She was very good at changing the subject. “We tried a lot of doctors. A lot of medicine.”

“Your family?” Rook said. He kept pace with her as they walked up the street, letting her manage the words in her own way. The houses were bigger here on the other side of the park, more porches and columns and windows … but still that blue, all that blue.

“Me,” Helen said. “My father died several years before the war. My brother, Charlie … near the end of it. Jane was in the city, trying to heal herself. I wasn’t very nice to her at the time, I’m afraid. It felt as though she’d abandoned me.” Helen hadn’t thought through this in years. At least, not while awake—sometimes the dreams slipped her back through time and she woke aching with regret for a vanished past. It didn’t matter if she thought about it or consciously didn’t think about it, it was all still there. That lost feeling of being thirteen and alone in the house with Mother, who was slipping further away each day despite all of Helen’s efforts to bring her back.

“By the end, there was nothing left. Everything was mortgaged to the hilt or sold off. But I heard about a new doctor in the city. I went to him and begged. Well, he agreed to payment in installments.…” Helen trailed off. The night was cold and wet. The cloud cover blocked out the stars. Perhaps it was not clouds but smoke from the factories at the river, she thought, choking the sky.…

And these few sentences were more than she had said in years. She could not do any more, not just yet. “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.

There was silence for a time. Then Rook said, “I grew up not knowing my father. Of course I was taller than everyone else. But havlen is an insult. Half-thing.”

Helen looked at him, shocked. How had she seen him and not known? She had to recalibrate. This man was only half-human. And half-dwarvven. Alistair would never approve. Copperhead would never approve. He couldn’t possibly be a member, then, unless he was a dwarvven spy, and in that case he had just carelessly handed a big secret to the wife of one of the top party members.

“I started out by punching everyone who called my mother a vile name. After a while I got a name for it.”

“I would have figured you for the class clown type.”

“When they finally threatened to throw me out of school for good I became the class clown instead. At least it’s a time-honored position, in dwarvven society. Like being a writer. Being a joker. It gave me a tenuous place.”

“It’s so much easier to talk of fun things,” Helen said. The way was getting steeper and it was hard to laugh. “If you talk silly then no one asks prying questions.”

“So let’s talk of terrible theatre some more,” Rook said, but Helen heard a bite in his voice that made her ask, “You didn’t stay the class clown?”

“Who does,” he said, “when war comes?” There was a moment when the moon caught his eyes and she looked right into him and saw that there was a thing, a some-thing, a black dark thing. But then his eyes glinted with a grin once more and he said, “Now, you may talk of cabbages and sealing wax and everything else Dodgson wrote of, but we are done with secrets.” He suddenly seized her arm and pointed to the footbridge they were nearing. “Have you ever climbed on a bridge rail in the middle of the night in November?”

“No!” Helen said, suddenly laughing, and Rook seized her arm, calling, “Race you,” and pulled her up the street, as if the race were the two of them together, against some other, unknown opponent. The cold night was sharp in her throat and her heels skidded on the wet pavement, but she laughed, fast and fierce, giddy with the run.

The bridge railings turned out to be stone ledges, and there was a fair amount of blue fey draped over them.

“Mm,” said Rook. “Perhaps we won’t climb these railings.” He looked at the blue. “No, I wanted to climb something.” He reached down and peeled away a large swath of blue with his gloved hands.

“Rook!” she cried, hurrying toward him—then stopped, for her face was still bare.

He let the blue fall over the edge of the bridge. “Go home, little fey,” he said. “Shoo.” The blue glow slid down into the black night and vanished.

“Rook,” she said again, shocked. “Do you have iron in your gloves?”

“No,” he said, and peeled another piece away. “It’ll be safe for you in a minute. Hang on.”

“But … you’re touching them. You saw what happened today, to that man.…”

“Yes,” he said. “And yet the odds are very much against that. Or perhaps I like to live dangerously.” He saw her expression and said, “Look, as much as I dislike the fey, a little piece isn’t going to harm me. You do know what the old fey tech that you humans used to trade for was made from, don’t you?”

Helen shook her head.

“Pieces of fey,” he said. “All your bluepacks that used to power things. Bits of split-apart fey. It was a punishment for them. They don’t like being torn apart like this.” He gestured around the city at the swathes of blue. “Whoever their new leader is, they’re strong enough to make it stick.” He dropped another piece over the edge. “Anyway, the small bits aren’t aware of much. It’s not till you have a whole fey that you have problems.”

“Well, I do know that much,” Helen said. “But aren’t you afraid there could be a big one hiding among these little bits?”

“I know,” Rook said, peeling off another piece. “But I am watching, and I am quick on my feet.” He dropped the bit of fey over the edge. She could see that they did not fall all the way into the water, but lazily drifted along just over it, looking for a new spot to rest. He looked over the edge, watching it go. “It doesn’t matter what I saw today. They are still not the race I fear.”

Helen did not say anything to that, because she knew which race he meant.

Humans.

Rook was havlen, so he was part-dwarvven. And Copperhead hated the dwarvven nearly as much as the fey, though she never could figure out why. Humans and dwarvven had been allies, once. The dwarvven did not like the fey, either.

“Well,” said Rook. “If they knew what we’ve planned for them…”