Copperhead

spiteful comment. Are you going to help him blow up the slums?

It couldn’t be. She refused to believe it. Rook could not possibly be that cold inside.

He was watching her, wavering there, and he did not put out hands to steady her.

“What are you doing then?” she said.

“Going in to help,” Rook said.

“I’m going, too,” Helen said. She did not know what possessed her to say it. And yet she thought she saw his hazel eyes glimmer with respect.

“Let’s go then,” he said, and with a trace of his usual levity added, “You can make a fine number of bandages with that skirt.”

“Not as many as you’re thinking,” she shot back, and the wit and raillery lay like a bright warm thing over the cold gulf that separated them.

They plunged into the destruction. It was dark and snowing and utter chaos. Frightened men and women ran through the rubble calling the names of friends, lovers, children—answered by terrible sounds of pain from those that had been hit. A woman was trying to move a smoking piece of metal off of someone with her bare hands. Several men were working to safely move the downed wires from the tracks. Ahead of her, in the shadow cast by the destruction, lay a tiny woman in a brightly flowered skirt like Helen’s mother used to wear.

Helen made a beeline to her, moving with a purpose and energy she had not felt in a long time. A metal bar lay half on top of the dwarvven woman, pinning her down. She was moaning.

Helen bent down. “Are you all right?”

The woman grunted. “Just my leg,” she managed, trying to sit up.

Helen wrapped her gloved hands in the knit skirt and shoved the twisted beam the few inches off of the woman. She saw the torn flesh and shuddered. The woman must be in too much shock to fully register the pain. “Lean on me,” Helen said, and, hoping she wasn’t making things worse, she helped the woman hobble the short distance to where a makeshift field hospital had arisen. Helen helped the woman sit down, patiently waiting her turn in the line, and thought, This is what I could do to help. She had done it before, so long ago, when she couldn’t raise a shovel herself and head onto the field.…

“Wait,” Helen promised the woman, and went to where several dwarvven were ferrying in supplies from their nearby home.

“Just get them patched so they can get home,” one was saying rapidly as he unloaded buckets of supplies from a makeshift wagon. “Fimn’s running the stretchers back and forth.”

“Broken bones are one thing,” said another. “But some are going to need the city hospital.”

“If they’ll take us,” muttered a third. “If they’re not overjoyed to hear this.”

“I hardly think—,” said the first, but then the third noticed Helen and nudged the others.

“Can I help?” said Helen. All three looked up, eyed her with suspicion. “I can clean wounds and apply dressings. I did it in the war. Debride, probe for shrapnel … if I can’t stop the bleeding or there’s a fracture I’ll call for a surgeon. I know when I’m in over my head.”

The first looked at her carefully. After what seemed like a long time but was in reality probably a very short time due to the speed at which they were working, said, “Over there with Nolle’s crew.”

“Thank you,” said Helen. She could feel them watching her as she walked in the indicated direction, stripping off her gloves.

It was still chaos there, but a controlled chaos. The groans of the wounded mingled with the bangs and thumps of people sifting through the destruction, bringing in supplies. Nolle, a sturdy dark-skinned dwarvven woman with long wavy hair, wasted no time letting Helen start working on the people being brought in. She pushed Helen toward a dwarvven man who had been struck just above his ear, the skin torn back. Helen swallowed, picked up the carbolic disinfectant, and stepped toward him. This was a thing she could do. “This is going to sting,” she said.

Nolle did not slow her own work, but gave a brief nod of approval in Helen’s direction. Despite the trouble that Copperhead was stirring up between the races, it was equal opportunity here, Helen was pleased to see, and they patched up dwarvven and humans with equal care.

It was full night now. The makeshift work lights had dimmed and been replaced three times by the time the line of people slowed. Helen’s fingers were numb as she bent mechanically for a next victim that didn’t come.

Nolle left what she was doing and touched Helen’s arm. “You should know we saved nearly everybody,” she said. “You have done well.” And then, as if it was something formal, she said, “I acknowledge our debt to you and take it on. Now sit down.”

Helen nodded, and found herself wavering, toddling out from the tented area into the wreckage, which was now quite covered in snow. It was starkly quiet after the time in the tent with the wounded. It was peaceful, almost beautiful, like something that had happened a million years ago to someone else. The people were mostly gone now, either helped in the tent or stumbled on home. It was down to a few figures still searching the wreckage to make sure they hadn’t missed anybody. Perhaps it hadn’t even really been all that long since the explosion, and yet it seemed a lifetime. A lean shadowy figure came through the snow from the other end of the trolley, a crowbar over his shoulder. The cold and fatigue suddenly got to her and she sat down, hard.

“Helen!” she heard from a distance, and saw him drop the crowbar and hurry toward her, and she thought, so maybe he cares a little if I faint?

The snow fell in white clumps, blotting out him and the smoking wreckage. She didn’t see the trolley; she saw the battlefield that she did not enter. She stood there with Mother as Charlie and Jane marched into the field and all they could do was watch and let them go. There were farmers to bandage and wounds to tend and she did that all day and into the night, worked straight through the numb shock while mother wept and Jane keened.

All of this flashed in front of her eyes, superimposed on the twisted struts and billowing blue smoke. Her legs were wet with snow, everything was wet with snow and she was so cold, or perhaps so warm.…

Then gentle arms were picking her up and now she was the one being helped along. “Didn’t you know you have to take it easy after you have a concussion?”

“No one told me that,” murmured Helen.

“I’ll have a word with Nolle,” Rook promised. “Basic medical training.” This and similar nonsense kept her awake, got her through the junk store and down the stairs to the tunnels below the surface. “You need to come see Jane and Tam,” he said. “Reassure yourself that they’re all right.”

She was shivering now as she warmed up. The tunnels were not warm, but the wind had been fierce, she only now realized. “C-c-cold,” she managed. They walked along the occasionally lit cement pathways and she studied the different painted symbols marking the tunnels, tried to keep a map in her head. Tunnels were not for her.

“They’ve commandeered all the blankets but I wouldn’t let them touch mine,” Rook said. “Jane will share with you. She’s been warm and safe—if not sane—the whole time.”

“She’s still … out of it?”

Rook shrugged. “She’s not the Jane that Frye told me about,” he said. “That Jane sounded on top of things. Frye always spoke of her as if she could rule the world.”

Helen drew back from his arm. “Maybe she can,” she said to the awe in his voice.

His arm fell away as she moved, as if he was ready for them to walk on their own, apart. “But your sister seems different than I expected,” he said carefully. “I know you said there’d been trouble since the warehouse. But … frankly, I’m somewhat worried about her motives.” They turned into a larger hollowed-out space that had been chopped up into many small chambers, with dividers made of grates and bricks and scraps of tin.

“Her motives?” Helen said wonderingly. “She’s dazed from whatever they did to her, but Jane means well.”

They stopped outside the very last chamber, a fully walled brick one set farther down the tunnel, a good deal apart from the rest. It made her wonder if he’d managed to obtain a nicer one simply by virtue of being havlen, and therefore no one had wanted him as a direct neighbor. “Helen,” he said, and stopped so she had to face him. Her eyes were level with his. Quietly he said in her ear, “Some think the trolley was no accident.”

“No accident?” She sucked air across her teeth. This was what Morse had implied, but why was he telling her this? “What are you saying?” she whispered back.

“In the front cabin. There appear to be traces of some sort of bomb.”