Copperhead

That was what I was doing as a double agent. Not just spying.”

She stared at him in disbelief, her lips forming the single word “Alistair” to his silent, unreadable expression. The floodlights swept over them as humans in black stormed down the stairs, through the halls. Shouting, running, chaos. The barricade had fallen.

Rook shoved her behind him and shouted in her ear, “Behind the quilt!” and then she was through the entrance into his bedroom and the door was closed behind her, and he was gone. Jane and Tam stood there, blinking at her. Tam was bleary-eyed but awake. Jane was vacant.

“Come on,” Helen said, and, grabbing their things, flung aside the brown quilt to reveal the hole in the wall. It was very short, and she could see lights just beyond it—a drop-off. “Hopefully not too far down,” she muttered, but she was sure Rook wouldn’t have sent them through it if they were all going to break legs.

She lifted Tam up, and he slithered through and called back, “It’s fine; come on!” and so shortly they were all through and then pounding down an escape tunnel marked by red sigils, splashing down tunnels and ducking under grates. They were met by other dwarvven children and elderly at various intervals, caught up in a sea of them running to safety, until at last they reached the point where the old sewer tunnels had poured into the river. The thin water trickled past the grate, out into the cold of the rushing river. There were narrow steps there leading them up to safety, and they scrambled up and tumbled out into the snowy dark at the waterfront, by the statue of Queen Maud.

The freezing air was bracing after the tumble through the tunnels. Helen kept a tight grip on Jane and Tam, searching through the confusion for a way out, a way somewhere.

Helen saw Nolle in the midst of chaos, calmly directing refugees to a line of barges. A small smile warmed her face as she saw Helen. “We’d been planning for this eventuality,” Nolle said. “The dwarvven are going home. Every last one. Leaving the city for good. But I wanted to thank you.”

“I hardly did anything,” protested Helen.

“You stood with us,” Nolle said, “and I think you will in the future. I will not forget my debt.” A short nod and she turned back to her work. “Goodbye.”

Helen pulled Jane and Tam through the crowd, out of the way. If everyone was going to insist on believing the best of her, she might have to actually live up to it.

“Where are we going?” said Jane absently.

“Frye’s,” Helen replied, and they tramped through the snow.

It was only during that cold black walk back to safety that she finally let herself think about the moment that had just happened, ever so briefly before everything ended. Not the moment itself. She couldn’t quite think about that; it was too fine, too vivid. But the moment before, the moment when she rattled everything off hysterically, when she had said she could make Alistair be like Rook. Helen closed her eyes against her mouth’s foolishness. For then there was the moment after to deal with, too, when Rook said what he had been sent to do.

Rook was supposed to bring them all down. Alistair included.

But he hadn’t, had he? Was that for his conscience’s sake? Or was it for her, all for her? And what did that mean, what could that mean—that he cared for her? Or that he didn’t? Helen did not want Rook to kill, nor did she want Alistair, despite all his faults, to be killed. But she couldn’t make it work out in her head. Rook had come to the meeting planning to bring Alistair down, and then, having met Helen, decided Alistair should live, and thus Helen and Alistair stay happily married for all time.…

Her eyes were dry against the black and snow-falling night when they reached Frye’s street. Her wet coat smelled like a battle and weighed a ton. Tam was so tired that Helen had resorted to carrying him, and he sagged trustingly in her arms, asleep. She stumbled down the street, half-asleep herself. What was going to happen to Tam after all this was over? She hadn’t tried to break the news to him about his stepmamma yet. She couldn’t let him go back to his father. His stepmamma had risked her life—given her life to try to get him away. And yet his father had all the claim. The courts would never see it any other way, no matter what vague, lunatic-sounding charges Helen could bring to bear.

A bid for Tam would be as bad as a bid for her own freedom. It would all be so messy, so public. So futile.

Yet her day with Tam had been surprisingly nice, hadn’t it? Studying at the museum, spying on fashionable young ladies attempting to resist chocolate sundaes.… She had never liked children, but Tam seemed to be cut from a different cloth than the rest of them. Yet Alistair would never agree to foster Tam, even if charges could be brought against Mr. Grimsby. And the courts would take her even less seriously as a divorcee.

And there she was, thinking about Rook again. He was from a different world, and there was no possibility for the two of them. Besides, Nolle had said: All the dwarvven were going home. All of them.

She needed to put Rook from her mind just as she had told him to do for her.

Despite that kiss.

Helen’s hands tightened on the small boy as she staggered up the walk to Frye’s narrow row house. She hated to always be running from things, but maybe that was her only course left to her. She could just take Tam and run away, far far away.…

The door burst open before she could figure out how to ring the doorbell and still hold Tam.

“Helen!” said Frye, and her gap-toothed smile was wide. “Get in here right now.” She took Tam from Helen’s tired arms and ushered them down the hallway toward the biggish room where the dancing had been. Deftly she divested Helen of her disgusting overcoat, patted a stray copper curl in place. “You, and you, Jane, just go right in here. I have some folks for you to meet.”

Frye opened the door to a wave of expensive scent; rose and lilac and geranium billowed out in a fine cloud. An entire room of beautiful women turned to see Helen as she made her tired way through the door. The room lit with the glamour of their smiles.

Chapter 13 WHAT THE HUNDRED DID

Helen moved among them, clasping hands and kissing cheeks. It was like some sort of twisted reunion, and they were all so pleased to see her. Some had been dozing, many were wide awake, but they all greeted Helen happily, with gay chatter or with calm fire. “We’re going to do this. We are,” she heard over and over. There was Calendula Smith. There was that dancing girl. There was Desiree. Helen could not find Alberta or Betty in the crowd, but there was Frye, presiding over it all in her billowy dragon-embroidered caftan, looking like the cat who swallowed the proverbial canary.

“They’re not all here,” Frye said, “as I was only one person with one day. But I made a big dent.” She gestured at the sea of dazzling beauty.

“Thank you,” said Helen. She felt like collapsing, but she straightened her spine, for it was her cue now. She moved into the center of the room, meeting their eyes and giving encouraging nods. There was a little carved bench and she stepped up, her apple green voile falling gracefully around her. She stood, feeling the slick wood under her heels, bracing herself. Her moment onstage.

“Frye brought you all here so we can reverse the damage done to us,” Helen said. “So we can all be safe. Safe without iron masks. Safe without being locked in our rooms.”

Nods of assent.

“But what we thought a simple procedure that my sister Jane could manage has blossomed into something more,” Helen continued. “Mr. Grimsby, the leader of Copperhead and the instigator of this curfew, is playing a dangerous game. Three nights ago he had one of the men of Copperhead kidnap my sister, leaving his wife caught in the fey sleep. We have found Jane, but … well. Let’s say the experience may have cost her.” She pointed to Jane, who was sitting on the floor in her torn and dirty grey dress, tracing the patterns in the carpet.

“Helen found her,” put in Frye from the sidelines. “She’s been putting the clues