“I have a history of cowardice and foolish decisions,” said Helen. She untangled the garnets of her elaborate collar and patted the chains back into place. “That’s all I have, Jane. I have to plan for the future knowing what I have inside me—plan around my own folly. I’m being very sensible and independent like you, you see? It’s just that when I do, it comes out—oh, it’s a muddle.” She gave up on the tangled collar. “You won’t understand.”
“I might…,” said Jane, groping for lost ground. How could you avoid old wounds when you didn’t know they existed? Yes, Jane had been there with Charlie, but Helen had been there while Mother wasted away, and Jane had still been huddled at the foundry, lost in rage and self-pity. Should Jane blame Helen for that instead of herself? As Helen said, it was a muddle. No, she didn’t blame Helen for running off to marry Alistair; she just didn’t always understand her, and at this minute that gulf seemed very wide indeed.
“No, you won’t.” Helen patted Jane’s cheek, sending out more gardenia from her perfumed wrists. “Ooh, your mask is so cold. But I suppose it’s the only thing that stops you from being angry with me all the time. If you hadn’t found that foundry, I’d have had to live with a fey in truth. Now kiss me, Jane, and promise you’ll come again to see me. Or stay forever and always. But at least come.”
“I promise,” said Jane, and now her tangled thoughts were derailed by Helen’s mention of living with fey. Of course! She should visit the foundry and ask Niklas for advice.
A man’s hand fell on Helen’s shoulder—a curly-haired man smiled down at them with all his perfect teeth. “Don’t forget to return and see us,” said Alistair. “We’ll find you a man yet.”
“She’ll return,” said Helen, forestalling any rebuttal by Jane.
“Excellent,” said Alistair. “Now Helen, my sister wants to know if you’ll join her for a round of hearts.”
Helen kissed Jane’s cheek. “Write to me,” she said, squeezing Jane’s hands, and then she was gone, whirling away in a froth of copper curls and fluttering pink skirts.
*
Down in the heart of the city the air was thick, a tangle of river smells and factories. Dead fish and new machinery wove a thick miasma that lay along the river like a wool shawl drenched in a storm. Jane closed the door on her reluctant driver and walked down where the streets were too narrow and filled with carts and waste to drive an actual car.
And yet despite the smells, the dirt, this area called to Jane, plucked at her with strings of warm memory. She had spent half a year here after the war, half a year broken and raging. The worn heels of her old boots slid on the wet cobblestones. It was always wet here, and always slimy, too, as if whatever they were spewing from the factories was welling up through the ground, through stone-scaled roads, coating the paths and walls and sky. It had not been so long since the air had been clean down here, she knew. Since the heart of the city didn’t automatically mean pollution. But need for the bluepacks had begun to outstrip supply a generation before the war. Factories sprang up like cattails along the banks, and the dirty coal that poured into them—chokepack, it was sometimes derisively called—slowly began to poison the home of the poor.
There were rough men down here in the grey sooty air, and ladies in loose red dresses, but if they looked at her, if they saw her face, they merely nodded. Something uncoiled within her at this, at the memory of this. The ironskin were familiar here, and no one startled at the sight of her. And the ironskin belonged to Niklas, and that was a community of sorts, and one you didn’t mess with.
Then, too, perhaps they merely saw in her someone who’d had enough trouble for one lifetime. Maybe they felt guilty; maybe they chose easier targets. A host of maybes that Jane didn’t know, so she just walked to the foundry, head held high and veil flung back so everyone could see her iron.
There was a high fence around the place—an iron fence, of course, and Jane gave the bell clapper a mighty tug and set it to ringing with sharp clanks. Through the bars the foundry loomed, its sooty walls as familiar as the day she left. The yard around it was a patchwork of dirt and brick, heaped with salvaged iron, slag—everything Niklas or the kids could drag home for cheap or free. A thin knobbly boy with an ironskin leg hobbled unevenly to the gate, tugged down the heavy iron bar, and let Jane slip inside.
“Thank you,” she said, and looked down at his thin frame while he studied her with curious eyes.