Ironskin

“You lost the war,” Martha said.

 

“It’s a draw,” Jane said grimly. “Are there old clothes stored somewhere?”

 

Martha furrowed her brow in question.

 

“I need gloves for Dorie,” said Jane. “Long gloves, a lady’s gloves.”

 

“Won’t fit.”

 

“I know,” said Jane, grabbing for the last thread of her patience. “I don’t need them to look nice. Just an old pair.”

 

“Chests in the north roof,” said Martha. “You won’t go there ’less he says so.”

 

“Of course not,” said Jane. The rules and restrictions oppressed her, overwhelmed her for that moment with her insignificance. But she had expected nothing less.

 

She plopped down on the stairs for a moment, felt the tired muscle ache in every corner of her frame. She wasn’t sure how long the tar would last. Not long, clearly—and every day Dorie had it on was another day of more work for the maid and laundress. Jane would stand up to their wrath if she had to, but she was sorry to provide them with more work if there was a way around it. And how would she get more tar, anyway, without going to the city herself? The thought of Mr. Rochart going to Niklas’s foundry on one of his city trips made her grin.

 

But the question of where the ironskin needed to go was solved, and it certainly was all about the hands. Maybe it even made sense. Dorie’s curse was not rage or hunger or misery, but it was a variant of fey talent—fey technology, perhaps; who knew how bluepacks were made, after all—and so perhaps it made sense that it was directed by her hands.

 

Chainmail would work, she thought. Chainmail like the dwarves wore, but crafted into gloves. But no, immediately—how would chainmail allow delicate use of the fingers? Jane flexed and unflexed her fingers, pondering. Had Niklas ever tried chainmail for scarred hands? Perhaps there was a reason it didn’t work, or perhaps the chainmail was simply so bulky that those people lived with the curse rather than live in iron gloves.

 

No, keep thinking. Something with the tar she had, but that wouldn’t get on anything. Two pairs of gloves, perhaps, cut to fit Dorie, and the tar sandwiched in between. Leather—no, oilskin for the gloves. There’d be some evenings of stitching ahead, she foresaw.

 

But first there was an artist to tackle.

 

*

 

Jane retreated to her room to freshen up before reporting to Mr. Rochart. Her apron and dark day dress were grimy with bits of the iron-flecked tar. She would have to attempt to remove those tonight, and then hope that the hired laundress Martha had mentioned could do a better job on them. There was a reason that her small collection of dresses and skirts were all dark.

 

But now she had a couple things Helen had insisted she take. (“You must dress up occasionally, Jane. I don’t care two pence if you ‘get applesauce on them.’ That’s what life is for.”) The dark silver gown hung in her closet like a promise. It insisted that someday she would get to wear that gown again, though she couldn’t think why or when. Next to it hung a pressed sapphire blue linen, an old summer dress of Helen’s that she had always admired. It was simple and neat, with a boatneck and three-quarter sleeves, enlivened by embroidered white dots that Helen had done one week in a fit of boredom with the old dress. But it was new to Jane. And it was quite appropriate for a dinner dress at the end of a day chasing Dorie.

 

Or for bearding an artist in his den.

 

She unbuckled her mask and laid it on the bed. She scrubbed her face and arms scrupulously clean before stepping out of her dirty dress and into the sapphire blue one. She changed out the padding in her mask for fresh—and then rather than twist her hair up, she suddenly decided to leave it down. The brown and white locks did not hide, but they softened the side of her cheek, obscured the lines of the iron.

 

Her mood lifted as she cleaned up and changed. Helping Dorie was not going to be easy, no. But she had proved that the tar would work. She had a way to get through to the girl, to break her of her disturbing fey habits.

 

The rest was just going to be hard work for the two of them—but Jane knew what hard work was like. She could do this.

 

Jane brushed down her skirt, looked down at her boots. They suddenly looked unbearably workaday, and she tugged them off, replaced them with Helen’s castoff dance slippers, white and embroidered with silver thread. They were a touch too long, and she was overdressed, certainly—but it seemed to suit her expanding, lifting mood. The twilight sky with stars and clouds, that’s what she was, and the thought was light and joyful.

 

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