“I’m sorry,” said Jane. But also … “It made him sick? The iron keeping the curse in?”
Poule shrugged. “I didn’t think that might apply to humans, too. You all just kept wearing it.…” She looked at Jane. “But I am sorry, that I didn’t think of that for you.” She stood as if uncomfortable, went over to a nearby worktable, busying her hands by sorting pliers, recoiling spools of wire. “That’s why I’ve been working on these things since then,” she said. “The iron thread, like Dorie’s gloves. Her mesh was closely woven, to ape the tar or your mask. But I’ve been working on others.” She held a thin ribbon of ironcloth out for Jane to see. “Variants. More iron, less iron, farther apart, closer. Is there some level where the iron can boost the person with the curse, help them control their emotions? Help them dissipate the blight, without making them sick from the blasted fey poison?”
“That sounds very useful,” said Jane. “But wouldn’t it take a lot of control from the individual?”
“Yes,” said Poule. “Just like the dwarves practice. Like I told you with the water imagery. So who knows if it would work with humans—at least, not without a long apprenticeship, and the will to work their arses off.”
“That’s the help I want,” said Jane. “I … yelled at one of the Misses Davenport. The elder one. I couldn’t help myself. It was like I was on fire. I can’t keep the iron on and make myself sick—but I can’t be afraid of myself, either.” Her voice rose on the end of the sentence, more shrilly than she had intended. Perhaps Mr. Rochart could help her, but perhaps he wouldn’t, and Jane couldn’t live with herself anymore. She was the lit end of a firework, a short fuse that would burst into a thousand stars. “Do you see what I mean?”
“Calm,” said Poule. “You can do this. A long apprenticeship, I said? You’ve been plugging away at it for five years, from what you’ve told me. All you need is a little more confidence that it’s working. A little more focus of mind.” She set down a spool of wire, rustled through the mess on the table. “Let me give you a bit of the loose-weave iron cloth.” She held up a linen mesh through which only a few iron threads glinted. “Put this on like a bandage,” she said. “See if the crisscross dampens the curse to where it helps you control what goes in and out.”
Jane took the cloth, took several breaths to calm herself. “Actually it was rather odd,” she said, holding the cloth in her hands like a life preserver. “It almost felt like I was doing something with the curse. When I yelled at Miss Davenport. Like I made her do what I wanted.”
Poule looked at her strangely. “Well, she is easily cowed,” she said. “I could make her do what I wanted.” She bent a bit of wire back and forth. “Tell me what happened in the clearing.”
Jane summarized the terrifying event, including how the fey had attacked her.
Poule nodded. “It felt like fear, you said? But you’re sure it wasn’t your fear.”
“You know,” Jane said slowly, “it felt oddly like my rage. Like Niklas’s depression. Like … a fey curse attacking me, from the fey itself. I thought usually that came from the blue fey bombs.”
“It’s the Queen,” Poule said grimly. “Maybe that makes a difference.”
Jane shuddered, remembering. “It was almost like it was trying to get inside of me. If so, I’m not sure I stopped it—I think it stopped itself.” It rejected her. Ugly ugly unclean … “And then, like it was trying to get inside Dorie. Something made Dorie all shimmery, but I don’t know if that was the fey, or Dorie herself. And now…” What if Dorie didn’t wake up? Jane refused to consider that. Dorie must wake up.
Poule looked thoughtful, but she clapped a comforting hand on Jane’s shoulder. “They only invade dead bodies,” she said. “Take heart—you’re not a corpse yet.”
Jane did not feel particularly comforted.
*
She did not want to intrude on Mr. Rochart in his worry, but she could not stand to go quietly back to her rooms and wait like “patience on a monument,” as the girl in Thirteenth Night said.
She nudged the door to Dorie’s room open a crack and saw Mr. Rochart kneeling by the bed, his forehead pressed into the white dotted coverlet and his hands wringing the sheets.
Jane turned away, unwilling to disturb them.
But as she turned he said her name.
Jane came back, stood at the foot of the bed. Dorie lay there, for all the world as if she were sleeping.
“She stirs,” he said. “She rolls and mumbles, like she’s talking in her sleep. But she does not wake.”
Jane sat on the other side of the bed, across from Edward. He had hold of one of Dorie’s hands, and Jane took the other. The small fingers lay limply on her palm. “She will,” Jane said, willing it to be true.
“I should never have gone into the woods,” he whispered. Jane heard in that an echo, that he did not mean today. Long ago, he meant. Regret, he meant.