Ironskin

“Yes, sir,” she said. The silver wallpaper flickered blue as Dorie looked at it, through it, seeing something Jane could hardly guess. The room hummed with emptiness.

 

“Tell Poule to check the iron at all the doors and windows.” His words swallowed themselves, dropped down his gullet like stones. “Tell her to prepare for a siege.”

 

*

 

Poule and Jane worked as silently and secretly as possible. Poule enlisted Martha for the task, and between the three of them they slipped in and out of bedrooms and washrooms, sitting rooms and hallways, staying out of the way of the guests and the extra servants from town.

 

Some of the windows were solidly covered in Poule’s mesh iron screens, but many had torn or been removed completely in the last five years, and had not been replaced. Too many of these screenless windows were open to the breezy spring air. Jane and Martha marked the places that needed work and watched the bedroom doors for guests as Poule slipped inside with crinkled sheets of iron mesh and a welder.

 

Mr. Rochart had disappeared almost immediately, leaving Jane with the admonition to keep an eye on Dorie—which she would have done in any case. She thought he must be in his studio—wondered how he could work with that threat hanging over him. But he had lived within the grasp of the woods for many years. Perhaps he was able to separate the two parts of him: the part that feared, the part that worked.

 

When she closed the door behind Dorie the last time, she met up with Poule and Martha on the landing.

 

“That’s everything in the open wing but the two rooms the guests are actually in right now,” Poule said. “Those will have to wait till they retire.”

 

“All the rooms that we’ve checked are done,” Jane said grimly. She pointed at the carved door between Dorie’s rooms and her own room. “I haven’t been able to get into Nina’s room all evening. She’s got herself barricaded in there.”

 

“Then we’ll have to do it in front of her,” said Poule. “That or bar iron across her door and lock her in for good.”

 

Despite the tension, Jane grinned. Mindful of her own lack of iron, she had taken the solitary tasks and continued her mantra of thinking of cool still pools of water.

 

“This iron will make us safe then?” said Martha. The normally unflappable maid betrayed the slightest hint of worry. From a chance word of Cook’s, Jane had picked up that Martha was fifteen—therefore six at the start of the Great War. Old enough to know the danger they faced now, young enough to have only dimly grasped the point of all the scrap iron drives and melted-down ornamentation back then.

 

“The iron mesh is so tight they can’t squeeze in,” said Poule. “We’re completely safe. As long as no one asks them in.”

 

Martha’s eyes widened. She rubbed one knobby elbow, nervous.

 

“I can’t imagine why anyone would do that,” said Jane, comforting. “It’s hard for a fey to hold a human shape without it being obvious. They can’t keep up a whole body for more than a few seconds before they turn back into light.”

 

“Thought they could take over folk,” said Martha.

 

“Yes, but only dead bodies,” said Jane. She had the irrepressible urge to add Poule’s line about them not being corpses yet, but she would not for the world scare Martha further, so she did, in fact, repress it. Gallows humor, she thought. When your nerves are wound that tight sometimes all you can do is make jokes about being as dead as King Bertram’s lover.

 

“More precisely, it seems like they can only take over bodies they’ve killed,” Poule was explaining to Martha. “We’re not sure why, but perhaps something about the act of murder is a part of it. That’s why they make those fey bombs.”

 

Jane bit her lip and tried not to think of Charlie.

 

“And if the dead knock at the door, none would let them in,” said Martha seriously. “All right then.” She looked perfectly unflappable once more.

 

“So, this Nina person,” Poule said, moving to the door. She lifted a fist and banged—monotonous, annoying thumps. Jane was impressed by her ability to skip politeness and jump right to the next level.

 

At length, Nina answered. A black satin sleep mask was pushed onto her forehead, and she held a short fat glass of amber liqueur. Her eyes met Jane’s—there was a flash of the nervousness she’d seen earlier—and then it vanished as Nina glared at Poule.

 

“Maintenance,” said Poule. She shoved the greasy bar of iron into Nina, so Nina had to either immediately back away or ruin her dress. She backed up and Poule squeezed past, headed straight for the windows.

 

“What is this?” said Nina. “Really, Jane, I thought you were understanding.”

 

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