“I captured this fey by using one piece of a fey as a seed,” said Grimsby. “The machine finds all the other pieces of that particular fey and draws them in, restoring the whole fey to itself.” He grinned cruelly. “Ironically enough, it runs on fey power.”
“And then that fey you captured can be destroyed forever,” put in Alistair, his face sharp and blue in the glow. “Show them, Grimsby.”
A hint of malice crept across Grimsby’s face at Alistair’s words. Now he bent his tall bony frame to the machine. If he had made it, why didn’t he make it to measure, thought Helen, for Grimsby seemed like some kind of strange praying mantis folded around too-small prey.
A switch—a thrum as the machine turned on. The blue light keened with pain. It mutated wildly, turning itself into all manner of things—a frog, a tree, a sparrow. A face, shining out of the light—low gasps as it formed the face of a small child, tears running down its face. “Help me,” it said, and the words thrummed inside Helen’s skull. She felt a tremendous compulsion to run over and let that child free—and by the looks of it, many of the others felt that, too.
The thrumming grew louder. The face splintered and reformed, struggling to keep its shape. “He’s caught me, he’s caught me. Help—”
A small boom like an implosion, and it was gone.
Grimsby turned off the machine and straightened up with a smile. “No mess, no fuss,” he said. “We have never been able to destroy a fey before, unless it was trapped in a human. But this? Very tidy. One People. One Race.”
Silence in the room as men and women grappled with what they had just seen. Helen felt as if she would be violently ill. She twisted her fingers together, focused on that sliver of pain to distract her.
Finally a female voice said, “Forgive the impertinence, but how do you get the piece of fey into the machine to begin with? Who bells the cat?”
Helen looked, but she could not see who had spoken. Grimsby smiled, as if this question was on cue, as if he had waited for just this opportunity. Helen did not like that smile. She put a hand to her seat, starting to turn, wondering if she could slip away. But one of the homely maids was standing there, Helen’s iron mask in her hands.
“When I turn on the general setting it pulls in the first piece of fey it can find,” Grimsby said. “A dangerous setting, you can see, to have fey come rushing at you.” A calm, meaningful voice. “More dangerous still for those who have fey lurking in their skin. I need every endangered woman to be thoroughly shielded, please.” Heads swiveled as he nodded at Helen.
With shaky fingers Helen buckled her mask in place. She needed to get upstairs to warn Jane. But the maid was there and all eyes upon her.
“Windows open,” Grimsby said, and Helen saw that Millicent was right, that there was no iron bolted into the wooden frames. The cold November air rushed in. Grimsby folded himself around his device again, long fingers sliding over the copper curves till they found the heavy lever. He pulled it down.
The masked women gasped and Helen knew they felt it, too.
A strange, almost hypnotic pull, tickling around the edges of the iron mask. Eerie, but faint, a fingernail-on-chalkboard sensation that she did not like but could withstand. She wondered how strong the compulsion would be without the iron mask. Would it suck the bit of fey right out of her face, or would it make Helen herself get up and throw herself inside that machine?
“Nothing’s happening,” grumbled one of the men, and several iron-masked faces turned his way, staring.
“Increasing power,” said Grimsby.
He cranked the copper wheel, and suddenly there was blue in the small room, blue out in the middle of the benches. In the middle of the guests—right through the guests, who screamed. A masked woman fainted, and several men stood, angry and red-faced.
“The piece of fey is resisting,” said Grimsby, eyes gleaming. “It must be a bigger piece than I expected. More massed intelligence. It’s attempting to form a shape.” His eyes narrowed. “Except…”
Except this figure had a familiar face.
This figure held a scalpel.
“Jane,” said Helen, and it did not seem to matter how loud the room was, she was heard. The name carried around the room in waves as Helen pushed her way to the space that had formed in the center of the room.
It was a wavy blue picture of Jane, Jane who had been bending over a still form on a white bed. But Jane wore iron, Helen thought—and then she saw that the blue light was most sharply focused on her hands, the hands that she had smeared with the fey-infused clay.
Jane looked up and through Helen. Her eyes were glassy with concentration, filmed over with white fatigue. Her mouth seemed to be shouting something Helen could not hear. Millicent’s fey mask was off, the face underneath red and horrifying. Helen could not look away, even though it felt as though she was being sucked back a great distance. The blue air whirled around her, and her ears popped as the pressure in her head grew tighter and tighter, and Jane seemed to be farther and farther away.
“Jane!” Helen shouted. “Jane!”
Jane looked directly at her then. Her dark hair was wild and blowing about her head. The attic furniture loomed behind her like a crouching beast. Jane held Millicent’s old face in her hands, clutching it in front of her.
<<Impressive>> Helen heard, and it seemed to be a voice in her head alone, or not even a voice, but the memory of a voice, a thought of one. <<Not what we expected, is it?>>
Now Jane was straight, the scalpel was gone. She was arching, shrieking. The strips of iron on her face glowed, brighter than the rest of the blue that made up the strange picture of her. Voices screamed. Jane turned and Helen thought Jane was facing her, thought Jane saw her. Jane’s lips faintly moved and Helen read, “Stop it … stop it … stop it.…” Jane seemed to bend in the direction of the copper machine. Stooping, still shouting, “Stop it, stop it.”
Behind the copper ball Grimsby’s face was backlit from the blue glow, and she could not tell if it was cruelty or fear she read there.
“Turn it off, turn it off,” Helen yelled at Alistair, but he shouted back, “Do you want the fey to be freed? I’m not going near it!”
Helen was not conscious of thought in that moment, but if she had stopped to examine the impulse that made her feet pick up and run forward, not away, it would have been something like: If it destroys me, it destroys me—but it will not hurt Jane.
There were those whose lives were worth something. Those who were trying to do good. Those who were determined as all hell to set things right in the world, and didn’t waste their days spouting off nonsense about “one race” or the cut of their hemline.
Those people needed to be around to save the rest of them from themselves.
Helen threw herself onto the lever and shoved it down with all her might.
And then everything went dark.
Chapter 2
THE IRONSKIN
The pressure slowly faded out and vanished, and then the room was the plain dark of a burned-out light. A hundred burned-out lights—all the electricity had winked out, and now the guests milled frantically about, crashing into one another, voices piling on top of the next, fluttering for explanations. Shouts rang out; orders coldly given by Grimsby: “Round the women up. Make them safe.” Don’t let them leave.
Helen felt her way toward the wall, tugging her iron mask off so she could not be detected by some man feeling it and attempting to make her safe. She had to get up the stairs and make sure Jane was all right. But the crowd was frantic and just as Helen’s fingers touched solid wall a heavy man crashed into her and she thudded to the ground. She felt as if she would have enjoyed a good panic right about then, but instead she kept her head down and reached once more for the wall. This time someone tripped over her, catching their sharp-toed shoe in her belly.