Tina Connolly - Copperhead

Helen didn’t know if she could trust Rook—but him being a spy did not seem the sort of thing Alistair would lie about. Rook must be entangled with Copperhead somehow. He must know more than he was telling.

The area was rough. Even Frye, who had cheerfully gone down to the section of the waterfront where Jane’s nasty flat was, had warned Helen not to go to the dwarvven slums. “It doesn’t matter what he did or didn’t know,” Frye said. “Stay here and feed Jane chicken broth. I’ll get those women for you.”

Helen wished she could have taken Frye up on her offer. Yet something drove her on, so now she was here, walking through the rough alleys in a dress of peacock blue, carrying a little letter-opener of Frye’s as though it would protect her from harm.

Dwarvven or human, the men mostly looked tired, she thought. Hopefully she wouldn’t encounter trouble, especially since there was no slim black-clad man walking beside her tonight to save her from her own folly.

As if in response to that thought, a man sitting on a bench across the street looked over at her perfect face, caught her eye.

Look away, she thought fiercely. Look away . She had loved the attention at first; she had loved suddenly having that power over every single person she saw. But now, when she was tired and miserable and afraid … look away .

Perhaps her fierce expression warned the man off, for he went back to staring at his grimy hands, picking at them as if to worry some splinter free.

But he wasn’t the only one.

She stared some men down, boldly, trusted in the power of her face and warded them away. It was not a skillful application of the power, as she had done with Alistair, changing his motives, changing his soul. It was merely the fey glamour she’d had for six months, with a little extra oomph behind it. Let your gaze slide away.

But she could feel the gazes pressing in from all sides, and finally she couldn’t take the tension anymore. She picked one out, a man leaning against a crumbling brick building. He was perhaps the roughest-looking of all—bigger and wider than Alistair, who was a tall man. His gaze flicked across the street, idling time, just waiting for a mark to come into his vicinity.

Helen walked straight to him.

The man looked down at her, his face an interesting cross between leering and disbelief. “Well, look what dropped into my lap,” he said in a soft rumble.

Helen’s heart was a sledgehammer on her ribs. She had only tried something this complicated with Alistair, whom she knew intimately. What ridiculous thing was she doing now? Breathe. “I need protection from here to the dwarvven neighborhood,” she said. “I’m told it isn’t far. Here’s something for your trouble.” She took several coins from the inner pocket of her coat and dropped them into his palm. They disappeared inside his fist, but he made no further move.

The leer intensified. “And what makes you think—?”

Helen didn’t have time for this. “You will take me now,” she said, and put the full force of her will behind it. Her fingers closed around her copper hydra necklace, her talisman.

The man straightened up. “Yes’m,” he said. “This way.”

He strode stiffly down the block, as if his legs weren’t completely under his control. Which they weren’t, Helen reflected with satisfaction. Her knees shook with relief. She could get used to this. Fix anyone who threatened her or her friends. Fix Alistair to be the husband she had thought he would be. Perhaps after Jane restored Millicent to herself, Helen could even fix Grimsby, make him into a good husband for Millicent. Her power suffused her, overwhelmed her. Perhaps a great many of The Hundred could do with her help. Would she or Millicent have changed their faces without their husbands’ insistence? And now she could solve that for them. She could fix all those husbands, every last one.

The man stopped at what looked like an entrance to a junk shop. “Right here, ma’am,” he said.

“This is a store,” Helen said, suddenly worried that she had messed him up with her power.

The big man actually grinned. “It is that.” He pointed. “Through the back.”

Helen went inside the dim store with some trepidation. Maybe she just thought she had changed him but she hadn’t at all. Maybe there were men here ready to capture her and sell her off. Her mind created a million dramatic scenarios until she realized she was looking at a very small woman behind the dilapidated wooden counter.

“Er,” said Helen. “I’m trying to find an acquaintance. He’s dwarvven . Part.”

The woman shrugged. “So?” She crossed her arms and Helen saw the chain mail glint at her wrists.

The store had no lighting, electric or otherwise—the only illumination came from the greasy windows. The back of the shop was curtained off in a patchwork of repurposed fabrics. As Helen watched, a line of ten short men came out from behind the curtain, stomped gruffly past, and vanished out the front door.

She was sure they couldn’t have all been back there. The shop must indeed lead to where the dwarvven lived. But how …

Helen’s eyes widened. “The compound’s underground,” she said.

The woman shrugged again.

“I need to speak with someone,” persisted Helen. “How do I do that? Can’t I go back there and find him?”

“No.”

“Can I leave him a note?” Helen’s gaze swept the shop. She realized that it actually was a shop, not just items in the windows for pretend. In the dim light it appeared to be all secondhand stuff—a lot of metal implements. But fully one quarter of the store was piled high with used books of all shapes and sizes for the dwarvven, who notoriously loved to read. It was hard to be frightened of a pint-size woman who ran a bookstore, but Helen figured she’d better stay on guard nonetheless.

The woman finally came back with a full sentence. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Rook,” said Helen, aware that it might not do her any favors. The dwarvven weren’t any kinder to mixed race than the humans were.

“I think you’d better leave,” said the woman.

“He wants to see me,” said Helen, and though it was not strictly true she thought it might as well be.

“I’ve no instructions on the matter,” said the woman, and her arms stayed folded. Knowing the stubbornness of the dwarvven, Helen thought she might stay there till doomsday. She almost turned, and then she remembered.

She could fix this woman. She could make her change.

It was for a good cause, wasn’t it? Helen bore down on the woman, saying with all her will, “You will let me in.”

But the woman only snorted. “Think fey tactics will work on me? Now you’re never getting in.”

Helen stopped, embarrassed at being caught. She did not even have the nerve to apologize. She turned to go—and then a young man came through the curtain. A man who suddenly seemed tall in comparison to the others. “Rook!” she said.

“It’s okay, Looth,” he said. “She’s with me.”

The woman watched Helen the whole way back past the booth and through the curtain.

Rook led her around piles of junk, boxes and furniture and more stacks of books, until they reached a door that appeared to lead to an ordinary cellar. He motioned her in front of him and said under his breath, “I’m sorry for the way they act.”

“You can’t blame them,” said Helen. She picked her way down the crumbling stone stairs. A few lights strung here and there lit patches of the tunnel with a faint yellow glow. They appeared to be getting into the remains of an old sewer system, long ago cut off from the new city plumbing. It was quite dank, but it did not smell any worse than mold. She put her wrist to her nose, breathing in the lavender scent of Frye’s dress, and below that, her own citrusy smell from Frye’s soap.