Tina Connolly - Copperhead

“They’ve commandeered all the blankets but I wouldn’t let them touch mine,” Rook said. “Jane will share with you. She’s been warm and safe—if not sane—the whole time.”

“She’s still … out of it?”

Rook shrugged. “She’s not the Jane that Frye told me about,” he said. “That Jane sounded on top of things. Frye always spoke of her as if she could rule the world.”

Helen drew back from his arm. “Maybe she can,” she said to the awe in his voice.

His arm fell away as she moved, as if he was ready for them to walk on their own, apart. “But your sister seems different than I expected,” he said carefully. “I know you said there’d been trouble since the warehouse. But … frankly, I’m somewhat worried about her motives.” They turned into a larger hollowed-out space that had been chopped up into many small chambers, with dividers made of grates and bricks and scraps of tin.

“Her motives?” Helen said wonderingly. “She’s dazed from whatever they did to her, but Jane means well.”

They stopped outside the very last chamber, a fully walled brick one set farther down the tunnel, a good deal apart from the rest. It made her wonder if he’d managed to obtain a nicer one simply by virtue of being havlen, and therefore no one had wanted him as a direct neighbor. “Helen,” he said, and stopped so she had to face him. Her eyes were level with his. Quietly he said in her ear, “Some think the trolley was no accident.”

“No accident?” She sucked air across her teeth. This was what Morse had implied, but why was he telling her this? “What are you saying?” she whispered back.

“In the front cabin. There appear to be traces of some sort of bomb.”

“And you don’t know a thing about it.”

“No, I do.” Rook looked down at her. “I was the one to pull the driver out of the wreckage. He … didn’t make it. But he told me he saw a girl in a grey dress come into the cabin and take something out of a large bag.”

“What? No.”

“I know you thought she was kidnapped,” he said. “What if she’s actually … working with them?” Quickly he added, “I haven’t told anyone but you. You need to help me figure out what to do with her.”

Instinctively Helen backed away from his words, flattened against the door to his bunk. “Maybe she was lost. She’s confused but she’s not militant. Not like that. You don’t know.”

Rook sighed. “I’ve locked her in my room for now. Go in and talk to her. I’ll come right back and meet you. I think there are a couple people that are suspicious, but no one would harm her because of you.”

“Me?”

“The way you helped us.”

“Anyone would have,” Helen demurred.

Rook shook his head silently, then touched her shoulder. “Don’t let your love blind you,” he said, and then turned and vanished into the dark of the tunnels.

Fingers shaking, Helen turned the doorknob and pressed into the room. What did he think he was saying? How could they possibly suspect Jane? It was Rook who was supposed to attack the dwarvven —Morse had said so. Rook had orders from Grimsby. That was the business he’d been doing there, the double-crossing he’d frankly admitted to. Jane was a red herring, an outsider he had seized on to blame.

Helen was adrift. She could not trust any of them, and she had led Jane and Tam into this rats’ nest. Besides, what did he mean, they would turn on Jane if not for her help? Her help was nothing, insignificant. The barest of candle-flame breaths and the dwarvven would blow the other way, come and roust them from their room into the snow. Or worse.

Helen sat down on a small trunk beside the bed, shrugging her coat off. The wet wool stank of smoke and blood. Tam was snoring peacefully on a cushioned chair in the corner, his explorer hat shading his eyes and his binoculars tight in his hands. Jane lay under the covers, dark hair spread around her pale face with its red lines. Yet her cheeks were pinker than they had been; she breathed.

Helen took Jane’s hand in her own, looking around the tiny brick room. The floor was a wood platform, raised off the cement below, and the ceiling was open at the top to the tunnel. A faded brown quilt hung on the wall, and when she flicked aside the edge of it she saw there was a short tunnel there, a back escape hatch. The only things in the room were the bed, chair, and trunk, and it was as neat as a pin. No ornaments or mementos. It was not the room of someone who intended to be there for long; it was not the room of someone who felt at home.

She was suddenly curious what was in the trunk.

She should not look, of course, but if she did everything she was supposed to she wouldn’t be here in the first place. She released Jane’s fingers and rose, swiftly knelt and pushed the lid back. She had a sudden thought that perhaps this wasn’t even Rook’s room at all, despite what he had said.

But there was a thin black jacket folded on top, and she thought that perhaps it was Rook’s after all. Carefully she lifted it off. A few more items of clothing, all dark. A knife. A stack of books. She lifted the top one out, curious.

Jane stirred and instantly Helen was there, seizing her hand, crushing it. “You’re back,” Helen said. She shoved the jacket back into the trunk and sat down.

Jane smiled and she was there in her eyes. “I am,” she said.

Helen squeezed her hand tighter. “What’s been happening to you, Jane? Do you know how strange you’ve been?” The tactless words tumbled out.

Jane sobered. “I have felt so strange, Helen,” she said. “I remember you finding me at the warehouse and leading me around. But large gaps are missing. It’s like a dream, that fades when you awake, and you only see snatches.”

“But you’re back now, really back,” said Helen, as if repeating it enough could keep Jane with her. She thought of what Rook had said and cast it aside. Jane could not hurt a fly, even if Grimsby’s machine had damaged her mind. Sleepwalking did not change who you were. She stared into her older sister’s face, reassuring herself over and over that Jane was Jane was Jane.

Jane seemed not to notice. “What are you reading?” she said, nodding at the book Helen still held.

“It’s Rook’s,” said Helen. She turned it over in her hands. It was a crackled black book, quite weathered.

“Is he the man who brought me here? I almost wonder if he’s part dwarvven .”

“He is,” said Helen, and read off the spine, “ Lady Adelaide’s Secret. I have heard of it, but I never did read all those books I was supposed to in school—did you?”

Jane raised amused eyebrows at the title. “Yes, but it’s not a school assignment book. It’s a scandalous thing about a man who accidentally marries two women. You’d probably like it. The man tries to do the right thing and leave the second wife, the one he really loves, but…”

“But?” said Helen.

“But the first wife is actually a murderess, and the second one is a detective tracking her down. And then it turns out the husband’s really been dead since about halfway through the book, and you don’t even know it even though he’s been telling you the whole story.” Jane put a hand to mouth. “I might have ruined it for you.”

“Thus marking the first time I tell you to think before you speak,” said Helen. She sighed and carefully replaced it in the trunk. Not a clue then, except to the fact that he really was half- dwarvven, as they had notoriously lurid taste in fiction. “Jane,” she said. “I’m worried that Rook was involved in the accident.”

“The trolley?” said Jane. “But the detonation happened at a dwarvven stop. And he went in to save people.”