Helen nodded, and found herself wavering, toddling out from the tented area into the wreckage, which was now quite covered in snow. It was starkly quiet after the time in the tent with the wounded. It was peaceful, almost beautiful, like something that had happened a million years ago to someone else. The people were mostly gone now, either helped in the tent or stumbled on home. It was down to a few figures still searching the wreckage to make sure they hadn’t missed anybody. Perhaps it hadn’t even really been all that long since the explosion, and yet it seemed a lifetime. A lean shadowy figure came through the snow from the other end of the trolley, a crowbar over his shoulder. The cold and fatigue suddenly got to her and she sat down, hard.
“Helen!” she heard from a distance, and saw him drop the crowbar and hurry toward her, and she thought, so maybe he cares a little if I faint?
The snow fell in white clumps, blotting out him and the smoking wreckage. She didn’t see the trolley; she saw the battlefield that she did not enter. She stood there with Mother as Charlie and Jane marched into the field and all they could do was watch and let them go. There were farmers to bandage and wounds to tend and she did that all day and into the night, worked straight through the numb shock while mother wept and Jane keened.
All of this flashed in front of her eyes, superimposed on the twisted struts and billowing blue smoke. Her legs were wet with snow, everything was wet with snow and she was so cold, or perhaps so warm.…
Then gentle arms were picking her up and now she was the one being helped along. “Didn’t you know you have to take it easy after you have a concussion?”
“No one told me that,” murmured Helen.
“I’ll have a word with Nolle,” Rook promised. “Basic medical training.” This and similar nonsense kept her awake, got her through the junk store and down the stairs to the tunnels below the surface. “You need to come see Jane and Tam,” he said. “Reassure yourself that they’re all right.”
She was shivering now as she warmed up. The tunnels were not warm, but the wind had been fierce, she only now realized. “C-c-cold,” she managed. They walked along the occasionally lit cement pathways and she studied the different painted symbols marking the tunnels, tried to keep a map in her head. Tunnels were not for her.
“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.