Jane’s heart sank. She looked at the sauced fish and porcelain bowl of stew on the tray.
Dorie stared up mutinously. Jane knew that look. The look of trying to waft the tray through the air.
But the tray would not go.
Dorie looked down at her tar-covered arms and wailed, a thin miserable sound. She raised her arms—rubbed them furiously together, trying to scrape the paste away. But her motions were clumsy and the tar sticky. Her scrapings only smudged the paste around.
She lay down and starting yelling in earnest, drumming her feet on the side of the dresser.
“What’s wrong with her?” said Martha in disbelief. And then, “You put tar on my floor?”
“It’s an experiment,” Jane said briefly. “This food won’t work.”
“Won’t?”
“I need something she can eat with her hands,” Jane said. “Tell Cook I need plain cut-up vegetables, plain cut-up bread. Apologize from me for the extra work.”
Martha was still peering at screaming Dorie.
“I’ll tell you all about it after I tell Mr. Rochart tonight,” said Jane. “Lunch—please?”
Martha backed out with the tray, and Dorie’s howls and kicks redoubled. After a while, Jane heard Martha return and leave the new tray outside, but she did not open the door. Jane waited until the girl wore herself out, till the furious kicks became languid thumps of the heel, and the howls were just a rhythmic grunt in the back of her throat.
Perversely, Jane was almost glad to see the tantrum—it made Dorie seem more human, to see her throw a full-blown, audible tantrum that looked exactly like any other frustrated child might have thrown, rather than her usual trick of calmly walking to the window and ignoring Jane. No, this tantrum was real, even down to the petulant part of being too tired to continue, but too stubborn to totally give up. Jane watched the kicks die away. Then she brought the tray in and set it down in front of Dorie.
Dorie sat up, sniffling.
“I know this is hard,” said Jane to the tear-streaked face. “But I promise you it’s important. Your father wants you to use your hands. Will you try again for me?”
She wiped the tips of Dorie’s finger and thumb, pushed the tray toward Dorie and held her breath, hoping the promise of food would lure the girl into one more effort. Sniffling, Dorie ate most of the bread and all of the carrots.
That was the last thing she did as Jane asked.
The minute lunch was finished, Dorie plopped down in an afternoon sunbeam and lay on her stomach, her hands flat to her sides. Her eyes were open, her lips pressed shut, and she refused to budge. Finally Jane went and retrieved a book from the library, sat down with her back to the window, and calmly read. Or at least pretended to calmly read—the book she had grabbed turned out to be about the politics of the Ilhronian city-states in the 1600s, a subject she would’ve found dull at the best of times.
Twice Jane set down the book, got up, and built herself a castle from the blocks, hoping the game would lure Dorie back to life. But Dorie refused to budge.
Eventually Dorie fell asleep. Jane brought in warm water and towels and wiped the tar off the limp arms. She settled Dorie down for her nap. Dorie did not stir, and Jane gazed down at her, wondering how she could look so innocent in her sleep. Dorie’s fingers twitched on the coverlet.
Jane stepped from Dorie’s room, softly closing the door behind her. Martha was dusting in the foyer below, one ear cocked to the room above. Her eyes widened as a bedraggled Jane came down the stairs, covered in bits of tar from stem to stern, a book tucked under one arm and dirty towels in her hand.
“You lost the war,” Martha said.
“It’s a draw,” Jane said grimly. “Are there old clothes stored somewhere?”
Martha furrowed her brow in question.
“I need gloves for Dorie,” said Jane. “Long gloves, a lady’s gloves.”
“Won’t fit.”
“I know,” said Jane, grabbing for the last thread of her patience. “I don’t need them to look nice. Just an old pair.”
“Chests in the north roof,” said Martha. “You won’t go there ’less he says so.”
“Of course not,” said Jane. The rules and restrictions oppressed her, overwhelmed her for that moment with her insignificance. But she had expected nothing less.
She plopped down on the stairs for a moment, felt the tired muscle ache in every corner of her frame. She wasn’t sure how long the tar would last. Not long, clearly—and every day Dorie had it on was another day of more work for the maid and laundress. Jane would stand up to their wrath if she had to, but she was sorry to provide them with more work if there was a way around it. And how would she get more tar, anyway, without going to the city herself? The thought of Mr. Rochart going to Niklas’s foundry on one of his city trips made her grin.
But the question of where the ironskin needed to go was solved, and it certainly was all about the hands. Maybe it even made sense. Dorie’s curse was not rage or hunger or misery, but it was a variant of fey talent—fey technology, perhaps; who knew how bluepacks were made, after all—and so perhaps it made sense that it was directed by her hands.
Chainmail would work, she thought. Chainmail like the dwarves wore, but crafted into gloves. But no, immediately—how would chainmail allow delicate use of the fingers? Jane flexed and unflexed her fingers, pondering. Had Niklas ever tried chainmail for scarred hands? Perhaps there was a reason it didn’t work, or perhaps the chainmail was simply so bulky that those people lived with the curse rather than live in iron gloves.
No, keep thinking. Something with the tar she had, but that wouldn’t get on anything. Two pairs of gloves, perhaps, cut to fit Dorie, and the tar sandwiched in between. Leather—no, oilskin for the gloves. There’d be some evenings of stitching ahead, she foresaw.
But first there was an artist to tackle.
Jane retreated to her room to freshen up before reporting to Mr. Rochart. Her apron and dark day dress were grimy with bits of the iron-flecked tar. She would have to attempt to remove those tonight, and then hope that the hired laundress Martha had mentioned could do a better job on them. There was a reason that her small collection of dresses and skirts were all dark.
But now she had a couple things Helen had insisted she take. (“You must dress up occasionally, Jane. I don’t care two pence if you ‘get applesauce on them.’ That’s what life is for.”) The dark silver gown hung in her closet like a promise. It insisted that someday she would get to wear that gown again, though she couldn’t think why or when. Next to it hung a pressed sapphire blue linen, an old summer dress of Helen’s that she had always admired. It was simple and neat, with a boatneck and three-quarter sleeves, enlivened by embroidered white dots that Helen had done one week in a fit of boredom with the old dress. But it was new to Jane. And it was quite appropriate for a dinner dress at the end of a day chasing Dorie.
Or for bearding an artist in his den.
She unbuckled her mask and laid it on the bed. She scrubbed her face and arms scrupulously clean before stepping out of her dirty dress and into the sapphire blue one. She changed out the padding in her mask for fresh—and then rather than twist her hair up, she suddenly decided to leave it down. The brown and white locks did not hide, but they softened the side of her cheek, obscured the lines of the iron.
Her mood lifted as she cleaned up and changed. Helping Dorie was not going to be easy, no. But she had proved that the tar would work. She had a way to get through to the girl, to break her of her disturbing fey habits.
The rest was just going to be hard work for the two of them—but Jane knew what hard work was like. She could do this.