Twig

by wildbow

☙

  The school’s prison-like elements turned out to make being stealthy remarkably difficult. The rooms were large and every single one, bathrooms excepted, had a window, either facing out into the street or inward, at the yard. I couldn’t very well turn on the lights without the room illuminating and risking that people half of the Academy’s rooms could see through their windows.

  My movements through the front office, thus, were done with the benefit of and detriment of darkness.

  The doors, I had to assume, were locked. At the same time, people were far worse about attending to windows.

  Water ran down over me and through my hair while I scaled the wooden branches and twigs that grew into and around the masonry. It was far finer than the usual, not quite branches but not so thin as to be ivy, it was thorny, to discourage children in the yard from climbing on it, but it was still a place where I could find handholds, if I was careful to do it.

  All the same, I was left bleeding in no less than five places; I couldn’t always see the thorns in the dark.

  I reached the window and teased it open. I slipped inside, then closed it behind me.

  Glancing outside, I didn’t see any lights going on, suggesting that a faculty member might have seen the dark shape scaling the paler wall.

  Jamie had told me that the records were kept beneath the front office, and my experience with the headmistress had suggested the office’s location. Rather than go straight for the records, I found myself in the room between the front entrance and the principal’s office. Typewriters sat on desks where the secretaries were stationed, benches lined one half of the room, and desks and cabinets of papers and supplies filled the other half.

  The principal’s office, once I found it with its name plate on the door, proved to be unlocked. I was glad I didn’t have to go out and back in again.

  The interior of her office had a desk and chair, cabinets, some pictures meant to impress parents more than please herself or her students. There were prominent faces I couldn’t name depicted on the wall. Gradutes of Academies. A ‘this could be your student in ten years’ thing.

  But I knew that however good she was, few people remembered every detail about every single one of the people who worked under them. If some of her staff slept in the building, some slept out, she still needed a means of contacting them.

  I found a box of notecards, filled with teacher’s names and mailing addresses. I took it with me.

  Humans were complex creatures. Add the rewriting of patterns, augmentations, grafts, revival, drugs, and everything else, and ‘human’ became an awfully unclear term. Every new discovery meant the introduction of things that had never been done or discovered before, more things that muddied the waters.

  Or bloodied them.

  My ‘gang’ was muddy and bloody both, but they were fairly simple, with defined roles. Here, in this, I was the odd one out. If all five of the other projects were successes, I might never have been given the go-ahead. It was sobering, to know that the foundation and excuse for my being rested on the backs of two corpses.

  Two who were like me.

  I’d been asked, once, how I could predict people as I did. Jamie, I think, had raised the subject. My answer had been simple.

  Humans as a species were like a collection of bugs in a box. Left alone, it was hard to predict how they’d move, or the patterns that would form.

  Shake the box, and it generated chaos. Maddened, they would seek to escape, butting their heads against barriers. They would turn on their closest neighbors and strike out. Even seek to kill. In their frenzied movements, they were very predictable.

  Jamie had been very quiet after that response of mine.

  But it was true. It worked on many levels. Force people into darkness, then offer them a light, and they were a moth to a candle flame.

  The darkness that surrounded Mothmont wasn’t my darkness. It was meant to work against me.

  But it was darkness I could use. The headmistress was worried, and I very much doubted she was sleeping after so many of her students fell ill. Many of them had rich and powerful parents. She’d been driven into a corner.

  Taking a blank piece of paper from the drawer of her desk, I placed it on the top, and I penned out a simple statement with a fountain pen.

  The Academy would like for you to please order a quarantine. Your students are to be fully examined in the wake of their illnesses, regardless of whether they fell ill. Take care that it includes one and all, and that it is by members of the Academy.

  None of the blame in this lies with you. Provided you speak of this letter to no-one, you have nothing to worry about. All will be well.

  Giving the moth her candle flame.

  The only way this situation could go sour was if something happened to my group, or if more of the puppeteer’s Bad Seeds decided to make a break for their families.

  The quarantine would keep that from happening and it would force our adversaries into a corner. If there was something they were trying to hide from an autopsy, they might well be uncomfortable with a full physical examination.

  The only danger was that she might not listen.

  Let it never be said that I couldn’t have fun.

  I opened the fountain pen and took a second to work it out. There was a syringe by the ink bottle.

  I hated needles.

  But I didn’t hate them so much that it would stop me.

  I took a minute to empty the pen with the syringe, and then took another minute to refill the syringe with blood from a thorn-puncture in my palm.

  I penned out an illegible signature in blood.

  Let her think about that.

  I locked the door,then locked all but one of the windows. Removing a shoe to wipe at the drips of water on the floor, retreating while I covered my tracks, I found my way to the remaining window and drew out a bit of thread from my sleeve and cut it with a letter opener, which I pocketed. I carefully looped it around the latch-end, leaving more than enough slack—there was a good foot between my hand and the loop that sat around the latch’s arm. Only tension keeping things from falling to mess and disaster. Pointing up, the latch was unlocked. A simple turn meant it fit into a waiting cradle, and resisted attempts to open the window.

  I climbed out of the window, then eased the window shut. Pulling on the thread with the knot, I worked the latch down, until it sat in the cradle.

  I pulled on one end of the thread, and worked it out of the gap in the window.

  There.

  Let her wonder who at the Academy would be leaving her a message signed in blood, in a room with all means of entrance and egress properly locked and sealed.

  Hopefully while she was wondering she wouldn’t be telling herself she couldn’t risk the quarantine.

  I headed down one floor, sticking myself with a few more thorns on the way. I was thoroughly soaked by the time I reached the set of windows on the ground floor.

  The letter opener slid between windows to lift a latch. I let myself into the records room.

  The benefits of an organization being as hoity-toity as Mothmont were that they kept good records. I had what I needed in two minutes. Mary Cobourn. I tucked it into my waistband behind my back, and pulled my shirt down to cover it.

  I exited through a window opposite the one I’d entered, stepping out onto the street beyond Mothmont.

  The rain poured down on me and the notecards. I didn’t care.

  She had them categorized. Staff was a category.

  Of that staff, two thirds were women.

  I found myself fumbling through the cards that remained, wishing Jamie were around.

  Jamie would know the names of streets better than I did, even in an unfamiliar end of town.

  Still, we knew they were close. If these students were paying regular visits, they had to be slipping away in the evenings, or when others were making their special visits to the Academy.

  House, I thought.

  I placed two cards bac
k in the box when the addresses suggested apartments.

  Another card, McCairn’s, proved to be too far away. Poor bastard probably had to travel a ways every morning and night.

  Unless he was staying at the Academy like he had tonight. Either way, I felt confident in ruling him out.

  Richards, Harper, Mason, Kelly, Caldwell, Percy, and Blankenship.

  I moved at a quick pace through the rain, favoring the parts of the street where the lamp-light didn’t shine. The only soul who saw me was a large man that was walking a near-empty cart of bodies through the streets, ringing a bell with a low tone. Coin for bodies. The area here was too nice for it to be lucrative, compared to areas closer to the orphanage where people couldn’t pay their way out of being sick. I guessed he probably only did a walk-around once a month or once every few weeks. Often only at night, because of the reactions the wagons drew in public.

  If our puppeteer wasn’t entirely alone, there could well be a few adventurous sorts who might do the reverse transaction, lightening the wagon.

  I considered for a second, then caught up with him.

  It was so very human of him to be startled by my sudden, quiet appearance. I thought for a second he might have messed himself, but the smell came from one of the bodies.

  He seemed immune to the smell. He wore a heavy rain-cloak that trailed down all the way to his calves, and was thin, with lanky hair suggesting he perhaps didn’t eat most nights.

  Maybe he was doing his rounds here because others had edged him out of another territory.

  “Has any one person delivered a number of children your way?” I asked.

  “Children?” He frowned.

  “Boys and girls, about my age, or a little younger.”

  “Dunno,” he said.

  I badly wished I had some coins to spare.

  “These street names,” I said. I held up cards, pointing. “Where are these?”

  He gave me some quick directions.

  “Any with big houses?”

  He shrugged. “Most. Why?”

  “Work with me, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He scoffed.

  I remained still and silent, hoping that he might come around if I was serious enough.

  He didn’t. At the end of the day, I was only a child, half-drowned in the heavy rain.

  “Out of my way if you don’t want to get run over,” he said.

  I stepped closer, and I stuck the letter opener into his crotch. Not hard enough to pierce anything, but enough to let him know there was a point to it.

  I didn’t say or do anything. I remained where I was, a blade held close to a part no man wanted to lose.

  I waited, once more, not moving or making a noise, hoping he would come around this time.

  My hand went up, holding the soaked cards with their running ink. He caught my wrist, and for a second I thought he had me.

  I pushed the point a little deeper, and his entire pelvis moved back. I was careful to keep the blade in place. I suspected the point might have hooked on a tag of skin, incentivizing him to stay right where he was.

  There was a growl to his voice as he said, “Trellis is closest further down that way. Then Yarrow, a little to the right, then in same direction, then Olds which is a hard right. You’ll see the other two streets if you stick to Olds. Biggest houses on Yarrow.”

  I nodded, “Let go of me, now.”

  He did.

  I twisted away, withdrawing my letter opener, and splashed off into the rain.

  Trellis was dark. The buildings looked more like apartments than anything else.

  Yarrow was where I found my prize. Mr. Percy’s residence.

  The lights weren’t on, but there was a candle flame on the second floor, and as ever, the branches were inviting in how they offered me places for my hands and feet.

  I got as close as I could to the window where I’d spied the candle flame, where it rose from a steeply sloping roof, and I listened.

  “…the boys!?” Mary’s voice rose at the end, a question.

  There we go, I thought.

  And she was using the words I’d given her, using my labels.

  I sat back and listened.

  Previous Next

  Taking Root 1.9

  “Mary, I won’t talk to you while you’re being like this.”

  “I’m scared! I’ve never been scared! And you’re not answering my questions, which—”

  “Mary.”

  “—isn’t making me feel any better!”

  I shifted positions and settled back, now that I knew I was close enough to hear, the box of notecards in my lap, the contents thoroughly soaked. The words were muffled by the intervening wall and window, but I could make them out and differentiate the speakers. The man, who I was assuming was Percy, was speaking in a very careful, measured tone.

  Mary was displaying more emotion in a given word than I’d seen from her during my entire discussion with her.

  The rain streamed over me, and I pushed my hair straight back, away from my face, glad that it was so very wet that it didn’t just spring back into the most inconvenient position. I was soaked through, and imagined that the spot at my back where the file was tucked into my waistband was so wet that the print from the pages was staining my skin.

  It wouldn’t, but I still imagined it.

  Where my skin was new on my arms and various points on my body, I could feel the cold of the rain like rough circles of ice. The passage of a single droplet left an ache singing through my nerves for seconds after it was gone.

  I shifted over, so the section of the room that jutted out to frame the window was tight against one of my arms and the slight overhang of shingles provided a bit of shelter. It helped.

  The puppeteer spoke, “Mary. I told you to be ready for anything, that the Academy was almost guaranteed to respond. You did very well to discover them as early and accurately as you did. I’m proud of you for accomplishing that.”

  “It wasn’t anything special. A group of kids shows up all at once? Just had to keep an eye on them. The boys—”

  “The boys,” he said, and he gave the word a different tone in the process. He was apparently noting the phrasing.

  “They did most of the work there, finding the group from the Academy.”

  “I’m still proud of you, Mary,” he said. There was a pause, uncomfortable and long. I had to fight the urge to peek in the window. The puppeteer resumed, his voice low and soothing, as if talking to an infant “Deep breath now. In… and out. There we go. Tears wiped away, hair fixed up, and you’re not so flustered. Do you feel a little better?”

  “A little.”

  “We knew they would send someone or something. I warned you to be prepared for anything.”

  “I thought it would be… one of those tools you hear the Academy talking about. The Dog and Catcher, or the man with the hands. Something like that. I was expecting to have to deal with monsters, I didn’t…”

  “You didn’t…?” the puppeteer asked, trailing off much as Mary had.

  “I wasn’t prepared for them to be like that.”

  My eyebrows were already up.

  The Dog and Catcher were well known enough as they could be seen around town, but I was surprised that ‘the man with the hands’ had come up. That would be the Hangman file from the Academy, and that file was pretty damn confidential. Enough so that even I hadn’t known about it until I’d started to wonder what special project the Tackhouse had put together and went out of my way to get the file.

  Had the little clones here been similarly busy during Mothmont’s excursions to the Academy?

  “You’re very much alive, Mary, which you might well not be if it was another individual or group from the Academy. I’m quite grateful for that fact.”

  “I don’t know how to move forward, and I don’t like standing still when I’m not sure where I stand. The boys—”

  “Your brothers are your brothers, nothing else. You were born f
rom the same womb. Have I spent half as much time in their company as I have in yours?”

  “No,” Mary said.

  “You look like you still have doubts,” he said.

  “I’m okay,” Mary said. “About the children from the Academy—”

  “Don’t change the subject. Do you have doubts, Mary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try to voice them. I’d like a chance to answer them.”

  “I feel as though, if I had to guess, you might have told them that they were special, and you only spend time with me because I need the extra practice and training.”

  “No, Mary. No, no no,” he said. I could hear the huff of a heavy sigh. “I’m so caught off guard by the idea that I don’t even know what to say.”

  “I knew it was unfair,” Mary said, and her voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. “There isn’t a right answer, nothing you could say that would make me feel better. So I wasn’t going to say anything. It’s poison they put into my head, and I don’t want the poison to bleed out into this. Us, our family, our home.”

  “Tell me. Share your worries when they come up. I know that what we’re doing here is a lonely exercise. I rely on you and your brothers to be my hands, while I continue to refine my work. I hope you can rely on me in the same way.”

  Her reply was so soft I couldn’t hear it.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s what I like to hear.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Your brothers are in the dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “We fix that, first. I’m glad you came to me, but as special as you are to me, I do care about your brothers.”

  “Yes.”

  “We can’t do anything about this unknown member of the group. From your description, I imagine she’s better suited against specific threats that are vulnerable to a chemical or counteragent.”

  “I thought about that. She can’t do anything without communication, either. The members of the Academy children have to give her information to work with, if she’s going to do anything to find us. If we wait and watch, they’ll eventually lead us to her.”

  I wanted to laugh. The irony.

  “The boy, Gordon, he was a physical threat?”

  “I don’t know if you could call him that. He’s stronger than he looks. He shoved his way through a locked door. Sylvester, the one I talked to, he said Gordon was the one to watch out for. Described him as being a jack of trades, or something like that. Physical prowess.”