Twig

by wildbow

  “I’ve seen you around,” she said, smiling in a way that probably every man here was familiar with, thinking back on their first loves. “You’re usually writing something in a big book, aren’t you?”

  Jamie nodded, swallowing hard.

  I’m so sorry, I thought. Very sorry, Jamie, putting you on the spot.

  It was Ames that spoke, and I felt a moment’s terror as the heavyset man opened his big fat cannot-act-worth-a-damn mouth. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The terror wasn’t substantiated. It came from a very real, very spooked place. He was as terrified as any of us. It was real.

  His inability to act was a saving grace, almost. The people that knew him would know he was speaking from a genuine place.

  “I—I really like your daughter, sir,” Jamie said. “You—”

  “No,” Ames boomed. “You’re making a spectacle of her, and you’re making a spectacle of me. I will not stand for this.”

  I stared, watching in fascination. Was this man actually saving us?

  He looked genuinely angry. Just like his fear, it came from a real place. We’d brought the shit to his doorstep, we’d brought it to people’s attention, and he wasn’t happy about any of it.

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie said, sounding terrified. “I’ll leave right away. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You most certainly will,” Ames said. He paused, dramatic. Then, in a less ominous tone, he said, “If you wish to see the girl, you can call on her at her home. We live next to the city hall.”

  Playing to the crowd. He was willing to be the bad guy that Muttonchops hadn’t, but not entirely. He had probably won some people over with that little display.

  Jamie nodded, a little too quickly. This time, it was Jamie who tugged me in the direction of the front door. I was more than happy to oblige, very aware of the man with the scarf and the knives who was now walking at a casual pace down the stairs.

  We were two steps from the exit when a hand slapped the heavy wood. I didn’t recognize the man, but he wore one of the unconventional uniforms, with a mustache so thin it looked like it was drawn on with a scratch of a quill. The slap on the wood made a dull booming noise, and it drew more attention. I noted that several of the special guests looked annoyed at the focus that was being drawn away from them.

  “We’re leaving,” I said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “I’d like to stop you right there,” the man said, his voice soft. “I’m sorry, but I know I wasn’t the only one here that was instructed to assume that anything a young child says is an outright lie, until proven otherwise.”

  Oh no.

  No, no, no.

  It went a step beyond paranoia and general knowledge of us.

  The damn woman had known we were here. She had warned people.

  I looked, and I saw people in the crowd looking a little abashed that they hadn’t been the ones to say the very same thing. Others that had been given the same instruction.

  I also saw Cynthia approaching, weaving her way through the crowd, gently excusing herself to get past others. She was roughly the same distance from the door that we’d been when Jamie had been grabbed. Thirty or forty feet from the door, albeit with a dense thicket of people between here and there.

  The man with the scarf hadn’t budged.

  Why. He and the woman in the kitchen—

  No, there were more important things to focus on. I couldn’t fuck up here like I did in so many of the actual fights.

  “Lying about what?” I asked.

  “The story. Your reason for being here,” the man with the thin mustache said. “To get here in the first place, you had to come from one of the theaters, or you came from the kitchen. Is it unfair of us to worry that the Academy might be low enough to use young children to deliver poison to an entire banquet?”

  Oh. Well, had to give the man points for imagination.

  Even I was at a loss for words there.

  I pulled my hand away from Jamie, the hand between me and the exterior wall gesturing before clenching into a fist.

  The only person who could see it and translate the gesture’s meaning was Helen.

  Help.

  I couldn’t know how she managed it without opening her mouth, but our dear, glorious Helen directed Ames our way.

  “You’re accusing this girl of poisoning food?” Ames asked, voice rising.

  “That is not what I’m saying,” the man at the door said.

  “You’re accusing me of being a traitor?” Ames asked, even louder.

  I am so very glad nobody said yes to that question, I thought.

  “No,” the man said, patiently. “I’m saying we don’t know for sure where these boys are from, or if the story about the romance—”

  “It’s true!” I said, cutting him off. Ames was acting the outraged parent, but he apparently didn’t know how important it was to keep our opponent from getting his balance, or keeping the man from getting a full sentence out. Playing dirty was absolutely vital here. “He likes her, he does!”

  “You’re raising nonsense about poison here, laying accusations, scaring good people,” Ames said, getting more into it. I worried he didn’t know where he was going, or that he’d run out of steam and abruptly stop, leaving us flailing.

  “I’m following orders!” the man said.

  Cynthia was getting closer. If she verified those orders—

  “He’s got a picture,” I said. Without waiting for Jamie to do it, I pulled the rain-flap of his backpack away, reached inside, and hauled out the book. He took it from me the moment I had it, and turned pages. “Why would he have a picture if he’s lying?”

  Jamie held the book up, a half-done sketch of Helen displayed.

  It was a little dark and scratchy, heavy on the ink. Not quite the picture a boy in love might draw, by my estimation, but it was a picture of Helen, and it was pretty damn accurate.

  There were murmurs from the crowd that could see the book.

  “That’s enough,” Ames said. He approached us, “It’s clear you like her.”

  “Yes sir,” Jamie said.

  Cynthia was close enough to be in earshot, now. She was looking at the man with the scarf and the knives, but he wasn’t moving.

  That somehow spooked me more than if he’d suddenly lunged for us.

  Ames put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “Come. Let’s talk, away from all this. I don’t like the spectacle. You can come to our place, for tea and cake, if the girl agrees.”

  “I’d like that,” Helen said, just behind me.

  His other hand touched the door handle, a few feet below where the man with the thin mustache had slammed his own hand against the wood.

  The man wasn’t budging, even with Ames up close and personal, the book as proof.

  Damnation, someone actually competent, who listened to orders.

  Ames hauled the door open, ignoring the hand. His strength contested the man’s, and Ames won.

  The man looked over in Cynthia’s direction, and I did too.

  She’d stopped moving. She watched.

  Ames passed through the door with Jamie. Helen caught up, and joined me in leaving.

  I felt ill at ease, well aware that I didn’t have the full picture.

  The front of the theater was covered. The rain poured beyond, flowing between the stones of the slightly domed street and into the gutters.

  The door closed behind us. We headed in the direction of the small adjunct building. Two black men on either side of the double doors opened the way. We stepped into the coat room, Ames and Helen found coats and pulled them on. Jamie found a smaller cloak and donned it. I searched and didn’t find anything small enough for me.

  The sniffing woman had my coat.

  Jamie found an umbrella and handed it to me.

  “What was that?” Ames murmured, once we were out and walking in the rain, out of earshot.

  “You know that whole blackmail thing we had going on?” I as
ked, twisting around to check behind us.

  “I believe I know what you’re talking about,” Ames said, with a heavy lathering of sarcasm and a little bit of loathing.

  “You’re done,” I said. “It’s over. All that you have left to do is keep quiet, and nobody finds out about the… less decorous parts of your military background.”

  A lifetime ago, he’d gone to a black market doctor and found a way to avoid attending a major battle in service to the Academy, a wounded leg and a bad infection. He’d survived when many of his colleagues hadn’t, had then been able to boast a rare level of experience, when so many who had fought in the battles he had had died. Now he was here, and he’d sided with the rebellion.

  In trying to meet and buy off some of the ex-students of the Academy, we’d found out about that bit of leverage, and played it out into our whole scheme here. One of the higher-ups in the local rebellion became our pawn, a means of Jamie getting access to important paperwork and a hiding spot, while Helen could be the daughter returned home after a long time away.

  “You’ve ruined me,” he said. “People will put the pieces together.”

  “People would have found out eventually,” I said. “The doctor who injured your leg knew exactly what he was doing when he named you. The moment he was caught, or the moment he was brought into the rebellion, he was ready to name you for his personal gain.”

  He shook his head, but he didn’t have anything to say.

  “If we’re done, does that mean there’s no tea?” Helen asked. With a slightly different inflection, she added, “And no cake?”

  “No tea, no cake,” I said. “Mr. Ames—”

  “General Ames,” Ames corrected.

  I’d goaded him about the fact that his title wasn’t truly earned, but I had to admit he’d done a lot to help us just now.

  “General Ames,” I amended my statement. “Our business relationship with you is done.”

  “I’m done with her, then?” he asked, indicating Helen.

  “Was I so bad?” she asked.

  “You disturb me,” he said, with a measure of disgust.

  Helen pouted.

  “Go home, figure out what to do next,” I told Ames. “I advise leaving. Just to be safe. Put some distance between yourself and the rest of this. Maybe play up how embarrassed you were with your treatment in there.”

  He shook his head, jowls wobbling.

  All at once, he turned, breaking away from us, as if he couldn’t bear to be in our company any longer.

  Jamie, Helen and I walked through the rain. We passed several people. The rain was thick enough it was hard to identify details. I might have imagined vaguely monstrous details about anyone we passed, except many of them were monsters, or stitched, or something-or-others.

  Was the sniffing woman out here? Or did the rain keep her from tracking us like she had with the coats and following us into the kitchen?

  “Well, I didn’t expect any of that,” Helen said. “I thought I’d be busy for a little while yet.”

  “We’re going to be busy,” I said. “Just doing something different than we were.”

  I continued to examine each of the people out on the street. Were any watching us?

  “Getting cake can be on the list,” Jamie said. “I’m sure Sy didn’t mean to tease.”

  Helen reached out to give Jamie a pat on the cheek.

  “I always mean to tease,” I said. “Except then. No, I didn’t mean to there.”

  “You’re the best boys,” Helen said. “What about the other boy? And our girls?”

  “That,” I said, “remains a very good question.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Cynthia back there, she wanted us. She was coming after us, she had the ability to give the order, and I think she probably would have been listened to. Now, there’s a dim possibility that she changed her mind, bought the story…”

  “But you don’t think so,” Jamie said. “She changed her mind for another reason.”

  “The man with the scarf on the stairs, he gave her some signal, or he communicated something, and she deferred to him. I’m guessing they don’t believe three birds in the hand are worth however many are in the bush.”

  “They’re using us,” Jamie said.

  “We’re being watched, right this second,” I murmured. “Guarantee it. They want us to lead them to the others before they make a move. Let’s get Helen her cake—”

  “Yay.”

  “—and figure out our next move. Because we’re stuck. We can’t communicate with or meet up with the others without putting them and ourselves in danger. We have a tail to shake, and the moment Mr. Scarf finishes discussing a strategy with Mrs. Cynthia, we’re going to have an entire city’s worth of hostile forces collapsing in on us.”

  “And Mary, Lillian, and Gordon might too, except they won’t have any warning at all,” Jamie said.

  “Let’s do what we can about that,” I said.

  Previous Next

  Esprit de Corpse—5.4

  “Two big issues,” I said.

  “More than two,” Helen observed.

  “Two big ones,” I reaffirmed. “We need to get out of this with our skin intact, and we need to help the others. Only reason they haven’t come after us is they probably aren’t sure they can find the others once we’re dead.”

  “They could torture us,” Jamie said, under his breath.

  “Sure,” I said. “Yeah, that’s probably in the cards, if they don’t get the results they want by waiting.”

  “Great,” Jamie said.

  “They’re not going to come after us here,” I said. “If they’re patient enough to let things get this far, they’re patient enough to let us have a bite to eat. We bide our time, we make them wait, we see if they make a mistake.”

  “We’re giving them time to get in position,” Jamie said.

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s fine.”

  “Fine?”

  I gave him my best winning smile. “It’s fine. Really. They’re not going to close in on the others that fast. We wait.”

  “Alright,” he said. “I’m going to assume you have a plan.”

  “I—”

  “—And,” he said, cutting me off, “Don’t correct me. Let me have this.”

  I smiled, shutting my mouth.

  We reached the building, and we were mute as we waited in a long line. We ended up settling in at the corner, where the path to a restroom and a length of counter at one end of the kitchen gave us some more privacy than we might otherwise have, putting us another pace or two from the nearest tables. I took a seat by the window, so I had a glimpse of the street outside. Jamie did the same, sitting across from me, while Helen took the aisle seat, next to Jamie.

  Jamie and I looked out on the rain-stricken city, and the two of us saw the world in very different ways. It was handy, when we were on the lookout together.

  I liked that, really. With our group being as diverse as it was, there were people who were more different from certain others. Gordon and I were one example. Could we work well together? Sure. But even while I’d trust Gordon to hold my still-beating heart in his hand and treat it with the care it deserved, I knew that we were very different in how we saw the world and how we approached a situation. We were polar opposites in terms of our abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.

  Put Mary and Gordon on the same task, and they matched each other’s stride well. Gordon and Helen, same thing.

  Jamie and I should have been opposites. We should have run counter to one another. I was the chaos that stood in contrast to his order, the haste to his slow and steady pace. He was gentler than I was. We worked together better than any of the other opposing elements among the Lambs.

  That seemed important to me. As if somehow it would hold things together in a pinch.

  The waitress came by, we made our order, and promptly delivered it.

  I left Jamie to continue studying the outside, and turned my
attention to the interior.

  The tea house was a sad little affair. It was the sort of location where the youth might congregate in better times, boys and girls could meet for first dates, children could gather and cluster into booths, and the elderly might sit for hours at a time, enjoying the good weather if there was any to be had. A glass display window protected and showed off an assortment of sandwiches and baked goods, and kettles were perpetually boiling behind the counter.

  But there were no youths besides us, there were no elderly. Whitney was a small town with a large town population in it, now, and that population consisted of soldiers and rebels, with a lot of angry people. The staff of the tea house was having trouble keeping up, and the food behind the display window was dwindling, with new food being placed within on a regular basis, only to be dismantled by the next collection of guests. It was less of an elegant, artistic construction than a wall being torn down a hair faster than it could be rebuilt. If the staff worked hard enough, they would manage to keep going until the day was done, then collapse from exhaustion before doing what they could to get ready for the next day. If they failed, then they would have to deal with wave after wave of disgruntled customers, men with a lot of repressed fear and anger due to the ongoing war.

  The constant rain meant mud was constantly being tracked in, and the floor was only partially swept before something demanded the attention of the staff. The result was that dirt and debris collected in corners and at the edges of the floor, where the mops and brooms couldn’t quite reach. The staff wasn’t used to this kind of environment, and it was clearly getting to them. They were used to a relaxed atmosphere, one where they could chat with their more innocent customers, not a crowd of unsmiling men who gathered at the door, shuffling their feet and murmuring among each other until a table vacated or the line reached the counter.

  “Miss,” Helen said. “Miss?”

  Helen succeeded in getting the attention of the waitress.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Helen said.

  “It’s alright,” the woman said, offering Helen a tired smile that suggested it wasn’t.

  Helen’s demeanor was bright as she talked, pointing at her cake with her spoon. “I just wanted to say this is really very good. Would you pass my compliments on to whoever made it?”