Twig

by wildbow

  I felt a hand touch the small of my back, insistent.

  Too far.

  “As an experiment, you’re too muddled with one another to assess independently,” the Duke spoke. “I have the distinct impression you’re arguing with me.”

  “My lord, I would say I’m arguing for the Lambs, not arguing against you. Forgive me, but when I talked about my views in front of Avis, I couldn’t help but feel you and I are on the same page, of similar views on where we should be collectively headed. Let me add my views to yours, and yours to mine, my lord.”

  “Presumptuous, too,” he said.

  Oh. Well. That was that. I’d gone and offended him.

  “I’ve had others challenge me like this,” the Duke observed. “Trying to appeal to my desire for excitement and challenge by arguing points, being reckless in conversation with me, foregoing custom and formality.”

  I didn’t dare speak at this point. I’d let my mouth run off with me.

  “I’m trying to decide if you’ve crossed the line that the rest did in trying to challenge me,” he said.

  “My lord,” I said. I waited for an indication I had permission to continue. He gave it, raising his chin a fraction. “I wasn’t actively trying to challenge you. I swear this.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve read your file, Sylvester,” he said. He touched the side of my face. “You talked about the behavior we all return to when we’re on shaky footing. I know this is where you go when you’re insecure, how you function as a living being. I do believe you when you say that, and it does inform my answer.”

  As much as you know and believe that that, I know that you default to playing with the lives of those around you. When the world doesn’t suit you or make sense, you reorder it. You’re good at reordering it. A builder more than a destroyer. But you’re too big of a man, Lord Duke. You’re a giant among mere mortals, and the most trivial actions you undertake are ones with massive ramifications for the rest of us. That’s how you function.

  Except you’re not a dumb giant, trampling over everything in your path. You know just how small we are.

  “You’re seeing me as a threat, you’re studying me, and you’re working out a plan of attack,” he observed.

  “Sy,” Jamie said, just behind me.

  No, couldn’t dwell on Jamie, had to focus. As if mirroring the thought, the Duke raised a hand, indicating with a raised finger that Jamie should stay silent and stay out of this.

  In this, too, the Duke and I were on the same page.

  “What are you thinking, ‘Sy’?” the Duke asked me, staring down at me with eyes that showed too much white.

  “My lord. I’m thinking that you’re smarter than you’re acting right now.”

  If Gordon had been present, I was pretty sure he would have socked me one right there, to shut me up, then worked to beg for mercy. He was being looked after for his heart. Mary might have stabbed my butt like she had Helen’s, just to make it clear I was being stupid.

  But this wasn’t a man who accepted half-measures.

  “Precious Sylvester,” the Duke said. His body language and voice softened. He smiled, and his tone became something very dangerous, alongside the gentle phrasing and volume. “I think you should explain yourself very carefully.”

  “The Lambs are a unit, my lord. We developed to cover each others’ weaknesses. I, myself, was pushed forward to patch a gaping hole in the group. But splitting us up now is like clipping a rose branch when it hasn’t budded yet. You know you can let us reach a more complete state before evaluating us. You have people come to you wanting to challenge you because you want to be challenged, you signal it, you outright asked for it with Avis.”

  “I signal this?” he asked. Not a question so much as a challenge.

  “You’ve talked about home. You want what you had there, on a deeper level. Back home, I have to assume, if you bared your throat like you’re doing here, someone would seize the opportunity. You’re doing it here, I’m seizing, and I’m hoping I’m doing it well enough you’re going to accept it where you’ve rejected others.”

  He stared down at me.

  “First of all,” he said. “You forgot to call me ‘lord’. I have a grave appreciation of formality, Sylvester. It signals respect. Forgetting something so simple is a telling blow to your attempt to earn my respect by challenging me.”

  I didn’t budge an inch or give any outward sign or change of expression, but interally I was screaming and running around in circles.

  “Second, your argument hinges on the notion that you’re not yet done developing to your full strength. Yet your Gordon is near the end. You’ve had more injuries. Your group dynamic is reportedly and observably breaking down.”

  He let that point hang in the air.

  I ventured a response. “My lord.”

  He gave me consent to continue, a dismissive backhand swipe with the fingers of one hand. His eyes and body remained stone still, not budging.

  I lowered my eyes. “We’ve had more injuries because we’ve been taking on more challenging missions. If the Lambs are breaking down, if we’re dying or nearly done, let the first Lamb die or break away before you take any action. You only lose the opportunity to work on the most perishable of us, and you stand to gain our loyal service in the meantime.”

  My eyes still lowered, my heart pounding, I couldn’t see his expression, nor how much I’d succeeded or failed in swaying him.

  It was a massive weight on my shoulders, wondering if I’d doomed myself or doomed the group. I let that weight be something real, driving me to the ground. Eyes fixed on the floor of the hallway in the Bowels, I dropped to my knee. I heard and felt the movement of Jamie and Lillian behind me.

  “That was my plan already, Sylvester,” the Duke said, above me. “You’re not entirely wrong in your judgment of what I was doing. The Lambs are not ready to be broken up. We already have enough experiments capable of acting independently, too few who work as a collective. I was thinking aloud, wanting to see your response.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said.

  “You’re forgiven for this. Stand.”

  I stood. My hands shook a bit as I did. I hooked my thumbs into the pockets of my shorts. The fact that my shirt stuck to my back had nothing to do with the summer heat—we’d spent the last while in the Bowels, and it was cool this deep underground, if not quite refreshing.

  “You are not, however, forgiven the transgression earlier. I know it is your nature, but I did say I would punish you, and I do what I say. I will decide on something fitting.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said.

  “Your fellow Lambs should be going straight from getting care to having their appointments. Have yours as your doctors are able. I expect you to be ready for another task before the week is over. The war wages on, and our enemy is catching up to us in fits and starts.”

  “Yes, my lord,” I said. My voice was joined by Jamie and Lillian’s.

  “I give you leave to go,” he said.

  “My lord?” Jamie asked. “Forgive me.”

  “What is it?”

  Jamie’s eyes remained fixed on the ground. With just a bit of sweat on his nose, his glasses slid down the bridge of the nose. He pushed them back up into place. “It’s customary for the Lambs to fill each other in, so none of us are in the dark or lagging behind the others. Most often that’s me. But we’re going to talk to the others, and we’re going to talk about this conversation. May I ask, if Sy hadn’t spoken up, would this have ended differently?”

  “I would have given it thought first, much as Avis is giving her matter some consideration right now. My instinct is that you would have been disbanded,” the Duke said. “Dear Lillian thrown to the nobles, perhaps, Helen ordered to my apartments, the rest of you left to fend for yourselves, with every expectation you wouldn’t fend for particularly long, but you’d see to the most essential tasks in the meantime.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Jamie said. “Thank
you, my lord. Knowing that will make this easier to convey to Mary and Gordon.”

  The Duke declined his head in acknowledgement. He swept his fingers to one side to dismiss us, and we were gone.

  We fled, leaving the Bowels and heading off to our individual, long-postponed appointments. Lambs to the Tower.

  The exit from the Bowels and the first half of the walk was painfully quiet. We walked among soldiers and warbeasts, students and stitched.

  Halfway there, Lillian started crying. Heads turned, curious, but nobody stopped for us.

  I reached out for her hand, and she squeezed mine so hard it hurt. She kept wiping at tears, only for new ones to show up. Had she simply let them fall, they might have been blamed on the light drizzle.

  “Crybaby,” I said.

  She kicked me far harder than was necessary. Doing it while walking meant having to take a quick half-step forward and a twist to one side. She pulled her hand away from mine as she did it, but I held it firmly. I tugged her closer to me, and put my other hand around hers, until I held one of her hands firmly in both my own. I squeezed hard.

  I was aware of Jamie, so much quieter than usual, a little to my right.

  “You stood up for me.”

  “You’re a Lamb,” I said. “I wasn’t going to let him throw you to some group of golden-haired sociopaths so they can torment you to death. Tormenting you is my job.”

  “I can do without that part,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” she said. “I like you more when you’re nice.”

  It was very possibly the worst thing she could have said or brought up with Jamie there, overhearing.

  She sniffed again.

  “Here,” I said, letting go of her hand with one of mine and extending a sleeve, my hand pulled inside. “Blow.”

  “On your shirt? Eww, Sy.”

  “I’m changing first chance I get anyway, and I don’t have any handkerchiefs to offer. You want me to try being nice, take what you can get.”

  She sniffed, gave me a wary look, then took the cuff of my shirt and blew her nose into it.

  The moment she released my hand, I wiped the snot on the fabric at her shoulder.

  She shrieked and came after me, kicking and pummeling me with fists. I dodged as best as I could, up until she pushed me into a puddle. She kicked me when I was down, as much to splash me with muddy water as to drive the toe of her too-hard shoe into my thigh. Proof as much as anything that she was learning stuff from being with the Lambs.

  But she was smiling, and Jamie was smiling too. I raised my arms in surrender, and the two of them approached me, offering their hands.

  Jamie hadn’t said a word since we’d left the Duke’s company.

  We passed the checkpoint at the tower, the guards giving me suspicious look as I dripped liberally with mud. I kept an eye out for the proboscis as it searched Lillian, and saw it pause at the mucus on her shoulder. She gave me a look.

  But we were cleared to pass inside. Here, at least, we were regular enough to be known to the guards.

  Checking on the other Lambs was priority number one. The door to Mary’s lab was closed, the doctors absent. Ibott and Helen weren’t present either, but I fully expected her to still be at the Hedge or deep in the Bowels, getting replacement skin after the burns.

  Gordon was awake.

  He lay on a table, his chest open. Tubes fed into it, crimson fluid churning and bubbling within. Doctors milled around him, chattering.

  “Sy had a long conversation with the Duke,” Jamie reported, as we drew next to the bedside.

  Gordon blinked. He lay his head down on the table, staring at the ceiling. “Good thing my heart’s not in my chest. I might have had a heart attack at the idea.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Is it? Can I see?”

  He grunted, then eased himself up, until his arms propped his upper body up. The tubes fed into his chest, showing some metal clips and bits here and there, the blood-pumping tubes were connected to the major ins and outs around where the heart should be.

  “You’re dirty,” Gordon remarked.

  “You’re a heartless bastard,” I said, pointing at this hole. “Is that permanent?”

  “No,” Gordon said, lying back down, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m getting the same heart back. They’re changing some things, but the problem might recur.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t feel happy about the news.

  “I might be getting a dog,” he said.

  “What?” Lillian asked.

  “Dog-dog or dog-dog?” I asked.

  “That makes no sense, Sy.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “A dog. A Gordon dog, for me. I told them that Dog could hear the heart going before I was even fully aware of it. They’re going to put something together for me. Inconspicuous, but built like I am, and a dog. If I know about the problems, I won’t jump into the fray and only realize I’m having problems when I can’t get out of it.”

  “Not guaranteed to be a dog,” one Doctor said, passing by with clipboard in hand.

  “It better not be a cat!” Gordon called out to the man’s back.

  “What’s wrong with cats?” Lillian asked.

  “You can’t do anything with cats,” Gordon said.

  “Sounds like a good stopgap,” I said.

  “Maybe good enough for them to find another good heart, or a way to keep my body from hurting too much as it rides out the rejection.”

  Gordon held up a hand, fingers crossed.

  I did the same. Jamie and Lillian did too.

  “How’s Mary?” I asked.

  “Grumpy. She stopped in. She’s getting surgery.”

  I nodded. “And Helen?”

  “Haven’t heard.”

  “Alright. Look, I’ve got an appointment I’m itching to get done.”

  “And a shower, apparently. Did you roll in mud?”

  “And Lillian’s been gross and got snot all over her uniform.”

  Lillian kicked at me. I jumped out of the way, bumping into a doctor.

  The man physically picked me up, carried me two steps, and planted me firmly down with the others, pressing down as if it would keep me in place, before carrying on with his business.

  By the time I’d figured out what was going on and turned around, he’d disappeared into the mill of Gordon’s doctors.

  I’d wanted to get revenge on one person. Maybe I’d have to get revenge on the whole bunch of them.

  “I’ll stop in when you’re through the worst part,” Gordon said. “Hopefully. I don’t want to be here too long.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll fill the rest of you in on the conversation with the Duke,” Jamie said. “Felt important. A sense of where we’re going.”

  “Good going or no?”

  “Not as bad as it could have been,” Jamie said. “But elaborating on that would require sharing the whole conversation. After.”

  “Alright,” Gordon said. “But you’re okay?”

  “Bad day, but I’m okay,” Jamie said.

  “Whichever one of us finishes first, we meet the other?” he asked. “Maybe grab Mary when she’s done. With Percy coming up today, she might need to talk.”

  Jamie nodded.

  Lillian, Jamie and I headed over to Jamie’s lab next. The silence was oppressive, and even my attempt to shake like a dog and get the worst of the mud-brown water off only provoked smiles, not joking conversation.

  As we reached the lab, Jamie grabbed his bag with the book. He waved at his team of doctors, then pulled the book out, and then bent down, to put it down, so it would lean against the doorframe.

  I was there before he did. I put a hand between book and frame, grabbing the book.

  “You don’t have to, Sy,” he said.

  “I promised,” I said. I watch you as you go to sleep.

  “I know you want your appointment right now more than anything, and
with the Duke and everything else, it might be a question of our group’s survival. That whole thing was too close for comfort.”

  “I promised.”

  “The promise was that you’d…” he glanced at Lillian, then his doctors, obviously uncomfortable. “It doesn’t matter if I’m here. It’s different. You shouldn’t put your appointment off.”

  “Bullshit. I shouldn’t break my promise,” I said. I tugged the book from his hands. “I promised. Now I’m going to take the book and I’m going to look after it, and I’m going to sit here and if you try to convince me to do anything different, I’m going to rub snot on you.”

  He met my eyes, a searching stare.

  I only withstood the discomfort for a short while. I broke eye contact, looking at Lillian. “Not that it matters, you strip down anyway and they launder your clothes for you in the meantime. Lillian should move over.”

  I turned my focus to Lillian, repositioning her much as the doctor had me, moving her to one side of the doorframe.

  When I turned around, Jamie was heading to his chair, a throne with tubes and connections running into and through it. He didn’t open his mouth as one of his doctors led him up to the seat.

  He pulled off his shirt, then pulled off his pants. A doctor draped a cloth over his lap in time to protect his modesty. Lillian wouldn’t have even blushed.

  I took a seat in the doorway, back to one side, feet propped up against the other, book in my lap.

  “What happened?” Lillian whispered. She hadn’t budged from where I’d moved her.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Feels like something happened between you two.”

  It was your fault, I thought, but the thought had no meat or merit to it, I knew. She’d just been the unwitting catalyst to this whole mess.

  “It’s nothing,” was all I said.

  “Okay, Sy,” she said. “Thanks for holding my hand and making me laugh.”

  “What about the other stuff?”

  “I think I got you back. It’s okay.”

  I nodded.

  Then she was gone. Back to her dorm to wash up and let reality sink in. I imagined it was really lonely, and I was surprised at the level of empathy I felt in that regard.

  No, it shouldn’t have been surprising. I turned my attention to Jamie, who waved.