Twig

by wildbow

  There was no answer but the patter of rain.

  “They are?” Lillian guessed. “The bad guys?”

  I traced my finger around the circle’s rim. “Defensive perimeter. And in the center there, we have critical figures. Wanted men, leaders of different factions of rebellion. Mauer. Maybe Fray.”

  I glanced at Mary.

  “Percy,” she said.

  “It’s possible,” Gordon said. “But Fray has outsmarted us before.”

  “The factions have been fighting for months. Over three nights, they’ve banded together. Either they’ve reached an accord or they’re getting there,” I said. “When things are that tentative, are you really going to get complicated and take risks with how you station your guards?”

  “Actually…” Gordon said.

  “…Fray might,” I finished. “You’re right.”

  “And,” Gordon said. “It doesn’t fix our problem with how we get close enough to them to do anything.”

  “It’s true, Sy,” Mary said. “Using Petey, attacking with our massed forces, spying, our hands are tied.”

  “Then we don’t use hands,” I said. I tugged on my shirt. The Engineer let it go. I pulled it on, and shivered again at how clammy it was against my already wet skin. “We use—”

  Helen stepped close, all of a sudden, her face an inch from mine.

  She licked my forehead, brow to hair.

  “Uh,” I said, my train of thought broken.

  “Go ahead, don’t worry,” she said.

  “Uh.”

  “You had ink on your face. I wanted to get rid of it before it stained. Keep talking.”

  “That’s what you use a handkerchief for.”

  It was a glimmer of the older, frustrating Helen. “I don’t have one and my spit would work better anyway. Go back to what you were saying.”

  “What was I even saying?”

  “We don’t use hands,” the Wry Man said, patiently.

  “Right,” I said. “Yeah. Damn it, Helen, and I had a good one-liner planned.”

  “It would have sounded silly if you said it with a blue stripe on your face,” she said, very sensibly.

  “Sy,” Gordon said. “Focus. What are you thinking?”

  “We use horns,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Mary said. “That doesn’t sound nearly as cool after the interruption.”

  I sighed, then shivered again.

  “Horns?” Petey asked.

  My eyes scanned the surroundings. The city, laid out like it is.

  “You don’t build a city like this without a design in mind. Winding roads, claustrophobia, gates to control movement, towers to observe… all done with a point in mind. If they seriously didn’t give the capstone of this design horns, I’m going to be ticked. Gotta tie it together.”

  “The Brechwell Beast,” Gordon said.

  “Please tell me it has horns.”

  “It has horns,” Gordon said.

  I smiled, spreading my arms. “Perfect. Then let’s give them a distraction.”

  “It’s a last ditch measure,” The Wry Man said, unimpressed. “Not something we use right away. We’re supposed to observe and report back so the Academy can take action, not take action ourselves.”

  My eyes were wide, I was smiling, and I was shivering from excitement as much as cold, now. “It’s Genevieve Fray. She’s two moves ahead of us, every damn time. I’m done playing chess. Let’s kick over the damn table. Right now.”

  “I’m not sure,” Petey said. “This isn’t how I operate.”

  “Like I said,” Helen said, reaching out to take Petey’s hand. “You’re with us for now.”

  “This isn’t what I was imagining,” Petey said.

  “I’m gathering Helen is for Sy’s plan,” Gordon said.

  “I want to see it,” Helen said, the excitement clear on her face.

  “Do you?” he asked. Gordon reached out to touch the side of Helen’s face. “No act, no games. Because I know you don’t want like we understand it. Say it again.”

  The enthusiasm drained away from Helen. Her eyes still glittered, but her expression was cold. The angle of her head, the way she held herself, it all shifted in the moment. More reptile than mammal, wearing raincoat and a dress.

  She nodded once.

  “Alright,” he said. His hand settled on Hubris’ head. “If Sy wants to do it, and if we can get the cooperation of the Academy, then I’m for it too.”

  Helen smiled, resuming her act as if nothing had occurred.

  “Yes, then,” Mary agreed.

  “Yes,” Lillian said, which was a little surprising. “Let’s get that bitch.”

  Mary reached out to squeeze Lillian’s hand, smiling at her best friend.

  As one, the Lambs faced the others.

  “Do you think this will work?” Catcher asked.

  “No idea, but I’m fairly sure that anything else we do, biding our time, it’s not going to work,” I said. “I know Fray, and we can’t give her the opportunity to make the next move at her leisure.”

  Catcher nodded. He looked at Dog, who didn’t give any apparent sign, then looked at us. He nodded once.

  The solo operators were silent.

  “I’ll go up,” the Wry Man said. “I know the signals. I’ll flash a message to the other towers. They’ll pass it on. If I say we know where Fray is, they’ll act.”

  I smiled wider.

  “Go,” he said. “I’ll catch up after I’ve given the order. We’re creating a window of opportunity here.”

  I remembered my doubts from earlier.

  “Can we trust you to do this?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why? Why are you with the Academy? Why are you loyal?” I asked.

  “That question could get you killed, if you asked it in certain places, or asked it in the wrong way,” the Wry Man said.

  “Are you deflecting?”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” the man said.

  “Why?”

  “They saved my life,” he said. “Not the Academy as a whole, but people who are tied to it. I have to repay those people, and I will probably never manage it before I die. If I have to serve the Academy to do it, I will.”

  My brain was pulling on every hint and detail on tells that I’d learned over the past several years. Every lie I’d identified.

  “Okay,” I said. “I trust you. I told them to expect someone. You could tell them we spotted the enemy ringleader and they’ll believe you.”

  He nodded once, then started climbing the ladder.

  “You two don’t have to come,” Gordon said, to the other solo operators.

  “I think I do,” Petey said.

  The Engineer nodded.

  I’d have rather they’d stayed, or gone back to the Academy to report in. I didn’t trust them, and they’d be at our back in this.

  We were halfway back to where we’d seen the ghost when the beam started flashing, pointed back at the Academy. The dark, overcast night sky glowed orange on one end and reflected a dim yellow-white on the other, passing on a message.

  Our enemies would see that light in the same way we’d seen the fire.

  In a short time, I hoped, they’d hear the roar of the Brechwell Beast, and they’d react with concern and fear.

  The box would be thoroughly rattled, the inhabitants set to scurrying, dangerous and mad as they were.

  This was what I lived for.

  Previous Next

  Tooth and Nail—7.5

  An impact shook the city of Brechwell, dull and low, reverberating through the ground and up to the rooftops. In the wake of it, windows and doors continued to rattle and bang in their frames, adding an eerie note to the tail end of it.

  The entire city seemed to go still. Birds taking shelter from the rain and the handful of soldiers on the street were all frozen. Our group and the rainwater were the only things moving in a still tableau.

  Then the warnin
g bells started tolling, muffled, all through the city, the birds took off from roosts, and soldiers ran. Where each of the towers had lone spotlights, additional lights were lit, the beams becoming diffuse, aimed at the city streets. Stretches of light and dark.

  State of emergency.

  A second impact cut into the bass tolling of the bells. As it rippled across a segment of Brechwell, the bells were jarred midway through their motions. Some sounded early, others were delayed.

  I gripped Lillian’s wrist harder as the rooftop shook with the strike.

  The Brechwell Beast roared, and the sound carried. It was a lowing noise, and I imagined I imagined it sounded frustrated. An actual observation, gleaned from small details and intuition, or just what I wanted to think?

  Wish they hadn’t warned people, but I guess they had to. Someone in charge probably promised citizens there would be notice, to pacify them.

  Down a side street, without a man or guard touching it, a portcullis gate slammed down, the blunted metal teeth of it striking the stone of the road. The lights from the towers shifted, leaving that street dark, illuminating the path that remained.

  I’d imagined this part.

  Release the local weapon, send it out into the streets, and use the gates to control its movements.

  I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Helen, ahead of us, raised a hand, then gestured twice.

  “Screams,” Catcher said, echoing the same sentiment. “Your Ghosts.”

  Here we were.

  I’d never had the impression the Ghosts were particularly intelligent. They could talk, recite from script, and they had residual behaviors and movement from the manner of their manufacture. I wondered if the scenario of the Brechwell Beast had even come up, if the Firebrands had taken the time to explain to their inaudible children just what to expect and what to do if the weapon was let loose from its dwelling.

  I heard the Beast roar, and this time it was moving.

  They’d opened the gate it had been banging against.

  “Cross!” Gordon shouted, pointing. It was a set of rooftops above a gate that still yawned open.

  “If it passes beneath us—” Petey had to raise her voice to be heard over the din.

  “Cross!” Gordon called out.

  Helen ran across, hunched over, one hand extended straight toward the ground, ready to drop and hug the peaked roof at a moment’s notice. Gordon and Mary were next, followed by Lillian and me.

  Dog, Catcher and the Engineer had gone ahead, and Dog had been kind enough to place his claws against sections further down the roof. I could see patches where he’d leaped and where he’d landed, and shingles had been torn or scraped away by the violence and the weight of each of his movements.

  Petey was lagging behind. I made sure to keep an eye on her. By all rights, Helen should have gone with her, but Petey and Helen were diametric opposites, Helen was our scout, capable of hearing the Ghosts, and Petey was far from being fast enough to help with scouting.

  We could have and should have reshuffled the group, perhaps sending Mary forward with Helen, but it was too late to decide on that now, and we were almost there. So long as Petey didn’t slip and slide off to one side and over the brink, we were fine.

  Dog and Catcher stopped, and Catcher extended an arm, signaling. Catcher remembered the signals for alert, and for direction. Easy to make out in the gloom, as he was a dark silhouette against the glare of a tower’s lights.

  I squeezed Lillian’s wrist, tugging her a bit as I willed her to move faster.

  We were so close.

  Over one house, past another, past an ‘x’ shaped intersection of rooftops and buildings, a park to one side and roads to another, and we could see what Catcher was indicating.

  A trio of Ghosts and a quartet of others in civilian garb were all gathered, talking. Some had rifles. Infiltrators.

  One Ghost was staring up at us.

  I could feel the tramp of the Brechwell Beast’s feet, see the shift of the lighting as some lights moved to follow it. It was loud, and the sound went beyond the heavy footfalls. A grinding sound, like something heavy rolling over crushed stones.

  The civilians were at a door, working to open it.

  “Catcher!” I shouted, and my voice was nearly drowned out.

  He said something, but I couldn’t make out the individual sounds. He was reaching into his coat, withdrawing something that was about the same size and shape as a wine bottle, but black with fluid inside.

  He tossed it out over the edge of the roof. Ghosts scattered, backing up, while the other enemies in civilian clothing were oblivious.

  The bottle struck hard ground, there was a flare of orange in the center, and then thick smoke filled the area.

  He said something else that I couldn’t make out.

  Each tromp of the Beast’s feet made my teeth clack together. He was one street over, rounding the corner behind us, turning, approaching the corner that turned onto this street.

  Helen dropped, hugging the roof’s peak.

  I tugged Lillian’s arm, hauling her down. I dug fingers beneath thick, wet, freezing shingles for a grip. Others were doing the same.

  The superweapon of Brechwell Academy lunged ’round the corner, not slowing, heedless of potential obstacles in its way.

  Had someone taken a toad, a mammoth, a bull and a rhino and kept the most brutish features of each, they would have been in the right ballpark for the Brechwell Beast. It was wide, muscular, and built to plow forward, with no sign that it was built to stop. Its chest was triangular and deep enough to scrape the ground, even as powerful limbs carried it forward. Tusks extending from the corner of its mouth scraped against the road and the sides of buildings, the curve of them keeping them from catching on anything, and horns extended around the top, doing much the same. At the shoulder—the shoulders and upper parts of its forelimbs were perhaps its largest feature, I noted—it stood three and a half stories tall.

  It was armored, something grown rather than hewn from metal, the plates white-gray in color, edges sharpened, layered over one another. The plates at the chest scraped the ground like the horns and tusks did, and the plates across its back gave it a serrated appearance. What I could see between and beneath armor plates suggested that the Beast had no lack of protection—it alternated from layers of heavy scale that was probably armor unto itself and skin that looked like it was nothing but callus and scar tissue.

  The street rumbled, windows threatening to rattle out of panes as the Beast made its approach, and I found the vibration of its movement threatening to tear my fingers from the shingles.

  I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hang on before it was halfway down the street to us.

  It reached the ‘u’ bend in the road, with us at the middle of the bend. Its full weight slammed against the building faces, and momentum carried the shock of the impact straight through to us.

  I wasn’t even sure what happened. In one moment, I was on the rooftop. Then it was like I’d been hit across face, neck, chest and stomach with a physical blow. In the next, I wasn’t touching anything solid.

  A full second passed before my right shoulder scraped roof. My right foot and ass touched the roof next, and I had my bearings. A moment later, my backpack caught on the roof, and I started spiraling out, head going more down, feet more up.

  I was halfway down the roof, sliding down faster than I could’ve run, and there was only an abyss below me, darker than the sky above.

  My arms went out for traction, heels of my hand scraping against the rough texture of the shingles, and as I started to correct the spin, I brought one leg out, my pants leg and the flesh nearest the bone of my shin tearing on contact with the roof.

  Belly down, more points of contact. I was hugging the roof, trying not to do anything that would make me spin and keep the momentum going through another venue. Three quarters of the way down.

  In the engulfing darkness below, I could see a vague shape in gray, l
it indirectly by the fire around a distant burning building, bounced off a cloud and down into the shadows beneath me.

  A tree, but one too distant to reach with a timely leap, let alone a skid and fall.

  The flare of hope died, but in its place I managed rage and fury.

  I will not die here!

  ‘Oh, I knew Sy would do himself in eventually.’

  I will not let them make remarks about how I was hoist by my own petard!

  I shifted my weight. Seconds away from going over the edge, I raised both feet and stuck one arm out, no longer trying to slow my descent. I’d slowed, but it would never be enough, even if the roof was dry, if I wasn’t wearing a damn raincoat.

  There was no light here, nothing to hint or illuminate my situation as I reached the end. I reached into darkness, slamming my feet down at an angle.

  My feet found the gutter, wedging into the space. My tired, cold fingers found the edge of it, too. Momentum carried me down and forward, and my shoes popped out of the gutter, kicking shingle on the way up and out. A flap caught the meager light as it flew through the air, joined by one of my shoes.

  I grit my teeth, bracing myself, as my lower body swung down, all of my weight jerking hard my fingers hard against the edge of the gutter, a wooden trough nailed to the eaves. I heard wood and metal cry out in their individual ways, threatening to pull free of where it had been secured to the wall.

  My other hand went up, punching skyward in an effort to reach high enough, and found a grip.

  Panting, hurting in a dozen places, I stayed right where I was, and found enough breath to whistle.

  I could feel the Brechwell Beast continuing on its way, rounding a corner, then passing somewhere to my right. Each movement jarred me, and made the water that sat at the bottom of the gutter splash out, spattering me.

  Catcher appeared in my view, mancatcher in one hand, touching the roof, the other extended out for balance, feet spread wide. He eased his way down to me.

  “You could have lost the pack,” he said. “Shrug your shoulders, let it fall. That has to be a solid stone of weight weighing you down.”

  “Heavier. It’s all books.”

  “Point stands.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “If it really came down to it, I’d let him fall.”