Twig

by wildbow

  “That would be ideal,” I said.

  “Making this all a matter of nice sounding words, tempting us with added help and the information you’d be able to provide,” Mauer said.

  “Less information, without the one with the memory,” Cynthia observed.

  “True,” Mauer said.

  The two sides were agreeing, now. Cynthia at one end, and Mauer at the other.

  “I wish I’d known you were doing this,” Fray said. “I would have tailored my plan to suit the situation, and provide a tempting reason for the Lambs to defect.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “No, I’m not at all disappointed, Sylvester,” she said.

  Fray stood hands on the backs of the chairs to either side of her, and she had the attention of the room. “For the past three days, I’ve been arguing for an end to the war. Not now, but soon. I’ve pointed out locations where key individuals can go, places they can work without being found, while still maintaining a reasonable standard of living. Believe me, I know how important that is. I’ve been on the run for a year and a half.”

  Her finger tapped on the back of the chair to her right for a second.

  “I’m proposing we take the war in a different direction. We leave them hurting, while helping everyone. Give them an enemy they can’t effectively fight.”

  She reached back. Avis pulled something from a bag and handed it to Fray.

  I almost flinched, seeing what she held. It wasn’t tailored to what I’d just been talking about? Bullshit.

  It was a book. Thick, large, and heavy, with a nondescript cover. It made a sound as it was dropped onto the table.

  “Don’t leave us in suspense,” the burly man spoke.

  “The Academy’s knowledge, distilled. This particular volume isn’t complete, nor comprehensive, nor is it well suited for doing research. But it’s a starting point. The tools and guides necessary to walk someone through some basic experiments. There are other books, more complete ones for anyone who wants to advance their knowledge, and I have plans for yet more, simpler texts in simpler fields.”

  “Giving the power to the people?” Mauer asked.

  “Giving the Academy’s power to the people,” Fray said. She indicated Cynthia, “Godwin’s enclave had the books, but not the means to mass produce, and the knowledge was of limited use—they had to find doctors and ex-students to use it.”

  She was indicating Percy now.

  “We give everyone the ability to learn, we take away the exclusive access to Academy knowledge, and our individual groups, working together, can incentivize use of the knowledge. Novice doctors and students will come crawling from the woodwork with their experiments, farmers will be able to create their own help instead of buying it, and everyone else will compete with the Academy for the same resources.”

  There were murmurs in the crowd now.

  “Not a genie that can easily be put back in the bottle, is it Genevieve?” Mauer asked, with a note of humor.

  “I did think you’d like this,” Fray said.

  “The production?” one of the men at the table asked.

  “Already set up. I’ll reserve further comment for when we don’t have listening ears,” Fray said, indicating me. “With a coordinated effort, they won’t be able to restrict the spread of the texts and deal with our final forays and efforts. We play all of the cards we’ve been holding in reserve, and by the time the dust clears, the world will be different. Humanity gets a fighting chance against the monolithic Academy.”

  The words and voices blended in together.

  I was disappointed.

  Was it change? Yes. Undeniably. The knowledge wouldn’t be used by everyone. But enough people would pick it up. Back alley practices and independent experimenters would crop up. People like the snake charmer. Monsters would appear.

  There would be good and bad in equal measure, and the Academy would hurt. It would be forced into a situation where it either had to take more control than it should, or lose control overall.

  I suspected the former. I suspected it would backfire, that raids and searches for books would ensure that the fires of hatred against the Academy continued to burn. That the next war would be even more brutal, with the people on the ground having many more tools at their disposal.

  She played the long game. Always the long game.

  Was it a stride toward what I hoped for? No. I couldn’t believe that it was. Fray knew it wasn’t. She’d said as much when she talked about how she’d have tailored it.

  “Sylvester,” Fray said, quieter.

  The voice snapped me out of a train of thought. I realized that the groups on either side of me were talking.

  “Is it what you expected?” she asked.

  “In a way,” I said. I’d expected this scene, the groups talking, the note of hope.

  “If you’d come to me when I first asked, Jamie would be alive, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I told you how things would play out. That a Lamb would die and you’d reconsider.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I don’t know yet. I’m not sure.”

  She nodded. “You hoped for a better brain, one that could pave the way to greater things. Did you hope it was Jamie?”

  “I hoped it was me,” I said, quiet. “But Jamie was a close second.”

  The conversations around us continued. Discussion, strategy.

  “I need to talk to them about things you can’t hear,” Fray said. “I’m going to let you go.”

  Letting me go. I’d expected to be taken prisoner, maybe even tortured in an edge case, but torture was something I could deal with, and had dealt with in the past. I waited for elaboration.

  “On the condition that you leave that behind,” she said.

  She was pointing.

  I turned to look, and felt the tug against one shoulder before I realized.

  “Ah,” I said. “No.”

  “There’s no other way. I can convince them, but you need to convince me first. I figured out what was in that oddly shaped bag you refused to take off and place at your feet. I remember the last time I met the Lambs. I remember Jamie.”

  I touched the strap of the backpack. The books were inside.

  “If I’d rather be taken prisoner?”

  “Then they’ll kill you,” Fray said. The word seemed to get attention, because one or two conversations stopped. “I know them better than you do, and they’ll kill you.”

  Almost thirty seconds passed before I slipped my shoulders free of the straps. “You don’t read them. If you do—”

  “I won’t,” she said. “None of us will. Hand them to me.”

  I placed the bag on the table.

  It was hard, seeing Fray take it, lifting it free of the table and handing it to the stitched girl.

  “Nobody gets to take that bag, or touch or read the books inside except him,” Fray told the stitched girl. “Not even me. He gets it back when he comes tomorrow.”

  My heart was pounding harder than it had all night.

  “You’re staying?” I asked.

  “So long as we don’t venture outside, the Beast poses little risk to us,” she said. “You have one night to decide. Go and sleep on it if you must. Next time you come, come with the rest of the Lambs.”

  My heart felt cold in my chest as I said, “I don’t suppose I have much of a choice, do I?”

  Previous Next

  Tooth and Nail—7.9

  Armed men led me out of the building, with Warren joining them. We made our way across the more open street, until we were just beyond the point where I’d been made to kneel, a coat over my head.

  The Lambs were there, in the shadows, smoke and the rain, the group spaced evenly apart. I saw them before my escorts did. The men started, reaching for guns, and it was Warren who stopped them.

  Gordon stepped forward.

  He was hiding it, but I could see the smouldering anger in his eyes.

&
nbsp; “Everything good?” his voice didn’t have a trace of that anger.

  A nice vague question, conveying teamwork, expectations, while giving nothing away.

  Gordon was a good guy.

  “It’s good,” I said.

  He nodded before turning his back. I followed him back into shadows, leaving the men and Warren behind.

  Mary, Gordon, Helen, and Hubris knew what was up, and they moved easily from areas of shadow to areas of deeper shadow, or to places where there was more smoke and cover. The art of disappearing, honed over a long time, for the humans. For Hubris, I imagined it was training. I wasn’t positive that dog had the brain of a dog.

  Lillian, though, was just walking away. I could imagine how the onlookers could see her, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t disappearing properly.

  I reached out to grab her sleeve, and tugged her into deeper shadows.

  We made our way to the nearest tower, then climbed to the roof.

  The Brechwell Beast was just close enough to give some cause for worry, but not so close that I was worried about my footing on the roof.

  I was one of the last ones up. I knew what to expect when I reached the top.

  Glares, folded arms, concern.

  I got out of Lillian’s way as she got off the ladder, and being mid-step on more precarious footing, I wasn’t in a position to dodge as she slapped my arm hard.

  “What did you get?” Gordon asked, quiet. The anger hadn’t really subsided, and he was still talking in that cool, collected way.

  “You’re not going to get on my ass, sock me in the face, or anything like that?”

  “At this point I’m suspicious you enjoy the reactions,” he said. “No. The mission. What were you going for, and what did you get?”

  I frowned.

  “Because if you didn’t actually have an objective,” he said, pausing as the Brechwell Beast struck a wall, “I am going to be upset.”

  “I wanted to know what they were doing.”

  “Do you?”

  I nodded. “Bring the Academy’s knowledge to the masses. Bring the war to a close with a few final, major events, distracting us from the distribution of very easy to understand texts. Hurts the Academy in terms of the power gap in what they’re making, in terms of control, in economics, makes for more competition over the resources the Academy wants.”

  “No. We have classes on ethics, procedure,” Lillian said.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes! Of course! So much would go wrong so fast, if you just started handing out these books and basic starter kits like the ones they sell to young Academy students. It would be horrible, Sy.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Because my gut instinct was to maybe not fight as hard as we might otherwise fight, when it comes to this. I’m not sure, but Fray might be willing to negotiate a trade, here.”

  “A trade?” Mary asked.

  “A few key players from their side, in exchange for letting this thing happen?”

  “Fuck,” Gordon said, under his breath.

  My eyebrows went up. Harsher language than his usual.

  “We lost Jamie,” he said. “Not in the final sense—”

  “Yes in the final sense,” I said, my voice low.

  “Whatever. However you look at it. I’m bringing it up even though we’ve been dancing around the topic for months because I don’t want to lose you, Sy.”

  “You won’t. I knew exactly what I was doing. I know how Fray thinks, I know how to dance on this razor’s edge. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “You’re here and you’re talking about entertaining her ideas.”

  I couldn’t keep meeting his eyes, so I turned away, only to find myself looking at Lillian. I ran my fingers through my hair, fixing it, as I paced a little.

  I came face to face with Mary and stopped in my tracks.

  I talked to Percy, I thought. But I couldn’t say it without it coming across as manipulative.

  “What are you doing, Sy?” Gordon asked.

  I turned away from Mary to look at him. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been acting different all night. Changing your pattern, increasing the tempo and intensity, making calls and now you’re working against us like you’re trying to keep us off guard?”

  “That’s not what I’m trying to do. But I knew you’d try to stop me—”

  “For good reason!” Mary said, startling me.

  “I’m here!” I said. “I walked in, I walked out.”

  “Without the bag?” Mary asked. “Without the bag with Jamie’s books in it?”

  “Oh. Gosh,” Lillian said, under her breath.

  “We’re going back tomorrow,” I said, annoyed. “We’re going to walk out then too. With Jamie—‘s books. Okay? We walk away with an idea of what Fray is doing, with an idea of how to counter it or steer it in the right directions. Mary gets to look Percy in the eye, we confront Fray, and with her preoccupied like she is, trying to juggle two factions and a half-dozen plans, we’ll have her at a disadvantage. It will be the one and only time, maybe, that we ever have that.”

  I looked at each of the Lambs. I even looked at Gordon’s dang dog, in hopes of seeing a glimmer of understanding.

  Gordon approached me. I could see the anger in his eyes, the frustration. I steeled myself.

  Pretty much expected this since I’d realized I could walk inside those doors down there.

  But Gordon didn’t hit me.

  When his arms wrapped around me, I wondered if he was intending to simply toss me over the edge of the roof. The size difference, the strength difference, my chronic low weight, I was willing to bet he could.

  “What are you doing, Sy?”

  Mary stepped closer, putting a hand on Gordon’s back, her expression unreadable. Lillian hung back, both hands on her satchel with the medical equipment inside. Helen was perched on the peak of the roof, slightly above us, staring, more old Helen than new Helen, just for now.

  Seeing them, I was choked up in a way that made me feel like I was in the midst of drowning. I wanted to get out of the hug, to have space, to have a chance to explain, and it didn’t feel like they were giving it to me.

  “I’m trying to say it right. The thing with distributing the books, it’s the second phase of a greater plan. She’s got another plan. I think, and maybe Lillian can say if I’m on the right track or not…”

  I reached out for help. Lillian didn’t give any indication she was going to play ball.

  “…the work that comes out of the books. Could it have a signature? Give everyone the tools to make stitched, to create life, to create the right drugs, grow Warbeasts, I don’t even know, but in a way that sets them apart from the Academy. Then, when she makes her next move, it’ll be easier to frame the Academy for it, like she did with the sterilization and the chemical leash, because that precedent exists. She can establish a narrative, at a time when the Academy has less credibility, when it’s damned itself by trying and failing to control the spread of this information. That the Academy is worse than it is. The next war comes around, the rebellion is better armed, the Academy is hurting. Step four drives a wedge into the cracks that become apparent. I’m not saying this is it, but it’s—don’t you see the scale we’re operating at, here?”

  “Sy,” Gordon said.

  His tone suggested he wasn’t listening to me at all.

  “Let go of me!” I said. I fought my way free of his arms. I backed away a few paces. “Listen to me!”

  “I hear you,” he said. “We all do.”

  “I’m right. This is what I do, this is what I’m for. I can figure a way forward, find what we need to do to exploit and derail her plan, and this war will be over, no more mice will have to get thrown into vats to make ghosts, people won’t end up conscripted by the Crown and find themselves facing down a cousin of theirs in a gunfight!”

  “Probably,” Gordon said. “But that’s not what we’re talking about.”

  “It’s th
e mission! It’s what we’re made to do. I’ve been explaining for something like three or four minutes and we’re not talking about it?”

  “No. We’re not.”

  “Because I seem to recall the last time we met Fray, you were thinking about defecting,” I said. “You were close, too. If a single snowflake had fallen on your back, it might have been the push you needed.”

  The words hung in the air.

  Gordon didn’t flinch. The reaction wasn’t even all that profound with the other Lambs. A turn of one or two heads, looking at our tallest, strongest member. Curious looks, but it was almost as if they were wondering what his reaction was, more than they were wondering if it was true.

  “I’m not even talking about going that far,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Gordon said. “I hear you.”

  “Then what’s the problem!?”

  “The problem,” he said, and his voice was quiet, “Is that I’m worried you’re falling apart even more than I am, and I have seams, Sy.”

  “I’m here,” I said, my voice low. “I’ve been in top form tonight.”

  “You’ve been in a form, Sy,” he said. “I’m just not sure it’s yours.”

  I could have hit him, if I didn’t know it would be futile.

  “What do you want, Gordon? You’re getting on my case, you’re making me play this dang-blasted guessing game, like I’m supposed to unravel a riddle that isn’t even a riddle. Tell me what you want me to say or do, and I’ll say or do it.”

  “Just tell me, Sy. What are you doing?”

  “Trying to do the mission? Trying to figure out how to beat a woman that’s smarter and on better footing than I am? Apparently without the help of my team?”

  There was no response. Mary kept one hand at Gordon’s arm, barely inches separating them. His dog stood on the other side of him.

  “Okay,” I said. “Forget the mission. You want me to bare my emotions? I’m trying to figure out how things work with the group being a different shape, one man down, one dog up, and two more members on the way. I’ve been worrying ever since the last time we saw Fray that the group might splinter. Thanks to you, by the way. You did start that.”