by wildbow
“What are you thinking?” Hayle asked, voice calm. He was gesturing to the men at the door. Helen remembered they had guns.
“About him,” Helen said, pointing at the man in the military uniform, and that rush she was feeling did change her voice slightly from the monotone. She could have controlled that if she had wanted to, but this still wasn’t an act. To the man, she said, “I’m very flexible.”
“Uh,” he said. “You’re—”
“I’m thinking,” Helen continued. “About if I can crawl into your open mouth. Things would tear apart, of course, but you’d be warm and you’d flop around and I want to see what it would feel like if you were doing that while I was most of the way inside you.”
The man’s hand went to his gun.
Ibott’s chair screeched on the floor as he stood.
“Enough of this,” he said.
“You told me to stop acting, I did. The acts were the only thing keeping me sitting still,” Helen said.
“Stop,” he ordered.
She went still.
“This is over,” Ibott said. “She’s having her appointment. I need to figure out what’s wrong.”
“We’re not done questioning. Helen, you can speak,” Hayle said. “Tell us—”
“I wanted to muck about in Fray’s insides too,” Helen said, interrupting him. “And Percy’s, and Mauer’s, and the others. That would have been lovely.”
She knew the cadence and even the fact that she’d chosen the word ‘lovely’ was very strange and offputting. She didn’t mind.
Hayle didn’t finish his sentence, only glancing at Ibott.
“Suggests she isn’t a traitor, unless she’s looking to do that with her friends, too,” one of Sylvester’s doctors spoke.
Ibott rounded the table. He comprehended the sentence just before grabbing Helen’s upper arm. “You don’t touch or attack me.”
“I would never,” Helen breathed. The rush was still coloring her words, maybe even her face. She felt like a coiled spring, a catapult ready to fire, a gun with the trigger cocked. But getting release meant feeling parts of someone break in her arms. It was the best feeling.
“Good,” Ibott said. He steered her around, marching her to the door.
“I would never,” she repeated herself.
“Do us both a favor and shut up,” Ibott said.
“Because,” Helen said. “I only feel this way about strong people, and powerful people.”
Ibott stopped in his tracks.
“Ibott?” Hayle asked, from the other end of the room. “Problem?”
“It wasn’t relevant to the topic at hand,” Ibott said.
His grip was tighter, the march more forceful than before, as the doors opened and he steered her past the Lambs.
Helen glanced at Gordon as she walked by, smiling, her eyes wide.
One hand went to her hair, tossing it back over one shoulder.
Her fingers lingered briefly at her collar, as she tugged on it.
Better to do this, than to let the questioning continue too long. The more questions she answered, the more chances there were of her giving the wrong answer.
Lillian
“The problems only became apparent when the mission was underway,” Lillian answered.
She was sweating, she kept fidgeting and telling herself to stop, only to resume again without fully realizing it.
“Why?”
“High stress situation, and we knew Jamie was coming, and that added more stress to things? The Lambs are people, we—they had reasons and plans. Sylvester had something to prove to make up for losing to Fray last time, when the whole thing happened with the water supplies. Mary was fixated on Percy, but she saw that one through when she killed him. Then there was Jamie, and he was coming, but I said that part—”
“Shh, calm down,” Hayle said.
Lillian made a concerted effort.
“Have you reported on everything that’s been happening?” another Professor asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mental issues, health issues…”
“Yes, sir. Everything as it’s come up, even irrelevant things.”
“She’s been thorough,” Professor Hayle said. “Helen’s apparent… precociousness, and Sylvester’s failings during this mission, they raise concerns.”
“Yes, sir,” Lillian said.
“Start with Helen.”
“She’s been changing gradually for a very long time. She presents one face to us and there’s more going on beneath the surface, which we only glimpse. She has never indicated any problems. During the mission, she provided a good assessment of Sylvester and if I’m remembering right, helped us capture a Ghost for Petey, before we knew he was a problem. We later heard it inconvenienced him and Fray, because he had to lure off some Ghosts and take them out of play to keep up the undercover ruse.”
“Alright,” Hayle said. “Mary, and Percy?”
“I’m close to Mary, it feels lousy to say stuff when she shared some of it in confidence—”
“It’s your job,” the military man on the far left of the table said.
“I—it—I—” Lillian said. She couldn’t find it in her to put a coherent syllable together. She’d had nightmares about this sort of thing, being on trial when there was no right answer. Except usually it was an oral exam.
“It is your job, Lillian, to look after the Lambs, to monitor their performance, and report anything the Academy needs to know,” Hayle said.
“As—as a friend,” Lillian said. “She told me things about Percy. About how it was hard to let go. He was like a dad to her. She was always worried he would show up again.”
“She told you she was considering betraying the team and you didn’t report it?” another Professor asked.
“No,” Lillian said. She was screwing this up. Everyone had been confident in leaving the room and she was saying all the wrong things. Half the words that left her mouth, she felt like it was the wrong answer before she’d even spoken and felt like it was a worse answer after she’d heard herself say it.
“No, she wasn’t considering betraying the team, or no, you didn’t report it?”
“I mean, she wasn’t. It never came up, not like that.”
“It sounds as if it was pertinent,” a professor jumped in.
“It wasn’t, not for the job, not for what she was doing,” Lillian said. “She—she just didn’t want it hanging over her head, I mean. I think, that was the reason, I think?”
A stutter of the brain had made her say ‘I think’ twice in the same sentence. She was pretty sure that was cruel irony.
They didn’t look happy, and they didn’t look convinced. Professor Hayle leaned closer to another professor so the man could whisper in his ear. People at the left end of the table were talking to each other in a babble of low voices.
Lillian had the slip of paper in her sock, she’d looked at it while she waited for her turn—second to last—and she had no idea what it meant, which terrified her.
She’d heard of the Twins. She’d seen pictures of the Twins’ victims. She’d seen their pet warbeasts and had heard about their Doctors, one had a name that recurred in urban legends and scary stories, told in candlelit dormitories after dark. She was pretty sure it was the same person, and all of the legends and stories weren’t necessarily just stories.
The stakes had never been higher, and in her attempt to give an explanation that should have sounded good, she’d fumbled and made it sound weak.
This wasn’t what she was good at.
She was good at studying, and she was good at putting people back together. Even if she needed help with some of the hard stuff. Most of the rest she did was try to keep up.
“That will be all, I think,” Headmaster Travers told her.
It sounded ominous.
She started to rise from her seat, then stopped. “Where am I going? The others went to their appointments, or other places, and I’m not sure if I’m suppos
ed to go to the dorm room, or wait, or—”
“Sylvester and his doctor should be waiting outside,” Professor Hayle said. “We talked it over between questioning Ashton and questioning you. If Sylvester is performing badly, then I feel the most important thing is to maintain routine. We’ll wrap things up soon, but for the time being, I would like you to look after Sylvester for his appointment. We’ll need you to be able to administer doses in the field, for longer engagements.”
“Depending on how the last series of questions go, it might be helpful if we know exactly where to find you,” the Headmaster said. “It wouldn’t do if we had to scurry around to figure out where you’d gotten off to.”
For the nobles. He might as well have said it, it was clear as day. If this went badly, the Lambs would be handed over. Some or all.
Lillian turned and left the room, only belatedly realizing she hadn’t said farewell, or any pleasantries at all.
Sylvester was indeed waiting in the hall, talking to the thuggish man that was his doctor. She’d never liked the man, after seeing him cuff Sy far too hard for a smart-assed remark.
Sitting across the hall was Jamie, who had a book in his lap. He was writing, and didn’t even look up as she approached.
“I’m supposed to come with you,” she said.
“I know,” the doctor said. “Do you think I’d be waiting here for some other reason?”
“For good conversation with me?” Sylvester suggested.
“Mm,” the man made a noise. He looked at Lillian, his eyes traveling all the way up and down her body. “If you learn this, I have to deal with him less. I’m bad at judging ages. How long until I can buy you a drink as thanks?”
“Three years,” Lillian said.
“I’ll probably forget by then,” he said.
Lillian wondered if the man had been asking out of any interest, but the thought creeped her out, and her mind was frazzled from a full half-hour of questioning. She wanted to ask so many questions and get feedback, and she didn’t dare with the doctor in earshot.
“Bye, Jamie,” she said.
Jamie looked up from his book, silent, and raised a hand in a wave, giving a brief smile.
She’d liked the old Jamie more. He’d shared books with her and talked to her. They were both bookworms, happier in darkness and quiet than in noise and chaos. This Jamie made her uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t put a finger on. It wasn’t entirely his fault. When he was around, everyone acted different, and she could see the pain on the faces of some of the people she cared about the most, Sy first among them.
The big man that was Sy’s doctor had an umbrella of matching size. The moment he was outdoors, he lit up a cigarette, then opened the umbrella, inviting the two children to stand beneath, Sy to his right and Lillian to his left.
Standing too close felt weird, especially when she wasn’t sure if he’d been offering the drink out of gratitude or as a roundabout way of asking her out, or if he’d genuinely wondered about her age. Keeping that invisible, wary wall between them meant standing so that one of her shoulders was out in the rain, the rest of her under the umbrella’s cover.
The walk to the Tower wasn’t fast enough.
Just before they reached the door, the doctor finished his cigarette and lit another.
“Are you going to expect us to stand around in the rain while you finish that?” Sylvester asked.
“Don’t care,” the man said.
“Can we wait inside?”
“Don’t care,” the man said. “You finished answering their questions, so I figure my obligations about watching you are done. I spent forever standing around in there with nothing to do and nobody I wanted to talk to, craving a burn. I’m going to have two, maybe three.”
“Make it three, and I’ll make this one easy on you?” Sy suggested. “And to look good for her?”
“You mean you won’t be a baby and a little ass dribblet?” the man asked.
“Neither. I just want a chance to talk to her and get caught up on things.”
“Fine. But you’re owing me a few no-nonsense appointments,” the man said.”
“Three, then,” Sylvester said.
The man nodded.
Lillian’s heart jumped as Sylvester reached out to grab her wrist.
He tugged on her arm, pulling her inside.
Alone with Sy. Why did this make her anxious in a good way when she’d slept in the same bed as him the last two nights?
Her heart was already unsteady, she decided. She was in a shaky place and it didn’t take much to tip the scales. She looked at his wet hair and his narrow shoulders. His shirt clung to him, translucent where it touched the skin. He was about as tan as anyone could get in the rains of Radham and Brechwell, which wasn’t much at all, but it was something.
There were beads of water on the back of his neck.
“How did it go?” he asked.
She remembered how it had gone, and the emotional high became an emotional low.
“Bad,” she said. The low came with a feeling like she wanted to cry, and if she cried, then he would call her a crybaby.
“How bad?”
“I panicked, I didn’t know what to say, I tried to defend you guys and make you out to be confident, like you knew what you were doing. But they kept attacking you, and I lost track of what I was saying, and—”
“You defended me?”
“Yes! Of course!”
“You got the paper from Hubris, right?”
“Yes, the paper. What did the paper mean?”
Sylvester half-turned, staring at her.
“It was important, wasn’t it?”
He held up his free hand, gesturing. He wasn’t halfway done before she realized what he’d meant.
“How the hell was I supposed to figure that out!? And why should we sacrifice you?”
“Because,” Sy said. “They’re not going to screw over the Lambs because bad science and logistics on their part made me sloppy. It would hurt them, they’d be hurting themselves if they went to the nobles about that. Especially when the Duke likes me.”
“Oh.”
“And I didn’t expect you to figure it out. It was Gordon’s plan. A pretty good one. I hope you didn’t do too good a job of defending me.”
Lillian huffed out a short, one-note laugh. “I really didn’t.”
“Good. Helen made a play too, but I won’t know what it was for sure until I talk to her. I’m really interested.”
“Are we going to be okay?” Lillian asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. A very likely scenario is they target one or two of us, in some attempt to clean up the roster and make it look like they’re doing something effective. In which case I’m probably the sacrificial play. I get benched, not killed, and you guys actively suck at the job until I return to the picture.”
“That’s… not so bad.”
“Like I said, good plan,” Sylvester said. He stopped at a door, opening it. “My office.”
“The doctor’s office. You’re the patient.”
“I’m impatient,” Sylvester said. He let go of her wrist and hopped up onto the desk at one side of the narrow room. It was barely bigger than a closet, with lots of bookshelves and both preserved and living animals of various poisonous and venomous varieties. Jars lined shelves. “I want to hear how things went, and we won’t for a while.”
“I know,” Lillian said. “Was there more you wanted to ask?”
“Ask?”
“About the questions?”
“Nope,” Sy said.
“But you asked him to stay for a while, and he was already going to finish a cigarette, and…”
“And I’m tired of being ferried around and told here to go and what to do and what questions to answer. I feel cornered.”
Lillian felt cornered in an office that was about two long paces long and an even shorter length wide, with furniture crammed in it. Murky light filtered in through a narrow, barred wind
ow, casting a raindrop-dappled light into the otherwise lightless room.
She had to admit she would have felt more cornered if the doctor was also present.
“That doctor of yours creeps me out,” Lillian said.
“Yep,” Sylvester said. “I’ll be sure to tell him that.”
“Don’t,” she said, punching his thigh. He was sitting on the desk with his legs dangling.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
She looked up at him.
He was so fine-boned, with high cheekbones, and a narrow chin. She could see the individual parts of his shoulders. His hair was wet and swept away from his face, wild and always looking like it was tangled, though it so rarely was. His eyes were an insane green color, very dark, framed by long lashes.
When he looked at her, she felt naked. Stripped bare. Not in terms of clothes, but in terms of what was going on in her head and her defenses.
It was ten times worse since she had shared a bed with him. She felt very aware of him, and doubly aware of his awareness of her.
He was glad she was here?
Words like that seemed so very meaningful, coming from someone who seemed to see her so clearly, understanding who she really was.
‘I know everything about you and I still enjoy your company’
Her face was hot, and she knew she was blushing. She turned to look out the window, and saw only a smirk on his face.
She would have hit him, but that would have meant admitting that she’d seen and facing the teasing that followed.
He stuck his feet out, one foot pressing against her belly, the other against the small of her back. She managed to make herself turn and give him a curious look. The feet dropped away.
“I’ve been feeling really lonely, since Jamie… went. And especially since this Jamie came back.”
She nodded. If he kept talking like this, she’d get a lump in her throat, or end up crying.
“It’s… nice that you’re here,” he said. “You do a good job of making me not feel lonely. You’re good company.”
Again, that look. She felt the heat rise to her face, more intense than before.
“I think I might go and see if I can get a bit of tea. Do you want some? I’ll bring some,” she said. She turned to go.
She felt a sharp tug at the side of her head.
