Twig

by wildbow

  This time, recovering fast was essential. The others were still closing the distance, fumbling around in the dark.

  No decorum, no strategy. I stumbled, nearly losing my footing as my leg lagged a fraction and my sense of balance went wonky, then I drew close. I still had a sharp instrument. Lillian had one too.

  I closed the distance, and after feeling out to get a sense of where the man was, a touch of palm to his ribs, I stabbed in a fury, as many times as I could in short succession, going for a quantity of blows over carefully placed ones, trying to find a space between scales. I succeeded on the fourth strike, but in the doing, my makeshift weapon plunged too deep into his side, and my hand slid right off the blood-slick handle. I could only assume he was trying to deal with Lillian, wrestling her to keep her from stabbing him, while she was trying to ruin his aim. He bodily picked her up and shoved her at me.

  Mission accomplished.

  We collected ourselves. A gunshot ripped out, the muzzle flash briefly illuminating the scene as the man who’d had Lillian I hoped it was a miss, but there was no telling, and Lillian had the sense to stay quiet, whatever it was.

  Gordon’s returning shot wasn’t a miss. The muzzle flash gave away the shooter’s location, and Gordon had used it. I wondered if the armored scales would protect against a gunshot.

  Lillian and I disappeared into the shelves and stacks, me holding her hand, leading the way as best as I was able.

  It was the same principle I’d espoused earlier. People had needs. Take away something they needed, and their behavior could be controlled. The light was gone. Safety in question. Two men worried they might be dying, and one was so convinced of it that he was imagining symptoms where they didn’t exist.

  The Lambs were safe, now. Or as safe as we could get. Jamie had been dragged away by Gordon or Hubris, Hubris was outside the building, ready to go after anyone that ran, and Gordon was somewhere among the shelves and stacks of crates that filled half the warehouse, lurking and waiting for an opportunity.

  Glass clinked. A flame flared. Another lantern lit.

  Lillian and I were at the far right of the rows of stacks and shelves. To our left, Gordon fired, aiming at the source of the flame. One shot, then another, then another. I heard swearing from the thug with the lantern, the Fishmonger shouted, and the Fishmonger’s people took cover. Gordon wasn’t successful in getting rid of the light source.

  “Alright!” the Fishmonger called out. “If you’re mercenaries, then I’m paying. Whatever they offered you, I’ll pay half again as much. You name and kill the ones who hired you, and give me any of those antidotes for my people, assuming you even poisoned them at all.”

  “I’m poisoned,” the one who’d held me said. His earlier commentary on the subject meant he had to double down, reaffirm.

  None of the Lambs replied. There wasn’t a sound.

  Lillian and I moved, and I was careful to set my feet down where the feet of the shelving units and the crates already depressed the floorboards. Lillian followed my gestures as I indicated the spots to place each foot, but her footsteps were heavier than mine. I’d have to let her know that at a later point in time.

  I was giddy with relief that we’d all managed to slip away. We had them in the palm of our hand, now, without the parity of them having the same. The trick was to figure out how to leverage that.

  My leg hurt where I’d been kicked in the hip, and my side throbbed with every heartbeat. I was mostly operating with just the one eye, the other one had to have a cut on the eyelid, if the eyeball itself wasn’t damaged.

  But I wasn’t important, here.

  I stopped, partially to let my leg rest. Lillian was the other reason.

  In the dim, I could barely see her. What I could see was that she had a look in her eye.

  I recognized the look. I’d seen it in Jamie, once. I’d seen it in Gordon, though he’d tried to hide it.

  The old days. When we’d been more child than Lamb. After the worst individual close calls. I could remember those moments, and for Gordon, Jamie and I, they had been intimate brushes with Death. I’d had one with Sub Rosa, different from my first in how easy it had been to surrender to the idea of it.

  Lillian’s brush hadn’t been with Death. She wasn’t a true Lamb in that way. It wasn’t a reality for her in that way.

  I wasn’t sure what to call it, there wasn’t a good word for it. She had confronted the dark side of academy science when she’d stared down that parasite. In the aftermath of it, she’d been like a different Lillian.

  She’d been harrowed, if I had to give a name to the process. It was a good word, it was close to the word hollow, and it made me think of a person’s very being getting raked over.

  Was the old Lillian still there, past it all?

  You. Okay. Question. I gestured.

  She took her time before giving me a nod. From what I could see of the look in her eye, I wasn’t sure I believed her.

  I reached out and up with my free hand, putting a hand on one side of her face. She flinched slightly at the touch, her hand momentarily clenching my other hand, as if I’d been very cold or had given her a static shock. Then she relaxed, her eyes closing.

  We stayed like that for a good ten seconds, my hand on her face. She was as absorbed by the touch as some other people might be by a good hug in different circumstances.

  She was someone who liked being teased, but what she really craved, deep down, was someone to cling to. Every night that she slept in my bed, she held herself tight against me, clutching me as if she’d fall into a chasm if she didn’t. Aside from lengthy sessions of kissing, that was all it ever was, to the point that I suspected she needed it more than I did. Someone to be close.

  This wasn’t that, but it was contact and it helped center her and nourish her, as surely as a sandwich did a hungry man, or light to a blind man.

  I heard footsteps and tracked their direction. My hand dropped off of her face, and her eyes opened.

  I pointed in the direction of the man, and she gave me a nod.

  A little less harrowed than she had been. The Fishmonger’s people had ignited more lanterns, and the place was brighter, Lillian’s features less cast in shadow, the tracks from earlier tears now visible.

  I could remember that heady feeling from earlier. The look she gave me.

  A dangerous game, that.

  I was a terrible truth-teller. I always got things wrong, in timing, in hurting others.

  Being anything remotely heroic would be worse.

  No, the best way to go about this would be to play to my strengths, be a bastard.

  I took the scalpel from her, then gestured in the direction opposite the man. Go.

  She hesitated just long enough that I wondered if she’d balk. Then she went.

  I climbed into a space at the lowest shelf of a set, between two crates. I pulled off my coat within the narrow confines, and put it between me and the pathway between shelves I’d just vacated. I took a second to arrange it.

  The man or men I’d heard would be rounding the corner by now. It was one or two. Doable. It was very possible they’d see a glimmer of Lillian as she got away or found a hiding space.

  I crouched there, poised, the hood of the coat over most of my face, my one good eye peering past, the angle sufficient to see shadows and movement of light and dark, but not necessarily the details of any people that approached. The back of the coat covered my shoulders, front, and knees.

  I heard the footsteps, I heard the creak as the man walked on parts of the floor that weren’t weighed down by heavy objects.

  He slowed as he got closer to me.

  I’d been spotted.

  A glance over my shoulder confirmed I had an escape route.

  I waited, let him get closer.

  A hand grabbed for my neck, aiming to pull me backward and down to the ground. but the coat was misleading. Fingertips grazed the front of my throat. I pushed forward, one hand grabbing the coat and pulling
it away. I saw a gun and swiped the coat down, stepping on it, limiting the gun’s movements. My other hand went out and forward, scalpel swiping across his throat, before dropping down to help hold down his gun.

  He struggled to pull back and away, with one hand trapped. Blood flowed out. By the time he pulled free, abandoning his gun beneath the coat, it was too late.

  Shouts, running footsteps.

  I climbed back through the other side of the shelves, taking my escape route, then climbed.

  The lower shelves were mostly crates. Other things were on higher shelves. Lighter things, easier to lift up and down.

  It was on the upper shelves that I found a box of tools. The shelves swayed with my weight, giving me away and forcing my hand, and I summarily pushed the tools out and over, letting them fall atop the people who had rushed to my victim’s side.

  They swore, gunshots fired, largely blind, and I made a haphazard climb down, freefalling more than I actually climbed.

  Heading over in Gordon’s direction, to the back left corner of the warehouse, I found myself moving through more open area, visible from the front door of the warehouse, from the table with the patient, and from scattered thugs, including the Fishmonger, the scaled one I’d stabbed and one of the ones I’d ‘poisoned’. The light didn’t reach far enough to reveal me.

  The eel-black one, the other scaled one and the spiny one would be among the ones in the stacks of crates and the rows of shelves.

  A cat and mouse game, baiting, trapping, it was doable.

  But Gordon hadn’t been shooting. The last batch of shots had been inaccurate.

  I had a bad feeling. A game of cat and mouse here, with me hobbled, and Gordon not in fighting shape…

  We’d done well enough to force them to spread out to find us, to divert resources, and leave their boss less guarded, in a dark warehouse.

  I took my bundle of raincoat and carefully unfurled it, taking the gun.

  I found and aimed at the Fishmonger, the gun pointed at the lower half of his body.

  Squeeze, don’t pull.

  Especially don’t pull here, knowing that the shot might go higher, into his center mass.

  The bullet caught him in his thigh. He fell backward, screaming bloody murder, and I dropped to my belly, as best as I was able.

  With both of his booted feet pointed in my general direction, me lying on the ground, there was an awful lot of leg between the barrel of the gun and anything too vital. I fired again, twice in quick succession.

  By the time I’d climbed to my feet, they’d found me. They came out of shelves and stacks, approached with lanterns in hand and guns raised.

  “Antidotes if you want them, your boss is down, and we can provide the counsel to know how to maintain those alterations of yours,” I said.

  This didn’t feel good. Not certain. I wasn’t sure how they’d act, and I hated forcing situations where that was the case.

  “Your choice,” I said. “Whether you want to get him help or not.”

  They continued to approach. I made eye contact with one of the ones I’d poisoned.

  Damn. I raised my gun, and five or so guns pointed at me in turn.

  He pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead.

  “No,” He said.

  “You don’t want to get him help? That’s fine by me.”

  “No, we’re not dealing with you.”

  My heart sank.

  Then I watched as the upper half of his face exploded into blood and skull fragments, a bullet shearing him practically from upper temple to upper temple.

  His body dropped to the floor. Half of the thugs turned, aiming at their new target.

  “He was as good as dead anyway, as far as I figure it,” Gordon said, limping out of the shelves, pale, face damp with sweat, two handguns pointed at the group of thugs.

  Lillian did much the same, appearing from the shelves, a rifle in hand.

  They outnumbered us, but we had them mostly surrounded, Lillian behind them, Gordon to the right of them, and me in front.

  It was a standoff.

  “It’s not worth it,” Gordon said. “You’re going to give us some information, answer some questions, you’ll give us the Fishmonger, and you can carry on doing what you do. We’ll disappear in a day or two, after picking off a few of your enemies.”

  “This is about the damn books, isn’t it?” the eel-black man asked. He relented, his gun pointing skyward. Gordon eased up in turn.

  “Yeah,” Gordon said. He looked like death, like he’d been the one to get beaten, stabbed, scratched and beaten some more. “Yeah, in a roundabout way, this is about the books.”

  Previous Next

  Bleeding Edge—8.9

  The Fishmonger didn’t really have a body type, in the conventional sense. He was shaped like a hump to begin with. Now, with his legs bent at odd angles, belly sticking skyward, in clothing that rendered him even more shapeless, he was something else. He groaned and moaned as he flopped on the floor to the best of his impaired ability. It momentarily interrupted the dialogue.

  I glanced at Lillian, who didn’t move a muscle to rush to the man’s aid.

  Instead, both hands on the borrowed rifle, she walked over to the table with the patient she’d been tending to earlier. She spoke to him in a low voice, laying the gun down so it was still pointing in the general direction of the thugs, before picking up tools.

  They didn’t jump to reach for their guns or give any sign they saw that as an opportunity. That was fine.

  This was a dominance game, a vicious dogfight followed by the survivors circling one another, teeth bared but with no desire to fight. Each side was obligated to attack if the other showed weakness or a reluctance to play fair, by the rules of this particular arena. They had reputations to maintain, even among one another, and in the eyes of their boss. We had to hold on to the illusion of competence we’d created.

  If Gordon teetered over and collapsed on the floor now, with Lillian occupied behind the group of thugs, then I suspected they would draw on us again. I hoped he had the strength to at least stand up straight.

  I eyed Ratface, who had relocated himself to one corner of the warehouse, as far away as he could be from us without ducking out the front doors, and I suspected the only reason he hadn’t done that was that three people had made their exit, two had disappeared by way of mutt, and the third had been shot.

  “Alright,” I said. The thugs were eyeing a bloody Lillian, looking over their shoulders, as she worked at cutting out the parasite that was crawling beneath her patient’s skin. Their attention turned back to me. “Here’s the deal. We’re not looking to muscle in on your turf. We’re not looking to stay.”

  They were silent, staring us down.

  Gordon spoke, “We’re on the hunt. We’re going to leave tonight, we’re going to get ourselves patched up, and then we’re going to look for the distributor of those books.”

  “Who or what are you hunting?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “What he said,” Gordon said.

  The thug stared us down. His tone was borderline insolent as he said, “Don’t know much.”

  The tone of his voice, his attitude, it suggested he had very little interest in getting us what we wanted. We could bribe and persuade, but our position was a weak one. It was a fine line here, given the circumstances, between asking and begging. It wasn’t possible to beg here and still hold the tenuous control we needed to stand out.

  Worse, we’d hurt their friends or colleagues, and we’d threatened and shot at the survivors. We were far from being on friendly terms with these guys. If they could screw us or mislead us, they would. Information couldn’t be trusted.

  We had to give them an incentive, then.

  “Like I said,” I told them, “We aren’t planning on staying long. We run this errand, get our hands on the books, and then depending on where things stand, we’re going to look for further work. We need to keep ours
elves sharp, earn the money we need to keep going.”

  I paused, glancing them over, before I continued, “If you’re helpful and your information is on target, then we come to you first. Give you a deal if you want to hire us. And if you don’t want to pay us, then we’ll still think, hey, those guys were helpful. Let’s not mess with them.”

  “You got to beat us up and threaten us, we returned the favor,” Gordon said. I winced a little at the way he’d phrased it, but Gordon being Gordon meant he could get away with it in a way I never could. I would inevitably come across as if I was mocking them, jabbing at them. Gordon shrugged, a very easygoing, languid shrug considering he looked to be on his last legs. “We’re even enough—”

  The Fishmonger interrupted with a groan, trying to move by pushing at the floor with his heels, only to inflict seven different kinds of agony on himself in the process. His legs wouldn’t work without help.

  “—Even, as I see it. Now, if you want to help us out on this, maybe you could name a certain someone or someones. People who you hoped might have a bad day.”

  Gordon did a good job of subtly indicating the Fishmonger.

  He was saying what he was saying without making any promises or guarantees. It had always bothered me a little that Gordon had such an easy time of it, while I came under ready suspicion, even when I was being honest.

  It wasn’t even with the important stuff. I could think back and I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been legitimately listened to by someone who wasn’t a Lamb, where I didn’t have to try. To logic my way to a listening ear or to manipulate to keep that listening ear.

  Even with Lillian, I wasn’t sure it was ever easy. Natural, perhaps, but I could imagine a world where I could spend an entire day with her, from the moment we woke up to the moment we went to sleep, no obligations, no other people. In that world I envisioned, the most common scenario was one where I said or did the wrong thing and made Lillian genuinely upset. The next most likely scenario was one where I got tired from having to censor myself and pick my words, and fail to find time to enjoy myself, end up tired and miserable, or end up sabotaging it, leaving Lillian genuinely upset.