Twig

by wildbow

  “Damn straight,” Horace said, with venom.

  “We went ahead and did it though. I know this might mess things up, but I was worried you’d come back and nothing would be done.”

  “You did right,” I said, without raising my voice.

  “Bullshit,” Horace said.

  “You did right,” I said, raising my voice only a fraction. I was emulating Mauer a bit, making myself harder to hear so people would listen more. “You saved a few thousand lives tonight, at least. Now I’ve got to ask, do you have weapons?”

  I could see faint confusion on Horace’s face.

  “What are you talking about?” Emily asked.

  “What we talked about? It’s coming to pass. Reverend Mauer, his lieutenant Stanley, and the Ridgewell soldiers, people who used to work for Tim something or other—”

  “Tim Dancer,” Jamie spoke, from the shadows. Horace’s eyes flicked away from mine, darting this way and that.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That group. They had plans to release the Ridgewell group’s primordial and let it loose in Lugh.”

  “Had?” Drake asked. He finally got himself up off of the pallets and blankets. Emily too had risen to her feet.

  “If we’re lucky, they burned alive,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky. They probably got free and are on their way here. Or some of them are. Men with guns, professional soldiers like Stanley. They want a primordial. There were only three available. You did your job, we did ours, now there’s only one.”

  “Who?” Horace asked, in the same instant Drake asked “Guns?”

  “We need to go,” I said. “Even if you don’t believe me about everything I’m saying, you need to believe that these guys are serious enough that they will kill you if you get on their bad sides. Which you have.”

  I indicated the hatch and the now-buried primordial.

  The others were drawing closer, behind Horace’s back. It was as if I had a very physical representation of how much I had them listening to me.

  “We’re not going with you,” Horace said, cutting straight through that illusion.

  “Then you’re going to die,” I said.

  “We’ll stay out of their way. We have places we can go.”

  I thought of the black-skinned man that Mauer had left in charge here. “Somewhere outside of Lugh. Right now, if your employers are to be believed, the Academy has an army gathering at the east end of Lugh. If you don’t get out now, then you won’t get the chance. You will die. If you try to get out now and go down the wrong road, or run across your former employer, then you will die. I’m repeating myself because I want to make this absolutely clear. There are no maybes here. Before the night is over, there will be a horrific body count.”

  “They are sticking by me,” Horace said.

  I shook my head. I turned to Emily, “In a matter of hours, the Academy is going to storm Lugh like nothing you’ve ever believed possible. The guy you were working for? He wanted to let the primordials loose and cross his fingers the things do more damage to the Academy than to all of the innocents and the guilty in this dumpy city. I warned you out of good conscience. Please listen. You listened to the girl I was with earlier, you know she cared. I’m doing this for her, and you should too. Take my word on this, let me get you all as far as Tynewear, and everything will be okay.”

  I saw Emily meet Drake’s eyes. She looked at Ermine.

  Then my heart sank, before she even looked my way, or opened her mouth to speak.

  “We’ll stick with our friends,” Emily said.

  With that musclebound asshole? The one who shoves you around like you’re nothing?

  “We can go to the city outskirts,” Drake said. “More north, there are ways out if it looks like something is happening.”

  I saw Horace tense, ready to start a fight. I was seeing how Emily was as defensive as she was, if she was around this guy on the regular.

  “Let’s do this. The project’s dead in the water, we lose nothing,” Ermine said. “We camp out for one night, act wary. Figure out where we’re going next.”

  The tension left Horace. He seemed to take a few long seconds to work through his need to argue the point, then simply nodded.

  “Fine.”

  “That might not be enough,” I said. “But whatever. Get there now. We came straight here from Ridgewell, and if Mauer is coming, he won’t be far behind us. Don’t go to pick up clothes or belongings, don’t try to pack up notes. Just leave.”

  “You sure like telling us what to do,” Horace said.

  “Whatever,” I said. I turned to go. I halfways expected him to attack me from behind, and I didn’t have the energy to fight or even plot what I’d do if he did.

  “Who did the third project?” Horace asked.

  I almost didn’t want to respond, let him wonder.

  But not having an answer would hurt our credibility.

  “Old crusty asshole, I forget his actual name, started with H,” I said, without stopping or turning around.

  “Harding,” Horace said.

  “That’s it.”

  “I believe you less than I did,” he said, voice almost taunting.

  I shrugged, for dramatic effect.

  He reminded me of Rick from Lambsbridge. Someone who had a particular view of reality, where everything had its place where it belonged, and he fought tooth and nail against anything that challenged that carefully arranged image. There was no use fighting, because any argument I made to paint a different picture would only lead to more resistance.

  Jamie was waiting at the door, standing there, keeping an eye on the goings-on outside. We made eye contact, and then passed outside. A paper-thin sheet of ice on a puddle cracked under my boot.

  We walked down the street until we had a spot to stand in where we were out of the rain and mostly out of sight, should Mauer come marching down the street with soldiers in tow.

  “Old crustybutt’s?” I asked. “Know where it is?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Okay. We’re going to need to be careful. Mauer’s men could be anywhere between here and there, and it’s not just about us getting caught and catching a stray bullet, but Gordon and Lillian are going to be laying low somewhere around there, observing. We don’t want to reveal them.”

  Jamie nodded again.

  He shifted position, stepping deeper into shadow as a group approached.

  Horace, Emily, Drake and the others.

  Ermine saw us in the shadows, and Horace followed her gaze, spotting us. He smirked, “Where are the rest of you?”

  “Looking after Old Harding,” Jamie said.

  Horace continued to smirk, shaking his head a little. He looked at Drake, “Wolves, huh?”

  I turned back to Jamie as the group moved on. The primordial project was cleaned up, they were leaving. It was the best we could hope for. I tried to envision how things would play out, where Mauer would be, based on my rough mental image of the city, and the thoughts weren’t as sharp or as clear as I’d thought they would be. The proverbial waters were muddied.

  I ran my fingers under my hood and through my hair. “I need an appointment.”

  “You’re just tired. You’re soaked and you’re freezing, we’ve been running around for half the day…”

  “That’s part of it,” I said. “Lead the way?”

  He nodded.

  As we ventured forth, however, we saw Horace’s group, dead in their tracks. My first thought was Mauer. That he’d caught up, and they’d stopped because of guns.

  But their attention was on Ermine, who had turned her reflective eyes out toward the west. To the water, which was so gloomy and dark as to be impossible to make out.

  She could see in the dark.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Heard something, seeing… the ships out on the water, there aren’t many with the weather being what it is, but, they’re turning?”

  Turning? />
  The low, dull horn of ships in the water sounded, carrying over the choppy water and up the sloping sprawl that was Lugh. The lowing of a dying beast.

  I used a hand to block out the light, trying to make sense of things. The spots in my vision mixed up with the choppy waves, the spots on the ships which the dim light did catch, and the lanterns on the ships, so far away as to be nearly impossible to make out.

  Then I saw it. A constellation of spots and blurry patches lurched, then broke apart.

  Another lowing, shorter, or cut short.

  “The biggest ship on the water,” Ermine said. On the docks, people were ringing bells, small ones, a shrill clatter, intent on getting the attention of just about everyone in earshot. She went on to add, “Something pulled it under.”

  My eyes traveled to the great sea beast of Lugh, the corpse of the experiment that now sprawled over a third of the city.

  Too soon. Too early. Had to be lying in wait already, listening for some signal none of the rest of us can hear.

  They’re coming, and we’re already running out of escape routes.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “Warn as many people as you can. The Academy is coming, and they don’t plan for anyone in this city to be alive by the time they leave.”

  Previous Next

  Bleeding Edge—8.16

  The city had awoken. Lugh had been, from the time we arrived, a city in torpor. There hadn’t been a person we’d seen yet, with the exception of the Fishmonger’s group, perhaps, who had been bringing their full strength or energy to bear. It was a brutish city, rough-edged and worn thin, but it was one that had been holding back its full strength, fist drawn back but not thrown as a punch, ready for a fight.

  The alert at the dock was reaching out across the city. Where lanterns had been points of light in the darkness of a stormy evening, more lanterns and candles were lit, now, a false fire spreading across the harbor, first, then along forked streets.

  The corpse of the sea monster that was draped over a lesser section of the city came alive, too. Not in reality, but the empty eye sockets flared with an orange-red light that caught the mist. A moment later, that flare tripled in intensity, a searchlight mounted within the creature’s head passing over us, then turning out toward the water.

  Half of a kilometer out in the water, the water frothed. The winding limbs of a collection of sea-beasts rose up as high as any of the ship’s masts, swinging, bending down back to dip into water, feeling out blindly for possible prey. One came down hard against the water’s surface, and the crack of the impact reached us disconcerting seconds later.

  Ahead of us, others were bringing lanterns outside, illuminating what had been a dark street.

  Look at the group. Who seems most together out of all the people here? Who takes charge when it counts?

  Not the old. Lugh wouldn’t be a city where the elderly were revered. I found someone fit, middle-aged, and dressed well enough. He was emerging from his house, looking over one shoulder at his wife or girlfriend.

  “It’s the Academy!” I called out. “All-out attack! Evacuate!”

  In any other city, my words might have been doubted. Radham, Kensford, Whitney, or Westmore… even in Brechwell, the warning bells could have been ringing, I could have told a random citizen that the city was under attack, and there might have been a moment of doubt. Less dramatic a moment for Whitney or Westmore, perhaps, considering how things had stood. But a moment of doubt? All the same, it had been possible and even likely.

  But in Lugh, there was no question.

  Anyone unfortunate enough to be born and raised here would be born and raised to the knowledge that the people of Lugh despised the Academy and the Crown, and neither Academy nor Crown had any particular love for Lugh. Lugh existed in large part because it was too costly to take, and its denizens knew that one day the Academy could and would pay that price.

  The man I’d called to turned back toward his home. He didn’t have to ask or give any indication. He reached into the dimly lit abode, and his wife handed him a rifle. A moment later, she emerged, holding another, shoddier rifle, her son, my age, a step behind her. The dad reached to his belt and handed the boy a pistol.

  It seemed that many matched the grim knowledge that the Academy would one day attack with the intention to make the attack as costly as they damn well could.

  The man ran to the side of a buddy of his, his family following. The buddy, as it happened, was the one who took charge.

  “Edward, Adams! You’re with me! Picker! Get the water pump, have it ready in case of fire!”

  Good enough.

  I paused in my tracks, wheeling around. Jamie stopped a few paces later, watching.

  “Word is they’re just forming ranks outside the city,” I lied, making my best guess about the situation. “If you’re going to get out of the city, you’ll have to hit them before they get set up. If you’re not planning on leaving, you should still hit them before they get prepared to attack.”

  I saw the expression of the family man’s buddy change. Concern, confusion.

  It was information I wasn’t supposed to have yet.

  Whatever. I’d put the knowledge in their heads. They would realize the danger and the need to act and prioritize that, while finding an excuse or justification as to how I’d known.

  Horace’s group was catching up to us. I’d told them to spread out, to give the word, but they’d stuck together, and if they’d hung back to warn others, then they’d done it for a minute and then legged it.

  I might have been being unkind—the street here was long and narrow, brighter-lit with the number of lanterns people were carrying. Going the opposite direction down the street would have meant going down to the harbor, and the harbor didn’t have many escape routes. Going down side streets meant getting turned around and delayed in an area that wasn’t as brightly lit.

  I frowned a bit, but I let them find us again.

  The sloping, slumping nature of the city meant I could see further up the hilly ground to make out other roads and streets. I had a sense of where we were going, and the extent to which the city was mustering its forces. Very few of the lights that illuminated the streets like so many jagged veins of magma were stationary. There was flow.

  On the eastern end of the city, directly opposite the harbor, someone blew a horn. A different sound from the dying-animal wails of the foghorns in the harbor, it was hollow, with a grating note.

  “I wasn’t sure you were telling the truth,” Drake said.

  “Yep,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything better. My own answer and response seemed surreal to me.

  “Because of the primordial experiments?”

  “They were looking for an excuse,” I said. I was slightly out of breath. “Mauer gave them one.”

  “Mauer. You keep talking about him.”

  “You’re going to want to start running in a different direction than we’re going soon, or you’re going to see him,” I said. “I don’t trust you guys to stay out of sight when it counts, either. I’m very politely telling you to get lost.”

  “The hell are you?” Drake asked.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, if it was a question on its own or one he’d cut short. I didn’t spare the breath to answer.

  People were gathering, arming themselves. The family we’d seen earlier had been something of an exception, the man at the head of it wealthier than the average citizen of Lugh. Three out of four people we saw had improvised weapons. Mining picks featured heavily among those makeshift weapons.

  I could see the individual groups, too. Some people had gathered friends and neighbors together, and they’d all supplied themselves with the same kind of weaponry. A group of quarrymen all armed with the picks and mallets, another with knives and cleavers matching a set. I saw a group of Brunos, the big muscular guys, and people who might have been artists or ex-cons, with a dismal assortment of cheap tattoos.

  I also saw that a grea
t many people on the street were gathering around a central point. The nature of that gathering wasn’t clear until we were closer and the crowd had shifted a little.

  Mauer’s soldiers, a pair of them, armed with guns and handing out more weapons. There might have been a crate of those weapons. Cheap rifles and ammo.

  I got chills from the sheer readiness of it, the ease at which the soldiers were prepared to capitalize on what was going on and the willingness of the people to be capitalized on.

  “Drake, Emily,” I said. “Horace, too. I want you to stay between me, Jamie and the soldiers.”

  “What are you—”

  “Please,” I said, insistent.

  They picked up the pace a little, I slowed my own pace, and I let Drake, Emily, and one of Horace’s subordinates form a wall to block us out from the soldiers’ view. We passed that particular crowd, and they fell back, moving behind us, to keep the wall where it was needed.

  If those men spotted us and gave an order, we would get lynched. There were too many scared people who wanted to be armed with something better than whatever they had in their homes or workplaces. The most scared of those individuals would be willing to do almost anything to get in the soldiers’ good graces. The others would follow.

  Mauer wasn’t even here, and he was setting things up to manipulate the crowd with an expert hand.

  My ability to direct our temporary allies in Horace’s group paled in comparison, and it wasn’t likely to be enough. I saw more of Mauer’s soldiers. These ones weren’t holding weapons, but they were talking to the crowd, gathering people around them.

  Jamie touched my arm, gesturing. I glanced his way, then followed him into a side street.

  It wasn’t as bright here, but more crowded, equally as alive, and it seemed doubly so with how narrow the street was. Barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. People were talking, almost negotiating, in the heat of the moment, trying to figure out what they were doing, how, what they needed. A group of boys were pissing on piles of hand-towel-sized rags. A group of men were tying similar, wet rags around the bottom halves of their faces. All were already armed.

  Like kicking an anthill.