Twig

by wildbow

  It was, I noted, an extension of one of the little tricks that I knew the mice sometimes learned. When arms were being tied, the base of each palm was pressed together, the elbows held far apart. When the arm was returned to an ordinary position, there would be more slack available. He’d held one position as he was restrained, held at knifepoint in a chair, but there had been room for slack.

  He was talking to me, but he was testing Mary. Had she been slow, he might have made a move. No coincidence, either, that this curmudgeon had timed the trick with his agreement to cooperate. Who would retaliate against him by cutting him, so soon after he’d agreed to answer questions?

  I changed direction, heading straight for the man.

  He tensed as I drew close, reaching for the table he’d seated himself behind. Mary reminded him of the knife, and he went still.

  On the underside of the table, less than a foot from his hand. I had to work for a second to figure out the right way to pull it free. A loaded pistol.

  “Answers,” I said. I tucked the pistol into my pants, under my jacket and behind my shirt. “Let’s start with the general stuff. Tell me about Warrick.”

  “A lovely town. Quaint,” Mcormick said.

  I knelt by the chair, felt the underside, and freed the hatchet that was there.

  The way he looked at me like he hated me a little suggested I’d found the last weapon in arm’s reach.

  “A quaint town where the people are scared to death,” I said. “And where you feel the need to have weapons stowed throughout the house.”

  “Mm,” he said. He smiled. Again, that sneer.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be more specific. What the hell are those things?” I used the hatchet to point in the direction of the creature that on the far end of the room.

  “The ‘born,” Mcormick said.

  I really didn’t want to have to torture this guy to get a straight answer out of him. Mary shifted the knife. This time it drew a line of blood. She and I both watched as the blood congealed, formed a droplet, and traced a line down Mcormick’s neck. Mary caught it with a handkerchief before it could meet the collar of his shirt and stain it.

  “We got sent here, or we volunteered to come,” Mcormick said. “Convicts, the poor, the bankrupt who didn’t want to give up the lives they’d led, slaves, injured soldiers. Get paid a small amount for nothing except living here. Nice homes, nice things.”

  “But?” I asked.

  “But, we’re the poor, we’re criminals, we’re bastards with demons that breathe down our necks, yeah? It’s a perverse sort of game, right? They expect us to fail, and most of the time, enough of us do that we don’t need to worry. Man, woman, child, whoever, they get taken up to that house in the woods, and they don’t come back. Playthings for Baron or Twin.”

  “Most of the time,” Mary observed.

  “Sometimes he’s in a mood. Sometimes he’s upset about something, and he takes it out on us. Good policy, should that time come up, to be the sort that keeps one’s head down, not taking visitors, and not drawing any attention.”

  “And the ‘born?” I asked.

  “Keep us in line, keep us from running. They remind us of the circumstance every minute of every day, like consciences given form, and I don’t think there’s many here who don’t have something ugly on their conscience, yeah? If we were to stir up something and cause a fuss, they’d rouse. The right cue or the right signal, they put us down. Meanwhile, we’re expected to feed them, keep them healthy. They’re our papers, in a manner of speaking, and getting caught without your papers is trouble.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t know the exact cues or triggers,” Mary said.

  “Mn,” Mcormick grunted.

  “You said your wife and child were out,” I said. “Without him?”

  “They are. She’s with a friend of ours. So long as that friend has a ‘born with, no problem.”

  “Money, freedom from jail, in exchange for a lack of freedom here, being under their thumb. I can see where some would take the deal.”

  “Most regret it. Starving on a street is better,” Mcormick said. He gave a nod in the direction of the monster at the far end of the room. “That right there, that’s hell. Leaves a stain on you.”

  I saw Mary’s expression change. The knife wavered, and Mcormick winced a little, pulling his head back a fraction.

  “Yeah,” Mcormick said. He seemed almost gleeful at Mary’s realization. That glee, in turn, led to me connecting the dots, seeing a faint glimmer of resemblance. “There’s another rule you might have noticed, a price that’s paid. Gotta form nice and tidy family units. Then you got to give them your firstborn.”

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.9

  I walked over to a chair on the far end of the table, plopped myself down, and felt underneath the seat. I found another hatchet, the metal scarred with use in a way the other one hadn’t been. I gave Mcormick a look and set it down on the table.

  He was still enjoying our shock.

  Best to change the topic. I couldn’t let him take the conversational upper hand.

  “How old is your child?” I asked. I glanced at the monster on the far end of the room. “Your second child, the one who’s out with your wife.”

  “She’s six,” Mcormick said. His expression seemed to harden as his daughter came up in conversation.

  “And you just keep guns and sharp tools under every other surface at her eye level? I don’t know how you cope. I’ve spent a lot of time around kids, and it’s full time work as is, just keeping the littlest blighters from finding inventive ways to murder themselves without sticking weapons everywhere.”

  “A strong hand and a careful eye,” Mcormick said. “If the weapons are needed, she knows to go for the gun, and she knows how and when to use it.”

  “On herself or on the enemy?” Mary asked.

  Mcormick leaned back in his seat. Mary kept the knife near his throat. “Herself, for now. Later, when she can shoot without the gun jumping out of her hand, I’ll teach her to shoot the people coming in the doors.”

  I nodded, taking it in. I was starting to wrap my head around Mcormick, and I could appreciate that even if he was a crotchety bastard, with an emphasis on the ‘crotch’ and ‘bastard’ parts, he was at least a good dad to his daughter, willing to do what it took to raise his kid with the skills she needed. I hoped that it was a trend among the mice.

  Calling him a ‘good dad’ in general might be taking things too far. I glanced again at the monster on the far end of the room. Fat, drooling, its eyes were blank while its expression was frozen, forever caught in the midst of raucous laughter.

  “Daniel,” Mcormick said. He was staring at the monster too.

  Daniel. I could see the monster react as its name was spoken.

  “Judge me all you want,” Mcormick said. “Won’t be more than a drop in the bucket compared to what I do to myself.”

  “You’ve been helping children escape, you said,” Mary spoke.

  “The wrongs of the parent shouldn’t become the burden of the child,” Mcormick said. “But if they stay, that means getting enmeshed in the town, keeping to the rules, being the Baron’s.”

  “You help them leave, and point them to the mice,” I said.

  “When I can. But every time I do, they get closer to me. It’s a matter of time before the Academy comes calling.”

  “Weapons won’t be enough,” I said.

  “I have more than just weapons prepared. Before I make another move, I’ll set some more things up, too.”

  “It sounds as if you’re expecting to get caught,” Mary said.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Mcormick asked. He twisted around to ask the question, briefly glancing at the knife. He couldn’t even hide the resentment and disdain on his expression. So much ugly emotion pent up inside that it had turned his personality sour. “I have to expect it. What else am I supposed to do, girl?”

  “I don’t know,”
Mary said.

  “I don’t know either,” I said. “But I get the impression you care about your daughter as more than another set of hands to shoot the Crown’s people when they come for you. It seems odd, to do what you’re doing as if you expect to keep your daughter alive, yet also act like you’re doomed.”

  “Maybe…” he paused, giving the word emphasis for the sentence that would follow, “…you should ask what you came to ask, then get out of my hair before my wife comes in. She does have a gun and the sense to use it. I don’t want me or her getting hurt in the skirmish as she lets herself in. Especially not if she’s going to come in and invite her friend inside with. That’s enough people that none of us walk away unscathed or happy. You don’t want my wife’s friend dropping her shopping bag and calling for help, and I don’t want that attention either. Yeah?”

  I put my elbows on the table, staring across its length. “We intend to kill the Baron, Mr. Mcormick. Maybe you should consider giving us what we need without fighting us every step of the way, so we can make a serious attempt at pulling it off.”

  “Up until you get caught, interrogated, and you tell them about me.”

  Mary glanced at me.

  “It’s not out of the question,” I admitted.

  “Mm.”

  “But,” Mary said, her eyes on the knife and Mcormick’s throat, “We know very well how the Academy works. We know how good their interrogation is, and that very few people earn the academy’s wrath and escape it.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “Sy has your gun. I have knives. If it comes down to it, we’ll take the same route you’ve offered your daughter.”

  “You’ll try,” Mcormick said. His scowl become something painful to look at, a twisted expression. Was he imagining a scenario where his daughter had to go for the gun?

  “Look me in the eye, Mcormick,” I said. “I’m not a mouse. You’ve had a weird feeling about us for a while now, probably. That girl who is holding a knife to your throat is better than you expected, right? As good as people three times her age who’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while now. You’ve been trying to get a read on us and failing, because you don’t understand what we are.”

  “What are you?” the man asked. He met my eye.

  “Within the last week, I had the Baron Richmond take one of my eyes out with a sword,” I said. “Me and my team killed three of his sisters and injured the other.”

  I watched him carefully, trying to read the emotions that crossed his face. Eyebrows moved up, then together, the jowl-lines between cheek and mouth went up, deepened, and finally disappeared as his mouth widened in a frown. Muscles stood out at the corner of his jaw as he stopped looking at me and started staring through me, his thoughts caught up in drawing connections.

  Initial surprise and disgust at the outrageous nature of the story, then realization as he thought of something, and consideration going hand in hand with concentration as he pondered the implications.

  “You know that the twins are four people,” he said.

  “Two monsters nested in their elder sisters. Only one of the elder sisters remain, now.”

  “And this talk of marriage?” he asked. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t tell you. I will tell you that we are very good. This won’t be the first or even the fifth job we’ve handled where I’ll have to be prepared and ready to put a bullet in my own skull in a timely way. You’re looking me in the eye, you’re hearing what I’m saying, and now you need to admit to me that you believe what I’m saying.”

  A bit of a trick, that last sentence. It was something that worked well on people in trances, or people who were drunk or who had otherwise taken leave of their senses. Hit them with a series of facts that would get them nodding their heads and agreeing, and then drop a vague statement they might agree with. You see me. You hear me. You believe.

  Dealing with a man like him, who was lost in thought and a small storm of complex emotions, no longer rationally and logically working his way through the conversation, this little trick had a chance of working.

  And, to tie it together, because it was bad form to leave something like that hanging without tying it up, giving him something believable that makes the whole picture come together.

  “There’s a reason we knocked on your door,” I said. “A reason your name came up. People out there believe in us, and a lot of people believe the Baron needs to die.”

  Believe believe believe. Repeating the word to hammer it in.

  I watched as he gave that statement its fair share of thought, drew in a deep breath, and then huffed it out.

  “Alright,” he said. “Put that knife away? I’ll deal fairly with you.”

  Mary glanced at me. I nodded.

  After dealing with a recalcitrant Jamie and a Lillian who had transitioned from terrified to being drunk on Wyvern, I was happy to be dealing with a Lamb who required far less work to work with.

  “I can throw these,” she said. “I prefer throwing them to stabbing with them. It keeps my clothes cleaner. Don’t try anything.”

  “Mm,” Mcormick grunted.

  Mary stepped away, moving around the table until she stood just behind my chair.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “The ‘firstborn’. In what context are they a danger?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” Mcormick drawled. “They don’t tell us. Daniel there, he’s not so much of a problem. My wife and I worked together to cut off his oxygen, early on, before he was completely grown. As a consequence, he’s less active, slower to think. The less fuss he makes, the freer we are.”

  “They pair you up, expect you to marry and have a child, to act like a good couple? What do you do while the child is growing up?”

  “There are enclosed areas here and there around the town. Prisons that aren’t prisons. The drunks get used to living without drink, the criminals get watched. We can find our own partners there, and if we don’t by the time our stay is up, they’ll give us one. I found my wife.”

  “Was she a mouse too?” I asked.

  A single slow nod of acknowledgement. “From Boggin. They didn’t call themselves mice Same idea. Kids band together, look after each other. I’d just got out of prison, she’d got out of a bad relationship that her husband didn’t survive, didn’t take long for us to have Daniel. They gave us the house and told us that if we wanted to leave for anything, we needed to go with a neighbor. It builds a perverse kind of community, don’it?”

  He turned and spat. Well aimed, placed in the coals of the fireplace, where it sizzled.

  “Accelerated growth?” I asked. “I didn’t see any baby Firstborn.”

  “You’ll have seen the doctors out there. They’re Academy students who showed more aptitude for the kind of art that the Baron likes than they had aptitude for science. I don’t know what treatment they get, but they’re usually big enough when they show up. At one year old, Daniel was seven and a half stone, easy. Stronger than you’d think, for his age.”

  The more he talked about Daniel, the more unhappy he seemed to get.

  A change of topic was in order.

  “The Baron? His behavior,” I said.

  “Stays in Richmond House, most days. The house is guarded by leftover Academy projects, warbeasts and weapons that don’t crowd the place up too bad. The ones that aren’t housetrained, bigger and nastier, they lurk in the woods between here and there. The screw-ups go to him in wagons that get checked at three different places, near start, middle, and end. When there haven’t been enough or when Baron or Twin get in a mood, they get in their wagons and come down here in a procession. About twice a year, at unpredictable times, there’ll be other nobles with them. Those are the worst times. Nobody’s safe, and they usually want a lot of people.”

  “Twice a year?” Mary asked. “Special events?”

  Mcormick shrugged.

  I could see Mary’s line of th
inking. “Special events like a wedding.”

  “That would make the Baron harder to access,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But he also knows about the rifles, that nobles are on the hitlist.”

  That got Mcormick’s attention.

  “Encouragement more than discouragement,” Mary said.

  “Probably,” I said. I looked at Mcormick, “Recently. His behavior recently. Last day or two.”

  “Holed up at the house. He came in on a train with a guard. Everyone kept out of sight, and when people started talking, word was that only one of his sisters was with him, she looked hurt, and he had a woman. Hasn’t set foot outside, and it’s rare he’d do that. Come home and not immediately collect some people.”

  His sister is hurt and he’s got a fiancee to torture, I thought. He wouldn’t hurt Emily this soon, however. We had time before things got really bad for her, I hoped.

  “When and if he comes into town, it’ll be with a guard? How many?” Mary asked.

  “Varies. Fifty soldiers. Plus some beasts his doctors have put together. Four or so wagons, they’re nearly identical, each with soldiers standing on the outside, one hand on a railing, another on their gun. I’d give you particulars, but they don’t come down this road often enough for me to have seen ’em. They’ll park, soldiers get out, so they’re all ready with guns up, some protecting the Baron, some going after the family he’s targeting. He’ll emerge only sometimes, protected by circled wagons and by a squadron of soldiers, and if he doesn’t leave someone behind with their Firstborn, the house will be left alone for a few days before the neighborhood gathers, assigns duties, and work together to clean up. Once the house is scrubbed and the things moved out, someone else gets moved in.”

  “He’s been doing this for years?” I asked.

  “The pattern changes now and again, but he’s been at it since he was a child. His aunts and uncle used to look after Richmond House, but they took over a territory somewhere and left him behind.”