Twig

by wildbow

  At my feet, moving against the back of my calves and my ankles, Mary stirred. She wasn’t in fighting shape, and she wasn’t, I knew, playing possum.

  “I was hoping to see that look of despair,” she said. “I haven’t gone ten minutes without wanting it, without wanting to see it and then tear your face off, to preserve it forever.”

  My eyes followed the point of her rapier. The damn thing was long enough to be a lance. She moved it left to right, right to left. A snake charmer charming the snake with the movement of the flute, only I was the snake.

  “It hurts,” Lainie muttered. She was hunched over.

  Kill the hostages, I willed the twin. Kill Lainie and Chance, for distracting you during this moment.

  She didn’t. She drew the rapier back, then thrust it, straight for me. I threw myself to the side, tumbling to the floor and skidding as I landed atop vials, pill-bottles and tools. Nothing I could really use, at a glance.

  She drew back, ready to stab again, and I knew her target was Mary’s body.

  “No!” I shouted. Too loud.

  Howls and screeches echoed through the building at the cry. They responded more to speech than to anything, and they responded here. One of the firstborn beyond the door broke past the soldiers, and came tearing into the room.

  It didn’t even have the sense to dodge or minimize the damage as the Twin swung the rapier. Had it been one step back, the rapier might have missed. One step further forward, and the rapier would have had to cleave through the meat of the throat, the bone of the spine. It was a strong material, but I doubted it would make it through. As it was, it cut cleanly past the flesh at the front of the firstborn’s throat. A backhand swipe disemboweled.

  There was no more time. My hands were empty. I’d had a gun. It was—

  I turned my head, and I saw the hostages. The gun was in arm’s reach of Simon and of Chance.

  As if in slow motion, Chance reached for the gun, then slid it across the floor.

  I swept it up off the ground, then ran toward the twin. Firing at range wouldn’t work any more than a half-dozen serious stabbings had. Fast as she was with the rapier, it was ungainly. I closed the distance, hurling myself at her, saw the weapon come around, and dove.

  I mentally recited an apology for everyone who was about to get hurt or die, but I knew that this was something I’d do ten times over, if it meant Mary had a chance of making it through.

  I moved the gun near the Twin’s leg, and I fired it, the bullet aimed at nothing in particular. In the wake of the shot, I heard screams, and howls, many of them from the street.

  The hammer of the gun struck the metal, and it created sparks. The spark touched the alcohol, and half of the Twin swiftly went up in flame. I flipped over onto my back to look up, to see, and I knew immediately that it wouldn’t be enough. Smoke and fire reached up toward the ceiling, flesh burned and I could smell it burning, but she didn’t scream, and she didn’t flail. Instead, she let the rapier fall to the floor.

  I hurried to move out of the way while she was half-blind and preoccupied. One of her limbs, a hand or a foot, clipped me, and sent me sprawling, reawakening the recent injury to my shoulder that adrenaline had quieted.

  To a backdrop of screaming, I scrambled back, until my back was against the wall. I panted from the burst of exertion, and watched as the Twin opened up her body, unzipping it, reaching for something within herself that would serve to end my existence or to stop the burning and free her to resume her cold rampage.

  She drew her hand out with an organ within it, bulbous and unrecognizable. She squeezed, and fingertips and bone punctured the flesh to let liquid cascade out. It drenched her arm, and where it did, the alcohol wicked off, the fires going out or dropping to the floor. She held it high, and she let the liquid rain down over her.

  So much effort, and she didn’t even burn properly.

  Fire was the most common answer to the Academy’s creations, and she’d been given a clear answer to it.

  I picked myself up off the ground. To my left, Mary was doing the same.

  Ruth wasn’t far from me, and neither was the bedside table with the folded towels. I reached into the folded towels, and took hold of the poisonous gas.

  I hucked it at her. Half-disassembled, limiting the spread of the flame by keeping herself in distinct pieces, she wasn’t as mobile. The gas erupted around her, forming an opaque yellow-green cloud, the little globe continuing to billow as it fell to the ground.

  “Cover your mouths!” Simon called out.

  I saw a glimpse of the Twin as she backed away, moving to one corner of the room. She was pulling herself together.

  “Soldiers!” the Twin called out. “In here!”

  “Milady?”

  A voice from the door. I couldn’t even see the source as the gas filled half of the room.

  “Get them!”

  “The firstborn are—”

  “Get them! Kill them, and then deal with the firstborn!”

  I gestured, without looking at Mary. If she was in any shape to cooperate, she would. If she wasn’t, I didn’t want to see. I indicated the door. The gesture for attack. The third one we’d ever taught ourselves, part of the first six, integral to how the rest had evolved.

  A knife flew through the smoke to draw a telling sound. A wet ‘thock’ of the blade striking home, the sound of a body.

  I was already walking forward into the gas, breath held, bending down to fumble for the source of the billowing gas. Once I had it, I held it close to my body to minimize how much it spread.

  My eyes teared up, my vision swimming in a way very unlike vertigo. I could only see the smoke, billowing and noxious, and feel it burn my nose, mouth, ear canals, dickhole and asshole.

  But, as I got closer to the end of the room, I could see the windows, pale squares of yellow-green in the midst of the smoke. I saw as one of her hands smashed the window, and how the gas suddenly flowed toward the opening in the glass.

  I could see the dark shadow and silhouette of the Twin, and the light of the fires that still burned at one of her hands.

  I plunged the smoking globe into the fissure of the Twin’s body, saw her tense and react, and braced myself for the retaliatory strike. It hit my arms, my upper body, my head, all at once, the shock spreading through more than half of my body as it knocked me off my feet and onto the ground.

  Not as strong a blow as it might have been. She couldn’t see me.

  The hit did make me take in an involuntary breath. The entire inside of my mouth burned in a way that reminded me of disinfectant poured on a wound, but it treated my entire mouth as that wound, and made me feel like every affected surface would erupt in ulcers, if it wasn’t already.

  Coughing, sputtering, I staggered out of the worst of the smoke, stumbled into a wall, and collapsed against the ground.

  The hostages, Mary, and Ruth were mostly out of the worst of the smoke. Especially now that it was contained. The Twin hadn’t accessed the globe, she wasn’t pulling it free and tossing it at us. She didn’t scream or taunt us. Only silence.

  My breath wheezed as I stared into the smoke. I realized I wouldn’t see anything, and looked away. I looked to Mary, who sat against the wall, bloody and battered. She had a nasty cut running from belly button to shoulder blade. I wasn’t sure how deep it was.

  All around us, I could hear the firstborn raging, the sounds of fighting. People were using guns more, which made the situation worse.

  The Baron was fleeing, and the soldiers that weren’t fighting firstborn were now converging on our location. We didn’t have long.

  Still, I needed to see.

  Chance and Simon opened windows, staying as far from the smoke as they could, mouths covered. The smoke began to clear. The Twin was there, sitting against the wall much as Mary was.

  Bled, burned, gassed, and to look at her, she was still breathing.

  I patted myself down, and found no weapon. I looked to Mary, and saw her holding
a knife out.

  I took it.

  I approached the twin, while Mary threw more knives toward the door. I saw the twin meet my eyes.

  “He didn’t even care,” she spoke, her voice ragged, ravaged by the smoke. I thought she should cough, given what I was experiencing, but she didn’t.

  “The Baron?” I asked.

  “He took that woman as if it was payment enough. Didn’t care. Immortality was more important than our sisters. He smiled. He laughed for his guests. Didn’t want me to wear black, to mourn.”

  “To be fair,” I said. “You’re awfully hard people to feel sorry for. You want to be mourned?”

  “We were supposed to—” she wheezed a breath. She tensed, like she was going to swing for me, try and execute me on the spot. Something didn’t let her. “Supposed to have him, if nobody else. Him. But we’re just bastard children. Even to him. Now—”

  I could hear movement outside. I gestured to Mary.

  “—Now I die alone.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I choked back ten different sorts of emotion. I didn’t sympathize with her, but I could sympathize with what she was saying. “I don’t suppose you’ll give me some advice on how to deal with your brother?”

  She shook her head.

  I wasn’t surprised in the least.

  A part of me, hearing what she’d said, wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t fighting more. The damage wasn’t that severe. She could have mustered the strength to hit me, fought to the door, gotten access to a doctor, and gotten patched together.

  But she had no reason to. Not anymore.

  “Then… Want to help me help you move along?”

  I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard me, but then she slouched. As she did so, her body came further apart. I could see how the gas had affected the meaty inner layers. It looked like the inside of my mouth felt.

  She strained, and I saw her bones shift and move. Her entire body was reconfigurable, to help the doctors do their work and to make room for her little sister. Her ribs pulled back and away, exposing organs in her chest.

  I sank the knife into place. I had to grip it with both hands to rake it across the surface. I watched as it strained, gushing blood, and then stopped beating.

  I stepped back and away. The other Lambs surrounded me. Gordon, Jamie, Mary, Lillian, Ashton, Helen, Hubris… all watching as the Twin slowly died.

  I saw the peace on her face, and every sense was aware of the violence and chaos all around us. Warrick had finally snapped, and it wasn’t pretty.

  I’d shaken the box twice, in the end. Now I had to deal with the consequences.

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.16

  It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. This would have happened anyway, in some form. That you pulled the trigger and the Baron didn’t doesn’t change the fact that he set this up with the hope that there would be bloodshed. He had to have.

  The Twin burned behind us, the already existent flames needing only a bit of attention from an oil lamp that had fallen to the floor before they could wreath our nemesis. Fire would scorch the most telling evidence away. What lay before us would need something more.

  The sheer number of soldiers in the area was keeping the firstborn from doing too much damage, but the degree of violence was shocking. The firstborn were as relentless as any stitched, just as strong, but they were alive. The way they moved was more unpredictable as a consequence, and their movements were single-mindedly focused on finding the most destructive path possible to the most recent stimulus.

  The more I saw, as we moved around the fringe of the ongoing bloodshed, the more convinced I was that these firstborn had been made to hurt, not to kill. Short claws sliced through skin and left deeper tissue intact. Meaty hands broke hands, arms, and the occasional leg, but the firstborn wouldn’t kill the individual.

  Which wasn’t to say that people weren’t dying.

  “What do you think of your handiwork, Simon?” I asked.

  There was no response. When I looked at him, all I could make out was the mask of flesh, his eyes meeting mine.

  We circled the plaza, entering closer to the north end, where the stage and fountain were. Given how things were unfolding, I suspected the firstborn had been gathered here, at the fringe of the party, where anyone could look over and up at them. As the noise and chaos had reached them, they had moved en masse, crashing into the midst of standing guards and some of the braver aristocrats who carried swords on their person.

  “Mother,” Chance murmured. We weren’t using the wire leash on him anymore. He touched Lainie’s shoulder. “Lainie, they’re okay.”

  Their parents and loved ones. I couldn’t see which people they were referring to, exactly. All of the aristocrats looked the same to me. Lainie didn’t look nearly as enthused as Chance did, but something in her relaxed on seeing. She was cradling one arm, but it didn’t even look broken. For all that she’d cried out earlier, I wondered if the damage was somehow worse than it looked, or if she was so sheltered that it was the very first time in her life that she’d actually been hurt.

  I took my attention off of our hostages and assessed the situation in short order, looking for the key people, the people the party had centered around, the Baron, the Warrick locals. I could see the trail of bodies leading away from the plaza, going further north.

  The Baron.

  The soldiers were winning the fight, but the sheer density of firstborn here was posing a problem. As our group moved around the very edge of the plaza, keeping our distance from the fighting, soldiers took note of us. Their eyes fixed on Simon.

  I knew right away what their concern would be. Another Firstborn, another potential combatant.

  Nothing Simon had done thus far spoke to him being interested in anything more than self preservation. He was loyal to his friends, and he’d provided help to our group, but that counted very little in the grand scheme of things, as I saw it.

  As a consequence, when I saw a soldier turn, looking at Mary and I, then turning his focus to the firstborn at the tail end of our group. I did nothing, keeping my head down as much as I already had been, and let the dice fall where they were slated to fall.

  It was Mary, in the end, who turned, saw, and grabbed the firstborn’s hand, tugging sharply on it so they both fell together. The rest of us stopped running, while Mary looked up at the soldier, eyes wide, half-panicked, like she was entirely unable to fend for herself.

  That look was enough to give the man pause. He held out his sword.

  “It’s dangerous,” he said.

  I wondered if Simon would do anything.

  “It’s my brother,” Mary said. “Please.”

  For a long moment, I thought the soldier was going to strike, resolving the situation, so he could go back to his comrades. His sword wavered.

  It would be easier if he did execute Simon. The social currency and independence the firstborn offered was dwindling. Simon remained a loose end.

  The sword lowered. The man, young, no older than twenty, extended a hand to Mary, helping her stand. “You’re hurt.”

  “We got attacked by some others. Her firstborn helped us,” I said, indicating Mary and Simon.

  He shot a skeptical eye at Simon, then said, “They’re going crazy. You need to get out of here, the madness that’s getting to them, it’s contagious, passing from one to the other.”

  “We will,” Mary said.

  “The Baron,” I said. “Is he…?”

  “He’s gone,” the soldier said. “He headed up that way. The first wagons passed through the hills. We’re handling the situation here, then dividing people into those who will go to the Baron and those who will stay here to clean up.”

  “He’s going to be so mad,” I said. I ran my hands through my hair, as if I didn’t know what to do with them. “He’s—they’re going to take it out on us. They always do.”

  I saw the soldier’s expression change. He couldn’t look me in
the eye, but his eyes didn’t remain on any fixed point. Lost in thought. His knuckles went white as he gripped his weapon. I saw his eyebrows move. Concern, and not for me.

  This didn’t sit easy for the young soldier. That was something I could use.

  “Sir?” I ventured. I let my voice hitch. I had his attention.

  “Our parents are at Richmond House, they’re servants. Is there—is there any way we could…” I trailed off.

  “You want me to help them leave?”

  “They only go once a month, and for special events. He uses us boys and girls to control them while they’re there, and scare them. Sometimes he hints that he has us in the dungeon,” I said. I was improvising, and the lie was spinning out into something convoluted. “He’ll make them wonder all day, have them work so hard to please him, because they think we’re at his mercy. He plays games with their heads, and telling them that one of us is hurt or in danger or letting them think they can escape when we’re really in the dungeon, that’s the sort of game he’d play.”

  “Our parents are always so happy to see us when they get back,” Mary said.

  “I don’t know,” the soldier said.

  “You can’t?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He glanced back at his companions. When he looked back at us, his focus was on Chance and Lainie.

  “They’re good people,” Chance said. “We owe a lot to them. My family isn’t overly important, but if you gave your name to me and helped them out, I could—”

  The soldier shook his head. “That’s not important. Okay. I’ll look into it. There will be one wagon-cart that goes back with some guards for Richmond House. I might be on it, and I could get you on it, if I explain.”

  “Please,” Mary said. She reached out, touching his hand where it gripped the gun.

  I imagined that moment of contact and the expression on a pretty girl’s injured face would haunt him for a long time. Much as the image of the blood-strewn plaza was liable to linger in my mind’s eye. I was cursed to a faulty memory that would only retain the bad things.

  “One hour?” the man said. “Meet me here. I’ll try to be here, if orders allow, and I’ll try to arrange something. For now, just get somewhere safe.”