Twig

by wildbow

  Her movements were wrong, not nearly as forceful as they should have been, given the situation. The damage was superficial, the sword fine and of the highest quality, capable of cutting the skin and leaving what lay beneath intact. Her fingernails dragged against the fabric of his jacket, and found no purchase where they should have.

  Her eyes weren’t the only thing the man had hobbled.

  I didn’t give him anything. Not a flinch, a reaction, or an intake of breath.

  He let Candida go, and she flopped to the stage, hands at her neck. All she knew was pain, she felt the flow of blood. She might well have thought she was dying, without knowing the major veins and arteries were all intact.

  He hopped down from the stage. I moved through the pews and then back, maintaining a distance, wary.

  He had better doctors than either of the Twins, and it had taken more than one Lamb to take out any of the Twins. I’d told Mary that I expected to lose and that it was part of the plan. That wasn’t wholly true. Leaning on Mary like that, relying on her, it was a point of failure for the greater plan. Too much chance that she would be seen.

  No, I was alone here.

  Since a long, long time ago, not even that long after we had lost Evette and the first Ashton, I had known about the expiration dates. I had known I would be alone in this. That, one day, I would find myself faced with a mission I couldn’t say no to, faced with an enemy I couldn’t win against, without a single Lamb to stand by me.

  I’d had bad dreams about it. Some intense, others like bad memories, slipping away before I could remember particulars. The stages differed, as did the enemies I faced, but the feeling was always the same.

  It was a feeling that made it hard to breathe.

  He felt the weight of his rapier in his hand, as if testing it. Then he hurled it.

  I didn’t move a muscle as the blade plunged into the pew nearest me, the end wobbling with the force of the impact.

  “Take it,” the Baron said.

  I glanced at the blade, but I didn’t move.

  “Take the sword, Sylvester. I’ll wait.”

  I took a step forward, watching him, and reached up for the handle of the blade. I tugged, and it didn’t come free. I pulled again, and it moved down like a lever might, while the tip remained embedded. A third tugged hauled it free.

  His narrow, bright-green eyes mocked me. He moved left, then right, fine clothes and too-fine hair moving like quicksilver around him. Only his face seemed like it was in focus, steady amid hair and clothes that flowed almost like water might. He moved forward, stepping up onto the seat of the pew. He stepped onto the back of the next pew, then down onto the seat of it, cutting a direct path toward me.

  He picked up speed as he closed the distance. Both hands on the rapier’s handle, I moved to intercept, ducking low, aiming for the lower stomach and groin, stabbing.

  He slapped the blade with the back of a hand, the slap carrying enough force that I felt it in my shoulder. He closed the distance, stepping so close that the toes of his left shoe nearly touched the toes of my right one.

  His right leg, however, came up. His knee caught me in the chin. My teeth were already clenched tight together, and I wasn’t sure if that helped or not. Teeth might have broken if my mouth had been open and driven closed, but as it was, the impact shook my head and its contents. I tumbled to the ground, the rapier falling from my hand, and was left sitting in the leftmost aisle, staring up at the man, while the various candles around the church seemed to brighten until they blinded me.

  I made a promise to Lillian, I reminded myself.

  He was waiting patiently, as I reached for and found the rapier. I wavered a little as I got to my feet and straightened. My eye wandered. Candida was still sitting on the stage, now with a glove removed, folded up, and pressed to the bleeding wound at her throat. Beside her was my imagined Lillian, ever silent.

  The lights remained so bright I could barely see the Baron. He walked toward me, confident.

  “I was raised being taught that we all have a place in the world, Sylvester,” the Baron said. “But I’ve come to think of that as complete and utter tripe. The world isn’t that inflexible. We break new ground on a daily basis.”

  I made like I was going to retreat, then stepped in, swinging. Again, he used his hand, striking at the flatter side of the blade, as if this was all proceeding in slow motion. I was more prepared for it this time, and recovered enough to make a quick slash in the opposite direction. This time, as his hand moved toward it, I turned the blade.

  He, too, changed the position of his hand. With the same ease he might toss his hair with a movement of his hand, he moved the blade up and away, the flat of the blade momentarily sliding past knuckles and the back of his hand. It was so forceful I nearly lost my grip on the blade as it went from being pointed in his general direction to being pointed the complete other way.

  Reaching down, he seized me by the collar. With a heave, he lifted me and threw me into the pews, through one of the decrepit bodies that decorated it. Dust and death filled my nostrils, while wood found its way into my solar plexus and the side of my neck, leaving me groaning and coughing.

  “Advancement is possible. So is falling,” he said. “And both are very difficult, painful things. Change always is.”

  He found where the rapier had fallen, put his foot on it, and kicked it, sending it skidding across the floor to me.

  “From the moment I was reborn as a proper noble, taken apart and put together as something greater, I grabbed hold of that idea. The pain and difficulty that go hand in hand with change. I was bitter, Sylvester. I realized how this system really works and where I stood in the grand scheme of it all. I saw the injustice of it, and it ate away at me.”

  A Baron who would never really have true power. Barely above bastard nobles in status. I had to pay attention to who my enemy was.

  I pulled myself to my feet, pulling away a tattered bit of cloth that had transferred from the body to me before I reached down for the sword. I coughed.

  “And here I’d wondered if you’d taken something into your mouth, hoping to spit it at me at an opportune moment. Not with that cough, though. What was I saying?” he asked. He was approaching along the pew. He hooked one toe at the base of the skull of the body I’d just been tossed through, flicked it into the air, and caught it with one hand. ” They saw me as dangerous, so they hobbled me even further. Put me here.”

  He punctuated ‘here’ by throwing the skull, straight down to the ground. It shattered.

  As I retreated, trying to catch my breath, I moved past my imagining of Jamie.

  “And here I’ve rotted. Stagnated. I’m a symbol, don’t you see? I’m a noble, seemingly nothing more, nothing less. I’m here because they needed a noble here. I’m expendable. It would drive anyone mad with boredom, left to write letters and beg for permission to go elsewhere or to visit another noble. Just me…”

  He moved quickly, three running steps without any warning he was doing it. I only barely got the sword around in time to swing it in his direction, trying to ward him off. He moved back just enough to let it move past him, then hooked one toe behind my ankle, toppling me to the tattered black carpet that ran through the middle of the church. I wasn’t even fully settled there when he kicked me, sending me rolling.

  Mere pain was an old companion of mine. I could deal with that more than my skull being rattled or my breath stolen away. I gripped the sword harder.

  “Just me and the freedom to do with my little township what I wanted. I latched on to that idea I’d been convinced of as I was reborn. How closely linked pain and struggle are to greatness.”

  I stood again, one hand at my chest where he’d kicked me, rapier again in hand.

  “Told you not to fight him, Sy,” Gordon spoke, his voice soft but still carrying from where he sat by the destroyed body, behind the Baron.

  “Don’t worry, Sylvester,” the Baron said. “I’m not one of those fanatics
who put far too much stock in Wallace’s Law or anything of the sort. I’m not going to say that I’m creating better people by doing what I do to them. I simply like to see people suffer, to see how it unfolds, what it reveals about them. And I like to see what it lacks, compared to the suffering that goes hand in hand with greatness. That is where I find you amusing, Sylvester. You straddle that line. So talented, yet so small.”

  Small. I did feel small. The hits I’d taken to my stomach and chest were making it hard to breathe, and that paralleled the crushing loneliness I’d been feeling for a while now, compounding it, as if I could no longer shake it or turn my mind from it.

  I had to find a way to hurt him, to cut him down, as impossible as it seemed. Had to, for Mary’s sake.

  I saw Mary at the window, and for a moment, I thought it was really her, not an imagining.

  I knew what I was doing, and why. My brain was reflexively reaching out for pillars of strength to draw on, where they felt so absent. It wasn’t so different from me seeking the easy familiarity of Jamie, after we’d lost him. Just like Jamie, the effect of this reflex wasn’t anything close to being reassuring or encouraging. The candles remained too bright, but the darkness seemed to get darker, and with each apparition that appeared to watch me fail, the loneliness became crushing.

  Was this what the Twin had experienced in her last moments?

  He stepped close. I moved the sword, then abandoned it, ducking in closer, too low to be in his reach, as I freed the knife from my boot. I turned, looking to hamstring, cut the Achilles tendon, for any vulnerable area—

  His hand caught mine, effectively trapping my hand as it gripped the knife handle.

  He squeezed, and I felt the strain in the small bones of my hands, fingers threatening to break and dislocate as he ground them against the knife handle.

  My free hand went back, seizing the gun I’d put behind my belt. I brought it around as fast as I could, and he struck it with his hand.

  Fragments of the gun scattered the pews and grounds of the church, struck so hard the chamber, barrel, and handle had broken free of one another.

  He backhanded me across the face, very casually, then slapped me.

  Before I could even see straight again, he backhanded me again. I moved my head, trying to put myself out of his reach, and was struck across the head. The jewelry on his fingers had cut me in a dozen places. I had blood running through my hair and down my face.

  I saw a glimpse of Ashton, his hair red in a much different way, expression blank, no advice to be offered.

  The Baron let go of my crushed hand, and I felt my numb fingers losing their grip on the knife. I caught it with my other hand just before it fell to the ground, and we were so close together that I knew he hadn’t seen.

  “Baron,” I spoke, and my voice was ragged.

  “He talks after all,” the Baron said.

  “I killed your last sister,” I said.

  There was nothing. No momentary surprise, no turn of his head to look at me better, no emotion.

  I stabbed, and his forearm caught mine, deflecting the blow. The hand at the end of that forearm caught me by the side of my head.

  Again, he threw me bodily into the pews, but this time, the throw coincided with pain that swallowed up all vision in my good eye, filling it with darkness and stars. I felt blood flowing.

  I blinked, struggling to make out the situation and surroundings.

  I could see him dusting himself off with one hand, the other hand held at a distance. He let the ragged bit of tissue fall to the floor and then crushed it beneath his heel. My ear, torn from my head.

  “What did you expect, Sylvester? That you would taunt me with the death of my last sister, and I would bare my neck, show you a moment of weakness? I know where I stand in the grand scheme of things, I know where I come from and where I’m slated to go. Where I was slated to go, that is, before you and Mauer handed me the key to a greater future. My sisters… are not so important. I have no attachment to them.”

  Again, he made his approach.

  He wanted to break me. He sought to keep on giving me chances and taking pieces of me, until I finally gave up. Why? To see some glimmer of what lay within me? For amusement? Because I was the closest thing he had to a peer?

  Whatever his reasons, he was succeeding. I could look to the phantoms of the Lambs around me, and I could remind myself of the reasons, but I couldn’t see a way forward, not on a lot of levels.

  I stared at the Baron, and I stoked the fires of hatred, knife still clutched in my hand. A weapon incapable of doing the kind of damage I needed to do to the man.

  “I’ll wrap this up, change clothes, and go to greet the nobles. If you’re the only troublemaker to show, I’ll find that disappointing, but I’ll find other ways to amuse myself, knowing that the bastards who’ve been lording their power over me will soon get theirs.”

  “I know,” I said. I backed away as he approached, and my injured face managed a smile. “I talked to the Infante before I came here. He arrived early, and I told him what you were doing.”

  I got to watch as his expression transformed. The amusement dripped away.

  “I see. I suppose I should deal with you now and handle that.”

  There were no more games, and there was no more intent to break. He stalked toward me, a gleam of murder in his eyes, and I didn’t have the tools to stop him.

  He grabbed me by the throat, lifting me off the ground.

  Then, with a remarkable sort of ease, the heel of his hand pressed in and something gave, taking away my ability to breathe.

  There were no final words from him. No mockery, no comments. His green eyes stared into mine. I tried to breathe and to cough, and only produced the wheezing crackle of air pushing hopelessly against cartilage. I could breathe, but only a whisper’s worth, not enough to survive.

  The darkness was getting darker still, creeping in around the edges.

  Helen. She was the last of the real Lambs to appear, perched on a pew like a cat might be. I saw her smile as I strained to breathe. A gentle, warm smile that didn’t fit the situation. Very her.

  My hand reached up, and I grabbed the patch, pulling it down. The fluid that had collected where the bottom of the patch pressed into the skin now leaked. A crimson, poisoned tear. There was no comment from the Baron on the state of my eye. All the same, really, I couldn’t have quipped a response back either.

  Summoning all of the strength I had left, I brought my fingers up into the orb, hard, compressing it. Fluid that had been filling it to bursting jetted out through the holes the syringe had made. A movement of my head directed the thin, twin streams into the Baron’s own eyes. The eye, still not fully connected to my head, still held the vast majority of the poison I’d injected into it.

  I’d had other plans for the eye, should the situation had differed. A talk over dinner hadn’t been impossible, nor a situation where he’d had me pinned, his face inches from mine. But this… this had been the most likely scenario. They always liked to pick me up, my legs dangling, and lord their power over me.

  You want to know what lies beneath this Lamb, Baron, after you dig deep enough?

  He twisted his head away, letting me drop without letting me go.

  My fingers reached up, past the somewhat deflated eye, hooking in behind to grab the stem that anchored it. Not fully attached, it wasn’t as hard as it might be to haul it free.

  In the moment it looked like he might recover, I squeezed the orb. driving out the last remaining juice in a substantial gush, aimed for his face.

  I’m a monster.

  He dropped me, and I fell to the ground. Choking, no air to be had, darkness creeping in, I drew out the packets, tearing them. I cast the poisonous and noxious powders at him, striving to overwhelm, to give him no more of a chance to breathe than I had.

  I staggered forward, and the blinded noble crawled away from me, hand moving this way and that, as if anticipating that I would draw in
close.

  I reached into a pocket for another packet, and there was only one thing remaining.

  Syringe filled with the Wyvern formula in hand, I approached the Baron. Before I could get there, arms embraced me.

  Candida.

  She’d been rendered so weak that I, injured and nearly suffocated, could easily pull out of her grasp. I didn’t. I felt her arms and the warmth of her body, and I stared at the Baron, who was getting further away.

  I felt a knife touch my throat, and I tried my best to freeze. Instead, my head lolled forward.

  I’d put off sleeping so much over the years, and now it felt like it was catching up with me. Except this was a much deeper slumber.

  “Let me help you,” she said. “If this doesn’t work, I’m going to need that syringe.”

  Possessively, I held on to the syringe. I didn’t want to let it go. Not even if I died.

  The blade penetrated my throat. A moment later, Candida’s finger penetrated the wound. I felt stabbing pains as it moved up, where the throat was blocked.

  The pain as she shifted the damaged portion was as bad as anything yet. I coughed, and wind whistled freely past her fingers.

  Her finger came free, and her arms let me go.

  Again, the candles seemed so bright. My awareness of the world was detached, filled with phantoms, to the point that reality was hard to distinguish. It took me a moment to realize I was staring at the Baron, who was in the midst of recovering.

  “Clever boy,” he said, voice clearly affected by with the gas he’d inhaled. “Clever boy.”

  I heard the scrape of metal on stone.

  “That sword won’t do you any good, Candida,” the Baron said. “My organs are protected. My throat can’t be cut, and you’ve given me immortality, you stupid girl. You’ll have to whittle at me for an hour, and neither of you have the strength to do that. If either of you move one step closer, I’ll call my guards.”