Twig

by wildbow

  I dearly missed the old Jamie in that moment. The old Jamie would have tackled me, or punched my arm. There would have been the interplay, the contest.

  But even if this Jamie became the old Jamie, somehow, if a light flashed behind his eyes and the unrecoverable was somehow recovered and pulled back from oblivion, that kind of moment wouldn’t unfold again. The close physical contact would be complicated by my knowledge that Jamie liked boys, and that he liked me. The roughhousing would never happen again.

  In a way, it was a piece of my childhood. I had to make peace with it being behind me. Like so many things.

  Jamie shot me a sidelong glance. I realized how I must have looked in the moment. The shadow falling over my expression. I cleared my throat, “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Sy,” he said. There was no need for him to ask or for me to explain.

  “Stop by our place first?” I asked, injecting something lighter into my tone.

  “Sure,” he said.

  I looked away, taking in the surroundings. I was trying to judge the degree of commotion based on what I could make out of the rest of the city. Things seemed busy, with an undercurrent of nervous energy. People were trying to get settled.

  It was only a few minutes of walking. We arrived at the apartment. I glanced down the length of the street, judged the coast clear, and unlocked the door. I opened it a crack, then bent down low. I checked for the long blond hair that I’d wedged into place there, wound to a nail in the bottom of the door and a gap in the wood on the frame.

  “Clear,” I said, opening the door so the hair came free. I stepped on it and opened the door the rest of the way.

  “You’ve been using that one too much,” Jamie said.

  “Have I?”

  “More than half the times we’ve gone out this week.”

  “Remind me later,” I said.

  “I reminded you this time, but you were lazy,” he said.

  I pulled off my raincoat and kicked off my boots.

  The apartment was well furnished. We hadn’t executed much logic in how we arranged things. My bed was set under the largest window, while Jamie’s was in a back corner, partially sectioned off from the room by a bookcase. We’d put furniture where we found it convenient, negotiating for pieces here and there. Custom wood grain with metal edging it, all square, blocky, and modern, and all of it matching. It had been expensive, but expense wasn’t a problem. What I hadn’t been able to buy with borrowed money had been easy enough to take on its own, like the artwork on the walls, strategically placed so it wasn’t easily visible from the outside.

  I headed straight for the kitchen to light the fire and take the damp out of the air, moving the kettle from counter to stove before the fire was even underway. Jamie took his time getting his coat off, his eyes on the window.

  “Anything happening?”

  “There are warbeasts in the water,” Jamie remarked. “Same ones that were in Lugh’s harbor. They must have verified they were healthy and wanted to put them somewhere that they weren’t going to get exposed to the rash.”

  I walked over to the window, grabbing a knife and a long loaf of bread. I opened the icebox and got some cheese. I peered out the window in the general direction Jamie was looking. I cut the bread and cheese by feel alone, watching.

  Roughly a minute in, tentacles briefly rose up higher than the three story houses were tall, then disappeared into the cityscape.

  “Man, I hate this town sometimes,” I said.

  “You sure seemed to like it an hour ago,” Jamie said, from the other side of the room.

  “An hour ago? That was—wait, what was special about an hour ago?”

  “Shirley?”

  “Ohh. Eh, no big deal, that.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe me.”

  “I believe the spirit of the words, but not the letter.”

  The focus it took to wrap my head around what he’d said nearly led to me cutting my fingers with the knife. I raked it across my fingernails instead, and resolved to focus more on what I was doing, taking my eyes off the window.

  I heard a violent clicking sound, and then music started playing.

  I looked over at Jamie. He was at our very expensive, borrowed-and-not-paid-for scrollphone. The delicate scroll had been placed in the machine, and was now rotating, the music playing from it. It was a violin-focused piece, and the scratchy nature of the device’s sound gave it a quality I almost preferred over ordinary violins.

  “You don’t mind?” Jamie asked.

  I shook my head.

  I finished with the bread and cheese and prepared the tea, carrying a plate and cup of tea over to Jamie.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You know, we’re going to end up wanting to kill each other by the end of this.”

  “Lies,” I said. “You might end up wanting to kill me, but the reverse won’t ever be true.”

  “I don’t go a straight week without a moment of wanting to kill you,” Jamie said, lightly. He arranged the cup and saucer of bread and cheese so they rested on the edge of the bed, and then set himself up with a book in his lap. “But you’re good enough company the rest of the time, I don’t even mind.”

  I took a seat on the wide windowsill above my bed, one leg tucked under me, my back to the window frame, my left side pressed against the cold window, and set everything down. I used the space available to lay out some cards.

  Who?

  “Solitaire?” Jamie asked.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  The thoughts of Lainie and Shirley had probably spurred my decision to go ahead with Lillian.

  She sat on the far end of the long, wide windowsill.

  Seven card handicap, I thought. I saw her nod.

  No cheating. A more dramatic nod. A smile on a face I couldn’t quite put together the way it was supposed to be.

  Then I drew our hands.

  How are you doing? I wondered. I made my play.

  “I’m throwing myself into my studies,” she said. “I don’t get to see the others as much as I’d like, and it helps. I’ve been thinking about my project. The suit you told me to work on. I might be wearing an early version the next time you see me.”

  I made her choice of card to play, and then divorced it from my mind so I wouldn’t use it to inform my play and decisions. In a way, I was letting her peek at my hands, while refusing to do the same for myself.

  I’m sorry.

  “I know. I don’t mean I know because I’m a figment of your imagination, in your brain. I mean I know. The other, real me. She knows,” Lillian told me, stumbling over her words as she tried to convey something very simple, simply because of the emotional gravity behind what she was trying to express. “Are you sleeping, Sy?”

  I’d spent more time sitting on the windowsill watching the world outside of the window than I’d spent lying in bed.

  “You need to sleep, Sy,” she said, very gently.

  I made my play. She was quick to respond.

  “Sleep, and when you’re done your tea, get yourself a tall glass of water. The wyvern formula Jamie is giving you isn’t perfect, so the downsides will be harsher. You need to be rested and hydrated,” she said.

  I played two cards.

  “That’s really eerie,” Jamie said, from the other side of the room.

  I looked up from the cards.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Lillian,” I said. “I kind of want some lesser explosives, really?”

  “The thoughts don’t connect, Sy.”

  “She’s going to wear that meat-suit she was thinking about. They’re going to blitz us, you know. Nothing held back. The only time they’ll take before coming at us full bore will be to get Ashton to recruit someone or something he can use. Then meat-suit Lillian, maybe with Wyvern, maybe, and Mary, of course, and Helen looking to flank? I can see it playing out.”

  “You’re smiling,” Jamie said.

  I smile
d wider, realizing.

  “Who’s winning?” he asked.

  “She is,” I said, looking down at the cards. “Guilt, I think. I feel bad about how I left things, so I went easy on her, I think. That’s something to watch out for too. For the altercation with the Lambs, further down the road. See how this sort of thing is useful?”

  “If you say so, Sylvester,” he said, very patiently.

  I finished out the match, then switched out the participants, pitting myself against Gordon.

  Feeling the cold on one side, the heat on the other, listening to music, with only one interruption as Jamie changed out the scroll, the cooling cup of tea held in both hands, I managed to doze off.

  A sharp rapping disturbed me. I remembered the tea as I jerked to wakefulness, and found the cup gone from my hand. I looked down at the bed, checking, and found it devoid of both tea and cup.

  “I got it, Sy,” Jamie said. He indicated the front door.

  Still bewildered, I nodded.

  Together, we moved to the front door, Jamie collecting and cocking a pistol, me with a knife in the hand that gripped the door handle, my other hand on the improvised trap I’d set beside the door, in case someone came charging in.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Chance,” was the reply.

  “Alone?”

  “With Elaine,” he said. He was using Elaine’s full name when in the company of others.

  I opened the door, one hand still on the trap. I relaxed when I verified that they really were alone.

  “I’m here for the list, and I have a bit of news,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said. “News is welcome.”

  “Some faces have turned up in Tynewear,” Chance said. “I heard from some others. Academy experiments, I guess? But they’re mercenaries? I thought you’d want to know, since you said you were being tracked.”

  I glanced at Jamie. “Looking for us?”

  “I don’t know,” Chance said. “There’s seven of ’em. Most are human-shaped, though some are clearly augmented. There’s one, they say it’s the size of a carriage. Metal and flesh, nothing to protect it from the winter, four legged, long hair or mane, metal jaw and legs, tubes at the side.”

  “Metal—” I started.

  Jamie turned around, hurrying across the room to his bed. He picked up some paper and walked back to us, scribbling.

  He’d never been an artist, unless he was drawing from memory. With the speed at which he’d drawn it out, it was shaky at best. “Like this?”

  “Maybe? We didn’t see it,” Chance said.

  “There was that other guy, with the claws,” Lainie said.

  “Mancatcher?” Jamie asked.

  “Don’t know what that is,” Chance said.

  “Like a stick, with a hinge-controlled collar fixed to the end, it closes around a neck, has spikes pointing inward? Would look like…”

  Jamie drew.

  “That’s it,” Chance said. “The thing that Paul said looked like a staff.”

  I looked at Jamie.

  “Old friends?” I asked, hopefully.

  “If they’re even friendly,” Jamie said. “Something pushed them to move through quarantines.”

  “But this fast? If they were enemies, shouldn’t it have taken them longer?”

  “It’s Dog and Catcher,” Jamie said.

  “I guess we’d better hope they’re friendly,” I said.

  Previous Next

  Cut to the Quick—11.3

  “No need for the groceries,” I said, turning away from the door. “We’re going to be a little busy staying safe and free for the next short stretch.”

  “Thank you, though, for that information,” Jamie said, in a tone that sounded like it was meant more for me than for Chance, a little reminder of social niceties.

  “Where are the papers? The map?”

  “Backside of the big picture,” Jamie said. “The papers are on the bookshelf.”

  Big picture. It was a pastoral landscape with sheep scattered across it. The thing had required a short ladder to put up on the wall, and without the ladder at hand, I had to stand on my toes to touch the very bottom of the frame, lifting it off its hooks.

  “Careful,” Jamie said, as the painting tipped. It was large enough that I couldn’t touch the left and right sides of the frame with my arms spread. I still managed to catch the bottom and one side of the frame and keep it from smashing to pieces on the floor and furniture.

  I laid it on the floor, painting down, the blank backside facing the ceiling, then turned toward the bookshelf. It was floor to ceiling, with vertical columns in addition to the horizontal, sectioning it off into cubes with open faces. The wood was dark and altered to be more interesting, lacquered to make the lights and darks stand out even further, with metal bracing around the edges and fixing it to the wall. It wasn’t particularly tall—I could reach the second highest shelf if I stood on my toes—four rows high, six columns.

  “Back of the shelves,” Jamie said.

  “I remember,” I said. I reached to the back of the shelf and found the notch to hook my finger inside. I pulled the loose panel forward and grabbed the papers behind it before pushing the panel back into place.

  “Left side, closer to the bottom is the personal stuff. As you go further right, you’ll find the papers for longer-term goals.”

  “I remember, I remember,” I said, absently. I stepped onto one of the shelves to reach the higher, leftmost shelf. “This is where you stashed my notes on the boxes with the stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said, very casually. A moment later, he uttered a quick, surprisingly spooked, “Sy! Stop!”

  I stopped.

  “Unless you changed it and you didn’t tell me, you rigged a trap there.”

  Trap. Here?

  Traps here. I remembered now.

  “Trap?” Lainie asked, her voice small.

  “I remember, Jamie. Wow,” I lied through my teeth, ignoring Lainie’s question. “Cut me some slack. It’s been a few weeks, but I know where stuff is.”

  “Uh huh,” he said, apparently not buying any of it.

  I climbed up on the next shelf, so I could reach over top of the bookcase, and I found the oil lamp that was set there. I unwound the thread that was attached to the mechanism at the side, then wound it around one of the little nubs that held the metal edging on the border of the bookcase.

  “You have traps in this place?” Lainie asked.

  “Yes. Don’t touch anything,” I said.

  “He’s grumpy when he wakes up,” Jamie said. “Ignore him. And don’t touch anything.”

  Now confident that the bookshelf with our notes wouldn’t go up in flames and take half of the apartment with it, I was free to move more panels and collect the papers.

  Jamie finished ripping the paper backing off of the picture. He enlisted Chance’s help in moving the canvas over to the dining table. We’d chosen a smaller table, because the large tables had felt so empty after Mrs. Earles’ crowded breakfast tables, and the edges of the picture hung over either side of the table.

  In clean, confident lines, the city was sketched out. Roads, buildings, and places of interest, as if from a bird’s eye view. Chance and Lainie, who we hadn’t yet told to leave, drew nearer, looking.

  I began sorting through the papers.

  “I had those nice and organized,” Jamie said.

  “They’re still organized,” I said. I tapped the sheaf of papers to the side of my head, “But they’re organized in a way that falls in line with how my brain works.”

  “It’s going to take me forever to get them sorted back in the right way,” he said, exaggerating his tone to match the words. “We’re here.”

  He tapped the map, one building marked out with a bolder outline and a symbol scribbled within.

  “They came from the direction of the military district,” Chance said.

  Jamie tapped the edge of the Marina that bordered the Boatyards.

&
nbsp; “Were they together? Spreading out?”

  “Don’t know,” Chance said.

  “We traveled from, let’s see, here… to here,” I said, identifying the main road we’d taken to go from the Theater district to Marv’s and then to Candida and Drake’s, my finger tracing the line.

  “They’ll catch our scent,” Jamie said. “Somewhere near here. From there, they’ll refocus and start to close in on us. How long ago were they seen? Do you know?”

  Chance shook his head. “About… ten minutes ago?”

  Jamie nodded, but didn’t offer anything to follow that tidbit of information.

  “No way of telling just what their approach might look like,” I said. “Might be worth having Chance and Lainie head them off.”

  “What?” Chance asked, slightly alarmed. Lainie looked doubly so.

  “Go home. Either they’ll be there or they’ll be there soon. They’ll have our scent and they’ll trace our path to your place. You can tell them some basics. That we’ve been by a few times, limited working relationship. Don’t volunteer anything, but don’t give them a reason to feel like they need to squeeze you for information either. Maybe don’t mention these papers,” I said. “That’ll cause more trouble than good.”

  “What are the papers?” Chance asked.

  “Resources,” I said. “Dastardly plans. Knowing the details would only hurt us and hurt you. Now go.”

  They looked to Jamie for confirmation.

  “Why are you looking at him?” I asked.

  “Dog and Catcher will be the ones who caught the scent, and they should be front and center. They’re nicer than you’d think, so don’t be too intimidated,” Jamie said. “Get ahead of this, make sure Drake and Candida don’t dig themselves into a bad situation out of loyalty. If you run, they’ll still track you down, but it’ll turn out worse.”

  “Fuck,” Chance said, with a great deal of emphasis.

  I jumped in, “If you have any latent frustration over how we ruined your lives or anything, then you might want to vent about it to their faces. It’ll make them sympathetic to you.”

  “Won’t it hurt you?” Chance asked.

  I shook my head. “If it really is Dog and Catcher, then they’ll get it. They know us.”

  “Is that really a recommendation in their favor?” Lainie asked.