by wildbow
“We do,” Lillian said. She fixed the cloth, then climbed over the divide to straddle the seat beside Mary. She breathed out the words, “I have no idea what to feel right now.”
“I know what that’s like,” Ashton said. “Try to pick a good feeling.”
“Mm,” Lillian made a sound. “I want to slap him, as part of us summarily kicking his ass and wiping the smirk off his face. Then call him names for about an hour. While he’s gagged, and can’t say anything back.”
“I said a good feeling,” Ashton said.
“That is a good feeling, hon,” Lillian said. She stroked Ashton’s head, careful not to mess with his hair.
“I want to see Jamie,” Ashton said.
“I agree,” Lillian said. “But I can understand that you grew a great deal more attached to Jamie than any of us.”
“He was my first friend. I wonder what he’s doing, and how Sylvester plans to use him.”
“He might not,” Helen said. “He has to keep the act alive.”
“But he might,” Mary said.
Too many possibilities to cover.
Heads turned as the horse galloped, pulling them behind them. The clip they were going was less sedate than was the norm, and Mary was young for a wagon driver. Perhaps not so unusual in a city where farmer’s children might take on duties, but all put together, they were attention-grabbing, a curiosity.
That came second to the mission. The hunt.
They were finally chasing him. Finally, after months of looking.
And with that in mind, every set of eyes on them felt like they belonged to Sylvester, that they might, the moment the wagon had passed, somehow communicate a message, or set something in motion.
Yet, if she focused too much on them, then there was the risk that she’d miss another trap.
She had to trust herself. That was the key. She knew how her body functioned. Her mental exercises and countless hours of practice had honed her ability to lay out a course of action and to carry them out, adapting at any step along the way.
“It feels like a trap waiting to be sprung,” Lillian said.
“Yes,” Mary said, validated that her friend was thinking along the same lines she was.
“He could try something at any moment. He’ll be looking out for us. And this… this orphanage of his, and I’m not even going to get into that because what in the King’s name is that about, but he placed it on the outskirts. Remember how he gloated about how he knew where we’d arrive in the city, because there were only so many routes to take? He mentioned it when we were talking about the places the Devil’s wagonfuls of children could come in.”
“I remember,” Mary said.
“As we get closer to this road out to the edge of town, we run more risk that he’ll try something. He can set something up there…”
“But,” Helen said. “Remember, he wants to see us. He wants us to show up.”
It wasn’t a reassuring statement.
Mary could feel her heartbeat quicken as they hit the country road. There were no ambushes, no attacks, no tricks.
Almost, she wondered if he’d simply absconded. If he’d bolted and left the city.
But then the building loomed, the top of it visible over a field of rust-red wheat.
Wooden cranes with crews, pallets, and counterweights were arranged around the building. Construction material was everywhere, and the building itself was only mostly complete. It was a manor, extensive and elaborate, with children sitting and playing in the yard out front.
“It’s a damn playground,” Lillian said. “Those pallets, the construction work. He damn well planned for the house to be in progress when we arrived.”
“I like it,” Ashton said. “It’s a very interesting house.”
The fields of rust-red wheat extended around to either side of the house, in the space behind it, and in the field opposite the house, so the road effectively cut through it. The fields offered virtually impenetrable cover, and they ensured that no matter which direction Sylvester ran, he could disappear. He had to have been thinking about the fields when he set up the house.
“Odds on there being traps in the wheat?” Mary asked.
“Oh lords,” Lillian said.
Mary slowed the horses, then brought them to a stop out front.
There he was. He stood in the front doorway, a cigarette in his hand, smoking, watching them.
Mary tied the reins, then hopped down. The other Lambs were right behind her.
The squeals, laughs, and voices of the children stopped.
There were two dozen children out front. By the time Mary, Helen, Lillian and Ashton had reached the point where the the driveway of the orphanage met the road, there was silence.
Each and every one of the children, some as young as eight, some nearly as old as Sylvester, stared, expressions blank.
Sylvester, meanwhile, only smiled, holding his cigarette.
“Cute,” Helen said. “They’re acting. He told them to act this way.”
“If we had some of the little ones with us, they’d be bothered by this,” Lillian observed. “Actually, now I’m remembering Duncan’s misadventure with the two youths that pulled a gun on him, and I’m a touch bothered.”
“I don’t see what’s so strange about the way they’re acting,” Ashton said.
Behind them, one of the horses huffed, stamping the ground with her hooves.
When you want to look one way, he’ll act elsewhere.
Mary turned, reaching under her shirt to her belly. There were two things there. One was a knife, and one was her bola.
The man at the wagon was taller than most unmodified men, wore a button-up shirt and slacks, and had modified hands, feet, and head. The head looked like an exceptionally poor taxidermy job of a very large rabbit. The mouth yawned open as if it were perpetually screaming.
Sylvester’s limber assistant.
He saw her reacting and pulled away from the seat of the carriage, knife in hand.
Almost, almost, her instinct told her to respond to the image of a knife with a knife of her own. Instead, she drew the bola.
The man twisted, turned, and bolted, while she started the bola spinning. His sheer speed caught her off guard, as he headed for the back end of the wagon. He’d be taking off down the road, or circling around the back of the wagon to head for the field, where he’d no doubt been waiting.
She threw, making the adjustments in the last fraction of a second to throw the bola.
It caught the rabbit man around the legs. The summary fall looked brutal.
“Helen,” Mary said, pointing. She followed up with gestures, hidden behind her back.
“On it,” Helen said, bouncing as she headed for the rabbit-man.
Already, Mary was striding toward the house, Lillian a step behind her.
When you want to go somewhere, he’ll upset your footing.
She deliberately stepped off of the path, nudging Lillian off the path as well. She wasn’t positive she’d seen the playing children walking on it, and that made her suspicious.
The children stood.
Sylvester raised his arm.
One of the cranes moved in response, lowering, an empty pallet descending in the direction of the front door.
The children approached, expressions still blank, reaching for Mary and Lillian.
Mary drew her knife, and the children closest to her stopped in their tracks.
“Mary!” Lillian admonished, aghast.
Ashton pushed past them, reaching out to the crowd of children.
As the wooden pallet descended to Sylvester, Mary noted that many other cranes were using ropes, but this one was using chain. She put away the knife.
With that, the children closest to her found courage and clutched at her clothes and her wrists. She was stronger than even the largest of them, but there were a number of them.
“Ow,” one child said, as they grabbed at her skirt and cut themselves. They pulled back
.
She put all of her effort toward drawing closer to Ashton.
Sure enough, the grip slackened. She found the strength to push through the crowd, and there was virtually no resistance.
Sylvester stepped onto the pallet. Simultaneously, the thing began ascending.
Mary closed the distance at a full run, now. She leaped, grabbing the top of a window shutter, then hauled herself up enough to get a foothold, springing over to grab the edge of the balcony over the front porch.
“You know, using Ashton is damn unfair,” Sylvester said. “It’s practically cheating.”
She grabbed for one of the smaller posts of the balcony’s railing of the porch for a handhold, and it came free. Only in the last moment did she manage to grab the edge of the balcony. She dangled there for a moment before she began the arduous process of climbing up.
The post hadn’t been nailed, screwed, or otherwise fixed in place. Loose, and no doubt intentionally so. In frustration, she swept her hand against the remainder of the railing, knocking each and every one of the loose posts out of their housing and into the dense bushes that waited below.
“You were always the most graceful Lamb,” Sylvester taunted.
She twisted, reaching, and turned around.
When she pulled out a gun, and not a knife, the smirk dropped off of Sylvester’s face.
She didn’t shoot him. She might have, but she didn’t have a clear line of sight to his knee. Instead, dangling from one hand, aiming with the other, she shot at one corner of the pallet.
Mary fired six times in total, each shot hitting the mark and eliciting its screams from the crowd of children.
She didn’t wait to see the results. She turned around, swung her legs forward, then used the momentum to raise up her upper body, shifting her grip to climb up onto the balcony.
The sound of creaking and the eventual snap as the chain tore through the damaged wood at one corner of the pallet put a grim smile on her face.
Sylvester still ascended. The pallet was now askew, one corner very low, the other corner high, and the planks that made up the three foot by three foot wooden platform were arching a little under his weight. He gestured up to the crane operator.
Mary focused on the climb. Every piece of this building that she could use for climbing was suspect. She looked at the building face with a fresh eye. There were patches here and there that glistened in the sunlight. There were shutters that lay there, inviting.
Stay focused. The gap was growing. Where was he going?
With the help of the crane operator, he could position himself wherever he wanted around the house. He could even access the interior, through the incomplete portions. There was cloth set up to keep the wind from blowing inside, but it was easy enough for the pallet to move adjacent and for Sylvester to climb past it.
Mary took the hard route, drawing a knife and using it as leverage for climbing, to reach the overhang above the balcony.
Helen had finished tying up the rabbit and attaching the man to the wagon, and was on her way back, and the horses—damn it, the horses were only partially attached to the wagon. The rabbit had managed to cut some of the straps. Ashton and Lillian were together, dealing with the children. Ashton was handling a lot of the talking.
That was fine. Mary gestured to Helen, and Helen ran right past Lillian and Ashton to start scaling the exterior of the house.
“It’s trapped, watch your handholds!” Mary called.
The building looked to be, going by the windows, two floors tall, with a section at the middle that was three stories tall, but the ceilings were particularly high, so it was as tall as a building with twice as many floors.
The similarities between this and the Devil’s tower didn’t escape Mary.
She climbed up onto the roof. Below, Helen was grabbing at the slats of wood that lined the exterior of the house, grabbing each one from the underside and hauling herself up.
Sylvester was already out of reach. There had to be a way to do this.
The speed with which the pallet had raised and fallen—he could only descend so fast. That meant, if there was a good way to get up to him, somehow, keeping in mind that he was a solid thirty feet over her head—
“Helen!” Mary called out. “Intercept him if he comes down!”
“Okay!” Helen said, with the musical enthusiasm of a cheery student answering a beloved teacher.
Mary ran across the roof, eye out for traps and snags. She saw the odd patches of shingles and avoided them, running for the tower that held up the crane itself, while she reloaded her gun.
Did he not anticipate this? There were no traps. There was nothing complicating her climb.
Sylvester was signaling to be put down. He didn’t look concerned as he watched her climb, but that didn’t say much.
If he wasn’t concerned, that could easily be amended.
She drew her gun, and Sylvester dropped down, holding the chain where the corner of the pallet was, low down enough that the entire pallet was between him and her.
She fired at one corner of the pallet again. She might have chosen the one he was holding on to, but she was reasonably sure that would have killed him.
He didn’t deserve her being this nice, at this stage.
“Oh, come on!” Sylvester complained. He shifted his weight, trying to swing the pallet from side to side, as if it were a pendulum, to make it a harder shot. “Impolite.”
She was secretly proud of herself that all six shots landed, again.
It didn’t take any time for the corner of the pallet to fall away. Sylvester was left standing on the edge of the pallet, as it hung down, connected at only the corners along one side. His hands gripped the chain.
“Your aim is atrocious,” Sylvester commented, his voice ringing out. “The Mary I knew would have managed to hit me already. You keep on hitting the platform!”
Don’t tempt me, Mary thought, as she climbed. The tower of the crane was well constructed, rife with handholds, and it was a quick climb. She rose twice as fast as Sylvester was being lowered to the ground.
She reached the crane top, and scaled the underside, climbing up and over, to find her face to face with two Brunos, and a mess of winches and ropes.
“We don’t want any trouble,” the first of the Brunos said. His hands pulled away from the mechanism.
Meaning Sylvester was trapped, suspended in mid-air. Without the Brunos to work the winches, the crane didn’t move, and the platform remained where it was.
There was nothing below him except a very long drop to the roof or the house. A thirty-foot drop onto the roof would have been bad enough, but it was gently sloped. Mary doubted she could have landed it neatly and without injury, and she was more adroit than Sylvester.
She left the Brunos behind. Running along the length of the crane to where the chain hung from, she let herself fall prematurely, reaching out to grab the chain.
In that moment, she saw Sylvester looking up at her.
If a path seems too easy, it’s a trap.
He was grinning like the duchess-fucked-cat with the canary.
He spread his arms, letting go from the chain, and leaped backward off of the platform.
“Helen!” Mary called out.
Helen, standing at the peak of the roof, was already running in Sylvester’s direction.
Mary wished dearly for a strong gust of wind to blow him off course. It would be satisfying. Tragic, of course, but satisfying.
As it was, he landed almost directly in the center of the cloth that covered the unfinished portion of the one wing of the house.
A blade glinted in his hand as he slashed it, allowing himself access into the house proper, while denying her the use of the same ‘net’ to drop down onto. Helen followed him, just a few paces behind.
She was the one who was stuck.
“Lower me!” she called up to the Brunos.
They didn’t move.
She pointed the gun, which got
them moving. The chain began clicking as she was slowly lowered closer to the ground. She climbed down to the damaged platform.
When she was fifteen feet above the sloping roof, she leaped for it.
Her feet scraped as she slid dangerously close to the gutter and the drop to the ground and bushes below. Helen, who had disappeared behind Sylvester, was just now emerging.
“He locked doors behind him,” Helen said. “He was heading toward the other end of the house.”
The other end of the house.
No. That didn’t make sense. What was there? More mischief?
Mary turned, looking. The front of the house was to her left. The crowd of children was still there. At the back were…
Two carriages, parked and waiting.
If the answer seems obvious…
She headed for the front of the house at a dead run. She let herself drop, sliding over the edge of the roof to catch the gutter, her body already contorting so she could swing herself over, passing herself over to the next gutter, the one that surrounded the overhang above the balcony. She nearly lost her grip on the grease that Sylvester had arranged to put there, but it was an easy matter to maneuver her body and tumble onto the balcony itself.
She heard Ashton say, “Get him. Help her. People should treat girls nicer than that.”
Lillian.
Mary did away with all niceties, and leaped off the balcony onto the lawn below. She grunted as she landed.
Sylvester was sitting in the doorway, an unconscious Lillian in his arms. The children were approaching hesitantly.
If only Ashton had had a little more to go around, Sylvester’s own assets could have been dogpiling him this very moment.
“I want to point out—” Sylvester started.
Mary threw a knife. Sylvester ducked his head—the only readily targetable part of his body.
“—I did get the drop on you after all, in a manner of speaking.”
He reached over, and hauled on a part of the doorframe.
A lever.
Mary forced herself to her feet, legs aching, and broke into a run, chasing. There was no time to reach for a knife.
False floorboards were lifted out of place as Lillian was dragged by the hook Sylvester had attached to her clothes. Sylvester ran alongside her, stooped over, one hand on her to help ensure she kept moving.
