Twig

by wildbow

  “Can’t let him,” Jamie observed.

  “Shh,” Helen whispered.

  “I’m sure you will, Lord Leeds,” Gordon and I said. We turned to the sister. “It doesn’t seem terribly fair that you have no consequences for losing the contest. How do we decide if it can be followed through on?”

  “The nice thing about maintaining the status that we do,” the sister said, “Is that when the scales are unbalanced, we’re invariably on top.”

  “Existence is unfair, but it’s unfair in your favor?” Gordon and I asked.

  “Exactly. I have a team of doctors at my disposal. The three of them can work on making my project a reality,” she said. She gave me the same smug smile that she’d given her brother. “I find it very telling that you jumped straight to finding objections and flaws in my design. Are you not keen for my bidding game?”

  “More like a game is more fun if there’s something at stake, my lady. What if we said that if they couldn’t make it a reality, one of them would be executed at random?”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  She hadn’t hesitated a second. Was there no loyalty to the doctors that maintained her, or was she an effective bluffer?

  “It does become a charade, though,” Gordon and I said. “A farce, to have twenty-four doctors submit their individual ideas, to be independently judged—”

  “—And a long train journey to manage it,” she said, without missing a beat. “Your reluctance is showing through, Sylvester.”

  “That isn’t where I was going with my objection,” Gordon and I said. It was so hard to avoid saying ‘we’ while still maintaining the independent schematic in my head. Gordon was a machine of memories and ideas and impressions that required constant attention to maintain.

  I paused, making use of the hanging thread of my statement to reorganize, to get everything straight, before Gordon and I said, “I’m saying that the doctors will intentionally fail. They know full well that existence isn’t fair, as you just said, and they would throw the game rather than slight any of you. A lot of work to tally their responses, when they won’t take your game seriously.”

  “He does have a point,” Monte said.

  “Oh, shush, dear brother,” the sister said, waving him off.

  “The game only works with the seven of you as participants, or the twenty four doctors,” Gordon and I said.

  We need them to favor the doctors, then take the joy out of the idea, focus on the work and execution of it.

  “We’ll have the contest among us, then,” the sister said.

  “Damn it,” Gordon said. I kept my own mouth closed, my poker face intact.

  The sister smiled. “I just had my pick, so I think I get to choose who goes next…”

  “There’s a way,” Jamie said. “I—Let me.”

  “Your synergy with Sylvester is terrible,” Helen said. “You work together as a pair only because you’re so different.”

  “That was the other Jamie.”

  “Do you remember Brechwell? Do you remember how bad he was at emulating you?” Gordon asked.

  “I remember,” Jamie said. There was none of the new Jamie’s characteristic annoyance of having to reaffirm that fact. It made me wonder if the new Jamie’s annoyance was fueled by the fact that his predecessor…

  No, that was still too painful to dwell on.

  Gordon ceded control. Jamie stepped in.

  I shifted my approach.

  Not attack, not defense, nothing direct. We’d gathered the materials. We needed to draw on what we’d already established. I already knew what we wanted to use.

  Jamie and I patiently watched as the sister seemed to decide on the other girl as the next to take her turn. The taller, blonde noblewoman, the only other girl in the group of seven.

  The finger pointed, the sister enjoying her moment. “Marcella, dear.”

  “My lady,” Marcella said, curtsying in the aisle.

  Patience, timing. I leaned forward, knowing the movement would draw attention. They were still wary of me sprinting for freedom.

  Jamie and I spoke, and in it, I felt a moment of the playfulness we’d enjoyed, roughhousing, teasing each other.

  Not a barb. No fierce gripping of a knife, that made me feel pain while sharpening my focus in the moment.

  Just a sad, dull ache.

  “My lady Marcella,” we said. “What’s your greatest fear?”

  “I beg your pardon?” the sister asked, startled.

  Beside her, Monte chuckled.

  “Isn’t that the trick of the game?” Jamie and I asked. “In devising horrific fates for others, you reach deep inside, and to recognize what others might find horrifying, you tap into what you yourself fear. To win the game, you have to dig deeper into your mind, memories, and self. In the doing, you reveal vulnerabilities. Even when one wins, it’s a bittersweet victory. That is, unless you trust your friends to keep confidence.”

  Monte’s chuckle continued, picking up as I said that last part.

  “I do believe you’re suggesting something unsavory about my character, now,” the sister said, to me.

  Ah, this was tricky. The diplomatic riposte. I could say yes, and she would kill me for the insult, or I could say no, back down, and risk letting her recoup and continue forward.

  Were I dancing with Gordon in the here and now, we might have said no, maintained our stance, as part of the conversation, and tried to steer things as it continued, so that that one sour note Jamie and I had seeded it with would recur, spoil things, and create divides we could use.

  But I wasn’t.

  Yes was an answer, so was no, but silence was the third option that remained at our disposal.

  Patience.

  Let one second pass, confident, accusatory.

  I’d expected Monte to take the bait. He didn’t.

  It was Leeds.

  “Not to worry, Moth,” the blond noble said. “Our collective lips are sealed.”

  Joining his strength to mine, to bring down the Lady.

  Moth, though, was a curious appellation.

  Moth, Leeds, I thought. Then, Monte?

  Nicknames. Place names.

  No. Mothmont. The place was named after the people.

  Members of the branch of the family that the school was named after.

  Nothing we could use, but a detail to file away later.

  Monte’s chuckle died. “You walked yourself into that one, dear sister, with your made up punishment. It would be like you, to fear being grotesque, huge, and good for nothing but—”

  “And,” Moth said, very pointedly, “It would be crass to imply any more.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to find any more takers in your game,” Monte said.

  The Lady Moth pouted, the expression very calculating. “True. I had my try of it.”

  “Shall I have my try?” the Lord Leeds asked.

  “No,” she replied. Her affront was feigned as well. “No, that wouldn’t be fitting. We’ve toyed around, but at the end of the day, my dear brother is the highest ranking nobleborn on this train.”

  The pause was a loaded one.

  She was passing the lead back to Monte. Not everyone would get their try.

  I’d insulted her, and now Monte had no reason to play, no reason to tear me down strategically before finishing me off.

  “My idea about the cloak, and going under the seat?” Evette murmured.

  “Won’t work,” Gordon said, his voice soft.

  Fire and frying pan, I thought.

  The timing was good enough, and the situation dire enough to warrant the gamble.

  The first part of the gamble was plain. If our educated guess was correct.

  “Unfortunately,” Jamie and I said, “You are not the highest power in play here, Lord Monte.”

  The sheer audacity of what I’d said gave him momentary pause.

  “We’re on our way to New Amsterdam for a meeting with the Lord Infante,” Jamie and I said
, with confidence, our voices still ragged.

  The sheer audacity of that bought me another moment of life. Then Monte said what Jamie been worried about him saying, “The Lord Infante is not in New Amsterdam, fugitive, so that meeting is unlikely and impossible.”

  My eyes and the eyes of every phantasmal Lamb in the train car turned his way.

  “He is,” we said. “And I’m sure he’ll thank you for delivering us securely to him.”

  Previous Next

  Thicker than Water—14.3

  The young lord Leeds sat across from me, his narrow sword laying across his lap. The other nobles were at the far end of the train car, talking among themselves.

  Leeds was tall, but that wasn’t unusual. All of the nobles but the ‘Lady Moth’ were. His hair was immaculately slicked back, his skin lacked any sort of blemish, and he sat with such perfect stillness that I might have thought he had died on the spot.

  That would have been quite the thing to deal with.

  I shifted the position of my hand. Leeds’ hand moved almost in unison, as if there were strings attached to me, and any movement on my part made for an equal and matching reaction on his.

  If I moved my hand in any way that put me in a better position to grab the sword, his hand moved closer to the handle.

  No other part of him moved. No tells, no tricks.

  The other Lambs sat around us, but he couldn’t see them.

  “In practice,” Gordon observed, “this is working better than the discussion was.”

  “Agreed,” Evette said. She was still standing on the seat behind Leeds, arm draped over the top of it, looking down at the rest of us. Her other arm dangled, touching Gordon’s hair.

  Helen sat beside Gordon. Jamie sat beside me.

  “Sylvester is good at a number of things,” Jamie said. I kept my mouth shut as he talked. “Action, acrobatics, fiddly things with his hands—”

  Fiddly things? I thought.

  He cracked a smile. “social manipulation, thinking fast, assessing and investigating a situation, consciously or subconsciously, making mental connections, problem solving, presentation, I could go on. He’s clever.”

  “Too clever, sometimes,” Gordon said.

  “Shh, be kind,” Helen said. “Sylvester is in a rough spot. Don’t kick him while he’s down.”

  “He’s resilient,” Gordon said.

  “Point is,” Jamie said, patiently, “Right now, he’s doing what he always does. He has the same capabilities, but they’re divided between us. There might be a small advantage if he needs to switch from one methodology to another quickly, but we’re in a bad place when he needs something like an aggressive approach—”

  Jamie indicated Gordon.

  “—With some mental connections while he’s at it,” Jamie finished, indicating himself.

  “Or when he needs to lean on me,” Evette said. “We’ll be in a bad place then.”

  “I think it’s best that we don’t put you front and center in Sy’s head,” Gordon said.

  “Agreed,” Jamie said. Helen nodded.

  “We’ll see,” Evette said. She turned, looking at the others at the other end of the train car, while my eyes remained on Leeds. “They’re figuring out what to do with us.”

  “So are we,” Gordon observed. “What are we doing with us?”

  Evette spoke, “Even if they finish that discussion by deciding we’re lying, they probably won’t jump straight to killing us.”

  “Not much we can do if they do,” Gordon observed. “We broke their stride just as they were handing us back to Monte for him to kill. That was good. Are we counting on being able to slip away? With Shirley?”

  “Shirley is a snarl,” Jamie said.

  Marcella, the blonde noblelady, stepped out of the car, passing into the train car where the doctors were.

  Gordon spoke, “I think we need to do something with Leeds. If we can put some distance between ourselves and the nobles here, we can tap into other resources.”

  “I think we should wait,” Helen said. “Bide our time.”

  “Really?” Gordon asked. “We’re going to argue this? They’re nobles. If we bide our time, there might not be any weak points or opportunities that pop up for us to exploit. We just end up getting closer and closer to a terminally bad situation.”

  Helen twisted around to better look at Leeds. “I think there might not be any weak points or opportunities for us to exploit in the here and now.”

  “Unless we create one,” Gordon said.

  “Me?” Helen asked.

  “You,” Gordon said. “If there’s no objection?”

  “I’ll just wait my turn,” Evette said.

  “You’re not getting a turn,” Gordon said. “Now be quiet.”

  Jamie vacated the seat next to me. Helen collapsed into it.

  I put the whole of my focus into her, letting the others become blurs in the background, vague sentiments and images.

  Helen, as I brought her into sharper focus in my mind’s eye, demanded that I tax my imaginary senses. Helen was art in life. She was, in my estimation, more beautiful than half of the nobles present, just in how well she was put together, how easy she was to look at and how captivating she could be when she’d drawn in the eye. Even then, she had them beat, because I was pretty sure that most of these young, attractive nobles were leaning on the exotic clothes and context. Helen could look like a force of nature while wearing a potato sack.

  She smelled good. The sensory inputs were important. I let my eyes close, and I tried to push my brain to create the smell of Helen. She could naturally produce a scent that other women strove for with chemicals and bottles, and then augmented it with something more artificial and mild.

  Not as forced as Ashton, but attention had been given over to everything.

  In training my senses to capture her essence, I pushed more of my thought processes into getting more out of the senses I did have. The taste in the air, of lingering sweat and humanity, and the taste and smell of the noble sitting across from me.

  Helen was a paradox. The human brain had a part to it that reacted on instinct, that pushed for the most basic needs. Warmth, food, water, sex. There was a primal center, and for Helen, that primal center was front and center. Everything else was camouflage that let her draw nearer until she could take what it was she wanted.

  She was driven by very simple wants and needs. But those wants and needs were characteristically things that were wanted and needed now. Society and civilization and social niceties kept us from snatching up all the food we could eat and stuffing our faces with them, from mashing our lips against the lips of each attractive person we saw.

  But for Helen, it was different. That same process that made her need and want also made her very capable of holding back from partaking. The patience was built into her on the ground level.

  As I constructed the illusion, trying to figure out how she would move and act in a more complex dynamic, I felt a blade touch my throat. It scraped skin as it moved slightly.

  I opened my eyes at my own leisure.

  Leeds was holding the sword.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Resting my eyes,” Helen and I said, lying easily. I continued putting the mental picture together.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think someone would be able to rest their eyes in your shoes.”

  Control of expression, control of my body. Look at him, how he was looking at me, and decide.

  No sooner did I decide that I didn’t need to put on any persona at all than I let my body and expression empty of all Sylvester. All of the pain, all of the will, all of the character.

  “Careful,” I heard Gordon say, from a far away place, and he wasn’t talking about the sword or the noble.

  It wasn’t a perfect emptying. Remnants remained. Wyvern let me bend my brain in the directions I needed it, and this wasn’t that difficult.

  The next part, the key part, was to turn my br
ain to its tasks. I had to pick out the things I needed and wanted.

  Food was secondary. None of the cake or cookies Shirley had been getting, hungry as I was.

  Safety. I needed safety. Physical safety. Escape.

  I needed mental safety. My focus turned to the nobles at the other end of the car, who were staring at me and the sword at my throat. It extended beyond that, to the train car next door. To Shirley. Without her, I was liable to unravel.

  The key, I assumed, was to savor. I was here, what I wanted was there. The space between was tantalizing. The time between was. So long as I wanted it badly enough that I could taste it, the present me and the future me were so close as to be indistinguishable, and there was no contradiction in being a creature of want and being a patient creature.

  And wanting something badly enough to taste it was not a stretch when I was already recreating distinct smells and sensations in my mind’s eye.

  The others were talking in stern tones. I could catch the cadence of it, in the background. There were two sides to this argument. The more aggressive side was winning.

  “You’re the third in the hierarchy,” Helen and I said.

  “You’re the one with the sword to his throat,” Leeds told me. “I would address that first.”

  Helen and I looked down at the gleaming length of the blade.

  We looked up to meet his eyes. My eyes were cold, dispassionate. I was Helen without the mask on.

  Gut feeling told me that the noble would respect this more than the act.

  “I’m going to assume you found a way to give yourself a dose of one drug or another, based on the things I’m seeing,” Leeds said. “Narrowed pupil, change in breathing.”

  My breathing was slower. I was calmer.

  Monte approached, traveling down half the aisle before asking, “Is there a problem?”

  “I don’t think so,” Leeds said. “He may have found a way to dose himself with something without moving his hands or feet.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Monte said. “Ask if you need help. We’re just waiting on Marcella.”

  Leeds didn’t say or do a thing to express just how little he wanted to do that. I still knew.

  Establish a personal relationship.