Twig

by wildbow

  I didn’t have time to fully secure my grip or adopt the right pose. I hugged the rope close to my body, gripping it with one hand and both thighs before I hit the face of the building.

  The muscle-and-chitin warbeast wasted no time in flinging itself over the edge.

  It landed a short distance below and to one side of me, with all of its claws perfectly positioned to find holds and gaps on the face of the building—where window frame met window and where there were gaps between stones. It should have bounced off and fallen to the street below, but instead, it simply embedded itself into the wall. A four-legged, three-hundred pound, abdomen-less spider.

  In the time it took me to shift my grip and get both hands securely on the rope, it asserted its position, and with a clicking sound, began making its way up to me with alarming speed.

  I pulled a pin from the sole remaining canister, leaving it where it was at my belt, and began half-climbing, half-running along the outside of the wall.

  The gas that billowed from the canister drifted down to the warbeast. It had to take a detour to get out and away from the gas, which bought me seconds to climb up further.

  It had circled down and around to my left to approach me from the side the gas wasn’t falling from. I wasn’t in a position to turn the gas on it again. It wouldn’t buy me any meaningful amount of time, compared to what it cost me, now.

  I wondered at my odds with a knife in hand, one hand on a rope, against one of the finer specimens of a warbeast I’d seen to date.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to see my odds. A piece of furniture fell from above; a dense bedside table or a clock too large to be a mantlepiece and too small to be a grandfather clock. It struck the warbeast, and knocked it from the wall.

  I hurried to climb up to the source. Once I reached the window, Jamie and Shirley pulled me inside more than I’d managed to climb up. The moment I was inside, I placed the canister on the windowsill and closed the window, so the canister was sitting outside.

  “Signaling where we are?” Jamie asked.

  “More like I’m trying to keep more from following,” I said. “Lose the scent trail, or muck with whatever senses they rely on.”

  We backed away from the window, looking up and over.

  By the time we’d reached the bedroom wall furthest from the window, there were two more of the spike warbeasts at the edge of the roof we’d just left, perched and tense, rain streaming off of them.

  They leaped, and the three of us turned, exiting the bedroom, cutting through the apartment, and entering the hallway proper of the apartment building.

  “Ground level?” Jamie asked.

  “Think so. Or close to. I rigged a whole squadron of the stitched to explode, instead of producing gas. Mauer’s out there too, of course. He’s got the guns, but I can’t imagine he wants to fire willy-nilly. What I’m hoping is that we can blow it up. Do enough damage to the Crown forces that Mauer feels compelled to seize the opportunity.”

  “What do we do about Mauer then? He’s far away, and crossing that ground isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Leave him,” I said. “Original plan was to let them get each other bloody, set them against each other and then capitalize on weaknesses and opportunity. But now we’re here, Crown isn’t too enamoured with us, if Mauer wants to go to town, I’m happy to let him.”

  “We let him live?” Jamie asked.

  I could hear the doubt in his voice, the question. It matched my own.

  “I’m not sure either,” I said.

  The smoke canister on the windowsill had forced the warbeasts to take a detour. They’d slipped into other rooms and apartments, and from the sounds of it, were tearing through doors and walls, were navigating rooms and hallways. Somewhere along the line, they hadn’t found another entrance to pursue us or appear out of nowhere and chase. No heads meant little capacity to reason or be inventive, it seemed.

  They were hunters, mechanical, simple and incredible in performing the one task they were meant for, but they didn’t test boundaries or break ground on their own.

  We made our way down to the third floor before stopping to rest. We approached a window at the end of one hallway and peeked out.

  Peace. Conflict hadn’t broken out. Stitched were parked and waiting, out of sight from the building Mauer was supposedly in. Squadrons and soldiers were ready, and any number of vans had warbeasts waiting within. Custom made for this task.

  Shirley took a seat further down the hallway, staying clear of the window, giving us some space.

  “I gave them direction on what to do to corner Mauer,” I said. “A lot of those same tools, they won’t really slow me down. Warbeasts that make disruptive noise, stitched that explode into clouds of poison gas, parasites, stitched that run fast…”

  “What can you do about stitched that run fast?”

  “Stitched that are new and heavily modified? They won’t have the same programming or alterations that advanced stitched do. The old weaknesses—”

  “Weaknesses hold. I get it. Fire.”

  “I don’t anticipate a problem. That said, I didn’t expect you two to be along for the whole thing. You’re not immune in the same ways.”

  “We’re not,” Jamie said. “I was watching everyone come and go. I have a pretty good idea of where our enemies are. I wish that meant I could see a good way out and away. But they really want Mauer dead.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s a thing. I investigated about what Emmett said. Gomorrah. Dead end. Then I sort of told the Infante that Mauer was also chasing the Gomorrah thing, which he was, and I sort of hinted that Mauer didn’t reach a dead end.”

  “And that relates to them really wanting Mauer dead. There’s something to this?”

  “There’s a lot to this,” I said. I exhaled. “It’s nice to be able to talk about it, finally, work it out with a set of listening ears to help me figure it out.”

  Another vehicle parked outside. The guy driving it looked like military, and the stitched horse looked sturdier than the usual. The vehicle probably held another squad of soldiers within.

  Jamie glanced back over his shoulder at Shirley, who had her shoes off and was rubbing her feet. “The Gomorrah thing. I talked to Emmett about it. The missing children. The Academy takes them. Auctions them off as prime material for experiments?”

  I gestured to him and myself, then back again. “Prime material. But, there’s more to it. Because when someone like Mauer or Fray dig too deep, then the Crown steps in, and all possible evidence gets removed. A hundred or more people killed, Academy asset and child alike, to silence something on a scale and level that the Academy wouldn’t normally care that much about.”

  “More than a hundred?” Jamie asked.

  “Hard to count. I’d like you to visit the location with me, if they don’t erase it completely. Your brain would be admirably suited to the task of deciphering that particular mess.”

  “I’d be happy to lend my brain.”

  “It’s a good brain,” I said.

  I wanted to get the banter going again. I wanted to find our stride, much as we’d had it before.

  When it came to the task at hand, at least, we were more or less on the same page. It was in the easy companionship that trust had been more or less broken.

  This wasn’t easy.

  “I keep wanting to joke or poke fun at you,” I said, staring out of the window.

  “Joking and poking fun is good.”

  “Or make witty remarks, or tease, or pick on you.”

  “Sure,” Jamie said.

  “And when I could bind up my brain and keep things neatly boxed up and organized… that was doable. And it felt normal and friendly.”

  “What does it feel like now?”

  “Less normal and friendly,” I said. “When I want normal and friendly. I don’t want to give the wrong ideas or trigger some bad reflex.”

  “It’s fine, Sy,” Jamie said.

  “No, it really isn’t.”<
br />
  “We can talk about it later. I do want to have a discussion. Put this to rest, maybe.”

  “It’s not something that lends itself to rest, because it’s not a dilemma that can be reconciled or fixed, don’t you get it?” I asked. “And it’s not fine either. You do realize that the first time we had a serious talk on the subject, the first Jamie went and disappeared forever? Then the second time we had a serious talk on it, I went and almost disappeared forever?”

  “I realize.”

  “You’re my friend. And I want that, it’s good and you’re a good person and… I need to find out where the lines are drawn, and so long as there’s this part of me that’s afraid of stepping too far and saying something and triggering that reflex or opening the box that should not be opened… I know I screwed up, Jamie. You know that, right? I’m sorry too?”

  “It was mucky. But really, it’s something to be talked about later.”

  “I’m afraid of overstepping and I’m afraid of understepping. I don’t want to be reserved and holding back, because what we need, especially here, surrounded, with so much at stake, is we need to dance. To move in sync.”

  “And there’s no sync,” Jamie said. He sighed.

  “I’m worried there isn’t, or it won’t be there when it counts,” I said. “Gut feeling, is all.”

  “Gut feelings are important, but—”

  “Jamie,” I said. I had to pause, find the phrasing. “I put a lot of myself into figuring out how to work with the other Lambs. You included. Those gut feelings, there’s an awful lot of foundation they’re rooted in. A lot more on the gut, a little less on the feeling.”

  Jamie drew in a deep breath, then sighed.

  “Stakes are high, situation is dangerous, there’s no easy exit with this many people packed into the area, and the fact is, we have to figure this out. The inability to banter properly is a symptom of a larger problem. One that will see us killed or captured within the hour if we don’t resolve it.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “That’s fair.”

  “I’m just saying, if there’s talking to do, maybe we talk it out before we tackle this,” I said, gesturing at the window.

  As if prompted by the gesture, a bird flew past the window.

  A very large bird.

  “Shit on a mad bat,” I said, stepping back from the window. Jamie mirrored me, backing away. “Shoes on, Shirley.”

  “What was that?” Jamie asked.

  “That would be the Falconer’s bird,” I said. “A pet of one of the Infante’s charges.”

  “Ah,” Jamie said. “Shitty bat indeed.”

  The bird flew past the window again.

  “Confirms it, that. She knows where we are,” I said. “And she will be harder to slip away from than the spike beasts.”

  “Noted,” Jamie said. He was frowning.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “I was thinking it would be better to run than to fight this one, but I’m not seeing a good avenue to run.”

  “I came to that conclusion forever ago, way before we jumped from the rooftop,” I said. “It’s why I said I wanted to do this. See it through.”

  Jamie had the decency to look annoyed.

  “You did that because you wanted to,” he told me. “Not because you saw a lack of options.”

  “That’s a pack of lies,” I told him, trying to be lighthearted, feeling the gap between us in the process.

  “Conversations and figuring out your motives back there are going to have to wait,” Jamie commented.

  “Sure,” I said. “Nobles incoming. Probably.”

  “Probably. With that in mind, how do you feel about being bait?”

  “Do I ever say no to being bait?” I asked.

  Previous Next

  Thicker than Water—14.14

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the rain momentarily let up. It was a trick of the weather, a shift in the already high winds that lifted the raindrops up, holding them in the air, before letting them drop.

  A moment of relief in the patter, followed by a sharp rap as the rain resumed.

  I flung myself out of the window, arms out to the sides, eyes wide, my open, borrowed shirt fluttering around behind me.

  I landed on the top of one of the carriages, shoes sliding on the rain-slick roof of the vehicle, impact startling the horse. I managed to avoid sliding off, even with the height and angle of my jump.

  Heads were turning. I could see the greater picture now. Looking through the windows, we had only been able to see a narrow portion of things.

  Nobody shot me or shot at me. Not right away. That had been a concern.

  The group that Jamie had estimated would be near the front doors, was there, out of sight of the window and of Mauer’s position. There would be the people from further upstairs moving down, some people moving up, with Shirley and Jamie caught between.

  They weren’t the only group he’d been able to identify. There were two other groups the Falconer could be leading, based on what we already knew about the nobles looking to lead the army that was forming to surround Mauer. Jamie had anticipated where and when they would turn up, based on distance, the speed of her ‘falcon’, and the speed of the vehicles on the road. Vehicles at the end of the road changed course as I appeared, immediately looking to park, so the occupants could get out. Odds were good that Jamie had been fairly close to exactly right.

  The first of the people here and there started to react. The hesitation had been fed by the fact that they hadn’t wanted to reveal their positions or presence to Mauer. Everything had to be done out of sight, often with other obfuscation, and deciding to stop was a call that had to be made by people at the top. That meant there had to be communication, even if it was a glance on the part of the subordinate and a nod from the officer in charge.

  The result was as if I’d hurled myself from that window into water in the greatest of cannon balls, but the splash was delayed by a full five seconds. The ‘splash’ was shouts, orders, and people moving. The group by the door broke away, moving to chase. Vehicles got in the way of other vehicles.

  I hopped down off the carriage, onto the road, and ran, feet splashing in puddles as I crossed the street. Horses, carts, and pedestrians provided some measure of cover.

  Stitched exited one of the covered wagons on the far end of the street. The wagon was the sort meant for the transport of goods, and it had hosted ten or so stitched soldiers, all armed.

  I reached to my belt and grabbed a can.

  “Grenade!” I shouted, as I threw it at the group.

  The stitched reacted, automatic, their instincts trained for a battlefield. They parted, moving to take cover, leaving me more or less free to run straight at the ‘grenade’—nothing more than a tin can with a key punched into the top. I moved right into the group of stitched, who were settling behind cover, ducking, or jogging away as well as a muscle bound stitched could.

  I could see the two in the group that weren’t reacting the same way. They followed the group, but they weren’t reacting like it was a grenade. Stupider, less trained, their outfits basic, with no jacket and only some of the equipment.

  The commanding officer, still in the vehicle, began to shout out orders.

  Each of the stitched had bands at their arm. I had to hope Evette had guessed right and that I’d remembered right.

  “Tempest to field,” I said.

  I had only a momentary glimpse of the man’s eyes widening eyes before one of the two stitched bulged violently and exploded. Meaty bits went flying this way and that, and a heavy gas cloud expanded outward. I disappeared into the midst of it.

  Passing Gordon as I made my way into the alley, I was careful to grab some of the garbage, pallets, and milk crates stacked against the wall and tip them over behind me. It gave away my position with the racket of it, but that wasn’t too important.

  Gas and obstacles behind me, my way forward mostly clear. They wouldn’t be following.
Not easily.

  Not the people.

  The concern was the experiments. The nobles.

  And, as it turned out, the squad of soldiers who were gathered in the alley, safely out of sight of Mauer. They were sitting here and there, many smoking. A

  I slowed.

  “Stay right there,” one of the soldiers called out, pointing his rifle with attached bayonet at me.

  I raised my hands, my mind going over the scenarios.

  They were too relaxed. Their body language suggested they were familiar with each other. Nobody had run to them, bringing news of trouble.

  I shifted my expression and body language, and I approached them with little concern apparent. “I’m Sylvester.”

  “Who?” one of the soldiers at the side asked me.

  “I’m part of the reason we’re here. I’m helping set up Mauer for the Infante.”

  “The kid,” the soldier who’d spoken first said. “Right.”

  “Sure,” I said, with a bit of uncertainty. “Something’s up. There’s trouble brewing. Someone used gas, and it looks like it was Mauer. He knows we’re here.”

  The soldier who was doing most of the talking looked at one or two of the others. Lieutenants? Seconds in command? Friends?

  “You’re supposed to head west, move around, wait for a horn. If Mauer flanks us, they want you ready to move in. If you’re here, you might get mistaken for Mauer’s men and shot.”

  “In the briefing, same breath they mentioned you, they said to ignore you. If we had any suspicion at all…”

  He asserted his grip on his rifle, pointing it at me.

  “…We’re supposed to shoot you.”

  I allowed only a hint of confusion to show. “And you’re suspicious?”

  “What are you even doing here?”

  “What I’m supposed to be doing?” I said, trying very much to sound like I wasn’t sure what he wasn’t understanding. “Outmaneuvering Mauer on behalf of the High Lord Infante.”

  I touched the space over my heart, declining my head in the faintest of bows.