Twig

by wildbow

  “Go home,” I said. “We’ll find you in a few hours, when we’re ready to get started.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He looked a little dazed. The highs and lows. The momentary hope, the crash of reality, followed by my offer of my reality.

  So many things were out of my hands. Arrows I’d loosed and trusted to fly straight. Boomerangs I’d thrown and trusted to return. But I couldn’t read all of the prevailing winds.

  There was more to do. Then nap, grooming and more.

  I walked around the lab, checked on the prisoners and guards, and spent five minutes standing watch over Leon while his guard stepped out to use the loo.

  It was only in the later stage of the exploration that I found Jessie. She was sitting at the top of a flight of stairs, in the shadows, leaning against the wall. Fast asleep.

  She stirred at my appearance, hand reaching for a weapon. Her eyes snapped open.

  “Shh,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  She smiled a little. Then, nearly as fast as she’d snapped awake, she slipped back under.

  “We’re as set as we’ll ever be,” I murmured. I walked past her up the stairs, checked around, and found a throw-blanket. I checked it for bugs and grossness, deemed it good enough, and brought it over to Jessie.

  The sleep she’d settled into was different than the one she had been in just a bit earlier. Utterly defenseless, this. Dead to the world, she barely stirred as I wrapped the blanket around her. I crouched in front of her, and I lifted the glasses off her face.

  Drawing a clean handkerchief from my pocket, I cleaned the glasses of smudges, wrapped the clean ‘kerchief around them, then found her bag, and slid both glasses and kerchief into a protected pocket.

  I was moving her braid so it wouldn’t tug if her head moved the wrong way when I sensed movement behind me.

  Shirley.

  “You’re back,” I said.

  She glanced at Jessie.

  “Too deep asleep now,” I said. “Nothing short of a stab wound would wake her. Not to worry.”

  “I found the carpenter. He’ll be here within the hour. Disgruntled at the late night call, but the money helps.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re not going to braid her hair into the banister, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’d never do something like that.”

  “You do a lot of things like that,” Shirley said, teasing lightly.

  My expression and tone were dead serious as I said, “Not while she’s asleep. I made Jamie and Jessie a promise long ago. That they would be safe while they were asleep. I wouldn’t betray that.”

  “She’s sleeping a lot,” Shirley observed.

  “Twelve to fourteen hours a day. Sometimes sixteen. When we’re done this job, it’ll be sixteen, to catch up,” I said. “She’s making do with less around jobs like this, so she can help me more. But she needs the memory consolidation she gets from sleep. She needs more than that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shirley said.

  “We’ll make do,” I said. “We lean on each other’s strengths, accommodate each other’s weaknesses. For Jessie, that means letting her sleep for right now.”

  “I talked to Pierre. He checked, the train is on time, and we have four hours,” Shirley said.

  “Plus half an hour for quarantine procedure, half an hour for travel from the junction to here. Five hours until Fray arrives,” I said.

  Shirley nodded.

  Five hours for the winds to change.

  “Would it be too much imposition if I asked you to watch over things, keep in touch with Pierre? Keep an eye out for emergencies? For four or so hours?”

  “I can. Can I ask why?”

  I found a seat next to Jessie, and then moved the blanket, pulling it so it also draped over my back and shoulders.

  “I see,” she said. She smiled. “I’ll scream if anything comes up.”

  “Perfect.”

  Shirley wasted no time in making her way back downstairs, giving us our space.

  Still, I was nervous. One of the guards was a question mark, Fray was a question mark. Things could happen.

  I did something I’d done thousands of times before, and I used Wyvern to adjust how my brain worked. As I’d done hundreds of times, I adjusted how it worked in respect to sleep. I used poisons and drugs to do something in that same realm that Junior had tampered with and suffered so much for. As I drifted off, I calibrated myself so my sleep would be a shallow one. The slightest thing would wake me up.

  I settled in, my feet on the step below me, arms folded against my knees, head resting against my arms, blanket over top of it to keep some of the ambient light away.

  Jessie moved her head, resting it against my shoulder.

  Being half-asleep meant being woken up once every few minutes by creaks and noises from outside, but that was fine. Because being fully asleep was a me thing, while drifting in and out of this shallow sleep meant being beside my friend and ally. It was reassuring, the constant forgetting and remembering that she was here, that she had my back and I had hers.

  I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but I felt insecure.

  All of these pawns were in play and few were wholly in my control. I was playing a game I was less familiar with while a master sat on the other side of the board. My only advantage was that Fray didn’t know she was playing against me yet. I would give up that advantage soon, and I had to hope that we came out ahead in that particular transaction.

  Previous Next

  Bitter Pill—15.5

  “Do you know what I miss about our place in Tynewear?” I asked.

  “Do tell,” Jessie said, from the other room, through the door. “Also, let me know when I can come in.”

  “You can come in any time,” I said. Then, as I heard her hand rattle the doorknob, I said, “But I’m naked, so be warned.”

  She left the washroom door alone.

  “Why do you want in?” I asked.

  “I want a towel for my hair. Can you pass one through the door?”

  “Hands are gucky,” I said, as I slicked my hair back. “So no. Give me a second…”

  I carefully picked at the towel, wrapped it around my lower body, and, not wanting to get it all gross, I pressed my hips against the cabinet below the sink to pin it in place.

  “There. Come in. I’m covered.”

  She let herself into the washroom, averting her eyes as she headed straight for the cabinet with the towels.

  “What was the thing you missed about Tynewear?”

  “Which? What? Oh. Showers. East coast, edge of the world—”

  “You’re really sticking with that, aren’t you?” she asked, as she used the towel to squeeze water out of her hair. She was already dressed,

  “So close to the heart of the Crown Empire, and what do you know? No showers.”

  “They have some in public places, like pools and athletics clubs.”

  “Point stands. No appreciation for the shower. Only baths. And baths are miserable when you’ve got stuff to do. Great if you want to stop, but terrible if you’ve a five minute window before a day full of spying, kidnapping, murder, arson—”

  “Theft. Don’t forget the rampant theft.”

  “And theft? With plans to set up a rebel enclave? Either way. Five minute baths are a tragedy.”

  “Coming from someone who has experienced tragedy, that seems very grave.”

  “It is! Terribly grave,” I said. I fixed my hair as best as I could, but it was already rebelling against the oil-wax blend I had used to try to pin it down. “Especially when we have to cut corners, no tea with breakfast, no time to toast or cook anything, just grabbing some fruit and whatever as we rush out the door, going hungry all morning…”

  “Sylvester,” Jessie said, in a very pointed way.

  “Jessie,” I said, mimicking her tone.

  “Are you hinting that you would like me to prepare breakfast while you get ready?”

  “However did you g
et that impression? No, no. Just because I let you have the bath first, with hotter water, and—”

  “I’ll see about your breakfast, Sy,” she said, with a sigh. “It’s not going to be fancy, we don’t have that long.”

  “I’ll take that as my hint to hurry things along.”

  She hung up the damp hair-towel, grabbed a brush, and left the washroom.

  I leaned in close to the mirror to check my face for any proper sign of facial hair, was disappointed, and ducked into the other room to start getting ready.

  Mary was waiting for me. Silent, she oversaw my selection of the tools and weapons as I laid them out on my bed. Ashton sat at the window, and didn’t look up as I touched it, gauging the temperature outside.

  I dressed with more warmth than was necessary. The pants meant more for winter than for fall. I wore a shirt under a heavier sweater. I couldn’t remember where it came from, but it was soft and close-knit enough to be worn on its own. Something I’d looted way back in Tynewear? Maybe Jessie had bought it during one of our supply runs, and it had found its way into my luggage.

  I grabbed a jacket but didn’t wear it. I collected everything I’d laid out on the bed, everything with its place. My gun disappeared into the inside pocket of the jacket, which I folded in such a way that the gun wouldn’t fall out. Other things were put in pockets, belt, and hidden pockets based on priority and need. I grabbed a bag and stowed the things I wouldn’t need for sure, but which would be useful to have. These too were put away based on a kind of instinct more than proper organization. Lockpicks in a front pocket of the bag, while a smoke canister and ammunition went into the bottom of the bag, sure to be buried by other things.

  “Is this how you operate, Mary?” I asked. “Is it a factor in how you’re put together? When you’re really nervous about the day, you focus a little bit on grooming? Armor yourself in fashion, arm yourself with the necessary tools, and find your center?”

  “I was only nervous in the very beginning,” she said. “Back when I didn’t know the Lambs. Then again, when Percy came up, and when the Lambs split.”

  “The very beginning. That’s when you settled on your particular style. Before then, we mostly saw you wearing the Mothmont uniform.”

  “I started wearing lace and soft fabric, to hide the steel,” she said, smiling. She touched my chest, over the heart. “What’s your soft armor hiding?”

  I could smell toast. My head turned.

  “Good luck with the mission,” she said. “I look forward to hearing the results, all the way back at Radham Academy.”

  I smiled, hiked the bag up over one shoulder, gathered the jacket under one arm, and joined Jessie in the kitchen, heels of my boots knocking the wood floor with each step.

  “Thank you,” I told her.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “It’s self-preservation, too. You get cranky when you’re tired and hungry, and I’m putting up with you for a good portion of the day.”

  “Did you eat?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m taking some of this. Toast, with liver spread. Cheese. Fruit.”

  I made a face.

  “Eat some fruit,” she said.

  Reluctantly, I took the fruit, popping it into my mouth.

  “I skipped the tea,” she said. “We can’t drink it while we walk.”

  “We could with a Dewar flask.”

  “We had a Dewar flask. We’ve had several. You keep turning them into bombs. Mostly poison gas bombs.”

  “Do I?”

  “And the glass jars with wire fasteners, and the milk bottles, which get costly, because they forced us to renew subscriptions if they couldn’t collect the used bottles—”

  Behind Jessie, Helen creeped up and stole a piece of toast. Except it was a phantom piece. Jessie, none the wiser, picked up the real version of that same piece of toast. Jessie bit into the toast with emphatic, not-entirely-serious anger.

  “Yes,” I said. “Take out your aggression on the toast, not on me. Gnash it. Gnash it good.”

  Helen’s eyes crinkled with humor as she devoured her own piece.

  Swallowing, Jessie stabbed the remaining bit of toast in my direction. “It wouldn’t be so bad if you handled it, but you leave that to me, because you don’t—”

  She paused.

  I waited, watching, as she remained where she was, toast held in the air. She stared at me, a faint frown crossing her features. If it was twelve percent of a proper frown, then it creeped up a percentage point, second by second, over a good five seconds.

  “Jessie?” I asked.

  “Shh,” she told me.

  I frowned, glanced at Helen, who shrugged, and I eased my concerns by eating my liver toast and cheese.

  “We should go,” Jessie said. “We might have to make a detour.”

  I grunted assent through a mouthful of toast, made sure I had my stuff, and hooked the strap of Jessie’s bag with my foot, lifting it up to a level where she could grab it without having to bend over.

  We vacated the apartment, and I paused before locking the door, making eye contact with Helen.

  “Watch the apartment,” I told her. I got a nod, closed the door, and locked it.

  When I turned around, the look of general concern on Jessie’s face had jumped a few dozen percentage points.

  “Helen,” I told her, doing my best to manage the handfuls of food without getting my fingers too sticky.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Where are we detouring?” I asked, as we walked down the stairs to the street.

  It was dim outside, the first rays of dawn only just reaching out. People were awake and busy, because it was seven in the morning, but the colder season was creeping in, stealing away daylight and making its approach clearly felt in the early morning. In a few weeks, water would start freezing and the air would be dry. For now, however, the salty air that blew in from over the ocean and into the city was cold and damp, the light faltering.

  “If nothing changes in the next few minutes, we might want to head to the—”

  In the distance, a train whistle screamed.

  “—train station,” Jessie finished. “Nevermind.”

  “You’re aware the trains are almost never on time?” I asked.

  “I’m aware there’s a deviation. Plus eleven minutes or minus seven, at the limit, for Laureas. When things are at that limit, about half the time, I can go down to the train station and ask.”

  “You seriously ask?” I asked.

  “I do,” she said. “And most of the time, something noteworthy happened. Enough for people at the station to talk about it with each other. Fray just arrived with her group, and she’s a tich late.”

  “I’m just imagining how you go about that. You just walk up to the ticket booth, say ‘hello Sammy, how’s work this morning? Oh, that’s good to hear. Why is the train late?’”

  “I’m a little more adroit than that, Sy.”

  “How does one adroitly manage the topic of a late train, as someone regular who isn’t a passenger?”

  “You’re dwelling on the wrong part of this. Fray has arrived. That she arrived late might be important.”

  “Maybe you think it’s adroit, but they talk among themselves about the odd girl who gets uppity about the train being late, even though she has absolutely no stake in it.”

  “Sy.”

  “Jessie. How can I trust an ally if she’s doing things behind the scenes that might hint at grave weaknesses or infirmity? This could be the fulcrum point by which our partnership regains balance or careens into disaster.”

  “There are a lot of locals who visit the station now and again purely out of a fondness for trains.”

  “Really now?”

  “Really. Can we please refocus?”

  “Little kids, I imagine. And old men. But seventeen year old girls?”

  Jessie sighed.

  “Do you like trains? Do you pay particular attention to trains here for purely selfish,
hobby-esque reasons?”

  “If I say yes, you’re going to clap your hands with glee, then file that away as one of the memories you actually hold onto, so you can use it against me. If I say no, you’re going to stubbornly stay on this like a terrier on a mousehole.”

  “So… that’s a yes?” I asked.

  “I don’t dislike trains. They make a good reference point for the flow of the city, when I’m measuring it all. When people come, when they go, the time it takes them to get from A to B, with the station itself oftentimes being one or the other—”

  “You like trains! That’s so adorable!”

  “You’re making more of this than there is.”

  “Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath, and exhaled, settling myself down. “Fair.”

  Act reasonable, let the subject drop. If there was anything to share, she would venture it, because she did want to share more of herself with me.

  “Some of my fonder memories are of the Lambs together, on the train. It’s so often a nice intermission, in the grand play of life. The pause before things start, the pause after they conclude, where we were together, me and you or us and the Lambs as a group. We can talk, but we’re still moving toward something. Everything else was prone to being interrupted, be it time at the Orphanage, let alone the actual missions.”

  I nodded, trying and failing to suppress the grin that crept over my face.

  “I’ve given you a fully loaded weapon to use against me, haven’t I?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” I said. “Not at all.”

  “That would be far more convincing if you didn’t look like the cat with the canary.”

  “I don’t want to discourage you from sharing parts of yourself,” I said. “It’s all good. I won’t use it against you.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ll forget you promised not to use it against me, and I’ll remember I didn’t believe you, and I’ll soothe my frustrations by telling myself I was right, when the time comes. But can we please just focus? Or can you do what you did back in New Amsterdam, lose your mind and let one of the ghosts take over? Because that might be preferable.”

  “Irreversible, quite possibly.”

  “But preferable all the same,” she said, smiling.