Twig

by wildbow

  Jessie raised herself up, and she moved her face closer to mine.

  She gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “On the cheek?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” she said.

  “You’re so lame!” I accused her.

  “Let me up. We have work to do,” she said.

  “Just like that,” I said. “Waving the white flag?”

  Teasing aside, I did climb off of Jessie. The two of us stood, glancing back in the direction of the station platform, where Duncan was talking to quarantine officers, still guarding the bags.

  “Your move next,” Jessie said, not making eye contact.

  “Oh, is that how we’re doing this? Back and forth? A game of one-upmanship?”

  Jessie sighed. We made our way down from the roof to the ticket booth proper.

  I asked, “One of us makes a move, the other has to work up the courage and top it, or she gets made the subject of merciless teasing?”

  “She?”

  “Well I’m not going to lose, Little Miss Ewesmont. I’m frankly interested to see where this goes. Unless you cry uncle, I’m imagining this escalating to the extent of a Fray-esque web of goings-on involving a trapeze, an Academy-engineered spider monkey that has actual spider in its makeup, a choir, and an actual uncle to cry out to. It’s an elegant lose-lose situation you’re walking into here.”

  “It really, really is,” Jessie said. She’d lifted up her glasses to rub at her eyes, as if I was already giving her a headache. I knew the truth. She was trying to hide that she was laughing. She found her composure. “For a moment, I entertained the fantasy that we might have something resembling an ordinary little romance.”

  I shifted position as I walked, giving her shoulder a bump with mine. “We’ll find a middle ground.”

  “That would be nice,” she smiled at me.

  “Can that count as my turn? A heartwarming bit of compromise?”

  “No, Sy.”

  But she pulled the same maneuver and she bumped my shoulder with hers. I took the opportunity to throw my arm around her shoulders, giving her a one armed hug.

  I could feel the tension fall away from her shoulders with my arm there.

  “How about this?” I asked. “Does this count?”

  Oh, look at that. The tension came back, just like that.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” I said.

  “It doesn’t count if you were doing it before today.”

  “That puts me at a natural disadvantage, my memory being what it is.”

  “And here I thought you weren’t going to lose,” she teased.

  “Oh, I won’t. But if I win despite it not being terribly fair, I’m totally going to rub it in.”

  “That’s allowed,” Jessie said.

  We made our way to the hotel. The outside was devoid of students, the doors boarded up, the area nondescript. After checking the coast was clear, we let ourselves in.

  The students were there, waiting and ready, virtually all with luggage in arm’s reach. The gang leaders were there. Virtually all of the strays were absent.

  I looked for and found all of my major players. Rudy and Possum were off to one side with Second Gordon. They’d collected Jessie’s and my luggage for us. My Lambs were present, as was Fray. Fray, distorted, stood next to Warren.

  Something had changed in Frederick’s eyes. I wondered if it was newfound respect or resentment.

  I glanced at the musclebound Warren, who stood off to one side with his collection of Fray’s hirelings, Wendy, and Avis.

  “We gave her a signal,” I told him. “She’s on the run from the Lambs. She’ll probably want help. Keep them busy, give us a chance to board our train, you’ll get no further interference from us, and we’ll be on good terms the next time we meet.”

  I saw his expression twist, and he momentarily looked as if he’d stomp toward me and smash me into the ground.

  Avis touched his arm, and he stopped.

  “We should help her,” Avis said.

  They hurried to leave.

  The door slammed behind them, in a way that only a bruno of a man like Warren could slam doors.

  Perhaps we won’t be on good terms the next time we meet, then, I thought.

  I looked at the room, and I could see that the nervousness had set in. This was the hardest step to take, the last chance to turn back.

  “Are you ready to go!?” I called out.

  I got a cheer in response.

  “To make a name for yourselves!?”

  Another cheer. Not louder, but more unified.

  “Ready to cut loose for once in your lives!?”

  This response was louder.

  “Say a very special fuck you to all the students, people, and parents who looked down on you!?”

  Even the ones who’d been holding back joined in for this one. Gang members, even.

  “Then let’s go!”

  It was the loudest outcry yet.

  Out the hotel, around the corner to the stable with waiting carriages, where we stowed the heaviest bags, the strays that had decided to come, and two students who would move slower.

  The rest followed behind.

  It was momentum now, keeping them moving. I broke away from Jessie, moved through the group. I encouraged students, made sure stronger ones carried heavier bags, and touched base with each of the group leaders.

  We didn’t go to the train station, but to the outskirts of town. The train tracks cut north to south, and we found the tracks at the northwest edge of town, as they emerged from the mountain.

  Jessie touched the track and sensed the vibration. She looked at me.

  “Right on time,” she said.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  The train emerged from the tunnel, already braking.

  It didn’t stop at the station, but here, waiting for us. A cargo train, meant to hold timber, grain, and meat.

  At a nod from the driver of the train and a signal from me, the students began boarding the train, piling into the enclosed compartments. I followed up the rear, taking an uncomfortable non-seat on the floor of the compartment, sitting across from Mabel the sheriff’s daughter, Possum, and Rudy.

  Jessie plopped herself down next to me.

  We left the door of the train car open. It hardly mattered, and there was something freeing about it that the students in our car seemed to like.

  With that as our vantage point, as we crested the hill, I could take in Laureas from a distance. The city sprawled, not a lot of it attractive. A port at the north end, ships coming to and fro, with dilapidated slums where we’d found the strays and set up our headquarters. A ferry crossed back and forth across the bay itself.

  I thought about the Lambs. I wished I could talk to them, even as I knew it was the worst idea.

  I said a silent goodbye to city and the Lambs both.

  Next time, I thought, for the Lambs.

  We won’t sacrifice you before we sacrifice ourselves, I thought for the city, and all the other ones like it.

  Previous Next

  Lamb (Arc 15)

  “I wonder how the mayor is going to handle this,” Mabel said. “Or how the Academy is going to handle it. Most of the students rioted, then disappeared.”

  Jessie, tired, closed her eyes, to better reduce the burden of information. In the back of her mind, she anchored the three segments of phrase. Key anchors were mayor, Academy, student. Orderly threads connected these anchors to the current date and time, to prior conversation, putting each idea in a line.

  Two days after his one year anniversary with the Lambs, Jamie had used the first available set of quiet days and post-appointment adjustment period to re-catalogue all of his memories, going through every last one in turn. The one year anniversary was a massive anchor unto itself, and in lieu of a system prescribed by his doctors, Jamie had shifted to a more symbolic series of subcategories. The hand signals used by the Lambs. They had started off simple, covering a variety of bases, an
d in Jamie’s mind, every last one had had a color, a general shape, and a lot of the vocabulary, spacings and timings of events were similar within a color or key gesture.

  The old system of his own doctor’s design had been thrown out, the new system implemented. It was something Jamie had done several times. Jessie had hoped that by adopting Jamie’s system and holding to it instead of revising it, she might extend her own life.

  Not so.

  Wonder was inspiration, which fell into the mind gesture. Mind was three fingers together. Mind became different things depending on context, the rigidity of fingers changed. Three fingers up tall, all touching, was hard thinking, maths, Academy science, logic, cold analysis. Bring the fingers down and it became soft, abstract thinking, which often became one of two different things if the thumb was in front or behind the three fingers. Interpersonal thinking for the former, inspired or artistic thinking for the latter.

  Of the most basic signs, each one flowed into the other. Each one assigned a color, it allowed colors to blur or mix, for categorizations to find shades of color alongside the general shape of the signs, for easy identification.

  Mayor was the anchor, marked turquoise-wonder at the outset, yellow-manipulation at the end. Within, words fell into place, transcribed exactly, as music notes might be, with sound and emphasis. Each of those details had emphasis of their own.

  She collected every detail she needed to be able to recall the statement in exacting detail. She did it with the next segment, a fainter turquoise echo of the prior statement with less emphasis marks and strong connection to the prior segment, as if the statement was an extended punctuation mark trailing on after the previous statement, a different anchor set two fifths of the way into it. The third statement was tinted red. The closed fist, aggression and violence, force and impetus.

  All three segments were sorted in this meticulous detail. Three cards on a vast bookshelf. Records extended back to the day that she had woken up in the stone throne, connected to the caterpillar system, set in place with a card with a tab that indicated Mabel.

  Other parts of Jessie’s mind in her skull, shoulders, and along her spine were muted so long as her eyes were shut. The parts that would track Mabel’s facial expressions and keep things in parallel with the transcription of words, environment, and Jessie’s ongoing awareness of her own physical state.

  Threads interconnected it all, stitching it together into a cohesive thing. Up and down and left and right were chronological elements as she explored her own catalogue, forward and back were her own focus, with one or two things taking priority while other things were pushed further back on a given shelf.

  If her mind was a painstaking record system, the threads were cobwebs that sprawled across it, divorced from the chronological and the focal. Three individual lobes and sub-systems tracked ongoing events in detail—it should have been four, but one had been damaged when Sylvester cut too close to her spine while removing the plague. Five more systems managed the threads. Without these, she would record the memories but be left unable to access them. Again, it should have been six threading areas of her brain, but Sylvester’s efforts had left her gutted in a way.

  She wouldn’t ever tell him, because that would be gutting him, and it wouldn’t help anything. The reason she emphasized timing so much as of late was because she was using the implanted lobe that maintained pacing as a crutch for systems that had been grievously wounded.

  “They’ll start with damage control,” Sylvester said. “They’ll paint you all as villains, as best they can. It won’t work very well. All the students who stayed are voices the Academy will need to suppress. Parents and family members will come, wondering where their children are, some will find their children stayed, and others will find that their children ran off with the circus. Efforts to stir the pot will be complicated by the rumors that I’ve kidnapped a great many of you.”

  Eleven cards were sorted in the span of eleven eyeblinks, faster than Sylvester could talk. She opened her eyes to watch Rudy, Possum, and Mabel. Other parts of her brain snapped into operation, tracking the visual details.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Rudy said.

  Threads connected the transcribed statement to Rudy’s expression. The underlying, natural operation was likely as sophisticated as Sylvester’s was, but actually using that knowledge was harder than that. It required her to stop and analyze, and it required her to know what to analyze in the first place.

  The cobwebs clarified rather than obscured. She could see things by the way the cobwebs sprawled, and she could peer through the cobwebs to see the anchors they were tied to.

  In this, in how her brain worked, she created a kind of sentiment.

  She could look back at Mabel’s words and connect it to things Mabel had said before. She could see the densities of threads, the zig-zagging shapes they made as they touched on things elsewhere, where those zig-zagging shapes dipped low or high, or seemed more scattered. A glance at an unusual pattern highlighted the anchors, highlighted key expressions at the time, still images of Mabel’s face at the time the statements were made. Jessie could look closer and see the exact transcript, the placements of light and shadow, temperature and her own posture at the moments in question.

  “It makes sense to do it,” Sylvester said. “The fact is that not all of us are going to stay. The initial gleam will wear off. If I burned the bridge, the people who no longer had a reason to be here but were forced to stay would be resentful. It hurts more than it helps.”

  The other students in the car nodded at that.

  “We’ll let them go that easy?” Rudy asked. “You know they’ll just go and report on our locations and activities, right?”

  “We’ll be moving a few times,” Sylvester said. “If we’re going to lose people, we should lose them during the moves. I suppose Jessie and I won’t be very open about where we’re going, just to protect all of us.”

  Jessie could cross check her records. This was something she had seen a few times while they were recruiting the gang leaders, Pierre, Samuel, and Shirley. He was always so mindful of the exit routes. When someone joined, he was careful to leave them a way out, to always remind them they could go.

  He sent them on their way with prosperity, where he could. The ones who betrayed, he gutted.

  This all tied back to Sylvester’s own experience with the Lambs.

  “You might be being a little cynical,” Jessie said. She found a number of memories where Sylvester had followed this pattern. “More than a little, when it comes to recruits and extending trust.”

  “I’m fine extending trust, I’m also fine covering our bases.”

  “You know what I mean,” Jessie said. “You’re being uncharacteristically wary.”

  “I’m always wary. I’m being uncharacteristically conservative, though. Are you saying we shouldn’t extend trust? Or are you saying we shouldn’t cover our bases?”

  “I think you might be being a little cynical,” Jessie said, not letting herself be caught by this particular trap. “Past experience coloring your present opinions when it comes to recruitment.”

  “You’re thinking of Clay.”

  “I’m not thinking of Clay,” Jessie said. “I’m thinking of you.”

  Sylvester leaned back. He exhaled slowly. “Fair. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Yep.”

  “Now I’m bummed out.”

  Jessie ignored that. “We recruited an army. If you try to micromanage it, you’ll end up too caught up keeping things in working order to properly plot.”

  Sylvester rubbed his chin, then ventured, “We might extend it to a trusted few, so there’s less reason for others to worry we’re playing things too close to the vest.”

  “Trusted few?” Mabel asked.

  “You three, barring any surprises in the next little while,” Sylvester said. “But I think my assessment of you three is pretty good. Things are going to change, as we get underway. People who fou
nd their way to leadership of student groups might be replaced by others. Neck has his talents, but I don’t know if he’ll stay top delinquent boy. Ralph is gone, and you’re liable to be the new leader of the Greenhouse Gang.”

  “You say it just like that?” Mabel asked. “I didn’t hold any special position in the group. There are people who spent more time there than I did.”

  “I’m good at reading people,” Sylvester said. “I like the read I get on you. I have no reason to think you won’t naturally find your place at the head of that particular contingent.”

  “I’m not as sure as you are,” Mabel said. “I know the Greenhouse Gang better than you do.”

  “Maybe,” Sylvester said. The way he said it suggested he was framing his thoughts. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

  Threads. Jessie checked past records, taking it all in, searching out cases where the threads zig-zagged in a similar way to this one. She took note of his face, thinking in the background to compare his expression now to similar cases. That was background. Her focus was on the pattern.

  His analytical ability challenged, he brought it to the fore.

  Sylvester talking to the gang leaders in late fall, three days into their stay in Laureas. Picking someone, seemingly at random, coming up with a dozen details.

  Sylvester at the herbalist’s in Tynewear. The man had been condescending, pricking Sylvester’s pride. Sylvester had gone on the attack, showing just how much of the herbalist’s trade that he understood.

  Sylvester talking to Lillian. An early memory for Jessie, in the grand scheme of things. One week after the Brechwell incident, Fray and her contingent of rebellion leaders, which Jamie hadn’t participated in, she had gone with Ashton for their proper introduction to the Lambs. In the period of time following, Lillian had been low, a teacher uncooperative with allowing her to do a lab project she had missed. He had given her less time than he had given others, and she had done worse as a consequence. Sylvester had reassured to encourage.

  There were two other examples that Jessie found and quickly touched on to verify another trend she had noticed. In all but one of the examples, Sylvester followed a similar pattern. Jessie had no idea if it was instinctive or calculated. He started with the blunt details. Visual things, clues he’d spotted and could point to. He moved on to weaker arguments that were hard to shoot down, then finished strong, with deep, powerful insights into things he had no right to know.