Twig

by wildbow

  “With a bunch of body-controlling bugs on hand,” I said. “Which is curious.”

  Berger stopped what he was doing, looked up, and met my eyes. “I’m not your enemy today, Sylvester. There’s no need to analyze me or pick me to pieces.”

  “Oh, not to worry. I pick even my friends to pieces, and while you aren’t my enemy, you’re not my friend.”

  “All the same, perhaps you should focus on our mutual enemy?”

  “The benefit of Wyvern and my particular mental architecture is that I’m very good at maintaining several trains of thought at once. I can pester you and think about how to deal with the enemy at the same time. It’s even constructive, since things in our conversation here might inspire me.”

  “The time and energy I spend in responding to you is time and energy I’m not focusing on this,” professor Berger said.

  “Bullcrap,” I said. I leaned back against the bars that encircled the stairs and looked down, making sure nobody was coming up. “All you’re doing there is playing a patience game. Waiting for the ‘patient’ there to figure out how he’s supposed to move while you’re pulling his strings. I’m sure that we can have a conversation.”

  Charles was watching me very closely. He glanced at his uncle, and I saw momentary concern as Berger pressed his lips together and didn’t fire back a response.

  Is that the first time you’ve seen someone talk back to your uncle? I thought.

  I didn’t have the full picture yet. Was Berger the equivalent of someone who had a bad day on the street, came home, and beat his wife? Would he take what I was dishing out now and turn around to take it out on the children?

  I only asked because he seemed like a peculiar individual. Controlling, uncompromising, and so lacking in empathy that he seemed to think less of Charles for having some. The closest thing I’d seen to kindness from Berger, the touching of his nephew’s hair, had been so calculated that Charles had to have seen through it.

  I wasn’t about to say it was the case, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Berger was the sort of man who only really expressed kindness by wearing a particularly thick glove when hitting the children.

  “Did you have a favorite stop?” I asked Charles.

  Mute, Charles glanced back at his uncle.

  “You can answer,” Berger said.

  “I liked Peachtree,” Charles said.

  “How come?” I asked him. Again, I checked the stairs to make sure the coast was clear.

  “I made some friends there. I got their addresses. We’re going to exchange letters,” Charles said.

  His arm moved a little, and the rebel leader stiffened. Charles adjusted, and the man relaxed. I thought about offering to take over, but I had suspicions about how that would play out. Not yet, not now.

  “Atlantica Academy is ranked eighth in the Crown States,” Berger said. “I’d rather Charles attend something more prestigious, but we’ve discussed it. If he keeps up with his studies, I may allow him to go there for Academy prep.”

  Academy prep, like Mothmont in Radham.

  “I find that language interesting,” I said. “You may allow him. I mean, you’re not even committing to a proper Academy, just the prep school, and you can’t even make it a promise?”

  “I don’t like promises,” Berger said. “And I don’t like guaranteeing anything for much the same reason. I find they mean very little to people if kept, and they cost you a great deal if they’re broken. Exceptions for present company, of course, you and I are in a life and death circumstance.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It warrants, hm, being political?”

  “In that vein,” Berger said.

  “Yet by choosing not to promise like that, you’re really playing at politics with family, aren’t you?”

  “Sylvester,” professor Berger said. “Please do not question how I raise the children in my care.”

  I started to respond, and then I saw Charles and the girl staring at me.

  I smiled. “As you wish, professor.”

  Berger took that at face value, turning his attention to his patient and completely missed the wink I shot Charles in the meantime. The professor tapped one of his patient’s arms and told the young man, “Right arm now.”

  “What about you, miss…?” I asked.

  “Florence,” Berger volunteered.

  Florence’s hair was black, much like Charles’. My experience in watching Helen suggested that it likely took a two-person team and an hour’s time to properly set up the hair and the light makeup, everything in place, with just a bit of ornamentation.

  She looked like a doll, hair carefully coiffed, a dress that looked more decorative than functional, with embroidery from shoulder to hem, and fine lace at the edges.

  “Hello, Flo,” I said.

  “Florence,” she said.

  “Florence, sure,” I said. “Your favorite stop on your trip with dad?”

  “I call him father,” she told me.

  “I stand corrected,” I said. “What was your favorite stop on your trip with father?”

  “If I had to choose, I quite liked Haverhill Academy,” she said.

  “Setting your sights high,” I said.

  “But if I got to choose anywhere, I would choose one of the Academies in New Amsterdam, or Crown Capitol in London.”

  “Setting your sights at the very top.”

  “Naturally,” she said.

  She didn’t even glance at her father. I wondered if—

  “She’s a strong student, and my name has some pull. She can achieve it if she works hard,” professor Berger said.

  She’d looked his way as he started talking. My wondering was cut short. Too quick to look, betraying the fact that she’d been acting aloof and avoiding looking to see if she’d earned the approval she was shooting for until she had an excuse.

  Berger didn’t seem to catch it, or didn’t seem to care if he had.

  “I like the name Peachtree. Sounds warm,” I said. Turning my attention back to Charles.

  “It wasn’t when we went,” Charles said. “It was wet and cold.”

  “Wet and cold. It must have something going for it. Girls?”

  Charles made a face.

  “Give it time, Charles. Something else that’s neat, then?”

  “They have tunnels and trenches and orchards everywhere, and the city boys and the town boys go to war over it all.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “The city boys didn’t like me much at first, but I proved myself. It was muddy in the trenches, so I got bits of pig that were being slaughtered for parts, paid for the bits with my allowance, and I made a stitched pig.”

  “It was clever,” Berger said. Then, because he had to temper any compliment, he added, “Simple, but clever.”

  Charles, subdued a little, said, “We let it loose in the downhill part of the tunnels. Scared the wits out of the townies.”

  “Something they’ll tell tales of for months to come.”

  “Herman Anthony, he was the leader of the city boys, he told me I was proper legendary, those are the two words he used, and he considered it a point of honor to be a fast friend with me. He’s one of the boys I’m going to write when I get back home.”

  Charles was talking, and I was doing my best to look attentive, but in the background, Berger had finished with the second man. He beckoned Florence, and carefully passed management of the strings over to her.

  The instructions were the same as the ones he’d given to Charles. I could tell already that she’d heard the prior instructions. She looked attentive, eyes on her father, but the way her eyes moved suggested she wasn’t really listening. She was studying the man.

  I double checked for anyone coming up the stairs, then moved away from the stairs, closer to Charles and the rebel leader.

  “She’s going to pull the string,” I whispered to Charles.

  “What?” he asked.

  “If he gets too stubborn, or if he starts pulling away
from the controls, which might happen if there are old injuries or if you get a patient with exceptional willpower, then you pull—”

  She pulled the string before the sentence was done.

  The young rebel toppled forward, sprawling on the ground, every part of him clenching, straining, or bending. His eyes rolled up into his head, and his mouth jerked open and closed, like a particularly crude stitched trying to chomp at a large apple.

  In the midst of that chomping, the young rebel vomited, then choked on the vomit, coughing some of it out.

  Berger was swift to drop to the man’s side, taking control of the strings that had pulled free from Florence’s fingers. He made the young rebel stop seizing, then reached into the man’s mouth to clear the throat, before ensuring that the man did not asphyxiate.

  Once the man was breathing again, Berger stood.

  “Berger,” I said, raising my voice.

  Florence didn’t flinch as she squared off against her father. She raised her chin, and Berger slapped her full across the face.

  “Professor!” I raised my voice, sharpening it.

  “Save your commentary, Sylvester,” the professor said. He shook the hand he’d used to slap his daughter, and flecks of the mess he’d scooped out of the young rebel’s mouth and throat fell free. “It’s not your place.”

  “You set her up to fail,” I said. “That, or you’re oblivious.”

  “Its not your place, Sylvester. Let it be. You lack context, and any further argument from you is going to be painful to listen to.”

  “I can guess at the context. This isn’t a first time. Which goes back to you setting her up to fail.”

  “There’s such a thing as ineptitude, Sylvester,” he said, his voice hard. “And there’s such a thing as malicious ineptitude. Ineptitude can be amended with counsel and careful instruction. Malicious ineptitude is amended with the rod.”

  “Or the open palm,” I said.

  “Leave it be,” the professor said.

  Florence hadn’t even moved since she’d been slapped. Her head had turned with the force of the blow, and flecks of another man’s vomit still clung to her face and hair, and she had remained like that, chin set, eyes fixed on some distant point of ground. Her cheek was red, and I could see the general oval of the handprint.

  Her father took her hand, and as if she were a statue or a doll, he posed her hand above her head, hooked the rings over each finger, and left it like that.

  “Does your wife speak out on the subject? Who gainsays you, if not the fugitive experiment you’re working with out of necessity?”

  Berger sighed heavily, and seemed to be resolved to ignoring me. He knelt by the third rebel. He was choosing ones that hadn’t defecated in or pissed their pants.

  “I see you’re not about to answer. Can I help your daughter clean her face, at least? If you’re all going to be keeping me company, I could do without the lingering smell of vomit on top of the general aroma of piss and shit.”

  “Use that marvelous Wyvern treated brain of yours and turn off your sense of smell, if you’re so particular,” the man said.

  He sounded snippy. Maybe I’d gotten to him a little.

  “Oh, I forgot I could do that,” I said, lying while needling the man just a little more.

  I waited, patient, walking back to the cage that encircled the staircase, looking for any incoming parties. If anything brought them up to the fourth floor, it would be the smell of shit wafting down to them.

  “I suppose we have to endure the smell. If you’re sure nobody’s coming, then please do clean her face.”

  I approached Florence. She’d shifted position to be more comfortable, but as something resembling a point of pride, she hadn’t cleaned off her face. She stared me down as I approached.

  I drew a handkerchief square from a coat pocket with a bit of a flourish. “Clean ‘kerchief. Want?”

  She gave me a small nod.

  I handed it over.

  She wiped at the one side of her face, which streaked the makeup a small amount.

  I spoke, my voice low, just for her. “That’s kind of an admirable skill to have. A big bad professor for a father, one of the foremost professors in the Crown States before the latest contingent of nobles arrived with the Infante, clearly very clever with the Academy science and on the political front. And you figure out the strings to pull. Crude at first, maybe, but you’ve got his measure. Given time, you figure out what gets what response, and you get more nuanced. Something you can apply to all the men in your life?”

  “Maybe I didn’t put that much thought into it,” she said.

  She handed back the handkerchief.

  I mimed a motion toward her face. She nodded, and she raised her chin. I got some of the bits that had escaped her.

  “Maybe didn’t put that much conscious thought into it, but I think family is often an arena of sorts for our testing of boundaries and the various games we play with peer and enemy alike. You were testing, as anyone does, but you were testing in a very interesting way, that got to a man like him. I sure tested the people closest to me for a long time. Still do.”

  “You said something about them before.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Some are downstairs.”

  “What happens,” she asked, while I was focused on getting a bit of food out of her hair, “If I pull the wrong string down there, and they die?”

  “Then you don’t make it out of this building alive,” I said. “Your father and cousin either.”

  She seemed to take a moment to process that.

  It was boundary pushing, figuring out how a given action altered the world around her. This was unfamiliar territory, and here she was, trying to figure out what this particular nervous system looked like, or which direction the blood flowed. Having heard her phrase that question and direct it at me, I was almost certain she’d been intentionally testing her father, trying to wrap her mind around him and how he worked, even if it meant enduring a little bit of pain in the now.

  There was something else at play, but voicing it aloud wouldn’t help me worm my way into her confidence. Elaborately dressed up, hair and clothing perfect, but for a trace amount of mess that I couldn’t get with the handkerchief, she was a bird in a cage. She craved some measure of control over her environment.

  Control and power. The cornerstones of the Academies. When someone lacked either or both, they would often hurt themselves to grab for something that sufficed.

  I could offer her both, however, and I was willing to bet she’d bite.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Not because I’m scared you’ll pull the wrong string downstairs, mind you, but because I think the results would be interesting.”

  “I think you’re a very dangerous person,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “If all goes well, I’m a dangerous person that’s going to drag you guys with me, and together we’re going to reach a crisis point, with a lot of parallels to you and this man here. Much like you hold this man’s strings, I’m going to hold yours, or I’ll hold Charles’. You’ll have the ability of holding your ground and being stubborn, or cooperating.”

  I’d gone by instinct, measuring Professor Berger’s pace, and I was pretty sure he was counting to a set number between each uttered ‘Cooperate’. Within a second or two of my saying the word, he echoed me.

  Florence glanced at her father and then back at me.

  I leaned a bit closer, and I said, “Cooperate, and I promise you’ll come to no harm, you’ll lose nothing, and you’ll learn more about your father in five minutes than you could learn about him in five more years of experimenting and getting slapped in the face.”

  “How do I cooperate if you hold my cousin’s strings?” she asked.

  I winked at her, and then walked away, back to the railing.

  Berger was watching me. He hadn’t overheard any of the conversation, but he had to have known that was a longer talk than wiping someone’s face or ha
ir required.

  Why don’t you care? I wondered.

  Something up your sleeve?

  “Charles,” I said. “What makes a town boy a town boy and a city boy a city boy?”

  “Hm?”

  “In Peachtree.”

  “Money, I think. Class. There’s more town boys, but they’re not as up to snuff and they’re not as organized. And the city boys control the tunnels at the top of the hill and near downtown. The best tunnels. Not much wet, close to food and water and toilets, and they go to a lot of places, so we can mount good attacks on them all. Their tunnels and trenches flood a lot.”

  “You control it because of the fact that you’re all closer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m afraid I’d be a town boy,” I told him.

  “I won’t hold it against you,” Charles said, very diplomatically, and with the utmost seriousness.

  “Ever see any marks sketched out in the dirt or carved into the wood?” I asked.

  “Hm?” he asked.

  I fished in a pocket for paper, then dug out a pen. I scrawled out some basic symbols that were fairly consistent across locations. The etchings of ‘mice’.

  “Something like this?” I asked, showing him.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s a code,” I told him. “Secret. ‘Townie’ people all over the Crown States and probably the Crown Cities use this code or one like it. This one means ‘the vulnerable will be protected’. Usually townie kids. This one means protector. Sometimes they change. I know in some places it’ll be a rabbit instead of a mouse for this one, or a wolf instead of a fox.”

  “What’s the difference between a wolf or a fox when you’re drawing it?”

  I sketched it out. “Straight lines, for when you’re carving it into wood, right? I know some places have a distinction. The fox is generally a bad person, but the wolf is drawn so he looks one way. Up, down, left, right. Each one means different things.”

  “What do they mean?”