Twig

by wildbow

  “If you’re feeling lonely, I’m always available to practice hugging,” Helen said.

  “Ha ha,” Duncan imitated me a bit. He sounded a lot less dry and more flustered.

  My focus was more on Helen in the instant. When I’d seen her as a phantom, I’d imagined her as being influenced by Fray, darker, with more latent hostility, the predator side of her active and ready. But the Fray had been a trick of my mind working against itself, the Helen had been real, and so had the aura of bloodlust.

  What was going on there?

  I resumed talking to the group, the worry lingering, “As for the knife you so carefully pointed out, sir, the knife was more of a ‘how are you doing’ from one master to another, a test of skill that I wouldn’t pull if I didn’t have utmost respect for Mary’s skill—”

  “You are so full of shit,” Mary said.

  “And, to answer the question,” I said, carrying on, “I would have taken you hostage, Lillian. If, by some miracle, I got that far.”

  “Lovely.”

  “It would have been with the full knowledge that you have countermeasures. Needles in your fingers, like Fray had, and whatever else. You turn the tables, strut your stuff, and it breaks the ice. Get past any awkwardness by putting you at my mercy and then adroitly putting myself at your utter mercy. Mary’s happy shooting at me and kicking my rear end. We’ve got more of a gap to bridge, but I can’t imagine a bit of a spar would hurt any.”

  “I see, I see,” Lillian said. “Very clever. A good analysis of the situation.”

  “You sound like you’re humoring me.”

  “Hi,” Lillian said, turning to Mabel. “What’s your name?”

  Ah, I see what you’re doing there, I thought. Then I registered implications and cursed to myself.

  “Mabel,” Mabel said.

  I sighed.

  Mary adjusted her grip and pressed the gun to my head.

  I know, Mary, I know, I thought. You want to protect Lillian and now we’ve got this going on.

  “Sorry about all of this, Mabel,” Lillian said.

  “Oh, no need to apologize,” Mabel said. “Whatever you’re thinking this is, me being here, it’s not. I did the surgery on Sylvester last night. I was dog tired, I needed to check on him and change his bandages throughout the night. We talked, I fell asleep.”

  “Don’t worry, Mabel. There’s nothing between Sylvester and I.”

  Ouch.

  “There’s nothing between him and I either, not really. Nothing happened,” Mabel insisted.

  “You’re from Beattle?”

  “Yes,” Mabel said. “I was year five.”

  “What were you studying?”

  “Pheromones.”

  “There was a project in the other building, when we came through. Ashton and Duncan said it looked like pheromones.”

  Mabel glanced at me.

  “Cat’s out of the bag, our noses are to the knifepoints. You can share.”

  “Yeah,” Mabel said. “I’m project leader for that. It’s going to be a warbeast with a pheromone trail. Sylvester wanted to operate with impunity in the cities without worrying about his scent trail.”

  “Can I stand up now?” I asked. “My shoulder really is getting quite sore like this.”

  There was a moment of silent communication among Lambs, a quick search of the surroundings, and the phantoms around the Lambs let me know that the Lambs were checking that letting me stand wouldn’t give me any opportunities, ways to escape, or weapons.

  Mary shifted off of me and hauled me to my feet. She didn’t have the full-body strength to hold me up, but I got my feet under me and after only a moment of wobbling knees, I found the strength to stand.

  Duncan and Mabel were saying something about Pheromones. Ashton was standing between Helen and Duncan, staring at me intently.

  Helen still worried me. I wished she was more involved in the dialogue.

  Just as it had been in the stable, his expression was good. Less dead.

  “People will have heard the gunshot,” Mary said. “We’re going to be taking you two hostage. We already touched base with Professor Berger.”

  “Noted,” I said.

  “I’ll need to get dressed,” Jessie said. “I have clothes here but I’d like privacy.”

  “Helen and Lillian, if you’d escort Jessie into another room?” Mary asked.

  Helen acted as cuffs of a sort for Jessie, locking her hands onto Jessie’s wrists, while Lillian carried the clothes.

  I toed at the shirt I’d left in the corner, with the reams of discarded bandages. Using my foot, I flicked it into the air. Mary caught it, still holding me at gunpoint, and checked it with one hand before passing it to me.

  Once I was more or less dressed, Mary used something to tie my hands behind my back. I tested the bonds, and I was left fairly sure they were razor wire with ribbon or cloth strips to keep the wire from digging into flesh. I couldn’t find the knot with my fingers.

  It was just Mary, Ashton, and Duncan, now, with Mabel in the corner.

  Mary gestured, watch, window. Duncan walked over to the window to look.

  “People on their way,” he said.

  “Good,” Mary said.

  “Listen,” I said. “Mary. There are things we need to talk about. In private.”

  “In private as in Helen and Duncan step out of the room, or private in the sense that you want Mabel to leave?”

  “Mabel leaves. Let me tell her to go to the others. She can tell them not to attack. There’s no rush, no demand on time. We can talk things through, I can outline the things Jessie and I found out, the things that have been going on, you all decide what happens with the information.”

  “How does that conversation end, Sylvester?” Mary asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do we capitulate? Set you free?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “If I had to guess, I think… Lillian is left conflicted. If there’s a reason we haven’t shared this information with you guys in full, it’s that it puts Lillian between a rock and a hard place. You’re loyal to Lillian and the group, Mary, but you might be concerned with Percy being in the picture.”

  Mary didn’t flinch. The phantom that shadowed her did.

  “Helen… I’m visualizing Helen not caring much. Ashton too. Just the way it goes. So I’m left pretty on the fence here.”

  “And me?” Duncan asked. “What about me?”

  I’d almost dismissed him out of hand. He was diehard loyal, by my mental picture. I drew in a breath, studied my Duncan-phantom and studied Duncan at the same time, and I surprised myself with the conclusion I came to.

  “I think… you might be the most likely to want to defect.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Shame on you Duncan,” Helen said.

  “I didn’t do anything. Defect?” Duncan asked. “You jumped straight from Mary talking about us setting you free to defection, specifically?”

  “You’re a rebel, Duncan,” Helen said.

  Mary spoke, “Did this piece of material you’re using to get Duncan to defect—”

  “I’m not defecting.”

  “—Play a part in your recruitment of the Beattle students? Assuming it’s real?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “It did play a part in why I wanted to recruit them in the first place.”

  “I see,” Mary said.

  She led me to the window, and she glanced outside.

  It looked like three dozen people, all of whom had taken defensive positions. It was about a tenth of our number. That left two hundred and forty or so assorted recruits elsewhere. They had two stitched with them, laborers we’d pieced together with components from the city, used for hauling and janitorial work. It looked like the night’s rain had pooled on the ground and frozen.

  I wondered if the missing rebels were laying the false trail or fighting off the crown. I wished I’d paid more attention to the game plan, but I’d been s
o tired.

  “I want to negotiate here,” I said. “Send Mabel. Nonaggression pact. No need to fight, you don’t hurt my people, We have a frank, serious conversation without eavesdroppers, we eat, Jessie and I stay bound. Then if you decide it’s not worth it, and if you let my rebels go, I’ll come with you with no complaints.”

  “We won’t hurt your army too badly, Sylvester,” Mary said. “But we’re leaving straight away. No compromise on that.”

  “Cover your ears, Mabel. I’ll—”

  “If you cover your ears, I will put bullets in Sylvester until you lower your hands,” Mary said, and in her imperious tone she was fully the Mothmont lady, the teacher and instructor who had aspired to train and lead a sea of clones in beheading the monarchy.

  Mabel, leader of the green team, formerly the Greenhouse Gang, daughter of some sheriff somewhere, didn’t cover her ears.

  I thought we were on the same side, even if we weren’t on the same teams,” I said. “Or is it the other way around?”

  “You shot me, Sylvester,” she said. “Six years ago, you took my hand and you asked me to trust you. I had absolutely nothing except the ability to kill and the conviction to do so. Then you lied to me, you manipulated me, and I was content to accept it, because I trusted you, in a way deeper than the lies and manipulations could touch. Part of that is who and what I am, what Percy made me into.”

  I looked away.

  “Look at me,” Mary said.

  That hawk-fierce glare was waiting for me when I did.

  “I loved Gordon, Sylvester. That was for him and I to share, separate from the Lambs. I love Lillian. I love Helen and Ashton in different ways. But I trusted you. Because I am what I am, that reaches deeper than love. You took that trust and you shot me. You left me to crawl back to the others, through hostile territory.”

  “Would it help to know that pretty much from the point I pulled that trigger is when I really started to lose it?” I asked.

  “Marginally,” Mary said. “Except you were seeing things from the moment we set foot in Warrick, or even sooner.”

  “Seeing things doesn’t and didn’t mean I was losing my mind,” I said. “Listening to the voices and letting them destroy me or hurt me or convince me to sit out in the cold endlessly by keeping me company… that’s when I’m losing it.”

  “Marginal, Sylvester. It was your own doing, in the end. I didn’t get to choose that outcome. You hit me where it hurt most, tore down a pillar. I had to give my broken trust to someone.”

  “Lillian,” I said.

  “Or the Crown,” Mary said. “The Academy. I’m a Mothmont girl, after all.”

  I met the real Mothmont girl, I thought.

  I stopped just short of saying it.

  It was too important a card to play. If I put it out there now, then there was a risk it wouldn’t matter, that Mary might harden her heart even more, and there wouldn’t be an in.

  Right now, when she was angriest, I wasn’t willing to fritter that away.

  Even if the chasm between the Lambs and I seemed this wide.

  I was left silent, thinking, glancing periodically at Mabel, who had dressed beneath the sheet, who was looking at me in a new, less kind light.

  Jessie, Helen, and Lillian returned. Jessie was dressed and wearing her jacket, her hands tied in front of her.

  “Did you tell them?” I asked Jessie.

  “I thought you wouldn’t want to tell Lillian until you were sure of the outcome,” Jessie said. “I thought it was better to wait.”

  “What’s this all about?” Lillian asked.

  “It’s something Mabel can’t hear. Anyone that isn’t a Lamb can’t hear it,” I said. I was getting more concerned now. “Send Mabel away, have her tell the Beattle rebels to hold back. We’ll have a discussion. Nothing lost, we all move forward with eyes open. I’ll trust your judgment.”

  Jessie shook her head. “They baited the Beattle rebels out. It’s a skeleton staff in Sedge right now, less than fifty rebels. If they take too long here, then the rebels start filtering back, our side outnumbers them.”

  “And they have a plan,” I said. “Tricks and tools.”

  “We do,” Mary said.

  I grit my teeth.

  “Is it so important to keep me out of the loop?” Mabel asked.

  I wasn’t so sure. Did I trust her? Mostly. Did I know her like I knew the back of my hand? No. It was a tenuous thing to bid the life of the Crown States on.

  “Gesture,” Duncan suggested.

  “Mabel’s been learning signs. Most of the team leaders and staff here have,” I said. “I could write it down. Or Jessie could.”

  “We’ll discuss it after,” Mary said. She looked at Lillian. “Right?”

  “Right,” Lillian said.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Mary passed me over to Helen, gesturing. Helen held my wrist, and she walked me to the door.

  I stood in the doorway, facing the street. The morning sun shone and the ground was coated in ice.

  Thirty or forty of the Beattle rebels were out there in cover.

  “Run!” I called out. “They win. Leave, get together with the main group, then flee. Find work where you’re using your brains, not your trigger fingers! But get going! Get lost!”

  It was painful to do, to discard them.

  I could only hope we’d be able to find them again, if we weren’t being brought straight to the Crown and the jails.

  “Run!” I called out again. I gestured.

  I looked for faces I recognized and I found too few. Some of them were leading people away, sprinting on the ice.

  A gunshot rang out to my right. It had been a pistol fired from the window. Mary.

  The Lambs, moving through the night, had set up a trap. A barrel in one of the labs, placed against the glass. As the bullet shattered the glass, the barrel was free to tip, crashing against ice and spilling out its contents. Whatever it was, and it had been ours so I should have known, it reacted on contact with the wet, frozen ground.

  Steam and smoke billowed out, and the students as a whole were blinded.

  From the chemical smell, there would no doubt be other effects.

  “Run!” I called out, yet again, and this time my followers listened.

  The Lambs marched us into the cloud, and someone put a coat over my shoulders to help me stay warm, the hood flipped up. It would help to make me a less recognizable target in the midst of this smoke.

  “Before you start,” Lillian said, cutting me off before I could launch into my monologue and explain about the Blocks, “We come with a message from the Duke. Berger can tell us more.”

  Previous Next

  Gut Feeling—17.2

  “What’s this? The Duke?” I asked. “Also, gas? Do I need to worry about Mabel?”

  “Not unless we linger,” Lillian said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Back to prior questions: What’s this? The Duke?”

  “Not a discussion for strange company,” Mary said. “We can discuss in more depth when we’re clear of your little town here and Mabel’s not here and we won’t be overheard.”

  “I feel as if I’m in the way,” Mabel said.

  “More like some things that need discussion are so big that anyone could be standing a hundred paces off to the side and they’d risk being in the way,” I said. “Even if you weren’t here, it might not be a good idea to discuss certain things, because there might be eavesdroppers.”

  “My hearing is very good,” Helen said. “I think I’d know if we had listeners.”

  “I’m trying to encourage Mabel here,” I said. “You know, convince her that she isn’t in the way, that it’s fine and she won’t be hurt before you all inevitably release her? I understand the desire to boast and be happy that your creator gave you better ears, but play along with the narrative here.”

  “Narrative?” Mabel asked.

  “Oh,” Helen said. “It’s not a narrative, really. We would be quiet, even if you
weren’t here. We don’t know what things you and the other students have made. We’ve had enough bad experiences that we’re very careful. The gestures are a part of that.”

  “Oh,” Mabel said. “That’s actually reassuring. I actually believe you.”

  “I like the double-use of ‘actually’ in there,” I said. “As if you really want to emphasize I’m not that believable, even beyond your surprise that the attractive young lady that’s holding you hostage is.”

  “You actually sound happy about that,” Jessie said.

  I grinned.

  “Had to give you that one,” Jessie said. “And I wasn’t sure anyone was going to jump to do it.”

  “It might be better if we didn’t encourage Sylvester,” Lillian said. “I’d feel a lot better if our most unruly hostage didn’t look quite so comfortable in the role.”

  “It’s because I’m home,” I said. “I might not actually be welcome home, the baby shit its crib, the wife is yelling at me, and said yelling has nothing to do with the fact that the cat is on fire, screeching and running around in circles. It’s still home, dangit. I’m trying to enjoy the good side of it.”

  “Can I be the cat?” Helen asked.

  “No,” I said, dead serious. “The cat is Ashton.”

  “Why?” Ashton asked, and there was something resembling a plaintive emotion in the word. “I haven’t said or done much of anything since Mary shot at you. I don’t see why I should have to be on fire.”

  “You’re the most pet-like of all of us,” Helen said.

  “No,” Ashton said. Helen wrapped her arms around him, picking him up and continuing with walking while his legs dangled for just one moment. She nuzzled the back of his head, and he looked so entirely fine with that reality that it negated his ‘no’. She dropped him and stepped aside so she wouldn’t walk into him as he found his stride again.

  Ashton turned to me, “Is it because of my red hair? Is that why you set me on fire?”

  “Don’t try to make sense of it,” Mary said. “He’s trying to get inside your head.”

  “He’s not getting inside my head. He’s just being wrong, which is annoying,” Ashton said.

  “I’m suddenly reminded of meeting Ralph’s family,” Mabel said. Then she seemed to remember the larger group and clarified, “Ralph was The leader of the student group I was a part of, and am still sort of a part of, even though we aren’t students. He was always very peculiar and very particular, with a kind of buried intensity. I wondered about it. Then I met his family. Sy suddenly makes a kind of sense, now that I’ve met—”