Twig

by wildbow

  “No,” he said. “No. I failed that exam. I ended up at Beattle, remember?”

  “Okay, but this isn’t an exam,” I said. “This is—”

  “—Worse,” Mr. All-of-the-above said.

  “I can barely wrap my head around how she works,” Face-girl said.

  Mr. All-of-the-Above wiped at his hands anew with another wet cloth. “But, in the interest of being positive, there’s good news.”

  “Do tell,” I said. “Please.”

  “It looks like she knows something about how she works.”

  Helen nodded.

  Mr. All-of-the-above smiled, “Even a nod here and there can help. She might be the equivalent of next year’s maths textbook when we haven’t even finished this year’s, but she can let us know if we’re going the right direction. That’s good thing number one.”

  I liked his positivity. I didn’t want to admit it out loud, but it was positivity I was sorely in need of.

  “Good thing number two? She’s sturdy. Hot beans, is she sturdy.”

  “Ptah,” Helen made the sound. “Tch. Tch.”

  “Helen says you shouldn’t call a young lady sturdy, sir,” I translated.

  Helen clapped her hands again, and Jessie rolled her eyes.

  “I think I can pull this off with her help,” Mr. All-of-the-Above said. He paused. “Maybe.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. I looked at the other ex-students. The two girls looked a little less positive, but they felt able to give me confirmation.

  Jessie visibly sagged with relief. I took a deep breath for what felt like the first time since morning.

  “But if we don’t get some more knowledgeable attention trained her way soon, this is going to be a lot less pretty,” Mr. All-of-the-Above said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I moved closer to the window, one side of my body touching one side of Jessie’s. Feeling the stiffness in my back as I positioned my head, I rested my chin on her shoulder, reached up, and placed her blonde braid so it laid on top of my head.

  We looked out at Big Neph, who was treading heavily through the rubble he had created with the toppling of the clocktower.

  “At least we have an idea of where to look,” Jessie said.

  “Mm hmm,” I murmured.

  “We should wrangle our people,” she said.

  “Already thinking about how,” I said.

  “Good,” she said.

  I lowered my voice so only Jessie could hear me. “That said, I want nothing more right now than to get Helen fixed, then to crawl into the biggest, fluffiest bed with the heaviest covers with you right next to me, and stay there for longer than necessary.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said. She made her voice very small, so we wouldn’t be overheard. “Just to sleep, though?”

  “We’d have to talk, of course,” I said.

  She twisted around, so my chin no longer rested on her shoulder, and she gave me the over-the-glasses librarian look.

  I was already grinning, mocking her with my expression, making it clear I wasn’t being serious.

  She extended her arm, and hooked my elbow with hers. I caught on right away, and we walked to the door of the room together.

  “You do have obligations,” she said.

  “Rebel group to coordinate, Crown States to save, Infante to topple…”

  “You owe Mabel a bath,” Jessie said. We were out of earshot of the others. “You promised and you’re overdue.”

  “Ah, right,” I said. Then I raised an eyebrow.

  “She and I talk,” Jessie said, before I could even ask the question. “She doesn’t want to overstep or get in the way, so she comes to me and asks.”

  “That’s good. I like her.”

  “I know you like her. I like her because she’s honest, forthright, and sharp enough to not completely fall behind. She took good care of you when you had the plague crawling across you, and that earns a lot of points in my book, because you’re important to me,” Jessie said.

  I reached up and picked up the braid that normally draped over one of Jessie’s skinny shoulders, and fixed its position. I let my finger brush her neck.

  I liked how put together Jessie was. The glasses, the hair, the clothing, it was all done with deliberation. She smelled like the hair products and soaps girls used, faintly floral, and I knew the smell had been carefully chosen, after an analysis of all the scents she’d come across in her lifetime as Jamie the second and then as Jessie.

  She took her time responding, letting me focus on her for the moment. When she finally spoke, she said, “So give her her bath, because she deserves it. Invite her to sleep in the ridiculously fluffy bed with the heavy covers with you and me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said, reaching up to put a hand on either side of my neck. “Because you only ever sleep well if you sleep in a puppy pile. You were content in Tynewear, you were at ease, sitting on that windowsill with our music playing and tea beside you, but you didn’t truly relax. You don’t stop unless you have a collection of people relaxed and in close proximity to you. That’s just your warped psychology.”

  “Probably,” I said. I let my forehead rest against hers.

  “Now put that psychology to work, Sy,” Jessie said. “Tend your flock. I remember some things Ibbot said about Helen, and I remember bits and pieces about Lillian’s work on her. I’ll try to provide guidance. If we need you, I’ll come get you.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  We broke away from each other, and I glanced back at Helen before heading down the hall.

  We hadn’t settled in the apartments, in the end. The concern was that Cynthia’s people would backtrack and find us. I wasn’t sure the fear was especially valid, but we had a few hundred ex-students and scattered gang members with their individual fears and concerns. A token effort to move a few streets down went a long way.

  Students had settled in various rooms of the building. The buildings at the periphery of the city had been evacuated, many people had taken their most prized possessions with them, and it was relatively easy to move ourselves in, simply to borrow beds, couches, loveseats and cots. In the effort to be conscientious, we’d tried to occupy only the empty apartments and the ones where people had clearly moved out, but having three hundred bodies made that impossible to fully guarantee.

  The various group leaders were supposed to be keeping tabs on their people and keeping their individual groups to set areas, but the lines had blurred over the last several months; it was hard to truly say who belonged where.

  To get any sense of where three hundred people in two separate buildings were, I needed to find people like Bea, Davis, Gordon Two and Mabel. I had been distracted by my own need for medical attention and Helen’s situation, so I’d dropped the ball, and needed to figure out where it had rolled off to. I looked for open apartment doors and listened for conversation, hoping that a combination of the two would mean finding some students who were willing and able to point me toward one of my lieutenants.

  “…not saying the perks are bad or that I regret going, but how old is he? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  Seventeen, actually, I thought.

  Students were talking, and I’d found myself eavesdropping.

  “Listen, I know I don’t know everything. But I think about the people I saw in the three different Academies I attended at, and there were some damn smart kids there. Whip smart, enough it scared me.”

  “Your point being?”

  “That they were still kids. I’m not saying he doesn’t pull some good stunts. I’m not saying Jessie doesn’t have her moments either. I’m just saying that they’re not quite adults.”

  “Sedge was good. I liked Sedge. It was better living than I thought it would be. Would have liked more time in the city, but I totally got that there were logistics issues with that.”

  “Okay, not denying that. But Sedge felt like something they stumbled on and took credit for.
”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. There have been a lot of things you could say that about. Things I know you have said things about. But I think it’s far more likely that they know how to stumble. They know where to look.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. Really stressing the maybe here. Except even if that was true, is that what we want?”

  “I’m happy to wait until we see the results of the big play.”

  “I was happy to wait, but I heard Valentina’s pitch, I got a good look at how Cynthia’s Spears operate, I can’t help but think that if Valentina was on the level and the Spears were open to new recruits, I wouldn’t mind something more directed.”

  “Directed?”

  “They know what they want. They have drive, passion, they’re angry. They give me the impression they surgically target, they do the job well, and they come back in one piece with their enemies heads in a bag. Sylvester and Jessie—”

  “Won. They came out ahead.”

  “They say they did. And I probably believe them. But there’s always the question mark, isn’t there? How much is our leader telling the truth? How much is he pulling our strings? There’s not as much direction there. There’s not a lot of definition. He has some old ties to the Academy and knows his stuff, okay. He has ties to the kids we saw—”

  “Same thing.”

  “Kind of. Vagueness, right? Ambiguity. He’s got ties to Fray that people talked about at first and now nobody really wants to say anything straight out about it, Sylvester and Jessie are running the show and people are mostly fine with it, but… it feels like they operate on instinct, in grey areas, making a lot of moves that are supposed to make sense later.”

  “They have a good track record, don’t they? Or is this going to be another ‘they say’ thing?”

  “I don’t know. But when they came limping back and started a conversation with those Spears that Davis and Valentina had us surrendering to, well, they were limping and bleeding. They run on instinct and if you gave me the choice between the two things, maybe I’d rather not be limping and bloody because instinct didn’t go far enough.”

  “You want to be a soldier?”

  “I joined because fuck the Academy. Fuck the Crown. Fuck them. Fuck them for making me disappoint my mom and aunt and sister. Fuck them for not handling the plague properly, fuck them for the constant wars. All that fucking, it needs some thrust. Point me at some moving bodies and let me make them stop moving. I want that, and all I’m saying is that if the offer was given to me right now, I might think about joining the Spears.”

  “Yeah, maybe. You make a decent case. Why only ‘might’?”

  “Well, the Spears look like they have an awful lot of spears and not enough spear-holders, if you know what I mean? We’ve got more skirts over here, and some of them are even school uniform skirts, which are the best ones.”

  “Ah huh.”

  “What? I’m a guy! I’m supposed to indulge. You’re supposed to indulge.”

  The conversation continued, but it quickly veered into the topic of ‘indulging’, and the biologically improbable interpretations of the act, as told by two people who had never indulged.

  My thoughts lingered on the criticisms, with the lingering being deep enough that I was unaware that Pierre had been standing at the other end of the hallway for some time.

  I passed in front of the open door, not glancing within, and I could hear the pause in conversation as they glimpsed me. I ignored them and joined Pierre.

  “Point me to my lieutenants?” I asked.

  “Can do,” he said. “How is miss Helen?”

  “Odds are better than expected, so long as we can get some prompt access to a black coat with the right qualifications,” I said.

  “Good,” Pierre said. We descended the stairs to the lower floors of the building.

  “Did you catch that conversation?” I asked.

  “Some,” he said. “I think it’s the nature of young men and women to wonder who they are and where they belong. I would blame that basic nature before anything else.”

  “Maybe,” I said. A few of the criticisms still felt a touch too on point. “How widespread is this sentiment?”

  A lot of other people might have waffled, asked clarifying questions. Pierre didn’t.

  “One in ten or one in fifteen, if I had to guess,” he said. “Valentina is one of them. I would be more worried about the fact that they’re finding listening ears.”

  “Alright,” I said. “We’ll find something for them to do soon.”

  “I think a lot of people had complaints, but during the honeymoon phase, they kept them in check,” Pierre said. “I saw this happen with previous employers. Gangs. One bad event gives a lot of people permission to voice doubts they had been keeping to themselves. This scare was that.”

  “I just don’t like the fact that the doubts exist, and I don’t like the idea that they’d rather be with Cynthia,” I said.

  “Only a small and vocal few, mind you.”

  “Even so.”

  “Even so, yes. These things often blow over, Sy,” my talking rabbit said.

  “But not always,” I said.

  “No, and rarely in a tidy fashion,” Pierre said.

  “We’ll find something for them to do soon,” I said, again. “As soon as Helen is in at least partial working order, we move.”

  “She’s coming?” Pierre asked.

  I looked at Helen, who was walking down the stairs with us, not a drop of blood on her, her smile sunny. “You coming?”

  “Yes,” Helen said.

  “She’s coming,” I said. “She wouldn’t want to be left out in circumstances like this.”

  Previous Next

  Gut Feeling—17.15

  “You’re not coming,” I said.

  “Am too,” Helen said.

  I had my jacket off and was wearing only my shirt, which was unbuttoned. The sink in the apartment was the small oyster-shell variety, with only a thin lip around the edge, and in the process of performing my own maintenance, washing up and medical care, I’d balanced roughly thirty objects on the edges. Moving and getting the things I needed was a bit of an exercise, but the exercise helped keep me sharp, as did the pain.

  The bullet I’d taken to my fingers had split the right side of my ring finger and the left side of my middle finger, shattering and dislodging the nails. The fact that it had split meant it could be knit together.

  “I’m coming,” Helen said. She sat on the toilet, which had the lid down, while Gordon Two worked on final touches. “I’m restless and I didn’t get to do much of anything before getting shot.”

  Which was my fault. She didn’t sound accusatory, but then, Helen only sounded accusatory if it served her ends. She was being sweet now, which was a dangerous pairing with her feeling restless. I wasn’t sure how to communicate that to Gordon Two, or to the other student who’d followed the pair in, a young lady who was sticking to one corner. She had likely been invited to help Helen with things that a male attendant couldn’t, but that role had to wait.

  I wasn’t going to ask. I’d retreated into the bathroom and taken to my own medical care to sort out my thoughts, and partway through they had found me, started to quiz me, and now there was a whole discussion happening.

  I’d joked with Jessie about being like parents, and in this, not getting ten straight minutes of peace ever, we’d definitely hit the mark.

  It had been more than ten minutes, between a rinse of my face and hair, looking after my back and shoulder as best as I could, scrubbing off blood, smoke, and dirt, and then finally tending to my hands. Doing them any earlier would have meant risking getting the bandages on the fingers wet or dirty. They’d get that way anyhow, but…

  Well, I didn’t have a good answer to that.

  “Syyyyyy,” Helen cooed.

  “I’m thinking,” I said.

  “You’re thinking too much,” she said.
/>   “You’re weak,” I said. “A small dog could beat you in a fight.”

  “You’re weak too, Sy, and you’ve always been weak. Even though you’re better than you were. But you’re hurting too.”

  I gestured for her to ease up. I didn’t want bystanders to focus too much on my failings. She gestured agreement.

  “All other things aside, you want me to come. I want to come. This is easy.”

  “That’s an awful lot of things we’re putting aside,” I said.

  “But there’s a lot of things to not put aside, like if you leave me behind, then you have to worry about me.”

  “Do I?”

  “Do we?” Gordon Two asked. “Wait, why do we have to worry about her?”

  “I’m trying to be good,” she said. I could see part of her expression in the mirror. She was wearing a very dangerous, sultry expression. “But a young lady has needs, Sy.”

  “Uh,” Gordon Two said. He took his hands off of her. “Uncomfortable.”

  “You’re fine, hon,” Helen said.

  “Are you threatening me?” I asked. “Us?”

  “No,” Helen said. Perfunctory, simple. “Needs. The difference between needs and wants is that wants are optional. Needs can be postponed but never wholly denied. Ignoring them wounds the body, mind, or spirit.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “And you need to murder people, or your spirit will wither.”

  “What?” Gordon Two asked.

  “Hmm. It might be more complicated than that,” she said.

  “Mind?” I asked. “Body?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The lines get blurry.”

  “Well,” I said. “In the interest of nourishing body, mind and spirit, I could try swaying you with promises of sweets. It might take some doing to detour and stop at the right place, but—no?”

  I’d read the expression on her face as I glanced up from my sutures in progress.

  “No,” she said, firm.

  “But sweets are equivalent to murder,” I said. “They go in the same bucket. A bloody, sexy bucket.”

  “What?” Gordon Two asked. “Wait. Slow down. What?”

  “If you’re confused and wary right now, then asking questions isn’t going to help,” I said. I raised my eyebrow as I checked with Helen, peering through the mirror. “I’m right about the sexy sweet blood bucket?”