Twig

by wildbow

  If the young lads cheered for it, then there would be violence. The Wolf would be emboldened, would close in, and Red Riding Hood would die a theatrical, gruesome, and very real death. Then, depending on the collective response to that, other antagonists would step in while the wolf retreated to the background, having raised the stakes for the evening and kindled imagination, or the wolf would even take center stage, picking off characters one by one. Bo Peep was number two to die, if the young boy at the center of the party willed it.

  Red Riding Hood’s emotions would be very real in the midst of it all. So would Bo Peep’s, if the party took that particular course.

  Ferres wasn’t willing to discount that possibility, and she was putting considerable effort into planning for it, making sure the Big Bad Wolf was something that could be ridden.

  I’d sat back and watched things for some time now, the idle bystander while Jessie and the other students worked on this project. I’d read these scripts enough to have a general sense of the web of interactions and narratives that played out across them. There were stories for grand violence, stories for intrigue, stories for heroism and valor, for being the gentleman that saved damsels in distress. Ferres’ focus was to ensure that the young man at the center of the party received his highlight moment, whatever he chose to do.

  “Are you ignoring me to get a rise out of me?” Ferres asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m ignoring you because my attention is elsewhere. The thing about having a shoddy memory is that I can put a book down and pick it up later and read it as if I’d never read it before. Every time I read through these, I pick up something new.”

  “I revise them regularly. That might play a part.”

  “It might,” I agreed. I put the booklet down, letting it fall to the table with a slap of paper on wood.

  Now that my attention was fully on her, Ferres seemed oddly composed.

  She really wanted to push me on this, to ask about Betty, but she didn’t want to give up the appearance of power by asking a question she knew full well I wasn’t going to answer. It would be groveling.

  Still, I’d expected to see more weakness in her, a glimmer of something.

  Why the rush through morning preparations then? Why hurry through her tasks with other students if she wasn’t hurrying to any place in particular? I’d expected a more heated confrontation, one where she might even have raised her voice at me.

  “It started as something far smaller,” Ferres said. “One scene, a speaking lion for a young girl who loved lions. Child’s play, in both senses of the word. But every prominent aristocrat wanted to top the last, grander displays, more involvement. I received funding for my Academies and I was able to pursue the kind of work I wanted to do most.”

  “At the expense of children,” I said, my voice low, “And let’s not pretend all of the children you bought off the Block were volunteers, whatever you told your students.”

  “Very few were, I imagine.”

  “Means to an end?”

  “If the young master and his friends are bloodthirsty or if their military fathers egg them on, then they might call for blood and be applauded for it, and that will be the evening. But it’s by no means a sure thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure, whatever.”

  “You don’t have to listen to me. If you don’t like my answer, you’re in a position of power over me. You could tell me to change my stance, you could threaten me or hurt me for saying something you disagree with. Whatever you imagine.”

  “I’m hardly going to do that,” I said.

  “You’ve done it countless times over the past several weeks,” she said.

  “Indirect hurt,” I said. “I feel like actively slapping you or putting you in screws is a little bit too brutish for me.”

  “Such a gentleman,” she said, and there was enough venom in those three words that some people on the other end of the room caught it and glanced our way.

  “All of this can end, all you have to do is tell Jessie and I how to contact certain prominent professors and nobles, and help us keep abreast of any changes or developments in the big picture. We’ll handle the rest.”

  “Oh, I’ve little doubt you will, young sir,” she said. “But the moment I tell you that, then I cease being useful to you. You’ll infect my Academy with black wood and ships won’t even come to port if they think their hulls might suffer. I’ll be one step among a dozen that see you do grievous damage to the Academy.”

  “You’ll fall on the sword, suffer for the good of Academy and Crown?”

  “I’ll endure,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You keep saying that.”

  She smiled.

  Again, that look. The calm in the face of the storm, from someone with very little to reach out and grab hold of. I’d pushed her and I’d taken away a vital handhold, very possibly her favorite student of the now, and as weary as she was, her emotions frayed, she wasn’t faltering.

  She should have been given more pause by this. It was concerning, because she should have come across as more unsteady. But something about her demeanor in this moment made me think that yes, I’d been right that she was fond of her student Betty. Yes, this had bothered her. Yet I harbored a suspicion that if I made her entire Academy and every soul in it disappear, she would still hold fast.

  I was beginning to grow suspicious of why, now.

  “Itsy Bitsy Spider needs his grafts,” she said. “If you wanted, you could exert your power, twist my arm, and spare him the procedure.”

  “I do want,” I said.

  “But?” she asked.

  “No but,” I said. “Spare him. Postpone it.”

  Again, she smiled slightly.

  Why was this a win in her book? People would wonder, and wondering with the right voices finding the right ear would unspool everything for Jessie and I. It was Jessie and I making a play against her and seeing her refuse to budge, while she made a miniscule power play and she made me concede ground.

  A small price if it helped Itsy Bitsy. I’d have to let others slide. I knew that. It would blow our cover and the whole ruse if we refused all operations and activities on Ferres’ part.

  But right now I wanted to focus on Ferres and the current dilemma.

  “Did someone mess up drug doses?” I heard the question from the far end of the room.

  It was Leland.

  “Why do you ask?” Ferres asked, stepping away from me and the table with the scripts.

  “The cast members are dead quiet,” Leland said. “I thought they had actually died, but they’re awake, they’re at the cell doors, and they’re just watching while I get them water.”

  “Leave it be,” I said, under my breath.

  I didn’t miss the fractional pause before Ferres replied to Leland, saying, “Leave it be. I’ll check on them shortly.”

  “It’s creepy,” Leland said.

  “Focus on the nightmare, Leland,” Ferres said. “I expect more, better answers from you than from your partner in crime, who should be coming back with at least three ideas.”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  Betty’s kidnapping had barely made Ferres miss a step.

  Ferres grew distracted with the activities of the others, who were working on the nightmare and the giant. She was in the middle of the room and in Jessie’s earshot, so I deemed the situation calm enough to exchange words with Jessie.

  “She’s got something,” I said.

  “Something?” Jessie asked.

  “Ferres. She’s got a card up her sleeve. It’s the only thing I can think of that accounts for just how hard she is to crack. I’m trying to play her as if she’s got only a few handholds left and she’s acting like she’s fine.”

  “She could be very good at lying.”

  “Or she’s got a card,” I said. “Both are equally worrying.”

  “What card could she possibly have that she wouldn’t have already played?” Jessie asked.
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br />   “I don’t know,” I said. “But if you’ll have a look-see…”

  I turned to look through the glass at the stairs. I’d noticed the people and the general commotion.

  “…our card is playing out now.”

  It was Wilbert, returning from his excursion to the girl’s dormitory.

  Jessie and I hung at the periphery of the group as they approached. Wilbert’s expression was severe.

  “She left,” Wilbert said. “She drugged her roommate to avoid any commotion, packed her things, and left in the dead of night.”

  “Into the wasteland?” Ferres asked.

  “By one of the postal ships,” Wilbert said. “We don’t know how she got on, but she seemed confident she could if she needed to, going by the letter.”

  “Do you have it?” Ferres asked.

  Wilbert handed it over.

  “What a shame,” the Professor said. “A damn shame, with the worst possible timing.”

  The effect was more profound on the other favored students than it was on Ferres. Jessie and I stood close to one another, and we watched as she spoke, we watched her move, and we even saw her eyes grow moist. Ferres as the warm individual. Unlike Helen, I fully expected that the warm, living, emotional face was the real one, the cold persona the mask.

  But emotions weren’t a weakness, not always. Ferres wasn’t budging at all, and it was proving to be her best asset.

  “They want to talk to you in the post area,” Wilbert said.

  There we go, I thought.

  “I’ll see to that. Talk with Leland, get your plan straight. I expect a thought out plan by the time I’m back.”

  “I’ll come,” I decided. My speaking drew several glares of the hostile ‘we didn’t ask’ variety. I returned them with a smug smile.

  The stairwell was full as students hurried to their morning classes. I spotted Evette, and I saw Lillian again. I saw a glimpse of Mauer, and I saw a multitude of friendly faces. Students and workers seeded here and there.

  “You’ve taken over the post system?” the professor asked. “Is the plan to send poisoned envelopes to major figures?”

  I remained silent, walking with her.

  We were in the central building of the Academy, the core of the reclining woman’s torso. The Academy’s post office was a short trip.

  Getting service once we were there, even with one half of ‘we’ being the Professor, well, that was a different story. We had to wait for the last of the mail to be hauled up by stitched crews and the one post worker on duty.

  Rather than shove paper forms and the like for Professor Ferres to sign, the post worker simply opened the side gate and let us into the back. The benefits of access.

  I closed the door behind me as I stood in the entryway to the mail room. Parcels and stacks of mail were already partially sorted, and stitched workers picked through mail before deciding where it was supposed to go.

  It was a tableau of sorts, a scene where laborers worked and gave the illusion that they were doing something that they had been doing five minutes ago and would be doing every five minutes for years to come, if they were given a chance. They sorted mail, questioned obstacles, and played it safe.

  Sitting in one corner was the cage. A young lady slept a drugged dream within it, her face a touch swollen.

  “Is that supposed to be Betty?” the headmistress asked.

  “We changed her hair and face,” I said. “It wouldn’t do if the others recognized her.”

  “Others?” Ferres asked.

  “Your favored students. Betty’s old colleagues,” I said. “You had a fit of inspiration, didn’t you? You’ll tell them you’re adding a new character to your performance.”

  I wasn’t wholly sure, but I saw the first real crack in Ferres’ performance at that. She covered it up well, but doing so necessitated looking away from me, hiding her expression for a moment.

  “She likes fairies,” I said. “Possible prey for the nightmare or the wolf, do you think? Or for a smashing by a giant, for a visceral impact.”

  I saw Ferres shake her head slightly.

  “Don’t worry, Professor,” I said. “Remember what you said. The audience might call for blood, but that’s by no means a sure thing. She could be fine.”

  The crack ran deeper.

  I saw the defeat reach her shoulders, as the strength in them subsided. I wasn’t sure if she had properly let her guard down or surrendered a stray thought while she’d been our captive. The momentary slump marked an occasion where I knew I had her.

  Why then did I still feel she had a strategy to play? One that she was so determined to hold back that she would surrender before she would use it? An ominous backdrop for our ploy coming together.

  Previous Next

  Dog Eat Dog—18.6

  “You changed her face,” Ferres said.

  We were outside, standing on a patio where many students lunched. It wasn’t the lunch hour, however, which meant that the only students who would be out here at this hour would be conspirators and students looking for a space to discuss a project. The wind was brisk enough that none of them were near.

  Our vantage point to see the scenery was fairly stellar. The scenery itself wasn’t. Wasteland and black woods as far as the eye could see to one side, and fog-shrouded ocean to the other.

  “Implants, just under the skin,” I said. “Quick, easy.”

  “If I’d moved forward and called your bluff, then the implants would be found fairly quickly.”

  “Probably,” I said. “But you’re quick enough to see what happens if you don’t play along. Your other students come under fire.”

  I watched her, and even though I couldn’t read her expression well, I was wondering if she was calculating whether it was worth it to take that risk.

  “Not just your favored students. All of your students. If I wasn’t in the room and you were free to act from the second Jessie or I gave the go-ahead to watching eyes or listening ears, you still wouldn’t be able to get ahead of what we have staged.”

  “So you say.”

  I smiled, tapped a cigarette out of the box, and hunched over, hand cupped, to light it in the brisk wind. When I was done, I leaned on the railing, looking out at the wasteland. Ferres remained close to her Academy, arms folded, back to the exterior wall. The reclining woman of Hackthorn’s breasts jutted out overhead. In judging their size, I realized that Ferres had modeled the breasts on her own, probably. On her younger self’s, anyhow.

  I looked away, watching dark clouds roll in. It looked like a storm was on the way.

  “Tell me,” I said. “When you first thought you were going to join the Academy, did you tell yourself, hey, you’d cut open kids and use them to make art pieces for some aristocratic brat to play with?”

  “A little reductionist, that. That work allows me to fund and support research that does actual good.”

  “If you want to play that game, the reductionist sword cuts both ways.”

  “The children were doomed to begin with. They’re better off. They can choose if they get restored to normal by the junior students of my Academy or if they wear those modifications to their own advantage. Others from the Block face far worse.”

  “You Academy types love to focus on the physical and gloss over the emotional and mental.”

  “I don’t know what an Academy type who focused on the emotional or mental would look like.”

  “Mm,” I made a sound. “Which is still sidestepping the point.”

  “I do good work,” Ferres said. “Be it with those children or in my research. I know you grew up with close ties to a young lady that was also an Academy student. Without me to help pave the way, she might not have found her place by your side.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “I don’t want to sound as if I’m bragging, but do look at the big picture.”

  “I try,” I said. “And in that big picture, honestly, I think both I and the young lady might be in agreem
ent that my side was a pretty crummy place to be. You might not have done any favors, putting her there. I’m kind of a bastard.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m being facetious. I do think you could have paved the way without, you know, so very many casualties.”

  “How many casualties have you racked up, Sylvester Lambsbridge?”

  “Eighty-three, directly,” I said. “Nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one. By the time I’m done with your Academy, I’ll likely have racked up an even ten thousand.”

  “Ah.”

  “I didn’t really keep count. I just wanted to get the last word in.”

  The door opened. Jessie and Helen. Jessie closed the door behind her and joined me at the railing, leaning with her back against it, her arm touching mine. Helen remained closer to Ferres.

  “Ferres was about to tell us things,” I said.

  “I suppose I was. What do you want to know?” Ferres asked. “Eerie to suppose that my voicing that question aloud completely and utterly ends my career.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Helen said. “Your career was over the moment we ambushed you in your bedroom.”

  I turned around, leaning against the railing beside Jessie. I turned my head a bit so my smoke didn’t blow in her face.

  Ferres frowned. She made an odd mirror to Helen. Older, not as natural a beauty, or not as unnatural a beauty, depending on the lens one viewed Helen through, but there were superficial similarities in how they held themselves.

  I spoke. “There’s a code you use when communicating with other professors, Academies, and nobles. A higher level of security.”

  “Is there?” Ferres asked.

  I raised my eyebrow.

  She sighed. “There is. For all that your abilities are vaunted, you Lambs haven’t been able to crack it, hm?”

  “We know where the numbers are. Stop gloating and just tell us what the numbers mean.”

  “Implants. Mine is under my left thumbnail. It looks like blood but isn’t, it’s an agent with a specific chemical balance. It takes two minutes with the lab in my office to extract and find out the current percentage. They’ll check the date and time of any messages I send against the number in the margins, match it against the same chemical they have in their offices.”