Twig

by wildbow

  Lillian was watching the beasts while the conversation played out next to her.

  Mary wished Lillian wasn’t being so quiet. She could see what Lillian was doing, but it wasn’t actively serving their purpose here.

  Glancing up, Lillian met Mary’s eyes. Her hand moved in a gesture. I. Eyes.

  Then before she could communicate anything more, someone in the group said something to Lillian, taking up her full attention.

  It didn’t seem urgent, whatever it was Lillian had been conveying.

  Looking back in the direction of the refugee camp, she saw that one of the bystanders closest to her had his pants down. He was actively jerking his hand back and forth, furiously enough that she thought he might hurt himself.

  He pulled his hands away in a very dramatic way, raising them with middle fingers raised at her, and shouted. The distance made his words inarticulate, but she could guess what he’d said. He’d illustrated, in a way, with a forward thrust of his hips coinciding with each word.

  He screamed over and over like a small child having a tantrum, rage and desperation boiling over. When she didn’t react or move, he added variation. She could almost read his lips, and pair that read with the distant cry. Screw you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you all, screw yourselves…

  Trying to get to her, to bother her, hurt her like he was hurting, even if it was through a kind of self abuse and humiliation.

  She could be clinically empathetic, but she couldn’t quite bring that empathy home and feel it. Things were the way they were. She couldn’t do anything for him.

  She would support Lillian, trusting that Lillian would make things better.

  She fixed the hood of her raincoat, turned away, and walked down the stairs that led from the wall-top to the plaza below. As she made her way down, she could see the full assortment of the Academy’s monsters. Most existed for utility purposes, it looked like. A solution for every problem.

  The council was already starting to depart when Mary reached them.

  “The general was saying we have a few days to figure things out,” the mayor said, his voice lowered a bit, so the rest of the city council wouldn’t hear as they walked away. “He thinks the vagrants outside the wall are going to stir themselves up and try another attack, so we don’t have much longer than that.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” the lead doctor said.

  “If they have a way into the city, we need to know about it,” the mayor said, insistent. “There’s rumors that some out there are sick. Not the red plague, but any sickness is bad when we’re already pressed in.”

  “Rest assured, we have the situation in hand,” the lead doctor said.

  The mayor didn’t look convinced. “Let us know if you need anything.”

  With those parting words, the man struck the wood-woven street with his cane and limped away.

  It was telling that the group of Academy doctors were silent as the town’s council left the area. They didn’t want to be heard.

  Lillian glanced at Mary. Mary moved her hand. I see-know.

  Lillian signaled. We agree.

  They’d both figured out the answer.

  Speak, Mary urged.

  Wait, was the response.

  Mary pursed her lips.

  “The Infante should be by before nightfall,” the lead doctor said, checking his watch. “No more than two hours. There are rumors that other populations have been crossing the burned acreages to reach black woods and collect the wood for use against the Crown. He thinks, if there’s a trend, that it might occur here, close to Radham. Don’t make me look bad.”

  Mary and Lillian exchanged glances.

  “We’ll check the vat beasts for drugs,” the lead doctor decided. “If the vagrants are getting in, they have to be getting by the vat beasts somehow. I can only imagine a rebel group with access to medicine using darts or drugging food for the beasts and slipping by.”

  “Yes sir,” was the muttered reply. Mary didn’t feel compelled to respond.

  “Station some scratchers on the wall. Turn their ears toward the vagrant mob. See if they can’t hear and scratch out anything suspicious.”

  “We’ll need to set up something to keep the rain off of them and their papers,” another doctor said.

  Mary looked at the scratchers, which were sitting in the rain. Their heads and ears seemed to make up half of their bodies, the rest of them spindly. They resembled hairless cats minus the tails, or hairless bats without wings. They looked less fond of the rain than anything present, human faces on bestial bodies with long fingers, sulking as they sat slouching in puddles.

  “Do it. Recruit help if you have to, to get the materials or building done. Requisition the writing supplies if we don’t have enough. Volume of material is better than anything else, and if the mayor says we can ask if we need anything, we might as well see if he’s telling the truth.”

  “I’ll handle that,” one doctor supplied.

  The lead doctor nodded, folding his arms. He drew in a breath, and in the process he managed to puff himself up a bit. Finally, he relented and asked, “Any other ideas?”

  Speak, Mary gestured, again.

  Wait, Lillian gestured, before asking, “Can any of the experiments at the wall talk?”

  “Some, I’m sure, if only barely,” the lead doctor said. “Why?”

  “If we haven’t asked if they’ve seen anything, I don’t think it’ll hurt.”

  The lead doctor looked fairly unimpressed, but that wasn’t anything new. “You’re here to lend your particular expertise, as Professor Hayle touts it. I was hoping you’d impress me with something more concrete, miss.”

  We know what the answer is, Mary thought, before gesturing again. Speak.

  “I’m confident in my abilities, doctor,” Lillian said. She’d emphasized ‘doctor’ a touch, as if to make a note that she was using his title while he insisted on calling her ‘miss’.

  He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he looked at Mary. “You have a guest, girl.”

  Mary was surprised at that. “Do I?”

  “Your parent. They’re at the north gate. I was called away from other duties to receive the message and carry it to you. They’re waiting for you now.”

  “I see,” Mary said. She saw the expression on the doctor’s face, put on her act as a young lady of Mothmont, and curtsied. “I’m sorry for the trouble.”

  “I already think very little of you two being here. It’s dangerous, the vagrants could reach their tipping points and attack any day now, and you girls seem more interested in sightseeing, playing about, and apparently visiting with family.”

  “Again, I’m sorry for the trouble,” Mary said. She curtsied, and this time she kept her head down.

  After a moment, the doctor sniffed. “Get going.”

  Mary turned to Lillian. “If I may?”

  “I’ll look into some things and meet up with you later,” Lillian said, as her hand moved. Think. Think. Water. Sleep.

  Agree, Mary gestured. Lillian would work on this some more, wash, and then nap. They’d traveled overnight to get here. It was overdue.

  It still frustrated Mary, that Lillian was keeping quiet on something essential. They’d come here to accomplish a mission, and it was an easy mission. The refugees were being collectively driven out of town and city by the spread of black wood and plague. This was one of many locations where the refugees had traveled in hopes of finding a new home, only to find a barrier. Some refugees were slipping past, despite a population of vat-grown beasts that were supposed to be on watch, with senses that allowed them to feel the vibrations in the earth from tunneling.

  Hayle had volunteered them, and they’d been happy to accept, really. They had skills in investigation and infiltration. Investigating infiltrators was second nature. They had their mission.

  The broader, larger mission was to build up Lillian’s reputation. Getting her grey coat would require sponsorship and funding. Each Academy had only so
many labs, and an overabundance of specialists. Lillian was positioned to get lab space, and even to use her ties to Hayle to have her own exclusive lab, but after some discussions over tea with Hayle, they’d decided that taking advantage of that connection in the now would potentially leave them short of political capital later.

  Lillian needed to prove her worth in a way that gave her a history she could clearly point to. References, completed missions and being a cog in the war machine that had won.

  Both of them knew that the refugees were tunneling after all. Lillian had seen something within the city that had helped her realize it. Mary had seen from the wall how the refugees were setting up the spears, yes, but also that they were camouflaging the hole they were digging, while simultaneously guiding the flow of rainwater to better flood areas.

  The tunnels would be waterlogged as a consequence, but the actual movement of earth and footfalls underground would be muffled.

  Lillian knew and was staying quiet, when they could have challenged the annoying doctor’s perception, proven their worth, and finished the mission in record time. If they could do that enough times, Lillian could make her name as a problem solver.

  Mary was annoyed, frustrated, and a small part of that had to do with the condescension.

  It was a bad tone as she found her ‘father’ by the north gate. She found him at the gatehouse, talking to a military officer. On seeing her, he broke away from the conversation, raising and opening an umbrella in the same motion.

  He was a man who dressed well. He liked the tailored suit jacket, the tie, and the triangle of a kerchief in the pocket of his suit, color matching that of the tie, though it was plain while the tie was patterned. He wore round glasses with gold frames and kept his hair oiled and parted. The look was old fashioned at the same time as the glasses, tie, and kerchief were bold decoration.

  “Father,” she said. “It’s a surprise to see you here.”

  He reached her, and with the umbrella in one hand, he embraced her briefly with the other arm. She allowed it, maneuvering so he wouldn’t feel the press of blades or weapons.

  When the hug broke, he remained close enough that they could share his umbrella. Mary lowered her hood.

  “We made plans,” he said.

  “I know. I was called away.”

  “As you often are,” he said.

  She didn’t have a response for that. It wasn’t that she was speechless or troubled. It was that he was right and she didn’t really see the issue with that reality.

  He sighed. “We only ask for your company three or four times a year or so. In recent years it’s been only twice a year. Last year it was once.”

  Mary thought again of the noble girl who shared her blood. This man’s real daughter.

  She had only maintained limited contact with her supposed parents, for appearances, at Hayle’s request. They had maintained a concern that embedded programming would make her turn on them and on herself in a violent way, and it had taken some time to ensure that wasn’t the case, with the help of pictures and incidental exposure while she remained restrained.

  It had been necessary to be sure, even after learning the truth about her trigger phrase and Percy’s intentions.

  But she hadn’t gone to any lengths to do more than the bare minimum in seeing them. It was an inconvenience. Their depth of feeling for her made her lack of feeling for them an uncomfortable lack.

  “The messenger brought your note, and I hurried to see if I couldn’t see you at the train station before you left.”

  “We didn’t take the train,” Mary said.

  “I know. I found that out. I went asking, and I heard you were here. I heard… worrying things.”

  “Things?” Mary asked.

  He liked to be clean-shaven, without any facial hair, and even with the overcast weather and the shade the umbrella provided, she could see a muscle stand out as the corner of his jaw as he glanced away.

  “If you asked girls at the dormitory, you should know they’re catty, they like their webs of rumor and deceit, to cut down the other girls. Whatever it is they said.”

  “I asked at the orphanage,” he said. “Where you stayed so you could be closer to the school. Are the webs of deceit cast by girls of the Academy that insidious, that someone at the orphanage a ten minute walk from the Academy’s doors would say the same things?”

  “You were apparently busy.”

  “I was,” he said, and that was very nearly a sentence on its own, but he continued, “…wanting to know my daughter.”

  Mary glanced away. She wondered what the noble lady had properly looked like.

  She wondered if there was something she could say that would make this man stop trying to cling to her.

  As she looked up at him, he held himself stiff, chin firm.

  Her own chin was raised, held steady, so she could meet his eyes without wavering.

  “I sent you to Mothmont because I believed it would provide you with opportunity,” he said. “Because I work every day with wealthy and powerful men and I can see that there’s a divide, a chasm between me and them. I am good at managing money, but I could do my best work every single day of my life and I wouldn’t ever be their peer. I wanted Mothmont and the connections it gave you to at least give you the possibility of being great.”

  “I know.”

  “Things happened, unfortunate ones. But in the midst of them you found a direction. I trusted you to walk that path you chose.”

  “Trusted. Past tense.”

  “I never fully understood what you were doing, and any questions were met by your insistence it was classified. I’ve wrung my hands over it, talked with your mother. We decided each time to trust you.”

  “Have I betrayed that trust?”

  “Have you?” he asked, not turning it around, but making it a genuine question.

  “I think I would need to know the accusations before I can answer that question.”

  “You and Lillian. Spending too much time in each other’s company.”

  “Mild, as accusations go,” Mary said.

  His expression changed, hardening a bit, looking more wounded, making it more clear what he was meaning to say.

  “No, father. She has a boy she likes. Gordon—you met Gordon.”

  “He died some time ago, Mare,” her father said, his voice softening. “And I could almost understand, almost, if it was your heart being tender after a loss, but…”

  Mary held firm, remaining silent.

  “…It’s been some time, and I haven’t known you to be tender for quite some time.”

  “It’s something I’m not terribly good at,” Mary said.

  “I wondered about you, but I trusted you,” he said. “I want you to know that. But I’ve heard things and stewed over them for the entire trip here. I don’t know you and I’m unsure about the path you’re walking. Girls and boys from multiple places remarked on you. Saying that you share her bed. That you’re her servant, following her around like a dog. There was speculation you take combat drugs, that you’ve been experimented on—”

  “That’s only venom from a nest of vipers, father.”

  “Convince me,” he said. His knuckles were white as he gripped the umbrella. The umbrella’s waver betrayed his. “Please.”

  It’s all because I’m not the girl you’re looking. Percy was my father more than anyone.

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say,” she said. “I can protest all day, but you’ll wonder all the same.”

  “I don’t know where you’re going, I don’t know where you are. I don’t know how you got this way,” he said. He sounded oddly less plaintive, even as he pleaded. “I don’t know you.”

  She reached up, fixing her hair. It was damp from some of the spatter of rain, and she pushed it up and away from her forehead.

  “It’s classified,” she said.

  “I—”

  “—so I’m expecting you to be discreet.”

  He s
hut his mouth.

  “There was the incident in Mothmont. I… was homesick. I fell in with a bad group.”

  That muscle at the corner of his jaw worked again.

  “Should I continue?” Mary asked. “If I carry on, I’ll upset you.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll be more upset.”

  Are you sure? she thought. She spoke, “I partook in the mass poisoning.”

  She studied his reaction. She watched the thought process, as he tried to put it all together while still not having enough information.

  “They’re the reason I’m… not tender. Them but especially the man who led them.”

  She thought about elaborating. Calling that man a father figure. The twist of the knife that would ensure she was never inconvenienced by this man again.

  Lillian wouldn’t have wanted her to.

  “My stay at the Academy was to watch over me, ensure I wasn’t a danger. It’s why they didn’t let you visit. Lillian is one of the few who know where I came from.”

  “But the rest of it? The classified jobs?”

  “I was asked to accompany them because they were keeping an eye on the reverend Mauer. Who you introduced me to. Who was revealed as a secret rebel.”

  Again, that muscle at the jaw.

  “I knew enough that the Academy didn’t to be useful. I’ve learned skills. The only things they’ve done to me are to ensure I’m alright, even if I’m not tender and haven’t been for a long time.”

  “So that’s what happened. That’s where you were, all this time.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked, to a degree, as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

  “As to where I’m going, what lies at the end of this path?”

  For an instant, she floundered. Giving an answer that tied her too closely to Lillian was problematic.

  “I want to teach,” she said.

  “Teach?” He sounded surprised at that.

  When she answered, she spoke the words and knew they were true at the same time. “I want to train a proper army, and I have for a long time. The path I’m walking, I think I can get there. I’m enough of a perfectionist that I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less.”