Twig

by wildbow

  They expected me to fill this void. Lab One was in suspension, at the same time we were surrounded by the movement of the students who were using the stairwells.

  Red bent down, and she picked up her wood axe. She hefted the weight of it in her hands, then gave it a small practice swing, with no strength behind it.

  “When I’m done, I’m going to put this in the bitch professor,” Red said.

  “I’m not sure—” Jessie started.

  “That’s my condition. I’m going to hatchet her. Maybe I’ll take her hand. Maybe I’ll give her a few whacks. You can patch her up later. But she doesn’t get to experience this without some fear.”

  The problem with that, I thought, is that the threat gives Ferres even less reason to press forward. She has more reason to take us down with her, match our violence and brutality with her own.

  We needed Ferres’ cooperation, and we needed Red’s. She was the only one old enough that still had her modifications, who I also trusted to cooperate and listen to me on some level. We really only had the Wolf, and that left us few options in who else we could put on the stage.

  “Okay,” I said. “If nobody disagrees, then okay.”

  Ferres didn’t speak up. The Lambs that were present didn’t either.

  “Then… let the actors take the stage.”

  I saw tension at Red’s jaw as she turned at a right angle, striding for the stairs.

  Jessie spoke, her voice barely audible, and the wolf turned as well. It loped, its movements seemingly far slower than Red’s, though it covered a roughly equivalent distance with each movement.

  It was as though they had practiced it a hundred times.

  With Jessie’s memory, I might have remembered the exact count. Wolf and prey had been calibrated on a biological level, much as the clockwork Punch and Judy emerged from the fancy clocks as the hour hit, to carry out their mechanical choreography.

  The Lambs divided into two groups. Half followed Red, me among them. The other half followed the Wolf. Students further up and below us on the staircases fell silent and still, and it was a change in volume and movement that communicated to students standing near the stairs. Heads turned to see why, then fell silent in turn.

  I took up a spot where I could peer through gaps in the crowd, sitting on one of the stairs near the top, opposite Emmett. Jessie stood beside me, slouching against the railing, head bent low to peer through the gaps with me. For our faces to be recognized, our targets would have to ignore Red, focus on the crowd instead, and see our faces in the background there.

  It was a question of what drew the eye. Virtually every student present wore the pristine white uniforms. Red wore, well, red.

  Students saw the wood axe she carried, and some of them remembered her as one of my agents of chaos and violence. It played a part in them falling silent, the fear that added just a little bit more tension to the scene.

  Professor Edmund had turned, his eye on Red as she let the wood axe dangle from one hand, her head bent. Murmurs and cries of alarm marked the arrival of the Wolf, in a place I couldn’t see for several long moments.

  Even more than Red, the Wolf had been a real and visible danger to many students present.

  Red’s hand shook as she gripped the wood axe.

  We need to do this. We need to sell Edmund on this. We need Ferres to not sell us up the river.

  The Wolf moved. Red moved perpendicular to it, into the sea of tables and benches, students and faculty.

  Students cleared out of the way, scrambling, as Red went up, over, and under both table and bench, each step placed carefully.

  The Wolf got close enough that it looked like it might stampede through the students. At the last second, Red changed direction, and the Wolf responded by batting at a table with one paw, sending it tumbling in Red’s direction.

  It collided with a wall, and for just an instant, for just about everyone present, it looked as though the deciding blow had been delivered, quick and undeniable.

  Red emerged from the small gap where the table wasn’t flush with the portion of wall near the ground. She dashed, and the Wolf was already moving to intercept her. It collided with her, snapping its teeth, and only the fact that the length of the axe bounced off of a tooth kept Red’s arm from being caught.

  For the next several moments, it was all snapping teeth, broken benches, and Red staying a hair’s breadth away from danger.

  I hadn’t imagined it would be this narrow, this very precise.

  It was a dance, and it wasn’t so different from the ones I’d enjoyed with any of the Lambs. Improvisation played a role, the stages we danced on changed, and only the fact that we knew each other remained a constant.

  This was a dark dance. Ferres was the choreographer.

  Ferres had yet to step in.

  And Edmund… well, he’d been alarmed enough at one juncture to stand in his seat. His lady companion gripped his arm, tense.

  The scene continued, and I looked away as the Wolf struck Red, sending her stumbling hard into the corner of a table. She dropped her wood axe, and scrambled to pick it up again before the Wolf could close the distance.

  Unwilling to be an onlooker and trust that this would play out as I hoped, I walked away. I took stairs two at a time, and Jessie followed.

  I heard a hard collision from upstairs before I was even halfway across Lab One. I heard the massed intake of breath.

  “Betty,” I spoke, before I was even around the corner.

  “Further down,” Jessie said.

  They were gathered in the stable, all at the end, where snapping and snarling beasts could discourage visitors from poking their nose in too deep. Caged.

  Betty was among the elite students and faculty members who stood and sat on bare wood and sparse hay.

  She flinched as she saw me.

  She was the Lillian that Lillian had worried about becoming. The mountain climber, who’d lost sight of ground.

  “Ferres is up there. When Red and the Wolf are done, Ferres is going to speak. She’s going to let slip that the Academy is in danger, she’s going to rally allies, and in the process, she’s going to spark a fight that’s going to see hundreds dead.”

  Betty barely reacted.

  “Ferres will die, I guarantee this. The visitors will die. So will my people. So I’m going to ask you… are you willing to step in?”

  “You want me to stop Ferres? When she might stop you?”

  “There are a small few individuals in the Crown States who are equipped to stop the Lambs right now,” I said. “Ferres isn’t one of them.”

  Sylvester is one, I thought.

  “We could slow you down, couldn’t we?” A faculty member asked.

  “You’d all set us back, don’t get me wrong. All the same, giving up your life, Ferres’ life, the other students’ lives just to set us back is a pretty grim proposition, isn’t it?”

  Somewhere up on the floor above, a piece of glass broke.

  I wouldn’t have asked Red if I’d known it would be this grim.

  I should have known.

  “You used me as a pawn to get Ferres to listen to you before,” Betty said.

  “Yes.”

  “You changed my face, you cut my nose, you… you took me. You held me there, kept me prisoner while the warbeasts and experiments roamed loose, and you held me like that for days.”

  “I did,” I said.

  “You—when are you going to stop asking things of me?” Betty asked, her voice hollow. “When are you going to stop taking?”

  I wanted to answer, to cut through the question and to challenge her, but I could see how frail she was.

  I knew that every moment we delayed, Red was either battling the Wolf, or if the fight had concluded, then Ferres would be getting her chance to speak.

  But, even with that knowledge, I was prepared to wait. I wasn’t pushing my brain to the limits to do it, but I thought I could see something in how Betty was acting.

  �
��Don’t go,” a faculty member in the cage said. “Don’t give them anything they want.”

  “You’re trying to make a point,” Betty said. To me, not the faculty member. He didn’t have his position and he didn’t have authority to make her listen. Betty went on, “But… it’s not like that.”

  “What’s not like that?” Jessie asked, from behind me.

  “It’s not equivalent, how you’re treating us, and how we treated you.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll talk to Ferres.”

  “Just go. Stand by her,” I said.

  Betty nodded.

  “I’ll go too, if it counts for anything,” one of the boys said.

  “Just two of you,” I said.

  Jessie unlocked the cage. I held a knife and a gun to keep the rest from surging out of the broad cage.

  Betty and the boy joined Jessie and I in jogging in the direction of the stairs.

  I didn’t see the final moments. A few seconds faster, and we might have.

  Red was on the ground, bleeding from various scrapes and contusions. She had fallen, and in the process, she’d lost her weapon. I hadn’t seen how that played out, how Wolf and prey had positioned themselves to have it go this way, specifically.

  The weapon, falling to the ground, had skidded across the floor and come to a rest not far from Professor Edward Frost, or whatever his name was.

  He bent down to pick it up. He was frozen in time, caught between three decisions. One was to fight off the monster and save the girl. To become part of the story. Another was to retreat. The third option…

  Well, to his credit, I didn’t take him to be the type to make Red experience the nightmare ending that had been scripted for her from the beginning of her stay at Hackthorn.

  it seemed like that was the moment the spell was broken and he recalled where he was.

  The second that happened, the Wolf lunged for him. He flinched, and jaws closed around him.

  The bottom end of the axe caught in lower teeth, the head of the axe between fangs at the upper row. The Wolf strained its jaws, aiming to close them, and the handle of the axe threatened to splinter and break.

  “Alright, Ferres, it was a good show!” Frost called out. “Enough of this!”

  The headmistress of Hackthorn didn’t make her appearance. She was supposed to be at the other stairwell.

  “Ferres!” he called out, with a little more alarm in his voice.

  He turned his head, and I knew that he was about to give the order for the entourage of scythe experiments to move in. The only thing that stopped him was perhaps the danger of escalating things when he was within arm’s reach of being bitten in half.

  “Welcome to Hackthorn, Headmaster Foss,” Ferres spoke. She finally made her appearance. “I believe this is your first proper visit?”

  “What’s your game!?” he called out.

  I gave Betty the smallest of nudges. She strode toward Ferres. The boy was only a step behind.

  I saw Ferres notice them. I saw them come to stand beside her. They were a little unkempt, not the best picture we could have put forward.

  But Ferres unrestrained wasn’t a good picture either.

  I saw Ferres turn briefly in our direction, as if looking for meaning or cue, but Jessie and I were safely hidden in the crowd.

  “No game,” she said. “Only a story for you to tell, so close to reality that it’s almost indistinguishable from it.”

  She snapped her fingers. The Wolf backed off, leaving Foss to sag a little.

  It was Duncan that started the applause, a fierce clapping that was picked up by Ashton, and by others.

  It swept over the hall. Only the guests didn’t clap.

  I could see from Foss’ expression that he would’ve liked to call her out, to insult her, or question her sanity.

  But to do so would be to admit he was unnerved, to draw attention to his weakness in the moment. To play along…

  I watched as Professor Edmund Foss started clapping. The rest of his people joined in.

  It almost seemed to get louder, with the accord of it, the fact that everyone present, be they enemy or ally, was on the same page in their relief, if for different reasons, that the show had struck home for everyone here, again, if for different reasons.

  Applause shook the main hall of Hackthorn. Student, Doctor, Professor, soldier and experiment.

  ☙

  Applause shook the main hall of Hackthorn. Lesser nobles, Doctors, Professors, students, soldiers, experiments, and more. More still filed into the space, each bringing their entourage, each bringing their own protection.

  Lillian’s hand found mine, clutching it tight. Just beyond the window, an experiment perched on the wall, big enough to eat the Wolf in one swallow.

  Nobles were taking a break from talking among one another. Aristocrats were gathered in their periphery. Lesser professors and professors without their own individual responsibilities were gathered for Ferres’ show and big reveal. Food spread out across the tables, the best we could provide.

  One of the Academies hadn’t even brought a boat, instead arriving on the back of a sea creature with a castle on its back.

  It was everyone we didn’t want. Too many, with too many combined resources among them. We were already outnumbered, and there were still boats on the water, waiting for an opportunity to unload their passengers.

  I gripped Lillian’s hand just as hard as she gripped mine.

  Helen’s head turned. She nudged Jessie, and with the pair standing in front and to the side of me, I could see the motion of it. I could follow the angles of their heads and see why. Ibbot was here.

  Frost was, too.

  The applause died down, and with it, the Lambs ducked our heads down, turned away, and set to work.

  Previous Next

  Root and Branch—19.5

  No sign of Fray. Mauer played his part. The Infante and the major players are absent.

  Well, the Infante was present. He waited for me in the stairwell, not moving from his spot, his stare penetrating. He kept the company of the Primordial Child.

  The Lambs had split up, as moving from building to building was a laborious process. There were three ways to get from building to building. The first was to take one of the two arms or the leg that held up bridges, which necessitated passing through the main building, the body of the reclining woman, and walking past ninety percent of the guests. For obvious reasons, we had to rule that option out.

  The second option was to use the walltop road that formed the three-quarter circle connecting the Academy buildings around the perimeter. Most of them were dormitories, and getting from, say, the boy’s first dormitory to the girl’s dormitory meant taking a curved road through two other buildings, one of which was the administration building, until reaching the destination. What should be ten minutes of walking to get from boy to girl proved to be twenty or thirty in practice, notwithstanding obstacles, having to move out of the way if any carts were using the path, or trouble accessing the buildings, like when the administration building closed for the night.

  The last option was making our way down to the ground, walking to the foot of whichever building one wanted to access, and then walking up.

  Not a single option worked in the long-term, when the Academy was as occupied as it was. We had access to the ground for the time being, but as the aristocrats and lesser professors started getting settled and got luggage put away, the city below us would teem with low level threats.

  The layout was meant to hold up to siege and invasion, and the limited, easily controlled paths played a part in that, with the heart of the University being able to produce an endless tide of warbeasts, stitched, parasites, or the like, should an enemy try to hold a given point.

  We rounded a corner, and the Infante was there again. This time he kept the company of Dog and Catcher. They weren’t children anymore, but were full size, with Dog being large enough to make the hal
lway cramped.

  The pair fell into stride with us.

  “Do you get that jump of emotion in your chest, when you’re on the verge of closing the deal?” Catcher asked.

  I was silent. Dog made a garbled sound of agreement.

  “Dog and I were made to feel it. Helen as well. It was something they gave the Academy students, you know.”

  I know.

  “The kick. For experiment and student both, they joined drug with reinforcement in reality. The students were all given access to Wyvern in small amounts, enough to make them susceptible, just in time for the first of the most critical examinations. We were given dosages of drugs for our first hunt. Success? The desire for it was etched into us. Failure? Etched in with Wyvern for the students, the weaker students not only weeded out but made into failures in every fucking sense of the word. For us, it was withdrawal from the drugs and a lack of maintenance if we failed. They ingrained us with the sense that if we could not be useful, we’d be left to rot, with no team to care for us.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know that they did the same to you, don’t you? Except what they did with you was deny you access to your fellow Lambs. In your explanations and stories, do you even realize that you tell the same story twice, but you’ll change it around?” Catcher asked.

  I was silent. It was my paradox, wasn’t it? I was the liar, but liars needed a good memory to keep track of their deceptions.

  Dog grunted.

  “I don’t mean to get on your case, Sy,” Catcher said, in his grizzled burr. “But you’ll tell a story about yourself and you’ll say you did what you did because of Wyvern, while you privately tell yourself you did it for the Lambs. You’ll tell that same story a few months later, and you’ll say you did it for the Lambs, while you privately tell yourself you did it for the drug. I’m telling you what you always knew. I’m not trying to trick you or get at you, that’s not how I do things.”

  Dog growled.

  “Not how we do things. Dog and I, we set our eye on something, and we see it through. We’re straightforward. I’m telling you straight, Sy, it’s one and the same. Your Lambs, your addiction. It’s never going to be good for you or them, and it was never going to go anywhere but a few broken hearts. The only difference between us is that Dog and I are ugly, we came to terms with things early. I never believed I could have a woman, or even a friend that wasn’t a proper experiment—”