Twig

by wildbow

  We hadn’t left them much in the way of resources, but there were a lot of brains there, and they did have what they had brought with them. In the stables, staircases, and in the main hall, there had been scattered cases of luggage and collections of medical supplies for the upkeep of nobles and experiments.

  “Across that broken bridge, they’re getting organized,” I said. “Establishing a chain of command, organizing, taking stock, and figuring out what we have planned. They’ll be sorting through the medical supplies and searching through the building to find what we left behind.”

  “We left traps,” Jessie said.

  “We did,” I said. “But once they finish searching the labs, they’ll get a sense of what they have available, and they’ll start acting. A set number of supplies for the care of nobles. The rest set aside to gamble with.”

  “I suppose it is a gamble,” she said. “Deciding what they can afford to lose, taking their shot with it, the best they can put together, after observing us…”

  “Depending on who takes charge over there, it’s going to be a very effective, targeted attack, or they’re going to play it conservative.”

  “Conservative would be bad,” Jessie said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I wished I had the binoculars. Instead, I looked over the chasm between our building and the main building of Hackthorn.

  “You’re focused a lot on the people in that building and not on the thing that’s putting holes in our headquarters.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Where’s your head at, Sy?”

  Where was it? If I’d been dwelling in situational awareness, my thinking in this moment was likely a bit of a swing too far into another kind of thinking.

  “Trying to analyze what we’re up against. Thinking, maybe, that if we can deal with them, somehow, we can behead the snake, leave the gossamer whatsit without anyone to give it commands.”

  “Might be a tall order, Sy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was. My dwelling on them was a little bit to do with me just wanting something I could figure out, a little bit to do with me veering too far into the problem solving part of my brain, as I moved away from situational awareness. “How are you managing?”

  “I’m tired, Sy. I need and want to sleep, but it’s not the time for it.”

  “This is going to take a while to play out. It might be better to rest sooner than later.”

  “That goes for you too, you know. You’re worn out.”

  I couldn’t deny that.

  We stayed there, thinking, me idly tracing my fingers up and down Jessie’s forearm, then down to her fingers, my mind half with her and half with the problems before us.

  “The good thing,” I said. “We’ve turned the tables.”

  “We’ve turned the tables in a lot of ways, Sy. Turning their students against them is a big one. Turning their Academy against them is another. Which way are you thinking?”

  “Well, the way I see it, we either win this one, or we drag them into a tie.”

  Jessie considered that one for a moment. She was about to respond when we heard a shout.

  “Sy! Jessie!”

  “Here!” Jessie called out.

  We made our way down the hall until we reached a part with a hole in the ceiling. A student stood on the edge.

  “A message from the girl’s dormitory,” the student said. “You said to keep track of the lights?”

  “That’d be Mary,” Jessie said to me.

  “I remember that much. Lillian’s there too, y’know.”

  “Lillian’s going to be managing the countermeasures,” Jessie said.

  “I remember that too.”

  We met the student at the stairwell, and the guy handed Jessie a folded piece of paper. The flashes were marked out in a pattern of dashes. It mapped to our tap code, and to our system of gestures. I couldn’t remember enough of it to translate it, but Jessie was able to go over the entire thing with a glance, then provide the translation.

  “Mary wants to come over. She thinks she can help.”

  I glanced at Jessie. It wouldn’t do to talk over her and get caught arguing when things were this tense, so I gestured. Jessie just so happened to gesture at the same time.

  Both of us wanted the other to go. I supposed we were going to disagree regardless.

  “Lillian’s over there, you can wind down, catch up with her, and you can make good use of the countermeasures, in case they try something. You’ll get a chance to think,” Jessie said, quiet. “If something springs to mind, you can have Lillian or someone pass a message using the code.”

  “You need to rest,” I said. “I work well with Mary. We’re not going to get many chances to rest, and we’ll need your brain later, as we keep track of them all.”

  Jessie set her lips in a firm line.

  “I have some ideas,” I said. I wasn’t wholly sure if I was lying. “Not an actual plan, but the general shape of what we might end up doing, in my head. It depends on a lot, like where the thing goes to sleep, if it goes to sleep, but it’d help if you were over there.”

  “And you think you’d be more effective over here?”

  “In the center. Not the center-center, not the main building, but closer to where I can communicate with the other buildings and more of our people.”

  Jessie nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll swap places with Mary.”

  “Be safe,” I said.

  Jessie blew air out of her nose, hard. “Says you.”

  “You’re supposed to say something endearing,” I said. “But no, you say that in a tone like you were going to call me numbnuts or a whackadoodle or something.”

  “And a hundred other things,” she said. “You’re going to be okay?”

  “I’ll manage,” I said.

  She put a hand behind my neck and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. Then she sprinted off, leaving me standing in the hallway.

  I swallowed hard, my attention turning to the nearest window. I could see the main building, and the dark shapes that were the people and experiments at the windows.

  We can do this, I thought. The Academy is ours, we have the resources. We just need to deal with an overly ambitious spiderweb and whatever else they come up with to throw at us.

  “You’re a child of the Academy, Sylvester.”

  The voice was deep. I’d completely forgotten he was there. I’d forgotten to keep an eye out for him and to keep my eyes and attention one step removed from him. In my fatigue, my thoughts completely elsewhere, I might well have provided the crack he needed to worm his way into my skull.

  I set my jaw.

  “You,” I said, to the doctor who had brought the message. “Ashton and Professor F. Where?”

  “I’ll show you the way,” he said.

  I would have liked to have a moment to myself, to think, digest, and see what I could do standalone. I didn’t have it. We walked briskly.

  “Tell me what’s going on upstairs. Distract me.”

  “It’s not much. My squad is background work. Carting things around, taking turns keeping an eye on the girl’s dorm, in case they flash a message, writing it down. We don’t want to stay too stable or let something slip past us, so we take turns going for walks, checking on all the people we’ve got stowed in the rooms here.”

  The people in the rooms. We’d gathered up all the students, faculty, and anyone else in Hackthorn who might not be cooperative, and we’d put them to sleep, collecting them in rooms.

  “Sylvester,” the Infante spoke, standing in the doorway of a room with an open door. The buckling of the structure around us had made the door pop open like a cork popped from a wine bottle. The gossamer whatsit had struck the building somewhere upstairs, by the way the ceiling curved.

  “What’s the mood like?” I asked the student.

  “Not great.” he said.

  He didn’t elaborate, and I wanted him to. I wanted his wo
rds in my ears and my brain, so the Infante’s would have less room to work.

  “Just keep talking. It’s actually more helpful if you make less sense, or say more troublesome things, so go for it.”

  “Huh?” he asked.

  I waited, hoping he would take the prompt.

  “I don’t know what to say. It’s not far,” he said.

  He had to be the laconic sort.

  “You’re a child of the Academy, Sylvester. You’re ours. You served us, once upon a time, and your heart was in it. That is still a part of you. The better times. When you believed.

  The damage to the building was so extensive.

  “Did you see any attacks on the girl’s dormitory? Any sign that they were using the distraction of the gossamer whichwhat to slip something past the radar?”

  “Mostly quiet. Only movement on the ground, and even then, not a lot. Carting bodies to the main building.”

  “Good,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  I couldn’t even articulate it. That I really wanted him to keep going, to keep talking, because I felt like I was on a precipice. Silly of me, to simply forget my circumstances because the Infante had been holding back and lurking in the depths of my brain. Jessie had asked me if I was going to be okay, and I’d said yes, and there was a good chance I was going to be wrong on that count.

  Ashton could engage my brain, keep that wheel turning. Waiting for Mary and finding her would take too long.

  “You believed in what we could bring about in the future, Sylvester. Because you recognized that the future is what concerns us most of all. It is, after all, why we so often use children. Our relationship to the future is complicated, and so is how we deal with the most vulnerable of humanity, who have so much potential.

  You know you see that. You’ve abused that yourself.

  The voice was starting to sound less like the Infante and more like the voice in my own head.

  “Oh, fuck,” the student said.

  The damage done to the hallway was extensive. This was where the spike had come through, and it was where the strands were worst. Ones I’d cut, that were still anchored at points. The wind blew in through the hole in the wall, making them dance this way and that. Sword slashes minus the sword—just cuts in the air.

  “Do you have a gun?” I asked the student.

  “Huh? No. I don’t know how to use one. Look, I don’t know what you’re on about, but we’ll have to take the long way around.”

  Fatigue and pressure had worn me down. I’d had the Infante with me for a week and change. I’d grown accustomed to that tension and threat that he posed, and both of those things had ramped up just often enough to keep me on that edge. I’d let my guard slip when other things claimed my attention.

  I turned to speak to the student, intent on using every iota of body language and tone to convey just how serious I was, so I might tell him that he needed to take certain measures.

  I came face to face with the Infante, instead.

  His massive hand reached for my face. He seized my head, and all went dark.

  ☙

  Dark.

  I came to, and I hurt all over. I felt warm and cold at the same time. The ambient temperature was different, but I had company close enough that body heat transferred to me.

  I was kneeling on the hard ground, and a knee rested against my windpipe. A hand stroked my hair, and a blade touched my cheek.

  Mary was sitting on a chair, the seat of which pressed against my shoulderblade. Her leg was resting against my body and throat to keep me upright, her foot in my lap. The blade ensured I wasn’t a threat. The hair thing—

  Well, I’d add that to the one hundred things I didn’t know.

  “How bad was it?” I asked.

  “Your timing could have been better,” Mary said. “You stabbed Ashton.”

  I winced. “Is he okay?”

  “Gravely offended, but he’ll mend. You let Professor Foss go.”

  I winced.

  “I caught him. He’s in the next room.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You set fires, Sy. Scared a lot of our people in the process. Because they were at risk, and so were the people we stowed away.”

  I nodded.

  “You scared me, Sy. Because you said an awful lot of things. Except it wasn’t really you, was it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. My voice was a hush. “What did I say?”

  “That our fates were foregone conclusions. That we were as good as dead, with the expiration dates nigh. There were other things. A lot of pain, a lot of rage and sadness. Except we were the enemy, and the actual enemy, you were saying they were the answer.”

  I nodded. I felt sick to my stomach. I was so ashamed I wanted to curl up until I was so bound up in myself I could cease functioning.

  I’d believed it once, a long time ago. A part of me wanted to believe it again, to abandon the pain and hurt and embrace that time when things had been clearer, simpler, and when the Lambs had been near.

  Mary’s fingers combed through my hair.

  “I did get the drop on you after all,” she said, her voice light, an attempt at levity.

  “Hah,” I said, with no humor at all.

  “Is this a thing we’re going to have to be concerned about? That one of our own, with no warning, could flip and do the most destructive, damaging things possible?”

  “Looks like.”

  “Is this where we lose you, Sy?”

  “Could be.”

  “How long did it take you to get this bad?”

  “A week or so? It’s not like I’ve been good for a few years now.”

  “Alright then,” Mary said. The knife moved so it was no longer pressing against one side of my face. “We’ll work around it.”

  I turned my head, trying to get a better look at her.

  “I should have told you.”

  “You do a lot of things you shouldn’t,” Mary said. “I’ve stopped being so surprised.”

  “Why aren’t you angrier?” I asked. “You’ve been so angry for so long.”

  “We look after each other,” Mary said. “Right? It’s always been how the Lambs were, right from the day I joined. There was always the assumption that we had our weaknesses, and we accepted those. I came to terms with this a long time ago. Shooting me and making me crawl back to the Academy, after you left? That surprised me. It pushed me away. But as long as you’re here, and it’s you being entirely you? I accept that.”

  “Me not being me is me being me?” I asked.

  “We support and love each other, warts and all,” Mary said, stroking my hair.

  “This is a pretty big wart,” I said.

  She didn’t respond to that. Her fingers continued moving through my hair, sometimes taking different courses, and it did a lot to calm my thoughts, even as the guilty feeling swelled in my upper chest.

  “Come on,” she said. “Stand.”

  She stood from the chair, then grabbed me by one armpit, helping me to stand. My hands were bound behind my back.

  She didn’t free them, but she didn’t walk me with one hand firmly on my shackles like a Crown officer might walk a convict, either.

  It was dark out. Hours had passed. Lights were on throughout our part of the Academy. The exterior buildings, the perimeter wall.

  There weren’t many lights on in the main building.

  “The gossamer horror?”

  “My knives and threads helped, but it only made three strikes before retreating. It settled in for the night.”

  “Where?”

  Mary pointed into the darkness. Down, in the midst of the city.

  “It settled on the main building first, but then lost its hold and drifted down to the ground. It’s guarded now,” she said. “They devoted considerable resources to the task.”

  There was an opportunity, I thought. When they were moving to a position where they could guard it, we had a shot. I missed it.
I occupied our resources. The Infante did.

  “Look at the enemy, Sy,” Mary said, moving her finger to point.

  I looked at the main building.

  There weren’t many lights on. It was something of a surprise that there were any at all.

  We hadn’t left them many candles. We hadn’t left them much of anything. Even the candles on the dining tables had been cut short, the truncated nature of them hidden in waxed paper stems. They were either burning the little candlelight they had, or they’d devised another means, which consumed limited resources.

  “Is it working?” I asked.

  “The siege is underway,” she said. “Gossamer weapon aside, they’re holding back. Not attacking. They’re waiting for a window of opportunity, if I had to guess.”

  “Not ideal,” I observed, despite the lump in my throat. “Any idea what they’re doing for food?”

  “I think they’re using the supplies they brought with them. Special feed for experiments going to nobles and Professors instead. Lillian thinks they might be setting up protein farms and ways to get nutrients.”

  I nodded.

  Our enemy was being conservative, then. It was the safer and more dangerous route of the two Jessie and I had discussed. They’d recognized what we were doing, the noble Starling or whatever his name had been letting them know about the houses. They were counteracting our plan to win by attrition by consolidating and producing resources. It would come down to who broke first, or to who could outlast the other, rather than us trying to fend off their attacks while they withered away.

  “We had signals from within. Students lingered behind, and the enemy doesn’t have enough of the story to realize they’re ours. Ferres is wounded. There’s a schism in their ranks, as they try to decide what to do. They tried to use chemicals from the lower labs, but Jessie and Junior swapped labels and containers.”

  “Yeah. My suggestion,” I said.

  “It injured quite a few and ate through their good resources.”

  “Yeah,” I said. This was what we’d wanted. I knew why Mary was showing and telling me this.