Twig

by wildbow

  “There are no other shores,” I said.

  That look in his eyes grew darker.

  “Refugees, Mauer. There were too many children and not nearly enough supply. That was the secret, and finding the right refugees, before the Academy got to them, that was the source of the knowledge we wanted.”

  Helen, beside me, was nodding slightly. She was so sincere it helped to sell my lie.

  “You are not the first, or the tenth, or the hundredth, in that billion or billions of people, to have a glimpse of victory. The Lambs and the Beattle Rebels, our fairy tales and our soldiers, our ‘cooperating’ Nobles, aristocrats, doctors and civilians, none of us are the first to stand where we stand on this road, on the brink of victory. In the last century, this conversation has played out before. Not exactly the same, the players are different, but it’s happened. Humanity has been here.”

  One of his soldiers looked uneasy. Mauer spared the young woman enough attention to deliver a sharp hand gesture, one that hinted at emotions he was trying to keep from us.

  “You want this to be a victory, but it’s not. Trying to make it so will only see them destroy all of this, in ways we can’t stop or deflect. Anywhere else you could go, they have control, they’re as close as God-damn to seizing it, or they’ve already razed it all to the ground. This, here, it’s the staging ground they’ve chosen for the present day. They’ve been waging war for a long, long time, almost incessantly.”

  “The plague, the black wood,” Mauer said. He sounded further away, now. “They’ve cultivated it? To help the razing along?”

  “They’ll let this place be buried, have Tender Mercies stalk the alien wilderness and hunt down any stragglers, and revisit it in some distant future when the plague has subsided and the black wood extinguished itself, old vegetation regrown.”

  Mauer nodded.

  It seemed to take him a long time to digest it. His lieutenants and soldiers seemed far more affected by it.

  I’d painted a grim picture for them, one where Mauer and the rest of us weren’t special. Where victory was not achievable in the end.

  He spoke, calmer still, “And you?”

  There were so many answers to that. So many answers that could have drawn him in. To talk about beliefs, about the nature of the war we were fighting, about anger. They were things I could seize on and play with and twist around with my tongue.

  I waited for the voice to tell me what to do.

  The voice was silent. The non-answer stretched out, until I thought he might get angry again.

  Feelings, anger, belief. It was what drove him. He was not rational, and he had long ago condemned himself to hurl himself into a wall until he’d dashed himself to pieces, in hopes of making some difference to it.

  I could bring him on board, even subjugate him in a sense, when he had so little else. It would be the first step, but it was not a hard course of action to draw him in. All I had to do was extend a hand, speak his language. Something heartfelt, basic, clear.

  “We’re re-evaluating the assumptions at hand,” I said.

  I let that sentence linger, I let him take it in, and turn it over in his head.

  I saw it. The anger that crept across his face, in the incremental, moment by moment changes of one line, of one angle of the corner of his lip, the movement of his eyelids. By hair’s breadths, as if the mask was cracking. Rainwater ran down his face.

  “And we’re killing gods,” I said, because so long as I was extending him a mercy, I might as well slap his hand away to be more merciful still. He wouldn’t thrive or even survive under our thumb, and what we were doing wouldn’t survive if he outlived us and took over. He hadn’t quite reached out to offer his assistance, but by rejecting it, rejecting him, I could give him that push he needed to resume moving in the ways and directions he had been moving for some time.

  At least for a short while longer.

  “I see,” Mauer said.

  I nodded.

  “Nothing to lose then, is there?” he asked.

  “I suppose not,” I told him.

  He stood there for a few seconds, and then adjusted his coat, covering his arm. He turned, and he walked back to the carriage.

  He stopped there. Without looking at me, he said, “You said you thought Genevieve Fray might accept your invitation and come here.”

  “She somehow always manages to turn up when it matters,” I said.

  “She won’t turn up. She was going elsewhere.”

  I didn’t ask. If I’d asked, he wouldn’t give me the answer. Because of spite, or because I’d just rebuked him and it would be his chance too rebuke me.

  Mauer turned his head to look in the direction of Radham.

  I’d guessed as much.

  The door slammed behind him, the stitched horses grunted rather than whinny, and they turned back to the main road. We remained where we were, largely silent, as we watched them go, picking up speed as they got to flatter ground.

  I turned my back to Mauer’s wagons, and my focus on Jessie, where she’d slept through it all.

  “I know,” I told her. “I know what you’d say.”

  “We couldn’t use him?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The Lambs were folding in together, the group focused on the group. Lillian and Mary reunited, talking. Helen hugging Ashton, talking to Duncan. There was the tentative approach of Lanie and Chance, too, with Emily trailing behind.

  “You look unwell, Sy,” Emily said.

  “You’re the one without eyes,” I said.

  She smiled softly.

  “It’s cosmetic?” I asked. “After what the Baron did to you?”

  She held her smaller set of claws to her face, and pried her eyelids apart. Within the recessed sockets, raw and bloody in appearance, there were orbs set into the back, small and beady. She smiled a little more. “I thought that instead of facing my fears, I’d become them. My peripheral vision is garbage, but it came with other perks.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  The conversations carried on. Plans, strategy, small words of affection, teasing. Ashton mentioning Abby. The conversation turned to Jessie, and all three of our young aristocrats seemed genuinely upset at the sight, even as Jessie was unfamiliar to them, in large part.

  “You had her here, while talking to him?” Lillian asked.

  “She got us this far. She gets to be part of the rest,” I said.

  “She’s asleep, Sy,” Lillian said. “Don’t start thinking otherwise.”

  “Maybe words or sounds filter through into the dreams.”

  “That’s you starting to think otherwise, Sy. I know how you work.”

  I smiled, and I was happy to stand next to Lillian, not tugging or pulling on any part of her, be it a string, tongue, or a bit of her clothing. Having her here was good enough. We each played only the smallest roles in the ongoing conversations and planning.

  Somewhere in the midst of it, I glimpsed Mauer, standing off to one side. His arms were spread. He was speaking, orating, and there was no sound.

  The rain pattered down around us, lightning flashed, and there was no thunder.

  The voice spoke, hushed.

  Listen.

  With that, I ceased to hear the other Lambs, our friends and allies.

  I heard the rain on the ground, running out of gutters. I heard the city. Minutes passed, and Lillian drew closer, asking if I was alright. I didn’t even hear myself respond, my ears attuned to the sounds of the world around us.

  When I heard it, my head turning, the others noticed, and they looked too.

  A lingering orange light, a plume of smoke. Futile, given the wall was what it was, but he hadn’t been trying to do damage so much as he’d been trying to make a statement. A bomb, a mortar, something else. It didn’t matter. A detonation near the exterior walls of Radham, not far from the gate.

  Our entire city shifted, packed to the gills as it was with soldiers and commander
s, with suppliers and with weapons.

  It wasn’t ideal, it wasn’t even good in any respect. Both Radham and our side were fully in the know, now. It would make both sides suspicious.

  But it was somehow right.

  The war was on.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.2

  Nearly thirty Professors and military leaders, two nobles, and another twenty assorted major players were in the room. Taken as a group, they looked worse for wear. They hadn’t slept as well as they might have if they were happy and secure of their futures. Diets had been affected by parasites, and the lingering effects of toxins in blood and muscles taxed others.

  An innocent bystander who stepped into the room and saw this sorry lot might have thought something was amiss, even without the cue of expressions and glares. Heck, I could smell it, when they were all in one space. The sweat, the fear, the pollution of their bodies.

  I wondered if Mauer might have described the crowd as having lost their souls. Broken, their dreams and stations taken from them. Maybe he would have wanted to hold onto his idea of the soul, that it was something more sacrosanct. Or perhaps he would have wanted to say that they’d lost their souls long, long ago.

  The important thing, however, was that they were at least holding up appearances when seen alone or in small groups. They looked tired and perhaps a bit unwell, but not to a degree that would shake anyone or stir too much in the way of suspicion.

  Their lieutenants were now organizing the arrangement of the forces. I stared through the window, and I watched as squads tore up train tracks that led into and out of Radham. Rank and file of soldiers covered the landscape, the masses of men spiky with the long rifles they held, and more continued to file in, existing groups firming up into tighter ranks.

  Running like rivers through the blocks and columns were the other things. Many were warbeasts, organized and held at bay. Others were vats and other machinery, that produced gas or held lifeforms that couldn’t quite be called ‘warbeast’. Many blocks had a different consistency, because they were made up of larger individuals, or because the individuals had the natural stillness of a war-ready stitched.

  I was letting the silence stretch on, as our audience settled. The Lambs were gathered around me, as were our lieutenants. All of my allies were waiting patiently, as I’d suggested they do.

  I wanted it to be a relief when I spoke, when I gave clarity and the full picture to the people who we’d only given fragments to. I wanted them to listen, and I didn’t want to give them a lot of time to start being clever, so they got the full picture now.

  I spoke. “There is incontrovertible evidence that Professor Hayle has been acting as part of a conspiracy to work against the Crown States.”

  I turned to face the room again, and I could see that I had their ears.

  “He produced the Lambs project and eventually took on a role as headmaster of one of the Academies most renowned for its research, development, and its special projects. We have reason to believe he’s responsible for the poisoning of the water, so to speak, where countless citizens were sterilized and leashed. At a later date, he had several experiments, Lambs included, pretend to go Rogue while they continued to work for him and arranged the killing of several nobles.”

  I paused for emphasis, then continued, “Many of your soldiers, followers, families and friends have been dragged here, and of them, many don’t know we’re here, or that we’re having this conversation. They still believe that all is well, and they’ll have no clue that we’re framing Professor Hayle for our own purposes.”

  “Why?” one man asked. “Petty revenge?”

  “I would strongly recommend not interrupting,” Mary said.

  The man shut his mouth, scowling.

  “He knows too much,” I said. “And he’s always been invested in keeping tabs on things. Creating projects like us, supporting other projects that could gather information. If he uncovers any of you, or if he gets ahead of any of this, then we’re done. And we’re taking you down with us. We’ve given a full third of those soldiers out there, most of you, and a lot of your people that we left behind a taste of our leash. Extricating yourselves of that leash is going to require removing us and time, and if Hayle acts, if we get revealed, or if we die, you only get half of what you need, and there’s an unhappy ending here.”

  “Hayle lives,” Duncan said. “Your underlings may want to know what this is, especially as the stakes escalate. If you feel the need to tell them, you make it clear. Hayle betrayed the Crown in an unprecedented way, and he has set other things in motion. He will live because you need his knowledge to stop his plots. Understand?”

  They seemed to understand, reluctant as they were to admit it.

  “Go,” I said. “Be good. Don’t try to be clever. Through the gates. Seize the city step by step, until we can get to the Academy itself.”

  They rose from chairs, and the ones who’d already been standing started to exit the room or held the doors for their betters.

  It was curious, that they acted like that, still holding to old hierarchies. Curious that some degree of civility and culture still drove them, even when they’d all been brought low.

  Some lingered.

  “Speak,” I addressed the one in the front, specifically choosing one who looked to be of lower station than the others. A woman who might’ve been an aristocrat’s wife.

  “The parasites you put in me, my husband, and these others,” she said. She indicated the group. She started to speak, then stopped, changing her mind about what she was going to say. “They’re taking too much. I’ve lost four fingernails. I feel unwell.”

  She showed us the fingers in question. The fingernails weren’t entirely gone—they’d broken lengthwise, individual fragments and slivers sticking out of the hangnail bed, the flesh beneath red and raw.

  I might have felt bad about putting those people into that circumstance, but we’d wanted to mix up what we used on people, to make it hard for them to find a single fix and turn the tables on us, and we’d wanted overlap, so some key figures were both poisoned and under other coercion.

  We’d known some of the methods we used would be uglier and more uncomfortable, and we’d turned those things toward some of the less pleasant members of Radham’s Academies and governance.

  I couldn’t remember who this woman was, but I knew that some of the aristocrats we’d targeted had earned harsher constraints because of their demonstrated amorality. The culling of adults over a certain age, forced breeding programs, the leadership that had supported some places like the Baron’s Warrick, with the forced inclusions of monsters in families, and the members of one Academy that had incorporated around a reserve of natives and turned the whole tribe into experiment stock.

  Whichever one this woman was, well, tearing off her fingernails in an indirect way wasn’t about to prickle consciences. Mine, least of all, lenient as it was.

  “Well, that shouldn’t be happening. I’ll look after it,” Lillian said. She looked over at me. “Can I have Mary? In case this is a ploy?”

  “You can,” I said. “I want her back for our opening play, though.”

  “I want to be there for your opening play,” Lillian said. “You aren’t leaving me behind. We won’t be long.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  While Lillian and Mary went with the parasite-infested, I did what I could to get Jessie ready. I bundled her up, making sure she was comfortable, and then covered her up further, with the same sack-cloths used for sandbags.

  “Okay?” I whispered. I had to reach beneath the covering to run fingers through her hair. “It would make all the sense in the world if you stayed behind, but I don’t always make a lot of sense these days, y’know?”

  Jessie slept on.

  “But maybe if you’re dreaming there, if your sleeping mind is putting things gently in place, where things can be put in place without doing damage, and if it’s holding firm where we need it to
hold firm, and if you’re actually touching on those memories, maybe it’ll be good if you hear my voice and you have some nice memories of me, or if you hear me when I’m being devastating and it calls some other good moments to mind.”

  I realized that Lillian and Mary had stopped in the doorway that led to the adjunct building, our makeshift labs. Listening. Duncan, Helen, and Ashton were at the front door, ready to venture outside. They watched.

  “And maybe,” I murmured, my voice lowered, just for her. “Maybe you’ll wake up one day, and—and I know there’s a chance I won’t be there, because that’s the way I’m going. There’s a chance others won’t, because it’s not out of the question. And I know there’s a pretty good chance that no matter what we try to set in place, plugging you into a new, hacked-together project caterpillar every night, letting you sleep all the time so you don’t lose more, you might still wake up and not be Jessie. So it’s not like I’m really staking a lot of hopes on this, for the record. Just saying…”

  Was it imagination when she exhaled a little harder than she had been, in the rhythmic breathing of deep sleep?

  “…But maybe, maybe there’s a chance that you wake up, and I’ll be there, and I’ll be able to tell you that you were with us. I’ll tell you what happened and because you heard the voices when you were sleeping, you’ll be able to say it almost sounds familiar. And then I’ll be able to tell you that you heard it while you were sleeping and something soft and fuzzy stuck in that rigid, not-fuzzy brain-structure of yours. And you can yell at me for bringing me with, maybe. Or you’ll be secretly happy you were part of this.”

  I wanted to stay.

  Go, the voice said.

  I obeyed. There weren’t any more of the hard exhalations, so I simply adjusted the bags and coverings to make sure she was comfortable, not too hot or too cold, that she’d be dry and that nobody would see her, and then signaled the stitched to bring her.

  Mary and Lillian didn’t start moving until I was at the front door with Duncan, Ashton, and Helen.

  We stepped outdoors. As much as I’d enjoyed the rain earlier, it was heavy enough now that I flipped up the hood of the military jacket I wore. My sleeve had the badge of a messenger. The others had a degree of camouflage as well. Helen and Duncan as soldiers, and Ashton as a student. We would stay out of sight and hopefully we wouldn’t draw too much notice if we were seen.