Twig

by wildbow

  We separated. When we moved around the periphery of the warcamp, it was a kind of weaving motion, different members of our group taking a turn at the fore or moving through the actual crowd while the rest of us moved along other tracks, by way of alley or by ducking around the back of crowds. It meant we were harder to pick apart as a group of Lambs, a blonde young lady, a red-haired boy, a young man with dark curls stubbornly sticking to his forehead. Duncan was harder to pin down, but we ran too much risk of appearing to be a unit.

  Especially, I noted, if we kept Jessie with us.

  We took our turns walking alongside her, as well. One at the left, one at center-front, one at the right, and one walking with Jessie and the stitched that carried her.

  It was our habit to move this way if we were trying to search for something, and in the doing, I ended up looking over the crowd, for Mauer’s men, for rebels, and for the people we’d captured and coerced, who might be getting adventurous.

  I saw a lot of our Beattle rebels. I saw the Hackthorn defectors.

  I saw Montgomery and the Moth. The nobles from the train. I was pretty sure those were their names.

  I saw the Primordial Child, fatter and larger than I’d ever seen him, and I wondered what I’d fed him to make him so monstrous. I wondered if he’d continue growing until he consumed everything, or if he’d burst, and if that spelled something horrible.

  The fight was mounting. A rainstorm drummed against the landscape, but the clouds that spiraled out from around Radham weren’t consistent. The low hills and flat plains of the landscape was marked in scythe-shaped swathes of darkness, where the clouds were thick enough to block out the sun, with something very near to sunlight, where the clouds were thin, if there even were any. Where the light touched the ground, it shone with the droplets of the rainfall that had touched it before.

  Radham itself was drowned in shadow. The explosions of artillery shells drumming the walls didn’t seem as bright or fierce as they should have been. Rain between us and the detonations and the darkness of the clouds overhead tempered it.

  The walls had no doubt been started when the full reality of plague had made itself known.

  “I wonder what Hayle is thinking,” I mused. I gestured as I spoke, so the others who weren’t nearby could follow.

  Duncan was the only one in earshot. “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “The Duncan-ghost has been missing for a while,” I said. “I’m not as on the ball with figuring you guys out as I was when I had images of you all keeping me company and giving me hints.”

  “Duncan-ghost, huh? That’s ominous.”

  “It really was, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. What are you thinking, sir?”

  “I’m thinking yeah, the Academy’s gone up against enemies who had back-alley doctors supporting them. They’ve gone up against enemies who had a handful of defectors, who tried their hand at targeted strikes.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The army was approaching the gates, now. We were on the fringes of the town and making our way along the expanse between it and Radham. Barricades had been hastily erected, carriages parked, and crates and supplies were already being dropped off by teams who put them down and hurried back to the wagons they could unload from.

  There was every expectation this would be an all-out war.

  “This is a war,” I echoed my thought.

  “Yeah. But more to the point, it’s maybe unprecedented. As far as I know, we’ve never had a war or even a proper battle where it was the full force of what the Academy and Crown could bring to bear… against the full force of what the Academy and Crown could bring to bear.” He gestured as he spoke.

  “Yeah, Duncan,” I said, signaling ‘agree’.

  We took different paths through the barricades and collected things ahead.

  “I’m not good at understanding people,” Ashton said, falling in step beside me, gesturing as he spoke. “I try, and sometimes I’m right, but sometimes I’m wrong. Even when it comes to silly things. I was very confused for a while that one of my doctors shaved his beard, and every day for a few months after that I was wondering if people would have their heads shaved the next time I saw them.”

  Duncan, off in the distance, gestured something along the lines of ‘Very confused’.

  Smokey-heart-stump think, I gestured, the signs segueing into one another. I asked, “Where are you going with this, Ash?”

  “Ashton,” he said, emphasizing the latter half. “I’m going and gone thinking that I don’t know what to expect next. I’d be anxious but you’re mostly calm so I’m making myself be calm.”

  “I don’t know where it’s going either, Ashton. But I don’t see Hayle surrendering. Not when faced with this. Maybe if we’d made contact in a different way, if Mauer hadn’t forced our hands. But not like this. So we see his opening salvo. From a distance. We shouldn’t get much closer.”

  Ashton nodded, clearly thinking. I gave him a nudge, and he broke away from me.

  I ducked between a carriage and a fence, and popped a cigarette into my mouth, lighting it, during the moment’s reprieve where I couldn’t see much of the proceedings and couldn’t see the others.

  “From a distance,” Helen said, walking beside me as soon as I was clear of the parked row of carriages.

  “Yup,” I said, still walking.

  “I don’t like distance,” she said.

  “I’m something like sixty percent sure distance is a good thing here,” I said.

  I stopped in my tracks, standing by a barricade. I shifted the bag at my shoulder and let my thumb brush against my weapon. Soldiers rushed past us, hurrying toward the front line. I scanned the various camps and emplacements. Need to find leader. Ours.

  Duncan gestured. I see. Action?

  I gave my response. Tell him. Warning. Pull people back.

  “I feel like your percentages are always lower, these days,” Helen said. She touched my arm. “You used to be more confident.”

  “I did.”

  “Are you scared?” she asked.

  Bravado was the name of this game. I was Sylvester. I was fearless, even reckless in the face of danger.

  “I’m terrified,” I said.

  “You know I don’t feel fear like you, Duncan, Lillian and Mary do,” she said.

  “Don’t let Mary hear you say she gets scared. She’ll deny it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “What were you saying?”

  “I don’t feel proper fear, but my thoughts have been going in circles lately. My team has been trying to rein in my hunger, I’m having my appointments again, and Duncan is making sure Ibbot is doing it more right than he was, but I think the damage was done.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think a lot about that. My thoughts circle around it but don’t ever land. Like tired birds.”

  “Of course. Tired bird thoughts,” I said.

  What? Duncan signed, in response to my gestured transcription. He was talking to an officer—one of the people who’d been in the meeting—and keeping an eye on us.

  Helen spoke, “My thoughts do a lot of those circles. I think this is what fear is like. Except…”

  “You don’t feel fear like we do. It’s… an abstract non-approximation.”

  What? Duncan gestured again.

  I explain after, I gestured. Warn man.

  “I’d feel a lot better if I wasn’t so distant from the worst of it,” Helen said. “I want my fingers digging into meat, touching bone, feeling the blood pumping out. I want to hear the sounds they make.”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “How soon?” Helen asked.

  I didn’t give my response right away.

  My eyes moved over the crowd, over the distant scene at the gates of Radham.

  A horn blew. The man Duncan had been talking to.

  The forces nearest the gate began to back away. Only the group of stitched working on the gate itself remained, potentially their han
dlers as well.

  I watched it, glanced at the general who Duncan had informed, and then looked over the young men and scattered few women in uniform. Helen had talked about fear, and these people were afraid.

  I looked past them and saw Sub Rosa, in the crowd near us.

  “Very soon. A matter of a minute or two before we’re properly underway. Sub Rosa says the gates are opening.”

  “Does she now?” Helen asked.

  “She pays attention to these things. We should split up for a moment.”

  “Distance,” Helen said.

  I started to say something, but she only smiled, winked, and parted ways. Heads turned to look at her as she sashayed into the crowd, hood low, even though she was just one more person in uniform.

  The heavy doors of Radham’s gates were hauled open, smoke billowing around the point that a targeted explosion had occurred.

  No sooner had the doors opened than a thick gas poured out. Silhouette became merely blurry shadows in the midst of gas. Men toppled.

  The ones who didn’t fall immediately were savaged by things that operated from within the cloud. Experiments, spindly and clawed, which moved quickly enough that virtually all of the gunfire that was directed at them was scattered, aimless gunfire.

  It took me a second to spot Helen, at one barricade, one soldier among many. She had a gun out, and her hand moved in gestures.

  I really wanted it to be door-open tentacles?

  She really wanted the doors to open and giant tentacles to reach out.

  Another time, perhaps.

  The gas served to push our forces back. It bought them time, and it bought them elbow room. From the volume of it, it was different from what we’d deployed in Hackthorn. It was continuous, the product of buildings and emplacements, much as the rain was something created by a perpetual production of seeded smoke and steam.

  Radham lurched. The walls remained where they were, but the rest of the city shifted, as if something had given way and something else had surged upward. Not a great deal—ten feet, twenty. But enough that everyone present reacted.

  As if that initial burst of growth had broken ground or started something, the Academy began to shift. It rose up, and staggered sections of the city rose as well. Areas slowly rotated, whatever was happening beneath them, as if there was a great corkscrew beneath.

  The tunnels beneath the Academy. The interconnected infrastructure, the layout.

  Jessie would want to be woken up for this. To explain it, to paint the way forward. She knew Radham better than I knew the back of my hand.

  The smoke that streamed skyward from countless chimneys and vents in Radham was darkening by the moment. The gas now flowed over the top of the wall, not through the gate. The wall at one side of the Academy was cracking, even being as thick as it was.

  Not all of this had been in place when we were young. Not all of it had been in place when I’d left, even. We’d known Radham harbored its superweapon and countless other weapons and resources besides, but the actual nature of it had been a closely guarded secret.

  Had I ever had even an inkling that I might’ve been going to war with Radham, I might have pried at that secret. As it was, it was just one thing among countless others that I hadn’t known and assumed I would never have cause to know.

  The upward progress was glacial, but it was progress. The Academy and to a lesser degree the city were rising up and out of reach. The gas and the creatures within the gas were meant to keep trouble at bay until the process was done. It was exceedingly possible that there would be more to it.

  Helen had returned, finding a place by my side. Duncan and Ashton appeared.

  The stitched and its great flesh suit held Jessie, standing just a little ways back.

  We couldn’t move just yet. There wasn’t much to be done, no orders to give to the people in charge, no answers or questions.

  Hayle would be in his tower, maybe, or he’d be at a high vantage point. He’d be looking down on us, while his Academy flexed muscles it hadn’t ever had cause to use, unsheathing claws, or releasing things that had been sleeping much, much longer than they’d ever been awake.

  A gas mask slapped against the sandbag and wood-spike barricade I stood by.

  Lillian, with Mary in tow.

  “I can’t help but feel the gas is Hayle saying something like ‘hi, Sylvester. Isn’t this inviting? It’s entirely your thing, with poisons and gasses not affecting you. It’s totally not a trap.’”

  “Or,” Duncan said. “It’s a poison gas that serves as a very effective countermeasure against invaders.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I was aware that whole regiments were rushing toward the battlefront, even as others retreated. Masks like the one Lillian had in hand were in place, uniforms were taped up, and weapons were at the ready.

  “If we don’t make a move now, it’ll only get harder,” Mary said.

  The Academy still rose. It had yet to reveal all of its tricks.

  I pulled on the mask. I turned, ready to help Jessie with hers, but Lillian was already on task.

  Rather than speak, my voice muffled by the mask, I gestured.

  We go. Clear the way for the army. This wasn’t something we’d manage on our own. It was never going to be, even before Mauer had alerted Radham that something was wrong. There were too many checkpoints, too much security. Radham was too mindful.

  I gestured again.

  We face down the second of the three gods.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.3

  Soldiers in gas masks aimed guns at us as we approached at a run. They were wary, doubly so with the tide of experiments and stitched that were marching out of Radham.

  Duncan raised his arm, signaling.

  “Let them pass!” the leader of the squad called out, his voice muffled.

  I was only able to steal a glance at the man. His face was hidden by a mask, a tube running to a bladder at his side, his coat long and heavy enough that it hid most of the little tells of his posture and form. I could see his eyes, however. I could see the glare.

  Complete and utter hatred.

  I heard the questions. I heard the concern, too, amid the grinding of stone on stone, wood on wood. But what I was particularly cognizant of was a deeper, more distant sound. It was a sound that carried beneath everything else, the dull volcanic roar of organic processes, something fitting for the flow of fluids through an impossibly large tree, the creak of massive muscles hauling themselves into motion, or air moving through great tunnels.

  The soldiers were of little consequence. The leader who we’d poisoned, blackmailed or otherwise forced to serve us could hate us all he wanted. I’d repressed enough anger and spite for them and their like over the years that they’d have to work for a few months or years more before they’d drawn equal.

  We left them to try and break into a sub tunnel that had been revealed by the collapse of the wall and the fact that the city was showing hints of its guts as it rose. They were ordering stitched to batter at the locked grate that secured it.

  Our path was up the wall. It had crumbled in a spot, helped by the shifting city dragging and pressing against the one side of it, and the ragged sides of the damaged portion formed a vaguely staircase-shaped ascent, albeit one of crumbling stone and splinters of wood as long as I was tall.

  Water ran down the sides of the wall and the foot of the city that was ever-rising upward. Gas flowed down through the crack in the wall, and it combined with the moisture and the lenses we wore to make visibility miserable.

  We started climbing.

  Each meter we climbed was another meter of steep fall that plunged to our left. Meanwhile, there was a steep wall to our right, the earth that had been subterranean before it had started rising. As we climbed, the wall to our right did too, slower to rise than we were, even as we were slowed by tricky bits in the ascent. Water poured over us and ran down the side of the wall to our right and over the broken bits underf
oot, threatening to wash us over the side.

  I heard a crunch. I turned to look, and saw that Lillian had drawn a knife, stabbing the wall to our right.

  It cracked like an eggshell, but the fragments that broke away from it were reminiscent of seashell, dark and earthlike on the one side, pearlescent on the inside. The earth on the other side spilled forth from the crack, dry and bound together with fibrous root structures. Then the water hit it, and it wasn’t dry anymore. The wound bled mud, thick and sludgy.

  “Theory confirmed?”

  I had to look to check who the speaker was, with our masks muffling the sound. Mary.

  Lillian replied, “I think so. It looked like calcium carbonate, but I was wondering at its thickness.”

  “Why?” Ashton asked.

  “Well, this isn’t sturdy. That tells me things. It’s not meant to do much more than separate the part of soil that’s going up from the soil and material that isn’t,” Lillian said. “This isn’t meant to go back to the way it was.”

  A more permanent state of affairs?

  Far below us, I could hear screaming. The entire group paused, listening, as two sides went to war.

  We had a full-fledged army, but only a segment of it was equipped to operate where the air was toxic. We had the advantage of being on the offensive, Hayle on his heels, but all put together, the forces were fairly evenly matched.

  I was in the lead. I pushed at a bit of rubble that wobbled at my touch and sent it careening over the edge. We were ten or so meters above the ground. Thirty feet. Five turns of head over heel before we crunched hard and wet against the grass and hard earth below. There was still a ways to go, going by the building tops I could see above us.

  “It’s also not about to hold much weight, standalone There might be some infrastructure that helps hold everything together, but this isn’t Radham as a… I don’t know. Think of Besserham.”

  “I don’t know Besserham,” I said.