Twig

by wildbow

  “She knows the Academy,” Duncan said. “And I don’t have the impression her memory is nearly as bad as yours.”

  “She made other sacrifices,” I said. I felt a tinge of bitterness. “Less sacrifices.”

  “We’ll find her,” Mary said.

  She shifted her footing, and slid down the length of the rooftop. I dropped down to use one hand to balance myself, and followed. The others made their way down, more or less the way I did. Jessie’s stitched climbed down the one face of the building.

  Harvesters approached us as we landed on the street. Ashton’s arrival, however, produced a puff of something that disturbed them, scattering them.

  “Don’t use yourself up,” Duncan admonished.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Ashton said, sighing.

  As the army was staying close together and the defending forces were retreating to the safety of the fog, the streets were empty. The only signs of life were the homes with shuttered windows with slices of muted light shining through cracks. They’d have barriers up, special cloth, paper, or something more protective, to keep the gas out, but it was thin enough to allow the lanternlight or voltaic lights within to shine through.

  The city continued to groan, like a singular joint easing itself into motion after a century of inactivity, or a tree creaking as it tried and failed to topple over. It sounded like muscles felt when extended to their limit.

  I gestured, walking alongside Mary as we set off, putting distance between ourselves and the army that was already halfway through the southern quarter of the city. I directed Mary to keep an eye to the sky. Duncan and Ashton watched one flank. Helen watched another. Lillian covered our rear, with Jessie to keep her company.

  “Where are you, Fray?” I murmured.

  It was hard to cover sufficient ground, but there were only so many ways through the city. With the city’s layout having changed, the open nature of the city was now a winding labyrinth. The main street was interrupted by a cliff five and a half meters tall, wet, slick seashell-like surface. Another path that might have existed was blocked because the building face was flush with a shelf of raised earth.

  The attack would be slowed, I knew, by the fact that the army we’d gathered didn’t want to kill the locals. People would be in homes or cellars, sealed in with stockpiles of food, if they didn’t have access to tunnels—and I was fairly sure I would’ve known about tunnels if they’d existed. Explosives would be off limits, and even more reckless warbeasts would be a problem. Breaking window shutters, knocking in a door, or knocking down a wall would almost certainly kill the family or families that lived in the building in question.

  I glanced again in the direction of the Crown’s crawling monolith. It showed no signs of slowing.

  Mary moved her hand, and for an instant, I thought she’d spotted Avis. It was a path—a shortcut. A sloping rooftop formed a path we could use to get to a higher shelf of ground.

  We climbed up, double checking that we weren’t exposing ourselves to gunfire.

  On the way up, no.

  As we peeked our heads over, however—we saw silhouettes and shapes, and we ducked our heads down just in time to avoid the battery of fire from the entrenched defenders. There had been quite a few of them, all hunkered down in the entrance to one tunnel.

  They’d known their battlefield well enough to know to watch this spot. Their fingers had been on the triggers.

  The ambient light of the approaching army illuminated the southern area of Radham. They weren’t too far away.

  “The rain,” Helen said.

  “What about it?” Duncan asked.

  “It sounds different now. It’s faint, but it’s less of a pssssh, and it’s more of a fsssssh.”

  My back to the cliff that protected us from being shot at by the defenders, I joined Mary in looking skyward.

  The plumes of cloudstuff that the infrastructure of Radham was sending skyward had been dark for a while now.

  I was aware of the specters of the dead and broken civilians, the thugs who wouldn’t have been out of place in the sticks of Radham, but who had lived and died in cities far away. West Corinth, Tynewear, Beattle.

  I saw Evette. I saw Percy.

  “Let’s get out of the rain,” I said.

  Getting out of the rain wasn’t hard. Every structure in Radham was made to withstand the rain, to shoulder that burden and accommodate the people who didn’t want to be drenched to the bone whenever they were outside. The eaves, awnings, gutters, and other protections were all over the place.

  Where it got tricky was situating ourselves so we actually had a place to go, after. We could hide in the shelter of any building, but whatever came next, we’d be exposed and we’d be hard pressed to get to the next place without getting wet.

  “It’s more fsssh than before,” Helen said.

  “Good to know,” I said. Was there no other choice than to confront a line of gunmen at the top of the cliff? They were hunkering down, defining a battle line, and the city being what it was didn’t make it any easier to slip by them. They were very much aware the gas was dissipating on the southern end of the city, and they weren’t about to let their guard down when the attacking army was so close.

  I saw Sub Rosa, standing on a rooftop. Her arms were turned skyward, as she let the rain pour over her. She lowered her eyes, looking at me.

  Once upon a time, I’d been on the same page as the phantom Lambs. They were gone.

  “There,” Helen said.

  ‘There’ was a tunnel that had only partially emerged. There was only a foot and a half of clearance.

  “If we’re halfway through it and the ground shifts, we’ll be scissored in half,” Duncan observed.

  “If you and Lillian don’t go through at the same time, then whoever survives can patch the other up,” Ashton suggested.

  “I love that you have faith in our ability like that, but I know I’m not that good a doctor,” Duncan said.

  “It looks different,” Mary said, her eyes roving over the surroundings, looking over nearby buildings.

  “The rain?” I asked.

  I looked, and I could see. There was a natural haze that appeared where rainfall was heaviest, as droplets struck hard surfaces and fractured, bouncing in a variety of directions. Localized clouds of mist.

  The mist had changed. Lower to the ground or nonexistent. The rivulets of rainwater were thicker. The light—

  I rubbed at the lens of my mask. It remained clouded.

  “Acid rain,” I said. “It’s getting into our uniforms. Go, go go!”

  One by one, the others began squeezing through the gap, entering the tunnel.

  It wasn’t sulphuric acid. It wasn’t like stomach acids I’d seen, nor digestive enzymes. It was bleaching cloth, eating at the natural waterproofing of our uniform coats and masks, and it was very faintly scarring the glass of the lenses of our masks.

  It might not have eaten through the material of our uniforms in an hour, as things stood. But things would change. The rain could get more intense. Even like this, if it wore at the seam, while bags or movement pulled at those same seams, then the seams would split, providing an in.

  Mary, Ashton, Jessie, and Duncan were on the other side when the ground shifted. Lillian hauled her arm out of the way before the top of the tunnel could come down on her arm.

  We shrank back into cover. The army had approached faster than expected. A running march.

  I set my jaw, and I reached out for Lillian’s hand. Jessie’s stitched, now without its cargo, sat unmoving at the base of the cliff. The rest of us were beneath the eaves of a business, lurking in shadow.

  Helen was closer to the street than us, tense.

  Someone had pulled off their mask. Their skin was visibly red, blistering, and as they brought their hands to their head, they left streaks of scalp where whole clumps of hair had pulled away from flesh.

  “Briggs,” Lillian said.

  I looked at her.

&
nbsp; “The old headmaster. Pre-Hayle. Red-tinted lenses on his glasses? Brute force approach to problem solving and ferreting out weakness. He served as a Professor for the military before he took over at Radham. This was his black coat project. I researched it—researched all of them so I knew what drove the important people.”

  “Acid rain?”

  Lillian shook her head. “No. That’s only half of it.”

  She had that quiet, horrified tone in her voice again. The Lillian who might have faltered in the face of that horror might have been gone, but this Lillian could steel herself and be horrified at the same time.

  There were others who were struggling now too. Most had the sense to keep the masks on.

  A man with a covered torch swiped it in the direction of one cluster of harvesters. One of the black oily critters leaped into the air, then jolted off to one side, as if it had been struck out of the air.

  It had spat, with considerable recoil, sending its empty exterior husk flying to one side.

  It wasn’t the only one. There were some in the nearby tree, aiming down, and there were some creeping toward Helen, Lillian and I. Some trace of Ashton kept them momentarily at bay, but the heavy rain would wash that away at any moment.

  They crawled over the afflicted like leeches, but they didn’t stop to suck blood. The harvesters collected resources, and the harvesters built. Their oil-black shells with teeth and claws cast off, they looked to be gorging on broken blisters, melting and softened flesh, and weeping fluids, spinning those proteins into something solid.

  The eaves weren’t keeping all of the rain off of us. I was aware of how it pattered against my glove and sleeve, despite my best efforts to hug the wall.

  “Helen,” Lillian whispered.

  Helen tensed.

  “Don’t. You’ll hurt yourself,” Lillian said.

  The Fishmonger and the Devil were standing in the rain, watching keenly as these post-harvesters continued their work. The efforts to fight them off were hampered by the incredible pain the most drenched were in. Too many had been given gas masks but no hoods, raincoats, or full-body quarantine suits.

  Our people were supposed to be hanging back, keeping an eye on things from afar, keeping the leadership in line. Hopefully there wouldn’t be too many of them in the line of fire here. Some would be.

  Lillian hunkered down, hood up, hunched over, and stepped out into the rain to go to the stitched.

  I reached out, gingerly, and seized Helen’s wrist. She tensed further.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “You know how Ashton likes his patterns?” Helen asked.

  There were people reaching out blind, grasping each other. A tangle of limbs, bodies, of blood, and gasping moans of soldiers who could no longer make noise.

  “I know, Helen,” I said.

  A full two minutes passed. Half of the group that had gotten this far had succumbed, the other half was still under shelter, fighting off the harvesters, both the whole ones and the ones who had shed.

  A tangle stood. It was only two soldiers, but they were knit together by the protein chains of the harvesters that crawled over them. One’s mouth yawned open, while the other spoke inarticulate protests.

  It stumbled, lurched, and groped in our general direction. One mouth made angry sounds, the other started pleading as it realized we were there.

  I hauled back, pulling Helen off balance. In the moment, I saw her eyes lock onto mine, and I thought she would pounce on me.

  Lillian’s stitched with its overlarge meat suit surged forward, pushing Helen and I aside very deliberately. It slammed one fist into the tangle, then bowled the tangle over. It began tearing into them—tearing them apart.

  Others saw, and they surged forward. They weren’t acting like soldiers anymore. They fought like something mindless.

  Helen hauled her wrist free of my grip.

  “Helen,” I said.

  She straightened.

  “Helen. As swan songs go… they aren’t aware enough to feel it. It wouldn’t hurt, they wouldn’t react. It’s a sad way to go about it, if you insist on going that way.”

  Helen remained very still.

  The Crown’s monolith crashed into the side of the city. Everything from the harvester slugs to the soldiers to us, even Lillian’s stitched, was knocked to one side. I flinched, turning my face away from the rain. Helen remained on the ground on all fours.

  If Helen had been considering going, then the howling and roars of the creatures who were stepping off and away from the monolith and into the city were a counterpoint to that consideration.

  “The way’s open,” Lillian said.

  The collision had helped the way to open again, the cliff surging a few feet skyward, or the level we were on dropping by that same measure.

  Helen stared at me, her eyes visible through the lenses. Dead, emotionless.

  “Come on,” I said.

  She stared.

  Was she gone? So utterly?

  No, not when we were so close.

  “Please. I promise you. It’ll be worth it.”

  She nodded.

  We left Lillian and Jessie’s stitched behind to continue its futile struggle against the tangle of soldiers, and ducked into the dark bowels of Radham.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.6

  The tunnel was dark, the only illumination being the light from the gap we’d just crawled through and a tracery of bioluminescent something-or-other running along the tunnel walls at eye level.

  “Can I remove my mask?” I asked. “Is it safe?”

  “Nothing’s safe at this point,” Duncan said.

  “Okay, well…” I undid the clasps and buckles, and I worked the mask off, then pulled the hood back. I took an experimental breath, and I didn’t die. “The acid rain screwed up the lenses a bit, and I’m worried about what it’s doing to the outfit.”

  I worked my way free of the quarantine suit, then rescued all of the tools, weapons, and various essential bits and pieces from it.

  “Easier to see in this lighting without the lenses,” I said, blinking. “Lungs aren’t burning. I think we’re clear here.”

  “I imagine we’d have to be, if the tunnels are used by defending forces,” Duncan said.

  The others began removing their masks. It was dark enough here that when I looked at Helen, she was a pale blob that took a second or two to figure out the orientation for. Lillian was easier, a narrow band of pale face visible between the lengths of straight brown hair on either side of it. She fiddled for a moment and then broke the mask portion free, raising it to her lower face and strapping it there, covering only her nose and mouth.

  They were easier to make out like this. Ashton had shucked off the entire suit, which had hampered his abilities. Duncan remained almost entirely suited up.

  I knelt by Jessie, then removed the quarantine setup, peeling it off, to reduce her weight. It was a process to get her behind me. Helen offered some assistance.

  I could almost hear the unspoken condemnations, the questions as to why we’d brought her. The stitched had helped, and we might not have brought the stitched if not for her. The pace and the group splitting that had risen from the fact she was with us had been to our benefit, I felt. But that was a minor thing, almost an excuse. It was true, but it would ring hollow if I tried to voice it aloud, were someone to challenge me.

  They didn’t challenge me.

  I got Jessie behind me, and I was in the process of trying to figure out how to bind her hands together without cutting off circulation, so I could carry her piggyback, when she simply hugged me tight.

  “Hold—” I murmured.

  “Sy,” she spoke in my ear, barely audible.

  I went still. I waited, tense, while the others rustled, apparently unaware. I listened, wanted the utterance to be the start of a thought. I wanted there to somehow be a world where Jessie would both communicate with me and remain safe from the great and terrible caterpil
lar. It was a cruel and monstrous thing that had eaten her predecessor’s mind and now it skulked near her, waiting for a waking thought to gnaw at.

  I wanted Jessie, and I wanted Jessie to be safe.

  I willed for something, anything.

  As if responding to that will, she hugged me tighter. I could feel her body pressing against me, expanding as she drew in a deep breath, her face nestled against my neck.

  “Yeah,” I murmured. “It’s nice to have you close too. Hold on tight.”

  I pretended she’d heard and gripped me tighter at that instruction, and straightened. She wasn’t too heavy, compared to the weight of the wet uniform and pack I’d been carrying.

  “Ready,” Mary said. By the shape of her, she’d discarded the entire uniform, as I had, and wore only the clothes she’d had on beneath. Her hair was wavy, and if I might have mistaken her for Lillian in the gloom, the streak of the pale ribbon at the sides and back of her head made it easier.

  “Ready,” Lillian said. She’d undone the top portion of her uniform, and tied it around her waist. She had a medical bag and the rifle, and the tube from the mask still extended to the air bladder.

  There was something to be said for the degrees to which we’d discarded the burdens and protections of the uniform, and where each of us stood in regards to our individual… hm. Mortalities was the wrong word.

  Our fated endings? The barbed and poisonous wyvern, the great and inexorable caterpillar, the puppet bound in her strings? Ashton had his metaphorical tree seizing his mind and limbs, and it would inevitably trap him. Lillian and Duncan had set out on a path that threatened to either claim them or destroy them.

  Helen in particular seemed to have done away with all propriety. Her arms and shoulders were bare, she wore a camisole and a coquette’s skirt, her legs and feet free of any socks or shoes. Her hair was messy and damp from being covered with the uniform, hood, and mask.

  She had been named Galatea, and she had been named Helen, after the face that had launched a thousand ships. There were two paths painted there, and she’d just been about to make a final decision, favoring the latter, to pursue the thing she was most passionate about, which would ultimately destroy her.