Twig

by wildbow

  Then they began using the combat drugs. They surged in strength. They threw us off.

  Mary cut them more. I dropped Jessie rather unceremoniously, then joined Mary in disabling them, kicking at one kneecap. My foot slid across the ground to kick at the side of one foot, which just so happened to be resting on ground that looked particularly slimy. It slid, the owner’s balance went with it, and Duncan was able to kick at the spot on the man’s arm where the vials were mounted.

  The ones who had been dosed were too strong, getting stronger, and so we killed them.

  We regained the upper hand. We broke more of the vials before they could use whatever mechanism it was that dumped combat drugs into their systems.

  Each enemy was summarily disabled but not killed, the attacking five with their masks set ajar, pacified by Ashton, pinning the remaining defenders.

  “Help!” one defender screamed.

  His voice echoed in the tunnel, reaching far. It was drowned out by the sound of walls falling, by the sound of countless guns firing, the sounds alternately far enough away to ring across the surroundings, or so close that the listeners would be left hearing only silence for seconds after. Explosions occurred, things screamed. People somewhere out there were crying for their mothers.

  These soldiers were quiet.

  We’d pit them against each other. Crown elite against Crown elite. All it had taken was letting the harvesters in, weakening them.

  The simple harvesters were easy for Ashton to direct.

  “If I told you to go to the Infante and lie for our benefit, to draw him into the position we wanted him in, would you listen?” I asked.

  “You’re mad,” one shouted. It was a woman. I’d pulled off her mask.

  “It’s a choice of life as a traitor or death of the worst kind,” I told her. “Life is always better, isn’t it?”

  “I’d rather die,” she said.

  I reached down, and I undid the clasps on her outfit, revealing the zipper.

  I pulled it off of her. A jacket. She fought.

  The quarantine pants came off next. She was left in a soldier’s uniform, summer-weight, but sweaty and damp. Her hair was in disarray.

  “Please,” Lillian said. “Cooperate.”

  “I have given every year of my life to the Crown since I was old enough to write.”

  “I did the same,” Lillian said. “My life for the Academy.”

  “You don’t understand, traitor. Every hour, every day, every week. Every day I studied or worked, it was for them.”

  “I understand that very well,” Lillian said.

  “On my days off, I socialized with others who served the Crown.”

  “The difference between us is my friends served the Crown, but one by one, they died—”

  “You think I haven’t seen death?” the woman asked.

  “And they turned away from the Crown. We learned things. What the world really looks like. Who’s really at the top.”

  The woman lay there, on her back, Mary stepping on one of her hands. Her discarded costume rested to one side.

  The harvesters scurried here and there, but they gave Ashton a wide berth.

  “She’s seen many of the same things,” I murmured under my breath. “She might even know the most pertinent details.”

  “Mm,” Helen made a sound, though I hadn’t been talking to her.

  “She believes, even with all she’s privy to,” I said. “I don’t know how, but it makes it easier to do this.”

  I grabbed the woman. Mary helped. Each of us had an arm, and we dragged her closer to the area where the drainage water was collecting, running in a stream. The harvesters were thicker here, the ones who might have been near where Ashton was were gathering in greater number at the periphery.

  We held her so her body tilted forward, head only a foot above the water, her arms to either side, where even if we let go, she wouldn’t get them in front of her before her face was submerged. Mary’s foot was on the ground, propped up with a heel on the tunnel’s floor, the blade extended and poking at the top of the soldier’s thigh. The soldier couldn’t bring it forward without impaling it. Her other leg was injured.

  “This is a bad way to go,” I said. “Acid. Parasites. Becoming a monster, maybe even one that’s aware of what’s happening to it.”

  In the background, Lillian was looking away.

  Harder, when she’d remarked on parallels between herself and this woman.

  The only difference being what? Crown instead of Academy? Soldier instead of scholar? Negligible. That I’d turned traitor and walked away? But for one friend walking away, the others following in time, Lillian might have been in this position.

  “You can live. You can find love, you can find family, money, legacy. All we need is for you to go to the Infante and speak one sentence. An innocuous sentence. Harmless. He won’t even know your role.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Why wouldn’t you even just lie?” I asked. “Say you’ll tell him what we want you to tell him. Then get away?”

  “I wouldn’t let any pledge of betrayal pass through my lips,” she said. “Even as a lie.”

  “I felt like that once, too,” Mary said. “Everything was abso—”

  The woman hauled her arm free of Mary’s grip. One side of her plunged into the drainage water. She tore her hand free of my grip.

  Had that been intentional?

  The acid rain was thick here, but the effects not instantaneous. She hauled herself free of the water, twisting around to face her direction, but I could see hints of her face in the gloom. I could see the way she moved her head.

  She gasped, making small pained sounds, and her head turned to scan the surroundings. Her eyes saw nothing. She flinched as harvesters crawled on her, flung arms around, and Mary and I were forced to step back lest we be splashed.

  Guards for the nobles, for the top professors. Gloria, Foss. Hayle might’ve had some.

  It seemed so wasteful.

  The irony being that they were ours. These were the ones we’d arranged to send into the city, to go to war with Hayle. The Infante hadn’t brought any humans of his own. He’d only brought monsters. He’d gathered them around him by being a Noble of one of the highest ranks, stealing their obedience and service from us with just words, gestures, and presence.

  They’d already betrayed the Crown on behalf of the enemy. I’d only asked for a slightly more informed betrayal. It mattered so little, and yet the consequences were so vast.

  We backed away, as she twitched, making more agonized sounds as her skin blistered and the harvesters crawled into the orifices of her face and head.

  She charged us, and we let her. Mary kicked her to one side at the last moment, and the soldier sprawled onto the ground.

  Two charges followed, and Mary kicked her each time.

  After the third fall, the woman remained where she was. The tension in her relaxed, harvesters continued their work.

  Lillian stared down at the woman. Her expression was hard to read, the filter covering her nose and mouth.

  Mary gestured. I responded. We had a back and forth. Duncan joined in. I had to squint at him to see in the gloom.

  A brief conversation.

  “You,” I said, nudging the next soldier with my toe. “Will you cooperate?”

  He looked at the woman. Flesh was sloughing from her now, her hair half gone. Her eyes were being devoured, as harvesters settled into the sockets, wriggling like pitch black tongues.

  “I’d sooner do what she did, in hopes that you make a mistake, misstep, and I get to kill you,” he said.

  “We won’t,” Mary said. She glanced at me. “I won’t. And I won’t let him misstep to the point it matters.”

  “Thanks, Mary,” I said, very unimpressed.

  But the soldier refused to cooperate.

  Mary had gestured, asking me a question. I’d responded. In our back and forth, she and even Duncan had doubted me.

 
But I’d said it straight. The fact that the leader of this squad reminded me of Lillian had softened me to a degree, as room-temperature as this particular group was for me, emotionally speaking. I didn’t feel any fondness, hate or frustration. I could still come to terms with what she was and where she stood. With how it related to what I and what the voice wanted.

  What if she cooperated? Mary had gestured, though the sentence had been butchered by the lack of words like ‘if’, the ‘what’ being only a question. Closer to: question she obey question.

  I’d tie her up. Leave her to get free later, I’d responded.

  Duncan had wanted to know if I would have sent her to the Infante. But no. We didn’t want to tip her hands.

  If they listened, I was willing to spare them. We were striving for something, and if all was said and done and the three gods slain, then I wanted there to be people left who could adapt, adjust.

  There was no point otherwise.

  The second soldier wasn’t going to cooperate. I could see that the third soldier was already even more stubborn than any of the first two.

  I looked at the remainder, and hoped that they’d come around by the time I got to them.

  ❧

  Three. Three had cooperated.

  Not three in ten, but three in thirty.

  Three squads.

  I felt exceedingly room temperature. The voice spoke in my ear. It was content with this direction. For the moment, it and I were on the same page.

  The Lambs were grim.

  “We should thank Abby for this,” Ashton said.

  “Why’s that?” Lillian asked.

  “I spent a lot of time around non-human things because of Abby, and I got a lot of practice,” he said. “And that practice mattered today.”

  “It’s night,” Helen said.

  “It’s important to thank people,” Ashton said.

  “We’ll thank Abby,” I said. “And in the interest of thanking people… thank you, Lambs. Thank you Jessie, Lillian, Mary, Helen, Ashton, and Duncan.”

  “I’m noticing the order again,” Duncan said.

  “You’re second place for me, Duncan,” Helen said.

  “That’s almost more terrifying than reassuring, but thank you,” Duncan said.

  “Thank you, Sy,” Lillian said.

  “Just me?”

  “It’s a bittersweet thank-you, I think,” she said.

  “Well, I’m pretty bittersweet as a person.”

  “That’s not wrong,” she said. “Thank you for… opening my eyes.”

  “I was thinking about that earlier, y’know,” I said.

  “A lot of us were, I think,” Lillian said.

  “I’m not going to thank anyone,” Mary said. “I’m not going to close that circle or provide any next iteration in some cosmic ratio set. We’ll leave it at this.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  Ashton reached out to touch the tangle’s face.

  Our tangle, caught and built by our hands, formed of twenty-seven individuals we’d hunted as they tried to use the underground to reposition in the battle.

  Ashton backed away swiftly, as the tangle grew more active. Nearly a minute passed as it started to move more, flexing itself, figuring out how it was configured. It twitched and flexed.

  It surged upward, hands reaching for and fumbling at rungs in a ladder. It rose more by dint of accidentally hooking on or resting on the rungs as more of itself gathered beneath it, flexing it to strive skyward.

  It nearly buckled, bending at the middle and turning to go another way. Ashton hurried to one side, blocking it, emanating something.

  It continued skyward. It surged out through the hatch we’d identified.

  The Infante wasn’t still here, going by Mary’s recent peek through the hatch, but he was close by. This thing was still rising in the enemy’s midst. It was big and dangerous enough to warrant attention.

  The battle lines at the other hatch shifted. We had an opening, a way in.

  We climbed up. We entered the building. The air wasn’t stale, but it stung the nostrils, and it smelled like war, only bad smells, only oppressive ones.

  It was a warehouse, but fortified. At another time, in proper wartime, it might have housed munitions, in addition to a share of the city’s defensive munitions. The munitions weren’t present. There were no manned turrets, no warbeasts chained up and held at bay. There were only squads, the detritus of war, both in corpses and in discarded articles, and those squads were preoccupied, fighting either the tangle or the enemy beyond the door.

  The Tangle bludgeoned its way through a squad of soldiers.

  I spotted the Infante just quickly enough to see him turning our way, his eyes wide, before the Tangle moved between him and us. He was just past the front doors of the building.

  Where was the Duke? My doubts aside, he was one of our best options.

  The Infante had disabled the gas for us, at least. I was glad to see it. I discarded the mask I’d scavenged from the soldiers’ we’d collected, letting it hang over one of my shoulders.

  I heard the Infante’s voice boom. Orders. Ones aimed at the relatively few people and the monsters outside, who were holding off the defending forces. He stepped through the doorway, into the building.

  Even at a glimpse, going by what I could see beyond the door, the Infante had a lot of monsters with him.

  He spoke again, louder now that he was inside, and the Tangle responded to it.

  It charged him, and he moved clear out of the way.

  It charged past him, and it collided with the wall. The building began to collapse, rubble falling around the Infante, around the battle lines closest to the noble, around the monsters the Infante had gathered around him.

  Acid water streamed into the building. Dust rose and was beaten down by rain. Harvesters churned.

  The Infante pulled his hand away from the Tangle, which was trying to figure out how to move again, with much of the rubble still resting atop it. It stirred, and the Infante walked away from it, putting distance between himself and it.

  “My best creatures are diving into the tunnel,” he said, speaking to the room. “The building is fortified. There’s one exit, and the chemicals in the water would blind you in seconds and melt you in minutes. I find it irritating, but hardly that limiting.”

  “Nowhere to run,” I said.

  “Succinctly put,” the Infante said.

  “It’s a good thing we didn’t come here to run,” I said.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.8

  Acid rain poured down where the roof dipped, streaming down in a broken curtain around the damaged section of the building. The Tangle was surging to life, a short distance away from the Infante, the harvesters swarming it, joined by more of their kin. The acid rain gave them more to work with. Others were gathering at the broken edges of the building and surging into the building by using the Tangle as a bridge to pass whatever restrictions kept them from approaching the walls.

  Ashton ran, darting for the left side of the building, where containers and vats of chemicals stood, where he’d be hidden by a labyrinth of pipes and tubes starting at the containers and stretching up the wall to the ceiling. Duncan was a few steps behind him.

  Mary flung a knife, running forward and to the right. She was ducking into the management office, by the looks of it. Half of the building served to vent gas in a time of crisis, the chemicals near where Ashton had gone feeding through tubes and making their way to the end of the building furthest from the Infante, where the largest vats, containers, and the chimney systems were. The other half was warehouse, and the office would be to manage the goings-on there.

  Helen disappeared into the stacks and piles of crates. Lillian backed away, moving into the cover of the pallets closer to me.

  I merely stepped back, bearing Jessie on my back, a revolver in my hand.

  The Infante barely seemed to care about the Tangle that was starting to gathe
r itself around him. Its ‘head’ turned in his direction.

  “Lambs,” he intoned. He walked further into the room, casually, unhurried. “The bulk of the group hiding at my flanks while the boy with the heaviest burden and smallest ability to defend himself stands in the distance? I’ll assume you didn’t discuss your strategy ahead of time. You’re running on instinct.”

  “You’re waddling in our direction, noble,” I said. “You barely seem to be realizing you’re doing it. See a threat, face it head on and crush it. Aren’t you running on instinct here too?”

  “I consider everything, Sylvester,” the Infante said. “Position, strength, costs, advantages. There are thousands of individuals now fighting in this pointless war of yours. I’m very mindful of them. You seem content to use them to put together this thing of Professor Brigg’s conception.”

  With the sharp and booming emphasis he put in the word ‘thing’, it was as if he’d seized the creature’s attention on purpose. It reacted, and it lunged.

  He struck at it with one hand as it closed the distance. It dwarfed him, but it still reacted to the impact, the direction of its charge turned by five degrees, maybe as much as ten. His hand remained in place, skidding along the wet, acid-slick surface of the creature’s head and neck, while the weight and force of the tangle’s lunge drove him back, his feet sliding on the floor of the building.

  The tangle collapsed, belly-flopping onto the ground. The Infante remained standing. In the next moment, he turned, raising a leg. His robes billowed as he kicked a stack of crates that had been lashed together. Wood splintered and broke, contents spraying into the air, but the pallet moved with the impact, slamming into the adjacent stack of barrels.

  He backhanded the damage he’d done, sending the fragments of wood and wood splinters into the air—just as Mary had stepped up onto a stack of barrels behind him. She raised her arms, shielding her face from the spray. Caught off guard—defenseless.

  “No,” the Infante said, reaching to his left, while Mary was behind him and to his right.

  In the doing, he blocked and caught a knife attached to a wire, that Mary had sent flying at him, while pretending to be on the defensive.