Twig

by wildbow

  He gripped the knife in his hand, the knife disappeared in the midst of it. He hauled his closed fist back, and Mary raised her leg—the wire was still attached to her shoe, and by pulling on the wire, the Infante divested her of the shoe.

  She dropped out of sight, gesturing.

  Hurt.

  She’d gestured in a direction. I already suspected. The initial kick at the pallet. Helen had entered the collection of barrels and crates at a point further from the Infante than Mary had, but in the interest of deceiving the enemy, she’d moved to a point well beyond Mary’s position, trying to circle around to the back and side of the Infante. The Infante had heard or guessed.

  “I’m not reeling from any artillery shells, and I don’t make the same mistakes twice. Your pet here doesn’t equalize the odds,” the Infante said. “And I have few soldiers here for you to try and use against me—none I’m interested in keeping alive. They were idiotic enough to obey your orders. At best, now, I’ll let them remain on this continent, in a city I’ll allow to be claimed by plague. They’ll be erased and forgotten by history. You have no leverage, Lambs. You have no advantages on this battlefield.”

  “You sure like to talk,” I said.

  “When I talk, others listen. Even my enemies listen, regardless of whether they want to hear. I have seen you at your lowest points, Sylvester Lambsbridge. I have seen you retreat from reality because for all that you have no compunctions about taking lives, you cannot bear to have lives taken from you.”

  He was advancing. As I backed up, retreating, I saw Lillian’s shadow off to one side.

  “For all you like to tear others down, what do you really have, big guy?” I asked. “Who really cares about you and not about the power you wield?”

  “I am the power I wield, Sylvester,” he said.

  He reached out with one hand, and he raised a barrel into the air. It was full of liquid, by the sound of it as he lifted it into the air. One-armed, he threw it in the general direction Duncan and Ashton had gone, not far from the Tangle, which was preparing for another strike.

  His eyes didn’t leave mine.

  “That’s their power, isn’t it?” I asked. “Not yours. If you are that power, then you’re admitting you’re theirs.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Is that the slant of your argument? Is that where we’re going?”

  “I’m clarifying your statements,” I said.

  “One does not look at an isolated hand and call it a slave of the body. I’m one piece in a greater organism. If power is given to me to handle, much as one hand might pass a knife to the other, or as one might use the mouth to order another person to give that knife to the waiting hand, then I’m not lesser for seizing or using the blade.”

  “I could tell you things about the ways I’ve abused my hand,” I said. “You’re not flattering yourself with the comparison.”

  “Being vulgar, Lamb?” he asked. “Changing your approach, trying to evoke disgust or attention from me, so I don’t pay attention to what’s happening behind me.”

  He’d hit the nail on the head there.

  The Tangle rose up behind him. He leaped aside as it charged through crates, planks that had been tied together, and into one pillar that was helping to hold the roof up. The pillar didn’t fall, but it bent, and with it, the roof shifted. Hundreds of gallons of water that had collected on areas of the roof that were more or less level poured down onto the broken wall and rubble on the far end of the building.

  I raised my gun, firing as Helen and Mary attacked in concert, moving out of the space between vat and pallet, and from the damaged stack of crates behind the man. My bullets struck the side of his head, his ear, his temple, distracting him while Mary threw knives. Helen leaped onto his back, grabbing one knife that had lodged in his shoulder, using it as a handhold to climb up.

  Mary’s next thrown knife was a soft toss, arcing through the air more than it followed a straight line. The Infante seemed to recognize what was happening with it, and moved away from it. Helen stuck out a bare foot, tried to catch the knife with her toes, and caught the thread that trailed behind it instead.

  Her next movements were as fast as a mousetrap snapping shut, knife passed to hand, the provided thread pulled against the Infante’s throat.

  He hurled himself at the pillar, to sandwich Helen between himself and it. She jumped clear, still holdng the thread so it pulled taut, and—while Mary and I both emptied our guns into the side and back of his head—kicked Helen.

  One Lamb down, I thought, with a cold, sick feeling.

  Helen wasn’t getting back up. If she remained there, then she would be vulnerable to any enemy charging through.

  More water was pouring from the sloping roof, as the pillar had been struck again. Less than before, but it was still a curtain. There were shapes on the far side. Creatures, warbeasts, groups of people.

  The Tangle was backing away, its head still aimed at the Infante. It reacted to something behind it, and shied away from the ruined corner of the building, which meant it shied toward the Infante.

  It bristled, gathering itself up and reconfiguring to mount a better attack.

  Ashton’s purpose in this was to keep the Tangle managed. If and when enemies came charging in, the cloud of aversion and negative emotion might slow them down or hamper them enough for us to react properly. Duncan’s purpose was to keep Ashton intact. Ashton’s sense around a battlefield wasn’t wholly there.

  The pillar wasn’t about to break. The roof wouldn’t collapse, and it wouldn’t collapse in a way that helped us. There were vats of chemical and the chimneys at the end of the room behind me, vats I was steadily retreating toward, but I had no reason to think they would be useful against the Infante.

  Against ‘power’, the first god.

  “You ordered your agents to watch the Nobles, aristocrats, generals and Doctors you coerced,” the Infante said.

  “This is where you say you found them, and they’re suffering right now.”

  “Not right now, Sylvester, not right now. I could lie and say I rooted them out. I could say that, yes, but you’re too clever to position them where they could be overturned with a single move. They’re scattered through the camps and armies. They watch, they communicate, and they operate in discrete cells. I know this.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “The Lady Gloria bowed before me, and I knew she was broken or gone. I infected her. The plague will take her. It will take those near her. It will take the ones you have watching her, the ones they communicate with, and countless others,” the Infante said. “Not right now. Not even soon. But you cannot get from here to there in the next few hours. Not easily, with things being what they are. Even if I and the army standing outside this building were to stand down, letting you do as you pleased, you would be hard-pressed to communicate what you’d need to communicate to your assembled army.”

  Mary was at Helen’s side now. The Infante looked at her. He didn’t move a muscle, only pulling the razor wire away from the bloody ruin at his neck. There wasn’t enough blood to matter.

  “The red plague seizes battlefields, and this is a battlefield of a scale to rival all but three in the history of this nation. What have you accomplished, Lambs? Even if you were to somehow kill me, which you’re far from doing, what change have you wrought in the world?”

  “If we removed you, people will wonder. The myth of the Crown being unassailable will be tested in small ways.”

  The Infante shook his head. “Unassailable? Sylvester Lambsbridge, the Crown is all there is. You know this. There’s only the Crown, places the Crown will assuredly claim in the coming decade, and ruin.”

  “I don’t think it’s as assured as you pretend,” I said.

  I reloaded my gun, placing the bullets in the cylinder with care.

  As I backed away, I could see others in the stacks.

  The Baron.

  The Twins.

  Cynthia.

  I tried not to
give them too much attention.

  “And I don’t think, Sylvester, that you arranged this particular war to kill me. Not as the primary goal. You aimed to set something in motion, to gather your components for a chimera of a mission, pieced and patched together for later construction.”

  “Killing you was always something I figured we might have to do,” I said. “You’re one of three gods to be slain.”

  “The reality, Sylvester, is I’m not a noble that can be toppled unless it’s the sole, all-consuming focus of my enemies.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “And I suppose it’s to your side’s advantage, that if it is the sole, all-consuming focus of your enemies, then your enemies are thinking too small to be a threat.”

  “Perhaps so,” the Infante said. He looked back in the direction of Mary and Helen, and at the Tangle.

  He charged at me.

  He was fast, and it felt as though each of his feet struck the ground with such an impact that it made it harder for me to keep my own feet under me. With my burden, I felt glacial compared to the speed and ease with which the Noble moved.

  I’d resisted calling him a Noble, choosing appellations to nettle, but he was a Noble. One of the best of them. He was the god I’d painted him as, him and the forces that were currently being held back by the worst of the rain and by the pressures of the forces of Radham.

  I couldn’t run, so I didn’t try. I couldn’t defend myself, maneuver, be clever and do anything else at the same time. I sucked at fighting, if it wasn’t an ambush. I didn’t try anything fancy.

  I aimed and shot, standing my ground, with zero thought to self-preservation.

  If this is the way we go, Jessie—

  Jars shattered, contents splashing out onto the ground between the Infante and I. Thrown from the flanks.

  The Infante, large as he was, had a lot of momentum. He couldn’t stop outright, even with his prodigious strength, but he could drop one knee and both hands to the ground.

  He slid on the slick of wet ground. Had he been running, he might have sprawled. He came to a stop, fifteen long strides away from me.

  Soap or scented oil, by the smell of it.

  Thanks Lil.

  “That’s better,” I said. I raised my hands. “Kneel before us, brute.”

  The Infante raised his head. He stared at me. I smiled.

  I turned to walk into the shelves and collections of medical equipment to my left. With my steady, slow retreat and the Infante’s implacable advance, we were far enough back now we were in the midst of the gas-production facility. I looked at the various boxes and containers and saw little I could use. Worse, it seemed to repeat ad nauseum. Vast quantities of the same products, with no variation, no creativity, no different tools.

  I wasn’t going to find anything.

  More glass shattered. The Infante reached for something nearby and hurled it in Lillian’s direction, two-handed. Whatever it had been had been dense. From the splinters and fragments that were cast into the air, and going by the sound, I had reason to suspect it had torn a whole swathe through the cover Lillian had taken.

  “Creatures!” the Infante called out.

  “I know you are, but—” I started.

  “Attack!,” the Infante ordered.

  Those stationed outside had no choice but to obey. They came in through the far end of the building. Some charged through the artificial waterfall of acid rain. Others seemed to have trouble with the footing on the rubble.

  The tangle, directed by Ashton, charged into the mass of encroaching soldiers.

  Another asset down, I thought.

  The Infante went on the offense. He moved with the same speed he’d used to charge after me, but this time he went after Lillian, wading through crates and vats, sending chemicals spilling around him. Mary hurdled onto the highest ground available—the top of a set of shelves, and gestured in my direction.

  I was to look after Helen. Mary would help Lillian.

  There were things that might have been birds and might have been large insects gathering in a cloud around the Infante. Another experiment, contained within his body. Mary’s initial attempt at stopping him was quickly aborted. She emptied a gun as she backed off.

  He didn’t slow, he didn’t stop. Nothing we did seemed to do much damage.

  Mary threw a knife, and it glanced off of his eye, as if she’d struck steel with steel.

  He hurled a metal cover from a vat, and he clipped Mary.

  “You were faster once, Mary Cobourn,” he boomed. “At least one of the Twin Sisters of Richmond were slain by your hand. I have reason to suspect this. To slay her you would have needed to be better than this. How does it feel, puppet, to take such pride in your abilities, but to know you’re slower and weaker than ever before?”

  I found Helen. She was lying on the ground, breathing shallowly. I was afraid to touch her, for fear she would hurt me, or for fear I would prod something on the brink of complete and total collapse.

  Her head turned slightly as I crouched near her.

  “I’m here,” I whispered.

  “Hi,” she whispered back.

  I moved to where I could peer around the corner of the shelving unit.

  The superweapon I’d glimpsed earlier was at the other end of the building. The Infante’s personal superweapon, by the looks of it. It was a tower of throbbing flesh that made me think of a beating heart, but scarred flesh. It bore a horned head of gold with two faces, had three breasts, two arms, and three legs.

  It warred with the Tangle, turning with surprising speed while lashing out, tearing with surgical precision. It was winning.

  The swarm the Infante had unleashed was spreading through the area. One of the things swooped at me. It took a chunk out of my shoulder, and a piece out of Jessie’s arm.

  Insect-bird hybrid, to look at it. Locust-crow.

  “Tomorrow, if you were to live, you would be weaker still,” the Infante’s voice boomed. “Not just your Mary Cobourn. All of you.”

  There were more crashes. Each disturbance seemed to bring more of the swarming things into the air. It seemed they could smell my blood, and they could smell Helen’s.

  I wrestled with Jessie’s hands, and I made her let go, depositing her near Helen. I drew a knife.

  One locust-crow swooped, flitting one way, then the other. I shot with the gun and swiped with my knife, to hopefully hit it if the bullet missed. The bullet missed, and it darted back out of the way of the knife.

  In the background, Mary leaped into the air, working wire. Something that might have been tentacles snapped up in her direction, seizing her out of the air. She was hurled, thrown down at the ground, with a strength that left me little doubt the Infante was the source of those things.

  We weren’t winning. Just the opposite. It was very possible Mary was down and out, like this.

  “We have our beginning, we have our middle, and we have an end,” I said, letting my voice carry. I saw Mauer amid the pallets, crates, and barrels. “We have our high points, our entanglements and attachments. We rise, we have our moments of excellence, and we have our failures, our moments of weaknesses.”

  “More the latter than the former, Lamb.”

  “We’re works of art. We were created, us Lambs. We were forged for a purpose, I know that. And hey, we’ve had our high notes and low ones, moments of high volume and low ones. Times when we made an awful lot of noise, and times of silence, to give that noise more weight and meaning. We wove in and among one another. That’s how you make music.”

  “From what you’ve left in your wake, I think you’re flawed pieces,” the Infante said. He was closer. He was approaching me, Helen, and Jessie, now.

  “And what are you, you glorified Bruno? You’re a single note, stretching on for far too long. No variation, nothing to complement it, no highs, no lows. If you were art, you’d be a canvas of red and only red. A big canvas, a rich red, maybe, but as much as your Professors might take pride in how you were pi
eced together… you’re not art. We’re flawed, but you’re boring.”

  His voice was very near. On the other side of the set of shelves. Paces away from me. “Your analogy is missing something.”

  I was very still, waiting. I didn’t want to give him any more cues on my location.

  The locust-crows were circling.

  “If you were art, you’d be art nobody would ever know existed,” the Infante said, and he was near enough that I could feel his voice, not just hear it. “No legacy, no meaning, no future. One more thing left forgotten in the smouldering ashes of a once proud nation.”

  Two swooped at once. I sliced one. The other caught the back of my neck, and latched on, apparently intent on digging in the direction of my spine. I dropped my gun and grabbed it, slicing its head off. The gun clattered to the ground.

  The Infante backhanded the shelving unit, toppling it. He stood before me. We’d taken chunks out of him with the bullets we’d fired his way, we’d sliced his throat, though the blood flow had outright ceased. He had knives sticking out of one shoulder, where Mary had tried to arrest the movement of that arm. He barely seemed to care.

  Helen, lying on the ground behind me, screeched.

  The Infante turned his head. His hand went up to catch one of the experiments that launched at him. It was like a primate, black, and matured, and as it clutched at his arm and hand, tendrils snapped out of its fingertips and toes, taking curious geometric patterns as they seized him. They flayed flesh and dug in as they went. More leaped on.

  “This on its own won’t stop me,” the Infante said, simply bearing the burden of the pack of flesh-flaying primates that was tearing into him.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “You’re so misguided,” he said.

  “Probably,” I said.

  “You are far from being art,” he said.

  “For all your wealth compared to mine, for all your power and my lack thereof, for all the shit I’ve had to deal with because the Academy can’t run the world worth a damn, I’ve lived a better, richer, more meaningful life than you ever will,” I said. “Keep that in mind.”