Twig

by wildbow

  “Headmaster Hayle? I imagine he’d be at Claret Hall,” the old woman said.

  “The man in charge of the Hedge.”

  “He’s downstairs,” the nurse said.

  I glanced out the window. They were just setting up the ring of fire now. The fire would keep the Hag Nerve from creeping in around them, at least for a bit. The water would seep in, but the Hag part of things wouldn’t come with it. They presumably had a way to manage the water lapping in around them.

  Duncan had said there would only be a few minutes of reprieve.

  “She’ll be safe as long as you don’t kick up a fuss,” I told the patients. I approached the nurse, gun still pointed at her, and motioned for the stitched to follow.

  “Whatever you’re doing this for,” the old woman said. “Surely it isn’t a world where you’d hurt someone like her, who treats us kindly?”

  “I think everyone who has a say would say the world they’re fighting for is the best one,” I said. “That they’d want to preserve the good people. The innocents. But want as we might, we don’t always get a chance. Don’t make me shoot her.”

  “It’s your choice,” she said, to my back. I was already out in the hallway.

  It was dark. The lights dimmed, at an hour when patients were supposed to be asleep. But the city was under siege, and anxiety ran high.

  We all say we’d want to preserve the good innocents, the voice said. Reflecting on my statement a moment ago. There isn’t single one of us who wouldn’t put a bullet in an innocent to bring their ideal world one step to fruition.

  This is the world you live in, Sylvester.

  You are the embodiment of that sentiment, that world.

  I kept the gun out of sight. The Nurse walked with me. Jessie followed, a short distance behind. The stitched carried her properly in its arms, now that it was done climbing.

  The Nurse led me down the stairs.

  The others were outside. How much time had passed?

  But I couldn’t rush. Not at this stage. I had to appear calm.

  She indicated the door.

  I looked down the length of the long, empty hallway.

  “Grab her,” I said.

  The stitched caught the nurse, clapping a hand over her mouth, holding her against the wall.

  “Thanks Jessie. Stay put for now.”

  I opened the door, letting myself into the room. A patient’s room, luxury, but the person who lay on the cot with an arm draped over their eyes was a Professor.

  I put the knife to their throat. They stiffened in alarm.

  I used my hand to move the arm. He was relatively young. Thirty-something. He hadn’t shaved recently, but he was well-groomed, even to the eyebrows.

  “I expected a knock at the door. Someone saying we’d lost. Ever since I saw that vessel out there,” he said.

  I heard detonations. Was that my signal?

  “You guys are dragging out the loss. It’s going to hurt all sides,” I said. “Let’s expedite things.”

  He considered that.

  “Every second counts. The patients and refugees in this hospital, the soldiers near to the ground floor, defending the entrance, the staff. If you want them to live, make this easy.”

  “What if I make it hard?” he asked. “I’m not saying I will, but knowing might make the decision that much easier for me.”

  “The artillery up above. The shells and explosives they’re raining down on the attackers are stored somewhere. I’d head to a tower, not too close to here, and I’d blow it up, and myself with it. I want to give them a way through, that doesn’t mean they’re wading through the Hag Nerve. I’ll sacrifice myself if it means giving them that.”

  “It’s that bad already?”

  “Yes. And I want through. Either you give us and them a way through, or I’ll take myself and everyone in the Hedge out to pave a way for my colleagues. Decide fast. You do not want to see what happens if they don’t make it.”

  It wasn’t my voice that had made that warning.

  He met my eyes. It was gloomy, the only light from an oil lamp turned to its lowest settings.

  He seemed to read something in my expression.

  I’d always been bad at being sincere when it counted. I came across as dishonest.

  “Alright,” he said. “What do you need?”

  He seemed to believe this, when I was as honest about what I was willing to do as I’d ever been.

  “Announce the surrender. Say Hayle sent the message and he’s spreading it around. The people outside the door get to come in. They pass without incident. All weapons get put away.”

  He stood from the bed, swinging his legs down.

  “What happens after?” he asked.

  “Go,” I said. “After all of this is over, we talk. And that’s only if all of them out there are fine and healthy. Hurry.”

  He left. He seemed bewildered, as he stopped in the hallway and saw Jessie, and more bewildered still when I didn’t follow to ensure he was doing what I wanted him to do.

  I stood in the small, luxury patient’s office, and I had a sensation that I’d been cooped up in here, once upon a time.

  I touched the window, looking at the bars of metal and the wood that wound its way across. I could see the water that ran down the glass and the flame reflected in the individual droplets.

  “Let her go,” I told Jessie.

  The nurse was released. She stumbled a few steps away, and it looked like she was about to run. She didn’t.

  “Did you hear?” I asked.

  “We lost,” she said. “I don’t know who won.”

  “Nobody,” I said. “That’s not how this plays out.”

  I moved at a more leisurely pace. The stress from carrying Jessie around had worn out my legs, and I was only now feeling it. The climb had only exacerbated the stress and exhaustion.

  “Can I—are you letting me go?”

  “Don’t cause trouble,” I said. “We still have to see how the dust settles, and who is left when it does. If you stay quiet, you’ll be fine whatever happens. If you stir things up and the wrong set of things occur, it only hurts you and others.”

  “I came here tonight with only the plans to look after my patients.”

  “Do that,” I said.

  She fled. Going back upstairs.

  “How was that, Jessie?” I asked.

  Jessie was silent.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We moved briskly toward the stairs. I had to trust the Lambs were doing their best.

  I made my way up, Jessie following, I opened the door just enough to peek, then stepped back, staying in the stairwell with Jessie.

  The Lambs appeared. Lillian and Duncan supported Mary.

  “You took too long,” Mary said. She sounded different.

  “The fire went out,” Ashton said.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  She looked up at me. One of her ribbons had come loose, and her hair had fallen down on the one side.

  “She pushed herself too hard,” Lillian said. “Fighting back a rising tide with knives and wire.”

  “And drugs,” Duncan said.

  “Not much. A burst of movement when I needed it,” Mary said.

  But she’d needed it. I wanted to say something and I couldn’t.

  The others were coming. Rebels. They ascended the stairs.

  “We should hurry,” Mary said. “People recognized us. Not everyone is keen with us just walking through, our guns raised while theirs were lowered.”

  “I imagine it’s hard for them to process. Most haven’t considered being in a situation like this, even in wartime,” Duncan said.

  Mary continued, “The dissenters will find those of like mind, and they’ll follow. Or they’ll do something to work against us.”

  “I puffed at them to get them to hold back, but that won’t account for much,” Ashton said.

  “Everything helps,” Duncan said.

  “We’ll have to
act before they pull themselves together,” I said. More of our rebels were collecting. Junior was with them, I saw. He held up a canister.

  Let’s give them a message, drive reality home.

  I gestured.

  Our rebels mounted the attack. They moved through the doorway at the top of the stairs. They stepped onto the rooftop, rifles bristling.

  The artillery team was on the roof. The great cannon was set in place, the crates of artillery were stacked neatly nearby, and the soldiers were divided. Half were keeping watch while holding onto their tea and hip flasks. The other half manned the cannon, many with binoculars in hand.

  Our side fired first. They fired back, but it was scattered.

  I could see lanterns flaring to life on neighboring rooftops. Concerned. Their focus seemed to be on the ground, a concern of an attack from across the fields, or from within Radham.

  Mary pulled away from Lillian and Duncan, and she stumbled a little before dropping to her knees, moving her rifle around from where it hand dangled at her back. Her focus was on the nearby towers.

  Our cannon was loaded. Our team was able to reorient it.

  “Attack the other tower,” she said. “I need rifles here, fast!”

  The cannon turned, slow and heavy, aiming at the tower to our north.

  Mary’s group aimed a battery of rifle fire at the tower to our south.

  They opened fire before we did, this time. Rifle shots. We ducked behind cover, crouching, as our cannon fired at the other tower.

  The towertop exploded, violent, a flare of orange flame and heavy smoke. All of the ammunition they had been carrying went up with them, and the towertop began to crumble.

  It was an attack from within that they hadn’t been fully equipped to deal with. They’d clued in, but it had been late.

  If Mary’s rifle battery hadn’t killed most or everyone at the other tower, it had cowed the survivors enough that they weren’t poking their heads up.

  That was fine. If they were being crafty or if they were running in anticipation of the cannon being turned their way, that would be alright.

  “Remind me which corner of Claret Hall had the especially fancy staff room?” I asked.

  The Lambs turned to stare at me.

  “We might as well,” I said. “Like I said, delivering a message.”

  I didn’t need to give the order. Our rebels began working as a team to slowly rotate the artillery turret. It stopped partway, the structure of it not allowing it to fully turn inward.

  It was our mechanically inclined girl from Junior’s group, coupled with the muscle of Jessie’s stitched, that helped us get it turned the way we wanted it, infrastructure pulled away, safeguards pulled out, mounts loosened.

  It was a slow process. We got the cannon aimed at the heart of Radham Academy.

  The team worked to fix its housing so it wouldn’t go flying off the tower, taking several of us with it, with the recoil of its shot.

  “What if Hayle is there?” Lillian asked.

  “He isn’t,” I said.

  “You can’t know for sure.”

  “I know the direction Fray ran, and she’d run to him. I know that our prior headmaster—”

  “Briggs,” Duncan said.

  “—him. He would’ve gone to the nice staff room with the nice curtains and rugs and gold-inlaid furniture, and he would’ve had his tea or his brandy there, talking with his fellow black coats. Hayle wouldn’t.”

  “You can’t know,” Lillian said. “Not for certain.”

  “As badly as you want your confrontation,” I said. “I want my answers. I wouldn’t do this if I thought there was any chance we’d miss out.”

  “Alright,” Lillian said.

  “He’s the third god, he wouldn’t make it that easy.”

  “All good to go,” our mechanic said.

  “Thanks, Posie,” Duncan said.

  “Would you like to do the honors?” I asked Lillian. “Considering what happened with your black coat?”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’ll do what I have to do in wartime, but… not like this.”

  Not like this.

  “Alright,” I said.

  I gestured.

  Posie and the Treasurer managed the firing.

  The staff room of Radham was obliterated. A hole through the wall, a shockwave followed, tearing through that enclosed space. The windows blew out in rolling fire.

  It was a shame that it had to happen, but we needed to break their backs. To make it clear to those who remained that this was over.

  Removing some of their leadership. Some of their superiors and mentors.

  There.

  “We hold a position here, use the artillery cannon to open a way?” Mary asked.

  “No,” I said. “We leave nobody behind.”

  “You’re sure? You said you wanted to reach the tower.”

  “We will,” I said. “Shoot down the walls.”

  I pointed.

  Break their backs, then scar them. Make it clear, above all else, that they’re no longer safe, whoever they are.

  The cannon was loaded, and it fired once more.

  One shot, to the base of one of the walls that surrounded Radham.

  It mostly held up.

  With the second shot, however, that section of wall collapsed. It broke free, it twisted, unpinned, and it dumped half of the resulting rubble on the outside of the Academy, half on the inside.

  Our rebels secured the door from those below as we made shot after shot, targeting the walls.

  Tear it down. Give them nothing. If they would drown the battlefield, tear down their walls and walk over the rubble.

  Lillian approached me. She took my hand. Speaking was impossible with the deafening boom after deafening boom.

  We watched, hand in hand, as the cannon fired, tearing down the Academy that had given birth to me, to her, to Jessie, Duncan, Ashton, Jamie, Gordon, and even Mary, in a roundabout way.

  When the ammunition ran out, we waited. We let the dust settle and the rain wash that dust away.

  Our retreat covered, we started on our walk to the distant Tower, where Hayle and Fray no doubt awaited us.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.17

  The fallen structures still smoked. People, the majority of them students, were doing their best to make their way across toward Claret Hall, where one fire had started.

  Soldiers were setting up a perimeter, rolling or having stitched carry barrels of salt. Other members of the teams were either helping to get the salt flowing freely, sticking trowels and shovels into the barrels, or they were using brooms to mix the salt with the slime, so the Hag Nerve on their side of the salt was thoroughly killed.

  We picked our way over the rubble. Many of the others from the ship had come running when the walls had come down. They’d run into the Hag Nerve and they’d found their own way through, helped by the rubble that had cascaded down onto the fields.

  There were enough of us that we couldn’t take one path without stretching ourselves out too thin. Our forces fanned out, to the extent we could with the Hag Nerve around us, many of us armed.

  The groups that flanked us approached the defending forces, the soldiers and Doctors that were moving away from the wreckage and devastation. Many of the defending forces and Academy natives were shell-shocked, rattled by the devastation around them, and they didn’t put up a fight.

  Off to our left, there was some gunfire, suggesting it wasn’t all that easy.

  Claret Hall would be harder, even beheaded as it was, but Claret Hall could come later.

  We made our way to the tower, stepping from slab to slab, chunk to chunk, and along areas where the slime had been parted by the force of falling masonry and that same masonry then dammed it off. Everything was wet; the moss that had grown on parts of the wall and slime that had splashed up now made footing precarious. I had to stop several times, because even with my legs tired from carrying Jessie and
from the climb, I was still better at it than some.

  The Wyvern had stunted me. It had inhibited my growth—I was only as tall as Lillian, and Lillian wasn’t tall for a woman. Jessie hadn’t grown in the usual way because Jessie lacked some of the hormones for puberty, and she was still taller than me.

  I looked back at her, and saw her asleep. Lillian was directly behind Mary, helping Mary to limp along—the two of them had hands gripping the stitched’s belt. I really hoped it wouldn’t tip over and send all three girls spiraling onto the slimy, smoking fragments of wall.

  I’d been stunted in other ways. I was still the boy. In personality and in other ways, I hadn’t grown up. It was ironic that the Wyvern that made the acquisition and loss of skills so rapid left me with the ability to climb and walk tightrope-narrow walltops and bridges as young boys did. It wasn’t because I was better at it, but because the fears and hesitation that held so many others back were muted in me. One had to learn fear and caution as they learned any skill.

  I’d seen Mabel somewhere, I was pretty sure. I could watch Lillian and Jessie picking their way through the ruins, and I could follow that thought to its conclusion. I hadn’t grown in the ways I needed to, in order to maintain a proper relationship with a girl. One had to learn to navigate relationships.

  In contrast, however, I had grown in a way that let me see this through. It wasn’t my childhood home, not quite, but it was my childhood, and I’d left it in shambles. The army behind us watched for my hand to move, saw me gesture, and they hurried to catch up.

  “Yes?”

  “Is Junior with us?”

  “He was talking to Duncan, last I saw.”

  “Can you bring him?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Sir. A title for a man.

  We were one of the most powerful people in the Crown States when we took Hackthorn hostage.

  We supplanted others and raised our standing when we took the lesser aristocrats, the lowest of the visiting Nobles, and the various small Academies. We became a power on par with any but the Infante when we gathered our army.

  We beat the Infante.

  “Everything okay, Sy?” Lillian asked.

  “The path gets a little less clear here,” I said. I pointed.

  “In more ways than one?” she suggested.

  “No,” I said.