Twig

by wildbow

  We were just past the dormitories now. The tower was on a raised area of land, but there was a dip before then, and that dip was flooded. A slash of overly still water, twenty feet across, cutting through the road.

  The tower itself was illuminated here and there. I didn’t see anyone in the windows, but I did see the orange and yellow lights shift as people moved this way and that.

  “No,” I said again, hammering it in.

  “I know your memory is bad,” she said. “I’m going to say it again.”

  “There’s no need,” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  Junior reached us, with Ashton, Duncan, and Helen in his company.

  “You have the stuff?” I asked.

  “I recruited help and made extra, just in case, because I did not want to run back a third time,” Junior said. “You can thank the rest of the old gang.”

  Three canisters. Each was as large as a single dewar flask, like the ones many Doctors used for long-term chemical storage, or as many civilians used to stow a kettle’s worth of tea or a multiple-person serving of hot stew. Too large to really serve well as a grenade.

  “Alright,” I said. I pointed. “We’ll need to get through. It should kill the Hag Nerve, shouldn’t it?”

  “Should,” Duncan said. “There’s a risk of it multiplying back into the body of water, but that water will be tainted. I doubt it’ll be mobile, even if it’s soupy.”

  “I’m glad Abby isn’t here,” Ashton said. “She’d be so sad.”

  “It doesn’t have a brain,” I said.

  “Neither do I. Neither does Wendy. I’m not sure about Abby.”

  “It doesn’t have anything brain-like,” I said.

  “Neither do you,” Lillian said.

  I reached out to pinch at her cheek, and she caught my hand.

  Junior got to work, flipping a switch on the flask before uncapping it. The gas began billowing from it, rolling out before us.

  The fact that the wall had come down and was now at our backs allowed the wind through. It rolled out and brought the gas with it, carrying it over the Hag that covered the ground and filled the moat.

  “How are you doing, Mary?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how soldiers can use those things with any regularity.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I used to always like this spot,” Mary said. “In the very beginning, when I was in Hayle’s custody, after you recruited me, Lillian would come visit me. Then it flipped around. I would walk Lillian to her office, or go to see her, or I’d visit the dorms here. I used to be hereabouts, past the thick of the buildings, only a few students around, rain falling, and I’d get a happy, anticipatory feeling.”

  “And now?”

  “Dread.”

  Duncan drew in a deep breath.

  “Duncan?”

  “I felt like I could stand a little taller, while going to see Professor Hayle. I was recognized by one of the best students in class and one of the top Professors locally. Huzzah for you, Mr. Foster. Stand here, look forward and…” Duncan swept his arm out, fully extended, palm forward, as if wiping his hand along a picture, “…you can see that black coat. You can see your way forward, that has you on an even footing with major aristocrats, below only the Nobles.”

  “It always terrified me,” Lillian said. “For different reasons. By the time I got used to it, we’d lost Jamie.”

  I looked back at Jessie. I reached back and adjusted her hood, and let the back of my hand rest on her temple.

  Lillian let go of the hand she’d been holding since I’d reached back to pinch her cheek.

  “Two gods to slay, hm?” Lillian asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The sound of the rain changed. I tilted my head, listening to it.

  “I think I had an inkling that one of your big abstract gods was lurking here even from the beginning,” Lillian said.

  “I think you might’ve,” I said.

  “I think that was why I found it all so intimidating,” she said.

  “I think—”

  She put fingers to my mouth.

  I drew in a deep breath, then nodded.

  “My first memories are here,” I said, after she lowered her fingers. I drew my hand away from Jessie. “Being terrified, needles up my nose and around the sides of my eyes, to reach the brain, poisoning my brain, pain that seemed like it was so incredible that it wiped everything away. I was scared too, once upon a time. Then I figured out how to put that fear in a box and promptly lost it. It was only the fear for others that was left, and fear of what I might do to those others.”

  “Us?” Lillian asked.

  “You. Lambsbridge. The… group from the sticks. Radham. The world. But I forgot a lot of the familiar faces. I’m only really good at remembering the people I see regularly.”

  The change in the rainfall suggested the Hag had relaxed. The rainfall on the bodies of water sounded more like rainfall was supposed to. The appearance of the water, too, had changed, rippling and splashing more with the heavier raindrops or collections of droplets.

  I gestured. I was the first to set foot on the path below the scattered rubble, layered by an inch of water.

  It wasn’t overly slimy. Slick, yes, but it served.

  Our soldiers charged forward, sloshing through the water. I carried on walking, as they ran past. Faces appeared in the windows, staring at the scene.

  “Be on your guard,” I said.

  The Treasurer, running past me as I spoke, called out the same words, “Be on your guard!”

  The scattered few stitched we had were first through the door, at the instructions of the Treasurer and Bea. The students in quarantine outfits were next. Once the calls came back from the people inside, a large portion of our soldiers stormed the tower.

  They hadn’t ever been here, it struck me.

  So odd, when the place was a staple in my memory.

  “I always hated this place. Hated the doctors,” I said. An extension of my earlier comments.

  “Don’t let your hate color your actions,” Lillian said.

  Walking, limping, or otherwise waiting for the others, the Lambs reached the door. We passed within. I could see our soldiers heading up the stairwells. Some were hanging back, getting lanterns out. Others were going down the hallway, investigating the various rooms and labs on the ground floor. Students and Doctors were hauled out of rooms, threatened with guns, made to kneel.

  I knew where I was going.

  Sub Rosa stood by the door. She looked mournful. I’d seen her wear an expression like that, once.

  I stepped through that door to Jamie’s old lab.

  “Sy?” Lillian asked.

  His Professors were there. Soldiers I didn’t know were making them kneel. The throne was there, like a tombstone, and there were the glowing tanks with the cloths thrown over them. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and the bookshelves were lined with diaries.

  I let my fingers trace the books as I took my time circling the room.

  I didn’t recognize the Professors, but the stark fear on their faces suggested they knew me. That was good enough.

  “Is Fray around?” I asked. I had to ask. It would be silly and dangerous not to.

  There were shakes of heads.

  “Starting this out by lying to me is not a good idea.”

  “We haven’t seen her. We weren’t looking out until the wall came down, but—we’d have noticed.”

  I nodded. I took in the room, where Jamie and his successor had spent so much time.

  “I’m thinking of a specific time and place,” I said. “I’m really hoping you’re all thinking of that same time and place. I think it should go without saying.”

  The Professors were silent. Jamie had had so many. An incredible team. There were specialists too, and Doctors.

  “I remember how little you all seemed to care,” I said. “You looked right past
me. You stepped over me. I found a scalpel and came after you, and one of my friends stopped me. You barely seemed to care. You just wanted to get back to work.”

  I saw old men clench their jaws.

  “Did you keep working, after he left? Are the brains working?”

  “You did so much damage, taking him away,” a woman said.

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  The man who responded was the oldest one present, enough that even the Academy measures he’d used to restore his vitality were only partial at best. It gave him a ghoulish appearance, almost a caricature. His hair was overly dry and unkempt. “They work. Loss should be minimal. Our work has been interrupted as different members of our team were pulled away for other projects, but we kept in communication. At Headmaster Hayle’s urging, we committed to stay when the Crown States were abandoned. Discussion to date has been where to take the project next, and we’ve been laying groundwork and outlining what we’ll need over this past week. We were thinking about a vat-grown body. Transplanting what we have to an empty vessel.”

  I looked at the throne, then at the vats and the various tubes and cords that connected them. Spines and brains in jars, tubes of fluid, a living thing interrupted, like a carcass.

  Transplating what they had. An empty vessel.

  I didn’t dare let myself hope.

  “Would that bring him back? The Jamie who put those memories there in the first place?”

  “What?” the old man asked. He sounded indignant. He almost spat the word, “No.”

  One of his colleagues, a middle-aged man with spectacles, reached out to touch the older Professor’s arm, urging him to be calmer.

  I hadn’t wanted to let myself hope, but it was still painful to hear.

  I could have killed that old man for that.

  “It’s muddied,” the middle aged man said. “It wouldn’t have been possible if we’d had a vat-grown body ready the moment we lost the original Caterpillar, because so much depends on original brain structure. Beyond that, the brains are a stew of the original Caterpillar’s catalogued memory and the memories from eighteen appointments the second Caterpillar had. There’s reduplication, meshing, the sorting mechanisms…”

  He trailed off, as I gestured, beckoning.

  Jessie came to stand beside me.

  One of the younger ones, a grey coat, spoke up with his eyes wide, “That’s the Caterpillar?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s in stasis, until we can get her to a point where she isn’t losing the memories anymore.”

  “I—we can’t. You know that, right? That wouldn’t be possible, especially at this stage.”

  “Redefine possible,” I said, and I said it with venom in my voice. “Do it like your welfare depends on it.”

  “You’ll want to call her Jessie, not Caterpillar,” Duncan said. “I’m reasonably sure that Sylvester wouldn’t kill you for referring to her as ‘it’ or calling her by the project title, but he’d make you regret it. We have people we’ve been talking to and utilizing. We’ll introduce you to them shortly, all going well.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice soft. I reached out to touch Jessie’s hair. “Why don’t you go get settled in the throne, Jessie?”

  “Um,” Duncan said. “Here, I’ll instruct you. Someone had better come and talk us through this. It’s been a while since I kept up with this project.”

  The young man I’d been threatening and the old man both got up, hurrying over to the dais that the great throne stood on. The young man pulled off his coat and used it to dust the apparatus off.

  “Hayle,” someone at the door said. “At the top floor.”

  “Is he in a position to come down to meet us?” Mary asked.

  “Are they?” I asked. “Plural. Fray has to be there too.”

  “Are they in a position to come down to meet us?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” the soldier said, sounding bewildered.

  “I had a mental picture of one or both of them with a device or creature at hand, or an apparatus, a weapon, or—” Mary started. “Nevermind.”

  “We’ll be up shortly,” Lillian said. “Unless there’s an immediate concern?”

  “No, Doctor.”

  “Then we’ll be up shortly,” she said, again. There was emotion in her voice.

  I watched as Jessie was situated. The cords and tubes were pulled into their rough positions, but not attached. They dangled, holding position by dint of habits formed long ago, poised like snakes ready to bite. Jessie slept on, and the stitched that had served as her arms and legs stood behind the throne, following Duncan’s orders when he needed something brought to his waiting hand.

  Lillian drew close to my side, rubbing my back.

  “Jamie was lovely,” she said. “Jessie had her good points too.”

  “Has,” I said. “Has her good points.”

  “Okay, Sy.”

  “They’ll fix her. They should have followed my project enough to know I’ve got a great imagination, and people as smart as them should know I’ve got reason to despise them to the core of my being. I’ve got motive, opportunity, means and more means. As mean as you get.”

  I said it loud enough to be sure they heard.

  “I’ll stay,” Duncan said.

  “Hm?” I made an inquisitive noise.

  “Unless you need me. I’ll stay. I’ll watch Jessie.”

  I stared at him, trying to figure it out.

  “You can trust me,” he said.

  “That’s not what I was thinking.”

  “The pill—”

  “Again, not what I was thinking. I was just… thinking about logistics. My head is in a different place right now.”

  “You can’t trust they won’t try something, like taking her hostage, not unless you have someone who knows their stuff. You could have one of your rebel doctors watch over things. We have some who followed along with the preliminary work we were doing with Jessie, but… short of Lillian, I’m the one most familiar with her. And Lillian wants to confront Hayle.”

  “You’re sure?” Lillian asked.

  “I’m sure,” Duncan said. “Just leave me some soldiers.”

  Mary called out some names. Lillian and I stood back while people got arranged.

  Ashton and Helen approached. I messed up Ashton’s hair.

  “Rude,” he said. His hair stayed sticking up. “I’ve got my hands full of Helen.”

  “And no cause to be concerned for your safety,” I said. “Many a lad has wished to be in the position you’re in.”

  He looked at Helen, then made a face.

  “No,” he said. “No, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that.”

  “A joke, young sir,” I said. “Because the alternative is too hard to bear.”

  “Okay, Sy,” he said.

  I settled my hand on his head, partially patting the hair back into place.

  “If Fray isn’t here—” Mary said, looking away from the soldiers she was directing. The Professors were working out who would be permitted to do the preliminary work and who would hang back, corralled and held at gunpoint.

  I shook my head. “She’s here.”

  Go. End this.

  “Bye, Jessie,” I said.

  Someone threw a switch. Turning on a machine. I flinched and turned away.

  We left Jessie and Duncan behind. We ascended the stairs, and we passed Gordon and Hubris’ old lab.

  We passed the room where Mary’s staff had worked from. I watched as Mary touched the door in passing.

  The hallway was one that wound up the tower exterior like a spiral staircase. The windows looked out on the city. Wreckage, harvester-modified surfaces and homes, innumerable bodies, and shapes that might have been clusters of bodies or warbeasts. Rain obscured everything. If it hadn’t, I might have seen some sign of black wood or the countermeasures against it in the distance. Whether black woods or a burn circle, the effect on the landscape was mu
ch the same.

  We passed Ashton’s lab, closer to the top.

  Hayle’s office had no need for hallways along any side but the one with the entrance. The windows provided an expansive view of the city. He sat at his desk.

  Warren stood to one side—except it wasn’t Warren. A Bruno, but its head hung forward and was revealed as a mask, no skull or anything behind the flesh. It was a husk, and it was a lifeless one. Soldiers stood by, weapons at the ready. Three guarded the Bruno.

  Fray stood by the desk. She was preparing tea.

  “Invisible gas and antidotes in the tea?” I asked.

  Fray shook her head.

  “Anything fun?” I asked. I examined the Bruno. “Anything in the Bruno suit?”

  “Useful for getting around when Genevieve Fray couldn’t. The face is interchangeable. I would periodically use Warren’s face, and sometimes something more generic.”

  “Copying me?” Lillian asked.

  “No. Coincidence, Doctor Garey, and barely a coincidence, at that,” Fray said. “It isn’t strong. It just moves the way I want it to move when I wear it. Avis designed the mechanisms for connecting my physiology to it.”

  “It sounds wrong when you call me Doctor.”

  “Be that as it may,” she said.

  I was aware that the soldiers were watching the exchange. The Treasurer was in the hallway, with Gordeux.

  I looked at Hayle. The old man, lines etched deep in his skin. He made me think of a gargoyle. In his natural process of aging, he looked more like an experiment than most of the experiments present.

  “I’d appreciate it if the room were less crowded,” I said. “The Treasurer and Gordeux can stay.”

  “I have a name,” Gordo said.

  “Guys, give us some breathing room. Stay in earshot, in case anything happens,” the Treasurer said.

  The soldiers left the room, passing by the Treasurer and Gord, who remained just outside the door. Mary sat in the chair across from Hayle, because she didn’t look up to standing much longer. Ashton sat as well, getting comfortable with Helen in his lap. I stood beside Lillian at the back of the room.

  The two gods remained on the other side of the desk.

  “I wasn’t sure if you heard,” Fray said. “I was glad to see it was you. It would have been such a terrible fate for this to unfold and for it to be the likes of Mauer.”