Twig

by wildbow

  “You think so?” Paul asked. “You really think you have the people?”

  “We can. We had some of the best teachers.”

  “Some of the worst, by my impression,” Paul said.

  “Things will settle. We’ve had food and water tainted with Fray’s chemicals for sterilization and leashing, we’ve had disease ravage us like no other, we’ve faced death, and we’ve faced down war. Rain fell from the sky, melting flesh and creating pools of blood. Mucus-laden superweapons have formed out of the same water. Swarms of parasites have ravaged this city and others. So many warbeasts have been deployed that we won’t bring all of them back. We’ve seen countless poisons and diseases, fire, storms, refugees sweeping through areas and leaving nothing edible behind. We’ve seen smoke and clouds of insects blacking out the sun. Families of all classes have lost their sons and daughters. You three were among those lost. To somebody.”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Goldie said.

  “We’ll find out.”

  “I don’t know if that’s possible,” Red said.

  We acknowledged that with a nod.

  “Too many families have lost people. We lost Gordon and Jessie, we might yet lose Helen. People are tired, Paul, Red, Goldie. For all that the arrogant people at the top have butted heads, people are tired. They’re ready to hear whatever we have to say, if it means that all of this stops.”

  “You really believe that,” Red.

  “I believe in a lot of things now.”

  She nodded slowly. Her dark eyes turned to look out over the same city I’d been looking at.

  “Among them, I believe all things are possible.”

  “‘All’ includes an awful lot of bad things,” Red said.

  Goldie frowned at that. Paul, for his part, seemed to consider it before nodding his agreement.

  “It includes things like a Crown States where no child is subjected to experiments without their permission, and they would be treated gently and with respect thereafter, retaining their memories.”

  “I expected you to say you wouldn’t allow experimentation on children,” Red said.

  We were silent.

  “It costs us too much, doesn’t it? It’s too important, when you’re thinking about a war in—”

  “Five years, twenty, a hundred. Inevitably.”

  Red pursed her lips. An expression of disgust scrunched a sculpted nose. She hung her head, and her mouth was close to the scarf she’d wrapped around her face at one point, then allowed to fall around her neck. She hadn’t picked red because of its connotations, but blood had splattered much of it at one point. Hers or someone else’s. It was more of a dark brown-red now.

  “We can’t lose that war, or things will go back to the way they were,” she finally said.

  “If you think that, then you might be on the same page as me.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” Red said.

  “An appropriate one. I think I want a retinue.”

  “A retinue?”

  “Consider it. The road the Lambs take now is one that gives us some incredible freedoms, but at the cost of others. We’re in need of capable protectors, ones that inspire something beyond simple fear, and that extend our reach.”

  “You’d have us?” Paul asked.

  “I would. It would mean status, power, things I think you wanted when you wanted to fight, Paul. What Red wanted when she took up her axe and danced with her Wolf. I think it gives you freedom like you wanted when you and your peers had your carnival, Goldie.”

  “I remember Bo Peep was frightened by that,” Goldie said.

  “I remember that too. I think she’s found her own happiness. There’s little need to worry.”

  “The problem wasn’t with her,” Goldie said. “It was where we stood, how we acted. We were so angry and bitter.”

  We thought back, imagining the scene. We remembered being drunk on girls and on madness, delirious, disconnected.

  “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m mistaken to ask. Joining the retinue could mean going to the table, to be fixed, improved. I know many of you don’t want to do that.”

  “I don’t,” Red said. “And I’m worried about your reasoning.”

  “The Nobles as they were existed as something too disparate. We need to tie ourselves together. We need to maintain a connection to our roots, those who helped us get here. I want to find excuses to make all of those connections into something long-term, transform them.”

  “You could have the other Lambs.” Goldie suggested.

  “We will. But that connection can’t be the entirety of it. It’s too insular. That road leads to madness, in my expert opinion.”

  “Can we think about it?” Red asked.

  “Please do,” we said.

  Red put a hand on Goldie’s shoulder. Paul broke away from staring at the shattered city to walk alongside them, departing with a great deal on their minds.

  They stopped at the door.

  “Do I call you Lord?” Red asked.

  “Soon.”

  ❧

  It was all we could do to not approach the Lambs. We stalked around the edges, had our flirtatious visits with each. It was flirtatious not in the romantic sense, but in the intimate kinship sense, as only people who knew each other was well as we did could approach, touch, and speak to each other, communicating in a manner far more efficient than would be possible with any stranger.

  But as much as we moved around the periphery, we knew we were something alien.

  We were a threat they were coming to terms with, a new reality.

  Sylvester was gone. He would not come back. He had been subsumed, he had subsumed. They might have sensed it.

  They, we acknowledged, would experience it.

  Until then, we were cautious. They would be on their guard for manipulation. They would push back if pushed. We wanted them to join us, to stand at our side, to face down the threat and take up the new mission, but we couldn’t do it by any means except extortion or by patience.

  We would let them decide, but they had to make the decisions themselves. We had to trust in the Lambs.

  We had to trust that, when the time came, they would come around to the idea of using the key to access Fray’s primordials and her work. We would be free to unleash primordial-cultivated superweapons and we would destroy all of the world except for the Crown States.

  Yes, it was a bargaining chip. Yes, it was the motivating force that Fray described, a weapon of last resort. As it drove her, now it would drive us to work fervently to ensure that there was always another measure to put forward, so we wouldn’t have to face the last one.

  It was all of those things.

  It was another kind of contingency. If the Lambs faced the same dilemma that Nobles the world over had, if breeding proved difficult, and if we couldn’t create our successors as so many Nobles did, then we would need a way to strike out, ensuring the Crown couldn’t flourish in our absence.

  After all, Jessie was lacking, much like Jamie had. Helen and Ashton couldn’t bear children, as they weren’t human. We had reason to suspect that Project Wyvern meant we were sterile, owing to the poison that tainted our system. Gordon wouldn’t have produced ‘Gordon’ stock, but whatever source had supplied that individual seed. Mary’s offspring would be only an exceptional person, if she could even carry to term with the state of her internal organs.

  Much as Fray had sought alternatives, we would strive to have something to put forward. Our doctors would work hard, looking for a way.

  If they couldn’t, perhaps it would be best to visit an end to the rest of the world that Fray’s chemicals hadn’t touched. A clean slate was better than a world where the Crown resumed power again.

  Wasn’t it?

  The question bothered us.

  We had steered clear of Duncan, and Duncan had avoided us.

  We visited Jessie’s lab. We stared at Jessie’s doctors, a mingling of the old guard and new ones. Duncan still gav
e direction, much as he’d been doing when we stepped away days ago, to confront Fray and Hayle.

  Duncan looked at us as we entered.

  “I was wondering when you would show up,” he said.

  We walked around the room. Jessie sat in the throne on the dais, a sheet wrapped around her.

  “Everyone, you can leave for the day. Back to your cells and quarters,” Duncan ordered the other Doctors and Professors in the room.

  They began filing out. Soldiers outside the door guided them. We watched them go, studying expressions and body language, searching for any tricks or problems.

  When they were gone, we looked to the rain-streaked windows above the bookshelves, that gave us a glimpse of the sky above and around the tower. It was late in the day, the shadows long.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s resting,” Duncan answered. He stood by a table with folders and notes strewn across it, half his attention on me, half on the notes.

  “Progress?”

  “No,” Duncan said. “We’ve only been laying the groundwork in hopes of future progress. Powering things on and turning them off again is a net loss, and we can’t do that.”

  We approached the throne, walking up the dais. With fingers and fingernails, we combed Jessie’s hair, and then began doing it into the braid she liked, that draped over her shoulder. Her glasses sat on the throne beside her.

  “The others are weighing your ideas. They’re hopeful.”

  “And you?”

  “I was always one to follow the administrative shuffling and manipulation in the Academies. I’m aware of the games that are played, the tricks, what kinds of promises go furthest.”

  “Interesting. Most were looking at it as manipulation, but it wasn’t.”

  “No,” Duncan said. “I don’t believe it was. You believed what you said. It’s the broader picture that was more of a problem. It was politics, in part.”

  “Politics aren’t necessarily bad.”

  “They aren’t. Still, I worry.”

  “Justifiably,” we said.

  “Lillian told me on several occasions about what it was like, being young, being against you. You targeted her, you tore her down, teased her mercilessly.”

  “It’s come up a few times. I was someone different then. I was trying to express something, and I regret that she suffered for that expression.”

  Duncan nodded. “I was your nemesis du jour for a bit.”

  “You were.”

  “I took the advice of others, and I tried to be like your fellow orphan Rick. I let it be water off my back, I tried not to react, to play dumb, I didn’t want to give you anything.”

  “If it helps, it wasn’t you. You could have been anyone. Anyone else would have been a bad fit, a symbol for the divide in the Lambs.”

  “It does help,” Duncan said.

  He looked at Jessie and sighed.

  “Are you’re thinking you’re my enemy now?”

  “I’m wondering,” he said.

  “You’re one of the harder ones for me to reach out to. I don’t know you so well. I know you’re attached to Helen and Ashton.”

  “I am. And the other little ones. But you used a promise to Helen to sway Ashton. You want to bring about her perfect world.”

  “Something like it. The world I’m envisioning will be a hard one to work with.”

  “You have ideas then?”

  “It’s going to mean leaving a lot of things behind, Doctor Foster.”

  “Doctor Foster,” Duncan said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That I wish I’d paid more attention, when you and the others had been discussing the tools you use and how you approach problems. I’m trying to figure out your angle for approaching this conversation.”

  “Everyone has an angle for approaching every conversation.”

  “You more than most. I’ve been dreading and anticipating this conversation for two days now. I started to wonder if you planned to ignore me entirely.”

  “You also thought perhaps I was avoiding this lab because Jessie was here. You’ve had meals brought here, you’ve been sleeping in a chair. You’ve been here more than Lillian, even when Lillian is the one who has always been more familiar with Jessie’s project.”

  “That was me acting on the dread, hiding here, thinking you might not come and I’d have time to think,” Duncan said. He smiled with that too-small mouth of his, then let the smile drop away. “I was wringing my hands. I concluded you would most likely make mention of my family.”

  “Does it drive you? Family?”

  “I’m not sure they’re alive, actually. When we sent armies and orders to the coasts to control the ports, I had people ask to find them. There hasn’t been a response, and I imagined there should be one.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll see,” Duncan said. “I worry about what it says about me if I say that my family isn’t a major driving force in what I do, not anymore. I can’t imagine you bringing them up would sway me much, whether you wanted to help or hurt them.”

  “I think you’re a fine person, Duncan. I wouldn’t worry about that.”

  “My other thought,” he said. “Was that I can’t guess. You know what I like and want. I care about the others, but unless you plan to exile me, I have them, and I’ll continue to look after them. I want a black coat, but the whole system is broken, me attending the Academy now would be a farce.”

  “You keep going back to the notion of ordinary life. Family, friends, school.”

  “I didn’t realize that,” Duncan said. “Lords.”

  “Lords,” we said, with a note of amusement at the irony.

  “And yet we—I didn’t approach this conversation from that angle. I wonder if I misread you, now.”

  “Who did you imagine Doctor Duncan Foster to be, if not a man who wrings his hands with anxiety while hoping for a good life?”

  “I imagined you would wake Jessie and send her to me, to change my mind.”

  Duncan looked up at me, as we finished with Jessie’s hair. We tied the braid.

  “I thought about it,” he said. “I can’t put a word to it. I felt like you wanted me to, and even if I’m not a good enough chess player to know the best move to make, I might be able to feel things out, intuit when I’m walking into a trap.”

  “You’ve learned a lot.”

  “I was right then? It was a trap?”

  “I don’t know. I might have answered her, then been upset at you, putting you on the back foot, swaying you that way. Waking her up would cost her countless memories. It would do irreparable damage. I could have gone on the attack, I could have been gentle, I could have played off of your goals as a Doctor. I could have called it cowardice. Above all else, I would have tried to show you my human side. I think your ability to see us as humans is where you’ve changed most. Yet all of that feels like manipulation more than politics.”

  “It does. What made you finally decide you were coming to me here?”

  “Timeframes, schedules, and a few skirmishes in places like New Amsterdam… it would all be easier if we got the worst of it out of the way. I’m willing to take that step. I’ll be the first if need be. Constraints forced my hand. So I’m here. Like I said, I wasn’t sure how to approach you.”

  “A big step. I’m sure you had some kind of strategy, didn’t you?”

  “Nothing so grand. You have the ability to say no, Doctor Foster. You have the ability to talk to the others and cast doubt on my honesty, and I’m sure if you argued well enough, while I wasn’t there to say my piece, you could change their minds. We’d find another way, or they would. We respect the role your voice plays in all of this.”

  Duncan reached out to the table, moving some papers.

  He stopped, midway through one rearrangement.

  “Respect,” he said.

  “In talking to the others, we were only ever thinking about what I could give them. We want to give them the wor
ld, Duncan, and they deserve it.”

  “Do you think I’m so petty that all I want is respect?”

  “We didn’t come here to give you that. We came here to give you a share of what you’d experience if things went forward. A reasonably fair conversation with a Noble, as an equal.”

  “Did ‘we’?”

  We nodded.

  “You’re still a boy that’s shorter than me, Sylvester. By all rights, I should say it’s far from being a fair, reasonable, or conversation with a Noble, equal to equal.”

  “By all rights.”

  “You terrify me,” he said.

  “As it should be. I just hope the other emotions outweigh the unpleasantness of the terror.”

  “You’re dangerous.”

  “We wouldn’t have gotten this far if we weren’t.”

  “What you want is to go under the knife, to be changed, to have a body that matches your mind. You want me to facilitate that.”

  “We would hope our body isn’t so crowded, damaged, or lonely.”

  Duncan moved more folders and papers. He collected a few into a stack, looked down at it, and drew in a deep breath.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. “About the body you’d get, who we’d have on that project, and whether I really want to do this.”

  “That’s all we can ask.”

  “Where are you going next?” he asked.

  “To the gates, maybe to Lambsbridge.”

  “It was damaged.”

  “We know.”

  “You’re still avoiding the others?”

  “I made my arguments, I framed things. It’s up to them to come to terms with it.”

  “Or are you scared?”

  We were terrified. We were on the brink of something and the state of the Lambs had never been questioned. Even with our departure. Even with the schism that had formed with Lillian and Jamie in that windy room at the top floor of the building in West Corinth.

  We were unsure what to say or do with Duncan. Well… one question.

  “You gave us a pill.”

  “I did,” Duncan said.

  “What was it?”

  “Something I’ve used a hundred times. One of our most powerful tools.”

  “Ah.”

  “Just a placebo, Sylvester. I had enough things on my mind, without trying to rush anything too fancy with chemicals, medicine, and your unique biology. If you’d taken it and not discarded it after, I wouldn’t have been sitting in this lab for as long as I had, wringing my hands, considering my options”