Twig

by wildbow

  “He’s doing that on purpose,” Mary said.

  I’m not the only one who thinks so.

  “Yeah,” Helen said, one of the few things she’d said since we’d climbed up onto the roof. The smile was gone from her face. She was deadpan again.

  “They don’t see it?” Mary asked.

  “Emotions are clouding their eyes and ears,” Gordon said, simply.

  “This is about the children! Please! A moment of silence and a prayer!”

  In the palm of his hand, I thought.

  I could see everything that was about to unfold.

  Stoke the fires, contain, store the heat. Stoke the fires, contain, store the heat.

  Let it all build up.

  Right now, he was containing.

  “Their names are Martin and Oscar Meadows,” he said, and he barely had to raise his voice to be heard, now that the crowd had been silenced. “Let us give them a moment and a prayer.”

  Nobody with a heart, no matter how angry they were, could dare to speak up in the midst of such a meaningful silence.

  “Is he going to start a riot? Directed at the Academy?” Lillian asked, whispering. We were far enough we wouldn’t be overheard. With the nearest members of the crowd a good thirty feet away, aiming to be closer, to see as well as hear, the shuffling of feet and the periodic coughs were enough to mask the whispering.

  “Maybe,” Gordon whispered.

  “No,” I whispered, without missing a beat. “No. Why the hell would he do that?”

  “To hurt Radham Academy.”

  “What good comes of that? They shut the doors and the gates and wait out the chaos,” I whispered.

  “Then why? What? He has some goal,” Gordon said.

  The silence lingered as I watched, looking over the crowd to the red haired man who was standing on the side of one coach. He was examining the crowd, but he hadn’t noticed us.

  “Look at him,” I said. “We can’t even touch him right now. He’s surrounded by this many supporters, and even if he wasn’t, if we could get to him somehow, we’d only stimulate the crowd, like an electric shock to a latent stitched. Wake them up, drive them to action.”

  “Making him a martyr,” Mary whispered.

  “He has full and complete control. He knows what he’s doing, and he knows how dangerous it is to stand against the Academy. He knows they’re going to pay attention to him, and he can only hold his position by maintaining a very delicate sort of balance. Starting a riot gives up that control,” I whispered.

  Reverend Mauer was peering through the crowd, finding people who weren’t at ease. A man who was more agitated than some, shifting weight from one foot to another, was met with a look of deep sadness from Mauer.

  The agitation quieted.

  “Are you sure this guy’s human?” I whispered.

  “After his botched arm graft and new skin, I don’t think he’s willing to let anyone touch him,” Jamie said.

  “You’ve paid a lot of attention to this guy,” Gordon remarked.

  “He’s a popular topic for gossip,” Jamie whispered. “The Academies don’t have the best working relationship with the churches. A lot of people wondered what sort of man would turn up to man a station in an Academy town, of all places.”

  “I guess we know, now,” Gordon remarked.

  The silence was lingering to the point that it was almost painful. More than a minute, easily.

  Who are you, Reverend Mauer? I wondered. Are you drawing this out for your own pleasure? To test how firm your grip on these people is in practice? Are you focused on the same taste of power that stole Gill away from the Academy, or are you laboring under a goal?

  People with their heads and eyes down were perhaps unaware, but the crowd began to shift, a little restless, as if their bodies were voicing the questions their mouths didn’t dare to.

  “Now,” Reverend Mauer said, as if gently rousing everyone present from a dream. “I know you’re upset. It is hard not to be, given the lives that have been lost, and your fear for yourselves, your neighbors, and your loved ones.”

  He had everyone’s ear, and mine was no exception. I was hanging on every word, picking apart how he was playing with emotions, saying one thing while gently stoking the fires, validating fear and outrage.

  “Aimless anger won’t help anyone, and would be an affront to those we’ve already lost. Nothing would be sadder than if we went out looking for answers or justice, only to sully the memories of Martin and Oscar, or worse, to join those killed by the escaped creature, because you were acting with emotion, not caution.”

  Control.

  Mary was giving me a sidelong glance.

  I was right.

  What we don’t know is what your next move is.

  “The Academy, from what we’ve been told, is deploying more creatures, weapons of war and armed men, with the intent of finding and stopping the escaped creature. Dog and Catcher are the least of the assets being brought to bear.”

  “Academy didn’t tell you that,” Gordon murmured.

  “Hard for them to turn around and say they didn’t, that they wanted to keep people in the dark,” I commented. Gordon nodded in agreement.

  There isn’t a single person here that likes that. Phrased so well, too.

  He went on. “I don’t like this, but at the present time, the only thing we can do is stay safe. Stay with family and friends, give each other comfort. If you still find yourself lacking, you’ll find Dicky, Bill, and myself here in the church, with several others, ready to offer prayer and counsel, should you need it. If you have any news, please, come to us.”

  “Soldiers,” Mary said.

  I nodded slowly.

  How many people are going to turn up at that church, talking about banding together and doing something, as if it were their idea and not Mauer’s?

  “A prayer!” Mauer declared, spreading his arms slightly.

  “Let’s go,” I said, climbing over the roof, intent on sliding down the far side, away from Mauer. I peered over to make sure the landing would be clear. “The Academy is going to want to be on top of this. It’s a bigger problem than Whiskers.”

  “Bigger?” Lillian asked.

  “He’s putting himself opposite the Academy, gathering soldiers, he’s telling people about the secret projects, if only in broad strokes, and he’s making himself effectively untouchable,” I said. “This is going to concern the Academy more than any murderous experiment, believe me. We need advice on how to move forward, and we might need help.”

  Previous Next

  Cat out of the Bag 2.5

  “This keeps getting worse.”

  I took Gordon’s statement to be a thought about our errant reverend Mauer and the riot. Then I caught a glimpse of the Academy, a considerable distance down the road.

  Even standing so far back that we were closer to Lambsbridge Orphanage than to the Academy, I could tell that the Hedge was closed. Shutters closed and no doubt locked, front entrance closed with an iron gate. More security would have been used inside. The Hedge was the easiest and most obvious point of access for anyone looking to attack the Academy, and measures had to be taken to make it defensible, while keeping it accessible to the public. I suspected the measures were very similar to those in the Bowels of the Academy.

  Where twice the number of men had been posted there earlier in the afternoon, it sat at over three times the usual, with ten men and ten stitched. The gates they guarded were only open wide enough for a man to slip through, ready to be closed at a moment’s notice.

  It was getting to be later in the afternoon, now, and as long as the summer days were, the daylight was fading. The lights were just being turned on, in anticipation of looming sunset and evening.

  “What do you want to bet they won’t let us through?” Jamie asked.

  “We need badges,” I said. “Secret badges that we can flash to any member of the Academy that gets in our way. Maybe we can get the Academy heads to pass a rul
e so everyone knows they have to do anything we say.”

  “That would be useful,” Helen said.

  “Yeah,” Gordon said, with a generous heaping of sarcasm and emphasis. “Does anyone here think Sy wouldn’t abuse that six ways from Sunday? Anyone? Show of hands.”

  “I’m hurt,” I said. “And I still want badges.”

  “I hate to break it to you,” Gordon said. “But nobody who knows you in the slightest is going to sign off on that.”

  I huffed, sticking my hands in my pockets.

  Jamie gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t be grumpy.”

  “I’m not being grumpy! I think it’s dumb that we keep getting held back because of arbitrary stuff and secrecy. Half the students know us, the other half keep getting in our way. Like back when we were wrapping up the Mothmont thing, that guy stopping me from walking out?”

  “I wouldn’t say half,” Gordon said.

  “Don’t nitpick,” I said.

  “Don’t use hyperbole, then,” he countered.

  “I wasn’t. I was generalizing.”

  Mary made a little ‘ahem’ sound. Our heads turned. “It’s interesting to see you interacting like this.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “After meeting Sy at Mothmont, seeing how he was there, having weeks to worry about how I’d deal with all of you as a group, um. It’s not what I expected. Seeing you, him, here like this?”

  “I understand,” I said. “It takes people some time to adjust to how amazing we are. Me in particular.”

  Mary’s mouth parted a bit, but she didn’t manage to produce any vocalization. Beside Mary, Lillian’s hand went up to her face.

  I took advantage of it, turning so I was walking backward, flashing her a smirk. I used a hand to push hair away from one corner of my face, where the rain had made it damp, posing like I was a hero on a cover of some seedy romance novella. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Jamie spoke up, “I think Mary might have been talking about the contrast of how you portrayed yourself at Mothmont and how badly you were just losing your argument with Gordon there.”

  My smile disappeared, and I glared at Jamie. He, in turn, shot me a quiet, small smile that suggested he was secretly pleased with himself.

  “Jamie,” I said. “You’re one of the very few people I can beat in a fight.”

  “In theory,” Gordon offered.

  “Like Wollstone’s ratio set is a theory,” I said, “At a certain point, you have to accept that it’s a given.”

  “I’m the book-reader and scholar with glasses,” Jamie said. “Why are you the one making the pathetic stabs at intellectual wit, here?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Gordon’s bad enough, but you? You’re asking for it.”

  “Come on,” Jamie said.

  I threw myself at Jamie, arms around his neck, but we didn’t stop moving toward the Academy gates.

  “There’s a dynamic,” Gordon said. “A big part of the dynamic is keeping Sy from becoming unbearable.”

  As if to illustrate the point, he reached back to take Jamie’s notebook with a reverent care, freeing Jamie’s other hand and making life harder on me in the process.

  “—Resent that!” I grunted out the words, meaning it in more than one sense.

  “Why is he special?” Mary asked.

  “He’s meant to be the unpredictable one, bending and testing rules and altering the patterns we operate in. Sy said you got the broad strokes from the puppeteer?”

  “Broad strokes. Not necessarily all the right strokes. While I was still being questioned and tested on at the Academy, Sy told me that Evette and Ashton didn’t work out.”

  Jamie and I stopped our struggles at the mention of the names.

  “No,” Gordon said. He sighed. “No, they didn’t. They didn’t make it past the beginning stages.”

  “Ashton was like me,” Helen said.

  “Except not at all,” Lillian pointed out.

  “Except not at all,” Helen clarified.

  “Vat grown?” Mary asked. I noticed the change in her voice and body language, interacting with Helen.

  “Yes,” Helen said. “Like you and I.”

  Abruptly, almost to the point that I’d call it impulsively, Helen reached out and touched the side of Mary’s face.

  The word ‘stricken’ derived from the word ‘strike’ in the same way that struck was, and Mary looked more stricken than if she’d been struck with a sword.

  “She’s doing that—” I started.

  Jamie pulled on the back of my shirt, forcing me to bend over to maintain free range of movement with my arms. I did what I could to jab at the softer sides of his belly, tickling him.

  -on purpose, I finished the sentence in my head. Helen wasn’t doing anything wrong, exactly, even if she was being weird.

  Gordon reached out and took hold of Helen’s hand, removing it from Mary’s face. He stepped between the two of them and held Helen’s hand, more for Mary’s sake than for Helen’s.

  “The original plan was for each of us to have a role, a specific set of talents, and for us to be able to address any problem. A gestalt.”

  “I got that part,” Mary said.

  “Nothing goes one hundred percent according to plan. Not all of us wound up being entirely what we were designed to be, and Sy wasn’t intended or even proposed for the gestalt group. Entirely different project, minor in the grand scheme of things. Hayle picked him up anyway. He’s, I’m blanking on the word, starts with ‘v’.”

  “Versatile,” I said, redoubling my efforts to tickle Jamie.

  “Variable,” Jamie said, almost at the point where he was able to pull the bottom of my shirt over my head and arms.

  “Variable,” Gordon said, probably going with Jamie because it made me wrong. “Sy is variable, to the point where he inadvertently covers other bases.”

  “As a scoundrel.”

  “As Sy, whatever labels apply at the moment. But see, point I’m getting around to is that Sy likes to describe humanity as a collection of careening objects, bouncing and ricocheting off established boundaries.”

  Jamie pinned my hands in his armpits by pressing his elbows tight to his body, and hiked up my shirt more. That he could talk and I couldn’t suggested he was winning, which was as irritating as hell. “He says that because he’s a bouncing, random object.”

  “Sort of,” Gordon said. “He’s human. Only things keeping him bound in and constrained are the firmest ones the Academy sets, and us. As Jamie is demonstrating.”

  “Eat dicks!” I told Gordon, my voice muffled by the shirt Jamie had pulled up around my head.

  “I was scared of him, once,” Mary admitted. “And now?”

  “Say what you will about Sy, he’s very good at making people experience that dissonance between what they expect and what they get. Sy is scary, he is dangerous and capable, you weren’t wrong when you judged it, back then. But now you’re with us, a member of our group, which is very possibly the safest possible place you could be when dealing with Sylvester there. With us as a whole, even. Keep that in mind if you’re ever entertaining the idea of stabbing us in the back.”

  There was a pause.

  “I was wondering when that was coming,” Mary said.

  “Had to be said. Sorry.”

  There was an awkward pause. I struggled with Jamie for a second, seriosuly annoyed at this point. I wanted to be able to do more to handle the Mary thing. Left alone, Gordon could push her away. I was the biggest villain of the two of us, but when Gordon hurt people, they took a while to bounce back from it.

  Mary broke the silence. “That stuff you were saying, in a roundabout way, am I right in interpreting that as you saying that I don’t need to worry?”

  “How worried were you?” Gordon asked.

  “Mary’s been very tense,” Lillian volunteered. “Worried about how things would go.”

  “I was.”

  “You don’t need to worry about us i
n general. Really.” Damn Gordon. He was so good at sounding sincere.

  “Oh, good. Gosh! Even Helen, then?”

  “Am I so scary?”

  “A little! More than a little, but if Gordon says you’re okay, and Sy’s not protesting…”

  I was silent.

  Gordon jumped in, stumbling with his words in a way he usually didn’t. “I’m… saying that you don’t need to worry about us in general.”

  You’re a cruel, cruel man, Gordon.

  Correcting her about Helen without saying anything outright.

  Nobody was saying anything. I suspected Mary’s fears about Helen had been redoubled, and I had further suspicions that Gordon had done it on purpose.

  He wasn’t as confident about Mary being a part of the group as I was, or he was concerned on a level. Just as he’d talked about the group keeping me in line, he was using Helen as the proverbial whipping stick for Mary.

  I wasn’t so keen on that. Mary had enough sticks.

  I struggled to pull my shirt down, while Jamie interfered with those struggles.

  “We’re at the academy,” Gordon said. The meaning was clear. Stop roughhousing.

  Jamie let me free. I fixed my shirt and tucked it in, then fixed my hair. Mary was giving me an amused look, and Jamie looked smug.

  I wasn’t proud. I was willing to look silly in front of Mary if it meant she could let her guard down a fraction, easing into the group. Losing to Jamie was part of that.

  Entirely intentional. For real. No joke.

  The people by the entrance gathered together as we drew closer. The six of us against ten or so Academy students and their stitched.

  “We’ve been invited,” Gordon said.

  “No entry,” one of them said.

  “We’ve been invited,” Gordon said, again. “Thank you.”

  One way to win an argument, just keep hammering at them until they give way. If they tire or show weakness, seize on that, hammer again.

  “No entry,” the same student told us.

  Gordon looked at Jamie. Jamie’s prediction had been right.

  “Go inside, find and talk to Professor Hayle. He’ll tell you we’re allowed inside.”

  “He’ll tell us the same thing every other Professor has told us. Nobody in or out.”