by wildbow
That goes both ways, I thought.
“We’re talking about you, not us,” I told her, “You’re out of options, all of you. You’re having a last hurrah before your families come to collect you or outright disown you. You had one chance to make something of yourself that wasn’t being a teacher or a housewife, and you failed.”
“I’m still in a position to hurt you,” she threatened.
“I’m in a position to stop you,” Gordon said, behind her.
She stepped back to keep us all in view, while also making sure that we were between her and the others. Gordon and I didn’t flinch.
Sore spot. She wore the wound like a badge, and she was no doubt used to hurting anyone who prodded it. Angry, spiteful, lashing out. She wore it all right out in the open.
And, I imagined, the others flocked to her because they identified so heavily with it.
This wasn’t a group like Reverend Mauer had been trying to make, something that might have endured and carried on forever. This was a group that would self destruct any day now.
It was beautiful in its bitterness.
“I’m going to keep this simple, and I’m going to keep it short,” Gordon said. “We’re here because we want to offer you an opportunity. You have very few opportunities.”
“Opportunities,” she said, sounding less than enthused.
Gordon shrugged. “You became Academy students because it’s the fastest, easiest way to rise up in society and get out from under thumbs. Now I’m going to offer you another way that’s fast and easy. Money.”
“How much?” she asked, without wasting a heartbeat’s time.
I jumped in, wasting no time either, wording things so I had a half-second to think. There were eight people in her little group. “Enough that, if you split it three ways, three people could buy houses in a decent enough town. Split it more ways, it still buys some time to figure out a way forward.”
“Money makes the world go around,” Gordon said. “And at the end of the day, even the Academy needs money and resources to keep going.”
The woman frowned, looking at each of us. “And how are you going to get us that much money?”
“We’re looking for a person,” I said. “And it’s tricky, because it’s a girl with a pet monster, and I do know there are a lot of girls with pet monsters around. Her pet was a disembodied head, but we’re not sure what it is now, and she could have changed her appearance.”
“Does she have a bounty on her head?” she asked.
“Not officially, but she’s committed major offenses against the Crown in two of the Crown States. That puts a certain price on her head. You get her, dead or alive, and then you point out the rule, deliver the body, and you’re made.”
“Where do you come in?” she asked. “Two little boys in the wrong place, doing and knowing things you shouldn’t.”
“We’re your salvation,” I said. “We don’t need or want the money. We want her caught, or we want her dead. That’s all.”
“You’re going to say yes,” Gordon said. “Do you want to keep pretending you won’t, or can we use this time to talk details, with Sylvester and me—I’m Gordon, by the by—telling you what little we know about her?”
“You think I’m going to say yes, because I don’t have anything better to do? Maybe we’re done with people telling us how we should live our lives.”
“Maybe,” Gordon said. “And maybe this is the last real choice. Your last chance, ever, to choose the course of your own life.”
She ruminated for a long moment.
“Ronnie,” one of the other girls said. “Please.”
Ronnie, the woman with the black feathered coat, bowed her head a little.
“You’re angry,” I said, my voice soft. “Angry at the world. This girl we’re after, she’s a good target for that anger.”
Was there really as much choice as we’d implied?
She nodded.
“How many people do you think you could round up?” Gordon asked.
“Twelve at least,” she said, raising her head. “Twenty at most.”
Twenty is a good number.
“Okay. Here’s what you need to know,” Gordon said. “She’s not a student, and she probably doesn’t have student identification. She has or had black hair, favors ruby red lipstick, was in the company of a young stitched woman and a head…”
☙
The others were waiting as Gordon and I met at the house. I tried to gauge how the others were doing, if they were closer or further apart than they’d been before Gordon had grouped them up.
Helen and Lillian seemed fine. Jamie and Mary far less so.
“Where do we stand?” Gordon asked.
“We talked to the faculty,” Lillian said. “There have been thefts of supplies. She set up a lab, and she might be reluctant to abandon it.”
“She’s set up others,” I said. “She abandoned those.”
Lillian frowned.
“I recognized the equipment,” Helen said. “Vat grown life, big and equipment necessary for working with microscopic life.”
“Together?” Gordon asked.
“I don’t know,” Helen said.
“Anything else?”
Helen shook her head.
“Jamie, Mary?”
“We looked through the crowds,” Jamie said. “If she’s hiding in plain sight, she might be hiding among larger numbers. If I can get a good look at her, I’ll be able to identify her.”
“This many pretty girls around,” Mary said. “Someone’s doing back-street work, touching up and prettifying. That same someone might have changed Ms. Fray’s face or hair for her. We asked around, I think we might keep it up.”
They didn’t stay together.
“You need to stay together as a pair,” Gordon said, voicing my thoughts aloud.
“We did, some,” Jamie said. “We stayed close enough we could see each other, at least.”
“And if she comes after you in the crowd?” Gordon asked.
“That might not be how she operates,” I said.
“But it could be,” Gordon said.
I nodded in agreement.
“And you?” Mary asked. “What did you manage?”
“We’ve got eighteen people on the ground,” I said. “Malcontents and criminals. We’re going to put word out with a few others. Local thugs. Every town has it’s common elements, and one of those elements is that there are people who aren’t happy, looking for an easy fix. They’re covering the common exits from the city and making sure Fray can’t run, if she’s still here.”
“I know Gordon likes to do things the direct way,” Jamie said. “But you, Sy? What’s the plot in your head right now?”
“Plotting? I’m offended!”
Jamie didn’t even blink.
I sighed. “The people we’re sending after Fray, they’re floundering, drowning, struggling to make it in life. I’m interested to see how she interacts with them. It’s very possible she might recruit them.”
“Which is good, somehow?” Mary guessed.
I nodded. “Insert a weak link that we can then sever at the right time. And those women are weak links.”
“Dangerous game,” Gordon said. I detected a note of disapproval in his voice.
“It’s one I’m confident playing,” I said. “At the very least, they’ll keep her on her back foot, make her deal with the people who are asking questions and cutting off her retreat.”
There were a few nods.
“We eat, hit the washrooms, change clothes if we need to, then move out again,” Gordon said. He looked at Jamie and Mary. “Same teams, please.”
Jamie and Mary nodded.
As we headed for the front door of the house, I inserted myself between Jamie and Mary. Two of my favorite people, for very different reasons. My oldest friend and my newest.
How to tie them closer together?
“You’re both methodical,” I said. “What you do, you do perf
ectly, whether it’s sticking a knife in between someone’s ribs or remembering the exact text of a book you read a year ago. Think about what puts the two of you on the same page. Use that.”
“We’re both fond of you,” Jamie said.
“Well, that’s a cop out answer,” I said. “We’re all fond of each other, aren’t we?”
Mary smiled at that. The inclusion. Even now, three quarters of a year after joining us, she needed the reminder that she was a dyed in the wool Lamb.
“We’re okay,” Jamie said. “We were figuring it out.”
“I know,” I said. “I only…”
I trailed off.
Gordon had opened the door.
He stepped back out of the way.
Our belongings were in ruins. The luggage destroyed, the contents torn up and strewn around. Entire sections of the little dormitory house had been torn up and ripped out, including the kitchen sink, by the looks of it.
But, worst of all, was the blood. At least three whelps had been torn to pieces and the contents had been used to paint the hallway.
The bloody handprint on the wall was at least two feet across.
A message was written on the wall in blood.
I have your real pills.
—G. Fray
All things have hearts. Even the Lambs.
“Oh gosh darn it!” Helen said. She reached into a coat pocket and pulled out the bottle. “Is there any way to tell?”
“Taste?” Jamie suggested.
“Taste it, then,” Gordon said. “But there’s no guarantees. We can’t afford to think we’re safe and be wrong. She’s here, she’s challenging us…”
“And if she knows we’re staying here, then she’s been watching our every move from the beginning,” I said.
Previous Next
Stitch in Time—4.3
“I’ll check the place,” Gordon said.
“I’ll come with,” Mary said.
“Thank you.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. There was no guarantee that the assailant had already left.
“Watch that you don’t mess up any evidence,” Jamie said.
“We won’t,” Mary said.
Ah, evidence. I liked where people’s thoughts were going. Mary teaming up with Gordon, Jamie thinking about the next step.
I could have done without Jamie suggesting Gordon or Mary would have messed up, but this was a better course of things.
“Sorry, little guys,” Gordon said, under his breath, to our deceased comrades. “You died for a good cause. Your brothers will avenge you, hopefully.”
“It would be nice,” I said, crouching down to sit on my heels, prodding at one of the dead whelps. It had a large beak and scaled body, it sported a long tail and narrow eyes. The tongue trailed out of its open mouth. I added, “My hopes aren’t high. She’s been one step ahead for a while. I doubt the Whelps are going to catch her off guard.”
“Yeah,” Jamie said.
I stroked the thing’s side. It was small compared to the others, I gauged it at twenty pounds, give or take, though it was hard to gauge with the sheer damage it had sustained. A runt like me.
I prodded the lolling tongue into its mouth, before closing the beak.
The mouth popped back open, and the tongue unfurled.
I tried. Sorry, runt.
“Don’t get too much blood on your hands,” Jamie reminded me.
“I know.”
“I can give you something to clean your hands,” Lillian said. Then she stopped. “Or I could, but…”
But her bag was the biggest out of all of ours, and the contents were strewn about.
“I think I can find it. Give me a second,” she said.
“Don’t,” I told her. “If they possibly messed with the pills, we can’t rule out that they messed with the stuff they left on the floor.”
“But—”
“It’s okay,” Helen said, giving Lillian a pat on the shoulder. “He was careful, and he didn’t get any blood on his hands. The scent marker only works if they bleed on you. Poor little fellas.”
“The Whelps know us anyway,” I added. “Maybe not you, so much, and maybe not Mary, but they’re not about to come tearing after me. You, maybe, but—”
“You already said that.”
“Repeating it for emphasis.”
She punched me in the arm, before dropping her arm to one side and looking down at the mess.
“We’re okay,” I said.
“I don’t think we are,” Lillian said, arms folded in a way that was hugging herself as much as it was defiance. “Fray knows where we sleep.”
“We can go somewhere else,” Jamie said.
“If she followed us here—”
“She might follow us elsewhere,” I finished for Lillian. “I know. There’s no place we’re safe, and she has the upper hand.”
“Especially with the pills being an issue,” Gordon said, returning.
“There is that,” I said.
Mary made her way back, standing beside Gordon. Between all of us, we’d formed a loose perimeter around the mess that had been left behind with the demise of the Whelps.
“Perimeter’s clear,” Mary said, a touch late. Filling the silence rather than promptly reporting in. “Nothing and nobody outside that I can tell.”
“Small building, fast check,” Gordon said. “What are we thinking?”
“We’re dealing with a Sylvester that has a lot more general knowledge, less compunctions, and the upper hand,” Jamie said.
“She can’t pee standing up, so that’s a point for me,” I said.
Lillian punched me in the arm again.
“Ow! Why?”
“This is serious. Be serious,” she admonished me.
“There was no stamp on the parcel, she would have had to know there would be a parcel arriving by mail with a guard, and she would have had to fabricate any fake pills in advance,” Gordon said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“She would have had to know we were coming, or that someone was coming,” Jamie pointed out.
“Yeah,” I said, holding my tongue as I thought, the armed mail carriage wouldn’t have been the most subtle thing for a paranoid ex-Doctor, and she was expecting someone.
Helen held up the bottle of pills, so they caught the light.
“Sealed,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Gimme?” Jamie asked.
“If it’s poison—” I warned.
“Just gimme,” Jamie said.
Helen unsealed the bottle, removed the glass stopper, then reached in to get a pill. She threw it to me.
I caught it and handed it to Jamie.
He popped it into his mouth. “Tastes exactly the same. Like chalk.”
“All signs point to it being nothing more than head games,” Gordon said.
“Yeah,” I said, for the fourth time.
The silence lingered. Nobody was saying what we were all thinking. We could say all we wanted, but our heads knew different.
Fray was smart, and she was clever, which were two very different things. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, and when our lives were at stake…
I said it, because nobody else seemed willing to, “We’re not really in a position to take a leap of faith here. Guessing wrong before we leap means a terminal fall.”
Nobody said anything to that. It was sobering.
“Is that it?” Mary asked, indignant. “We pack up, use the badges, and force our way onto the next train ride back?”
“It’s the safest option,” Gordon said. “Lillian, you were briefed on the particulars of the drug, weren’t you?”
“They filled me in before we left. What to expect when you showed symptoms, how to handle it. If we left tonight, assuming a two hour train journey to Radham, one or two brief stops, I don’t think there would be any major symptoms. You’d feel like you had the flu, at worst. I could alleviate symptoms, which would delay the deteriorat
ion.”
“Dying,” I said.
“If you want to be blunt about it,” she said. The look in her eyes when she looked at me was steely. Her tone was cold, and she spoke with a kind of authority.
Our lives were in her hands, as they so often were, but right here, right now, with all of us in grave peril, well, this was Lillian’s moment.
She fixed the position of her bags, betraying the nervousness behind the guise. “When you start throwing up, the other parts of you that are breaking down will tear and rip. Your stomach and throat will bleed, your muscles will rip, and you’ll be incapacitated by cramps. The blood that drains into your stomach will make you throw up more. By that point in time, every hour that passes adds a month to the time it would take you to recover. And that’s with Academy help, and it assumes you’re taking the pills again.”
Gordon looked at me. “You ran away once.”
Mary’s ears perked up at that.
“Didn’t leave Radham. Couldn’t. Planned to, but the opportunities never came up.”
“What opportunities would that be?” Gordon asked, a half-smile on his face, “Were you going to get classified as a war machine so they wean you off the leash, and somehow pass yourself off without getting caught by Dog and Catcher?”
Helen tittered, “That’s a funny mental image. Big hulking warbeast, check. Big hulking warbeast, check. Big hulking warbeast, check. Then there’s Sy, standing in the stable, fake horns on his head. Check.”
“Then the actual medication comes in,” I said. “In the form of a three gallon syringe, to be jabbed into my tiny ass.”
There were a few smiles at that, breaking the tension.
Good.
“In seriousness, my vampire bat plan was sort of like that,” I said.
The half-smile dropped off Gordon’s face. “What? You’re serious.”
“Sort of,” I said. “I needed a good back-alley doctor to help me figure out the particulars, stuff to watch out for, get the tools, but if I stole the blood of something that was being weaned off and getting the drugs that eased the transition, then gave it to myself?”
“If you gave me a week, I couldn’t list all the reasons that wouldn’t work,” Lillian said.
“But,” I said. “I could get the drugs that way, if there wasn’t any other option, right?”
“You’d kill yourself.”