by wildbow
It was good to know he was still behaving. A large part of what we’d been working on to this point was ensuring our grip on him wasn’t going to falter.
“Good for her,” I said. “Out of all of us, she’s probably eating the best.”
“And she doesn’t even enjoy food in the same way we do,” Jamie commented. “There’s something really sad about that.”
“Mm,” I agreed.
We watched for another few moments. Approaching footsteps made me turn my head.
The chef I’d talked to earlier was approaching yet again. Wordless, he set down a plate, stacked with appetizers and tiny cakes.
“Wow! Thank you, sir!” I said, trying to sound surprised.
He didn’t respond, only turning to leave.
I picked up one of the seahorse-slug things and viciously bit its head off. It tasted like undercooked bacon, but a longer-lasting aftertaste that made the initial texture worth it.
“You’re allowed to gloat,” Jamie whispered to me. “This was the first priority, wasn’t it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I whispered back, smiling.
“Brat,” he said. Then, distracted, he turned to the window, “Oh! I recognize that face.”
“Which?”
Jamie indicated a man. Even though most of the guests had removed their long coats, this one wore his. He had long hair and glasses, but the hair was black, and the man was old enough to have white-and-black stubble on his cheeks. He walked with his hands clasped in front of him, milling aimlessly until a woman in a deep blue dress approached, catching him in conversation.
“Cynthia,” Jamie said.
“The man’s name is Cynthia?”
“The woman in the dress is Cynthia. She’s taking charge of the rebellion here, and she’s the one throwing this little lunch party,” Jamie said.
“Who’s the man?”
“Louis Peralta. Ex-New Spaniard, removed from Radham Academy three years ago, he studied the science of pain. How we experience it, how to remove it, how to inflict it.”
“Sounds like a lovely chap,” I commented.
“The loveliest. When he walks down the road, children and small woodland creatures flock around him.”
“Anyone else?” I asked. “I can’t help but notice that there’s a distinct lack of stitched here.”
“That’s true. Most are probably off fighting.”
“Or there’s a certain kind of status to being able to hire actual people, instead of using dead ones,” I said. “Or they’re playing up to a certain audience. If you’re demonizing the Academy, using the Academy’s tools in the background looks bad.”
“True,” Jamie said.
“Question is,” I said. “There are monsters in the audience. Past Helen, the two tall women at the far end there, on either side of the man?”
“Oh. He’s Mr. Pock. Think Ibbott, but he likes to make sets, he’s only about half as arrogant, and only a third as good.”
I nodded.
“There’s Edwin Grahl. He was innovating new ways of doing stitched when something political behind the scenes at one of the Academies got him upset. He left in a huff, found a patron, and continued his work. The Academy put out a warrant for unlicensed use of the Academy’s knowledge. He went into hiding.”
“There are a lot of these guys,” I said.
Now that Jamie was pointing them out, I was getting a better sense of things. It wasn’t always easy to identify the Academy educated. Sometimes it was, sometimes they had the wild hair or the coats or tools on hand, but more than half of them blended in with the crowd.
“John Durant. He got removed from the Academy when he helped make a superweapon, but failed to leash it right. People got killed. There are very few people I can think of who are as volatile as he is. Angry, works on projects bigger than he can handle. He could be as dangerous to their side as he might be to ours.”
“A lot of people that left the Academy, one way or another,” I said. “Not all Academy trained, but close enough to have something to offer.”
“That’s essentially it,” Jamie murmured. “She’s gathering her forces.”
The way Cynthia was doing it was interesting, too. I saw how she took the arm of Dr. Peralta and led the man to a group of the high-society types.
What was the plan there? Building connections? Convincing the people with the money and the resources that this was a battle that could be won?
“There,” Jamie said. “Man with the red tie?”
I looked and saw a man, blond haired, with a jaw prominent enough that it looked like it had been surgically modified.
“Nobility,” Jamie said.
“Here?” I asked. A two-legged cat might have had as much sense to walk into a wolf’s den.
“He’s illegitimate. Of everyone here that might hate the Crown and the people that fall under its umbrella, he probably hates the Crown the most.”
“Tall order,” I said. I grabbed a tiny cake.
“Tall order,” Jamie agreed. He grabbed a little bacon-and-pastry affair, then offered it to me. On a whim, we touched cake to pastry as if we were toasting a drink.
He popped his treat into his mouth. I started, then stopped.
Someone had come in the back door. A woman, with thick black hair falling across her eyes, parted so that only her nose and a wide mouth were visible. She wore a military uniform, just as the scarred people and the countless soldiers in Whitney did.
A woman in uniform wasn’t the most unusual thing in the world. But a woman that entered a room and sniffed, rather than looking around?
Entering through the back door?
With our raincoats clenched in one hand?
Her head turned in our direction.
“Go,” I said, hopping down from the counter, hauling Jamie down with me. He only just managed to collect his backpack before I hauled him along.
There weren’t many escape routes. There was a door to one side, which might have led to the kitchen manager’s office, but I wasn’t willing to gamble that the manager’s office would have a door or a window to the outside.
The woman moved toward us, with long, brisk strides, and one hundred percent conviction. When a waiter got in her way, she grabbed him with two hands and shoved him forcefully into the nearest counter. She barely slowed an iota in the process.
There were two surefire exits from the room. There was one that she’d just used to enter the kitchen, and there was one that led from the kitchen to the floor of the theater.
Weighing our options, this one strange individual against a room filled with people who had been warned about our existence, I chose the room.
With Jamie lagging behind me, I pushed past the free-swinging set of door to enter the party.
Previous Next
Esprit de Corpse—5.3
We weren’t walking through a kitchen, wearing clothing that resembled that of the staff, not anymore. The pair of us stood out like sore thumbs, our hair a little damp from being under our hoods in the humid outdoors. We wore dirty boots, not shiny black shoes. Jamie carried a backpack.
We attracted attention, tramping through people twice our size, who were all wearing their finest. Women had their hair done up, nice dresses on, and the men wore suits with long jackets. There were very few children in attendance, making us stand out all the more.
I peered through the crowd, noting the location of everyone important. The kitchen door was in the southeast corner, the stage with the singer to the southwest, and a hundred and fifty feet of banquet hall stretched the distance to the north end, where the front door was. Covered tables dotted the space off to the sides, standing on carpet, while the center remained clear, hardwood, ostensibly for dancing during different events.
The ceiling arched above, and a kind of extended balcony ran down either side, with fancy iron-wrought railings, with a number of figures gathered and looking down on the affair from above. Some stood and talked on the s
tairs that led up from either side of the front door.
The rebellion here had brought in a lot of ex-Academy types, and those individuals had each attracted crowds, many staying toward the edges of the hall. The middle had more clusters, but it also had more elbow room and empty space.
No matter how we moved through the empty spaces, we would either stand out like sore thumbs, walking in a straight line, or we would look evasive, zig-zagging to break line of sight.
The tables offered a little bit of cover, blocking others’ view of us, and the densely packed people would be something of a benefit in the same way. That said, there was a bit of a caveat to that. There was nothing stopping someone from grabbing one of us.
I was counting on a given person leaving us alone because others had left us alone. The mentality of the herd of sheep. It made the initial batch of people more important, as we approached.
That in mind, I led the way toward people who looked more actively engaged on conversation.
So much planning for the simple act of walking into a crowd.
Then again, there was the corollary that we were walking into a crowd of people that would imprison us if they knew we were working for the Crown, and probably shoot us on the spot if they knew what we really were.
It was sobering.
Jamie and I passed just behind a cluster of the group of chattering ladies, into the thick of the crowd. I brought my chin down, ducking down as if begging excuse, and walked at a consistent speed.
The pair of us passed behind the core members of the gaggle of chattering women without drawing notice.
I was put in mind of one of the covers of Jamie’s books. The heroine of the haunted forest, every tree hostile but dormant. This was that forest. The ‘trees’ dwarfed us, they outnumbered us to an extent that I couldn’t guess at, and if they turned on us, I couldn’t even guess at what they’d do to us.
Countless sets of eyes watched us, judging, prying, thinking about doing something. But it took a special kind of courage to break away from the herd and do something like that. I was watching people, studying them, trying to figure out who might have that courage. It wasn’t always obvious. A well dressed man in unique colors, my instinct was that he could be left alone. He tried too hard to impress, by body language alone.
An older man, one that looked too frail to kill a fly if he swatted it, I knew he was dangerous by the wide berth others gave him, and the way they reacted when he moved his hands, gesturing. I’d known professors who moved like he did, swatting students that weren’t attentive enough, not caring what others thought about them.
Once I was pretty sure the coast was clear, I allowed myself a glance back toward the kitchen. The sniffing woman hadn’t followed us past the kitchen door. I noted that the hostess of the party, Cynthia, stood near the stage, the center of attention for her own small cluster. Jamie, just behind me, looked deeply concerned, one of his hands gripping mine, the other holding the strap of his bag.
I saw his eyes flick in one direction. Casually, head turning back to face forward, I looked out of the corner of my eye.
The extended balcony on the far left of the room had groups of people talking, just like everywhere else in the banquet hall, but a lone figure stood alone. Bald, he had a scarf covering the lower half of his face, a heavy cast to his forehead, almost neanderthal, and the hands that gripped the railing had long fingers. Knives glinted on the strap that ran diagonally across his chest.
He was watching us, his head moving to follow as we made forward progress.
I thought I’d lose track of him as I moved too far head to track him in my peripheral vision, but he turned, and he started walking in the same direction we were, along the length of the balcony, making progress toward the front door.
Two of them.
Good eye, Jamie.
I had to wonder where the woman from the kitchen was. She wasn’t following us, which was curious. It raised questions. Why not stir up the crowd, call something out and have people mob us or grab us?
The first possibility was that her hands were tied. Maybe she couldn’t speak. Maybe she could, but wasn’t willing to cause trouble with this event being more important than it looked.
The second possibility was that she hadn’t come after us because she didn’t need to come after us. We were already caught.
Three quarters of the way. The last quarter of the hallway stretched before us.
The man with the scarf started moving faster, one long finger tracing the top of the railing. He was a little more eager than the woman had been, and the speed he was moving suggested he’d make it down the stairs and beat us to the front door.
I looked, and I didn’t see windows. There were side doors, likely leading to the theaters, but they weren’t accessible side doors. The crowds of people around the various scientists and experimenters made it look pretty dire.
I picked up the pace a little, my hand tugging on Jamie’s.
All at once, the man that was above us stopped, turning, gripping the railing with long fingers. I allowed myself to look, momentarily making eye contact.
A moment later, Jamie’s hand hauled back on mine. My stride was broken, and eyes that had been glancing our way now stared.
Jamie had been grabbed.
I supposed it had always been a ‘when’ we got grabbed, not ‘if’.
He looked shocked, and he didn’t know what to do. The man that had him was a military sort, with massive mutton chops, badges on his lapel and an odd amount of jewelry on the hand he’d used to grab Jamie. A very ostentatious wedding band, and a ring that probably signified something military-related. Membership of an important group.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked, his voice deep. More heads turned.
The attention we were getting was so oppressive I almost couldn’t breathe. Jamie looked stricken.
Cynthia was looking, but I wasn’t sure she could see us, specifically. The man at the railing remained where he was, watching, fingers rising and falling like a line of something or others was squirming between them and the railing.
He’d probably seen the man turn and come after us.
I couldn’t let the fear show in my face. Fear would doom us.
I smiled, knowing that my fake smile was being studied by merchants and politicians, people who had made livings off of using or identifying fakery.
“Love,” I said, not looking at the jewelry on his fingers, while remaining acutely aware of it.
The man harumphed. “Love?”
“Brotherly love. This guy and me, we’re the fastest friends you ever saw, sir. There’s a girl he likes, I told him, no matter what, he needed to tell her.”
“T-told you, Simon, y-you really didn’t have to do that,” Jamie said, voice shaking a bit. He was drawing on his nervousness, using it.
Simon. It was my first fake name. Nostalgic.
Even my nickname, Sy, it was taken more from Simon than Sylvester.
I told myself it was a good omen, and didn’t allow myself to consider that it might be the last fake name I ever used.
“We never thought we’d see her again. Then we saw her coming here, he’s dressed nice, we thought—well, I thought and I told him, he’s gotta say. Before he loses the chance.”
The man didn’t show any sign of relenting. His face was like stone. Stone with massive muttonchops, but stone all the same.
I was still counting on the sheep mentality. That if we stopped this man, convinced him, the rest would let us be. Even managing that would be hard. It depended on Cynthia not coming to see what the commotion was about, and the man at the railing above us staying where he was.
A lot of dependings, there.
Foremost among them was Muttonchops here.
The rings. The way he so proudly displayed the badges. I was counting on him being a romantic at heart.
“Girl, hm?” he asked. He sounded skeptical.
“She was over there,” I said, pointing into
the crowd.
Like magic, the observers parted, stepping away from the path of my fingertip. The only ones who didn’t were Mr. Ames and our dear Helen.
Ames looked like he was going to suffer heart failure. He had already been sweating bullets, and now a full third of the room was now focusing its attention on him and Helen. He couldn’t have looked more stricken if someone shoved an icicle up his rear end.
I shifted my grip on Jamie, circling around him, so I stood between him and Muttonchops. One hand on each of Jamie’s shoulders, I pushed.
The muttonchops, the flash, the display. Not just a romantic. Muttonchops believed in the show.
This was for his sake, something gaudy, obvious, impossible to ignore.
I believed, wholeheartedly, that he couldn’t maintain his hold on Jamie without becoming the bad guy, without standing in the way of a boy and his love. Jamie wasn’t even to blame. It was my fault, I was the one who had dragged him along.
The hand dropped away. I pushed Jamie along, and he made a faint show of resisting.
We drew closer to the front door. Fifteen percent of the way left. Ten. Five.
We reached Helen and Ames. The last few paces to the door were an impossible journey, now.
I crossed my left set of fingers, tapping them on Jamie’s shoulder, to get Helen’s attention, then shifted my grip.
It was a gesture that meant risk.
Shifting my grip to the left, to indicate the general direction of the man with the scarf. He’d moved when I wasn’t looking, and stood on the stairs.
Damn it.
I couldn’t even see Cynthia, but the singer at the far corner of the banquet hall was watching us even as she sang. If Cynthia made it this far, we were doomed.
Too many factors to consider. Everything in my perception condensed to this particular moment and scene. I was hyperaware, my every sense pitched to an almost painful degree. We were walking a tightrope.
“I don’t know what to say,” Jamie said, to Helen.
Helen’s hand moved to her hair. A gesture was hidden in the action. A question mark without a question to precede it. She was as lost as Jamie. Her voice and attitude didn’t betray it, either way.