by wildbow
“You’ve got a hump,” I observed.
Helen contorted, shifting position.
“Pressure, ow, pressure!” Shipman raised her voice a little.
“Shh!” I hissed. “You can damn well cope.”
“She’s digging individual toes in between my ribs for a foothold. I’m allowed to say it hurts!”
“Bring your knees in,” I said.
The bits poking out beneath the armpit receded.
“Better,” Shipman said.
“Don’t care,” I said.
“Too tall,” Jamie observed.
Helen dropped her height an inch.
“Too short,” Jamie said.
Helen raised her head a half-inch.
Exemplary control over her own body. Not perfect, but enough to make the difference. To sell this in a way that wouldn’t normally work.
“You need the mouth,” I said.
“I don’t have the teeth, and I can’t do the voice,” Helen said. “Unless you want to get a file?”
“Ibott would kill us,” I said. “Don’t talk, don’t open your mouth.”
She nodded.
Then she pulled at muscles in her face. A rictus grin, too-wide, until it looked like her mouth would tear open.
It wasn’t perfect. The nose was wrong.
But people didn’t look at noses.
“Officers, Brigadier,” I said. “Kneel.”
I could tell the instruction didn’t go over well. These weren’t men who had knelt for anyone but the Crown.
I got a kind of perverse joy out of it, watching as they knelt.
“In a line,” I said. “That pissed-off look on your faces? Keep it.”
They arranged their positions, so they were all in a line, down the center of the room. Jamie, Lillian, and the firetender took up position just in front of them.
‘Melancholy’ and I approached the door. Shipman was slow, carrying Helen. She didn’t complain any further, though.
“Good girl,” Helen purred. “Keep going.”
“I don’t need the encouragement,” Shipman said.
“Pat on the head for you,” Helen said.
I opened the door a little, caught it with my foot, and then kicked it open, trying to make it look more like ‘Melancholy’ had opened it than I had.
She stood in the doorway, so the door remained propped open, and I threw myself forward, stumbling to the point of nearly falling down the stairs.
The people on the street were far enough away they’d infer I’d been pushed or kicked.
I looked at the Academy forces at the walls on either side, defending the position, ready to open fire. I moved my head as if I was looking past everyone and everything, blind.
“Soldiers? If you’re there, throw down your guns,” I said.
I could see them hesitate.
“That’s an order! Throw them down!” Tylor bellowed, from inside.
As I walked down the stairs, I could hear the guns being dropped to the ground.
That sound and the presence of Melancholy in the doorway lent me an air of legitimacy.
I stumbled down the stairs, missing the occasional step, and trying to step down to another step when I reached a short landing. I made my way down to the street.
“Someone in charge?” I asked. “The assassin sent me. Someone? Anyone?”
The mail was snatched out of my hands. A plague man had it. He had pocks and boils breaking up tattoos on his neck and hands, military tattoos. The sort that almost counted as medals people gave themselves, or to memorialize the dead.
Don’t read it. Don’t read the others’ letters.
“What are these?”
“She said, um, one for you, and then one for Madsen, and one for the forces at the west gate. Orders from the top.”
The man made a face. I saw only through my peripheral vision, as my ‘blind’ gaze stared a hole through his chest.
He didn’t like Melancholy, I realized.
Funny how it worked.
“Is she coming down to join the rest of us?” the man asked.
“I only—I was told to bring the letters. I can’t see what’s going on,” I said.
He opened one of the letters, then hunched over. “Damn rain. Ink’s running.”
I remained silent.
“The senior officers are being taken as prisoners of war,” he said. He turned his head. “Two coaches. We’re going to be rid of the ugly bitch, and not a moment too soon. Send runners with these letters to Madsen and Hughey.”
Gordon and Mary, I thought.
He wasn’t giving the order to go and find them.
The simple, stupid reality of humans. There was only so much they could process. We’d given them too much information to dwell on.
He’d completely glossed over that part.
If I said anything else, it put everything in jeopardy. Gave them cause to be suspicious, to pay attention to me, the lowly messenger…
I swallowed hard.
Had to take the risk.
“My friends,” I said. “They were with me, and she hurt them. She said, Tylor made her promise to help them.”
I stared at the ground as I said it. Hoping, hoping.
“Mm,” the man said. A single syllable response. Not even a word.
I had a knife and I had a firebomb. If it came down to it, I’d stab him and make a break for it, using fire to delay pursuers.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do at that point, but I couldn’t do nothing.
Come on. Basic sense. You can’t go against her deal with Tylor, or you jeopardize everything.
“Vic. Head over in the direction of the bank. Opposite end of the street, behind the houses. If the fires aren’t too bad. Bring someone to help carry. Supposed to be two injured kids. Related to bigwig doctors.”
I sagged in relief.
Relief or no, I didn’t say or do anything to draw attention to myself. The rain poured down, battering the paper the plague man held gripped in his fist. Gunshots and explosions sounded off to the north end of the city.
The fighting had stopped here, but the war hadn’t left the area. The air smelled like smoke and blood, and there were more people staring off into space than there were people talking. Everyone in their own individual worlds.
I could remember seeing that look in the plague men’s eyes back in the city. A part of them missing, perhaps. Was it a casualty of the transformation, or of previous battles?
What did it mean, to be so changed? They’d become the perfect soldiers for this ugly battlefield, but it was a change that made it awfully hard to go home, when all was said and done.
I’d talked about the importance of the fact that these people wanted to fight. They wanted justice and revenge. The Academy forces didn’t want either. They wanted to return to their ordinary lives. It made a difference, when push came to shove.
Was there a chance that these men who had been made into soldiers would want to keep fighting, when ordinary, sane people would want the war to end?
We’d never identified the doctor responsible for creating these transformations. He was likely to be elsewhere, making more.
An awful lot of men with little to look forward to, except the expectation of death and blood.
I stood and waited in the rain, shivering, until the coaches arrived. Two men perched on the back, each holding on with one hand, their other hands wrapped around Gordon and Mary, respectively.
Mary’s eyes were open, and her expression changed as she saw me. Gordon was moving, but very weakly.
I allowed myself to feel relief, finally, but I didn’t let it show.
Three commanding officers, the Brigadier, and all of the Lambs found their way into the coaches, hands and ankles bound. Two plague men rode up top of each coach, and another was inside the cab of one of the other coaches, but there was room on the bench. I was the last one into the crowded space of the first coach’s interior.
Well, not the last one.
>
Melancholy made her way down the stairs. I didn’t stare, instead turning away as she drew ever nearer, but I imagined the challenge. Shipman, not the largest of us, but sixteen nonetheless, with a burden on her back and shoulders, walking down wet stairs.
One stumble, one fall, and the ruse was ended.
I reached out for Mary’s hair, and stroked it, pushing it out of the way of her face.
She smiled at me, her eyes half-lidded.
There was a slight collision as ‘Melancholy’ reached the door.
“You’re not riding up top?” the plague man who’d taken the letter asked.
She couldn’t talk, not without revealing her voice, or the fact that her teeth were normal.
Instead, she chanced a look in his direction, giving him a better view of her face.
A sneer of contempt.
She lurched into the cab of the coach. The door slammed behind her. The other coach’s door slammed as well.
I didn’t dare breathe, my ears peeled for any sign that they’d realized or started to doubt matters. That they were angry and would start an argument.
The door was closed, and all was silent, but for Gordon’s labored breathing.
Were we free and clear?
My heart pounded.
The coach set to moving.
Free and clear.
☙
We stopped at a fork in the road.
The able-bodied officers of the Academy’s forces hauled the plague men out of the vehicle, leaving them at the side of the road. Even with many of us being children, we’d had the weight of numbers in a cramped space. After that, the ones up top had been caught and either strangled or shot.
I watched how Jamie stared down at the bodies. But we had other things to focus on.
“You know the way?” I asked the Brigadier.
“Of course.”
Jamie spoke, not taking his eyes off the dead plague men, “Back around the side roads, up to the north end of Westmore. You can appear at the rear of our own forces, and lead them with knowledge of what the enemy is likely doing. Their forces will have been pulled back from the front. You can flank and destroy, then use the momentum.”
“Or command a retreat,” the Brigadier said.
I raised my eyebrows in surprise.
“I haven’t decided,” he admitted. “We’ll see. I don’t think Westmore is salvageable. But it may not be for them, either.”
I nodded.
There was a pause.
Nothing more to be said, except—
He extended a hand.
Again, my eyebrows went up.
“You made the best of a bad situation,” he told me. About the best compliment I could get, given the circumstances.
I took his hand and shook it.
“We’ll be going now,” he said, moving over to the other coach, which was already slightly turned to the northernmost road in the fork. “Lost time is life spent. Especially in wartime.”
“It won’t always be,” I said.
He gave me a sad half-smile.
“I really believe it won’t be,” I said.
“That there won’t be war, or that we’ll one day have time to spare?” he asked.
“Is there an answer I can give that will make you stop giving me that pitying, condescending look?” I asked. Then I remembered, “Sir?”
“Good luck,” he said, with a kind of finality.
I nodded.
The words were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t dare. Yet I knew that having no answer would bother me for a long time.
Why were you upset that we rescued you?
“You too,” was all I said.
I climbed into the other coach. An officer rode on top, wearing a plague man’s hat ad coat. He was the only one not going with the Brigadier, and he kicked things into motion.
I settled in next to Mary, and let my hand rest on her forehead. She was a little too warm. Opposite me, Gordon had his head in Shipman’s lap, feet on Jamie’s.
“Was just tellin’ the others,” she said, sleepily. “Our misadventures. Wish we’d done better.”
“We did pretty well, circumstances allowing,” I said. “We’ll wrap this up neatly.”
“If that sniper who shot you doesn’t get us,” she mumbled.
I looked up, in the direction of the coach driver. My finger rotated the ring at my thumb. “He’ll be fine. Flying enemy colors.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Is this really how we want to operate?” Jamie asked.
“Hm?” I asked.
“Killing those who show mercy and heal us, abusing the terms of surrender, wearing enemy colors?”
“And hair!” Helen said. She was at Mary’s feet, the hair in her lap.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, isn’t it? We do what we have to, to make this work. I don’t know where you’d draw the lines, otherwise.”
“I think you know where the line is, Sy,” Jamie said. “I think you deliberately choose to cross it. Sometimes when you don’t have to.”
“I like that side of him,” Mary said, sleepy, thoroughly under the effects of the painkillers. “I like Sy.”
“I like him too,” Jamie said, voice firm, “But I think you’re a bad influence on him. You and Gordon both.”
Mary snorted.
“I mean it. I don’t know that I like what Sy becomes, when he’s with you two.”
“I’m not that suggestible,” I said.
“You are the exemplar of suggestibility,” Jamie said. “It’s your strongest trait. You absorb and you learn more effectively than any of us. I know because I know exactly what’s happened in the past. I know who you’re with when your behavior changes. I see the patterns.”
“Using my suggestion against me?” I asked. I’d told him to watch for trends.
“To your benefit, Sy,” he said. “Not against you.”
The rest of the coach was so very quiet. Everyone was hanging on to every word, and nobody was jumping in, to defend me, or in the case of Gordon or Mary, to defend themselves.
I nodded. “So I’m just a composite of influences around me.”
“No,” he said. “There are definitely things that make you you. Some I’ve puzzled out. Some I haven’t.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Your earnestness. Your hope.”
“Sure,” I said. “Give me a few years, I’ll turn as sour as any adult.”
“Your eagerness to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others.”
“That’s not how I’d put it.”
“And, as I’m reminded with the plan to off the rebellion doctor, your insistence on attacking the people who are kindest to you.”
I shrugged. I’d deflected the last two comments, but I felt like I couldn’t with this one, without being dismissive of the weight it seemed to carry with Jamie.
He was too gentle a soul.
“I’m suggestible, like you said,” I said, eyes on Jamie’s knees. “My oldest memories are of days and weeks of people consoling me, telling me it’s going to be fine. I’m so brave, I’m so kind. They’ll give me things. I just have to stop crying, stop struggling, stop making trouble.”
I raised my hands, gesturing, “Kindness, then unbearable pain. Kindness, unbearable pain. You can do that to a slug and it’s going to leave a lasting impression. People are kind to me, then horribleness follows. No. I’m done with that. I know what lies beneath the surface.”
Mary, head still in my lap, reached up and gave my arm a rub.
Lillian’s eyes were shiny.
Shipman, in stark contrast, looked like she wanted to be far, far away from here. Her attention was outside the window. Even with Gordon’s head in her lap, she didn’t look like she was connected or present at all.
Their relationship was over. I knew it. The war, or Gordon’s actions, or the danger, something had driven a wedge.
“But we’re kind to you, Sy,” Jamie said. “Aren�
�t we?”
“You are,” I said, without hesitation. “But—”
I’d started speaking again, somehow in the expectation that someone would jump in and finish the sentence for me. Then I realized I didn’t want them to.
“But?” Lillian asked.
“But we aren’t people?” Jamie asked.
“That’s not what I meant. It sounds wrong, like it’s being twisted around to mean the opposite of what it means. You’re…”
I floundered. It was a rare thing for me.
“You’re better than people?”
My heart was cold in my chest. I felt like I’d somehow stumbled on the worst combination of words to say, and I’d put everything in jeopardy.
Nobody was talking. Body language was weird.
Jamie rose from his seat.
He crossed to my side, then nudged for me to move over. Mary and I did a little bit of reshuffling to make room. Even so, he was a touch squeezed between me and the door.
“Do that more,” Jamie said.
“Compliment you? Talk about your superiority?”
“Be upfront. Say what Sy is thinking.”
There was no way to say anything to that. It would have felt forced. I was left mute, only able to nod.
He elbowed me, then turned his attention to Mary. “Didn’t make you too uncomfortable?”
“Nope,” she said.
He reached over and began fixing her hair, pushing it out of her face.
“You going to be good to go?” I asked.
“I’ve fixed what I could, but breaks are breaks,” Lillian said. “No hard exertion.”
“I’m good to go,” Gordon said. He worked his way to a sitting position, making use of the space Jamie had vacated to move his legs.
His hand was trembling. Phantom pains, again? It shouldn’t have been so soon.
“I’m not very fast, but I can help,” Mary said.
I nodded.
It was cozy, squeezed up against Jamie, Mary’s head in my lap, the others around me. I almost could have fallen asleep.
But as I looked out the window, I could see Whitney.
I reached out past Jamie’s face and knocked on the glass.
The coach slowed, then stopped.
We slowly made our way out of the coach, many of us hurt, offering help where we could. Only Shipman remained behind, with the driver. She avoided our gaze.