Twig

by wildbow

  But she had the eyes of a killer. Her pupils were contracted to sharp points.

  Sanguine stepped forward, thrusting. The floor creaked.

  The girl moved, rolling to one side. The wire unspooled from the handle, and Sanguine lunged for it, using the sheer length of the rifle to try and get the point of the bayonet’s blade under it.

  She saw, and she moved, turning so her own body pressed against the wire, while her hand pulled it down, flush against the bedspread, while it cinched tighter around the officer’s neck. It took Sanguine a second to turn the bayonet around, slash at the wire.

  But she was already moving, taking advantage of the moment’s pause. There was a nightstand on the far side of the bed. She heaved it over, and the cord went tighter still, digging into the corner of the bed. She’d wound the wire around the drawer or ornamental bit of the piece of furniture, and now she used the weight of it. The blade’s point dragged against woolen covers and sheets, but not deep enough to cut wire.

  Sanguine threw himself forward to get a better angle. The only place the wire wasn’t digging into the bed was next to the man’s neck. He found the right position, pulling the blade along the wire rather than sawing or pushing, aware that his quarry was heaving the window open, casting one look over her shoulder, eye glinting—

  The thin wire snapped where the blade had cut at it, going slack. Sanguine was only dimly aware of the way the blood welled out from where the wire had dug into flesh. Too much, too fast. No arterial spurts, but enough blood that the man was almost guaranteed to die.

  “Pock!” Sanguine called out.

  Without waiting for a response, he hurdled over the bed, going to the open window, thrusting the gun’s point and the blade through, followed by his head and one arm, eyes pointing in either direction.

  She was at the side, climbing over to the front of the building. The eaves. Her eyes were already on him. She’d seen the gun’s point emerge. Saw what he was going to do next.

  He wanted to see what she had planned, and it wasn’t like he was going to do something different.

  He slapped the gun against the side of the building, aiming, squeezing—

  Sanguine saw the movement, the tensing muscle, and relaxed his grip. She threw herself back and away, pulling her raincoat up and over her head.

  He followed her, watching her lift her raincoat up, so it would catch on the edge of the gutter for the next house over. She now gripped the inside of the sleeves, while the middle of the raincoat looped over. She let the raincoat sleeves turn inside-out, controlling her descent.

  He moved the gun over, aiming, so he could shoot her the moment she was in the air, when no amount of agility or cleverness would let her move to either side.

  Except she hauled down on one sleeve of the raincoat, changing the angle of her descent a fraction. In the final moment before she let go of the raincoat, she swung a bit to one side, letting go.

  He adjusted his aim, ready to hit her as she hit the ground, two or three feet to the left of where she had originally been planning. He pulled the trigger this time.

  She hit the ground with a stagger. The wood of the porch railing beside her exploded into splinters.

  She flashed him a white-toothed grin before half-spinning, half-stumbling around the corner of the porch, ducking too low for him to have a clear shot.

  He smiled.

  He loved it when they were clever.

  He pulled away from the window. There was no point, now.

  “I can’t save him,” Pock said. “If I had my kit—”

  “Alright,” Sanguine said. He wasn’t surprised. He crossed the room to look the terrified man in the eyes. He gave the man a light slap on the cheek. “You. The girl was asking questions.”

  The man sputtered, spit, not blood. “Please help.”

  “You heard the doctor,” Sanguine said. “We can’t. What was she asking?”

  The man was breathing hard. He had that animal look in his eyes. A horse in panic.

  Sad, coming from a soldier.

  “Was she asking about Cynthia?”

  The man’s attention clarified a moment.

  “She was?”

  The man nodded slightly, before something reminded him of his present circumstances. The panic returned. His eyes were unfocused.

  “They split up,” Sanguine said. “Now they’re going to converge. I need to find them as they do.”

  “What? They were going to do this to me?”

  “Probably,” Sanguine said, smiling. “I like them. Nightmarish little pricks, aren’t they? The girl was wounded and threw herself off the side of the building. Must have hurt like the dickens.”

  “I—what?”

  “Come now, sir,” Sanguine said. His blood was pumping, he felt almost drugged. “You can’t be so surprised. You’ve dealt with monsters before.”

  He stood, backing away from the bed, cocking his head to one side as he studied the dying commander.

  He pointed the rifle at the man, who was too out of his senses to even recognize the threat.

  Thrusting, he drove the blade’s point into the roof of the man’s mouth, and into the brain. The man jerked, struggled for a moment, and then abruptly died.

  “Good god!” Pock said.

  “The key parts of the brain should be intact,” Sanguine said, raising his voice to be heard as he walked away. “I’m going, you stay.”

  “What if they come back!?” Pock reached the railing by the stairwell and leaned over.

  “They won’t. They can’t. They’ll be striking at key targets before fleeing!” Sanguine called out.

  He pushed the door open, eyes adjusting for distant targets before he was even outside.

  Cynthia.

  She could handle her own. He knew that.

  The sole building that was toward the center of the town that was also fit for the rebellion forces to use was a mason’s workshop. Stone walls, tall, spacious, it could take a hit from a bomb without crumbling into tinder and dust. Cynthia had changed the location of her headquarters from the theater after the children had been chased from town.

  A door halfway to Sanguine’s destination was left unlocked, slightly ajar. Grahl’s place. One of his eyes peered through windows.

  There. Through the front window. Grahl had spent the night in an armchair, a bottle and a glass beside him. Not one to sleep through a battle after all. The handle of a hatchet or hammer stuck up and away from his head like a lone insect’s antennae.

  There were others. The children had moved unerringly, as far as he could tell. Had they planned this from the beginning, figuring out who was where, who would be remaining here, vulnerable, when the fighting was elsewhere, or was it simply an amazing degree of coordination?

  He focused on the tracks. Knew they were different ones. Three children. One with a limp, another slow, not running but not limping either.

  Just before reaching Cynthia’s place, the sets of tracks diverged.

  He felt excited, seeing it.

  They knew he was following. They would lay a trap for him. Try to distract.

  The mason’s house.

  He slowed, searching.

  A giggle.

  A girl’s. Hard to match to the girl with the limp. The sound carried.

  Melancholy had mentioned their names, reading what Cynthia had given them, he wished he remembered.

  A distraction?

  “Sorry about Melancholic!” the voice called out, so innocent it was almost taunting. The sound bounced off walls of a nearby alley. “I broke her!”

  Ah. Wasn’t that too bad?

  Still, he smiled. The theatrics were a nice touch.

  “Choleric too! Riddled him full of holes!”

  Sanguine nodded. He believed it.

  “And poor Phlegm! Killed him again!”

  Marvelous control of sound. Changing position, letting the voice carry, bouncing at him from different directions.

  Phlegm would have liked t
hat, ironically enough.

  He felt sad, but it was a small sadness. Not that his colleagues were dead, but because he’d always assumed that when one of them fell, the rest would fall in short order.

  And, Sanguine told himself, he didn’t plan on dying tonight.

  He asserted his grip on his gun, reaching the front door.

  “Wrong direction! She ran!” the girl called out.

  He hesitated, hand on the doorknob. One eye flicked out to the side.

  No tracks fresh enough to be hers.

  A gunshot startled him. Distant. A window two feet left broke.

  “Shoot, gosh, and damn!” the girl called out. “Missed!”

  He pushed his way in through the door.

  Theatrics, with a slim chance of a lucky shot. She’d been too far away to be shooting at him with a pistol.

  The mason’s workshop was dark. Lights had gone out.

  Halfway between the front door and the stairwell, one of the so-called immortals lay bleeding.

  At the door to Cynthia’s office, another lay dead.

  He walked past them, ignoring the dying man, and moved through the workshop. No sign of life.

  He had to be right on their heels. The children weren’t fast.

  Through the back door. Tracks only a handful of seconds old.

  A glimpse of movement, further down, between the base of the hill and the back of the workshop. He adjusted his eyes a second too late.

  There was only a narrow avenue behind the buildings, with sparse grass growing, and the periodic flower. With the water rolling off the mountainside and down into this space, it had to be fertile ground, though it wouldn’t get much sun. He stepped carefully past fallen firewood, eyes searching.

  Had to think like the children. They were steering, moving as a pack of wolves might. Around the periphery, chasing, guiding.

  Except he had to think like Cynthia might as well. Because she would recognize what the children did and try to find an avenue they weren’t covering. A gap in the net.

  The slower ones would be closer to him. The quicker ones further down, cutting her off.

  He ran, feet tramping down on the footpath. The girl wouldn’t have had time to lay a wire, but—

  There. Caltrops. Nails bent so that four prongs stuck out in different directions, left in the dirt.

  He skipped past them.

  Heard a whistle, close. Above?

  Looking up, he almost missed what was happening to his left. He passed a space between buildings, and the girl who had had the wire was there, already in motion, out on the street in front of the buildings. Keen eyes saw the movement. Throwing.

  He ducked, bending over. The blade struck his back, across his shoulderblades.

  Fingers gripped the corner of the building, helping him come to a stop on the slick ground. He heaved himself in the opposite direction, toward that same alley.

  Gone. Of course.

  One on the roof, to let her know he was coming, so she could be ready. Slowed as she was, she would have had to have carried straight on down the road, while he was busy navigating the building interior.

  Wolves circling.

  He watched for her as he continued running behind the buildings, following Cynthia’s tracks. He saw soldiers on the street. They were shouting, calling out.

  A smell in the air. He wrinkled his nose.

  She’d used her gas. The foul, sense-obscuring stuff. Somewhere further down.

  He broke away. No use following, if he’d lose any use of his eyes from the lingering traces of the stuff. He headed to the soldiers, hailing them. Ordinary men. Boys, almost.

  “You,” one soldier said. “One of the assassins?”

  Sanguine nodded, focusing more on catching his breath and studying the surroundings.

  No sign of the limping girl.

  “You should know, the children she warned us of are about,” the soldier said.

  “I know.”

  “Commander ordered the group to follow her, warn her. We were told to stay, pass on word.”

  Sanguine frowned, eyes peeled for any movements.

  One on the roof, but he didn’t see a thing.

  One on the ground, the limping girl with the wire and the knife. But she wasn’t moving forward.

  “She carried on this way?” Sanguine asked, indicating the other direction.

  “She did.”

  “To her apartment?” Sanguine asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  And they chased her. The soldiers chased her.

  Not just a handful of children chasing her. Her own men would be looking for her. Very possibly tipping off the children to her location.

  Sanguine broke into a run.

  They’d showed themselves for a reason. Raising the alarm. People would find the dead officers and doctors and instinctively want to protect Cynthia, among others.

  That she’d changed where she operated from, both to the Mason’s and where she laid her head at night, it didn’t matter. All the children had to do was follow the soldiers.

  How many children left?

  The giggling girl, the one on the rooftop, the girl with the knife.

  He could see the tracks now. The largest of the children had broken off.

  One child, smaller than all of the rest, moving from cover to cover as he followed the soldiers.

  All the way to Cynthia’s apartment.

  Sanguine slowed.

  The men were gathered at the front, guns in hand, watching, searching the surroundings.

  He joined them. “She’s alright?”

  “She’s fine. She’s gathering her things. We’ve got the place surrounded.”

  “You led one of the children here. They know where she is, now.”

  The man frowned a little. “The entrances and exits are covered.”

  Sanguine studied the area, backing away from the group, his head turning, each eye operating independently.

  Shingled houses, row on row. A cobbled street.

  The quiet was broken by a distant, distant rumble. An explosion in Westmore. An hour away. Had to be a big one.

  Then stillness and quiet again.

  “Cynthia!” Sanguine called out.

  He saw her face appear in an upstairs window. She peered down at him.

  “Out!” he called.

  No sooner was the order given, than a small object flew down from a nearby rooftop.

  A moment later, there was fire, and the men at one corner of the house were engulfed, screaming struggling. Panic and madness. The front of the building was licked with flame.

  Sanguine, calm, collected, raised his rifle, eyes focusing.

  The boy was hiding, using the peak of the rooftop and the chimney for cover. Sanguine took long strides, aiming, looking for a hint of a movement.

  He heard a bang, on the far side of the house, out of sight.

  A window opening.

  He dropped the rifle, running.

  “Stay!” he called out, but too late.

  She’d leaped from the second story window.

  In the same moment she fell, another grenade was cast down from the rooftop.

  She’s capable in a scrap, but he’s not even giving her the opportunity.

  As with the first, it expanded into flame.

  Sanguine saw a glimpse of the boy on the roof, already turning to run, scampering along wet shingles and peaked roofs. He might have had a shot, if he wanted it. Yet Cynthia was flailing, reaching out for help. Every heartbeat counted when it came to saving her.

  He straddled the fence, a coin flip between one or the other.

  They’d been given orders to leave the Lambs alive. Orders he hadn’t cared about, as his earlier shot at the boy had evidenced, but given this knife’s edge of a decision… he turned his attention to Cynthia, who was partially engulfed in fire.

  She could be saved, at least more certainly than the boy could be shot down.

  Beauty gone. Even the rebellion’s best
doctors would struggle. It would take time to fix.

  But there was nobody left to work with. Better to have her alive, so he had a place. He’d have his Lamb-hunt another day.

  Previous Next

  Lamb to the Slaughter—6.1

  Jamie walked down the hallway while reading a book. I tackled him, throwing my arms around him, pinning his arms to their sides. Mary joined me, clapping a hand over his mouth, her other hand making sure he didn’t drop his book.

  “Mmph.”

  “Shh,” Mary said. “We need your eyes.”

  “Mmph?”

  We led him over to the window. Helen was already standing by the window with Lillian. We were on the second floor of Claret Hall, overlooking one of the grassy open spaces where students were eating their lunches, most doing it while looking over papers, making notes, or having discussions. Always working, working, working.

  A canopy of slanted glass panes set between interwoven branches directed the rainwater onto stylized grates, with the water disappearing into some underground reservoir. There was a steady patter of rain, but it was also a hot summer day, making for the kind of humidity where clothing stuck to the body. Gordon was there, sitting on a bench beneath a tree, unfolded paper on his knee, a partially eaten sandwich in hand. Shipman was on the other end of the short bench, arm’s length from Gordon. Brown bottles of Sassafras Beer had been placed on top of Shipman’s papers as a kind of paperweight. Meeting for lunch, between their individual tasks.

  “You’re better at lipreading than I am,” Mary said.

  “Why am I lipreading?”

  “Because,” I said. “Their breakup has been a long time coming. I want to know which of them makes the call.”

  “That’s perverse,” Jamie said.

  “Come onnn!” Lillian said.

  “Come onnnn!” Helen echoed her.

  Down on the bench, Gordon raised his head, looking around. He’d heard us.

  I shushed the others, then told Jamie, “If we know, we can tailor how we respond to him.”