Twig

by wildbow

  I squeezed out more.

  He touched his heart, and began fumbling with the coat. The pain he was suffering from was making it clumsier than it should have been.

  All those people the crawling darkness had touched, it seemed, had died in a horrible way. The Academy, it seemed, had wanted to tip the scales of morale in their favor.

  I pulled at the surgical tape he’d plastered over it to seal it and then undid the coat.

  I held the needle poised like a dagger over his heart. He nodded and closed his eyes.

  I stabbed him, then depressed the syringe. It was slow going, and I could see his discomfort.

  All of this trouble, to just make our way halfway up the street. The soldiers were thinner, and had we both been able-bodied, we could have made a break for it, waiting for them to move to a certain point or turn their attention one way or the other. With Jamie like this, though…

  Parasites, poisons, and diseases didn’t affect me like they did most. I’d badly underestimated how they would affect even a covered-up Jamie.

  I heard shouts. The plague men were moving, taking cover. One hurried to the very wagon we were on, using the front and sides in the same way another soldiers on another battlefield might use sandbags.

  His voice was muffled, very nearly drowned out. My earlier observations about shadows and tricks of the mind applied to the sounds here.

  I couldn’t hear what he said, or even make out how he said it, but my brain told me that it was an exclamation of confusion and surprise.

  Now that I was here, crouched under the belly of the wagon, I wasn’t entirely sure I had put all of the metal and wood panels away, nor had I stowed all of the emergency treatment kits.

  I might have, but I might not have. I hadn’t been paying attention to it.

  I really needed the Wyvern formula.

  I shifted position, poising myself beneath the wagon, knife in hand, staring at the soldier’s one foot, as it came down to rest on the road behind the wagon.

  The other would come down, he would stoop down to look under the wagon, and I would cut.

  If that cut wasn’t sharp and effective enough to silence him, or if he, an expert soldier, was quick enough to get out of the way or block my cut, there was nothing more I could do.

  I heard the clack as something settled into place in the wagon above me, and then, in a lunging movement, the foot went up and away.

  I could hear the plague man above us shoot his rifle.

  Like I had, just moments ago, the plague man had more pressing concerns.

  I turned my head and looked at Jamie, slumped over, trying to breathe, disconnected from everything around him as he tried to deal.

  It struck me that, but for the clothes he was covered in now, from head to toe, he had looked almost exactly the same the very first time I’d seen him. That same moment that I’d realized my best friend was gone.

  The realization made me want to jump out of my skin, it was so sharp and uncomfortable. We’d talked yesterday, we’d hashed out our issues, and we’d found a tentative peace, but with the realization, the memory, I felt resentment boil up and over. I knew the resentment was unfair, that he didn’t deserve it.

  I knew he was a Lamb, and he deserved, at the very least, the affection I had showed even Evette, who I had never truly known or talked to. She had been an idea, and I had given her my time and attention. I had slept in her room and talked to her, because she was a Lamb. Yet when it came to this Jamie, I couldn’t bring myself to extend that.

  I hated that contradiction in myself, but I equally hated the fact that my brain was like a broken machine, constantly tripping up, failing to learn from its mistake as it drew on familiar impulses and memories, only for logic and reason to kick in and wake me up.

  It would be so much easier if you died, I thought. Then I could mourn him and be done with it.

  The thought was real, crystal clear in the same way as any rectangle or scene I might envision, and it was matched by an equal and opposite impulse, that wanted to do right and fairly by him. Because he wasn’t a bad person, and he had been thrust into a bad situation. Because Jamie had left him to me as a legacy, and he’d been so kind about the things that mattered, even if he was as challenged by me as I was by him.

  My mind could run on multiple tracks at once, and it felt like my feelings were doing the same, divided, split, and periodically clashing in uncomfortable ways.

  Leave him behind, that part of me that I hated told me. You can accomplish more if you do. If he dies in the meantime, it isn’t really your fault.

  The idea sickened me to the point I thought I might vomit in self revulsion. The other side of me was so uncomfortable with this reminder in close proximity that it hurt to be around him. Both ideas made me want to flee, to take that first step that would set me to running, one foot in front of the other, every step making it harder and harder to change my mind and turn back.

  I shifted position, moving the kit I’d collected from the wagon into Jamie’s reach, laying the syringe on top of it.

  I turned my back on him, and made my way out from under the wagon, checking if the coast was clear. It was.

  Twisting, I climbed up onto the back of the wagon.

  One rifle extended along the side. Gently, I lifted it free, the end and the blade of the bayonet passing beneath the elbow of the plague man a matter of feet in front of me. He knelt behind the wall and the reinforced box at the front of the modified wagon, shooting over the top.

  Wait, I told myself, aware that a glance from the plague man would alert him to the fact that there was someone right behind him. Wait.

  I was impatient, the discomfort hadn’t gone away as I left Jamie behind.

  Wait, and take all of that anger and resentment, all of the bad feelings…

  He finished reloading and started shooting once more. I cocked my rifle, and I aimed it at the back of the plague man’s head.

  …and let it go. At least for now.

  I squeezed the trigger as he finished his burst of shots. Blood sprayed, and he slumped over, collapsing onto the floor of the wagon. That he was dead would be explainable, given he’d been in the midst of a gunfight. If they were clever enough to figure the bullet had come from behind…

  Well, the risk of that was lower than the risk that he’d comment about the theft of material and presence of nearby enemies, after this current distraction was done with.

  I exhaled slowly, turning to move to the back of the wagon.

  Then, with focus and effort, I made my way beneath the wagon once more.

  Jamie’s eyes were open, as if the bullet I’d fired had woken him. He was still slumped over.

  I shifted the position of the rifle I held, and I gestured. You. Okay. Question.

  He winced as he leaned forward, shifting position. Fire. Pain.

  It burned.

  I nodded. The feelings I’d put into the bullet were only a drop in the bucket. But I could put on a civil face.

  Us. Run. I signaled.

  He nodded, moving again.

  While the plague men were focused on the fight, we slipped away, Jamie moving slower than before.

  Moving from street to street, we could see how the damage got worse. A city burned, besieged and littered with bodies. I had no idea who was winning or losing, and the lights and torches that one side or the other held were no longer any indicator of things. The distinctions blurred as things burned. By the placement and nature of some of the fires, I had to wonder if any had been set by Mauer.

  Looking over my shoulder, I almost missed seeing a group that had no lights at all. Stitched. Jamie elbowed me in the same instant I saw them.

  I indicated a bit of cover, looked back over my shoulder to make sure we weren’t being followed, and that there was enough distance between us and the plague men, and then fumbled in my pocket for a whistle.

  With the whistle in my mouth, I looked at Jamie, who still wore the mask.

  The mask
helped, I had to admit.

  He showed me the signal. Short, short, short.

  I blew. Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.

  We waited, wet snow falling around us, melting as it touched warmer ground, and rain falling, only to freeze or pool over already frozen puddles.

  The reply came back. Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.

  Jamie nudged me.

  This was risky. I was holding my breath, and there was no plague smoke here, or anything of the sort.

  I stepped out of cover, and approached the stitched.

  In that same moment, someone else emerged from a place behind the stitched. Their handler.

  He looked at me, tensed, and then barked out the order, “Guns up!”

  The stitched raised their guns. I raised my hands, Jamie doing the same beside me.

  “Friendly!” I called out. “We’re experiments!”

  He didn’t give the order for stitched to shoot.

  “There are plague men further down this hill!” I called out. “I thought you should know. There’s a lot going on, and we need to talk to your commanding officer!”

  To deter them or to interfere with them as subtly as we can get away with, depending on how cooperative they are, I told myself.

  “Further down that hill—”

  “Was a crew of Crown soldiers and plague boxes, holding the line. They got ambushed by plague men. The disease resistant soldiers. Now the plague men are using the boxes against the Crown.”

  “Plague men? That’s not what we call them,” the handler said.

  “The immortals,” Jamie called out, voice muffled by his mask.

  The handler nodded, but he didn’t give the order for the stitched to lower their weapons.

  “They’ll have heard the whistles,” I said. “And they’ll have found their buddy that I shot, and might figure out it wasn’t a stray bullet from that last firefight. Can we move somewhere out of the rain and potential danger, at least?”

  Something about what I’d said seemed to get through. He nodded. “Guns down. Be ready.”

  In unison, the stitched lowered their rifles, holding them in front of them instead.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll reach out to my commander.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Jamie and I moved past the rank and file of stitched.

  “I’ll tell him you have, what, information to share?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And we’ve got comrades somewhere in the midst of the fighting I’d really like to find.”

  “Mm,” he said. “Not much chance of that, but I’ll mention it.”

  I nodded.

  Beside me, Jamie pulled off his mask. He reached into a pocket for his glasses, and put them on.

  The Crown army was drawing the perimeter inward as they cleared buildings and secured streets. They were a ways into Lugh, now.

  The handler approached another soldier, indicated me, and then gave the order, “Go tell the Baron that there’s a child experiment here who wants to talk to him.”

  Previous Next

  Counting Sheep—9.3

  I prayed for the forces of Lugh to attack. A timely assault, a good bombing. Best if it hit the front lines, mostly stitched, but it would be an excuse to go, to run.

  The Baron.

  That meant the Duke was running the show on the Crown’s side. It was the equivalent of me trying to deal with plague men instead of ordinary soldiers. Elite, better at what they did, and very, very dangerous.

  The Baron had less clout than the Duke did, but he had less reason to keep up appearances. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he could take issue with someone and then slap them down.

  Could we just run? Bolt for safety? I doubted it. It would buy our survival in the short term, but end it in the long term.

  I stayed where I was, waiting. Off to the side, Jamie was peeling off the bandages and mask.

  The camp was set where wagons with warbeasts could maneuver, at the crossroads of two major roads at the north end of Lugh. The long streets provided little to nothing to break the wind as it swept through, stirring up the meager, wet snowflakes. Actual human soldiers were few and far between, with the bulk of the army formed of stitched, with a small fraction being the handlers for those same stitched.

  Dead wood made up the wagons, snow and darkness covered and dimmed any color in the surroundings. The only lights were artificial ones, white, glaring, and flickering, aimed out toward the city. The gathered soldiers didn’t talk and play cards, and were little different from the stitched. It didn’t give me the sense that morale was low, so much as it gave me the sense that there wasn’t any emotion at all. The living soldiers and handlers were little different from the stitched, especially with the hooded coats they wore. They weren’t as vulnerable to the wet snow as the stitched were, but they were just as unwilling to get wet, given the climate.

  A stark contrast to Mauer’s camp, which was all life, fire, and energy.

  Jamie blew on his hands before rubbing them together, and gestured in the process, giving me a sidelong glance. Plan. Question.

  Wary, I gestured back.

  I didn’t have a better answer. Nobles weren’t to be messed with, there weren’t many games I could play without risking my life and that of the Lambs.

  Better to ground myself and be ready to play the more diplomatic games that came with any dealing with nobles.

  They were people. Very strange, unpredictable, powerful people, but people. The usual truisms held.

  He made his approach, and I had to steel myself. The Baron Richmond didn’t look like a person at all. Too tall, his features alien, but not in a way I could pin down. His hair was too fine, perhaps, moving like gossamer rather than hair, moving in a very ethereal way in the wind.

  He was dressed for battle, with a cape and pauldrons that wrapped around his upper body, concealing torso and arms, a helmet with gold tracing, and boots with the same. The end of a scabbard was visible below the end of the cape.

  He moved with a retinue, as if he wasn’t imposing enough on his own. On either side of him were the twins. His bastard sisters. I had nothing against bastards, I was probably one myself, but for the nobles, those things mattered. The Baron Richmond was disenfranchised by virtue of his lower status. Too powerful to deal with the common people on any level, too low in status to wield any meaningful power. The bastard twins were below him in status. Were it not for their brother’s continued hard work, they might have found an early grave to assassins or other subtleties.

  They were beautiful, I had to admit, wrapped in heavy coats, though theirs had albino wolf pelts around their otherwise bare shoulders, and were a stark, startling white. Pale skin, pale fur, and white cloth that surrounded them and with the bare shoulders, suggested they weren’t even dressed beneath the overcoats.

  They reminded me of Helen, if I imagined a Helen with more bloodlust, and the inability or an unwillingness to suppress it. Their hands were all over their brother.

  “Lambs,” Richmond said.

  The alarm bells in my head were already ringing, but something about the look in Richmond’s eyes and voice struck at those bells with force enough to dash them to pieces. The prey instinct, that part of my mind that unconsciously picked up on the little details, was screaming at me.

  Trouble.

  I wanted to hear gunshots behind me, an explosion, for bullets to start flying. It would be reason enough to take leave.

  “Lord Baron,” I said. I bowed, being very mindful of position and decorum. Not too far, not too exaggerated. I couldn’t give him a reason. He wants to hurt the Duke, and the Duke doesn’t dislike us. If he can destroy us here and come up with any excuse at all, he will.

  The prey instinct was probably picking up on signals from the Baron’s retinue. The doctors that tended to the Baron and his sisters seemed to be bracing themselves, the sisters seemed too eager, their hands active as they each ran gloved fingers up and down the Baron’s arms, watching us
with unblinking eyes.

  The Baron spoke, “Straighten. What are you doing here?”

  “Errand for a friend of the Academy,” I said. “We were looking for someone in the city when Mauer showed. We tried to burn him alive, and he got away. We caught wind of what he was doing, but by the time we had enough to report on, things were underway.”

  “You failed to kill him,” the Baron said. The word choice was weighty, ‘fail’ and ‘kill’, not emphasizing but putting them out there, leaving them to float about like snowflakes, for later perhaps, or to seize on at a later moment.

  “My lord, we tried to position against Mauer while he escaped the fire and made his initial moves, we lost our teammates, and made our way in this direction, because we couldn’t reach him. We ran into some plague men, picked off what we could between the two of us, Jamie got hurt, and that hobbled us further. We came looking for you to report what we know about Mauer’s weapons.”

  The Baron held up a finger. I shut my mouth.

  “Two things,” he said. “You. How hurt?”

  “I’m recovering, my lord,” Jamie said. “I’ve been treated, I’m unsteady on my feet, but I’m ready to serve the Crown if needed.”

  The silence that lingered after Jamie’s statement was an ominous one. The Baron still held his finger up. He moved his arm, and both sisters pulled their hands away.

  In an easy, practiced motion that suggested he had performed it several times a day since he was able, he drew his sword. A saber, the blade patterned like damascus steel.

  He pointed it at me.

  “Second of all, when I say something, Lamb, I don’t expect to be ignored. Mauers lived, I said, and you went on talking.”

  “My apologies, my lord,” I said. “I meant to expand on my answers, not to ignore you.”

  “You failed to kill Mauer. Because of that, he was able to gather people together under his banner, was it? He is the man in charge?”

  Multiple yes or no questions, and I couldn’t answer one without answering them all, I doubted the Baron Richmond would let me give a lengthy answer.

  “Yes, my lord.”