Twig

by wildbow

  “Still have the bottle?” I asked Lillian.

  “Vitamin water,” Lillian said.

  Our trump card.

  So little time. Agitated, I started to move, to talk, and stopped both motions. I looked over my shoulder.

  “Sy—” Jamie started.

  “One moment,” I said.

  I used some of that limited time to hurry over to where Hubris had fallen.

  I bent down by the dog, and put a hand to his throat.

  He heaved out a sigh.

  “I knew you were made of tough stuff,” I said.

  Another sigh.

  He weighed about a third to half what I did. It was hard to say—he was dense, all muscle. The opposite of the Twins. Pulling him into my arms was a task unto itself.

  “Okay?” I asked. “You did good, boy. We’re going to help Lillian and we’re going to help you.”

  I felt him sigh again, huffing a breath against my ear.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good dog, good dog.”

  The cut in my leg roared with pain as I hauled Hubris over to the others.

  “Let’s go.”

  Lillian put a hand out, touching Hubris’ damaged face. She leaned close, whispering, “Thank you.”

  Once she was done, I started to move. Jamie put himself between me and the direction I wanted to go.

  “Sy,” he said.

  “We need to go,” I said.

  “The burden is going to hold us back.”

  “He saved me. He saved Lillian, which is more important.”

  “He’s gone, Sy.”

  I held the dog, briefly stunned. I waited, wanting to feel the chest expand with another sigh, another breath.

  “Just—let him down. Okay? He was Gordon’s, in the end. Not ours. Gordon went, he did his job one last time, and then he followed his master, alright?”

  I had to look to Lillian for confirmation. I saw the look in her eyes.

  It took some doing, but I managed to crouch down, and set the dog down on the road.

  “Right,” I said.

  “Good man,” he said.

  I shook my head. I moved to Lillian’s side, helping to support her as we moved. “I was such an asshole to that dog, always calling him mutt, instead of his name.”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “You really were.”

  “But Hubris was such a pretentious name.”

  “Yeah, Sy. We need you to focus. Where are we going? We need a plan, because they’re going to catch their breath and come right for us.”

  “Mauer,” I said.

  “Mauer?”

  “I don’t even know,” I said. “But if we time it right, maybe he’ll take the opportunity to go after nobles instead of finishing us off.”

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  Counting Sheep—9.9

  “I like when you hold me,” Lillian said. “And when you pull my hair, and pinch me.”

  “I’m not sure this is the time or place for that, Lil,” I said.

  “I know you overthink sometimes, and I worry that you’ll stay up nights thinking, and you’ll second-guess yourself, and I really don’t want you to second guess yourself when it comes to me, okay?”

  “I don’t and I won’t,” I said. “Because you’ll communicate the good and bad to me, and you’ll keep me pointed in the right direction.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “I’m deftly avoiding that particular subject and denying the possibility.”

  On the other side of Lillian, Jamie shot me a look.

  “I might die, Sy,” Lillian said. “And it really scares me that I might fade away when I’m not in my right mind. And it scares me more that you might be upset and get everything twisted around in that head of yours, and it scares me most of all that you might not even care at all.”

  “I’d care, and you’re not going to die,” I told her.

  “You’re so lovely when you’re being lovely,” she said. “And when you’re being mean that’s still lovely in its little way, but I think that’s because I’m twisted, myself. When you’re pinching and poking fun at me the bad isn’t as bad as the attention is nice. I get all mixed up in you like that, don’t you understand?”

  “I understand,” I said. “I understood it well before you admitted it to yourself.”

  She lowered her voice, like she was saying something confidential, “The only reason I’m not screaming and wailing about Gordon and—and about Hubris, and about this hole in my middle and about dying, I’m playing tricks with myself. I’m reminding myself of the bittersweet moments you’re so good at, putting myself in that frame of mind.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, very gently.

  “But—but if I start to go, shake me out of it? Please? I don’t want to—” she said, stopping.

  “You don’t even need to ask, Lil, okay?” I said. “I’ve looked Death in the eye and I politely asked people who were going to kill me for the exact same thing, okay? Not to let the poison be what takes me down into oblivion. Not letting it be my passenger, or the horse I ride on.”

  She reached up to touch my cheek.

  “Mary told me. At a sleepover, sharing a pillow, foreheads touching, whispering about things only best friends can talk about. She said she pointed a gun at your head, and you asked her. That was the moment she saw you as something more complicated than an enemy.”

  “If and when the time comes, and it’s not coming today, I’ll make sure that you don’t even have to worry, okay? I’d be there for you.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was the blood loss or the fact that she was deliberately disconnecting herself, but she had a sleepy look on her face and the movements of her head. Her eyes retained the intensity from before, but it was turned inward.

  “It’s not even a concern today, because you’re going to be fine, got it?”

  “Mm,” she said. “Keep lying to me, Sy. I have Jamie over here to tell me straight, when I need the blunt truth.”

  I looked Jamie in the eye.

  “You’re going to live, Lillian,” Jamie said.

  She looked surprised at that. The surprise gave way to a sudden, sharp change in emotion, her face twisting up, before she pulled herself together.

  “Now I don’t know what to think,” she whispered.

  Jamie indicated a turn. I shook my head. It would put us too close to the fighting.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lillian said, still whispering.

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry about,” I said.

  “I asked for this job, I talked to Hayle, I asked to come here, I thought it would be such a good thing, and then it wasn’t, and then it really wasn’t.”

  “None of that is your fault.”

  “My mom—”

  Again, that flicker of emotion, pushed away.

  “Your mom?” I asked, gently.

  “She was saying, I didn’t need to hurry. I didn’t have to work so hard. I’m too young to be so focused on my career, she said. I should live a little, stop and smell the roses. I told her that I hadn’t ever seen a proper, real, grown-in-a-garden rose since I came to Radham. The ones you do see are altered, or they’re weaponized, or everything looks normal, but the origins aren’t. Everything’s moving and everything’s turned on its head, and if you stop to smell the roses in a place like Radham, then you’ll only make yourself look like a fool. The look on her face… I think she thought I was calling her a fool. I didn’t mean to.”

  “There are real roses in Radham,” Jamie said.

  “Are there?” Lillian said.

  “I’ll show you sometime,” Jamie said. “After we get through this.”

  I felt an immense gratitude toward him, not for the first time in these couple of days, that he was so willing to play along.

  “I just—” Lillian said, halting. “Before we left, before I even went to talk to Professor Hayle about doing this and bringing the Lambs, I thought, this is my chance. Just stop. Thin
gs have been so hard, the other Lambs are gone, I miss Mary, and it would be nice to spend time with Sylvester. Wouldn’t it be nice to get milkshakes and do something together, and be at Radham when the other Lambs finished and got back? Talk to Mary about everything stupid and minor and lovely that happened? But I made the choice, for my career. Now Gordon is dead and Hubris is dead, and I might die.”

  “You took too much wyvern, you crybaby. You definitely got the pathological lying thing down,” I said. “It’s not your fault, and you’re not going to die today.”

  She offered a halfhearted, one-note laugh.

  “If I die—”

  “You’re not going to die, you dunce.”

  “—then pay a visit to my mom and dad? You’d have to do it, Sy. Lie to her face, about how things went.”

  “If I say yes, will you shut up about dying and focus on the living part?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then sure. I promise. Jamie will hold me to it.”

  Lillian nodded slowly, her eyes drifting shut.

  I jostled her. Her eyes popped open.

  “I wasn’t—” she said. “It wasn’t that. I just felt very peaceful and at ease. I like being able to put all of my trust into your hands, Sy.”

  “Okay, Lil.”

  Her head was hanging. Above and over her field of view, Jamie raised a hand, gesturing.

  Slow. Feet.

  It was true, now that I paid attention. Lillian had one arm over my shoulder, one over Jamie’s. I had one arm around her back, a hand on her chest, so I could maybe stop her from falling forward if she stumbled. She was leaning on us more, her feet were dragging and scuffing the ground, and we were moving slower than we had been a matter of minutes ago.

  Think. Think.

  Could we muscle our way to victory? Were there any hostages we could take that would matter, enabling us to turn Mauer to our ends, or at least getting him to the point where he might listen to us for long enough for me to say what mattered?

  Evasion. Could we make our way through and to the other end of his camp and somehow trip up the Twins, ensuring they tangled?

  Deception, misleading? Instead of moving ourselves in a better way, could we lead the Twins in the wrong direction?

  Draw on any of our individual talents? We had Jamie’s memory, but I wasn’t sure how we could use that. Gordon was dead, or we might have been able to use his sense of tactics. Not necessarily to put together a plan, but to at least feel better about whatever plan he chose. Hubris was a defensive tool, able to let us know when the Twins were coming, and we didn’t have him either.

  I could hear the noise of the crowd, mingled with gunfire and noise. The crowd had a light, too, and further down the street, two hundred and fifty metres down, past two intersections, that glow was bleeding out into the road ahead of us.

  We were close to Mauer’s camp.

  If we found a way past the perimeter and mingled with the people in the crowd…

  No. Every idea I came up with met with a firm ‘no’. I was sharper on Wyvern, but I couldn’t see a solution.

  I had emulated Jamie in the past, and I’d done a shitty job. Could I be a Mary, and rig an ambush that would buy Lillian time to perform surgery on herself? I would have to emphasize the ambush over the actual fighting to accomplish anything, because I couldn’t fight.

  Could I play Helen, and act? Or be the Helen behind the mask, the monster, and catch my enemy in a position where they couldn’t fight back?

  My mind was pulling the characters into existence, so real in my mind’s eye I could almost see them. Gordon, standing in my peripheral vision, the light from a side street catching the moisture in the corner of one eye. The movement of Lillian’s dress was Hubris, at our feet. A shadow atop the fence was Helen, the blade of the bayonet Jamie had across his back was Mary’s, as she walked beside us, on the far side of Jamie, stretching her arms over her head.

  It would be so easy to lose my mind. To give the images a power they don’t yet have.

  I stared into the light, further down the street. I imagined a copper-haired Mauer, staring me down. Staring us down. Just Mauer, as an abstract picture, without particular weapons or clothing, just the intense eyes, the sharp nose, the hair, the fire and light and noises of the crowd around him. A lopsided silhouette.

  No actual crowd, however. The mental image stood alone.

  “Jamie,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “Stay behind.”

  “No.”

  “If the Twins have any sense of smell, they’ll go for the most obvious scent. Blood. Lillian’s. You back off, stay on the periphery. If there’s a way to do this, maybe we can disappear into the crowd. In the chaos of Mauer’s camp, two kids, maybe she and I can find a way to get her medical attention. Get to a place where we’re safe enough to get her surgery. An added body is a chance we get noticed. If we fail, it’s another dead Lamb. You, at least, you could live through this, let the others know how it happened.”

  “Vital organs,” Lillian said, voice soft. “Need a transplant. Nobody in that camp is going to be good enough to do it. This isn’t going to work.”

  Frustration welled, with that same wild wanting-to-hit-something rage. I swallowed it and buried it.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said.

  “I’ll come,” Jamie said. “Even if it means a higher chance we get spotted, I think I have to come.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” Lillian said. “If I pass out, maybe he can finish. But I’ve got to do the surgery myself. At least at the start.”

  That doesn’t work at all!

  Jamie added his argument to hers, “And if I leave you, then I feel like either I won’t make it, or you two won’t.”

  I shook my head.

  He wasn’t wrong, but he was one hundred percent wrong. I knew I was contradicting myself, and I knew the contradiction was because a small, dark corner of my mind had turned itself to the task of cutting losses.

  “Okay,” I finally said.

  “Not okay,” Lillian said. She was slurring her words a little. I didn’t need gestures from Jamie to notice that. “Remember the rule? Can’t sacrifice one Lamb for one. Have to save two. Definitely most definitely can’t sacrifice three for a chance of saving one of the three. Dumb.”

  I didn’t answer her, and she didn’t resist. As we drew closer, she didn’t even add more words of protest.

  The lights of the fires were bright. Torches, lanterns, stacks of crates and pallets that had been set off to the sides and set on fire, to better shed light on the surroundings.

  The people milled this way and that. In Mauer’s orbit, they were focused, moving with purpose, gathering together in groups. Mauer’s lieutenants were organizing them, giving direction where there wasn’t any.

  Now that we were here, I was feeling how slow Lillian was moving.

  For every minute we spend moving, she loses three.

  We weren’t going to be able to make it through the entire camp. We weren’t going to make it, waiting at the periphery until the Twins came for us.

  Maybe this is better.

  I gestured, then led Lillian over to the corner of one building, near a fire. The three of us leaned against a wall, my shoulders tense and knotted with the work of bearing a share of her weight.

  A burly man with a gun and arms black from fingertip to elbow looked our way, concern etched on his face.

  I extended an arm, hand pointed at him, then, using my whole arm, gestured. I closed my eye, willing him to listen, willing this to work, to all come together. The wrong person at the wrong time, the attention of bystanders moving faster than this man and words could, it could end us.

  But the alternative was seeing another Lamb die, and very possibly dying myself.

  He approached, wary, slow. I opened my eye, watched as his eyes moved. He saw the blood on Lillian’s shirtfront, dripping down her dress and stockings, and picked up the pace.

&nbs
p; His voice was inaudible in the commotion that was Mauer’s army.

  I had to raise my own voice. “The nobles are here! Spread the word!”

  Confusion crossed his features. He indicated Lillian.

  I thought the words he uttered were something like, “What about her?” but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Spread the word!” I repeated, clenching my fist. My other fist held Lillian’s hand. “Nobles!”

  Jamie was looking at me like I was crazy.

  When I’d imagined Mauer, I’d imagined him standing alone. That was the trick. To frame things in such a way that I was confronting him, not his army. There were other hurdles to cross, to actually attempt to communicate with a man who we had attempted to burn alive just hours ago, before he communicated with us by way of gun and bullet.

  We’d sicced the Brechwell Beast on him too. I wasn’t sure if he knew enough to blame us for that.

  We’d killed his buddy and ally Percy. We’d dismantled his plans in Radham.

  He was a good orator, but a gun was louder and better at getting the last word in.

  In this, I was using his army to reach out to him, to communicate the message I so dearly wanted him to recognize before he could pull that trigger.

  I clenched Lillian’s hand harder. I was aware of the attention we were getting.

  Putting a hand out, I gestured. Eyes. Dark.

  Close your eyes.

  I closed my eye and bowed my head.

  Lillian had talked about this. About liking it. Surrender.

  I detested it.

  My eye closed, my other eye blinded, I relied on my hearing, listening to what Mauer must hear so often. The ebb and flow, the nuance, the sentiments, the directions that people were moving, even when they stood still.

  I could hear the quiet as if it were a physical thing, as voices lowered, as attention shifted away from dialogues and to him, to Mauer, or to his lieutenants.

  If he was placed differently, if the lieutenants were faster to arrive, they might well obey his orders and put bullets in us.

  The lowered volume was more powerful in this climate than any roar of an explosion or dull crack of a rifle could be. I listened, my altered awareness moving to my senses, drawing a complete picture of the crowd. I could feel the chill as wet snowflakes settled on my forehead and nose.