Twig

by wildbow

  Things are going to change, Mauer’s words echoed in my head.

  I knew I could easily approach Mauer, trying to give him reasons to let us go. I could promise service and help like we’d given with the whistle, or further interference vs. the enemy forces, or I could tell him that we would be best positioned to spread the word in such a way that the nobles would get the message and feel that fear he and Fray wanted them to feel.

  But if I asked, if I even tried, then the man would say no. He’d just had his moment of triumph. He was soaring, even as he stood in place, intense, taking in the battlefield. I knew what he wanted in this moment: to preserve the moment and hold on to it.

  To have that annoyance, that snarl of the young servants of the Academy getting him to do something he hadn’t planned? It would spoil the victory.

  The clearest path to freedom was one where I didn’t push or didn’t try.

  If he kept us with him, that wasn’t so bad either.

  I put my arm around Lillian. She had no interest in watching the battle, so she wrapped her arms around me and buried her head in my shoulder, her back to the fighting. I looked over her shoulder to watch things progress.

  Mauer stayed busy, but there were only so many orders to give. He would talk to people, organize support for one side or the other, call for people to retreat—It almost looked as if it was working, as the Academy gave ground.

  The fires were dying out. Less explosions, more bullets.

  The distant, dim shape of the primordial continued its struggle. There was no Duke to constrain it or decide how much firepower was necessary to keep it down and out. I could see it carry on fighting, refusing to die or not being allowed to die, and I could see Mauer. The movements of the primordial seemed to concern the man more than the ebb and flow of the battle, the human beings who were dying and who had died as part of his ploy, spent like coin to bring about his greater strategy.

  He hadn’t just feigned a loss to bring the Duke out of hiding. He’d intentionally lost, after rallying these people to fight.

  And now, what? He was trying to put up an actual fight? No.

  To create room for him and his people to disappear, maybe. To slip out of the city with his soldiers and a sufficient number of people to spread the word. If he lacked those people, then he could at least trust the Crown soldiers to do it, or he could bide his time, pick out another noble, and repeat the process.

  One way or another, the message would get out.

  Pull the weary back, send in fresh men, pummel the Crown’s front lines, time flank attacks with squads moving out through streets and setting up in buildings… I could only understand Mauer’s moves in abstract. Gordon would have had a better sense of how Mauer was actively bullying the Crown. With careful, methodical steps, Mauer seemed to be driving the Crown back.

  It wouldn’t last. The people of Lugh were too few in number. The Crown forces retreated and their ranks grew denser as they did so, making it harder and harder to keep pushing, morale-wise.

  Still, it created space.

  Mauer’s body language was changing. He was getting ready to leave. To let this battle be the small victory and the ominous note for the future that it was. He wasn’t sending his soldiers out as much as he had been, and he made a point of talking to people who had distinguished themselves, instead. They were in charge.

  I could feel Lillian’s heartbeat against my chest. So very alive and focused with wyvern coursing through her brain, she had withdrawn entirely into a different space, here. She clung to me, inuring herself against the outside world.

  Lillian was still Lillian, even like this.

  The tone of the battle shifted imperceptibly. I noticed it almost immediately, in the rate of gunfire, the movement of distant forces. It took me almost a minute of observation to work out if it was my imagination or not.

  After five minutes, I realized that the people fighting on the front line weren’t rotating out properly.

  Because Mauer’s side is winning that decisively? Or because they’re under so much pressure they can’t step away?

  “Something changed,” Jamie said.

  “The Baron,” I said. “I’m pretty sure.”

  Lillian lifted her head, pulling away to look up and at the battle.

  Mauer’s orders were getting more heated, his voice was just a touch sharper. He worked to reinforce the front.

  I could have gone to Mauer, offered our services, but I wasn’t sure what we could do. If there was an opportunity for the Lambs to strike, there was an opportunity for Mauer’s gunmen to get in position and shoot.

  Was the Baron craven enough to simply stay out of sight? To work to rally the Crown forces but not to take the glory or the credit?

  Or was it possible that he wasn’t willing to show his face because he’d heard about the Duke, or because injuries from the explosion made him reluctant to be seen?

  There was another reason I didn’t offer our services. I knew the Lambs would go if I suggested it, but we were hurt and tired, or hurt and inexperienced, in Jamie’s case. If I asked and we went, it reduced the chances that Mauer would let us go. If we swore to cooperate and threw ourselves into the thick of things once again, there was a chance the Shepherd would see it as threatening, something to be wary about, another drop in a bucket that tipped the scales in favor of removing the Lambs from his equation.

  He certainly wouldn’t see it as a reason to let us go.

  No, our best chance of Lillian seeing her parents, of me seeing Mary and Helen and Ashton, it was if I played the part Mauer wanted me to play. Of someone on the fence, paralyzed by doubt.

  “I’m scared,” Lillian said, her voice eerie, lacking in any trace of fear at all.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The tide of the battle changed. The people at the front were losing. The momentum was lost, the Crown was pushing back, and this game of tug-of-war looked to be lost, one side with their feet trying to find traction and failing.

  Stay quiet, and Mauer would leave, and he would likely leave us here to fend for ourselves. It would be hairy, a particularly dangerous environment, more dangerous if we tried and failed to help anyone on the way. But it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. There would be time to think before we rejoined the Academy. We could even stagger our approach, feel things out before we revealed ourselves, stepping through that front gate.

  If we knew what rumors had passed, we could concoct stories.

  Not easy, but doable.

  Doable, I thought. The word sounded hollow in my ears.

  I heard shrieks. Shouts, a commotion nearby.

  At the edge of the clearing that was Mauer’s base camp, soldiers and wounded had gathered. At that perimeter, a figure was fighting her way through.

  Candy.

  Her forward progress was hampered by three of Mauer’s men, but she was strong, and she had Drake at her back.

  No, scratch that. Drake was actively holding her back.

  Something told me that whatever unfolded next wasn’t going to be so doable as what I’d had in mind.

  “Mauer!” Candy shrieked.

  “Bring her here,” Mauer called out. “You. Stop fighting, let them escort you!”

  Drake, the boy with the black scales, reached out, grabbing Candy’s arm, trying to hold her back. He said something plaintive.

  Lillian clutched my arm.

  “Mauer,” Candy said, as she drew closer, two men holding on to her arms. She seemed genuinely surprised to see me and the other Lambs, but she found her voice, “I know the Baron. Let me talk to him. I think—I might be able to end this.”

  “His sisters are dead, he knows that by now,” Mauer said, voice cold. “He’s mad with rage and bloodlust, and he’s winning. How and why would I send you in, when everything seems to suggest a full retreat is in order?”

  Candy shook her head, and then she looked at me. She stuttered as she started to speak. “I—I think I might have what he really wants.”r />
  She’d heard. As I’d explained everything to the others before setting out to hunt the Baron, she’d heard me talk about the nobles and their motivations. About who the Baron was.

  I felt an ugly pit in my stomach.

  Stay quiet. Let things unfold like this, and things stay doable.

  “No, Emily,” Lillian said, quiet.

  Emily? Right. I kept forgetting the girl’s name. It was something long and overcomplicated, and she’d changed it.

  I could see the fear and the doubt in Emily’s eyes. She was shaking.

  “People are dying. If there’s even a chance—”

  Mauer was going to say no. It was a diversion of resources, a distraction that cost time he now needed to successfully slip out of the city.

  My finger touched the ring at my thumb. Conscience. I couldn’t be like Mauer, and so casually spend those lives that were currently fighting at the front, just to get the optimal results. Lives were more than that.

  “There’s a chance,” I said. “What Can—What Emily wants to do, there’s a chance it works.”

  I felt Lillian’s hands drop away from my arm.

  That pit in my stomach yawned wider. So strange, that acting in accordance with my conscience would create this divide between me and the member of our group who cared most about people.

  Emily spoke, so fast she stumbled over her words, “You said—Sylvester said that the Baron, what he wants is power and control. He’s—um, he’s not a powerful noble, he’s too far out of line for the throne. He won’t achieve power in any reasonable span of time. I can give him that time, it’s in my blood. If I offer that, and ask him to back down, to leave Lugh alone, maybe—”

  “He’s not that sort of man,” Mauer said. “He’d capture you and take your blood, and he’d do nothing different.”

  “I know the formula. I studied the science they injected me with. I know things that they wouldn’t be able to pull from my blood. So long as—”

  “Torture,” Mauer said. “He would torture you for whatever you have in your head.”

  She paused, hesitating. I could see Lillian visibly relax at that hesitation. Glad that Mauer was successfully arguing against Emily’s plan.

  “I’ve experienced torture, being made the way I am,” Emily said, her voice low. “If he kills everyone here and then tries to torture me for what I know, I won’t give him what he wants.”

  “Even if I believed you,” Mauer said. “I just killed one noble. Why would I want this one alive?”

  “Because…” I said, pausing.

  Lillian’s expression didn’t change. She was still that focused, intense Lillian. But I could see the unfathomable sense of betrayal in her eyes. She so wanted Emily to live, she had justified much of this as being for Emily, in part, and now I was working against her.

  I tore my eyes off her, and looked at Mauer. “…Because he will do more damage to the nobles alive than dead. You know it. He’s a loose cannon, a mad element, more prone to backstabbing than anything else, and he’s mad. It’ll be a madness without direction, at least for the next short while. With the Duke removed, he’s the local power. What he does in the meantime will shape how people react to any of those nobles you say are going to turn up in months or a year. A mad king. I know you can see what you’ll be able to do with the citizens of the Crown States if they’re living with fear and anger directed toward that madman.”

  “You want to spare him?”

  “No,” I said. “He took my damn eye, and threatened me to never get a replacement. I want to slit his throat and piss through the wound. But for this, for what Candy is talking about, I can tell her what to say, I think there’s a chance he’ll pull back. To you, he’s more of an asset than a danger.”

  “We may have very different estimations of the man,” Mauer said.

  “And I’ve actually met him,” I said, getting more heated. “He wants a win. Remember? The Crown always wins? Give him a shot at true power, a chance to ascend a hill crowned by the Duke’s corpse… he might bite.”

  One life offered up in exchange for the hundreds here.

  I looked at Emily. I hadn’t assuaged her fears with my description of the man. Still, her jaw was clenched, as were her fists. She was steeling herself. She would give herself over to the madman in exchange for Lugh’s continued survival.

  Mauer turned to the soldier next to him. “Sound the horns. Cessation of hostilities. We’ll see if the noble listens. If he doesn’t respond and give this girl a chance to talk, then we continue with things as planned.”

  Lillian shook her head, hugging her arms to her body. “Emily!”

  “Don’t try to talk me out of this, please.”

  “You’ve lived your whole life trying to avoid being a pawn of your parents, you spent the last few years living your own life, and you’ve been happy, haven’t you?”

  “Part of the reason all of this even happened was because of me,” Emily said. “Our projects, those monsters.”

  “This war started because of him,” Lillian said, pointing at Mauer. “He didn’t give you all of the details! He was the one who rallied everyone for this slaughter!”

  “The slaughter was inevitable,” Mauer said, voice quiet and hard. “Lugh was marked. Sooner or later, it would have been wiped clean, as part of the Crown’s agenda. I decided the when and where, and gave this battle a different sort of meaning. If this girl can somehow bring about a situation where Lugh still stands after all of this? That will have meaning. It’s worth trying.”

  “No,” Lillian said.

  The horns sounded on Mauer’s side. Stop firing. It was a sound that went hand in hand with requests for a meeting, a truce without being a truce, so often used as a prelude to surrender.

  I’d read about it in books, and never dreamed of it coming to pass.

  “No!” Lillian raised her voice. She wheeled on me. “Sy, please, stop this!”

  “It’s the best way forward,” I said.

  “It’s not! We can’t choose to sacrifice one person because—”

  “Because so many more are dying?”

  “He won’t listen!” she said, raising her voice further. Wyvern had suppressed her fear, and now it made her demonstrate it more. She looked at me like she didn’t even know me. “You’re throwing her life away for a chance! We were going to help her!”

  “I made this choice myself,” Emily said, putting a hand on Lillian’s shoulder. Lillian flinched and stepped back.

  Then, turning to Jamie, she hugged him.

  “Don’t talk,” she told him. “Please. Don’t agree with Sy. Don’t try to make this okay.”

  All night, she’d been on the verge of breaking. Having wyvern didn’t make any of this easier.

  “Please,” she said. “The Baron won’t listen, he won’t okay the negotiation, he—”

  On the other end of the battlefield, trumpets sounded their response.

  All across the battlefield, the sound of guns died down. People hunkered down in cover.

  I met Jamie’s eyes. “I’m going to have to go. I’m betting he’ll want to meet indoors.”

  “You have to go?” Emily asked.

  “Or I do,” I said. “We have to at least be visible enough to catch his attention. He must think Mauer is going to trade him us.”

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  Counting Sheep—9.18

  I might have said that both sides of the battlefield were as tense as the strings of a violin, but the reality was that both sides were composed more or less of dead men. Stitched on one side, inanimate corpses on the other. Too many deaths, too much blood.

  Our approach to the battlefield meant that I could smell that thick odor of blood in the air, the shit that had leaked from rectums that opened in death, the sharper tang of fear, and, as I’d smelled from the beginning, the smoke.

  The eyes of the living were on us as we approached, while the dead on both sides stared off into space.

  Mauer walked with a con
tingent of his soldiers at his back, his good hand on Emily’s shoulder. More soldiers surrounded Lillian, Jamie and me. I was walking right behind Emily.

  “If I say anything, trust that I’m doing it to help. The worst thing you can do here is to second guess yourself. He’ll see it as the wrong kind of weakness and capitalize on it.”

  Emily nodded, though she didn’t look back at me.

  “The right kind of weakness would be to let him know just how reluctant you are. You don’t want this, you don’t like it, you can detest him, and let that show, but don’t waver. If you show doubt, fear, give him any excuse to say no, then he’ll take you up on that, say no, and watch as you try to backpedal. He’ll go out of his way to murder people in a way that punishes you for wasting his time and for backing down. Kids, elderly, he’ll make it ugly.”

  Emily was breathing harder. She was getting scared, now that I was painting a picture of who the Baron was.

  Time to give her some stability. “You have power here. Something he wants, the ability to steer this entire battle to a better place. I’m going to give you some tips on how to successfully negotiate this with him, but I think you’re smart enough to choose the right course on your own. Before that, I want to tell you some stuff that’s not going to seem important right now, but which might save your life and save your sanity later. You’re going to have to marry him.”

  She turned her head a little, glancing back at me. Mauer reaffirmed his grip on her shoulder, as if he thought she’d tear away and run.

  “What he wants to do is to break you down and rebuild you into a pawn he can use. As a noble, he’s grown up around two kinds of couple. There are the husband-wife pair who are together for the sake of alliances, who bicker and who exist as entirely disconnected entities that just happen to share the same living space and last name. Some of them utterly hated each other, they fought a constant war with words and subtle sabotage. He’s anticipating that relationship, and he thinks he’d win. He probably would.

  I went on, “There are also the pairs who make each other stronger overall. If you’re going to be his wife, you need to start right off selling yourself as someone with composure, someone who could be a person that makes him stronger.”