Twig

by wildbow

  “Firstborn!” Chance managed, voice strangled. Mary’s distraction had given him the chance to speak.

  “I’m not a firstborn,” Simon said, sounding tired, his words slurred. “I’m a doctor. Yesterday evening, my friends and I were in the same situation as you two, except they carved into my face as part of that, and they stabbed my lady-friend in the back. When they were done, they made us use our talents to modify me. I would suggest that you do what they say.”

  Good man, Simon, I thought.

  “Do you do this sort of thing a great deal?” Lanie asked me. Simon’s little speech had put new fear into her eyes, but her voice was breathy.

  She was pretty, though not so pretty as Mary, because it wasn’t a real sort of prettiness. Her red hair was tidy and her clothes flattered her figure. The look in her eyes was intense, suggesting she was wholly caught up in the moment. It would be so easy to get a reaction out of her, to say one thing or another and toy with her emotions, to excite her, to devastate her.

  Yet all I found myself feeling was a profound sense of how much I missed Lillian.

  I put a sly, wicked smile on my face as I touched the nose of the pistol against her sternum. “I think that now that the tables have turned, it’s my turn to ask the questions. Miss.”

  Just a little bit of play, to get her reeled in just a touch more.

  “Am I supposed to call you sir?” she asked. Fear and excitement mingled as she gave me a smile with just a hint of a falter to it.

  “Not at all,” I said. “We’re going to walk out of this stable. Possibly with and possibly without Chance over there, depending on how cooperative he is. I’m thinking you’ll be cooperative, won’t you?”

  The smile was no longer faltering. She’d wanted excitement, and she’d gotten possibly more excitement than she’d had in her life to date. I suspected that particular well was bottomless.

  “We are going to leave as a group,” I told her. “You’re going to act like you were before. You’ll tell me and Mary there to do things, but the most important thing is that you get us to the town center, in the thick of things. What do you think about that?”

  “I think… can I be honest?”

  I nodded once.

  “I planned to avoid my parents and my aunt as much as possible today. They know I planned to, and they’ll be surprised to see me.”

  “Well then,” I said. “Would they be less surprised if Chance was ordering us about and being something of a stubborn ass?”

  Chance squirmed a bit, clearly offended.

  “I think they would find that a perfectly good reason for me to be back there,” she said. She licked her lips, as if they were dry.

  And for Chance to be alive.

  The girl wasn’t dumb.

  “Mary,” I said. “I’m thinking along the lines of a razor-wire slipknot. Put it around his neck, run it through his sleeve. Tug, and you slice his throat? It should keep him obedient.”

  “Give me two minutes,” Mary said.

  I nodded. “And you, miss, I assume you don’t need razor wire to stay complacent? Knowing I have the gun should be enough?”

  Her head moved, signaling I was right. I suspected I could have handed her the gun and she would have still been obedient.

  I also suspected that, at the first sign of trouble, she would prove to be a problem.

  “What will we do in the meantime?” Lanie asked.

  There was a change in the tenor of things outside. The citizens of Warrick were captive prey, and they were sensitive to changes in their environment. There was a great deal of tension, and the smallest movements could make things reverberate through the streets and buildings.

  This wasn’t a small movement.

  “You could pat me down,” Lanie said.

  For all that she’d said she wasn’t interested before, she sure seemed to find me interesting now.

  “Shut up,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  “For?” she asked.

  I raised the gun, and I pressed it between her eyes. Obediently, she shut her mouth, pursing her lips.

  I listened, and I heard distant horses. A procession, not dissimilar to the arrival of the first trainload of aristocrats, but heavier, weightier.

  “The Baron is here,” I said, voicing my observations aloud. “At the town center.”

  This is it.

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.13

  We entered the city center as a quintet: two Lambs, two aristocrats, and a man turned monster. The layout of the town made this the space where festivals would be held, if Warrick was the sort of place to hold festivals. If Warrick had farmer’s markets, where everyone gathered to sell produce and trade goods from the professional to the homespun, then this was where the people would set up their stalls. It would be where friendships were made and rekindled, where gossip was exchanged and conversations were had. But Warrick wasn’t that sort of city.

  No, the heart of this city didn’t beat. It, like the Baron Richmond’s church, was symbolic, and it was a symbol designed to be false and discouraging.

  Now the man had his gloved hand around that heart, gripping it, forcing it to beat to his tune. The resulting life and animation was a stricken sort, one driven by fear and ungainly, unpracticed movements.

  Our group wasn’t dissimilar, but it was dangerously lopsided in how awkward things were. Chance held himself too rigid, Mary’s dog on a leash, his collar little more than a slip of razor wire. Mary was doing a good job of playing the meek Warrick girl, but Chance looked too concerned with his own mortality and our immediate surroundings. I wondered if people would have taken notice of his nervousness if he wasn’t sixteen or so. Just a little bit older, and he might have looked like an adult.

  Lainie had seemed normal, but was swiftly moving away from thinking of this as a little game. As if we were invisible, we passed through the gauntlet of soldiers and guards that were watching all entrances to the city center. Lainie seemed to lose the light in her eyes and the bounce in her step as we left the men with guns behind and entered the broader crowd.

  The adults around us that weren’t desperately trying to fade into the background were of Lainie’s social class, her parents, aunts, uncles, people her father might do business with, people she might interact with in a few years, when she was grown. She understood them, and she knew the good it could do to be on their good side, and the ruin it could bring to be on their bad side.

  Which was a very complicated way of saying that the familiar faces might be bringing matters home for her.

  “The Baron isn’t here yet,” Mary commented.

  “He’s coming,” I said. I could track the shift in the tone of things and in the crowd’s attitudes. Anticipation mingled with fear. Even the aristocracy of the western Crown States had a healthy fear of the nobles.

  “The Baron?” Chance asked. “Whatever you’re doing, I don’t think you want to cross him.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “We really don’t want to cross the man.”

  Mary made a point of briefly meeting my eyes. She looked away, giving me a fractional nod of the head by way of agreement. The statement that we didn’t want to get on the Baron’s bad side seemed to put our hostages at ease. Simon knew more than the kids did, but apparently I sounded convincing, and the tension in his shoulders eased somewhat.

  There were so many people, and it was getting increasingly clear that this wasn’t a good battlefield, be it for the overt attack or the subtle one. The street was level, all stone and the stone-gripping wood, with mortar where the fast-growing wood hadn’t extended far enough. A town hall, a smaller church, and several large houses blocked in the area, which formed something of a plaza, capable of holding perhaps a thousand people, if I had to guess. If and when the population here exceeded capacity, the guards that stood between the buildings at the plaza’s edge could move further down the streets, increasing the number by two hundred or five hundred people. Anythin
g more than that, and I suspected that holes would appear in security, with too many access points to cover.

  A third of the way down the plaza, pale stone had been laid out in some shallow, long steps, leading up to a raised section. Two-thirds of the way down, the steps and raised portion reoccurred, with a stage overlooking the entire affair, and a fountain behind that stage, the statues added a kind of presence to it and framed it. A soldier, a doctor, and what I assumed to be an aristocrat, all in modern Crown style.

  By no accident, I was guessing, the construction of the stage had passing resemblance to a hangman’s gallows. It was fancier, with more trim and style to it and carvings etched into the wood, but the breadth of it and the overall dimensions were evocative.

  “You suck at fighting,” Gordon said. “So I think you’re on the right track. If you actually find yourself at odds with the Baron, on his turf, surrounded by his friends, you’re going to lose. Even if you have Mary with you.”

  I nodded. I took note of a cluster of tables, and more tables were being added. Tables were being carried by the people of Warrick at the order of the aristocrats that were taking a hand in the event. Dining room tables plucked from houses, very probably with the assumption that the tables were free for the taking. Entitlement.

  “I know you like shaking the box, but this is a situation where you get one shake at most. The houses and town hall around the town center are occupied. Soldiers, stitched, bodyguards, and all of the warbeasts you noticed before, they’re camped out in there.”

  Our group had to stop as a cluster of adults walked in front of us, cutting us off. Entitlement, again, was in full display. They were adults, well-to-do adults, and they wouldn’t pause or make way for children. Mary and I drew closer together, and Lainie became part of the huddle. Chance stumbled a little as he fought to stay close. Not that Mary would ever make a mistake and let that wire draw closed. Chance’s bloody demise was too dangerous a possibility here.

  “There’s no nooks or crannies,” I shared the observations that ‘Gordon’ had given me. “The buildings are all occupied.”

  “We can come and go as we need to, so long as we have these three with us,” Mary murmured.

  “True,” I responded, keeping my voice down. I looked around again. The way was clear, but talking strategy was important enough that I was willing to stop roaming and start figuring out the next few steps. I was content to stay where we were, at the southern end of the plaza, on the lowest tier. “Leaving and camping out in a nearby building makes for a break from opportunity, though. Too far away, and we can’t act on anything we need to act on.”

  “With everything that follows, we’ll want an escape route, or a place to hide. I can’t move without knowing where I’m retreating afterward, Sy.”

  “Wow,” Lainie chimed in. She’d overheard, which I’d intended, and her attention was fully on us, which I had also intended. “This is real, isn’t? The wire, the things you’re talking about, like you’re so used to it. What are you actually here to do?”

  “Don’t ask questions, Lainie,” Chance said. He was tense, his voice lower than was necessary, given the surroundings and the lack of anyone special in earshot.

  “If you find out, it’ll be later, when the time comes, and that’ll only be if you’re paying attention and only if my friend and I think you’ll be useful,” I said.

  Hook set. It served to pull her attention away from the people around us.

  Ironic, given that my attention was now fixated on them. For now, the battlefield consisted of people, the well-to-do, movers and shakers in the militaristic, political, commercial, and scientific spheres of the Crown States.

  “What are you thinking?” Mary asked me.

  I shook my head a little. “I’m trying not to think. Do me a favor? Give me a minute?”

  She nodded.

  We were all outside, but the surrounding buildings blocked the cold, and the sun was overhead. All things considered, the cold wasn’t bad. It looked like fires were being prepared, for people to gather around. Heated pots were being set up under tables. Not the flammable kind, unfortunately. Nothing I could make explode.

  The crowd moved this way and that across the plaza. We were hunkered under the eaves of the town hall at the southern end, forming a cluster that huddled together as people moved around us. I leaned against the wall, using my one good eye to watch what was going on.

  Going by the speech patterns I could overhear, the fashion, and the way they seemed to be close-knit, I was guessing the party guests were all from the same overall area, the western or the north-western Crown States.

  That close knit was like a spider’s web. Invisible threads connected each person. Family ties, profession, old relationships, interests. My wyvern injection was still fresh, and my brain hadn’t slept recently. I was slightly detached from reality, which wasn’t a bad thing when I needed to break my focus and take in the greater picture in abstract. I’d already been studying the crowd and now I could push myself to take it in like those soldiers and bodyguards on the perimeter were. They, men who had stood by during events like these for years or decades, watched the crowd in a practiced way, with skill. They knew the particulars of what to watch for. I could watch with instinct, by pushing my brain into another sort of space.

  The crowd was a blur. I didn’t think about or look at anyone in particular. I looked at the collections of people, how they clustered, who stood further from who. I looked at how some people shared a closer personal space, tuned my ear for the pitch of the conversations, the degree of ease with which they talked.

  It was something I had done since I had first started taking the wyvern formula, taking in the bigger picture and using it to inform myself in a way I couldn’t put word or label to. Now I pushed it in another direction.

  I knew I was taking longer than I’d told Mary I needed, but I took the time to follow people as they broke away from one conversation, then moved over to other groups, the differences in how they talked, the space they shared with others.

  I wondered for a moment if Mauer made use of this social instinct on a regular basis. If he pitched his voice and shifted his body language to capitalize on these same sorts of signal.

  Mary was talking to Chance and Lainie. I tuned it out.

  Everyone was connected to everyone, threads tying one person to the others around them. Continued observation let me see how strong and how intimate some of those connections were.

  As if all of this was a spider’s web. Push on one point, and strands would break or collapse in to cling to the offending fingertip. In this blurry landscape of bodies, some figures seemed to become more distinct, while others faded away, unimportant, not useful.

  I was aware as the entire web shifted. My vision came into focus, and I touched Mary’s arm.

  “He’s here,” Mary said.

  The Baron arrived in the far corner of the Plaza from where we stood, and that was partially my intent. He stood taller than the last time I’d seen him, which suggested modifications, and he looked positively regal. In any other circumstance, the man might have been laughed at for dressing up to the extent that he was, but he had several advantages here. The crowd was his, and he had the opportunity to meet and greet the important people before his enemies did. This event, too, was all about him, and few would attack a man who was celebrating a wedding or engagement, whichever this was.

  He was tall, like the figures in myth were tall, pale, with sly eyes and straight golden hair. The colors of Richmond were worked into his clothes, black intermingled with yellow for the lining, and emerald for the draping jacket and slacks. He wore high boots, I noted, and I imagined that people would see that as reason to adopt the fashion.

  Provided the night went well for the Baron and the noble still lived. No need to curry favor with a dead man, of course.

  His expectations of how the night would go clearly differed from mine; he wore a gold circlet. It was a ballsy move, wearing something s
o close to being a crown or coronet, especially with other nobles due to show up. It signaled ambition, and his confidence moving forward. I could imagine five or ten different ways that he could use that one simple detail of what he wore on his head to shape the coming narrative. Whether Fray or Mauer attacked or not, the relationships he sought to make or capitalize on with other lesser nobles, if he wanted to actually provoke someone…

  I turned my mind away from the subject, lest I get caught up in it.

  Beside the man, meek and miles different from the woman I had met, was Candida Gage. Her dress included a draping hood. Where the Baron wore emerald, the woman wore white. The gold-leaf and black checked trim was much the same, lining the hood and detailing the dress. She hid it well, but she moved like someone blind. As the hood hid the marks from where her horns had been removed, she wore new eyes just like I did, replacing the altered eyes she’d had before. They held up for the sake of appearances, but they didn’t let her see, or they didn’t let her see well.

  He hadn’t had her for a day before he’d seen her put under the knife. It fit his mentality, to show her the power he had over her, without being so vulgar that he might lose his shot at plucking immortality from her brain.

  I saw the Baron’s doctors, all as a group, and I watched as certain heads turned at their arrival. Other doctors in the crowd, almost universally wearing long coats, like stylized lab coats, dressed up in five kinds of flourish for high society.

  And I could see the Baron’s sister. The sole surviving Twin. A giantess compared to the crowd she walked through, a monster that, even more than the Baron, made the citizens of Warrick shrink down and away. That she’d arrived alone stirred faint murmurs from the crowd, and a sharp look from her immediately silenced those same murmurs.

  This, for the time being, was the arena. The Baron and his sister would reach out, mingling, and Mary and I would be the mice that avoided the prowling cats. We’d seized the artist doctor Simon to put ourselves in a position to seize Chance and Lainie, and we’d used them to put ourselves here.