Twig

by wildbow

  All other things set aside, crowd removed, battlefield disregarded, Baron left unarmed and blithely unaware of potential danger, we stood only the slimmest chance of success in taking him out of the picture. All those things in consideration… it was harder than that.

  Which meant I had to turn my focus back to the people I’d been paying attention to as I’d studied the flow and intimacy of the crowd.

  “Chance. Lainie. Simon, too, if you think you won’t be heard,” I said, and I described what I was looking at even as I noticed the details, “Over there by the table with the bread. There’s a man wearing two swords at his belt, a decorated military type, with hair in bad need of a trim.”

  “I don’t recognize him,” Lainie said.

  “Me either,” Chance said.

  “Why?” Mary asked.

  “Because people are giving him a wider berth. The only people talking to him have been military people of his rank who have a duty to talk to him, some are maybe old comrades, and even they moved slightly further away from him as the Baron arrived. He’s on at least his second glass of alcohol, and it’s not even that late in the day. He doesn’t want to be here, and I want to know why.”

  “There’s a contingent of soldiers stationed in Warrick,” Simon murmured, speaking without moving his misshapen lips. “He leads them, and he led them in Lugh. He didn’t do well there, and he came back at the same time as the Baron.”

  “In disgrace?” I asked. I got a slight nod. “Why?”

  “I’ve heard differing versions of what unfolded.”

  Not very helpful, but the less Simon talked, the better. I moved on. “Over there. A woman in a silver-blue dress and the white-fur jacket, with a flowery blue decoration in her hair. She’s not very old, but women twice her age are paying her special attention, old hens flocking to a young peacock.”

  “Female peacocks are drab,” Mary commented.

  “Work with me,” I said.

  “That’s Ruth Bloxham,” Lainie said, standing on her toes to see. “There are people in the aristocracy that really want to get an in with the nobility, even marry into the lower ranks. She’s one of them.”

  “I know the type,” I said, glancing at Candida. She was keeping her eyes on the ground as if she was shy, her hand on the Baron’s arm, to hide the fact that she was mostly blind. She reacted to movement around her, which was better than I could do with my eye. The benefits of having better doctors. Still, she didn’t focus on anything or anyone in particular. She couldn’t.

  “There are families that have been working for generations to curry the favor and prestige that would get them an in with the Crown. Then there’s Ruth. She’s done it singlehandedly. Since she was sixteen, she’s been connecting with the right people, earning and using favors to meet even more powerful people she can earn favors from… there’s at least one minor fashion trend and two musicians who owe their success to Ruth.”

  “The hair thing?” Chance asked. Lainie nodded.

  A natural-born socialite and political player, then, someone with a sharp eye and a sharp mind.

  “When the Baron arrived with Candida on his arm, eyes turned her way,” I said. “Based on what you said, she was a contender to be his wife?”

  “Yes,” Lainie said. “There was talk on the train here that she must be upset. That she might even snap. There’s some resentment in some circles, my older cousins are about her age and they hate her so. They say her success so far has been luck, and they’re hoping this is the event that breaks her and leads to her ruin.”

  I studied the woman, watching her.

  Ruth seemed so at ease. The Baron looked her way, smiling, and she smiled back, though her attention was more on Candida, as if Ruth wanted to catch Candida’s eye, should she look up from the ground. I saw her tall heels momentarily rise up off the ground as she stood on her very tiptoes, trying to get a glance.

  “She doesn’t give me the impression of someone that’s about to break,” Mary said.

  I shook my head. “She wants to talk to Candida very badly. I’m just not sure if she wants to because she’s a fantastically good actress who can hide her ill-intent from me, and plans to sabotage Candida, or if it’s for genuine reasons. Maybe she sees Candida as someone who can be a peer and a real friend. A genuine non-threat, in a way, compared to people like Lainie’s cousins, who want to tear her down, and others, who are only stepping stones to better things?”

  “When you started theorizing, the first place my mind went was if she pursued the Baron, once, and learned how dangerous he was,” Mary said.

  “And her primary interest is to warn the fiancee? That’s a dangerous game to be playing,” I said.

  “Yeaaah,” Lainie drew out the word, her expression caught up in something akin to awe, like she couldn’t even comprehend the idea.

  Whichever of the three options it was, Ruth Bloxham was insanely brave and insanely confident in her ability to navigate this political stage, considering how approaching Candida meant being in proximity to the Baron. Emphasis on the ‘insane’ part of things.

  “There was someone else,” I murmured. I scoured the crowd, watching, looking past the hundreds of people who were only one or two steps down from being dressed for a costume party, all color and flamboyance, their masks ones of surgical alteration, hiding the faces they’d been born with under the prettier and more handsome ones the doctors had given them.

  We’d leapfrogged from being nobodies to having a firstborn, then from having a firstborn to having a firstborn and two aristocrats in hand. Getting near enough to the Baron would take another leap. I needed someone or something to capitalize on. An enemy of the Baron, like the decorated general, or someone close to him.

  From there, I could find a way to deal with the Twin, potentially, and any of the Baron’s doctors who might be able to save the man from the fates I had in store for him.

  “Ah,” I said, as my eye found my target. The last two people who’d formed a critical point in this spider’s web. A very dangerous pair. I’d seen the whole ebb and flow of the crowd focus around one point, with people leaving like they were on a mission. When Candida had arrived, the crowd had moved to let these people be a part of it. They beamed with happiness.

  Mr. and Mrs. Gage. Candida’s parents. Next to the Baron, this was their day.

  “The Gages,” I told Mary, who had never seen them. “They cannot, whatever happens, see me.”

  Mary nodded. She fully understood. Or so she thought.

  The Gages knew me. Not letting them see me was critical, but more critical was the need to avoid letting anyone critical see me with Mary. Should that happen, she would become culpable. I could be seen, targeted, and run away a fugitive. Mary had to return to Lillian and the others.

  This was the other hitch in the plan. I needed to remain in a position to tie up loose ends. Mary had to escape alive. Witnesses would need to die, most likely. The thought made me look at Lainie, Simon, and Chance.

  Lainie’s face was flushed with excitement and fear. She looked giddy.

  She was such a different personality from Lillian, but she kept reminding me of her all the same. I’d seen Lillian giddy, before. Before I’d said goodbye to her, even.

  I would have to say goodbye to Lainie too, very soon. I wished very dearly that there wasn’t a glimmer of innocence and goodness in her, beneath the surface. I wished that I didn’t like her just a little bit, that Chance had been a bit more of a bastard to Mary.

  “Focus on the job,” Evette reminded me. “I won’t ever forgive you if you slip up and mess this up.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We move now.”

  I had Mary, Lainie, Chance and Simon’s full attention now.

  “You only get one chance to shake things up,” Gordon’s voice cut through the crowd. “After that, they tighten security, they start looking for you, or for the instigators. The Baron will be more careful. Make sure it’s worth it.”

  “Simon,” I said. I drew
the stimulant drug out of my pocket. It was a packet of powder. I could see him react as he saw it. Eager. “How many doses are in this?”

  “For someone your size? Four.”

  “For someone like you? Not counting tolerance?”

  “Three, perhaps.”

  “Two if I assumed some tolerance? I’m also assuming that this is the in-vogue drug for the upper crust.”

  “You would be right in those assumptions, I suppose,” Simon said, voice a whisper. He flinched as someone walked past him.

  “If I gave you the whole packet, a double dose or so, what would happen?”

  He tensed.

  I held up a hand to keep him from answering. A group of slower moving elderly women walked past us.

  I lowered my hand, and he spoke, “I would die, thrashing, convulsing, and frothing at the mouth. If I didn’t kill myself by beating my skull against the cobblestones, I would choke on my own vomit, most likely.”

  “Good,” I said. I’d had a gut instinct, based on what it was, but every drug was different. I knew what to expect from this, above and beyond what Simon had shared with me. I looked at Mary. “Feel up to it?”

  “You want her to take it?” Lainie whispered, horrified.

  She had a shred of empathy for others, it seemed. Damn it.

  “He wants me to give it to someone,” Mary said, her eyes locking to mine. “Who?”

  “Ruth Bloxham. The whole packet.”

  She didn’t wait for further orders, but she knew me well enough to read my expression, tone, and body language, and knew from that that I had none. She pressed Chance’s leash into my hand, as I’d pressed the packet into hers, and then walked into the crowd, graceful, skirt swishing. Virtually anyone else might have stumbled, trying to navigate the people who moved this way and that, unpredictably and suddenly. She had no trouble at all.

  My hands shook with anticipation and suppressed emotion.

  I glanced at Chance, who had turned white with shock, then turned my head the other direction to look at Lainie. There was horror in her eyes.

  There would be more horror etched into her face before the day was through.

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.14

  From the point that Mary disappeared into the crowd, I didn’t see her. I knew how she moved and the habits she stuck to, and I knew how she would move through the crowd. I still didn’t see her.

  I trusted Mary as I did any Lamb. But even though trust was a completely different thing from the ties that bound us to one another, the loss of those ties tested my ability to trust. Uncertainty about things bled out into uncertainty about other things.

  I had to put it out of my mind as best as I was able. I couldn’t afford to hesitate or second guess Mary’s abilities; her abilities and my abilities were the only rocks in these unsteady waters. The only thing I knew and could fall back on. Everything else was in flux, and I could put all of my thoughts to the task of anticipating anything around me, only to end up surprised. The Lambs had to be a constant, or my entire world would consist of people, events and things I had to second guess.

  It struck me that in a span of time ranging from the next hour to the next day, I would lose that. I would leave them behind.

  The shaking in my hands got worse. Not just tension and anticipation, now.

  “She’s going to die,” Lanie spoke, at a whisper. “You just made this decision and gave the order, and she’s going to die horribly?”

  “Shhh,” I said. It was hard to keep my voice gentle and keep from being harsh to the hostage. “Try to keep your expression neutral. If you tip someone off, then this gets really ugly, and she might really die.”

  “What are you talking about? A full dose, he said—”

  “Shh,” I said. This would be so much easier with another Lamb present. Mary was seeing to her task, and there was nobody to see to the hostages while I focused on more important things. My attention was divided.

  The tables that were being set up around the plaza were being set with tablecloths, and much of the conversation was taking place around the tables. Men and women who had attended a hundred parties like this one, Ruth Bloxham included, knew how the events would proceed. It was perhaps odd that things were still being prepared around them, but that might have been the status quo when the nobles were involved.

  Mr. and Mrs. Gage were the organizers here, in charge of the little details for their daughter’s special event. At their behest, appetizers and tea were already being set on the tables.

  The space around Ruth was about as clear as it would get as she excused herself from the conversation, smiling. She collected a saucer and a cup of tea, two cookies perched on the edge of the saucer. Probably finely crafted little things, dusted with icing sugar.

  The fact that she’d collected the cookies and kept them on the saucer where they might fall off made me think of her as being more of a kid than she was. She’d started out at sixteen and she had to be in her early twenties now. This party, it was her environment, one she navigated like a fish navigated water. She let her guard down in ways that others couldn’t afford to, even with something as inane as cookies. That, in turn, gave her an allure. Youthful and playful in demeanor to appeal to the younger women, smart and adroit enough to hold her own with the older ones. That she was gorgeous covered most of the bases with the men in attendance.

  “Remember how you wanted to sit down and learn from Mauer?” Helen asked me.

  I nodded slowly.

  “I would like to learn from her.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Chance and Lainie turned their heads to look at me.

  I spotted Mary in the crowd, momentarily standing still while people moved around her. Her hands were empty. She met my eyes.

  “It’s done,” I said. Mary was already gone.

  “You’re a monster,” Lainie said. There was surprising emotion in her voice, as if she might start crying.

  “Simon could have told you that,” I said. “You don’t look at the firstborn around here and think of the misery that surrounds them? How monstrous what Simon does is? What about what the Baron does?”

  “I’m fourteen. There’s nothing I can do about it,” Lanie said.

  “And when you’re older, you’ll have other reasons for not speaking up about this injustice. Ruth Bloxham, like you, like your parents, and like everyone here, condones these atrocities. You condone them by being here. Do you think I didn’t see the looks on your faces when you picked out my friend and me? You were eager to participate on their level. Don’t use age as an excuse.”

  “You’re a monster,” she said, again, her expression twisting.

  It wouldn’t be possible to get through to her, and it wasn’t a priority. There were too many other things in play. I searched the crowd, watching, making sure the pieces were all in place. While I did so, I simply said, “I’m a monster that knows exactly what he is. You’re three monsters who pretend not to see. When and if things get ugly, I want you to remember, the ugliness you’re seeing has been ongoing, affecting the poor, the people who you and your families stepped on to get here.”

  “I think you’re a special kind of ugly,” Lainie said.

  “You’re not one of those rebels, are you?” Chance asked. “The Brands?”

  “No,” I said. “No, not really. I’m alone.”

  Ruth Bloxham laughed, hunching over slightly, hand to her mouth. The smile touched her eye. She worked to compose herself, taking a drink of her tea.

  Mary would be making her way back, and—

  My thoughts were interrupted as I watched Ruth Bloxham, in the company of a young man and a young woman, turn away from the table, say something light and teasing, her voice raised to address the larger group she’d just been talking to, and then walk away. The trio of Ruth and her two new companions walked further from the hub of activity around the Baron and Candida, closer to me.

  “You’re alone? You have that girl�
��” Chance started.

  I moved my arm, raising a hand to tell him to be quiet. I felt the tension of the wire against my finger just before Chance felt the lack of tension that would come with the wire breaking the skin, only just enough reminder to keep from inadvertently killing him.

  It did get him to shut up, though.

  “Ruth Bloxham. Do you want her to die like Simon described?” I asked.

  “No,” Lainie said, as if I was crazy for even asking. Chance, mute, shook his head.

  I looked up at Simon.

  “No,” he said, speaking under his breath.

  I looked around. Mary wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It made sense that she’d be taking a circuitous route. It made it harder to draw a connection between what was about to happen and our little group of five.

  It also made it harder for me to hand over custody of our hostages and handle the situation.

  “Good,” I said. “Here.”

  I pressed Chance’s razor wire leash into Simon’s hand. “Mary might be along any second. In the meantime, you look after yourselves.”

  They weren’t quite able to hide the looks on their faces. Incredulity.

  “If you mess around and I have to come back and take control of the situation, she’ll die. This is your test. How good are you, as people?”

  I didn’t have time. I turned away, starting to walk off, the three left behind.

  I got about three steps, then turned around and walked right back to them.

  “Okay, nevermind that,” I said. My voice changed, switching to something a little colder and more intense. The intensity wasn’t hard to manage. I simply had to stop holding back and let the mask skip a little. “Chance, Lainie? If you try something, not only with Ruth Bloxham die, but some of my friends will die. Your parents will die. So will you. Simon knows about the poisonous gas his buddy made. Simon? You know I’ll get to your friends before you do. You will walk down into that basement, you will see their bodies, and you will know it’s your fault.”

  Want to call me a monster? Then I’ll show you my ugly side.

  Simon didn’t hunch over to better meet my eyes. He didn’t stoop, he stood tall, wrapped in his monstrous flesh, his face distorted. Only his eyes, but for a notch in one lower eyelid, were normal, the emotion showing through. But even as he stood tall, looming over me, I could see that I’d had an impact. That I held the power.