Twig

by wildbow

  “No! Lord Infante!”

  I couldn’t breathe with the fat fist clutching my collar.

  Mary was going to either try and fail to complete the mission, and the Lambs would be splintered, or she was going to miss the window of opportunity and come looking for me, before returning to the others.

  Perhaps that would be best. She wouldn’t find me. Things wouldn’t lead back to her, hopefully. She could return to a more normal life as a Lamb.

  “No?” the Infante asked.

  “He held me hostage, Lord Infante.”

  I managed a nod.

  “Ah, the scoundrel agrees, then. But you could have said no, Elaine,” the Infante said. “You could have willingly gone to the grave rather than aid in a plot that put a noble’s mortal life at risk. Even a lesser man like the Baron Richmond is a higher value life than yours, you can’t deny that. You’ve wronged the natural order. That can’t go unanswered.”

  I couldn’t speak. Fabric threatened to tear. I suspected that I would die the moment it did, because he would seize my actual throat instead, and crush it like a small child might squeeze gruel between his fingers.

  I reached down as far as I was able, and I reached for my boot. Between the fingertip of my middle finger and the fingernail of my index finger, I caught the very pommel of the knife I’d slipped within. I hauled it out, moving my hand to catch the length of the handle against the base of my hand, and I had a grip on the knife a moment later.

  The Infante’s son’s eyes moved down, looking. He smirked.

  The knife plunged, digging into my thigh. I let go of it, letting it drop to the road, the clatter of it drawing a small amount of attention.

  My vision was going black. I’d already been tired, hurt, and exhausted, and it wasn’t taking much.

  Touching my fingertips to the blood, I brought one arm up, and I drew on the sleeve.

  T-R-U—

  The darkness threatened to overwhelm me.

  “Let him breathe.”

  I was released. I coughed, sputtering, and dropped to my knees, where I coughed more.

  “You don’t believe you lied?” the Infante asked.

  I shook my head. I wondered if the lack of a proper answer would end me.

  “The Baron doesn’t have anyone who cares about his existence? You forget about his sister.”

  “Dead, Lord Infante.”

  “One is, I know, but the other—ah.”

  I nodded in agreement with his realization.

  “You?”

  “Yes, Lord Infante. I did it alone, using my hostage and a hostage doctor dressed up as an experiment. Elaine can confirm.”

  I didn’t see the look or his indication for Elaine to speak, but I heard her voice. “He did, Lord Infante. In the town hall. He killed the Baron’s doctor, and then the Twin. U—used a knife, and fire, and gas. The body burned. The Baron doesn’t know, we don’t think.”

  She was talking too much, making what was largely truth sound like a lie.

  “Then I sincerely apologize, little scoundrel. I gave the order too quickly. I suppose I should send you off before I make another mistake. Go, and fulfill this noble goal to make this world a better place by removing one more heartbeat from it.”

  It put a bitter taste in my mouth, to hear my goal described as noble. Worse, it almost felt as though one of the few redeeming parts of this task I’d set for myself had been stripped away. The fact that it was for Lillian remained, but it no longer felt like the first mission I’d set for myself. It felt like I was doing the Infante’s bidding.

  I almost turned to go, and then I glanced at Lainie.

  “I think I’ll keep her with me,” the Infante said. “She’s young, and she hasn’t yet had the modifications necessary to be in my company for extended periods of time, but I’ll find other things to do with her. As I said, she committed a wrong. I may consent to the Baron’s death, but it’s not for her to say.”

  I could see the emotions fly through Lainie’s eyes. The terror, the defeat, and then renewed terror as the scope of her fate sank in.

  “Lord Infante,” I said.

  “I already know what you’re going to ask,” the man said.

  “I would like her assistance in completing the remainder of my goal, if you would be willing, my Lord.”

  I’d hoped never to utter the words ‘my Lord’ again.

  “Do you not think she deserves punishment?” the giant asked me in his heavy voice.

  “Lord Infante,” I said, glancing at Lainie, “I think the punishment will come about on its own, with no need of your help or mine.”

  She looked between me and the Infante, clearly confused. Her whole being was focused on the present and her current fate. She couldn’t see how things unfolded from here.

  “Shall we make a bet of it?” the Infante asked. “If I revisit Elaine Dexter and her family some time from now, and I don’t think the punishment sufficed, I’ll remedy things then.”

  “I think that is fair judgment, Lord Infante,” I said.

  He nodded. “Then go about your business. I came this way to visit the Church, which I found curious, and to see what sort of town a little man like this Baron might have wrought.”

  “Then we have the same destination, my Lord,” I said.

  “The Baron is there?” the Infante asked, his eyebrows raising. “Then I will skip the church for now. I expect I’ll find your body or the Baron’s there when we come back this way?”

  “I hope for the latter, Lord Infante,” I said. “But yes, I would expect so.”

  He smiled.

  His son and the girl gave me sideways glances as they and the Lord carried on past Lainie and me.

  The moment his back was to me, I bolted, running, once again with Lainie’s wrist in my grip. There was no resistance from her. Getting away from the Infante was excuse enough to move and move quickly. Each running footstep made the stab wound on my leg throb.

  “What—” Lainie started. She stumbled, as if moving and speaking required too much coordination. She was still in shock. “What—punishment?”

  Punishment. The Infante had laid it out clearly enough. It would sink in, once she thought about it. If he visited her family and found that she hadn’t faced grim enough measures, then he would handle it himself with her entire family at stake. Perhaps he would check in and retaliate against her family, a scene for her to find or later hear about, and have that be the punishment.

  No. She couldn’t go home again. She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t reach out. It would either be the catalyst that saw her and her family utterly destroyed, or it would mean finding out things that would destroy her. Both were equally possible.

  I would have to find a way to tell her, but that time wasn’t now. I was approaching the church. My fingertips went out to brush wood where a fresh mark had been carved. I changed direction.

  Now that we were close enough, I could hear shouts. I could make out the words.

  “…a shadow! A flash of dark hair at the window, was it!?”

  The Baron. Drunk on power and confidence.

  The voice was loud. “Come to me, Lamb! Come to me! My soldiers will let you through. If you came for the Lady Gage, then come, or I’ll open her throat!”

  I felt Lainie hesitate, and shifted my grip on Lainie’s wrist so I held her hand, somewhat more gently. It helped urge her forward.

  The Infante had taken everything from her, and she didn’t know it yet. Hearing the Baron speak, knowing the implicit threats his words carried, facing this scene, possibly my last act as a Lamb, I knew that Lainie’s imminent situation mirrored my own.

  Closely enough that I had to wonder if it was on purpose.

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.18

  We reunited with Mary and Chance, and Lainie ran up to her cousin, throwing her arm around him.

  “What happened?” Mary asked.

  “Ran into trouble. It doesn’t matter,” I said. �
�He saw you?”

  “I was quiet enough. It’s like he has eyes in the back of his head.”

  “But did he see you?”

  “No,” Mary said. “I ducked out of the way as his head turned.”

  I nodded, trying not to let Mary know just how much my heart was pounding.

  “He’s taunting us, telling us to get inside. He has his wife hostage.”

  “Candida. Candy. Or Emily, depending,” I said. I couldn’t keep my hands still as I wrung clammy sweat off one hand with the other, then reversed the process, effectively getting myself nowhere. I was very aware of how cold it was and yet not cold at all. The terrified energy that brimmed inside of me was such that I could have stood wet and naked in a blizzard and the cold wouldn’t have been the first, second, or even the third thing to register.

  Snow drifted down around us. It was already getting dark.

  “I think I can beat him,” Mary said. “But not him and the soldiers together.”

  “He won’t give you the chance, and I don’t want to belittle your abilities…” I said, trailing off as I gave Mary an up-down look. She had a tear in her lip, and her best efforts to wipe her face clean hadn’t mended the messy red mark that ran down from one corner of her mouth to her chin. Her nose had been smashed, and she still had dried blood edging her nostrils. One of her eyes was bloodshot. I could see from the way that she moved that she wasn’t nearly as graceful as she should be. She had her arms folded and leaned against a wall, and I suspected part of her reasoning for taking that pose was that it hurt to move. “…But you’re hurt.”

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  I glanced at the church, a block away.

  “That’s not a yes,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. It wasn’t wholly the truth.

  She gave me a look.

  I wasn’t sure if she was going to comment. I didn’t wait for it. I pulled away from Mary, taking a step toward the church and the Baron.

  Mary grabbed my arm. Quick. “What are you doing?”

  I turned around, walking backward, my eyes on Mary. I could see Chance and Lainie just a short distance away, Chance still holding Lainie, who had her head buried against his shoulder.

  “Wait. Stay. Don’t do anything, and whatever you do, don’t reveal yourself,” I said. “I’m going to convince him I’m operating alone.”

  “Sy,” Mary said.

  “Wait,” I said. In the process, I let way too much of the emotion I was feeling affect my tone of voice. My voice nearly cracked. I took a short breath, then said, “Wait. Or we both die, and the rest of the Lambs suffer as punishment.”

  “I hear you, Sy. But if you’re talking about me being unable to fight because I’m hurt… are you any better off?”

  “I’m not that hurt. Able bodied.”

  “But your head… you’re not thinking clearly. No, that’s not right. You’re sharp, but you’re… detached, something’s off. I’m not able to do what I do best, which is—”

  “Making people bleed,” I said. “I understand. I’m not in good thinking shape, maybe. But I’m not planning to think.”

  “You want to fight?” she asked. She saw the expression on my face change. “Sy…”

  “In the meantime,” I said. “Don’t show yourself. It’s all turned around. I’m having to fight. I need you to put the weapons aside and think. Be sharp, be wary. Keep an eye out for opportunity. But whatever you do—”

  “Don’t show myself. Sy, I want to be a part of this,” she said.

  “You are,” I said. “You’re one of the most important parts of this, believe me.”

  It was the truth, but not in the way she wanted. She was one of the biggest considerations I had to keep in mind. I couldn’t let this mission jeopardize Mary, Lillian, or any of the other Lambs.

  I saw the look in her eyes, and I relented. “Don’t worry. I’m not expecting to win. But I’ve got to convince him I’m operating alone. We need him to let his guard down. I can do that, but the instant he thinks there’s more than one Lamb—”

  “Lambs!” the Baron cried out. “Last chance!”

  I tugged my arm free of Mary’s hand. She was still taking in my words, processing the plan, such as it was.

  “Do you have a knife?” she asked.

  I raised a foot and touched my boot. I’d left the knife behind after meeting the Infante.

  “No.”

  “I thought it was missing.” She pressed a knife into my hand. “Anything else?”

  “Everything else. If you have anything from Simon’s lab—”

  She quickly found and held out a syringe, packets of powder like the ones I’d collected, and one of the ribbons she’d pulled from her hair.

  “Anticoagulant,” Mary said, about the syringe. “It’s probably not strong enough to work on the Baron. Or you.”

  I kept one packet, took the syringe filled with clear liquid, and grabbed the ribbon. My first thought on taking the ribbon was that it was a memento, not on how I could use it as a weapon.

  The thought almost paralyzed me. I made myself move, and I was hasty enough about it that I almost stumbled, my actions too forceful.

  The world had been turned upside down. The only way forward was one that wouldn’t let me lean on the Lambs. I was having to fight. Mary was having to hold back. All of my usual social finesse was now clumsy and brutish.

  I shucked off my coat as I approached the church, letting it fall. Putting everything where it needed to be, knife in boot, powders between the belt-line of my pants and my hips, I freed myself to work with the syringe. I squeezed out two thirds of the contents, then raised the needle to my face. I hauled out the plunger, and with it, a share of the vitreous fluid from within my eyeball.

  It was tricky work, when I was walking as fast as I was. I tore off a corner of a packet and added the contents to the fluid. I did the same for another packet, and then replaced the plunger. I shook it, mixing it as well as I could, and then put the needle into my left eye.

  My head pounded as I forced the contents into the orb of my eye. Fluid bubbled out from the insertion point, and it burned as it touched my eyelid and cheek. The same things that Simon had used to make his gas, though the combinations and quantities were wrong. I tossed the emptied syringe aside and rubbed my cheek with the back of one hand. I was careful to avoid the bloated, drug-treated eye itself, which I couldn’t even close my eyelid around.

  I fished past the packets in one pocket until I found the eyepatch, and pulled it on. I was just in time to round the corner and find myself near the front the church. A dozen soldiers were gathered at the double doors. More were gathered around the perimeter of the church, with several to each of the side entrances.

  They watched me as I approached. All men, older, some with scars and uniforms that had likely been updated or newly tailored for the engagement event.

  Not a one of them moved a muscle as I approached, except to turn their heads, following my approach. It was left to me to open the heavy church doors. I had to press my full weight against one of the double doors to get it open. I stepped into the church proper.

  The Baron was there, sitting on the stage where the altar would have been, had he had an altar, one of his arms around Candida. He smiled as I entered.

  I took in the surroundings. The windows on either side of the church were tall, but high up off the ground, hard to access without a ladder. The little light that shone through was dulled by the dust that caked the window surfaces. Candles throughout the church had been lit, many set haphazardly, and the wind that blew in from behind me made the little flames dance, filling the entire church with a wavering of light and darkness.

  Two rows of ten pews, with a black carpet stabbing through the aisle, from door to stage. Of the pews, roughly a third of them had occupants, as caked with dust as the windows were. Some were skeletal, others effectively mummified. I looked at them as I moved further from the door, and I could see the thick, old-fashioned na
ils that had been driven through the backs of their knees and into the wooden beams that I supposed were knelt on during prayer. Similar nails attached elbows or forearms to the back of the pew in front of them.

  A screaming, tortured death as they slowly bled out or died of exposure, I imagined. Forever trapped in a position of prayer, kneeling with hands together. Now that the Baron was atop the altarless stage, it almost looked as though they were praying to him.

  Arrogance at its finest.

  “The first ones came here to worship,” the Baron spoke. “I insisted they stay. The others came to reclaim their family members.”

  I glanced at Candida.

  Her eyes were still blind, staring at nothing in particular. She clutched her hands together.

  “Are the others lurking outside, Sylvester?” the Baron asked. “Is this the point where you do what you do best, and bait me into a trap? Talk my head in circles while your friends maneuver around me?”

  I saw Candida’s lips move. Sylvester.

  I wasn’t sure what to read in her expression. I’d made a promise to Lillian that I would help Candida. Was it hope I saw, or despair?

  “Or are you alone?” the Baron purred.

  The word caught my attention. My eye met his.

  “You are. I can see it,” he said. “That’s a look I’ve seen on many faces.”

  I remained where I was, halfway down the aisle. Behind me, the door slammed shut.

  “When addressed by a noble, law dictates you must reply and reply with due respect, Sylvester,” the Baron said.

  The nice thing about walking away from all of this is that I don’t have to pay attention to what the law dictates.

  My teeth clenched. I walked between the pews so I could keep walking while maintaining a moderate distance from the Baron. I chose a direction that would keep my good eye pointed his way.

  “Nothing to say, then. Shall I put the lovely miss Candida Gage to the sword, then?”

  He moved the arm that held her against his side, and gripped her head, moving it to expose her throat. In one smooth motion, he drew his rapier, and moved it to her bare neck.

  The barely-restrained emotion that had inured me against the cold made me somehow able to stand still as he drew the sword against the flesh of her neck. A line of blood appeared, then widened. Her hands went up, clutching at his wrist, and yet she was unable to stop him as he moved the sword back and forth, sawing faintly against the flesh of her throat as if he was playing a violin.