by wildbow
“You killed him?” Mary asked me. It was almost accusatory. You got to kill him and I had to sit around doing nothing?
I coughed in response.
“Are you okay?” was her second question.
“Alive,” I croaked. “Mary, meet Candi—Emily. Emily, meet Mary, Lainie, and Chance.”
“Call me Candida,” Candida said, between gasps for breath. “Emily is… gone? Maybe I’ll be Emily again when I get stronger. When I get my horns and my eyes back.”
“Candida, then,” I said.
“I picked locks, we have a route through, we can shut doors behind us,” Mary said.
All business. I nodded. Business was the last thing I wanted to attend to.
“I’ve got two wire traps, I left the rest of—”
“Take them down,” I croaked.
“But—”
“Take them down,” I said, again, fiercer. “We’re wrapping up. Can’t leave any leads. Wire traps are too you. Too Mary.”
“I’ll catch up, then,” Mary said. “Chance, Lainie, you show them the doors I opened.”
“We’ll go to the train station, find a spot nearby,” I said. “The trains come several times a day.”
Mary nodded, “Chance, take my bag?”
Chance nodded. He looked wary.
“Almost done,” I croaked the words.
I felt a pang of loss. I didn’t blink, because I worried it might squeeze excess moisture out of my eyes. I had to be stoic, inhuman.
It was merciful, in a way, that someone banged on the door, distracting everyone in the room. A window at one side of the house broke.
They’d seen us enter. Now they were giving chase. Some would be circling the building.
We cut through the house, entering the side-street, where Mary parted ways with us. Chance led the way as we crossed that street to another house, where a door was only slightly ajar. We cut through that house as well, then a third, deadbolting and flipping latches where we went.
She was a clever girl. The doors, setting out the escape route, laying traps, it was smart. I’d asked her to use her head while I saw to the fighting, and she’d done so in a very Mary way. The traps were unfortunate, but she couldn’t have known.
I was left pretty damn secure in feeling that we were out of the soldier’s reach, after the third house. We were able to slow down, making our way toward the train station. Not terribly far.
Once we were a fair distance away, we found a place to hunker down, not on the north side of the tracks where the landing was, but across the tracks, on the far side. The occupants would exit onto the landing, and we would hopefully be able to sneak onto the train and hitch a ride out of town.
Time to leave Warrick.
“You said—” Chance said. He startled a little as I snapped my head around to look at him. “You said you would let me go? That you wouldn’t kill me, like you did the doctors.”
“I suppose I did,” I said, my voice rasping.
“Lainie too?”
I saw Lainie shrink into herself.
“Lainie can’t go home,” I said. The words were painful to utter. Can’t go home.
They seemed even more painful for her to hear.
“I’ll scream,” Lainie said, her voice firm in a very tremulous way, as if that firmity would crumble at the slightest touch. “I’ll bring down hell on our heads, guards, soldiers, Firstborn… I’m sorry, Chance.”
“No,” Chance said. “Don’t be sorry.”
The young gentleman.
“Lainie,” Candida said. “He’s not a bad—”
“He’s going to kill me,” Lainie said, abrupt, interrupting. “He’s going to kill me because I know things. He told the Infante that he would punish me, that—”
“No,” I said, my voice hard.
I paused, taking in a breath, “No. You live, Lainie. But you can’t go home.”
The change in her expression, it was as if what I was saying was even more terrifying than the idea of dying.
Perhaps death was a great mystery, but the idea of never going home again was something she could understand.
“No,” she said. Her eyes were as wide as they could get. They might have been puppy dog eyes, but they were too haunted. “I tried.”
“The Infante saw you. He said he would check up on you,” I said. “He wanted you punished. If you show your face, if you reach out to family, give him or them any clue at all, he’ll see to it that you suffer the worst sort of fate.”
“No, please.”
“It’s not up to me,” I said. “The only thing you can do is to stay away. Keep your distance. So long as he never sees hide or hair of you, his imagination will fill in the blanks, and he’ll believe you’ll have suffered.”
“I’ll stay away for a few years, then. Five years? Won’t that be enough?”
“No, Lainie.”
“Ten? Fifteen? Twenty?”
“No,” I said, again. “He remembered one incident from when you were a newborn, didn’t he? Fourteen or fifteen years ago? He’ll remember your face.”
Lainie’s hands went to her mouth.
I screwed my eye closed and turned my face away as I heard the cry pass through her lips. It felt so real and tangible that it almost physically pained me to listen to.
“Candida will look after you in the short term,” I said.
Deaf ears.
“I will too,” Chance said. I could hear the emotion in his voice. “I will too, I’ll be with you, okay Lainie?”
Her broken wail shifted tone. She threw herself into his arms, and he hugged her.
I was only barely able to push down the vicious jealousy I felt, seeing that. She had family.
I turned away, looking out the window. In the doing, I glimpsed Mary, who had made her silent entrance.
“Traps disarmed,” Mary said. “I’ve removed some of the etched guides I put into the wood, too.”
“Good,” I said.
“You said you’d lose,” Mary said. Back to the accusatory.
“Couldn’t break away,” I said. My voice sounded like an old man’s, with all of the requisite tiredness.
“I came here to contribute. I wanted to end him, for Lillian. Then you, what, you fought him? You told me to stay back, look for an opportunity, think about how to tackle the problem, and you went and fought him yourself?”
“I had help,” I said.
“I don’t understand what you’re thinking, Sy,” she said. “Why? Why all this? Is it Gordon? Are you doing what you did with Jamie? Trying to be some golden warrior, tackling problems head-on? Are there other reasons?”
I couldn’t give her an answer. I glanced out the window.
She reached forward, putting her hands on my shoulders. Her face was too close to mine. “Look at me, Sy.”
I did.
There were tears in her eyes. Seeing them made tears threaten to well up in mine.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” she said. “I’m asking because I care about you.”
My already ravaged voice was rendered hollow. My mouth moved, but the words didn’t come. Not on the first try.
“I care about you too,” I managed. The rest of the words followed without my bidding. “I love you, Mary Cobourn. You’re my family.”
She let the distance between us close. Her forehead touched mine, resting there. Her eyes were closed.
If I ask, she’ll come with me.
How long ago was it, now, that I was told I should be more selfish?
Lillian would understand, given time. She had the others.
“Mary, I—”
“Sy—”
We’d interrupted each other. The rest of my words went unsaid. I’ll explain. Just hear me out.
“You first,” I said, the words heavy, the choked-up feeling threatening to send me off into another coughing fit.
“Sy,” Mary said, she straightened, hands on her hips. “If nothing else, you have to tell me how you managed to do it.”
/> I opened my mouth to speak, and only a cough came out.
“How did you kill him?” Mary asked.
“He’s alive,” Candida said, before I could stop her.
“What?” Chance, Mary, and Lainie all said at the same time, with minor variation.
“He’s alive. He’s just, not there anymore,” Candida said. “A syringe, right into the eye.”
“Syringe? The anticoagulant?” Mary asked. I saw her eyes move, the thoughts clicking into place. “Wyvern.”
“Wyvern,” I said.
This time, when she seized my shoulders, it was forceful, fingers digging into flesh. “Are you an idiot?”
Now Chance and Lainie seemed just as frightened of Mary as they’d been of me. Lainie had seemed to forget to cry, and was staring at the ongoing dialogue. Candida seemed to be realizing that she’d said something wrong.
“It’s part of the plan,” I said.
“The plan? Sy, they’ll do a checkup, they’ll find the wyvern, and they’ll know it’s you!”
“They’ll think it’s Fray,” I lied.
“You don’t know that. Your disappearance, the timing, the—no, this wasn’t the way to do it!”
“It makes sense,” I said.
“No, Sy. If they even suspect you, it’ll tie our hands, they’ll start questioning everything! This—” her voice broke a little. “We don’t have much time, Sy. A handful of years. Two to five, with the rest of the Lambs. If they cancel the project—”
“They won’t. They can’t. They need the Lambs to hunt down the biggest threats to the Academy. There’ll be bluster, and threats, but they’ve mostly tied their hands at this stage. They don’t have enough smart special weapons.”
Her fingers continued to dig into my shoulders, suggesting how little I’d convinced her. “You can’t be sure.”
“That is one thing I’m positive of,” I said. “I wouldn’t have done it this way otherwise.”
“If they cancel the Lambs,” Mary said, again. She didn’t finish the thought.
“They won’t,” I reassured her.
“All I want, is to be a Lamb. From the very beginning, with Percy, I thought I would be part of something bigger, part of a team. Then Percy let me down, and you raised me back up. The rest of you, you helped me become something I’m proud of. Even better than what Percy could have done with me.”
“Are you proud of working for the Academy?” I asked, knowing full well that I shouldn’t. “The Crown?”
“I—” she started.
I could push. I could make her side with me.
I didn’t push. I let her organize her thoughts.
“What you said about Lillian, about wanting her to be something great. I want that for her too. I believe she can change things at the top, where they need to be changed. I won’t pretend I’m pretty or good at heart. Lillian is the one good thing. The one light.”
“You say that even knowing that they sabotaged her? They wanted to take her black coat away from her?”
“Yes,” Mary said. “They can try and try again. She’ll have me at her back. She’ll have you. Helen, Jamie, Ashton, Duncan. We’ll find a way. We killed nobles. We can find a way forward against stupid bureaucracy.”
I nodded slowly.
I could see the light in Mary’s eye. The passion. She believed it. That was where she belonged. Lillian belonged with the Academy and Mary belonged with Lillian.
I spoke with careful deliberation, lying through my teeth. “They’ll think the formula was Fray’s, because it was imperfect. It wasn’t prepared with the same doses and quantities the Academy would use if they were giving me my dose. They’ll think that if I had a dose of wyvern and used it, then I would have used an Academy dose, not the imperfect dose that Simon brewed.”
Mary, going by the expression on her face, clearly didn’t believe me.
“Trust me,” I said.
“You—”
“Trust me,” I said, again.
I prayed she wouldn’t speak up again. I wasn’t sure I could ask her to do it a third time.
She didn’t make me. She still looked obviously uncomfortable as she sat beside me, looking out the window.
Her hand found my bandaged one, and she squeezed, very gently. Her thumb rubbed back and forth along the back of my hand.
Candida was staring in my general direction. Not quite at me, but in my direction. She’d heard everything, and unlike Chance and Lainie, she had something of an idea of what was happening and who the Lambs were.
Mercifully, she was silent. She’d opened her mouth once already, and in the doing she’d spared me from asking Mary to come with me. I would thank her for it later, but until I did, she would likely see it as a mistake, an overstep.
Chance and Lainie, meanwhile, were silent. Lainie’s wide-eyed stare at me was filled with emotion. Blame, fear, dependency and horror. There was less life in her eyes than there was in Candida’s.
And Chance… Chance was quiet. Tension stood out in his neck and shoulders. His focus was on some point a thousand yards off, his mind at work as he wrapped his head around his new reality. One day, perhaps, he would blame me. Or perhaps he’d think back to when he’d picked us out, thinking it was his choice, and he’d blame himself.
I counted the seconds in my head, because I was impatient and simultaneously didn’t want another second to pass.
I felt the rumble, the movement of the train along the tracks.
Chance held the bags in one hand and supported Lainie with the other. Mary helped Candida to her feet.
From the look of it, the train was all cargo. Things for a celebration tomorrow, perhaps, or bags for the nobles who had arrived while I dealt with the Baron. As a group, we all made our way to the train. I let Mary take the lead with Candida, and kept an eye on Chance and Lainie, walking beside Lainie.
“The train is going the wrong way,” Mary said, looking back at me.
“It’s fine,” I said. “We get out of here first, and we get home second. We’ll be able to drop these guys off and see them on their way.”
Mary nodded.
Candida said something, and Mary responded. I didn’t listen and I didn’t hear. My ears and the space between them were all full of noise.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I needed to be able to see.
Falling a half-step behind Lainie, so she wouldn’t see what I was doing, I reached behind my back and I drew the pistol I’d taken from the Baron’s soldier. Holding it at my hip, so my body helped further block the view of the weapon from Lainie and Chance, I pointed it at Mary.
Almost, I almost got so choked up I started coughing. It would have been disastrous.
“I’m going to retaliate,” Mary the Phantom whispered to me. “Unless you kill me.”
The real Mary walked on, oblivious.
Passing it behind my back, I put the gun in my other hand. The fingers were damaged and weak, the bandages made for padding that made it harder to get my finger inside the trigger guard, and it was closer to Lainie.
I aimed it, glancing around the surroundings. We weren’t in plain view of the train. We had to round corners to get there.
Tears flooded my eyes, and I blinked them clear. It left me only a moment of visibility before I would be blinded by my own biology once more.
My thumb pulled the hammer back, and it clicked.
Mary turned, whirling on the spot, hair and skirt moving around her. I had to pause a fraction of a second, to ensure I had the shot.
I didn’t even see the knife before it flew out of her hand, embedding itself in my shoulder.
I’d tipped her off. She’d had an inkling of suspicion.
But she’d played with kid gloves, made assumptions. The knife was in my right shoulder, the gun was in my left hand.
I pulled the trigger, and saw the spray of blood. Mary toppled before she could throw another knife.
She collapsed onto the road, and I hurried to point the gun at her again
as she reached for the bottom of her shirt. Her right knee was obliterated. The bullet had gone in the back and out the front where the kneecap was.
But the hardest thing to look at, above the pain, the damage I’d done to beautiful, graceful Mary, was the look in her eyes. So much anger.
“Don’t,” I warned her. My voice went high, “Don’t make me shoot again.”
Her hand moved away from the bottom of her shirt.
“Thank you,” I told her.
Her mouth opened, her jaw chattering in the process. The pain was already hitting her, then.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I’m not going home,” I said.
I watched her expression change. I saw the pieces fall into place.
“Since when? Gordon?”
“Yes. Lillian’s black coat was the final straw, but I think I would have left anyway.”
I saw the pain touch her expression. She brought her knee closer toward her chest, hands moving toward it.
“Don’t,” I warned her, again.
The pain remained, but she stopped reaching for the knives under her skirt and at her boots.
“The Firstborn,” she said.
“The Firstborn are with the families and the families are steering well clear of the train station,” I said. “You’ll find a way onto another train. And you know where Mcormick is, though that’s a bit of a distance to crawl. You’ll live.”
“You’re a bastard,” Mary said, with more vehemence than I’d imagined.
“Absolutely,” I said. “But I’m a bastard that tried to cover the bases. I left a message for Jamie. The story is that you saw me leave and you figured out why. You left a message for Jamie, he’ll forge it, saying that you chased me. You tried to stop me from killing the Baron.”
I suspected the gunshot wound hurt me as much as it hurt her. I heard her make a small sound of pain.
“They’ll be suspicious. Knee injuries are a pain to fix, and they won’t be in a rush. The Lambs will be questioned, but with the Baron and the Duke removed from the picture, it should be just the Academy that’s focused on you. With all of the key pieces that are in play, the Lambs are too valuable. But a couple of months, half a year? They’ll keep you guys out of the picture. That’s enough of a head start for me.”
“I’m supposed to tell them that you got the drop on me? While I was tracking you?” Mary asked. The anger was there. Fury like I’d never seen before, even when Percy was in the picture.