Twig

by wildbow

  He was the one who’d picked on the nanny, too. I flicked the rope with a whipping motion that used my entire arm, to help cinch tight the loops that included his arm and neck, then hauled back, hurling my weight back, then turning, using the motion of my body to pull against the rope with both arms and with one shoulder.

  Jamie wasn’t going to quite the same effort. He’d hauled back, yes, but his shoulder wasn’t strong, so he simply cinched the loops shut with an upward and backwards motion, then immediately set about tying it to a branch that was worked into the roof-bounding wall.

  Once he had tied it down, he worked on my particular set of ropes, attaching it to the roof. I did my best to maintain workable tension while he did his job.

  On the ground level, there were confused shouts, demands, and noises from the children.

  Then a lone gunshot, piercing and very unexpected. The shouts, demands, and noises were muted in the wake of it.

  A miscalculation? Had Jamie placed his cradle badly, or failed to haul back enough? Had the third been so quick to pull out his gun, take aim at the children and shoot them?

  I couldn’t imagine that.

  Against all better judgment, I headed straight to the edge of the roof, looking down and over.

  I assessed the situation, then threw myself backward before the second gunshot came.

  The shooter was the one I’d caught. His gun-arm was outstretched above his head, caught, and his ability to shoot was limited to firing skyward.

  I waited, listening to the third one talking, trying to manage hostages that were no doubt breaking away from the group. Those orders became cusses as the one I’d bound began firing off the rest of the bullets. Then, after a tense pause, he began shouting and cussing.

  Frustration. Good enough.

  I turned to Jamie and saluted.

  “Sy,” he said. “That was a possible course of action.”

  “I’ve been wanting to do this since I came up with the idea,” I told him.

  That said, I went over the edge of the roof. I grabbed the rope on my way down, my heel finding a foothold in the loose netting. My body weight, while not all that considerable, did tighten the ropes for the person directly below me.

  Shifting position, I slid down the steep incline, both hands and one foot grazing the various handholds and footholds, so I could catch myself if I started moving too fast or if I needed to stop.

  Jamie’s captive was getting himself loose, I saw. I stopped my downward descent from the roof of the two-story building, catching myself, then leaped, grabbing the ropework that had the one wrist of Jamie’s captive bound. My weight, the movement of the loose net and the man’s position meant that he stumbled, head and one shoulder knocking against the wall.

  That would tighten the ropes around his arm. He would be able to get it free in just a moment, but I wasn’t giving him that moment. I half-fell, half-slid down the ropework, the rest of the way down, catching myself just as my foot collided with the hand that was still sticking up and through.

  I grabbed hold of the net and swung down and around, bringing my feet into his hollering face. It wasn’t that graceful or neat a hit. I mostly caught his one eye and ear. His hand, I saw, still stuck up, but with fingers pointed in new and interesting directions.

  Good enough. I hadn’t knocked him out, but he was reeling and hurting, and he’d dropped his gun.

  Letting go of the net so I could fall the six or so feet to the ground, I looked at the third man.

  He had a gun, I saw. That was unfortunate. It was aimed at me too, but he was holding off on firing, what with me being so close to his buddy.

  Would he get clever? Turn on the hostages? Use them against me?

  I was in the midst of preparing the mind-games and lines of dialogue that would put him off balance when I decided on something simpler.

  “Rabbit,” I said, clearly and loudly.

  I saw a look of alarm and confusion on the man’s face. He turned, a moment too late.

  The rabbit appeared out of shadows, moving as fast as a galloping horse, clubbing him across the lower face in passing.

  I scooped up the gun from the ground. There wasn’t much need. The three thugs were hurt, hurting worse, and caught.

  “I have a name, you know,” the rabbit said.

  “Yes. You’re quite right. Spur of the moment thing.”

  “I don’t understand why you call me rabbit,” he said.

  “You don’t?” I asked. I saw his ears twitch. “Is… is that an extension of the previous thought, a ‘you know my name, so why do you call me that’ thing? Or are you genuinely curious why someone would describe you as rabbit-like?”

  Another ear-twitch.

  “Thank you,” the nanny said. “That was… unexpected.”

  She looked utterly bewildered and a little bit in shock. She hugged the two boys close to her with one arm, while holding the hand of the ten year old girl.

  Giving a greater weight to trauma. This was very possibly the worst instance of violence they’d ever experienced. The mangled hand, the kick at someone’s face.

  Lords, even Pierre was a terrible sight to behold. He was a hack job of academy science, straight out of a nightmare, and he wore it with pride.

  And… potentially blissful lack of awareness?

  On a level, I knew all that, and it played into my actions, but so often I tended to bludgeon through and demand others keep up with me.

  But if Jamie was willing to keep up and put ‘conscience’ at third or fourth place in our list of priorities for the sake of tonight’s plan, then I could bump it up when it didn’t cost me anything except maybe a bit of time.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you four,” I said. I might have even meant what I was saying.

  The nanny nodded. “Who are you?”

  “Criminals,” I said. “Scoundrels, bastards, fugitives. I’m Sylvester, and this is Pierre.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t look happy or secure.

  The leader of the trio of thugs pulled at the ropework that had caught his wrist. I pointed the gun at him, and he went still.

  “We were after them,” I said. Truth. “Had the ropes ready, but they took a different route. They grabbed you, which complicated things. Made this more of a rescue than a…”

  I trailed off, looking for the words.

  “Interception?” Pierre offered.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. I used the gun to give him a bit of a salute.

  “What’s going on? The fire at the house, thugs in the street, now this?”

  There was a faint note of hysteria to her voice.

  “Did those men say who they were working for?”

  “The Devil?” the eldest spoke up. He sounded bewildered at the idea.

  “The Devil,” I said. The magic word. Jamie had used lipreading to confirm that the thugs had used it while talking to and threatening the Mayor’s nanny and children. “Also known as Mr. Colby.”

  “They said that too,” the boy said.

  I know, I thought. “He’s a very bad man who wanted to burn the city and rule over the ashes. He targeted the Academy, the police chief’s house, the mayor’s house, various gang headquarters, I think. I don’t know who you are, but—”

  “We’re—” the elder boy said. The nanny put a hand over his mouth.

  I quirked an eyebrow. “Doesn’t matter. But you were probably on his list. People he wanted to hurt. We took it on ourselves to ignite the stockpile of fuel and incendiaries he was going to use to burn more of the city. That stockpile happened to be located in his headquarters, which is a very tidy sort of quid pro quo, and now we’re going after his lieutenants.”

  “I’m no lieutenant!” the lead thug protested. I pointed the gun at him, and he shrank down as he faced the darkness of its barrel.

  “I don’t understand,” the elder boy said, speaking around the hand that now loosely covered his mouth.

  He wasn’t processing. I could see it. Shock, a
larm.

  I was seeing that what Jamie said was true. Violence was like breathing to me. I still wasn’t any good in a fight, but I could handle ambush and assassination. I’d seen wounds of a horrific sort that these people probably couldn’t dream up with some colored pencils, a gun to their head, and a sudden fit of inspiration.

  He was just a bit older than me, and he’d lived such a sheltered life. How long had it been since he’d last seen blood?

  Disconcerting to think about, now that Jamie had set my mind on that particular track.

  “A war,” I said, very simply. “A small one, over the city’s underworld. You got caught in the middle.”

  That was something they could understand.

  “I didn’t know we had an underworld,” the nanny said.

  “Everywhere has an underworld,” I said. I looked around. “Whoever you are, I don’t have any use for you. You should go wherever you were going. Don’t waste any time, avoid the main road and the crowds. Avoid men like them if you can help it.”

  “Will you come with us?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ve got things to do. I’m sorry.”

  The nanny shook her head. She didn’t quite seem ready to break away and leave.

  “Pierre, would you kindly collect the other guns?” I asked.

  “Can do,” the rabbit said.

  I waited while he attended to the task. He came back, guns in hand, pointing them at our captive lieutenants. All three were matching revolvers, which was convenient. I took one and moved bullets between guns.

  “Here,” I said. I approached the nanny. She shied back a bit as I started toward her. Then she did it again as I lifted the gun, even though I’d reversed it so I held the barrel. I reached for her hand and pressed the handle into it. “Finger off the trigger unless you’re planning to shoot. Just in case you run into more trouble.”

  “I don’t think I could,” she told me.

  “If it’s for them, not just for you?” I asked. “You might want to.”

  She stared down at the gun, then looked at the girl, her youngest charge. I saw a small nod on the nanny’s part, intended more for herself than for me.

  “Be safe,” I said.

  That was the send-off. She found the courage to hurry on.

  “Goodbye rabbit,” the young girl said. “Thank you! Goodbye mister, thank you too!”

  “My name is Pierre!” Pierre pronounced, indignant.

  “You’re dead,” the lead thug said. His hand was still outstretched above his head, with more rope around his neck. The second thug was similarly trapped, but only around the one hand. Broken fingers and a tight weave of rope made extricating himself something of a task. The third was ass-down on the road.

  “You sound pretty sure of that,” I said.

  “I know my boss,” he said. He twisted up his face, spitting.

  “And I know me,” I said. “I know I’ve faced down nobles. I’ve faced down more monsters than you’ve kissed girls. A lot more, judging by that mug of yours.”

  I couldn’t resist throwing the insult in there.

  Still, it only got me a snort in response. “He’s a different sort of monster. He’s a clever one. This? This nonsense with the fires? People running around? No law? It’s his element.”

  I tilted my head a little.

  If anything, I might have said it was my element.

  “The Devil gave out orders. He instructed you to find children. Kick down doors, hunt them, bring them to him intact?”

  “The intact was implied. He tells you to bring him something, you don’t damage the goods. He gets to do the damage.”

  I sighed a little. “That’s fine. What other orders did he give?”

  I could see the man’s eyes move, a glance at his buddy on the ground.

  Without looking, I pointed the revolver at the one on the ground. He made a yelping sound, in his haste to exclaim in surprise and say something in the same breath.

  I pulled the trigger, wincing at the force of the gunshot.

  “I don’t know if I have the nerve for this part of things,” Pierre said, his voice breaking through the sound of ringing in my ears. “So much of it is fun, the fire, the running around, rescuing pretty nannies and dandy little boys. But I’m not one for killing.”

  “Want to go for a walk, then? See that nobody’s heading in the direction of the gunshots and shouting?”

  “I can do that,” he said.

  His hand reached down, took mine, and he pressed his gun into it. I now had two, to aim at the remaining thugs. Their expressions were caught between glares and something more aghast.

  “If I don’t get the answers from one of you two, then I’ll find another merry little band of piss-spittles and quiz them. I know that you’re supposed to say that the Devil scares you more than I do, but let’s cut straight to the chase. I pose the more immediate threat. What’s his move?”

  “Going to the Academy,” the lead thug said.

  “Interesting,” I said. “Why?”

  “He doesn’t say why,” the man said. “You don’t predict him. You don’t ask! He can kill you if you ask!”

  Getting too upset, too irate. His eyes kept moving left and right.

  “Which Academy?” I asked.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Which Academy is he going to?”

  There was a telling pause. Mentally fact-checking? I looked at the other thug, the one that wasn’t talking, and there was a flash of fear on his expression, then the look in my direction, to confirm.

  I pointed the gun at the lead thug, and I pulled the trigger again. He didn’t even fall, what with the ropes still having something of a hold on his throat. He dangled, the strength gone from his knees.

  “Okay!” I said, injecting cheer into my tone. “Your friend is a terrible liar. I get the feeling you are too.”

  That fear had crystallized now. The thug had been a fairly decent liar, and I would have sussed it out quickly enough, but his buddy’s reaction had been the dead giveaway. Now I was hoping his buddy continued to be as forthcoming with details and information.

  “Well, it’s not the Academy. Want to hazard an answer?”

  “I—” the man said. His mouth opened, then closed, a fish out of water.

  “If you take too long I’ll think you’re making up an answer.”

  “The train station.”

  That one caught me off guard.

  “Doesn’t strike me as the type to run,” I said.

  “He’s not. He’s laying a trap.”

  “And it’s not a trap for me,” I said.

  “We left the meeting, talked to some people, made sure we were ready for a war. Part of that, we went by the police station. Rang the special bell, talked to the chief.”

  I set my jaw.

  “You’ve got friends or something? People coming in on the train sometime tomorrow? You even asked about them, when you were being arrested? He—it’s what he does. You cross him, he destroys you and everything you love.”

  Previous Next

  Dyed in the Wool—12.7

  Jamie had made his way down from the roof. Deeming the coast clear, he approached, stopped, and took in the scene. He joined me in working to drag the bodies so all three were placed near one another.

  “I should have known,” he said. “In your twisted mess of a mind, when you propose the safe plan and the dangerous plan as a backup, and the dangerous plan could be seen as more amusing or fun from any angle, you’re really plotting to go ahead with the dangerous plan.”

  “Oh, you’re talking about me going down the ropes.”

  “Yes. What else would I be talking about?”

  “I completely forgot about the rope thing,” I said. I gave the soldier a pat down as we propped him up next to the other two. I found some bullets and placed them in the revolver.

  “Glad to know the risk was worth it, then,” Jamie said, with a trace of sarcasm.

  “Colby knows about the La
mbs. They’re due on a train that’s coming tomorrow. He’s already sent people to the train station.”

  Jamie blinked. I saw the concern on his face as he processed the idea.

  “When do the trains arrive?” I asked.

  “Up to fifteen minutes late or fifteen minutes early, but… discounting the six-thirty train—”

  “Too early,” I said.

  That got me a nod of confirmation. “Eight, eleven-thirty, then in the afternoon, two, five, eight-thirty, eleven. The last train is sometimes late, depending on whether the green train gets priority, I’m not sure what the system is. That’s for passenger trains. Again, fifteen minutes deviation either way.”

  “Non-passenger?”

  “Every two hours starting at seven. More reliable than the passenger trains. Five minutes deviation? Seven, nine, eleven, one, three, five, seven, nine, green train at eleven, then one o’clock in the morning…”

  “And so on.”

  “And so on. You think they’d take a commercial train? The trains pass through. Most don’t even stop.”

  “We’ve jumped off of enough trains. I’m just… I’m trying to anticipate the moves the Lambs are making, the moves the Devil is making, and what our best play is. I would have gotten your attention and immediately headed off, but I needed to think, and we need to wait for the rabbit.”

  “Pierre.”

  “Yes. He went for a walk. Didn’t like the murder-interrogation angle.”

  Jamie gestured. Bad. The second word he used was the one for behind, but he moved straight into the gesture for time. Past.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Later. He gestured.

  He didn’t want Pierre to hear us talking about him. Fair.

  “It’s, what, eleven o’clock at night now?” I asked.

  “Close to,” Jamie said.

  “And you said I don’t have good timing,” I said. “That was an off the cuff, educated guess, young sir.”

  “I’m shocked that you even remember that part of our conversation earlier, yet you can’t keep simple names straight.”