Twig

by wildbow

  “My lord? I don’t understand.”

  “You’ll receive enough of a sum that you’ll never have to work again, and your children and your children’s children will be cared for solely on the interest that this sum generates. You’ll need servants. A manor. Do you prefer older buildings or newer ones?”

  “I don’t understand, my—my lords, I don’t know what’s happening—”

  Her emotions were on the verge of spilling over. She’d found a way to resign herself to her fate, and keep the emotions more or less restrained, but now that this was being offered to her, it looked very much like she might lose her mind.

  “Miss Therese,” Jamie and I said, careful to address her as we might a young aristocrat. Leeds’ sword moved closer to my throat. We continued, acknowledging the warning and proceeding with care. “I would recommend you play along.”

  I’d nearly said ‘we’.

  “Play?” she asked. She looked at me, stunned.

  Then, as if a belated thought process finished, she seemed to realize I had her best interests at heart. She wasn’t adrift, she wasn’t isolated. Her hope wasn’t ill-founded.

  “I prefer older buildings, my lord,” she said.

  “We’ll find you one that costs what someone like your father wouldn’t make in a lifetime. The staff I provide you will counsel and follow your every whim in decorating the place. You’ll need three charity projects at a minimum, to discuss with other aristocratic women of your standing,” the noble said.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said. Her eyes flicked back to me.

  “What interests you? Think of one, quick. Or I shall think you’re dull.”

  “You do not want him to think you’re dull,” Leeds spoke. Following so soon after the behatted noble’s pronouncement, it was a one-two punch, something to keep her off balance.

  A test of more than just quickness of the mind.

  “My lord?” she said, and she stopped. For a long instant, I thought she would stumble. Then I saw a light in her eyes. “The welfare of clones, my lord?”

  “That is one I have never heard of before,” he said. He smiled, his voice still warm as he instructed her, “Tell me of it.”

  “My friend commented on it once, and it stuck with me,” she said. She still looked bewildered, but talking on this topic seemed to center her. “Clones are grown and raised to perform menial work. Stitching carpets and clothing in factories where they sit in row and column with others like them. The law doesn’t protect them, but says that they are not actually human, because they are not of woman born.”

  “The law, in this instance, favors the corporations, which fund the city, which funds the law, you see,” the noble said. “That sounds like a wonderful pursuit. If you paint it as something that troubles children or child-like things, you could romanticize it. In fact, I would see little trouble in giving you my backing for this task. You could achieve real change, a footnote in history, but, even so, that isn’t to be understated.”

  “Yes, my lord. I would… be honored. I still don’t understand.”

  Beside me, Jamie sighed heavily.

  I remained still. The grip of the nobles was too strong. Jamie and I working together couldn’t see any gaps, couldn’t make out any chances, weaknesses, or opportunities.

  The forecast the Lambs had made in deciding whether to try for escape on the train or later seemed accurate. These nobles weren’t about to make a silly mistake that would give me a chance to slip away. No.

  No, except maybe this farce with ‘Miss’ Therese. Maybe there was a way there.

  I wanted to believe that the city was so large, chaotic, and crowded, that if I slipped away, I could disappear into it.

  I harbored doubts, all the same. Jamie and I waited, watched, and listened carefully.

  “Were you fond of horses as a child?”

  “I was, my lord. But New Amsterdam doesn’t allow much room for horses that don’t pull carriages. Even then, it almost mandates the use of stitched ones.”

  “Very true. But I’m thinking of an estate with a stable. We’ll get you started with three horses of a beautiful pedigree, racers, if that’s alright? Fast as the wind, beautiful, healthy.”

  “My lord, I fear it’s too much.”

  As she said it, I could see the glimmer of fear on her face. As if the more he said, the less likely it all was to happen.

  “Not at all, not at all,” the noble dismissed her. He waved her off. “I pride myself on my generosity, you see. Your beauty seems a rare and natural sort. That should be rewarded with wealth and power. I dream of putting Wallace’s law to work, of putting the beautiful together. Survival of the powerful, but in this era, it is beauty and brilliance that offer real power, once circumstance is stripped away, yes?”

  Hesitantly, she nodded. “Yes, my lord. I think I see.”

  “Your family will be brought to you. I saw your tearful look back at them. The love was evident, you for them and them for you. They’ll be treated nearly as kindly as you will be. Yes?”

  “Yes. Thank you, my lord,” she said. There were tears down her cheeks, now. I didn’t judge them as tears of sadness, tears of fear, or tears of happiness. Not one emotion alone. The emotional cup was simply running over.

  “You’ll need clothes. I’ll have the finest tailor in the city whip a wardrobe up. Etiquette lessons, so you don’t have to worry about any embarrassing faux pas or what fork to use. Though you did say your father had raised you in good company.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she said, smiling, still with tears streaming down her eyes. “I would welcome refreshers, should you suggest them, but I think I could comport myself, given the need.”

  “And there will be need. But that’s good,” the noble said. “That’s good. We can dispense with that. I have a good eye, yes? I can pick them out, just like that.”

  He was talking to Leeds.

  “You can, Lord Bonn.”

  Lord Bonn raised a finger, as if something had struck him. “Medical care. A doctor to look after you. So that beauty remains fresh. I know just the doctor. Doctor Bath, your colleague, her name, the one from the Academy in Hanover State? She was talented, nearly good enough to be my doctor, when I was looking for a replacement for Joseph.”

  “You’re thinking of Betty, my lord,” the noble’s doctor said.

  “Betty. Just right. Miss Therese, we’ll enlist Betty. Head to toe care. Tear just about everything out. All of the fiddly organs, vitals, eyes, eardrum, inner ear, tongue, vocal chords. We’ll get you sorted out. Engineered replacements. We can put Betty to task phoning and mailing around to see what the various academies have concocted. If they have any inventive replacements for the heart or the uterus. We’ll leave your skin intact, of course, and your brain. Beauty and brains, so very important, yes? We’ll find a way to do it all without leaving a blemish.”

  The tears had come to a stop in the midst of the monologue. Her mouth worked, but her voice didn’t.

  “Your family will be with you every day up until you decide on a husband for yourself, I’ll have to insist on that, but it would be unfair to ask Betty to divide her attentions. You and you alone will get to be special, as the matriach of a new aristocratic family in one of the proudest and most distinguished cities on this planet.”

  She hunched forward, staring down at the floor of the carriage, leaning heavily on her knees. I saw her rock a bit. I met Jamie’s eyes briefly.

  “Theresa,” Jamie and I said.

  “Manners, fugitive. You’re addressing an aristocrat,” Lord Bonn said.

  We thought that final word would be the breaking point. It wasn’t. She was trying so dearly to hold it together.

  “I would like to hold your hair back, if I may?” Jamie and I asked.

  There was no response at first. Then a faint nod.

  Leeds moved the sword out of my way as I leaned forward and to my left in my seat, reaching out and over. My hands combed through her hair, gathering it up and pulling i
t out of the way.

  She brought her hands to her mouth. They couldn’t block what came any more than an arrangement of planks could bar a flood. They tried, but what didn’t come out of the mouth came out of one nostril, and then she gave up.

  The cup of emotion had run over again, but they were heavier, uglier emotions. Nothing so clear as tears.

  “I am so very fond of my dolls,” the Lord Bonn said, ignoring the snorts and coughing from his ‘doll’.

  “I know, Lord Bonn,” Leeds replied.

  I reached for a pocket, and a hand seized my wrist, hard. Lord Bonn’s.

  “Handkerchief,” Jamie and I said.

  He held my wrist firm and searched my pocket himself. He withdrew the handkerchief and offered it to me.

  We dabbed at her nose, then one corner of her mouth.

  “It would be a mercy to kill her here and now,” Evette said.

  I couldn’t see her, the carriage was too crowded for the Lambs proper to fit within, but I heard her voice, and I heard the sentiment.

  “Consequences be damned?” Jamie asked. “We would die.”

  “It might well be worth it,” she said.

  I dabbed. We dabbed. The worst of it had been wiped away, but our ministration was more to offer comfort and caring than to clean, at this stage.

  “I have to ask,” Jamie said. “Are you suggesting this because you care? Stressing that you’ve never evidenced real compassion before…”

  “I can’t grow?”

  “Or are you suggesting,” Jamie asked, firm, “Because you want to throw us heedlessly into something reckless, something that will get Sylvester hurt or killed?”

  “Ah! You got me, clear as day, transfixed through the heart, I’m foiled!”

  “Be serious. This is serious,” Jamie said.

  Evette appeared, wedged between Therese and one of the doctors, leaning forward to match Jamie’s position, where Jamie sat between me and Leeds. She’d aged down to match Jamie.

  “Doing nothing,” she said. “Waiting, and biding our time, it’s not going to get us out of this. At the very least, give up the seat.”

  “To you?”

  “To anyone.”

  “There’s no escape,” Jamie said “Not from this. Not from this many nobles. The situation we’re going into, we need to face it armed with as much information as we can. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to sit, we’re going to watch, listen, and gather what we can so we’re equipped to act if and when there’s a moment.”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  The arguing of the two overlapped with what Bonn was saying to Leeds, “…color code my dolls. I was thinking blue, perhaps, with the black hair, but then I think of her passion, the clones that need rights and salvation. There is so much we could do with that. I’ll have to get out a book of flowers, and find out if there’s anything that inspires me.”

  “Perhaps,” Leeds said. He was only entertaining his peer at this point, not truly listening.

  I closed my eyes, letting everything wash over me.

  The sound was one of a snapping branch, the whoosh of an aborted breath, then a violent skittering sound.

  All conversation stopped. Eyes turned to the object that rolled across the floor.

  A dense metal center, with spines of metal extending out in all directions. Fine wire extended between each spine. Altogether, it looked like the upper half of an umbrella.

  The carriage came to a stop. I heard screams outside.

  Then, in short succession, two more splintering sounds. These were regular bullets, powerful ones capable of punching past a handspan’s width of wood and still flying true enough for the bullets to embed in the floor or opposite door of the carriage.

  “No,” Bonn said.

  As the next barrage opened, that deep-thinking, pattern-seeking part of my brain that was currently reaching out for Jamie kept count. I wondered if each volley would be twice as numerous as the last. But as bullets punched into the carriage, and I tracked the sound, they added up well past four, up to six, then seven. Two or three more struck, ambiguous in how they came at once, so the part of my brain that was keeping count tried to count the sounds, and lost track of the numbers.

  Bonn threw his head to the left, violently, cracking it against the metal-reinforced doorframe. Not intentionally, I realized. He’d been struck, a bullet to the head. Ruining brains and beauty both in an instant.

  The bullets came from both sides. There was no running, no escaping. Getting low to take cover would have been mad, because the bullets were coming down at diagonals. A doctor caught one of the expanding bullets, which had already partially opened as it plunged through the outside of the wagon, with the bladed metal sinking into his thigh before opening the rest of the way.

  Jamie and I watched as Therese jumped and flinched. She had already reached the breaking point, and this was too much.

  As the hail of bullets struck at the carriage, half of the bullets getting lost in the deep wood of the carriage exterior, we calmly reached out and placed my hands over Therese’s ears.

  It did nothing for the feeling of the impacts, but we saw her shut her eyes, we felt her hands press over my hands, adding her strength to mine as if she could make us press hard enough to shut out all of the noise.

  An expanding bullet grazed me and opened late.

  The bullets had stopped coming from the right side of the carriage. Leeds noticed a moment after we did. He looked at me, then reached for the door, hauling it open, stepping outside and disappearing from sight. His doctors were right behind him.

  We waited, watching, noticed a pause of sorts in the barrage, and then shifted my hands away from Therese’s ears. We took her hand, and dragged her behind me. She was bigger and stronger than me, but she came willingly, looking back only to stare at the body of the Lord Bonn. We left that dark, enclosed space of the carriage, and stepped out onto the street, our backs pressed to the side of the carriage for cover.

  Panic. A crowd fled. Authorities approached. Doctors were out and trying to give care. One caught a bullet as Jamie and I watched.

  This wasn’t the entire convoy. It was one segment. Five carriages, black and otherwise nondescript, but built sturdy. We’d been targeted, and we’d been targeted by people who knew what they were doing.

  “Therese,” I said.

  She looked at me. One of her hands was clasped to her upper arm, which was bleeding badly. A bullet had gone through and through.

  We bent over, picked up one of the expanding bullets, and used it to saw at the fabric of her sleeve.

  “You’re going to run. Go find your family. Get your father. Leave the city. If he works at a bank, it might be a good idea to embezzle funds. Gather as much as you can, get everyone you want to see again, bring them and run. Cut all ties to this life. You have been given a second chance.”

  We’d removed the sleeve and reduced it to cloth strips. We packed up and bound her wound as best as we were able. My experience from Tynewear was coming in handy. My hands knew how to do this.

  “Come with me,” she said. “They called you a fugitive.”

  I thought of Shirley.

  “They’ll kill her out of spite,” Gordon said. “If she wasn’t killed in the barrage.”

  “I agree,” Evette said. “It’s how they operate.”

  “I can’t help but notice she’s recommending the plan, again, that brings the highest chance of you getting murdered,” Jamie said.

  “Without Shirley, I don’t think Sy will last very long,” Helen said, her voice soft, nearly drowned out. I didn’t know where she was.

  The rate of shots slowed to a near stop. I peeked around the back of the carriage.

  Like a living organism, the city had produced countermeasures to that which threatened it. They moved like wolves might, as pack animals, with loping, lunging movements, strength, and ferocity, but they did it along the sides of buildings, headless things that were simply four spindly limbs
with webbings of meat and muscle connecting them. Jamie and I counted twenty.

  An automatic, pre-prepared response to the snipers.

  “Can’t,” Jamie and I said. “We—I have someone else to save.”

  She hugged her arms to her body. I saw her close her eyes, and imagined she was summoning up the courage to bolt.

  “Thank you,” Therese said. “Thank you for your gentleness, in such a trying time.”

  I felt a kneejerk reaction. I wanted to reject it, clearly, without question. To spit at that kindness, somehow. It was an old feeling, nostalgic in a bad way.

  I was reminded of Lacey. I thought of how I had reacted when she’d been the one to show gentleness.

  Now I was in that role.

  I swallowed hard, and, grasping, I blamed Jamie. It was him who had taken the action, who had noticed and held her hair and offered the handkerchief, who had told her to escape.

  “Thank you,” Jamie and I said, though if I’d been able to let him use my lips without owning any of it, I would have. “You should go. Run.”

  I injected enough force into that last word that it gave her the impetus to act. She ran.

  The Lambs were so scattered. It was hard to track them all. I could look places, see the dying horse, with Abby kneeling next to it. Emmett, standing atop a wagon, staring in the direction of the shooters. I saw Mary, taking note of all the guns.

  Jamie was right next to me, but in the chaos—I couldn’t leverage him.

  I looked for Gordon, instead. For Helen.

  Gordon was standing guard near Leeds, watching the noble.

  Leeds had been shot. He’d dropped to one knee by the nose of the next carriage over. An expanding bullet. It had torn into his hip, burrowing into the hollow of his pelvic bone. He was working methodically to extract it.

  As he saw my approach, he reached for his sword.

  “The Infante is expecting us,” I said. I didn’t bother correcting ‘us’ to ‘me’. “This is really very inconvenient, my lord.”

  He looked at me curiously, and in his pain and agony, his expression betrayed more than it had in all our prior discussion. Confoundment.

  The word was Jamie’s suggestion. But it was Gordon who I tapped into, as I saw that weakness.