by wildbow
“Yeah,” he asked, setting his jaw. “Some people aren’t that weak.”
“You’re a zealot,” we said. “You believe, both in Mauer and in his cause. A lot of the soldiers under him have been with him for a very long time. And, to top it off, you’re winning, after getting two nobles in one day. A task you were willing to die for. All we have to do to break you is to target the one weak point in it all, and everything unravels.”
Evette, it seemed, like the monologues.
He was silent, forcing me to volunteer the nature of the weak point. “Mauer. I tell you one little thing, and you’ll know it’s true. You’ll realize a fact that you’ve been keeping from yourself for years, and your world will crumble.”
“Try me,” he said.
We smiled, and we leaned forward, over the tub, shooing back the doctor that was working on the man. One hand went on his shoulder for stability as we leaned close.
In his ear, we murmured, “Working on a double cross against the Crown, on Mauer’s behalf. I want you to give me a location you know he isn’t.”
He frowned, looking up at us.
Gordon, too, was frowning, sitting on the ledge at the other end of the bathtub. “You had to jinx us, Helen.”
We glanced back at the professors and crown officers at the other end of the bathroom. Kinney was standing on her toes to look over and around and try to get some sense of what was going on between us.
“We’ll convince them Mauer just left. That will give me time to take action. I can set some things in place in the meantime. But I need help convincing them I’m cooperating—”
“Sylvester,” Kinney interrupted.
“Look confused,” we whispered, before leaning back, turning to look at Kinney.
“What’s this?” she asked. We saw her look between our conspirator and us.
She’d seen the mock fear.
“Give me another minute,” we said.
Leaning close, we provided some verbal instruction to the soldier on how to look properly horrified.
“Swear at me,” we urged him.
“Fuck you!” he raised his voice. We realized a moment later it might have been genuine, because he reached for us with a good arm, seizing us and trying to drag us into the tub with his naked, bloody self. “Fuck you!”
Hands seized me, and hauled us back and away from the tub. The grips remained strong even after we were well away from the tub, securing me.
We stared the man down. Willed him to cooperate.
If I were anyone else, I might have been able to manipulate it out of him.
The force of will proved fruitful.
A full minute passed, and we could see the surrender gradually take him over.
“There’s an apartment block on Thirty-first and Queensway,” he conceded. “He won’t be there anymore, but there was enough stockpiled there that he wouldn’t have left right away either. The tail might be warm. Fuck him, if you’re not lying to me.”
We liked this guy, even if his loyalty wasn’t to me or to us.
We looked over at the professors.
“I guess we’re visiting the next location,” Arandt said.
“No,” we said. We left the bathroom, stepping into the living room. “The Crown police can go, confirm or deny. But I’ve been thinking. We need you in the lab. We have ideas—”
And, we thought, We need you out of the way.
“One of us can work on projects,” Arandt said. “Depending on what it is you need.”
“Special stitched. With gas inside.”
“It’s been done,” Arandt said.
“I need it done in a few hours,” we said. “And we need something that can produce a disruptive sound, and we’ll need equipment. Lockpicks, knives.”
Evette and I continued to ramble, but we were aware of the grumble of dissent.
“Turning on the Crown, just like that?” Gordon asked.
“I don’t object,” Jamie said. “But it feels precarious. A double-cross?”
“If this isn’t a quadruple cross by the time we’re done,” Evette and I mused, internally, “Then we’ve shamed ourselves.”
“A quadruple cross?”
“Getting everything lined up so that we can take out every major player in this city with one bullet, lined up to pass through all of the bodies,” Evette said. “And we’ll see if we can’t find the Island with the missing children while we’re at it.”
“You’ll get us destroyed before you’ve set up half the cards,” Gordon observed.
“Probably. But if we don’t get destroyed, it’s going to be glorious,” Evette said, clasping her hands together.
We blinked hard. Focusing on reality. We were standing in the room with all of the bodies, staring out the window.
The professors waited patiently by.
Another blackout? No, this had been brief.
We turned to Shirley. “Doing okay?”
It was the wrong question, awkward, out of place.
“Not so well.”
We reached out and took her hand. It was infantile, but it reassured at the same time. She smiled uncertainly at it.
“Let’s get out of here,” we said, feeling as if we’d failed, that the question and the hand holding were far, far too little, even misleading, considering what we needed in the greater scheme and solution to this puzzle. We needed to give Shirley kindness, to reinforce the connection, lest she run away from us.
Chances were good we were going to need her to save us from ourselves.
Previous Next
Thicker than Water—14.7
The rain was heavy, drilling against carriage roof and street around us. The streets were smooth, but the roads were wet and the carriage skidded with every turn and adjustment in direction, the wheels squeaking and grinding as they ran sideways across the road with every skid. Each of the wagons had lanterns mounted on them, and it was just getting dark enough for the lanterns to be lit, making for fleeting, passing lights that illuminated the raindrops on the windows like hundreds of individual, tiny light sources.
“…going to need some warbeasts. Can you modify them so they’re loud?” Evette and I continued what had been a long discussion.
“Theoretically, but—”
“Make them loud, then. Mauer is a communicator. He’s an orator, and every time I’ve seen him, he’s had a way of commanding the crowds. People look to him for direction. So we have to deny him that. If we’re going to get him, we have to deny him that role. We blitz, we steal his voice, and we steal their ears.”
Kinney shook her head, “The modifications to the warbeasts would have to be post-fact, there are drugs, there are machine augmentations, and there are likely resources we could tap into for alternate organs or physical structures, but there would need to be time in the lab, surgery—”
“You can’t?” Evette and I asked. “I thought you guys were good, I thought we had resources.”
“We can,” Kinney said, patiently. “But the one resource that isn’t in our hands is time. If you assign arbitrary tasks—”
“I was asked to hunt Mauer by the Lord Infante because I know Mauer better than anyone the Infante has at his disposal. I have spent more than half of my life, nine out of about sixteen years, hunting people like him. When I talk about the measures we should deploy, I’m doing it for a reason. Not to be arbitrary.”
“I have doubts,” she said, very calm, “I’m voicing them, full disclosure.”
“If you’re questioning me on this, you’re questioning your noble.”
She gave us a very unimpressed look that suggested she knew full well what we were doing, then matched the look with tone of speech as she said, “Perhaps it would be better to tell us what you’re looking to accomplish, and we can suggest the tools to accomplish those things.”
“No,” Evette and I said. “Because I don’t have time to run everything past you. We’re dropping me off shortly, and then you’re taking the carriage to go strai
ght back to the lab to start getting everything ready. Some of the things I name have reasons that aren’t just for the obvious purpose, so I want you to strive to give me what I want, not just close approximates.”
“Evette,” Gordon commented. “You’re not making friends.”
“And you want warbeasts that make noise, of all things?” Professor Kinney said. She looked over at Arandt, as if checking for confirmation.
He was remaining quiet, arms folded, listening while letting the younger Bette Kinney handle the negotiation.
“We want warbeasts that make enough noise to drown people out,” Evette and I said. “Things like this—”
We tapped at the canisters that were still connected to our belt. “Smoke that chokes, for obvious reasons, and some smoke that nauseates, to disrupt focus and, again, potentially steal their voices. You and Professor Arandt will work on more smoke generation vehicles. Smoke with drugs, things to cover other bases, I want them to suffer if there’s even a whiff of the drug.”
“Something effective in lower doses?” she asked. “We could kill them in low doses. Why hold back?”
“Anything that potent would likely kill me. I’m going to be in the thick of things.”
“In the thick of things?” Arandt asked, his eyebrows rising. “Against Mauer? A trained soldier, capable combatant, religious and military leader with a small army of revolutionary soldiers at his back.”
“Because Evette,” Jamie said. “Because her default approach is the unexpected, chancey one.”
“It’s because of the scale and nature of his forces that I’m going to be there,” Evette and I said. “It’s part of a greater plan.”
“I note how they doesn’t even have a good reason ready to supply for why they’re going to be in the thick of it. They just want to do it,” Gordon commented.
“Shh,” Evette urged the spectres.
“That ‘greater plan’—” Professor Kinney started.
We interrupted. “Stop. Look. Mauer expects the out-of-proportion response. It’s how the Crown and the Academy operate. If we kill his people, we make ourselves a bigger, more intense enemy. If we kill him, he becomes a martyr. That carries weight, especially with the way he positions himself. That means taking his strengths and turning them into weaknesses. It means giving him no room to find or keep his balance. We break him, and we break him by being soft, ephemeral.”
“By getting you in close proximity to him, and leaving him unable to command?”
“Among other things,” we said, thinking. I looked up. “Is there a drug we can use to induce ringing in the ears? What’s it called?”
“Tinnire.”
“Do that. Gas form, if possible. Enough to be uncomfortable or disruptive, without destroying. I want a cumulative effect with that and a number of other drugs, with no contraindications. Choking smoke, nausea, lights or sparkles in the eyes, mild pain, hallucinations, a little bit of bleeding from orifices?”
“All doable. It’s a question of asking for the right chemicals from the right batches, keeping an eye on management, packing it into canisters like the one you have—”
“No,” we said.
“No?”
“Not canisters. No. I’m thinking… it needs to be stitched. Or warbeasts, if you think you can get enough set up. But probably stitched. Fill them with gas. Set them up to explode, or exhale it, or leak it when shot. It’s about pressure, having bodies on our side that we can expend while still accomplishing our objective. And the gas needs to be thin, easily dispersed into the air and still effective when dispersed at those concentrations.”
“You’re asking for a great deal, again, stitched would have to be modified to carry a payload.”
“And you’re worried about time, you said?” we asked. We weren’t as good as some of the others at going on the offense, or at manipulation. All we could do was seize on something and push for it, and run them down with quantity of words and ideas. “Recruit more people. I’m sure you can do that, can’t you? Just use the Infante’s name, bring some people on board?”
“It’s in the realm of possibility,” she said. “And you’re introducing complexity now.”
“I’m not even halfway done. The next phase is parasites. The worst thing that could happen is that I capture Mauer and we get to the stage where they’re on their heels, and then his very well trained and very dangerous lieutenants immediately make a counter-play. Mauer will have plans up his sleeve, things he’s discussed with his lieutenants. We get Mauer, they enact the most viable plan, and suddenly they have a person, place, or thing hostage.”
Gordon commented, “And they get the hostage or they take away something that hurts—”
“The nobility won’t pay ransom,” Kinney said. “It would have to be a very valuable hostage, but it’s more likely that we don’t pay, and we lose something that hurts.”
“Very likely,” I agreed. “Which is why we step it up. We need longer-term problems. Something to delay. Parasites. Something that’s time consuming to get rid of.”
“Fisteria,” Professor Arandt suggested.
“Would it be hurt by the smoke as proposed?” Evette and I asked.
“Most things would.”
Evette and I nodded, “Find a way to make it so they’ll stay at peak effectiveness. Hamper Mauer’s men, don’t kill. We want them to stop, hurt, and think, before they decide on their next move. We’ll also need a deployment. Something different from the stitched.”
“I have to ask,” Kinney said. “Why aren’t we outright killing them?”
“I covered that,” Evette and I replied.
“No, you suggested roundabout reasons why killing the men and leaving Mauer alone would give him grounds for further aggression, and why taking out Mauer alone would make him a martyr. Killing the men and killing or capturing Mauer in a massive assault would prevent both.”
Evette and I stopped. There were reasons, but spelling it out meant having a better mental footing. Implementation was easiest.
“Theoretically,” we said, stalling.
Gordon. Help.
Gordon spoke, “You want a reason her approach won’t work? Mauer’s forces are too spread out. They won’t be concentrated in a way that can be easily attacked.”
Evette and I repeated it, virtually word for word. We were speaking with a delay before we spoke, and our attempts to cover it with body language and manner of speaking weren’t perfect. Far from.
“The gas and the parasites, distributed well enough, will be able to reach or inconvenience most of Mauer’s men on the fringes. The lookouts and the groups that are waiting to flank us as we attack Mauer in the heart of his group.”
We repeated Gordon’s phrasing.
“With a distribution that wide, you’re talking about affecting civilians,” Professor Kinney said.
“Definitely,” Gordon said. “Mauer’s men, they’ll be in tall buildings a block or two city blocks away, watching over things with those guns and some binoculars or telescopes to give them the ability to watch things unfold. We want to catch at least the closer ones in the course of the general assault. We’ll want fast moving troops with guns. Expendable ones. Limber stitched, where possible.”
We repeated for him, sentence by sentence.
“Stitched, as a general rule, emphasize durability over agility.”
“But you can,” Evette and I said.
“We can, yes. But I happen to wonder if we should. A lot of this makes me wonder if we should. I’m not seeing the thrust of it, and I’m not a member of your little team of like-minded experiments. Why should we go this far? Explain your rationale.”
Evette and I answered, not waiting for Gordon, “You should, because you want to make an impact. You should recruit as many people as you can under your banner for the sake of this attack, because you want to enjoy the power, however briefly, that comes with working under a noble. That ability to say ‘jump’ and have a crowd of people obey in unison.”
“Arandt,” Gordon said, with a hint of urgency.
We wheeled on Arandt, extending a pointing finger.
He’d just opened his mouth to speak, his arms still folded as he sat in his seat in the carriage.
“Yes?” he asked.
“He was going to interject,” Gordon said. “He’s been waiting all this time to find a point to jump in and devastate your argument.”
“You were going to interrupt us,” we said.
“I was going to add a comment,” the gaunt Professor Arandt said.
“A comment about your recklessness,” Gordon said. “You’re painting a picture, staking everything on this plan, the drama of it, and he’s too conservative and careful to truly want to be a part of it.”
“You have your doubts,” we said, speaking over the last few words of Gordon’s commentary. “I understand. But there’s more to this. Aspects I can spell out later. What we need for now is for you to get started. Mauer just took major action. There’s two ways he could go from here. He either escalates, seizing on prior advantage, or he does something to cement that advantage and burns every bridge behind him as he disappears. One of those actions is imminent, and hitting him while he’s in the process of preparing for it may be one of the few times we catch him with his guard down.”
“I can’t help but notice the infrequent use of the royal ‘we’,” Kinney observed.
“And that last part is complete and unmitigated bullshit, Sy,” Jamie commented.
Gordon was gone, and Jamie was present. He wasn’t lurking in my peripheral vision anymore, but I still couldn’t look directly at him without him dodging off to one side, like an afterimage from a very bright light very close to my eye.
“That isn’t how Mauer operates,” Jamie said.
“Sy doesn’t get all of the credit for the unmitigated bullshit,” Evette said. “I helped.”
“You helped,” Jamie conceded.
Kinney had said something in the midst of the conversation between Jamie and Evette, and my observations of Jamie. She was looking at me expectantly.
“You said something,” I said. “What was it? I was thinking.”