Twig

by wildbow

She heard the jangle of the chain.

  “I’m going to come in there,” the captain said. “You’re going to give me your hand, and I’m going to cuff one of your wrists.”

  Evette waited.

  The man stepped into the room, set one foot on the puddle of soapy water, and sprawled.

  She lunged, driving one foot into the man’s stomach as she walked on him, kicking him across the face as she entered the doorway.

  The subordinate that had first opened the door was there.

  She’d noted the nature of the floor earlier. Now she dropped. Still slick, soapy all over, she slid hard into one of his legs, toppling him.

  His hand grappled for her, his fingernails scraped skin, but found no purchase.

  “He’s getting away!” the man roared. “Fuck!”

  There were others in the apartment. A man sat by the window with a long rifle. Quick to react, rising to his feet as he drew a gun. She figured out the way to the front door, then bolted for it, using the passage into the hallway as a way to get out of the man’s field of view.

  A fourth man was in the hallway, guarding the closed front door. A harder barrier to pass.

  Still sprinting, she hurled the handful of crushed glass in the general direction of his face and eyes. She had to bring her shoulder down low to drive it into the man’s solar plexus. Being shorter had its advantages here.

  While the man suffered, knowing the other three were about to appear behind her, she passed the pants to the other hand, which had fine glass particulate embedded in the skin and countless fine cuts across the surface, and used the other, unhurt hand to turn the key and knob.

  She hauled the door open, found herself with a grown man on one side of her and a grown woman on the other. Their hands found no purchase on her slick skin, but the attempts at grabbing her put her off balance. She half-fell, half-slid down the short flight of stairs, caught herself, and then hurled herself downward, one hand on the rail to keep her balance as she ran down the stairs.

  Soap and water had transferred from her to the stair, and one of the two that she’d just now evaded slipped, catching themselves on the railing or their comrade. Whatever it was, she only saw a glimpse through the gaps between stairs and railings, and that glimpse suggested they’d stopped, at least for a moment. There were others catching up now.

  She flew down flights of stairs, jumping down as much as she ran. After several flights, a glance suggesting they were a little ways behind her, she paused to catch her breath and pull on the pants. The texture against her soaped-up legs was uncomfortable.

  The other Lambs would be making comments now. Still a concern, that.

  But it could wait. A lot of things could.

  The noise of the soldiers coming down after her spurred her into action again. She ran down the stairs, hit the landing and stumbled, then took two steps and jumped the remainder to the next landing.

  There were people coming up the stairs.

  Timing.

  Timing was key.

  She knew there were people coming down from upstairs. There were people coming up from downstairs.

  If she waited too long, then the ones from upstairs would catch up. If she was too early, she’d throw herself into the clutches of the people below.

  Timing.

  She dropped down to a crouch, bracing herself, and then, on seeing a glimpse of the people below arriving at the top of the stairs below, about to round the corner and look up at her, she took a few running steps, and then threw herself down, one hand reaching for the railing.

  She vaulted over, down to the stairs well below her, reaching for the railing on the far wall as something to catch and keep her from landing on the stairs and tumbling the rest of the way down.

  A hand seized her by the ankle, coarse and rough enough to bite into skin and find purchase there. With sheer strength and a twist of the man’s body for leverage, she was hauled down out of the air, onto the stairs and landing.

  It was Mauer, and two of Mauer’s lieutenants. She might have recognized one as being from Lugh.

  Mauer looked tired, far older than he’d looked the first time she’d seen him. Or had Sylvester painted a prettier picture in his mind’s eye? Mauer’s coppery hair was longer and shaggier, his face slightly drawn, but his eyes were sharp.

  “Trust you to make an entrance, Sylvester,” Mauer spoke.

  That voice. The younger jamie would have a perfect word for the sound of it.

  She looked up at the man and smiled. “Just who I wanted to see.”

  “Yet you didn’t seem satisfied with staying put?” Mauer asked.

  “The head wound and lack of explanation led me to assume the worst,” she said.

  The men from upstairs were catching up now.

  Mauer looked up at them.

  “Charleston got the soap from the tub, but forgot the soap by the sink, or vice versa. The boy might have blinded Flinn, we didn’t think about the lighting.”

  Mauer pursed his lips.

  “We left our last meeting on good terms,” Evette said. “I hoped this one would go considerably better.”

  “Mm,” Mauer made a sound.

  For a man with such a powerful voice, he was being very quiet.

  He settled his eyes on Evette. He seemed to take a long moment to study her.

  “But you aren’t the Sylvester I knew,” he said.

  “Ah,” she said. “Long story.”

  Mauer drew a gun, aiming it at her.

  “I can condense it.”

  “My instinct and logic suggest you couldn’t get the drug you’re accustomed to taking and took something else, with a resulting change in mannerisms and manner of speech,” he said.

  She almost opened her mouth to confirm that suggestion.

  “But,” he continued, “things are rarely simple with you.”

  “Rarely,” she said.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  She thought back to the conversation with the others. The discussion of what part of Sy they each were.

  They weren’t there or listening in, as far as she could tell, and the pat answer likely wouldn’t satisfy Mauer any.

  “I’m Wyvern,” she said. “I am Sylvester’s pain.”

  Previous Next

  Thicker than Water—14.9

  Mauer’s men gave Evette a push, returning her to the apartment. They nudged her with the butt ends and barrels of rifles, and manhandled her until she had been herded to the sitting room, and they had her take an armchair, before settling into position, with one behind her, another two to the sides, and the rest in front of her, staring her down.

  The other soldiers filled out the rest of the room.

  Mauer was one of the last to enter, followed by two doctors who went straight to the man in the bathroom, who was hunched over the sink. The one who had had glass thrown in his eyes.

  Mauer had donned his coat, which had fallen off when he had reached up to seize her out of the air, and it now hung over his shoulders, more or less hiding his monstrous arm.

  She watched him carefully. He took measure of everything in the room before finally relaxing and turning his attention to her. Even then, however, he gave her a once-over before assessing her as a non-threat.

  “Tea?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  He nodded, and signaled one of his men with the hand of his good arm. “For everyone who wants any.”

  One of the soldiers stepped into another room.

  “Sylvester’s pain,” Mauer said.

  “Yes,” Evette said.

  “Shall I address you as Wyvern? Sylvester’s pain is a mouthful, and addressing you as ‘Pain’ makes me think of the nobles with their pet projects.”

  He didn’t even sound like he was humoring her.

  Explaining about the Evette personality was too complicated. “You can call me Sylvester. It’s fine. Names aren’t important.”

  Mauer nodded. He took a moment, thinking. His men waited w
ith no sign of impatience. One or two heads turned to glance in the direction of the bathroom, but their focus was more on Mauer than anything.

  The rain pattered against the window. It was dark out.

  “Sylvester,” Mauer said. “You and I, whatever might have happened in Lugh, are far from being allies.”

  He made it sound worse than being simple enemies.

  Evette withheld comment.

  “I know you’re a fugitive and that you’ve distanced yourself from the Crown and Academy both, but the very nature of what you are, or what Sylvester is, it means you can never be trusted.”

  “I know,” Evette said.

  “You’ve tried to burn me alive, and it remains very possible that all of this is a long con, with you breaking from the Lambs in an attempt to bide time and place yourself close to me or to Genevieve Fray. It’s very possible that this is a short con, and you are indeed a fugitive, but I remain a piece in the current caper of an independent, unhinged Sylvester Lambsbridge.”

  He’d seen the wanted posters then.

  “You can’t be trusted,” Mauer said. “Even this very shift in demeanor, posture, expression and manner of speech…”

  Mauer gesticulated at Evette in a general way.

  “…I have no way of knowing if it is reality or an elaborate act.”

  “Most would operate on the assumption that it’s an act,” Evette said. “Or would know that Sylvester is exceedingly adaptable because of the drug regimen he’s been on for most of his life.”

  “Most would,” Mauer said. “And I wouldn’t put it past him, or past you, to set up a trap with the subtlest of cues, using my own strengths against me.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I don’t want that to be the focus of our conversation. Because, if it is a ruse, I’d rather you had the slack to hang yourself with. And because,” Mauer paused for emphasis, “if it isn’t, I have seen others with similar looks in their eye to the one you have now, and I wouldn’t want someone else to have called them a liar to their faces.”

  “Ah,” Evette said. She wished for a moment she had access to the manipulative aspects of Sylvester. She felt like every thing she could think of to say would be too blunt or even abrasive. Her thoughts turned over, trying to figure out a good way to guide the conversation.

  Mauer beat her to it. “How did ‘Sylvester’s Pain’ come about? Is this a recent thing?”

  “Yes. It’s recent,” Evette said. She was supposed to be feeling emotional turmoil. She felt bad, but it was a static, flat kind of bad. “Sylvester left the Lambs behind when he became a fugitive. He abandoned them to avoid having to watch them die one by one. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, when you think about it.”

  She expected an answer from Mauer. The lack of an answer caught her off guard, and it was very telling, in itself.

  “He didn’t want to work for the Crown or the Academy anymore. Not after the way some of the others were treated. He went to Tynewear, just in time for the plague. He told himself he could maintain ties to the Lambs in some other way. A cat and mouse game, challenges. Because even being enemies was better than having nothing at all. In trying, he ruined the ties he had left.”

  She glanced up from her hands to Mauer.

  No feedback, no indications.

  “He retreated. There was a bit of an adjustment, but I’m managing things now. Everything extraneous is tucked away and pushed back. I’m pursuing the mission, solving the problem at hand, until he comes back. If he can.”

  “What’s the mission?” Mauer asked. “I have to assume I’m involved?”

  “Right now? I’m working for the Infante, but it’s a double cross. In the end, I’m looking to help you. Our goals align in this.”

  “Do they, now?”

  “Yes,” Evette said, with unvarnished earnestness. She grinned. “Because I’m betraying the Infante, and I can set the nobles up to get gunned down. But it’ll be complicated, because the source I used to find you all here is going to be drugged and he’s going to crack. He’ll reveal the lie, and I can use that to position the Infante.”

  “That does sound complicated,” Mauer said. “I don’t see a reason to play along.”

  “I know what you’re doing. You’re waging a war, slowly and steadily, choosing key moments, places, and targets every step of the way. The soldiers who do it know they’re sacrificing themselves in the process. Because they’re believers. You’ve made them into zealots.”

  “Zealot is oftentimes a sort of insult, Sylvester. It would be wise to avoid ambiguous insults directed at the soldiers gathered in front of you.”

  “Ah,” Evette said. She processed that. It was so easy to put her foot in her mouth, to focus on Mauer and forget the wider audience. Not that she was an actor, orator, or director of any sort of play. “I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

  Mauer didn’t respond.

  The slack he’s letting me hang myself with goes beyond the Evette persona, then, she realized.

  How unfortunate. Sylvester had handled adversity for a long time by escalating the risks, trusting the other Lambs to catch him when he inevitably stumbled. None of that mapped to the other Lambs. It didn’t map to the people Sylvester had studied as he’d developed. It was his alone, fostered and refined by the Wyvern in his system.

  It was Evette’s, now.

  Now, faced with a grim sort of adversity, that risk-taking behavior was one of the few tools that Evette had at her disposal. She had a welling bruise and a cut on her scalp from the blow she’d taken to the head earlier, her hand had been cut by the ground glass, and her throat still had some residual soreness from Monte’s abuse on the train, which was her fault. Getting hurt in the process was a part of the gambles she took.

  Now Mauer had prepped the noose for her, and she was left to wonder if the fact that it was metaphorical meant she was any less likely to inadvertently harm herself with it as she so easily hurt herself with other things.

  “You’re going to run out of people, Mauer. I know you hope to turn this into a movement with the initial victories. That’s how you operate. But it’s going to take time to find new people who are willing to die for the cause. The Academy will develop countermeasures. Even for your next attack, which I’m betting you’re already planning, I’m sure you’re calculating odds, weighing that nine or twelve or fifteen percent chance that you’ll make your play and they’ll have an answer. Something that goes beyond the sniper-hunting, wall-crawling warbeasts. The next mission will be riskier, as will the one after that.”

  “Do you see me as a zealot?” Mauer asked.

  “Huh?” she asked. She didn’t miss that he’d used the word, so soon after criticizing her for using it. The real, whole Sylvester would have been able to gather something from that, but she was left trying to wrap her head around the question.

  “You seem to be implying I’m not as willing to die as any of my soldiers.”

  “I don’t imagine you are,” she said. “But that’s not what I’m trying to convey or accuse you of. You’re working with Fray. She probably has something up her sleeve. But maybe she hasn’t told you. Maybe you have doubts, after the primordial thing.”

  “I have doubts,” Mauer said.

  Her eyebrows went up.

  “I’m on the verge of failure. The Academy is a monstrous entity, as is the Crown. You lowballed it on the chances, I imagine. The real number is supposed to be higher, but we won’t talk about that,” Mauer said, his voice soft.

  The look in his eyes was dangerous.

  “Faced with all of this adversity, what am I to do?” he asked. There was a note of concern in his voice. “I’ve worked for years at this, lost good men. Fray is unreliable, and I’ve spent a very, very long time in hostile territory, waging a long war.”

  His voice had started to waver. She heard a hint of panic now, she heard the exhaustion. She saw some of Mauer’s men exchange glances.

  “And you,” he said. He extended his
one good hand. She didn’t miss the tremble in his voice. “You, Sylvester-who-is-not-really-Sylvester, you have the answer. You are our salvation.”

  And with that final word, all of the tremor and the emotion dropped away from his voice. The waver was gone, the insecurity banished. The tone he gave the word was almost one of condescension.

  Everything he’d said from ‘I have doubts’ onward had been solely to bait reactions, to build to that condescension.

  “Create a problem,” he said. “Then solve it. I’ve done it myself.”

  “That’s not what I was doing.”

  “No?” he asked. She could see a flash of anger in his eyes as he swept his monstrous hand out from under the cloak and extended it her way. It trembled, as if it was a distillation of the anger that was etched into his words and face. Muscles here and there stood out against the skin of the arm, twitching spasmodically. “Sylvester’s pain? That wasn’t what you were doing? That mention of pain?”

  The twitching seemed to intensify with that last word, as if he’d willed it to get worse.

  “The dissent against the Crown? The mention of lost comrades, or the hollow look in your eyes? These weren’t elements you cobbled together to strike a chord with me and my zealots?”

  “No,” Evette said. She shook her head. Every time Mauer used that last word, it was all the more damning. “No, not at all.”

  Had he doubted her all along? Had he saved up the little details and clues that would have sounded so petty on their own had he called her out on them one by one, and built up a case?

  This conversation was a mistake. She wasn’t equipped for this any more than she was equipped to out-politic the Infante.

  “Whatever you might be plotting, I’ll have no part of it. I won’t put myself or my people in harm’s way at your suggestion.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Sylvester,” Mauer said, with gravity.

  Evette stopped.

  “I have complete and utter confidence in the path we are taking. But as I said, we are far from being allies, Sylvester, and everything I know about you, from our first meeting to Genevieve Fray’s fondness for you, it tells me you’re too dangerous to leave alive.”

  He reached into his coat. Evette startled at that, immediately rising to her feet, turning, with the aim of putting the armchair between herself and Mauer.