Twig

by wildbow

  “You go to the downtown area to panhandle. Very close to Beattle Academy. You see things. Hear things.”

  “I don’t see or hear anything,” the child said.

  I could see the whites of their eyes. Even the ones peering out of the nest. It was easy to see that they were fixated on the biscuits.

  “Fine,” I said. “It would be nice if you could keep an eye out, but it’s not obligatory.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t trust someone who offers something for nothing.”

  “Then you can give me information, and I’ll give you these.”

  I moved my hand, waving the biscuits in a lazy side to side motion. The snake charmer drawing the attention of the snake with the movement of the end of their instrument.

  “What information?” the child asked.

  “Have any children gone missing?”

  That got me a shrug.

  Shot in the dark, that.

  “What are you doing for the colder parts of fall and winter?”

  Another shrug.

  “Okay. I’ll give you some clothes and blankets, and let you know where you can stay if you can’t stay out here. Money too, if you want. But I’m going to ask you to keep an eye on some people. You can tell me if you see them.”

  The child paused, then nodded.

  I extended the hand with the roll of biscuits.

  The child snatched at the entire damn thing, stealing it from my hand. Within a moment, three biscuits had been shoved into their mouth. No offering to the others. Taking their share first.

  “You agreed faster than I thought you would,” I said.

  It took the child about a minute to choke the mouthful of biscuits down.

  “She trusts you,” the child said.

  That said, the child turned and retreated into the nest.

  I remained sitting for a little while, listening to the waves. I might have sat for longer, but I remembered Jessie being cold.

  “Thought so,” I murmured to myself. I stood, and began walking along the base of the wall, away from the nest.

  Jessie walked the walltop above me.

  I held out one hand, gesturing.

  A second, partially eaten roll of biscuits bounced off of the top of my head, not the palm of my hand. I caught it out of the air before it could get all sandy.

  “Unkind,” I said.

  “You threw your jacket at my face,” Jessie said. “I’m not letting you get away with stuff. Quid pro quo.”

  She was wearing my jacket, now that I looked up.

  Now that we were farther along, the wall was getting closer to the beach. After a little while, it would slope gently into the sand.

  “We get the trust of the stray, and that gets us the trust of the chief cub. As twelve year olds go, they’re the most territorial and… respected?” I said, making that last part a question.

  “Respected enough. Nobody picks fights with that one. Doesn’t hold back in a fight. Every last fight is a life or death one to that child, whatever it was that happened to them.”

  “It makes others pay attention to them. Showing we work with the chief cub will get us a lot of cachet with the other children downtown. We’ll win them over in one fell swoop. That gives us the kind of eyes that even Pierre can’t provide.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Let’s also hope the others put the kettle on. I could do with some tea,” I said.

  Jessie made a sound of agreement.

  It wasn’t too long of a walk to the building we were camping out in. It was a tall building, set on a hill, which offered an even greater view. Three stories, but proportioned so that each floor was scarcely larger than a typical room in the average house.

  It might have been a lighthouse once, or a watchtower, but refurbishment had stripped away any utility and offered very little more space in the bargain.

  We let ourselves in, and saw a half-dozen faces within. Men and women, and one rabbit-headed man. Two of the men reached for guns as the door opened.

  They recognized Jessie and I and put the guns away.

  “Back already?” I asked Pierre.

  “Yes,” Pierre said, meeting my eyes with his bloodshot ones. “I’m quick like that. I put tea on, by the way.”

  “You’re too good to us,” Jessie said.

  “We had some success on our end,” I said. “The stray gave us a once-over and decided we were fine. Now the feral children trust us. Will make something small happen tomorrow. Some good feelings about Leah.”

  “Unless Pierre says that trust isn’t warranted,” Jessie said, going straight to the stove. She hung up my jacket on a chair back near it, then checked the kettle. It bubbled as she tilted it.

  “She went straight to the Rank,” Pierre said.

  The Rank. A local delinquent gang, consisting of current, former, and hopeful students.

  Entirely unsurprising and yet disappointing.

  “A double agent, then?” I asked.

  “Working with us doesn’t mean that she can’t work with the Rank,” Jessie said.

  “True.”

  “There was more,” Pierre said. “A name came up, one that you said to watch out for. Genevieve.”

  “Fray. She’s coming?” I asked.

  The rabbit head nodded. “From Trimountaine.”

  I glanced at Jessie, who was warming her hands by the fire as she waited for the kettle to finish boiling.

  Our choice to camp out here at what I’d described as the cliff at the edge of the world had been a choice made with some strategy in mind.

  Mauer had been shifting his footing to position himself to where the receptive ears were. The disaffected, the frustrated, the furious. Once he had their ear, the man could make them zealots.

  Fray had other methodologies, her eye turned in the direction of things and people she could use. The actions she could take with the widest-reaching ripples of consequence.

  After assessing a variety of possibilities, we’d settled on this location, as a spot that one of the rebel leaders was likely to go. A place where we could move effectively against the Academy.

  So often, Fray was the one being chased. This time, we would be laying in wait for her, our traps and schemes set up in advance. Once we had her and her resources pointed in the right direction, we could use the knowledge we had and deliver the most critical blow possible to the Crown.

  “Only a skeleton crew tonight,” I observed, looking at the assembled mercenaries and crooks we’d recruited. “Spread the word to the others. Everyone lays low. Pay is increased for as long as nobody fucks the dog and alerts the neighborhood. If Fray makes an invite and it sounds good enough, then accept, and report back to us.”

  Turning the tables on her. It would be interesting to see how she reacted.

  Previous Next

  Bitter Pill—15.2

  “One thing that strikes me, as we make this rebel faction thing happen,” I said.

  “Hm?” Jessie asked.

  “It’s really difficult to find people who we want working for us, for something like this, you know? Because you want good, helpful, quality people. But you also don’t want to be too sad when things get hairy and people start dying.”

  “Which it will, and they will,” she said.

  “Yeah. Shirley is bad enough. I owe her.”

  “We owe her,” Jessie said. Then she paused. “I wonder how Mauer does it. Does he have the magic touch, when it comes to finding people who are just assholish enough to not mind if they die?”

  “Mauer’s magic touch is in tapping into that subset of the populations that is willing to die for the cause. His willingness to send them to their deaths is their willingness to go down fighting, and so long as that’s true he can keep his conscience clear.”

  “Is that really true, though?” Jessie asked. “What about Lugh?”

  “Two parts to that. First off, Lugh was largely
populated by people who were willing to fight the Crown. Off his conscience.”

  Jessie didn’t look like she bought it.

  “Second? Fray’s plan. Not his burden to bear. His focus was the guns and managing the primordials, who didn’t hurt anyone except the Crown soldiers. Or something like that.”

  “Cognitive dissonance,” she said.

  “Yep,” I said. “It’s disturbingly easy to narrow your view, shrug off that responsibility for all the people on the periphery, and let things burn. Dumb people can do it because they don’t think, but smart people? They can be the best at lying to themselves.”

  “You’re not speaking from experience at all, I’m sure.”

  “Clearly not,” I said.

  “And that whole thing about having allies you like who you wouldn’t miss. I’m totally not a part of that?”

  “Jessie,” I said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. She wore my jacket, still. “You’re perfect. The best balance of competence and pain-in-the-assness I could hope for.”

  She gave me that look where she frowned at me over her glasses. “You do remember that context?”

  I gave her my best innocent look.

  “‘You also don’t want to be too sad when things get hairy and people start dying,’” she quoted me. “You said that.”

  “Did I? My memory is terrible, Jessie,” I said. I gave her shoulders a squeeze. “That scarred and melted brain of mine, you know.”

  “Of course. I’m surprised you can even walk straight.”

  “I’m going to have to rely on you tonight, what with my terrible brain,” I said. “Lots to do.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Jessie said.

  “Should be interesting, regardless,” I said. “And there’s our Shirley. Hi Shirley.”

  Shirley was approaching from the other end of the street. We walked up to her, and I removed my arm from Jessie’s shoulders.

  “Pierre said you needed a coat,” Shirley said. “I felt restless.”

  “He didn’t have to do that,” Jessie said.

  “Don’t sound so horribly disappointed, now,” I said.

  “I don’t sound disappointed.”

  “Don’t sound so defensive, now.”

  “Sylvester,” Jessie said. “If you’re concerned about your pain-in-the-assness and how okay I’d be with you biting the dust, you really don’t need to worry. Really. You passed the threshold ages ago.”

  “Don’t sound so testy, now.”

  Jessie sighed. She shucked off my jacket and threw it at my head.

  “Your fashion sense has been deplorable, at times, Miss Jessie,” I said. “When you were Jamie, not now, I have to note—”

  “I’ll take that roundabout flattery.”

  “—But you never were one to be unprepared for the weather.”

  “I cannot predict the weather, Sy.”

  “But you make well educated guesses. You forgot your jacket on purpose. Or… let’s be generous and say you were on the fence and you erred toward the side that could theoretically lead to you having my jacket to wear.”

  “Shirley,” Jessie said, turning her attention away from me.

  “No comment?” I asked. “No? We’re letting this slide? Hoping melty-brainy-Sylvester forgets?”

  “We’re mobilizing,” Jessie said. “If you’re feeling restless, we can use your help.”

  “Great,” Shirley said.

  I listened as I pulled on my jacket.

  “You’ll need to make some stops. Sy and I were discussing while we warmed up over tea, figuring out the next step. We want to take pre-emptive action. Get ahead of Fray, who is apparently in touch with the Rank.”

  “The student gang.”

  “Yes,” Jessie said. “Pierre is already on his way to round up our various agents. But we need some more people. Select ones. So if you could knock on some doors, apologize for bothering people late at night, and ask for some names, offer some work? It’s ten o’clock right now. Given their schedules, I don’t think they’ll be asleep just yet. They shouldn’t be too disgruntled.”

  “I suppose?” Shirley asked.

  “It helps that it’s a beautiful woman knocking on their door out of the middle of nowhere, asking for their company and, presumably, offering money,” I said.

  Jessie pulled a small notebook out of her bag, and raised a foot to pull a pen from her boot. She opened the notebook to write things down. “First stop. Twelve Belvidere road. Ask for Marvin. Short, swarthy, a Bruno without the height. Second stop, not far away. Twenty-nine Belvidere. Ask for Leo. Then we want Stanley. He’s at the blue house on Proctor. For the last person, Rita, walk down toward the beach. Two places to check. Either the broad stairs that lead from the road down to the beach, or further down the beach, by the cliff. She goes out for a walk to smoke at night, after she tends the bar at Fishbone John’s. But leave the group of men behind. She’ll interact better with you if you don’t have an odd collection of people behind you.”

  I met Shirley’s eyes. She looked uncertain.

  “If you can’t find Marvin, you’ll want to find Don. But Don drinks, so he’s not our first choice. If you can’t find Leo, then we’ll make do with Alfred…”

  Jessie murmured to herself as she scribbled down instructions.

  “Are they dangerous?” Shirley asked. “Do I need backup?”

  “No,” Jessie said. “This lot is harmless. Marvin is loud but soft. Leo and Stan work the general store. You’ve probably seen them. Gut feeling, Sy, how much money are we spending in the immediate future?”

  “More than a lot, but not a ton.”

  Jessie gave me that look again.

  “You wanted a gut feeling! That’s a gut feeling. I don’t think in terms of numbers. I think in sentiment.”

  Jessie addressed Shirley, “There’s another reason you don’t want the men with you as you talk to Rita. The men are pretty interchangeable. If we can’t hire them, we have options. But Rita is hard to replace. We’d have to… ugh. I don’t know. Maybe ask for Marlene?”

  “You’re naming all of these names and I have no idea what you’re on about at this stage,” I told Jessie. “I get the greater plan, but you’ve lost me.”

  “Marlene is Don’s niece. The problem is that she’s younger than she looks. Young is bad. And young is… skewed, on your useful asshole paradigm, Sy.”

  “Fair,” I said. “Can’t have particularly young assholes.”

  “Watch how you word that,” Jessie said, to me. To Shirley, she said, “Let’s try to get Rita.”

  “Which means paying more,” Jessie said. “I’m writing down prices. Seventy five dollars for the men. But one-fifty for Rita, if she doesn’t bite initially.”

  “What’s the job?” Shirley asked.

  “A lot of waiting, a little bit of looking the other way,” I said. “Then a bit of acting. If they pull off the con, then we’ll double the amount.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What if I can’t get the first or the second choice?”

  “Three out of four of them are men,” I said. “You and I have talked about salesmanship. This is that. Even if there’s no product.”

  “Same techniques,” Shirley said.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m out of practice.”

  “You’ve had more than you think,” I said. “You got us our accommodations. You negotiated for those.”

  “Yeah,” Shirley said. She didn’t sound certain.

  “If you run into problems, it’s fine,” I said. “We’ll adapt, Jessie will come up with other options. Go easy on yourself.”

  Shirley nodded.

  Jessie pointed. “Take that road. Two streets—”

  “I got it,” Shirley said. “I know my way around.”

  I saluted her as she walked away.

  “Her tone at the end,” Jessie said. “Did I talk down to her too much?”

  “Mostly fine,” I said. “Only that bit at the end.”

  “Di
rections to the starting point? I’m bad at figuring out how much others know or remember.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Shirley is cool. She’ll get it.”

  We walked, me with my hands in my jacket pockets, so they could warm up. Giving away my jacket had left me a bit chilly. It might not have been a problem, but getting cold while dealing with the stray, then warming up with my hands wrapped around a cup of tea while Jessie and I plotted, and then cooling off again, it had thrown my body off. I was slower to adapt to the cold after the temperature zig-zag.

  My breath fogged in the night air.

  The other Lambs were keeping us company. Situated here and there, they sat in pairs or trios, perched in places where they could watch over the area. Evette was conspicuously absent.

  She was likely plotting for what we had going on tonight.

  “How long do we have?” I asked.

  “Before?”

  “Before Pierre rounds up the hires.”

  “Not long. The first groups are going to be meeting at the rendezvous point within a minute of us getting there.”

  “Let’s slow down a tich, then. I want to arrive as they do.”

  Jessie nodded, adjusting her speed.

  “The ravage hit New Amsterdam,” Jessie said.

  “Really?”

  “There were murmurings about it around the market this morning. It’s the latest in a string. The entire city is on lockdown, the bridges are blocked, and walls are being erected to keep it contained. Ones much like the ones they had in Tynewear.”

  “Because those worked so well.”

  “They, at least, don’t have the issue of a master Lambsbridge tearing his way through the city as he runs from bounty hunters.”

  “I like how you exclude yourself from that reporting,” I said.

  Jessie smiled. “Hard to blame the dead and gone. The onus is on you, sir.”

  “Credit’s mine too, then.”

  “The worst of the plague hit in Gomorrah, Sy.”

  “Hm?” I asked. I raised an eyebrow. “Really? How coincidental.”

  “Theoretically speaking,” Jessie said. “What if that coincidence was on Mauer’s shoulders?”

  “If he knows about the plague?” I asked.

  “He picks a fight. He breaks even at best. But in the wake of those battles he fights?”