by wildbow
Instead, I just said, “Yeah.”
My biggest hope here was that she wasn’t expecting trouble. There were no warning signs. Her thoughts would be on what came later. The plan coming to fruition. She had little reason to watch her back.
So as the soldiers drew within ten paces, and then five, I was chewing the side of my tongue, hoping that she wouldn’t. The buildings on this part of the street connected above the street forming an archway or tunnel that foot traffic had to pass beneath. It was the place where the soldiers would pass by Avis.
I heard the shout as the order was given. The group that was now walking just to her left turned at a right angle to simultaneously face her.
In that same instant, she turned, backing away a few steps, her wings spreading wide, cloak cast behind her where it had encircled her before. In the doing, she loosed her friends.
Her wings had been folded around her body, a perpetual self-hug. Rigging and exoskeleton framework supported her body while staying light enough to allow her to fly. And, it seemed, in addition to all of that, she’d had birds with her. Perched on her wings. perched on the exoskeleton. Perched on her arms and settled on her clothing.
They had been bred to attack.
Lords-suckling mother-cunting birds! I thought, as I ran past Gordon Two and out the door.
She heard or saw me as I left the building and ventured out onto the street.
She turned to face me, and I could see the telltale signs of drugs at work. Veins and coloration, the nature of her eyes, and the way she held herself as she breathed.
The drug was only just kicking in. She hadn’t taken it overtly, which meant it was an implant she could activate with a muscle, or something contained within a tooth. Nothing acted quite that fast, which meant she’d likely taken it when she saw the Academy security approaching.
“You,” she said.
I drew my gun. I didn’t fire it as I pointed it at her. Good thing, too, because she was quick, ducking low to the ground, wings flapping to cast her forward at an angle her legs weren’t suggesting.
I adjusted, aimed, and loosed a shot I knew would miss.
Men were leaving the building behind her. One had a net.
With her back to me, I couldn’t see what she was doing. I was only aware that one of the two men dropped to the ground as if he’d been shot. He collapsed on top of the net he held.
She leaped, beating her wings twice while in midair to increase the distance at which she moved. She kicked the second man in the face with a bare foot, and she managed to slash his face open as she did it.
No doubt anticipating that I might fire again, she performed an acrobatic maneuver in the air. A flap of wings, a kick and a twist, to change direction while still airborne, hurling herself down and toward the ground, where she could land in a crouch.
I’d expected something like it, but I’d expected her to go the other way, where she had more room to move.
It only took a small adjustment. I shifted my aim and I pulled the trigger.
It hit wing, which wasn’t hard to do given the sheer span of her wings, and it produced little more than a mist of blood and a puff of feathers in response.
The remainder of the men exited the building, collapsing in on her from every direction.
“Stitched only!” I shouted. “Humans stay back!”
It didn’t look like they were listening, until the Horse called out from behind me.
“Obey the boy!”
But Avis heard me too. She shrugged out of the cloak, and she got to work. She hurled herself forward, caught one truncheon-wielding fist in her talon, and stepped on the same stitched’s shoulder. A flap of her wings, just barely high enough to be out of reach of a swatting club, and she was able to move forward without kicking off or really using her legs. It caught the man in front of her off guard, and she slashed his throat with a talon.
Every swing of a truncheon in her direction was a miss. Considering that her wings together might’ve spanned a modest barn door, that said a lot. She moved as if the stitched and humans around her were underwater and she wasn’t. Twitchy, fast, with minimal resistance from the environment around her.
High kicks, strong considering how slender she was, wings tucked in close, then a swift unfurling of the wings and a flap to reposition herself, so she was never surrounded.
I saw the man I’d told to wait on the rooftop creeping forward, as she engaged in a fighting retreat, retreating directly toward him. Slowly, quietly, he unfurled the net, readying it to throw.
And, in the moment I was recognizing that, I saw her pause in the midst of reorienting herself. Wings around her, spinning in place, one leg in the air and the other down, as she prepared to bolt for it and find a vantage point from which she might take flight, her eye lingered a little too long on me. I looked from the man on the rooftop to her.
And she looked from me to the man on the rooftop, twisting around to see him behind her.
I saw the muscles in her shoulder and neck convulse.
A dark mark appeared on the chest of the man on the rooftop. A wound.
The birds, done with their initial prey, extended their attention to the rest of us. Pecking, tiny talons scratching at eyes and hands.
Stitched and man alike flailed ineffectually at the birds, and Avis turned to run. She’d fought her way clear of the tunnel and the soldiers that had surrounded her, and she was very probably faster than any of us.
I drew a deep breath, and I aimed my gun while a small black bird dug into the back of my hand with talons, doing its level best to get a grip on the tendons that extended to my fingers.
I aimed while a bird pulled at my lower eyelid with a beak as sharp as any knife.
I put pain out of mind and out of body, so it wouldn’t affect my shot, aimed, and fired, emptying my gun.
Somewhere in the midst of the shooting, she jabbed the point of her left wing far to her right, bent forward, and fell face-down onto the road.
I holstered my gun, and I strode toward Avis.
Drawing my knife, I grabbed the first bird, ignored the pain as it gnashed and clawed at my hand, and I cut its head off.
I killed a second, and then the remainder flew off.
They were trained to fly back to Avis, and they did.
She struggled to crawl forward, bit by bit, while birds settled on her back, head, and shoulders.
Then, hearing my footsteps, she struggled to turn herself over with the wings obstructing her movements.
I leaped forward to stand on her back, stepped on two birds I could reach without losing my footing, and waited.
“You’re an omen of bad things, Sylvester,” Avis said.
“Are you reading the entrails of birds for these omens and portents?” I asked.
“You could have talked to us,” she said. “Genie would have been delighted.”
“We’ll talk later,” I said. “Not to worry. I don’t intend to leave you with the Academy or the Crown. Not long-term.”
“She described you as having your own special rules. Lines you wouldn’t cross and don’t allow crossing in others. You had Percy killed for harming children.”
“Not quite me, but close enough, sure.”
“We didn’t cross those lines. We’re working against the same forces you are.”
“Wrong line of argument, Avis,” I said. “It’s because your plans are so in line with what I want to do that I’m here.”
She was silent at that. I knew she was thinking it through, figuring me out.
I’d been on that side of things. On the back foot, against an enemy who had been anticipating me far longer than I had been anticipating them.
A bird nipped a coin-sized chunk out of my leg. I kicked at it, then aimed and fired at it, reducing it to a mess on the road. Avis jumped visibly.
“I’m just better equipped to see this particular plan through to the end.”
“You think so?” she asked. Then she spat, and then she
coughed violently.
“Which reminds me,” I said.
I pulled off my jacket, wrung it up into a thick rope, and tied it around her lower face. She hadn’t been able to aim at me with her face aimed at the ground, but I wasn’t ruling out the possibility for later.
“Not taking any chances,” I said.
She only glared at me out of the corner of her eye.
The Horse caught up, having checked on his security people, and he brought a few men with him. Together, they worked to hold down a veiny Avis with a bullet in one thigh. They secured a chain in place where I had the jacket, and moved on to other measures I didn’t particularly care about at this stage. I was free to step off of her and away, and to walk away.
“I’m thankful for your help,” the Horse said. “But where do you think you’re going?”
I heard the gun cock.
Yes. There was definitely good cause for why Fray hadn’t worked with this sop.
Previous Next
Bitter Pill—15.9
“That’s a fine way to treat someone that’s helping you out,” I said. “Pointing a gun at them.”
“You’re an admitted part of the rebellion, and you’re a big part of why trouble is unfolding here,” the Horse said.
I turned around, facing professor Horse. I wiped at my lower eyelid, and my finger came away with an unbroken line of blood on it.
“The actual fault lies elsewhere. Mainly with your professor Y. Now before emotions take over, I want to point out that you’ve got men bleeding over there, professor Y is preparing to run, and the riot is unfolding behind the scenes. There are priorities here, and effective management of time is key.”
It wasn’t, but I was certainly hoping to move it along.
Horse glanced back at the injured men, who were being tended to. He didn’t look very happy as he looked back at me. The gun didn’t waver either.
“Now, speaking for myself, I’m very, very interested in learning who our captive here was talking to in the greenhouse. So if you’ll let me go, give me an escort to march me along if it makes you feel more secure, I’ll go do that, you can tend to your people and our captive, and in a matter of minutes, we’ll converge to go together and get professor Y before he can disappear on us.”
“You’re implying he’s not already gone.”
“He won’t be. Not until he hears about the bodies. I’m assuming that when you investigated, you didn’t send anyone to him to keep him in the loop?”
The Horse didn’t answer me, but his expression told me that he hadn’t.
He might have wanted our Professor Y to be a better person, but he wasn’t about to stick his neck out for the man to cut.
“He’s attached to his position. He’d do an awful lot to get an even firmer grip on it, including removing you. If he left without a dang good reason, it would run contrary to just about everything I understand about his character.”
“You really have been talking to the man,” the Horse said.
Lying on the ground, I heard a sound from Avis.
I realized that it was her laughing to herself, her voice muffled by the fabric and chain that encircled the lower half of her face, locked at the back of the neck with a simple padlock.
“Seems like she might know more than we do,” I said. “Which is reason enough to move faster.”
I put a touch of emphasis on those last two words.
The Horse looked at two of his men, and indicated that they should go with me.
“Great,” I said.
“Shackle him,” the Horse said. “And take his gun.”
I rolled my eyes as one security officer reached for my gun, and used finger and thumb to lift up my shirt to make it more visible. No use making life harder and risking that they frisk me and find everything else. The other officer pulled out a pair of cuffs. They were a modern sort, which was doubly annoying—‘u’ shaped bands of metal that both fit into bars. The bar was ratcheted up to my wrist, then the key withdrawn. Just tight enough that I could feel my pulse throbbing against the bar.
The security officer put the other shackle on his own wrist.
“I’ll find you,” the Horse said.
“Here? There’s nothing to see here. Keep eyes on things closer to the heart of the Academy, watch the exits of the offices, keep an eye on the crowds and see if there’s any stirring, anything being passed around,” I said. “We’ll meet you at the library, and we’ll move on Professor Y together. With luck, he won’t have any other hirelings, and this is all the bleeding I have to do today.”
Avis twisted around on the ground. Veins still stood out, and her eyes were bloodshot. Her expression, intense, one brow arched, was the body language equivalent of screaming, “I know you’re up to something!”
I remained calm, even as she struggled with the stitched who held her. She was gagged with chain included as part of the gag. Her hands were bound behind her, and a chain encircled her body, trapping her wings against it. More binding secured her legs and the feet with talons built into them.
I would have liked to encourage professor Horse to keep Avis under lock and key, but I worried that it would have the opposite effect.
Besides, it didn’t matter too much. The man was fairly firm in his convictions, and he actually seemed to care about the people who served under him. The damage done and the deaths seemed to have left their mark on him, because he was distracted.
I wasn’t planning on sticking around, either.
“To the greenhouse, escorts!” I proclaimed.
The two men looked less than impressed.
But the Horse nodded, and I was led off.
Alright then.
This wasn’t a sustainable series of events, really. Being shackled was bad, because it meant I had little chance of escaping the chain of events that would see me in Academy custody.
I could play along for a while, but I didn’t get the impression that I could change the Horse’s mind on things.
“He really doesn’t like me, huh?” I asked.
“You’re a rebel, he said,” said the soldier I was cuffed to. The man was young, prematurely balding, and his short hair didn’t help hide it. He had a nasty talon-wound on his forehead, but it had already had something applied to it—a quick daubing of some styptic.
“I’m just surprised at the depth of the Horse’s dislike, really,” I said. Testing.
“Professor Horsfall fought them down south,” the officer said.
Not taking up the nickname, but jumping straight to professor Horsfall. He was respected, then.
I could use that.
“So I gather he manages security and he’s the one the students like and go to, professor Y is part of things because he’s smart and opportunistic with some good manipulation skills, and the fat cat aristocrat has the final say when it comes to the purse strings. Strength, cunning, and money, in three different corners of the power triangle?”
“Sure,” the guy said.
Laconic, this guy.
His right hand was cuffed to my left, and the soldier walking to my right was free, just keeping a mild eye on me while he walked, glancing around him.
I began playing up my limp, where my leg was already bleeding.
“Makes it hard for me. See, I became a rebel because every professor I ran into was of Professor Y’s ilk. I can’t stand the Crown because every person with any power that isn’t Academy is like that aristocrat guy who manages the Academy. So I’m kind of really floored that I’ve run into someone who seems decent.”
“You talk a lot, huh?” Mr. Laconic asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Mostly when I’m nervous. Or to think through problems. Also, talking helps distract from the fact that I’m bleeding in twenty places and it kind of hurts.”
“We all are,” Mr. Laconic said.
“I’m just glad we were able to stop her,” I said. “I’m not good for much else, but I can deal with that type alright. I’m assuming Horsfall wi
ll be fair to her?”
“Fair as she deserves,” Mr. Laconic said.
“He’ll be fair,” the other officer countered.
I played up my limp more, and eyed a paving stone that lay slightly ajar on the path ahead. If I kicked it with enough strength mid-stride, I could manage a pretty convincing trip and fall. I wouldn’t fall all the way, but still, it would be a step.
I’d need another step to complete the maneuver.
“Yeah. I got the impression he wasn’t the kind to abuse a prisoner,” I said.
Build rapport, reinforce ideas, us versus them, don’t hurt prisoners, we’re on the same page about Horsfall being a good guy.
The officer to my right lit up a cigarette.
Scratch that. I might not need another step to my plan after all.
“May I?” I asked.
The man gave me a sidelong glance.
Then he tapped out another cigarette, handing it to me, before striking a match and holding a flame to the cigarette.
“Thank you,” I said. “Goes a ways toward calming my nerves.”
“Yeah,” the man said.
He offered one to his friend.
Take it, I thought. Take it. You know you want it.
He reached out, taking the cigarette. Because one of his hands was occupied with the shackle and my hand, his buddy leaned across me to provide the lit match.
I moved closer to the man I was shackled to to make room, reached across my lower ribs with my free hand, and paused, waiting a moment.
“Steady,” the other officer said, as they tried to coordinate.
In that moment, while their focus was elsewhere, I lifted Mr. Laconic’s gun free of its holster. I held it by the handle, the chamber against my wrist, the barrel against my lower arm, in as casual a position as I could manage, and readjusted the strap of my bag on my left shoulder
Moving my arm back, I slid the gun between my bag and my back. The bag was heavy enough and had enough stuff toward the bottom end that the gun was held in place.
Just fine, this. Had I not had the opportunity afforded by the match, I could have kicked the stone and lifted the gun in the midst of tripping and climbing up the man to find my balance. It might have required more of a distraction or a redirection of attention to my leg if I wanted to move the gun across me and into a temporary hiding spot. Maybe to my injured leg. Maybe I could have bumped into a wound. Maybe I could have used exhaled smoke to cloud the movement.