Twig

by wildbow

  “The man doesn’t want to be found. But I don’t think he’s one to sit still and keep quiet, either.”

  “Rumblings?”

  “Something closer to what he tried in Radham, perhaps,” I said. “Still moving steadily toward a goal.”

  “Ferres’ papers suggest some noise, but it’s almost the inverse of ours. To the Academy, Fray has all but disappeared. No word, no rumblings, no suggestion of activity. They’re nervous about it. Mauer, meanwhile, has disappeared, and there are rumblings, but they’re having trouble pinning them down. They’ve got experiments passing through every settlement, and there isn’t a single whiff of Mauer to be had.”

  “And meanwhile, for us…”

  “The animals Mable created and loosed before we reached Hackthorn are traveling this way and that, confounding the sniffers. They’re dispersing our scent as well as some other pheromones usually reserved for when Academies want to control their warbeasts.”

  I nodded, smiling a little.

  “It might be better to do this with the shapeshifting,” Jessie said. “Because if you want to push the immortality thing, involve Mauer…”

  “…We might have to split up,” I said. “Too many bases to cover to do it as a trio.”

  “Sy,” Jessie said. “I don’t think any of us are in a position to do terribly well on our own. If any one of us have a bad day, on top of dealing with dangerous situations like Hackthorn being on the brink of erupting, or Mauer—”

  “Or everyone else perking their ears up when a few of the most powerful Nobles and Professors start paying attention to something in little ol’ Hackthorn?” I asked.

  “Or any of it.”

  “Dang it, Lillian, not taking our offer,” I said. “Would’ve made life easier if we had a few more Lambs.”

  “We’re at the stage where we could reach out, but…”

  “More splitting up,” I said. “Not just a two-one split, but a three way split. One set of eyes on Hackthorn, one on Mauer, and one voice reaching out to the Lambs.”

  “We should go before those dark clouds hit, make sure our rebels know what they’re doing, fill Helen in,” Jessie said. “Else it might be troublesome to get clear.”

  Her arms were around me, my arms around her, her breath warm against my shoulder. We didn’t hurry, much as we should.

  Previous Next

  Dog Eat Dog—18.7

  The rain was starting to come down. With it came an awareness that the reclining lady of Hackthorn had some very minor design issues. Aesthetically, she was pleasing, structurally she was sound. But the curves, valleys, the windows and jutting walls did not amount to a wholly ideal flow of water. It was a stark contrast to Radham, which had been bent beneath the rain for decades, where the attempts to control and redirect the flow of water were somewhat haphazard and forced. Eaves and the placement of gardens did an incomplete job of keeping bridges and balconies dry.

  I walked over to one edge of the balcony, where a deluge of water streamed off of a shelf high overhead, forming a sharp spray as it glanced off of the wall to one side. The eaves overhead didn’t block all of the rain, not at the far left corner, if I stood up against the railing.

  I turned my face skyward, spray and rain drenching me. The combined downpour was enough to make it difficult for me to raise my arms.

  We’d spent what felt like forever in the black wood, and it had been two weeks with minimal rain, and it had been a minimal rain I hadn’t been able to properly experience. Then we’d had a dry spell for our stay in Hackthorn.

  Being able to actually stand in the downpour helped me get centered and feel cleansed in a way that no bath could accomplish. Even if some of it was gutter overflow.

  I waited until I grew cold enough to start feeling numb before stepping back under the eaves. The others were gathered as I turned around. Other Lambs, crowding the balcony. Mauer, Fray, and people who felt painfully familiar, who I felt I should have recognized.

  I opened the glass doors, stepped through, and closed them behind me.

  “Sy! If we’re going somewhere, I want to come,” Helen said. “I didn’t come with you guys to be all alone.”

  “It won’t be for too long,” I said.

  “Any long is too long,” Helen said. She turned to look at me, half of her face hanging off, long pins sticking out from between eyeball and socket, more pins wedged between muscle groups that were pulled so tight that the metal fixtures were bowing and bending.

  “Stop moving,” Ferres said. “Stop talking.”

  “There are things to discuss,” Helen said, firmly. “And there’s not a lot of time.”

  I didn’t want to agree with Ferres, but I couldn’t shake the mental picture of Helen’s facial muscles moving, constricting, and the metal pins snapping in explosive and sequential fashion, each snap leading to two more, leaving her face a mangled ruin of torn muscle and broken pins.

  There was a lot of power in those muscles.

  “I want to invite Professor Crawford,” Jessie said. She was standing at a table, penning out a letter.

  “Him?” Ferres asked, turning.

  “Justify it.”

  The professor frowned.

  “Crawford’s the brain brain, isn’t he?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Pioneer in neurophysical design. And you’re dripping,” Jessie said. She reached over to a chair, and threw a towel at me. I caught it, and draped it over my shoulders, before starting to dry my hair.

  I volunteered a justification. “Emily’s immortality was one that came with consequences, mentally. Ferres knows this, she volunteers that information, and says she’s sure enough of her work here that she’ll allow her work to be checked by one of the best people in the Crown States when it comes to brains.”

  “Good,” Jessie said. She looked at Ferres. “What do I need to know about you and him?”

  “Politically,” Ferres said. “He and I had drinks… it must have been eleven years ago.”

  “Romantic drinks?” Helen asked.

  “We sat at the same bar, after attending a speech. We talked. It’s hard to articulate just why my reaching out to him now would draw concern. We had zero interest in one another. No common ground. If our conversation were a… I don’t know, a battlefield? A sparring match? It was one that saw both of us deciding the other was a non-threat.”

  “Aggressive non-interest?” I asked. “Enough that it’s a problem?”

  “I’ve never had to say it aloud or give words to explain the social phenomenon among Professors,” Ferres said, as she worked on Helen’s face, setting another pin in place. “Scar tissue blocking the pneumatic channel in the second complex levator anguli oris. Remember that for me.”

  “Noted,” Jessie said. She had been writing when I stepped out onto the balcony, and was still writing now. While working out what to write in the letter to Crawford, it looked like she was writing form answers and incomplete letters to others, with details to be filled in.

  Ferres continued, “Rising through the ranks is a struggle. It’s a crab bucket, and any attempt to climb out sees others dragging you down. You learn to assess people efficiently to better find your way to the top of the bucket. I sat with Crawford, and it was the briefest of jousts. We talked about what we were working on, and in the doing, I sought to find out if he was a rival, or if he was useful, his knowledge a possible way of advancing my own work. He wasn’t either. We talked about who we each knew, and cross-checked each other against the web of interactions, key individuals, political gains and political threats. He hinted at the romantic, in case we could partner up and work as a pair, but I already had no interest in that and turned him down. So it went.”

  Jessie spoke, “You believe you came to an agreement, based on your non-involvement with one another. Asking for his company now would make him wonder why.”

  “Exactly. If he were more of a rival or an ally, my invitation would make more sense.”

  “Don’t explain it?” I sugg
ested. “Leave him wondering?”

  “He would ask questions,” Jessie said. “He’s cautious, deliberate, he runs a lab with an aristocratic sponsor, he’s able to operate with relatively few power games.”

  “The only solution would be to invite everyone,” Ferres said. “That would be hard to justify.”

  I leaned against the wall, towel in one hand while I rubbed my chin with the other.

  “No,” Jessie said, to me more than to Ferres, as if she could read my thoughts. “What if you’re trying to make this as explicitly unpolitical as possible?”

  “I’m always political,” Ferres said.

  “What if you’re retiring? Stepping down from your position, leaving only this finding as a final legacy?”

  “I don’t leave obligations unfinished, and I have commitments for the next two years.”

  “Well,” I said. “What if you don’t trust your hands any longer? Or your eyes? A motivation to seek out immortality and eternal youth.”

  “Justification, but thin, and a long road to travel to draw this particular man in,” Ferres said. “I might suggest instead reaching out to Professor Brad Austin. He and I are rivals, he’s a close second to Professor Crawford in the field, and it’s far less of a reach. He would come. He wouldn’t ask why. He would hope I was wrong and that I would make a fool of myself, while fearing I was right and that I would surpass him in every way.”

  I glanced at Jessie.

  Jessie nodded, and set to writing a fresh letter. “How do you reach out?”

  “No nonsense, no flowery language, except where necessary. He is cordially invited to see my name placed in the annals of history. It would delight me, put a little flourish on the penmanship of delight, if he would be present. He’ll be present.”

  “Noted,” Jessie said. “Then the aristocrat John loft?”

  “Same as I would have addressed Professor Corder. Pleasant, genial—”

  “I remember,” Jessie said. “Pess?”

  “Pleasant will do.”

  Jessie continued to rattle through names, making mental note.

  The storm was picking up. As the wind changed direction, rain hammered the glass doors I’d recently passed through.

  “Does that free up the other side of your face? Can you smile with just that side?” Ferres asked.

  Helen smiled. I could see a kind of light in her eyes as she did.

  “I think we found the source of the lock, then,” Ferres said. “I can restore your face. It will take the entire night, but then we should be done.”

  We didn’t have the entire night. Not if we wanted to get ahead of the worst of the storm. It was looking to be the kind of dark and stormy where crossing the wastes or the dark wood would be next to impossible. Wading through a soup of black mud while trying to keep a lantern in hand, unable to see farther than the light could reach…

  “We need to figure out what we’re doing tonight,” I said. “Who goes where. I was thinking I might go for a walk.”

  As I said that, I gestured. School. Attack.

  “Now? I thought you were putting that off,” Jessie said. Her voice was very calm, curious, and unbothered. The look in her eyes was focused. She didn’t gesture, as her hands were full with writing implements and paper.

  “Storm isn’t going to get any better.” Time. We had a deadline.

  “You’re already dripping wet. It’ll raise eyebrows.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” I said. Prepare. Helen stay.

  If Helen was staying, the best thing to do would be to ensure that at least the initial stages of the takeover went to plan.

  Helen go, Helen gestured.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Ferres said. “If I slip with this incision the work tonight will take another hour.”

  Helen stay with rebels. With professor. Medical, I gestured. Jessie continued to write, her eyes moving between Helen and me.

  Helen go, Helen gestured again. I heard the Professor hiss with irritation.

  There were three bases to cover and three of us. It wasn’t the easiest thing to wrangle. We could change the division, have one Lamb handle two tasks, but it made for a wobblier path.

  One Lamb to reunite the flock, one Lamb to the Shepherd, and one Lamb to remain behind.

  “I’m so restless,” Helen mused aloud.

  “Is this another form of torture?” Ferres asked. “Meticulous work with an unruly, talkative patient?”

  “I’m so restless I could kill something,” Helen said, expanding on the thought.

  Ferres’ work with the scalpel stopped.

  “You’re being uncooperative, Helen,” Jessie said.

  She managed her half-smile, using the part of her face that didn’t have skin and fatty tissues pared away and needles wedged into what remained. “I’m in an uncooperative mood these days. You know that. It’s why Sy wanted to keep me with you.”

  Ah, the latent threat.

  “We’re all wrestling with our individual issues,” Jessie said. “We push through.”

  Helen rolled her eye, the other one held in place by the pins.

  I wanted to say that this was Helen’s belated adolescence, but Helen had been and might remain a creature of countless adolescences. Countless small shifts, leaps, rebellions and adjustments.

  Helen might—

  She reached up, pulled a pin out of her face, and while Ferres wasn’t looking directly at her, plunged it into Ferres’ eye.

  —do something like that.

  The professor dropped, screaming, hand at her eye. The needle was already so slick with fluid that she couldn’t pull it out.

  “I go,” Helen said, firmly.

  “You go,” I said.

  Jessie’s eyes were wide and her expression concerned as she looked at me. She’d stopped writing.

  Ferres’ screams continued.

  “I go?” Helen asked, happy.

  I looked back at Helen. The screams continued in my ears even as Ferres remained where she was, standing by Helen, working on Helen’s face.

  Just a very realistic simulation, when and where imagined Helen and real Helen had overlapped.

  A very realistic depiction of how the scene might play out. Not directly, but in the long run.

  To Jessie, I’d jumped to a conclusion. Jessie didn’t have the benefit of being able to see how Helen might act if left to her own devices here.

  She’d said it outright, she’d laid out her boundaries. I didn’t need a hallucination to tell me that Helen was a danger. But I did need it to remind me of what the consequences could be, and how devastating a mistake could be.

  “You go, I suppose. You have to,” I said.

  “I don’t like how you got when you were alone with Helen in the black woods,” Jessie said. “She doesn’t keep you thinking straight.”

  “It’s a bad riddle, isn’t it?” I asked. “Like the sort that Hayle used to give us. Scorpion, centipede, butterfly, all need to get from A to B, but leave one alone…”

  “Am I the butterfly?” Jessie asked. “Or am I the centipede?”

  “Let’s not overanalyze it,” I said.

  “Alright,” Jessie said.

  Her eyes were downcast. She fidgeted in a way that had nothing to do with gestures or signs, as she became very aware of the pen in her hands.

  “I’ll be with Helen for most of it,” I said.

  Jessie nodded.

  “We’d go together through the black woods. We’d part ways when she hunted Mauer and while I rounded up the Lambs, or vice versa, and whoever finished first would help the other. A few days apart, if we were lucky.”

  “While I stay here, managing things,” Jessie said. Her voice was a notch quieter than before. She fixed the volume as she said, “It makes the most sense.”

  She didn’t want to stay. She didn’t want to be alone. She was trying to be brave, and I really wondered if she would break into tears right here and right now.

  The rain found another direction, an
d it ceased drumming on the window. The spray hissed as it hit the balcony outside, instead.

  “Or we stay together,” I said.

  Jessie spoke, “This is the crossroads we’re at, isn’t it? We stay together, and we keep each other company while accomplishing nothing, or we enact our plan, but we’re separate. There’s a very real chance that we part ways and it’s a forever goodbye.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I know I’m strong. I hold up pretty well, most of the time. But I didn’t do well while you were in the black woods.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Jessie had lost memories, but she had always lost them when alone. It wasn’t a definitive thing that it had to do with her being isolated, but it was an indicator, a bad premonition.

  It reminded me of Jamie, and Jamie’s experience along those same lines.

  None of us wanted to be the one to remain behind. Whoever remained behind might break.

  That was what we were, now.

  “What if…” Jessie started.

  I knew how that question ended.

  “…Three Lambs afield, leaving the pen empty?” I asked.

  Jessie nodded.

  “No sure way of knowing if the wolf will be laying in wait when we return,” I said.

  “You’ve trained very nice, very capable rebels,” Helen said.

  “We have,” Jessie said. “But there’s a lot they can’t do. We’d be asking five hundred people to maintain control over a population of fifteen thousand, give or take. If they lost control, I don’t think we’d be able to regain that same control over a wary enemy.”

  “And it wouldn’t be fair to them,” I said.

  Jessie nodded.

  There was no good way to handle it.

  Mauer was standing by the door, attention keenly on the situation, eyes bright. Evette was sitting on the bed, smirking.

  Fray stood with Ashton, one hand on his head, messing up his hair, while he stared at us with a blank expression.

  Ferres, meanwhile, was very, very still, as she listened. The Hag of Hackthorn was terrified. As terrified as she had ever allowed me to see, even. She was hearing us talk, hearing things come to a head, and her Academy was at stake.