Twig

by wildbow

  He could paint a clearer picture, he knew, outline a way forward, and they would follow that path, but he didn’t. For the time being, they had retreated to an island in the midst of a lake, more or less outside of the reach of the blight. If he gave them a goal and inflamed their passions, it would do even more to ease Dalton’s restlessness and erase Isaiah’s doubts, but it would only backfire if and when he didn’t carry it through. No use giving them motivation with no power or allowance to enact it. It would only frustrate.

  He could hear the dogs barking.

  Wil returned, holding a kettle and three teacups, two of which were full. She handed one to Limps and set one down on her seat before bringing the remaining cup and kettle to Mauer.

  He took the cup first. With his good hand, he handled the teacup in one hand, running his fingers along interior, edge, and handle, his eyes turned to the surface of the cup as the firelight lit it. He could feel the warmth at the handle where Wil had been holding it.

  “You have the oddest rituals, reverend,” Wil said.

  “Please, Wil. I’m not taking that role at present.”

  “You’ve done a fine job the last few nights, if I may say so,” she said.

  “Even tonight,” Isaiah said.

  Mauer shook his head. He balanced the teacup on his knee. He held out his hand for the kettle and asked, “Who boiled the water?”

  “Lieutenant John Coumb,” Wil said, handing him the kettle. “I can hold that cup for you, if you’d like.”

  “No,” he said, before she could.

  “You have the oddest rituals about tea that I’ve seen,” she said, her voice soft. “About your meals too.”

  “About many things. Many were lessons I was taught when men didn’t take precautions,” he said. Coumb was a known factor. But the barking of the dogs and the fact that he didn’t wholly understand how Wil operated, it was cause for him to be cautious.

  He shrugged one shoulder, letting his coat slip from where it was perched on his shoulder and draped over his bad arm. The act revealed his arm, and he knew that all present were looking.

  He held his bad hand out, and he poured steaming water into the cupped palm.

  “Reverend!” Wil exclaimed, eyes wide.

  It hurt, as boiling water poured directly onto flesh should. His flesh was callous thick, yet it would blister and burn. Growths ran through it, resembling a fungus or plant, but they would crack and bleed as any flesh did.

  He had grown used to pain. The arm always hurt, from shoulder to each of the blunt, crude fingers.

  The water escaped through the gaps between fingers, burning as it trickled through. He closed his eye, feeling the agony of it, while trying to show very little of that pain. He tried to focus on the other sensations, to feel for grit, for the weight of the water, and how it moved.

  With one eye, he watched Wil and her reaction. She seemed horrified, broken out of the spell that swept over her when she was around him. He felt sufficiently satisfied that nothing was amiss, no parasite or particulate was present, and that she wasn’t putting on a show.

  He moved his bad hand, and the corner of his mouth pulled back with a twitch as a physiological reaction to renewed pain touched his expression. He took the modest cup in a large, burned hand that could have closed fully around the kettle, and set the kettle down on the bench beside him before drawing a leather pouch from his coat pocket. He kept the teabags on his person, in the pouch with a small spoon.

  Mauer prepared his tea with care. Teabag in, a set number of turns of the spoon, at a pace he had rehearsed many times. He turned the spoon over and rested it at a set angle, and he eyed the small bubbles on the surface of the liquid that continued to swirl after the spoon had ceased moving, doing so with a mind to amount and to pattern.

  It was quiet. There wasn’t a sound except for the stir of wind and the distant lapping of water on the shore.

  “It seems most have retired for the night,” he said. He took a sip of his tea. “Dalton, you pass by the supply tent and makeshift watch tower on the way to your tent, don’t you?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Tell them to wake all of the patrols. They’re to tell the patrols to do a sweep, be watchful. They’re to be more careful than kind. Wake others up if they must, but let’s ensure we don’t have any trouble. Anything remotely suspicious gets reported. We’ll pick up and move to another location tomorrow.”

  Limps spoke for the first time since asking for his tea. “I heard the Crown was close to finding us. Sniffers. Are you thinking they might have found us already?”

  “They’ve been drawing closer,” Mauer said. “If it were that alone, I wouldn’t want to take such precautions.”

  “If it’s not that alone, what else is there?” Dalton asked.

  Mauer took a sip of his tea, “The dogs were barking.”

  “Past tense,” Limps spoke, realizing.

  Everyone present, Mauer excepted, reacted, hands touching pistols at their waists, their attention extending beyond the circle of light at the campfire.

  “Check the dogs are alright while you’re at it, Dalton?” Mauer asked.

  “I’ll go now, if that’s alright, sir?”

  “Please do,” Mauer said.

  He liked the way they responded. The questions they asked.

  They were good men and women, overall. They were believers, even if some were believers in him and some were believers in God.

  “Where are we going?” Wil asked. She’d seated herself on the edge of the bench Mauer sat on.

  “I don’t reveal destinations to anyone but my key personnel,” Mauer said.

  “Well, I’m only going to say, sir, I might’ve got family in these parts.”

  “We’ll see,” he said. He finished his tea, handed his cup to Wil, and then he stood, collecting his coat and draping it over his shoulders. “I’m going to retire. Limps, will you look after the fire, or find someone who will? Dalfton built it, so if he returns, you can tell him I asked him to mind it.”

  “I can, sir,” Limps said.

  “If he’s left to his own devices, he might leave us with no wood and a signal fire that they can see from New Amsterdam,” Wil said, joking.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Mauer said. He drew in a bit of a breath, then addressed the trio with more assertion, “Goodnight. I’ll be awake for a little while yet, in case there’s a problem, but I’m not to be disturbed otherwise.”

  “Yes sir,” repeated an overlapping three times.

  He didn’t like that he had to specify that.

  “God be with you,” he said.

  “God be with you,” was the echo from the other three mouths.

  The camp was dark in contrast to the fire. There were tents throughout, and he was very aware of the numbers, that his army was presently very small. There were boats propped up, used as a roof or one side of a more structured tent, supplemented with tentcloth and all lashed up with rope and careful knotwork. His own accommodations were similar, only they came close to being an actual home. The boat had taken nearly everyone to move away from the water and turn over, with boards, railings and other furnishings coming away to serve as benches and other furnishings.

  God be with you. His own words echoed in his head.

  He was very tired, and he’d been getting more tired as of late. Whenever he ruminated on that growing feeling of exhaustion, it was always the same image and sound that sprung to mind.

  One of his primordials had spoken. It had named itself.

  God.

  It was a voice and a sight that had tainted every mention of Him since. He couldn’t even call it a device of the Crown, calibrated to sow unease in his mind. His God had been pieced together by his effort and by Genevieve Fray’s.

  He lit candles, and as he did, he checked the papers that were stacked and scattered throughout his quarters. An Academy in the West had fallen to plague and Fray had braved that area to acquire a map. That she was wil
ling to brave that kind of environment suggested she might have been hiding in the midst of plague as he hid in the midst of water and blight.

  The map showed the spread of disaster. It showed which of the Academy’s weapons had been released, and the paths they had taken or been given.

  There was not much ground left for the staging of a fight. The reported movements of nobles and higher-ups was suggesting that they would vacate, only a skeleton crew of Academy professors left behind to administrate. Experiments created to brave the plague and blight would stay behind, policing a smothered continent.

  The fingers of his good hand traced over the images, drawing out imagined paths for Academy, refugee, rebel and Crown.

  He wanted to stay up to keep an ear out for trouble, and he busied his hand with the tidying up of papers, he kept his eyes active by glancing over letters and messages, correspondence from members of his flock.

  The alertness granted him by the tea gradually faded, and he heard no commotion. After what might have been an hour, he hung up his coat, then unbuttoned his shirt at the shoulder and side before pulling it off. Disrobing was a painstaking process when he had only one hand and he had his bad arm to work around, but he was careful to fold shirt and pants.

  His monstrous hand quenched candles, pinching away the flames.

  He retired, laying on his back, head on pillow, arm heavy enough at his side that it meant he slept on a faintly angled surface. He draped the crook of his good elbow over his upper face, shutting away the faint light and the light of the blazing fire that seeped between the wood of his accommodations and the ground.

  It took a lot of focus to take his mind off of the throbbing of his bad arm. It felt as though it had been flayed alive, every inch of it hurting. The burn in the palm and fingers was of a different sort, more focused, reacting to every change in the air. It was something to focus on, a change from prior sleepless nights where the pain had trained him to remain awake until he fell into sleep with no progression or process that could be interrupted.

  He didn’t dream, but he did sleep, and he did wake. It was as though he was laying in bed one minute, feeling cool, and in the next moment he was snapping to alertness, the temperature different, the feel of the thin stuffed mattress and sheets different.

  His revolver was tucked between mattress and wall. He collected it, cocked it, and aimed it into the gloom with the same motion of his arm and hand.

  He waited, and he waited for a considerable amount of time, aiming at only darkness, letting his eyes adjust to the light level. The fire deeper in the camp had shrunk by a fair margin. It would be close to five in the morning, if he had to guess.

  Mauer waited, all of his instincts from the battlefield primed.

  He shifted position on the bed, and in the doing, he used the thumb of his monstrous hand to flick a knife from under his pillow down the bed, closer to his waist.

  Easing down, he pretended to relax, even as he took up the knife between two fingers of his monstrous hand. He set the revolver down. All of this was something he had done one to ten times a night for years. Being ready, being hyperalert, as if every night’s sleep was something stolen in the midst of an ongoing fight. The dogs barking and then settling down had him on edge more than usual.

  In many ways it was. This long period of dormancy was one of the longer breaks he’d had from the fighting since he had been setting the stage in Radham.

  It was different this time, though. That had been more of a beginning, and this felt like the approach to the end. He was tired, and he hadn’t been before.

  He used the same techniques to fall asleep, dwelling on the pain of the burn, controlling his breathing, relaxing various muscles. Again, he fell into sleep rather than fading or slipping into it. Consciousness dropped away, and seemingly a moment later, he felt the movement of air across his burn.

  His hand lifted, knife caught between two meaty fingers, and he backhanded his assailant. He struck the figure down, pinning them against the luggage container that served as a bedside table with the back of his hand and the blade of the knife on opposing sides of their throat.

  “Oh,” the voice said. Female.

  He remained silent, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  “Sorry,” she said, with her Crown accent. “I don’t know what came over me, that I found myself here like this.”

  “Not wise, Wil,” Mauer said.

  “No,” she breathed. “Apparently not.”

  “Did something come up?” he asked. He hadn’t released her.

  “I… was hoping to contrive for something to come up,” she said.

  Was that it? It wouldn’t be the first, fifth, or even tenth time that Mauer had drawn that kind of interest. Twice it had been insinuations from men, even. He’d never reciprocated. It was an unfortunate consequence of his ability to draw people in; sometimes he drew them in too close. People who were looking for something often found that something in him.

  “I’m a man of God,” he said. Again, the image of his primordial flitted through his mind’s eye.

  “But you’re a man, aren’t you, Reverend?” she asked. And she sounded less sure of herself than he’d ever heard her.

  “Don’t—I’ve told you time and again, don’t call me that.”

  He released her, moving the knife away. There was the revolver to fall back on, just in case—

  He felt the movement of air, and then her weight was on top of him. He brought the revolver around, and fingers closed around his. He was strong enough, fitter than the vast majority, and yet he was matched or beaten in physical strength here.

  Her fingers tightened on his, and he felt the pain of cartilage grinding and flesh giving way as the vise closed his hand around the hardest parts of the revolver. He grit his teeth, and swung his bad arm up and at the weight on his chest.

  It was two legs that caught his bad arm, toes finding holds in the gaps and hollows near his hand and wrist, the strongest part of her legs and hips stressing the weakest parts and angles of his shoulder and elbow.

  He knew what she was, too late.

  “Lambs,” he said.

  She giggled. It didn’t sound like Wil anymore.

  Two of her arms caught his good arm, one of her hands over his, the other on his forearm. The weight of her body rested across his, and her legs had his other arm. She was astride him.

  “How many of mine have you killed?”

  “None,” Helen said.

  “The dogs?”

  “I’ve left the dogs alone.”

  “Will you leave them alone as you make your exit?” he asked.

  “It depends on how this conversation goes,” she said.

  “A conversation.”

  “Mm hmm,” she said.

  She laid her head on his chest. The angle of it was wrong, her head positioned too far down. She shouldn’t have been able to place her ear over his heart.

  She wasn’t wearing much. A nightgown, perhaps, or just a slip. For the ruse of pretending to be Wil? She would have had to hear Wil speak, or even overheard their interaction, which meant she had been close for some time.

  “I remember,” she said, and she moved his destroyed hand with the revolver. The flat of it rested against the back of her head, on her hair. “Our first real meeting. You pressed a gun to my head.”

  “I do recall something like that.”

  “You’ve been in my thoughts ever since. I could have approached you another way, but Sylvester did say that you shot him on sight.”

  “Sylvester,” he said. “Are the Lambs still coordinating as a whole, or—”

  “I defected. I’m officially dead, but that won’t hold up for very long.”

  “Mm,” he said. “If you talked to Sylvester you know he and I parted on… not the worst of terms.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said, her voice a whisper. She shifted position, and in the doing, she made the harder part of her ribs grate against his. “But I just—”

  He t
ook the opportunity and moved his gun-hand, and made it only inches before something in her seized up, reflexive, the hold on his arm becoming a stranglehold, as tight as his movement had been quick.

  As he relaxed, so did she.

  “I just really wanted very badly to hunt you, sir,” she whispered “To see if I could. To be here, like this.”

  “Is that so important?” he asked.

  “It’s my everything.”

  He knew about inflection, about emphasis. The way she had said it, he absolutely believed it. That she’d gone as still as she had after uttering those words, not even breathing, her heartbeat barely perceptible as his own heart drummed its war beat, it drew out that statement, begging him to dwell on it.

  “You have lines in your face you didn’t have when you pulled the gun on me, Reverend,” she said.

  “It’s been many years.”

  “Hasn’t it?”

  “You’ve changed considerably from that small child.”

  “I have,” she said. “I used to be softer.”

  As she said it, she changed position. The cushions of hip and chest rested heavily on him.

  “Now I’m…” she moved one leg away from his arm, bringing it up so it rested across his lower body, bent. “…Hm. I had innuendo in mind, but you’re not cooperating.”

  “Humor is often lost on me.”

  “Amusement is, apparently.”

  He wondered at his ability to use his arm, with all of its composite mass and muscle, warring with the strength of her one leg. He was stronger, he suspected, but she had the all-important leverage. The question was whether he could do sufficient damage before she ended him.

  There was a similar problem if he raised his legs up, then brought them down to generate the momentum to stand and try to topple her from where she rested on top of him. She still had her grip on him.

  “It’d be my first time, doing this with an emotional connection,” she whispered. “You were on my shortlist. So was Fray, and many of the Lambs. I wanted it to be special.”

  He tensed.

  “I’ve had my dalliances, but they were purely physical,” she said. “Flesh and flesh, with very little meaning. But this…”