Twig

by wildbow

  Paul had stood up, and his one hand was planted on the table in front of him as he leaned forward, his eyes wide. Had they not been modified, the whites would have been clearly visible. As it was, they had no whites, but the colors made the pupils very clear.

  Bo Peep’s mouth formed the word ‘no’. Shirley actually said something similar out loud. “Don’t.”

  “It’s done,” Sylvester said. “They heard.”

  “Heard what?” Fang asked.

  “Sylvester said, that if the dice roll had been different, I could have been a lord?” Paul asked.

  Murmurs passed over the crowd.

  “Sylvester’s in a weird place,” Davis said. “We shouldn’t put too much stock into—”

  “Explain,” Paul said, interrupting, ignoring Davis. His voice was hard.

  “Isn’t it amusing, in a dark way?” Sylvester asked. “They’re a fabrication. As much as you are, Paul. It’s the big secret. It’s one they’ve killed to protect, countless times. They wipe out entire continents and blame it on war and plague, to hide it. They’re in the middle of doing it to this one. Wipe everything out, clean the slate, and then rebuild with complete and total control and nobody else to say different when they rewrite history and tell a different story.”

  “I don’t see how that’s funny,” Fang said.

  “Don’t you?” Sylvester asked. “I mean, how many of you are named John, or Charles, or Duncan, or Philip or Mark or Timothy, because they’re names of prominent nobles and it’s a nice look for the parents? How many of you have siblings with those names? Mary or Elizabeth or Malcolm or Montgomery?”

  He could see people here and there frown as their names were spoken.

  “The street names of houses we grew up on, or schools we attended, or cities we lived in, how many of those had names inspired by nobles? How many of you actually aspired to work with nobles, or achieve a status where you might dine with one? Who among you felt true awe for the first time at one of their parades or ceremonies?”

  “That’s enough, Sylvester,” Davis said.

  “Is it? Weren’t you really damn proud that you got a commendation pinned on your chest for your academic performance and service to the crown, Davis? Who was it that pinned that bit of silver to your chest and made you feel more grand than you’d ever felt? Was it a noble?”

  “No,” Davis said, but he still looked like that one had struck home.

  “Did it bother you it wasn’t a noble?” Sylvester asked. He already knew the answer.

  Davis had no answer to that question.

  The nobles no longer sat at the table. When he hadn’t been looking, they had stood, scattering themselves throughout the room, making themselves felt. It was the Snake Charmer and Percy who were close to him now, buoying him forward. Sub Rosa and Melancholy. The Fishmonger, the Devil, Cynthia, Mauer, Fray, Avis, the Headsman Warren Howell, Wendy, Dog and Catcher. The Primordial.

  Shirley wasn’t approaching anymore. She wasn’t even reacting. She seemed to understand there wasn’t a real chance to stop him. The bottle had been unstoppered.

  “Can any of you name one meaningful part of your lives that wasn’t affected in some way by this farce of theirs? A friend group or family without that one person who was loyal to the King or, flipping it around, maybe that one person who had lost someone close to them in the name of the Crown? A major event in your lives that wasn’t influenced by them, by the flags they have us wave, the words they have us say, or the beats they have us march to?”

  “We get the point, Sylvester,” Davis said.

  The warm humor of just moments ago was gone, replaced by cold restlessness. People shifted position or looked uncomfortable, without any place to go.

  “What does that have to do with what they did to us? To the experiments?” Red asked.

  “Same as they did to me and the Lambs,” Sylvester said. “They snatch up children or they offer children with no other options a choice to go with them. To get healthy and to have shelter. They round us all up in a place like New Amsterdam, test us to see who’s the fittest, strongest, best looking, smartest. The best of us get to be Noble. They get the best the Academy has to offer, they get invented histories, or they get slotted into a waiting space on the family tree.”

  “And the rest of us are fodder for experiments,” Red said.

  “Not just fodder for experiments. Fodder for them. They have to be effective, and for that, you have weapons like the Lambs that act as trial runs before a noble gets the modification. They have to be pretty, and for that, artists like Ferres needs their practice.”

  Red flinched at that. Paul, meanwhile, only stared.

  “History, the role of the Academy, politics, the wars, the disasters, it’s all wrapped up in this. I told Paul that if the dice had fallen down differently, if he’d been a little taller, or a little fitter, that he might have been a Lord.”

  Montgomery twirled his cane. The Twins prowled through the crowd, gravitating towards the agitated, the angry.

  Sylvester knew he could use that.

  “How many of you are wearing Academy uniforms? Think about this: they were testing you too, rolling dice, playing games behind the scenes. If you aspired to be a black-coat Professor, then they were keeping all of this in mind when they decided if you deserved that coat. Nothing to do with how hard you worked or how good you were. But whether they thought you might play along, if you could be trusted to possibly pull the strings one day, and keep the farce alive. For each one of you, that was the reality: either you are the sort of monster who would exploit children to succeed, and I don’t think many of you are… or they were never really going to give you a chance.”

  Virtually every voice that was likely to speak for sanity and calm was too affected to speak, or they were familiar enough with Sylvester to know that there was little reason to do otherwise.

  “Do you have proof?” Mabel asked, speaking for the first time. She hung her head a little, clearly shaken. She was standing by the stairs that led down deeper into the building.

  Sylvester smiled.

  “We have proof,” the Fishmonger said.

  But even in the silence, nobody heard the fat boy with the nasty expression.

  Sylvester waited. Like the Fishmonger had said, there was an answer to Mabel’s question. It was better to let them find their way to that answer on their own.

  It only took a moment more before Davis looked at Sy, alarm on his face. He was quick and clever enough to jump to that conclusion. Mabel was almost right on his back, connecting to what Sylvester had said.

  But as quick as they were to realize the conclusion, they weren’t equipped to get ahead of it, to actually deal with it.

  “Ferres,” Junior said.

  “She’s in surgery,” Davis said. “And we actually need her.”

  “But she can provide answers,” Fang said.

  “She’s in surgery,” Davis said, more firmly. “She’s going to be around tomorrow, there’s no reason to rush this. You got your answers—”

  Paul moved, crossing the dining area. Davis called out, almost inarticulate in his haste to get his people moving. Students who were acting as soldiers scrambled to get up from their benches, to get between the thirty or so students and experiments in Paul’s entourage. More in Paul’s periphery than there had been before this discussion.

  “We deserve answers!” Goldilocks called out. People were shouting now. Finding themselves divided, one side against another. Sanity and concern against outrage.

  “You’ll get answers!” Davis called back. “Tomorrow!”

  As quickly as the larger group had come to a halt when faced with Davis’ improvised formation of junior soldiers, they pulled back. Junior was near the rear, and he was calling for another route. There was another staircase down on the other side of the dining hall.

  Soldiers rushed to get between the group and the stairs, and they didn’t quite make it. With Cynthia standing and watching, the soldiers in
stead collided with the front left corner of the group of students, trying to block them physically, bodies pressing against bodies.

  Junior and Paul’s group pushed them away. Then, when the rows and columns of soldiers made it impossible to push the junior soldiers back and away, the press of bodies behind them making it nearly impossible, hands went up to protect faces, elbows stuck out, and somewhere along the line it became punches being thrown.

  The frailer, more nimble members of the group dodged around the knot of melee, going for the stairs, heading down in the direction of Lab One.

  Davis called out, ordering soldiers who were still blocking the first stairwell to hurry down, to try to intercept. It looked like he was about to go himself, though he was unsure of the swell of violence on the other end of the room. Mabel signaled and then headed down, leaving Davis to manage things upstairs.

  Sylvester watched it all unfold. Mauer stood beside him and it was partially with Mauer’s eyes that Sylvester analyzed the crowd, trying to decide if he needed to say anything more.

  The restlessness was bleeding out. People were picking sides but not yet finding an outlet. Some were moving to help the soldiers. More were hanging back, still digesting what they’d heard.

  “Why?” Davis asked. He was asking Sylvester.

  Sylvester glanced at the Snake Charmer. He looked at Sub Rosa.

  “It’s a way forward. It ensures we don’t fall into the rut.”

  “A rut!? Do you even understand what you’re saying!?”

  “I think the fact that my words were able to get this kind of effect is a pretty good indicator I know what I’m saying.”

  “No. Lords, no, you don’t have a bloody clue,” Davis said. “Valentina was absolutely right.”

  Then Davis turned his attention elsewhere.

  “Valentina. The vice president of the Beattle student council,” the Snake Charmer said.

  “She believed in the nobility, in a twisted way,” Melancholy said. “You were supposed to be a surrogate, Sylvester. That was the label she desperately wanted to apply to you. She wanted you to be someone who could lead, who wouldn’t bleed or stumble when push came to shove. It’s ironic, because what you said here just now would have shattered that perspective of hers.”

  Fray was standing so close by, holding Evette. Fray looked solemn while Evette smiled.

  “She thought you were weak,” Percy said. “I think, in service to what we’re striving for in the long run, you should step in now. Instigating this was one thing, but you won’t win over the likes of Davis until you show that you have control. That you have that power.”

  Sylvester nodded, mostly to himself.

  He raised a hand, standing from his seat at the dining table. People turned to look. They saw as Davis grabbed his wrist.

  “Whatever you’re doing, just stop, please.”

  “Davis,” the Treasurer said, a few steps behind his old student council president.

  “Don’t tell me you’re on Sylvester’s side,” Davis said.

  The Treasurer was quiet.

  “Please. Don’t make things harder for me. I’ve tried to be a good friend.”

  “I want answers,” the Treasurer said.

  “I know. But…”

  “I’ll wait for them. I won’t get in your way.”

  Davis nodded. He turned back toward Sylvester.

  Sylvester simply spoke to the room, “There are some faculty members in the administration housing building. They might know.”

  Davis let go of his arm as if he was poisonous to the touch. He called out an order, but it was too late. Students who had been lingering in earshot now turned to hurry off to the bridge, for the same building that Sylvester, Jessie, Helen, and Ferres had been sleeping in. There was no way for Davis’ relatively modest group of soldiers, already preoccupied, to get from one of the two south corners of the room to the northeast one.

  Some of the students who lingered, looking like they might have followed Paul’s group or the group that was going to the administration building, but who were holding back, they looked like defectors. Hackthorn students from one of the dorms.

  “There are faculty members in the other dorms, aren’t there?” Sylvester said. “Go. Hands in the air if you’re worried about getting shot at. They’ll see your uniforms and let you approach. Go. Go ask, grill them. Tell the students in the dorm.”

  Davis didn’t even try calling out an order this time.

  It was a small group, all considered, but as prodded, they took the suggestion.

  There was noise from elsewhere, shouting, banging, and the periodic sound of breaking glass, but the dining hall had largely cleared up. The student body had been divided and much of it had marched off.

  Davis staggered back a few steps and fell into a sitting position on a bench.

  “There’s no reason for this,” Davis said.

  “They want answers,” Sylvester said.

  “There’s no reason to press things like this, to stir it up. To tell them in the way you told them.”

  “Avoiding the rut. You don’t even realize you’re doing it, talking down to the experiments, marginalizing them. Academy on top, the useful experiments a rung below. We can’t do that. We don’t want that to be how we approach this final stage of things.”

  “When you say ‘we’,” Shirley said, speaking up for the first time since Sylvester had started talking, “Do you mean all of us here, you and the Beattle rebels, or do you mean you and the voices in your head?”

  “They’re not just voices,” Sylvester said. “They’re people.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  Sylvester nodded.

  He didn’t answer her question.

  Across the room, Possum was hugging Bo Peep. Rudy stood off to one side.

  Sylvester was glad that Bo Peep had someone, at least.

  The soldiers who had headed down toward Lab One were now making their way up. Before they had even found the breath to speak, Sylvester started walking toward them, walking away from Peep and Possum.

  “Downstairs. It’s bad,” the soldier told Davis.

  Sylvester continued walking. Shirley, Davis, the Treasurer and most of those who remained headed downstairs at a near-run. They passed him.

  From the look on Davis’ face, it was likely that some consideration was given to some form of incarceration or binding. Or maybe a gag.

  But that would have been slipping into the rut. Whether Davis had processed the thought or whether his instincts had told him to do otherwise, it would have been a mistake. Sylvester had acted to keep from being put under the thumb of the others. The host of personalities, perspectives, and ideas in his head would have found a way to show how much of a bad idea it was to imprison him or put him in chains.

  The situation was almost in his control.

  Lab One was only one floor down. The main area was still occupied by a few experiments who didn’t have cells or stables to be stowed in, but it was mostly tables, desks, and a lot of open space that was now filled with two opposing factions of students.

  Sylvester stood at the very back of the crowd.

  Barred from the actual surgery hall by the soldiers, Paul and his group had taken another route. They’d accessed the hallway on the other side of the room, opening cells and dragging prisoners out. Faculty members, favored students.

  Betty was kneeling, sobbing, while Paul held her by the hair.

  “She knew,” Paul said.

  “If you do this, Paul,” Mabel said. “They win. They’ve made you ugly. They’ve taken your humanity.”

  “She knew. She knew where we came from. She was exactly what Sylvester talked about. The students who were tested and who succeeded. Who they thought could be useful and support the real Academy. Isn’t that right, Sylvester?”

  “It’s exactly right,” Sylvester said.

  He began making his way through the crowd. Davis could have stopped him, but didn’t.

 
; There were no magic words. There was nothing Davis could do that wasn’t ordering an outright conflict.

  “She knew about the—what was it even called?”

  “The Block,” Sylvester said.

  With that, Betty’s eyes went wider.

  “And she had her justifications and they were… very tidy. I’m clever with people and I’m not even sure if she believed them herself, or if she was just that evil. But there’s a truth, and she didn’t serve that truth.”

  He made his way out of the front of the crowd. He passed others. Cynthia. The Devil.

  “Then what happens next?” Mabel asked.

  “Aren’t you angry?” Sylvester asked. “Aren’t you upset?”

  “Of course I am,” Mabel said. “But I was already angry and upset. This isn’t a big change for me. It’s an eye opener, if it’s true, but I was already willing to leave the Academy. I was already willing to fight for something better.”

  “Yeah. You’re a good one, Mabel,” Sylvester said. It was getting harder to find the softer, calmer types in the crowd. It was all the likes of the Fishmonger, the Devil, the monsters.

  “Are you going to do to Betty what you did to Ferres?”

  Sylvester looked down, meeting Betty’s eyes.

  “That might be up to the others,” he said. “To Paul, and Red, and I.B. Spider, if he’s recuperated enough.”

  “I think your word matters,” Mabel said. “You get a say, and they’ll listen.”

  Red spoke, “She’s as ugly as Ferres where it counts, inside, and she doesn’t even have the excuse of being older. I think she would have been worse, if she’d grown up to earn a black coat.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Sylvester said.

  “Sylvester, with one word, you could stop this,” Mabel said.

  Sylvester turned, looking at her.

  He had a lot of complicated feelings about the girl he’d flirted with, who had seen something and backed away. Melancholy and Cynthia had positioned themselves to stand on either side of the Sheriff’s daughter.

  “With one word, I could make it clear that we’re in charge,” Sylvester said.

  “Nobody’s disputing that,” Mabel said. “It’s clear. But you could make it very clear in the here and now that you deserve that responsibility. That you haven’t let them make you into the monster they wanted you to be.”