Twig

by wildbow

  “We could,” Jessie said. “They’d go back and tell others.”

  “Can we work with that?” Lillian asked. “Isn’t it easier to work with a little bit of negative opinion of one man, compared to… whatever happens if he comes inside?”

  I spoke, “They’d say that Ferres is rude, she has something to hide, the report of a discovery of true immortality is the dying effort of an older Professor to be relevant again as the Crown States ceases to be. Everyone turns their attention to other things, with only a few intrepid, irrelevant individuals and second-in-commands investigating. Some of the most pivotal players have already backed out, this threatens to take all of the meat out of the plan.”

  “Nora passed on that Edmund was with Fray, back in the day?” Jessie asked.

  “She did,” Mary said. “What does that mean for us?”

  Jessie spoke, “We don’t know to what degree they might’ve been collaborating, if it was self-serving in the moment or something bigger, but you Lambs discussed it then and came to the conclusion he was a Fray plant. There might be an ongoing relationship even today.”

  “We have to assume he’s not,” I said. “If we act buddy-buddy and we’re wrong, it’s the end. We’re forced to capture him, others get suspicious, we don’t get any advantage worth talking about, and the Infante might even clue into what we’re doing. We observe from a distance and if we find out something about Fray then that’s great, but for now we take this as an early check-in from the Academy.”

  “If we take it as that, we’re definitely not ready,” Duncan said. “We’re not close to being able to invite someone in and talk to them. Half the place is in ruins, the other half is a mess, we’ve got prisoners everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere,” Ashton said.

  “Not the time for pedantry, Ashton,” Duncan said.

  “We invite him in,” I said. “Which is going to be… what, ten minutes from now?”

  “Sixteen minutes,” Jessie said. “We can stall and make it twenty. But twenty isn’t a lot.”

  “Twenty has to do,” I said. “We can do this.”

  “You have ideas?” Jessie asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. I’d thought for the time it took me to run to the tower. Now I was figuring out which thoughts to tie up and which needed more attention. It was a question of priorities. “Duncan, you, Bea, Ashton, Emmett, Lara, and the Treasurer—”

  “I have a name,” the Treasurer said. He looked far more unhappy than he should have for the misplacement of a name. I suspected he was holding onto hard feelings from the prior week’s events.

  “You guys stay. We’ll communicate via. Nora. Everyone else with me.”

  “Are you sure?” Lillian asked.

  “Why the doubt?” I asked.

  She didn’t have an immediate answer for me. I wondered if she didn’t trust me, if she was trying to articulate that she hadn’t seen me in good form for a while.

  “I’ll say why I doubt,” Bea said. “You told me once you cause as much havoc as you can and then you have the benefit of being better at handling the consequences and better at knowing what’s going on when it comes to working out a resolution.”

  “That sounds like something I’d say,” I said. I looked down at the boat. How much time was this going to cost us?

  “It’s pretty much the context I met you in. The problem is this is something where we need to build something,” she said. “Not to tear it all down.”

  Mary glanced at me. “She’s not wrong. You really think we can do this? Twenty minutes to transform the Academy into something respectable, that passes muster with someone like Edmund Foss?”

  “No,” I said. “Twenty minutes to transform the Academy into a place that’s in the midst of preparation for a major event.”

  “It’s less than twenty minutes,” Jessie said.

  “Which is all the more reason to move,” I said. “Unless someone else has a better idea?”

  I could see it. The Treasurer was about to voice an objection, the objection would need to be answered, and we’d lose half of a minute.

  “Go,” Duncan cut in.

  I went, the others following. I wasn’t fast, and my recent spar with Mary had done a number on me. Jessie appeared beside me, taking my hand. She wasn’t holding me up, but she was providing me some support. I was sure if I needed it, she’d help support me in a more practical way.

  I was aware that Lillian and Mary were with us. A part of me wanted to analyze them and their reactions. I couldn’t afford to. There was too much to do.

  The act of moving away from this scene where I could watch my opponents and analyze them felt like I was stepping through one of the windows and falling onto the cliffs. I didn’t have a good read on Edmund, I didn’t know why he was here, what he wanted, and what would satisfy or compel him.

  I was so focused on what was happening outside and what was happening fifteen minutes from now that I wasn’t focused at all on the present. We turned a corner, and I saw the Infante, squarely in front of me, back to me.

  I hesitated.

  Jessie’s hand tugging mine gave me the impetus to get moving again, where I might very well have remained in paralyzed silence for a full minute.

  I needed to distract myself.

  “Nora, pass this on?” I asked.

  “Alright,” Nora said. She oddly seemed more at ease when moving than when standing still. It was as if she were built to be perpetually in motion, moving with the support of her arms and claws, back arched slightly, head sticking out more forward than up.

  “Tasks, roles, responsibilities. Duncan, you’re taking point. He’s never met you and I don’t think the Lambs have been gone long enough for word to get out about you. Based on what we’ve seen cross Ferres’ desk, there might not be wanted posters either. Get yourself into a Hackthorn Academy uniform. Bea? Pass on word, all guards and soldiers in the city need to hide, while still holding the peace. Talk to Shirley.”

  “Got it.”

  “Treasurer and Davis need to gather everyone who’s trustworthy, who’s educated and who’s proper. Get Davis, he’ll look good and he’ll make a good complement to Duncan.”

  “Why?” Nora asked. “Treasurer asks.”

  “That’s going to be the crowd we put in directly in front of him. He’ll like that, being from Cicely’s. Girls are especially good. Ashton? I asked you to stay back because this guy’s never met you. He’s going to meet you in passing, and he’s going to get a whiff of you. Not enough of anything to make him look back and wonder about anything—”

  Nora was making noise. I paused.

  “Ashton is trying to interrupt you,” she said. “He says he’ll do just fine. He doesn’t tell you how to be a jerk, you shouldn’t tell him how to do his thing.”

  I wondered how much of that was Nora’s license and how much of it was Ashton. If it was the latter, who or where had he got that from?

  Whatever.

  “Great,” I said. “Slow our target down, treat him well, get him to talk about his Academy and how much better it is. Get him to the tea room or the dining hall in the main building, slow him down. He spent the last while traveling, and sitting in carriages and boats makes people want to sit around. Ironically.”

  “What do we say?” Lillian asked. “He’s going to ask for particulars.”

  “We be coy, Duncan says,” Nora said. “Why would Ferres give away the show? It’s her big moment, the kind all Professors hope to have.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Even beyond that, Ferres is a showman, she likes her art. We need to put that in front of Edmund’s face. Art. The quality. Lillian and Jessie are headed to the labs. Lillian identifies everything of top quality that the Academy can boast. We parade that in front of him. Jessie knows the keywords to control the warbeasts. Those were top notch, the control, the theatrics of having a giant wolf or spider in our complete control, more than the Academy usually strives for.”

  Helen spoke for the fi
rst time. “She’s a showman, but what happens when she doesn’t show?”

  “We’ll figure that out,” I said. “I’ll look into the Hackthorn children. It’d be asking a lot, but I think even after the fiasco of the other night, they’ll listen to me.”

  “The girl is talking, Bea,” Nora said, as if Lara had supplied the name. She adjusted her voice to match the person speaking. “It’s unfortunate, but those kids are loyal to you, Sylvester. But it’s going to take time to round them up, we split them up because they had too much of an influence on each other, and a lot of that is your secondary influence.”

  Doubt, suspicion, concern, lingering feelings. Bea and the Treasurer both. It was only going to get worse.

  “We’ll handle that when the time comes,” I said. “For now, we need to dwell on this. Helen and Mary here are going to need to keep an eye out in the meantime. Details. Things that need immediate attention. Where possible, we get students to move things into place. Furniture, stacks of boxes, it’s all about hiding the damage, focusing on presentation, we make it look like we’re mid-renovation, not mid-reconstruction. It’s a fine line.”

  “One of the dormitories has fire damage,” Nora said. “A bridge does. The plant life on the bridge is all burned. There are a lot of places around the Academy where that’s going to be visible.”

  “We’ll deal,” I said, with little idea how. “It’s a question of directing their attention. We bring people and things out at key times. Hand signals are going to play a big part. Mary and Helen will round up students when we get back to the main building, liason with the lieutenants. Again, hand signals. Once we make Mr. Professor Edmund Foss stop for tea, hopefully, we’ll redirect attention to areas depending on which ones he’ll see next. We paint the damn walls five minutes before he arrives in the room in question, if we have to.”

  “Paint needs time to dry,” Nora said, in an ‘Ashton’ voice. “He likes watching paint dry. Duncan is saying Ashton is being pedantic again.”

  I continued, ignoring the interplay between the other guy Lambs. “I’m thinking we station students in even numbered groups in doorways to mark no-go side routes, hallways, stairways.”

  “Got it,” Nora said. “Duncan. Duncan’s getting a uniform now. Bea is going to spread word and get people on board.”

  “We need to hide any and all Beattle uniforms,” I said. “And we need to maximize the number of Hackthorn uniforms around them. Spreading word is a good thing.”

  We weren’t far from the main building now. I saw a portrait of a noble, the Infante standing next to it, staring at it.

  “We’ll need everyone’s attention,” I said, hoping that didn’t echo the Infante’s noble lines of thinking and somehow wake him. I felt anxious and bothered in a way I hadn’t for some time.

  Helen perked up at that.

  I could tell, even before we were done crossing the bridge, that the students were reacting to the word. The boat had been seen, it bore Academy colors, and it wasn’t out of the question that students with binoculars had seen enough to draw conclusions about who it was. They were talking, worried, unsure about what was going to happen. I watched through windows and saw the anxiety.

  Some among them could even be considering rebelling against the rebels, being subversive, or passing on a message.

  “Let me take point?” Jessie asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “As soon as we have their attention.”

  I’d thought not long ago about the role I took in their hearts and minds. That I was the face that the students and rebels linked to the fall of their respective Academies; Hackthorn had fallen twice and the second fall had been grim. I’d been the one to get involved in interpersonal rivalries, in compromise, when a group butted heads with others on a distribution of resources and labor, or when someone struggled with another member of their team. Compromise left both sides unhappy, and that unhappiness was something that touched me, coloring opinions of me.

  So long as I did everything right and supplied peace, hope for a better future and freedom from the constraints of their old life, I’d remained in their good graces, and that association hadn’t held me back.

  But I’d broken that trust on all three counts.

  Jessie was stability. She was organization, the liason. She was inoffensive, rarely linked to conflict, more to measured, calculated responses.

  We were a team for a reason. I gave her hand a squeeze before letting go of it. Association with me would taint their image of her. It made sense, it would be only a small taint, but everything counted in the here and now.

  Helen whistled, using her particular control of vocalizations and intonation to simply produce something loud. It wasn’t the worst she could do, but it did get the attention of the hundreds of students in the open space.

  Helen half-flounced, half-flourished, all theatrics, as she moved to one side, indicating Jessie.

  “We’re making the school presentable in the next ten minutes. Vernon, you take twenty students with you. There’s construction material at the ground floor and near the stables, stacked in the hall. Carry it away, stack it anywhere there’s damage, missing portraits. Grab carpets from upstairs. Take them down. Hurry.”

  “Clive found extra carpets—” The guy who was supposedly named Vernon started speaking.

  “If you found some, use them, but go,” Jessie said.

  Vernon went.

  Jessie pointed, “Eddie, you and ten students, more materials from that space. Do the same thing, second floor. Martin, ten students, third floor. Alvin, ten students, fourth floor. Be mindful of the damage to the ceiling, there’s a short ladder in the library on the fourth floor, grab it on the way, see what you can do to plaster the ceiling in the next ten minutes. Jim, ten students, fifth floor. Herman, ten students and sixth. Darlene, eight students, left stairwell. It should be mostly clear, be mindful of the railing.”

  Students were mobilizing now.

  “…Go to the dormitory,” Jessie said. “Pass on word, recruit more helpers. Harvey, ten students, just block the right stairwell, make it look like you’re doing work.”

  “Flip it around,” I said, looking around. “If they come upstairs from the left stairwell, they’ll be able to see through the glass exterior of the dining room, they’ll see the burned dorm, clear as day.”

  Misdirection, control where their eye looks.

  “Change that around!” Jessie called out. Darlene was already leaving. “Darlene, right stairwell, Harvey to the left. Those are the key areas to start with. Others, listen to the Lambs, be ready to act. We do this actively!”

  “Uniforms!” Mary called out, her voice almost overlapping with Jessie’s. “If you’re wearing a Beattle uniform, then you’re going to make yourself scarce, but don’t leave just yet. Listen to what we have to say, then make it your job to inform everyone else you meet as you disappear. Check to see if they know what to do, tell them if they don’t. Hide your weapons, take them and soldiers to the west and south Dormitory buildings, make sure they don’t make a fuss. Carry trash with you.”

  “This is a rehearsal of a really big play,” Helen said. “We really want to get this right, but it’s a test, and how we act is part of it. Don’t worry too much about looking like you’re trying not to look at them. If you’re worried you look suspicious or worried, then what you want to do is look like you’re doing something. You have a place to go, a thing to do, even if it’s getting food from the cafeteria, going somewhere, or finding someone else that looks uneasy and talking to them like they’re a friend.”

  She was reading the room, sensing how tense and unsure they were, and reassuring, ensuring that they would reassure each other. She was good at reading people. It was a key part of acting.

  Mary picked up in an instant. There was scarcely a breath between the two of them, but by going back and forth, they were able to organize their thoughts on what needed to be done. It was information overload to the audience, switching from one thing to the
next, but… well, there was something to be said for being attentive.

  Lillian was already heading downstairs to Lab One. I turned to Jessie, who gave me a nod.

  “We need people,” I said. “Reliable, strong, good with weapons.”

  “Jerome!” Jessie called out. “You and your friends. Patrick, Stefan, Curtis!”

  “They’ll need guns.”

  “They have guns,” Jessie said.

  I smiled. “You read my mind.”

  “Yeah,” she said. We took the stairs alongside Lillian.

  Lab One.

  “Warbeasts and less human experiments,” Lillian said. “Here?”

  “There,” Jessie pointed. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

  “I’ll check them for gunshot wounds and injuries first,” Lillian said.

  “Be wary of Miss Muffet’s spider, she’s got a taste for humans now that she’s eaten and she’s entered her next birthing cycle,” Jessie said.

  Lillian made a face, but she headed into the Lab One stables without further complaint.

  As our contingent of soldiers arrived, Jessie began directing them to the other cells. The cells held Betty, key members of the faculty, and other students I’d deemed too clever and competent to be left among the other students being kept prisoner in the dormitories.

  Was it possible to keep them penned up here while everything else was going on? Yes. Was it likely that Professor Edmund Foss would appear and insist on exploring the lab in full? No. But this was harder to explain than some bullet wounds on a giant, a bayonet wound on a great black wolf, or an acid stain on a wall.

  I walked away from them, moving into the surgery theater.

  Junior was there, alongside members of his team—not the Rank, but a team of volunteers and assistants he’d accumulated, mid-crisis and in the aftermath. Paul was here, too. He sat on a countertop, staring down Ferres.

  Too much anger, too much bitterness.

  Ferres was on the table. She had one leg, one arm that ended in a stump, and one arm that had a recently reattached hand that was now strapped down. Tubes ran through, in, and out of her body. Needles penetrated various points on her face and torso, with pen marks on the skin, with numbers and ratios.