Twig

by wildbow

  Ashton spoke up for the first time. “I read in books once that we were supposed to treat others how we wanted to be treated. Isn’t it only fair?”

  “You’re enslaving us,” John Salford said. “You’re trying to build something here? In plague-ridden wastelands? With who? How?”

  “You mean the who of you that we’re not forcing to stay behind? The who would be anyone who wants to stay,” Helen said. “Anyone who would rather take the risk of dying to plague, if it means being free until then, instead of being safe but shackled.”

  “As for how,” Lillian said. “We have some brilliant minds and people available to devote to the task. I think we’ll manage some headway against the problems of plague and black wood.”

  “I’d say you were arrogant, holding yourselves in that kind of esteem,” Mr. Salford said. “But you’re not talking about you and your rebels. You’re talking about us. We’re supposed to be your great minds.”

  “All those people in the admin building? Brilliant. Capable hands, educated, driven. With the right incentives, the guns to heads, poisons and parasites, they’ll do what we need of them,” Duncan said. “The nine of you will contribute as well, unless you’d prefer grisly ends.”

  “There are ten of us,” Salford said, quiet.

  “There are nine of you,” I said. “And whatever else you want, whatever else you’re pushing for, you’re not quite at the point where you’ll want to use him.”

  Burner rose from his seat. He placed his hands on the quarter-circle of railing that bounded the upper stage of the tiered room.

  He looked at the heavyset man, who sat with his hands folded, fingers of one hand drumming on the back of the other.

  “He’s insurance, isn’t he? A way to guarantee that if we had plans to shoot you messengers, you could at least take some of us down with you. They might even have asked you to consider eliminating all of us in one shot if you could. If you’re loyal enough to the Crown and what it means.”

  Burner set his very defined jaw.

  “You’re not that loyal,” I said. “You have ways forward. You have doors open to you, even when faced with life under our thumbs, rather than the Crown’s. You have hope, still, that there’s a way to break our siege and return to your old lives. Unless you’re going to admit that Mrs. Derby was right, and you have no chance at all?”

  He was considering it. Giving the order that would bring their Trojan horse into play.

  I turned my head, taking in the Lambs. All stood straight, and all wore their individual variations on expressions of grim satisfaction. I kept my eye out for hand signals, and saw one.

  “You can give him the order if you want,” I said. “Just know what it costs you. If we bring this to a close, we’re going to be the most powerful people on the Western hemisphere. Do you really want to be on our bad side?”

  Burner tensed, and then he turned. He strode from the room so suddenly that the rest of the group that had accompanied him had no time to react, no sycophants keeping stride with him or supporting him as he made his exit. They hurried to catch up.

  Our soldiers hurried to accompany and escort them.

  It was Salford who indicated the fat man. “Cross. Come.”

  The man in the corner didn’t respond.

  “Cross.”

  The fat man reacted, sluggish.

  “Come.”

  Ashton’s hand signal had indicated the experiment that was dressed up in an aristocrat’s skin was reacting to him. They’d dosed the aristocrats who were going to be in our company, but they hadn’t been able to effectively dose him, or whatever they’d used had been of limited effect, and Ashton had overwhelmed that effect.

  The man trudged off, joining the rest of the aristocrats who were leaving, preparing to convey this reality we’d proposed to the rest of the people in the main building.

  It was Mrs. Derby and her husband who lingered behind. She waved her husband on, bidding him to leave her alone with us.

  She might have had enough character that she could meet our eyes and both think and talk clearly in the midst of all of this, but she wasn’t fearless. Far from it. She looked even more scared now.

  “They won’t agree so easily,” she said.

  “But you agree?” Lillian asked.

  “Saying I did would… I can’t just voice my surrender so simply,” she said. “But I haven’t been left many choices, have I?”

  “They’re riled up and the others will be too,” Jessie said. “They’ll try something, the nobles will coordinate with them, one final attempt. You could hitch your cart to that wagon.”

  “Would you?” Mrs. Derby asked.

  Jessie shook her head slowly.

  “I may be willing to offer my cooperation. I assume it would position me and my family better, when the dust has settled?”

  “You can assume,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You seem to be taking this in stride,” Duncan said.

  Mrs. Derby opened her mouth, as if to respond, then closed it, giving us a single nod. She paused before speaking, “Out with the old, and in with the new? Isn’t that what they say?”

  “It is,” Duncan said.

  “No difference between the two,” she said. She glanced down, fixing her dress, before clasping her hands before her. “I’ll adapt.”

  She curtsied slightly, and she left the room.

  No difference between the two.

  Previous Next

  Root and Branch—19.13

  The Nobles stood on the rooftop, amid the bodies of scattered warbeasts and experiments. Ribcages had been torn apart so they spiked skyward from otherwise unrecognizable piles of meat and gristle. Skulls had been bifurcated, some so neatly that it seemed inconceivable that it had been done in combat, while others had been divided in a messy way, skull fragments sticking through torn flesh and scale.

  It was getting late, and we’d decided that they were too relaxed up there. We’d taken care to ensure the warbeasts didn’t suit as food. The ones who scattered the rooftop and hung from the branches that had grown across it were only a small share. Some had been bloated, filled with gas or parasites. Junior and Poppy—Persephone? Prissy? I wasn’t sure of her name. Whoever she’d been, she and Junior had made sure that many of the warbeasts, when slain, had smelled as pungent as possible.

  My sampling of the smell had revealed it to be something like faeces mixed with perfume. I’d prepared myself in advance of the sample by liberally coating every inch of my body, hair, and clothing in powder, inside and out, changing out of the clothes in question right after.

  Even with that, only Ashton had been willing to keep me company for the twelve hours that followed.

  The Nobles were holding up remarkably well. One or two had been lightly injured by the second wave of warbeasts we’d sent their way. When they’d realized the traps hidden within the beasts, they’d changed their tactics, parrying tooth or claw while physically throwing the beasts off the rooftop. It was harder and more hazardous, when most of the beasts were several hundred pounds. Most beasts had accelerated reflexes and enhanced strength. Some had barbs in their fur to make letting go that much harder.

  Junior had been one of the more dangerous, devious, and ruthless of Beattle’s students, leading the Rank. We’d told him, Prissy and Gordeux to go all out, and this had been the result. Spite, traps and overall nastiness blended together with snarling warbeasts we’d mostly inured to the gas.

  The Lady Gloria was one of the injured. She had torn off her sleeves and used them to wrap the wound at her middle, and she was the only noble who wasn’t standing, seating herself on one corner of the roof, her head turned our way, the wind periodically blowing her hair this way or that.

  The rest stood, pretending to be impervious to the elements. They had been up there since dawn, and now the sun was going down. The light was fading, and the Nobles on the rooftop were getting harder and harder to make out.

  “Soon,” Mar
y said.

  I lowered the binoculars and rubbed my eyes, my shackles rattling. I turned my back to the window, resting against the wall to the side of it. The room had a series of beds in it, but only one of the beds was occupied. Nora had arranged her overlarge body so she curled up in the corner, her shoulders and head against the headboard, her back and legs against the wall that the bed had been set against. Three pillows had been propped up around her, in use by four different people, with Abby and Bo Peep sharing the one by her knees. Ashton used another, and Lara rested directly against her sister’s upper body, hugging a pillow instead of using it to rest her head. Quinton did without, just enjoying the proximity of the others as he lay on his side. Two blankets were haphazardly shared by the group in a way that seemed entirely sub-optimal, but I doubted I could have fixed it, and I knew I would’ve woken at least one of them by trying.

  Emmett, pretending to be too mature for the sleep pile, had seated himself by the foot of the bed. But he was still young and there was only a certain extent to which he could act the adult. He’d dozed off, and because of Quinton’s hoof jutting over the bed, had unconsciously tilted his head to one side, into a very uncomfortable position, so he wouldn’t get repeatedly kicked in the head as Quinton had his running and jumping dreams.

  Lara was awake and all but unable to move, nestled in as she was. Her eyes were open, and she was humming, accenting the hums with a vibrating distortion.

  Her eyes watched me. The two main eyes were red-rimmed in a way that might’ve made my eyes water sympathetically, were I not used to them. Her eyelids themselves looked like she’d screwed them shut and endured having someone rub glass dust and salt into the lids until she had two black eyes and the eyelids themselves were raw and shredded. The orbs weren’t much better. The structure of the space around the eyes was mid-transition. Lesser eyes, even more damaged looking, were peering out, socketed in spaces where skull had dissolved into socket and the surrounding flesh was pushing out latent infection and skull fragments in painful looking clusters.

  Bone fragments and eyes.

  The arms that hugged the pillow appeared overlong, but it was just her claws.

  “We should be positioned. They’re going to try something, and this time they’re going to be desperate,” Mary said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I raised the binoculars. The Nobles were still there. One of the Nobles I hadn’t put a name to was talking to Lady Gloria. The distance and the lighting meant I couldn’t make out the lip movements.

  “Are you going to come?” Mary asked.

  “Might as well,” I said. “We going to bring Ashton?”

  “He might be useful,” she said. “Even if the enemy is counteracting him.”

  “If we can tax their resources by forcing them to prepare Ashton countermeasures, that’s a good thing,” I said.

  The humming died down. I lowered the binoculars and glanced at Lara.

  She looked very concerned. Her eyes blinked, the ordinary ones out of sync with the others. Some of the others didn’t have enough eyelid to blink fully.

  “We’ll make sure he’s safe,” I said, my volume quieter than normal, as if I was saying it to Mary, though I met Lara’s eyes.

  “Don’t stop,” Ashton mumbled. His hand reached up and patted clumsily at Lara’s face.

  “They want you,” she said.

  “Mmm,” Ashton said. His eyes snapped open.

  He’d somehow wound up at the center of the mob, with a pillow against his belly while Peep and Abby rested on it. He managed to extricate himself without disturbing them too much, stepped off the bed, and where another person might have stretched, he remained poised, like a stitched that had burned through a wire, hunched over with arms slightly raised, knees slightly bent.

  His hands went to his belt, and he drew a comb. He immediately set to fixing his hair, his eyes fixed on the ground a few feet head of him. Done entirely from memory.

  I glanced out the windows. Lady Gloria was no longer talking to the others. They’d taken their former perches, spaced out on the roof and surrounding branches. The residual gas drifted across the Academy.

  We headed for the door, and Ashton moved to follow, glancing back at the others. His attention was on his clothes now, fixing wrinkles.

  “They’re not going to care, Ashton,” I said.

  “I care,” he said.

  We stepped out into the hallway, and I gently eased the door shut behind us, as quietly as I was able when chained. I was very aware of Lara’s penetrating stare as the gap narrowed and the door finally closed.

  “I’m trying to decide if we should unchain you,” Mary said. “On the one hand, you’d be faster, and you could help more. On the other, when all is said and done, I think I’d be more effective if I wasn’t having to keep as much of an eye on you.”

  “Best to play it safe,” I said.

  “Chains on, then.”

  We passed a window. I peered through, raising my binoculars. The light was worse, but I could make out the Nobles.

  We passed the next window, and the combination of light and angle made it next to impossible to tell if the Nobles were there. I met Mary’s eyes. “They’re gone.”

  “I saw,” she said.

  Our pace picked up. We headed down one set of stairs, then another, and by the time we entered the hallway, we were running.

  Lillian, Duncan, and Jessie were by the doors.

  “They’re moving,” I said.

  Duncan twisted around, raising a hand.

  The gate cracked open. Cages creaked as doors were opened. Experiments flooded out, moving in a stream. All pack animals, all a cross between simian and canine, with faces defined by long, slanted eyes and the long canine teeth that jutted more forward than up or down.

  Duncan hauled open another cage. His Grabber pawed its way forward, tentacles lashing this way and that as it felt its way, exploring the world beyond its cage. It was the size of a horse, but its body was lighter and its legs longer and stronger. The thing’s children were closer to large dogs in size. All headless, all with tentacles framing the stumps where the necks should have begun.

  Lillian wasn’t wearing the suit she’d designed. The Treasurer was, buried within what looked like muscle layered over muscle, with no skin to cover it. Only the mask wasn’t organic, his breath hissing through the filters. Even with the added mass and extra foot and a half of height, he looked burdened with the casks and the cages he carried. The lifeforms within the cages were similar to the canine-simian chimeras, but they were smaller. Less baboon-wolf and more chimpanzee-puppy.

  Lillian only had a rifle and her white coat. She had a quarantine mask, but she didn’t wear it over her face, instead leaving it hanging around her throat, like a second face.

  Helen was smiling, swaying on the spot as if to music only she could hear.

  “Go,” I said to Helen, as I stopped walking, coming to a halt beside Jessie.

  Helen was right on the heels of the slowest of the attack beasts we’d unleashed.

  “Drop ropes down,” I reminded the students who stood off to the side. “Two tugs, a pause, and two more tugs, means it’s us. Or you can just cut the ropes and leave us out there. Would be a tidy way to get rid of us.”

  “He’s joking,” Jessie said. Like Lillian, she had a mask. “Don’t do that. Really.”

  With that, we stepped through the morass of builder’s wood that had been cleaved and pulled down out of the way, freeing the doors to open, and we passed through the gap and into the city proper. There was a haze, but the word from our Doctors was that it was supposed to be inert, now. The moisture was still heavy in the air, but the chemicals wouldn’t be active. Ominous, to see ambient clouds of what had been corrosive gas, but not hazardous.

  “Nervous, Sy?” Lillian asked. Her voice was hushed, and it sounded eerie, given the landscape.

  “Hm? Never.”

  “Never, right, yeah,” she said. “You always poke fun w
hen you’re uneasy.”

  “Uneasy? Here? Naw,” I said. My eyes scanned the area. There wouldn’t be any Nobles, not here, not this far in this fast. I still felt the need. “We’re sticking our necks out, there’s no danger.”

  “We spread out as soon as we’re into the street,” Jessie said. “Duncan, Lillian, Ashton, you’re the fulcrum points. Mary—”

  “I’ll fulcrum,” I said.

  “You’re chained up.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Let me be the bait.”

  “Let him,” Mary said.

  “Alright,” Jessie said, her voice soft. “Mary, Duncan’s beasts, Treasurer, Helen, and I are floating. Ashton, stay close to the middle, support whoever needs supporting, which will probably be Sy or me. I’ll take the west, since that puts me further from the side with the Nobles.”

  “The objective isn’t to kill,” Mary said. “We don’t need to win.”

  I might have made a joke about Mary needing to convince herself of that. I didn’t. I’d just been called out on poking fun, for one thing, and I knew the words weren’t meant for Mary, but for Helen, who was already roaming, staying just in earshot.

  The sound of a distant thud drew our collective attention.

  The thud was soon followed by a sound like a sturdy iron rake across cobblestone, and then a wet, gurgling scream.

  The pack of warbeasts had found the nobles, or vice versa.

  We moved as a unit, fanning out. The Treasurer was a weak point, he didn’t know the dynamics, and in an odd way that completely went against the language Jessie had been using, he became the fulcrum point. He was the fixed point which the rest of us revolved around, as we found positions, chose vantage points, and kept an eye on those closer to us.

  “Blasted things!” a voice called out. It was augmented. Noble.

  “Calm, Clifford,” a voice replied, further away. It was only the sheer silence that hung over the city that allowed me to catch it. “Calm. They want us agitated. It wouldn’t do to give them what they want without something in return.”

  Something told me it was Carling.

  “We’re not alone anymore,” a woman said. “And it isn’t the beasts. Not entirely.”