by wildbow
“Was it—maybe it wasn’t you?” she asked, as if begging an answer. “Can we at least say that you weren’t yourself, that it was a quirk in your head, another personality?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and I hated myself for not telling her what she wanted to hear. At least I’d given her an answer that wasn’t ‘I don’t know’. “I don’t think that distinction really exists.”
Soldiers with guns shifted their feet uncomfortably. They weren’t pointing the guns directly at me, but they were close. When I met the eyes of one fellow, he looked away.
When I let my eye roam, trying to go anywhere that wasn’t where I was standing, just a few feet from Jessie, I saw just how many Nobles were present in the room. They moved, pacing, and as they did so, the others moved out of their way. In this place, in this visual representation of where my thoughts dwelt, the Nobles held sway.
Lillian blinked hard, then blinked a few times in quick succession. She looked skyward, and the tears started.
I wanted to tell her not to do that, but how could I?
“For all that you guys tried to teach me a good poker face, huh?” she asked, her voice too high, as if it was on a precipice.
“Yeah,” I managed.
“What I keep going back to is—” she stopped abruptly, blinking more. “I know it’s stupid, but it’s just about the only thing I can cling to right now. The Lambs accept each other’s foibles, big and small. There’s a part of me that wants to do that. Sylvester is what he is. From the earliest days, when you convinced me that certain rude words were normal conversation among adults and I used them in class, or when you put that egg in my mouth while I was sleeping, or when you looked up my skirt or relentlessly made fun of me, well beyond the point it was funny and when it made me want to quit… not just the Lambs but the Academy altogether, give up on my dream because you were that vicious?”
“Lillian,” I said. I didn’t really have a follow up.
“You were a horrible little shit sometimes, Sy. And this—this is… whatever this is, seeing you like this, deranged at one moment and lost the next, covered in blood? It’s—”
She stopped.
“Bad,” I said, swallowing.
“But I knew that Wyvern hurt you. I knew you came from a bad place if you’d go from that to the Academy labs. I knew—not at the very beginning, but I figured it out quick, that Wyvern was going to do your head in.”
I nodded.
“So what I’m clinging to is this silly, little-girl idea that this is normal. Of motherfucking course you’re standing there like that and I’m standing here with a bunch of soldiers with guns. Of course when the others leave you alone to talk to Mauer and to get me, we all come to reunite with you and find you’re lost to the world, so nonfunctional your organs are suffering for it, and you’ve turned an entire Academy upside-down. Of course, Doctor Lillian. Business as usual.”
Her voice was getting even higher at the end there.
“And that part of me really doesn’t want to blame you. It was what was done to you. It really, really, really—” She stopped there, raising her hands up, as if to put a wall between us, or to ward me off from speaking, and pushing her in any way.
I was silent.
“—really,” she continued, once she had her composure. “I want to be able to tell myself that I’m a proper Lamb, and I can forgive the experiment parts of you, because that’s how we operate.”
“It doesn’t make you any less of a Lamb if you aren’t okay with this,” I said.
“Don’t tell me that,” she said. “Because it’s all I have, Sy. Jessie is—was—Jessie’s one of my favorite people I never got to know enough. It sounds so dumb, but I was really looking forward to reading books with her.”
“She said she was losing her memories,” I said. “A lot of them.”
“She told me. We didn’t want to tell you because you were fragile,” Lillian said.
I clenched my fists. My hand hurt, a lot.
I wasn’t clenching them because I was angry or anything like it. I needed to remind myself I was present.
“That makes some sense, then,” she said. “It makes this scene make more sense. Thank you.”
I couldn’t bring myself to respond.
“Can I check on her?” Lillian asked. “Or should I wait? The others were signaled. They’ll be on their way.”
“You can check on her,” I said.
“No abrupt movements, Sy. And don’t go anywhere, okay? Let’s be mindful of the soldiers you recruited who have guns. Let’s respect their feelings on this too.”
“Don’t go anywhere? I—”
I turned to check.
The shackle on my arm was gone. The hand at the end of that arm—
Skin had torn wholesale. From the midpoint on the back of my hand and palm to the second knuckle, I’d managed to strip off the flesh, so it bundled around the ends of my finger. It was still bleeding profusely, enough that I’d not been able to see where the torn skin had gathered in the initial glance.
“Get me my medical kit,” Lillian said. “Hurry!”
I could look more freely without having to look at Jessie, because Lillian’s body blocked my view. I looked to the ground.
The chain that led to my ankle was bundled up. My shirt was bound around it, with the leg of a tea table thrust through the cloth. It was soaked with blood and something else, and it had been twisted up and around several times.
It was a trick that served to bend steel bars and, in the right circumstances, to apply force to something like a human head or chain, when cloth would otherwise tear and wood wouldn’t have the leverage. Twist up the cloth, soak it, bind it around, and then use the stick to twist it up further, until the cloth crushed that which was between it. Bars would bend to be closer to one another, a skull would crack, and chain links could theoretically bend or break.
The chain that was attached to my ankle was in bad enough shape that I could have broken it. I could break it even now, with enough of a kick of my leg.
I’d almost been free, before they’d come in with the guns, before Lillian had arrived.
I’d almost… what?
A soldier had brought Lillian’s bag. She was digging through it.
That she was doing something, doing anything at all, it should have filled me with hope. It didn’t.
I couldn’t communicate it to Lillian. I couldn’t articulate that, and if I could’ve, I wouldn’t have wanted to say it and make Lillian’s heart hurt the way mine did.
“Lillian.”
It was Mary.
Lillian stopped what she was doing. Simply the arrival of Mary was enough to draw out more tears on her part. Mary flew to her side.
“I can’t stay for long,” Mary said.
“I can’t make the call myself, Mary,” Lillian whispered.
Mary looked my way.
“Jessie’s alive?” Mary asked.
I saw Lillian nod.
“Then why?” Mary asked. One of her arms encircled Lillian, hugging her.
“Because Sylvester was talking before… before he came to. Because—”
“I could have,” I said. “I would have, if…”
I trailed off.
“Yeah,” Lillian said. “That.”
For all of her hardness before, Mary’s look now was pure sympathy.
I’d seen that eerie sympathy when she’d stroked my hair, before. The tenderness that Mary didn’t offer up very often at all. It was what Lillian had been talking about. She was able to accept and look past the parts of me that were experiment, and be kind to the other side, and it was so clear a divide in her that it had seemed entirely out of place.
“I need to go. I can’t leave the others, but someone had to come, and I thought that if it really was an emergency, I’d have to be the one to fight off whoever or whatever it was. But it’s a thing there too. We got intercepted on our way here.”
“Take me with you,” I said.
<
br /> I saw the looks on both of their faces.
“Take me with you,” I said, again. “Whatever say I have, whatever weight my word still carries, whatever favors I can still rightfully call in, you need to take me there. It’s important.”
“Why?” Mary asked.
“Because. Because I can’t do anything else. I can’t stay here and look at this and I can’t be there if and when Jessie wakes up. I need to keep moving. If I stop moving forward I won’t be able to start again. This, this whole plan, it’s me, and I need to see it through.”
“It might be better,” Lillian said.
“Do we have shackles?” Mary asked. “Cuffs, anyone?”
“Not here, but I can go,” one soldier said.
“No time,” I said. “If something untoward happens, Mary can kill me. She wins in a fight.”
“I’m not worried about a fight,” Mary said. “I’m worried about circumstances where I don’t even get a chance to fight back. You tend to create those.”
“I think—” I said.
Tell her you’ll be good, the voice said. Convince her.
“I think I’ll be okay. I think I know where all of this is going. The rules this operates by. I’m okay if I have Lambs close. It didn’t work here because Jessie wasn’t there with me. I can do this. And it doesn’t make it easier or right, but I can’t spend the rest of the time I’ve got hobbled. I need to act decisively, while I’ve got a chance.”
Mary glanced at Lillian.
“Do it,” Lillian said.
“You think?” Mary asked.
“If we don’t have Sylvester and we don’t have Jessie, then we might not be able to see this through,” Lillian said. Her voice was pitched to a volume meant for Mary and I alone, or just for Mary, with me overhearing by accident. “And if we can’t trust Sylvester, if he’s this far gone in the here and now, then we definitely can’t see it through.”
Mary stood. Wavy brown hair, ribbons, and a dress with tasteful amounts of lace all remained aloft for a fraction longer than it took her to move. Many of those same things settled with a weight that only a trained eye might have caught.
“Are your pockets empty?” Mary asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
She stood, approaching me. With deft movements of her hands, she frisked me.
“You’ll need a shirt,” she said. She turned to one of the rebel soldiers nearby. “You. Give us your shirt.”
The hesitation was clear.
“Now. Everything we’ve been doing for the last few weeks and months hinges on this.”
He pulled off his shirt. It was a button-up shirt, and he had an undershirt on underneath, even though it was summer.
She handed it to me, and then bent down to address the chain at my ankle. I started pulling on the shirt, working gingerly with my damaged hand.
The moment my shackle was off, she gripped the upper arm I’d already set into the sleeve, and steered me in a hurried march, out of the room and toward the exit that would lead onto the walltop.
I did what I could to get buttoned up. I might’ve been taking too long, because with scarcely a glance, Mary reached over with one hand and began doing up others.
“Jessie’s gone, or she’s going,” I said, quiet.
“I know.”
“Helen’s…”
“Yes. I have my difficulties, but it’s a few months to a year off.”
“Okay,” I said. “I just wanted to know where we stood.”
She tore at some of the lace that encircled her waist. Seizing my wrist, she began moving the loose skin back into place. Her grip was stern as I reflexively jerked and pulled.
The Baron stood in the stairwell, watching us as we made our way down to the door.
“I’d normally use Wyvern to convince my body to stay still,” I said. “I think it has its hands full.”
“I know,” Mary said. “It’s fine.”
There were guards at the door. They gave us some wary looks, but at Mary’s gesture, they unblocked the door and hauled it open.
“Keep your hands in your pockets unless you absolutely have to move them, and if you do, try to signal me and keep them in view,” Mary said. “The pressure from the edge of the pocket will help, but you need more attention to that hand than I can give you here.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
It took some doing to get my damaged hand wedged into a pocket. I worried the blood would seep out and run down my pant leg, but it was dark, still.
The others had gathered at one end of the bridge. Some of our lieutenants were with them. Davis, Mabel, Junior.
Of the assembled group on the other side, just a few paces from the Lambs, I could recognize Professor Ibbot, Professor Gossamer, the noble Lady Gloria, and the aristocrat, Mrs. Deb? Darby. Mrs. Darby. I couldn’t remember the name of the well-spoken man who’d been at the same meeting Mrs. Darby had. There were another six who hung back a bit, less familiar to and with us.
“Everything okay?” Duncan asked.
“We’ll manage,” Mary said. “I don’t think we need to do further introductions, do we? You’re all aware of who Sylvester Lambsbridge is. I’m Mary Cobourn the Second.”
“Is that an attempt at humor?” Ibbot asked.
“I hope it is,” Helen said. “With the state of things, we need more reasons to laugh. You’ve done a poor enough job that a great many people have reason to cry.”
“Watch your tone, Helen,” Ibbot said. “A proper lady should be deferential.”
Helen laughed at that. Outright disrespect. I could see how it prickled Ibbot.
It prickled me too, in a different way. I heard the laugh and I knew that Helen was far from being in a good place, too. Having Ibbot near just brought it into focus. A stressor of its own right.
“We saw the flashes of light,” Mrs. Darby said. “Your pattern to date suggests that you often flicker the lights on and off to communicate just before you attack. We thought we would get ahead of that and open dialogue.”
They will submit, the voice said.
“Kneel,” I said.
I saw the shock hit them.
“That’s not—”
“Kneel,” I said, louder, firmer. I let some of the emotion and raw energy from earlier into my voice, the anger at everything and at myself. I turned it against the people who were supposed to be responsible for everything. Who were symbolically responsible for me being what I was.
“We should go,” Professor Gossamer said.
“If you leave,” I said. “We will blow up that bridge with you on it.”
I could see the alarm on Duncan’s face. Ashton frowned slightly.
Mary, at least, seemed to be neutral to this, or she was sufficiently good at appearing neutral.
Helen looked intrigued, for her part, but Helen was a difficult read in the here and now.
“You’d lose any and all chance you had of getting the others to listen or cooperate,” Professor Gossamer said.
“Probably. I’d give them their chance to kneel, and if they didn’t listen, I’d wipe them out too,” I said. I was very aware of how many nobles were arranged around us. Mine, not theirs. “Your time is up, the sands have all found their way to the bottom of this hourglass. The point’s been made. You know and we know how this ends. No more pretending, no more niceties.”
“Niceties are important,” Lady Gloria said. “You can achieve our cooperation without humiliating us. Trying to humiliate us will only make us balk. We may well die before we kneel to someone who isn’t our Lord King.”
“Then you might as well die,” I said. “Because if you want to see this as humiliation, you’d face a lot more of it. We had our turn as the bottom rung, doing the Academy’s bidding. Now it’s the same, but the positions reversed. You’ll be our slaves in all but name. You will bow, you’ll scrape, and you’ll choose the right words. How fast you bow and scrape will determine if we treat you with something resembling kindness, as we’ve treated
the experiments we took into the dormitory over there, or if we treat you as things to be used and discarded.”
“That’s it, then?” Mrs. Darby asked. “I’ve already given you my personal concession, I’ve told the others I’m already willing to surrender. I don’t know how much my circumstances will change, and I’m scared at the ideas of what might happen, but you’ll hold us hostage here? You’re making me reconsider my decision.”
“You can kneel, knowing just how many of them are watching this through the window, you can come with us, you can try to walk away, and we’ll take the bridge out from under your feet, or you can be taken prisoner. You don’t want to be taken prisoner.”
“We’d be agreeing to be prisoners in the long term,” Lady Gloria said. “I know where I stand in relation to you. I know it’s not as wide a gap as some would like to pretend.”
I shook my head, slow.
“Yet I must insist that you could make this easier,” she said.
“That decision is entirely in your hands,” I said. “It rests on how quickly you admit your decision in totality.”
Her face was hard as she stared me down. I didn’t flinch.
Time was not a currency I was willing to spend any more of. No. We held power, and I had every intention of using that power to hoard that very currency. I would give everything for more of it. I would tread over any number of corpses until I could get more of it. I would take it by any means.
Mrs. Darby shifted her footing. Multiple eyes turned to her as she reached out for the railing to the bridge she stood on, and started to work her way to her knees.
Ibbot seized her arm, stopping her.
Her eyes on the ground, Mrs. Darby said, “I would have it be known I’m bending the knee, or I would if I wasn’t being manhandled by a notorious boor.”
“He’s pressing the issue because he’s in crisis,” Ibbot said. “The Lambs have expiration dates. Someone’s run short. Jamie, was it? Or have Lillian’s dalliances in study drugs caught up with her?”
“You don’t know anything,” Mary said.
“No,” I said. “He’s right. It’s a big part of why time’s up. There’s so very little left to lose, now. You can be sure I’m putting a high price on that little. You do not want to pay for it in blood. You do not want to see me get creative.”