Twig

by wildbow

  “Nothing,” I said. “Well, a great deal makes them special, but that’s not what you’re asking.”

  “Why should I lose everything and everyone I hold dear, when you won’t?”

  I was very aware of the Lambs who were arranged behind me. I was aware of the state of them.

  You’re losing them, the voice said. They’re slipping away as you speak. And if you let them go, then I’ll have no reason to hold back. Our deal will have ended.

  I blinked, slow.

  “Because, if you’re honest with yourself, if you step away and look at what this world is and what it’s becoming… we’re really not far from a reality where everyone is condemned to the pits. Everyone is lost. Maybe not this generation. Maybe not the next. But surely, somehow, if you cherish anyone, anything, any legacy at all, you can’t let them win, destroy it all, and erect some… mockery in its place. Rewritten history, modified, subjugated, and broken people.”

  “You might well be giving me too much credit,” Berger said.

  “If that’s so, then I’m really sorry I spared you, way back then,” I said.

  The fires were rising from the building where we’d left the Infante.

  A hollow, eerie bellow sounded, extending over the city.

  “That would be the golden calf, I presume?” Duncan asked.

  “Yes,” the Professor next to Berger said.

  “The Infante is coming. He’ll have his pet with him,” Berger said.

  “And you’ve given your answer?” I asked. “You won’t help? You’re speaking for the Duke in that?”

  “Almost,” Berger said.

  “Almost?”

  “I can’t speak for the Lord I serve, but in speaking for myself, I don’t believe you’ll bring about a better world.”

  I tilted my head to one side, watching Berger.

  “We treated you pretty fairly, all considered,” I said.

  Berger didn’t reply. Beside me, Mary placed bullets in her gun. She exchanged guns with Lillian and loaded the other, too. Duncan and Ashton were kneeling by Helen.

  “Fine,” I said. “Point taken. But you’ve worked with Lillian. You’ve seen Duncan. You’ve communicated with them, tried to fight for a better future alongside them, steering the Infante away from trouble.”

  “Insofar as that’s possible,” one of the Professors said.

  “You’re… you’ve lost, you’re faltering. You seem resigned to your fates. But pass the baton. If Lillian and Duncan aren’t the kind of Doctor you want to succeed you, then I don’t know who else would serve.”

  The Golden Calf howled yet again.

  “I’ve met some doctors I could recommend,” Ashton said. “But that’s not the point.”

  “Hush,” Duncan said.

  Berger glanced at the Duke.

  The Duke lowered his head, reaching down to Berger’s belt. He retrieved a handful of vials.

  “That’s a yes?” I asked.

  “Shh, Sy,” Lillian said. “Don’t go and say something that changes anyone’s mind, if they’re leaning toward helping.”

  “I’m not going to change anyone’s mind,” I said.

  “You could,” Ashton said.

  I shut my mouth.

  Berger held the vials that the Duke had retrieved and put in his hands.

  “Combat drugs?” Lillian asked.

  The Duke turned, facing the burning building.

  He’d left one arm extended.

  “In your condition—” Lillian started.

  Duncan touched her arm.

  The rain continued to pour down. Berger extracted the drug with a syringe, and he placed the syringe point into the Duke’s arm.

  “We’ll have to get past the Infante to reach the ship,” Mary said. “Are your people on board?”

  “Guarded,” Berger said. “They’ll be shot before we get close enough.”

  “Get us to the Infante’s ship. We’ll get close enough.”

  Berger nodded.

  “We’ll have to find a way to stop the Infante,” I said. “Are there drugs? Any mechanisms? Chemicals we could use?”

  “No.”

  “If we take out his Professors, what happens?”

  “He’ll recruit others. They’ll be worse at maintaining the delicate balances and keeping the plagues and weapons within him from harming him, but he’ll survive. He’d be able to get himself restored to peak condition, if only because they’d keep him alive and well until he made it back to the Crown Capitol.”

  The fighting was picking up. We weren’t terribly far from the Academy itself, with its high walls, at the highest elevated point on the city that had raised itself in stages. I had a feeling harvesters had warped the exterior walls, elaborating them, smoothing them out and reinforcing the bases, but it was hard to see in particular.

  The Tangles had united into a few greater forms, comprehensive enough to be able to climb from the ground at the base of the walls to the tops of the wall. Much of the artillery fire and gunfire was aimed at them.

  Duncan picked Helen.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “There’s damage to her brain or spine, going by how nonresponsive she is. I’d need to perform exploratory surgery to tell, and this isn’t a good surgical theater.”

  I set my jaw.

  I shifted my grip on Jessie. The others pulled coverings into place, protecting them from the rain we were about to venture into. I was very aware that the fabric would start to give way if we subjected ourselves to too much of it.

  I heard the sounds of the Golden Calf, and I could visualize the Infante, not far from it. Three Infantes, as possible positions, possible stances. I could imagine him in a range of conditions.

  The Lambs have to destroy him.

  The Duke, beside us, stretched.

  “Donn’t,” the Duke said. His voice was rich, the words crude, as painful to listen to as they must have been to utter.

  I turned to look at him.

  “Donn’t… disappoint me,” the Duke spoke.

  Thunder rumbled, and we we ran, ducking our heads down, jackets and hoods pulled up. The Duke almost resembled his old self, but his expression was a stricken one. One I recognized, in a morbid way, the expression mirroring sentiments I’d harbored in my heart in my darkest moments.

  The Duke of Francis was going to die, for the burst of vigor and focus he was demonstrating now.

  He kept his head down, his movements efficient, not graceful but not graceless either. I knew that kind of movement too: it was the mechanical movement of someone who had to keep putting one foot in front of the other because there was no guarantee they would be able to resume moving if their rhythm broke or if they stopped.

  A Tangle rose up, striking out from an alley. It wasn’t large, composed of four people, but it was relatively intact.

  The Duke ignored it, even as it found its footing, moving to strike at him.

  I lunged, moving clumsily with Jessie at my back. I cut more to slow it a fraction than to stop it. It clubbed at me and hit Jessie.

  Mary threw knives. With the wires attached and the knives embedded in flesh, she hauled to one side, pulling it off balance and toppling it.

  The Duke had barely budged or reacted. He couldn’t spare the strength or effort for anything that wasn’t our primary enemy in this.

  But, as we ran, he held his sword arm out, his hooded cloak stretching down the length of his very long arms. It had been black once, but it was mottled, the color bleeding out of it, the parts where the fabric was tight against shoulder and head were outright bleached.

  The length of cloak he’d extended and the sweep of his arm provided a canopy, sufficient to shelter Lillian, Jessie and I.

  The shattered city was staring to slow in its growth, the rumble quieting. The sound of war on the ground, across the city, and at the foot of Radham Academy itself seemed to increase in volume, as the dull sounds of the city’s shifting ceased to mask it all.

  I saw
the Infante, standing in the street. He let the rain wash over him. His flesh was bleaching and mottling less than the high quality fabric of the Duke of Francis’ cloak.

  I saw the Golden Calf. The two-faced helmet had been unclasped, but its face wasn’t visible. It hunched over a tangle, it ate, the helm blocking our view of its face and process of eating. Its back and body were bulging, larger for the mass it had taken into its body. Its arms were longer, stouter at the shoulders.

  We slowed our pace. The Duke, not wanting to stop, continued moving, circling around to one side.

  The Infante was scorched, flesh peeling from body in black, twisted clusters rimmed by red, damaged flesh, fluids streaking him as they flowed from open wounds. He didn’t look weaker, for the damage that had been done. He didn’t hang his head any lower, he didn’t bow down. He didn’t look less, wearing his battle wounds rather than his highest-quality robes.

  The Lambs were glancing around us. I looked around us, and I recognized many of the storefronts, though display windows were thoroughly barred and shuttered. I recognized the shape of the street. I didn’t remember, but it was a place close enough to my heart that I couldn’t forget it entirely.

  We were very close to the orphanage.

  The Golden Calf reached up, closing its helmet, doing up the clasp.

  I saw the Primordial Child, standing in the background, watching.

  “How dangerous is it?” Duncan asked.

  “They create primordials in the Crown Capitol, in the most controlled of environments. They cut and pruned until they came to a conclusion. Few of the resulting creations were truly capable of anything,” Berger said, his voice muffled by the mask he’d returned to wearing. “Even of those few, most are only fodder for research and advancing Academy knowledge, primordial-derived advancements that greater minds than mine may spend a decade or more reverse-engineering.”

  The Duke moved, lunging for the Infante, blade in one hand.

  The Calf, as far from its master as the Duke had been before the attack was initiated, was fast enough interpose itself between Infante and Duke before the Duke could strike. It parried the blade with a backhand swipe of a claw.

  The Infante hadn’t so much as flinched or glanced the Duke’s way.

  His focus was on us.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.10

  The Infante glowered, his veneer of humanity pulling away. He was burned, but the burns hadn’t penetrated far past the surface, his skin almost seeming to grow tougher where the fire had seared it. He remained unfazed by the life and death fight between the Duke and the Golden Calf that was moving back and forth around him, the two combatants within his arm’s reach at times.

  Had the Duke been able to find an advantage, he could have used the closing of the distance to attack.

  I could see the Infante’s craft, impaling the wall that framed this section of the city. Like a great pirate’s ship ramming a smaller craft, biting into railing and deck, it had cut into the city. It was guarded by a section of his army, and by a scattered assortment of his experiments. The weasel warbeasts with the augmented jaws, humanoids with helmets, and others I couldn’t make out through the rain.

  Lillian handed a jar to Mary. Duncan and Ashton paced backward and to the side. They wanted to find an avenue to act. I could draw the connection, imagine what they wanted to do. I could picture how this might play out, if they succeeded. I could picture the moves as if they were moves on one of Hayle’s chessboards, during those early days where he’d made us compete with one another. Counting moves ahead of time, figuring out where we wanted to be, how to cheat effectively…

  I pushed myself. I tried to take in the situation, to see where the others might position themselves, how the enemy might respond. The Golden Calf was a whirling dervish of destruction that had a way of appearing at every point, devastating every contingency. I held every image in my head, tried to account for the Infante, and found him easier to predict, harder to deal with.

  The Calf might have been stronger in a sense, but it was feral. The Infante was only feral when it was inconvenient.

  The more I focused, the more I felt everything slip.

  The Lambs must slay this god, the voice said.

  I put it out of mind. It wasn’t helpful, it didn’t help me process this situation. It was… simply an unpleasant, dark noise in my head. I couldn’t even be sure if it was articulating noises anymore, or if it was meeting my brain halfway, like writing and speech in a dream, that made no sense in retrospect.

  “No room for failure, Sy.”

  That was a more reassuring voice, helping me center myself and figure this out. I looked over a battlefield and saw a dozen instances of each Lamb, fifty instances of the Calf, and five—six instances of the Infante. All frozen in position, at places where they would make their key moves. I could look at any of them, and visualize where everyone else might be in relation to them.

  “Yeah,” I said, under my breath. The Infante was staring me down.

  “No room for sucking, because that monster will tear all of us apart. And you’ve got Jessie with you. So no sacrificing yourself. It’s not an option.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The rain pattered down on my coat. I was standing under the eaves of a building, but it still was getting at my shoes. I worried about what would happen if it was left to do its work, eroding at the treated leather.

  “I wish I’d gotten to know Jessie.”

  “I do too, Gordon,” I said. “I do too.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said.

  Duncan and Ashton ascended to a sloped rooftop. Duncan carried Helen.

  The Infante reached in the direction of a pile of rubble.

  “Duncan!” I shouted. “Down!”

  Boneless limbs reaching from the Infante’s hand to the rubble, seizing it. Duncan dropped, pulling Ashton down with him, and the Infante adjusted the throw as all three tumbled off the roof to the street.

  Stone pulverized stone and wood. Scattered fragments of the rubble that had broken away as it was hurled forth chipped at the ground and wall near Duncan. Duncan and Ashton covered their faces and heads.

  The worst of the rubble had struck the wall above them. Some shattered pieces landed around them, or bounced off of the three Lambs.

  The Infante turned his attention to me.

  I could imagine his thoughts. You’re going to make me destroy you first, are you?

  My imagining of the voice sounded dangerously close to the voice in my head.

  He strode forward, one step, then two, and then was running by the third step.

  I turned, moving perpendicular to him, closer to Lillian and Mary.

  Mary threw the jar, sending it arcing high into the air. She drew her pistol with the same hand, aiming it—

  The Infante reached up to catch the jar out of the air with the same boneless limbs that had gripped the rubble. Mary, for her part, turned on the spot, bringing one foot up, kicking out at the air—at thread.

  Wound around the jar-top, the thread was pulled taut. Held firmly in the grip of the Infante’s coiling symbiote, the bottle broke. The contents showered down on one side of his face, his shoulders, and into the mess of tentacles and the hand that was almost hidden among them. It was powdery, and it clung to him where the rainwater soaked his skin.

  I wondered what Lillian had in her kit that she thought might serve against the Infante.

  Momentarily blinded in one eye, hand and the associated tentacles coated in the powder, he continued charging at us. I skipped up on top of a rain barrel that was rigged to divert some water into a garden that was protected by an overhang. From there, I stepped up onto the arm of a diagonal gutter that fed into the barrel, and made the hop to get to the roof of the one-story building.

  My legs were tired. The combined weight of Jessie and I and the running we’d done to this point was adding up, and I didn’t get my feet onto the roof. I hit the edge of the
roof with my stomach.

  “Damn it, Sy.”

  A moment later, something jabbed me hard in between the ass cheeks. It was Mary—driving her shoulder into my butt, as she’d hopped up right behind and beneath me, she was using the force of her entire body to force me up.

  “Perilously close to the droopier vitals, Mary!” I called out, as I clambered onto the roof.

  The Infante swung his arm at us, the various tentacles that extended from his hand and arm forming a singular, club-like entity. Mary leaped up and away, Lillian dove for the ground. The rain barrel and gutter were demolished.

  “You’re broken,” the Infante said. “Half of you dead or dying, the other half incapable of accomplishing anything.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I said.

  “I am not diminished,” the Infante said. “You… you remind me of what humanity was, before.”

  “Before.”

  “How many years did man walk this Earth, so sick and crippled that his cities and nations only barely subsisted, let alone progressed? You… all of you barely subsist, like this.”

  “It’s better than the alternative,” I said.

  “When you’ve spent your remaining time in the pits of the Crown Capitol, you’ll change your mind about that. When you’re spent, well past the point of keeping alive, crumbling as you are, I’ll ensure you see each and every loyal soldier and ally of yours that the plague doesn’t claim, being marched in to suffer the same fates.”

  In the background, I could see Ashton edging closer to the fight between the Duke and the Calf.

  If he could gain any influence over it—

  “Your Ashton won’t affect it,” the Infante said. “It doesn’t have senses as you and I do. It doesn’t have muscles in the same sense, nor the bones you might expect. Its shape is… accident, but not unintentional.”

  Had he seen me looking at it, or did he anticipate me?