Twig

by wildbow

  Murmurs? Shouts.

  He raised one hand, touching the back of his head.

  I’d made him bleed. He was always self conscious about that.

  I’d made him bleed a lot. He would be more self conscious about that.

  His expression was unmoved as he returned his focus to me.

  I smiled, spreading my arms.

  There were more noises from the crowd.

  “Proud of your small victories?” the Infante asked.

  “Devastatingly proud, tits.”

  His expression shifted. “What?”

  “I said I’m devastatingly proud, tits,” I told him. “Did that knife I jammed in your ear actually do something to your hearing?”

  “Tits,” the Infante said.

  I touched the back of my head.

  It was then that he seemed to realize.

  “Juvenile,” the Infante said.

  I glanced at Gordon, who seemed inordinately pleased. Gordon wasn’t any older than he had been in Lugh.

  “It’s what we are,” I said. “It’s what I am.”

  “You said that to the Duke,” Lillian said. Mask or no, I could hear the incredulity. “Sy- you sacrificed the Duke’s life to—”

  “It worked,” I said, with intensity. I pointed at the crowd behind the Infante.

  The Infante turned to look. As he did, the back of his head was plain to view. I’d carved the four letters into the back of his head.

  The crowd behind him looked stricken, not sure what to do. Laugh, cry…

  That harpoon was a little late in coming. This would have been when I would’ve liked to fire the shot, and try to unite Lamb and Professor in dragging that bastard off the ramp.

  The saving grace wasn’t any harpoon. It was a creature from the crowd, bloody and hard to make out, as it tore past the people nearest the Infante, stepped onto the railing, and pounced onto the Infante’s face.

  Helen.

  Her arm was broken, but she still used her hand, flinging her body around to the side to get her hand to where it could hold on. Her other hand clutched. Her one good leg scrabbled for purchase.

  “Harpoon!” I shouted, looking for the professor that had run off.

  He emerged from the stairs, looked at the scene, and threw the oversized crossbow.

  To me. The idiot. I caught it in a bear hug, reversed it in my grip, and gave it to Mary. I knew her arm was hurt from our first skirmish with the Infante, so I held the front end, ducking low, while I let Mary do the aiming.

  The plague-ridden hand struck Helen, pulling her back and away. The harpoon caught the hand before another blow could be delivered. I, Duncan, Ashton, Lillian, and Mary all seized the rope, pulling it to one side.

  The Infante’s attempt at smashing Helen away from his face was thrown off as we pulled him slightly off balance. He caught himself.

  The High Noble made a hand gesture at the Golden Calf.

  It hung on the railing, perching on the side of the ship, and with the gesture, it hopped the railing, landing on the deck.

  Lawrence whistled. He made another gesture. The Golden Calf sat down where it was.

  The rope from the harpoon was secured, tied down. As one, we made the Infante’s sole remaining arm our target. Fluids were oozing from it, and he slapped Helen’s back, smearing the fluids onto her clothing. He grabbed her, trying to pull her away.

  Mary’s razor wire and a rifle that several of us could grab provided some leverage on that hand. Duncan poured something on the deck, and the Infante lost his footing, dropping to his knees. I threw a coat over the Infante’s face and over Helen, to keep the rain off of her. It wouldn’t do for her to dissolve while trying to do this.

  There was an echo to earlier. This time, instead of Gorger taking the Infante’s head, we had Helen.

  It wasn’t fast. But Helen had the ability to finish this. Broken as she was, ribs fractured, limbs more fluid, relying on musculature, she crammed herself into the Infante’s mouth.

  Soldiers on the ground started to approach.

  “Stand down!” Lawrence called out.

  “Sir—”

  “Stand down!”

  “No, Professor!”

  Several guns raised—not all of them. They aimed at the Professors.

  I nearly lost my own footing on the slick of fluids Duncan had placed beneath the Infante.

  Lawrence stood at the top of the ramp, facing down the crowd. The Duke’s professor stood at his side.

  “Look at him,” Lawrence said. “The plague took him. That much is clear to see. He’s mad, he’s broken. He lost.”

  The guns didn’t waver.

  “He lost, and the Crown doesn’t lose. Therefore, he’s not Crown.”

  I could have laughed at the circular reasoning—I might have, if the guns hadn’t actually drooped a little.

  I dropped away from the struggle to hamper the Infante’s one arm that wasn’t harpooned. It took some doing, but I needed to sway the crowd.

  Lillian’s coat over me, I climbed up the Infante’s arm to where Helen was.

  Helen, our beautiful Helen. She was a monster in disguise, but above all else, her role in the team had always been the actress.

  Our glorious actress, from the point that she’d been kicked and injured, had played dead. She’d played out her part, to the point it convinced us, because the Infante had needed to believe it to let his guard down. No longer able to play effectively at being human, she had played her role perfectly when it came to being broken.

  “Turn his head thirty degrees to the right,” I said.

  I heard an exasperated sigh from her. She was using her body to stifle him, to deny him air and keep him from effectively closing his jaw. It yawned open now, to the point even one of the weasel-thing’s jaws might have dislocated.

  But she had some leverage on the outside of his head, which she was using to make him face skyward, the coat covering the both of them. She managed to get him to turn his head slightly. Not thirty degrees, but enough to give them a glimpse.

  Of ‘TITS’—carved on the back of the noble’s head.

  It wasn’t much, but in hurting the soldier’s faith…

  The guns they’d lowered a fraction didn’t raise.

  They needed to believe the Infante could win, or that he could win on his own, but we’d taken chunks out of the noble, and now we had him at our mercy.

  Helen’s arm reached into the Infante’s mouth and up, likely finding a grip on the uvula or on the ledge that would lead up to the sinuses. If the Infante was one to reflexively gag, he would have thrown up then.

  As it was, it was purchase for her to go contortionist, to draw herself inches in deeper, a young lady making the giant of a man swallow her.

  Minutes passed. The harpoon gun was used twice more, lashing the Infante down further, so both arms were pinned down. It meant the others could back off and get out of the rain.

  I draped another coat over Helen, then backed off.

  It took what I estimated to be nine minutes, all in all. Struggles, two attempts at hauling hands and arms free of the barbed harpoons. We fired more that had been brought from belowdecks. The Infante slowly went limp, sagging to the ground.

  Our actress remained where she was, making absolutely sure.

  The audience was very still and very quiet, their eyes averted.

  No applause to be had.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.11

  We wore coats that had been provided by the Professors. Mine was too big for me. The others wore coats that fit them—even Jessie had a coat draped over her, in addition to the one I’d put on her.

  As a group, hunkered down against the rain, we worked on extracting Helen.

  The soldiers who had been stationed around the base of the ramp were advancing, many of them gathering at the railing, watching, staring at the noble. They watched us, and I was very aware that they were holding onto their guns, not putting the weapons away. />
  The flesh-melting rain pattered down around us. Already, the clothes that the coats and coverings I’d been using were bleached or eroding away. My skin hurt at the ankles and wrists when I stretched or pulled against it. I worried that sooner or later, I would bend a wrist and the skin would split, welling blood and other fluids.

  But I worried about Helen more.

  She slid fully out of the Infante’s mouth, and we wrapped her in a cocoon of the multiple coats we’d arranged, using the momentum of her sliding down to the deck to keep her sliding along the wet wood. We moved her to where the cabin encircled the ship’s navigation, and the overhanging bit of cover that we’d all been standing beneath. ‘We’ being the Professors, the Lambs, and myself, when we hadn’t been actively helping.

  As a unit, we unwrapped her as much as we’d already wrapped her. Ashton lifted up her arm and side so Duncan could put the dry part of the coat beneath her, providing some protection from the water on the deck. Not much had reached the area under the shelter.

  “Help,” Duncan said.

  He unbuttoned her top. I moved to block the view of the soldiers behind us, while holding her head.

  “Duncan,” Helen said. “Manhandling me? You cad.”

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” I said. “You got what you’ve been wanting for a while.”

  “Reasonably satisfied,” Helen said, her voice soft. “But now the bar’s been raised, whatever will I do next?”

  “You could be content with this,” I said.

  “I’m afraid I’m insatiable,” she said. “I always want them bigger, stronger, harder… to beat.”

  She was delirious. Or worse, she was drunk on whatever hormones or whatever there was churning in her system, stoking her appetites for bloodshed, crushed bones, and asphyxiation.

  The Devil of West Corinth lurked nearby. They were out in force, prowling in the shadows, adding their forces to the soldiers who had us surrounded.

  Lillian provided some light, a bright little bioluminescent flask, and Ashton held it. Helen was visible in a stark blue-green and black.

  “Plague,” Duncan observed. “We’ve got the pinprick signs.”

  “Surgery?” Lillian asked.

  “How fun,” Helen said, barely audible. She sounded like it was fun.

  “Do you want to take point?” he asked.

  “No. You know Helen’s physiology better than I do.”

  “I’m also rather fond of her. It’s hard to be objective.”

  “I operated on Mary, once upon a time. It’s best if you do it. We’ll split up the work, or I’ll keep you on track.”

  “Got it,” Duncan said.

  One of the Professors broke away from our group, approaching the soldiers. They were a restless lot, moving this way and that, not wanting to stay in the rain, but not wanting to leave the scene either. They paced around the deck, looking for safer ground, one or two choosing to stand where posts and gun mounts blocked some of the rain, others looking for overhangs.

  They knew who we were. They’d seen the Infante on edge, bristling with ugliness, the emperor sans his clothes, and they’d… not intervened. No. They’d hesitated.

  Not quite letting it happen, and more than a momentary hesitation—nine minutes. But it was the best way I could think of to parse it.

  Duncan was using a gloved hand to explore where the plague was setting in. He tapped at one spot near Helen’s armpit, and gave Lillian a severe look. “He got you good.”

  “I got him better,” Helen said. Her smile was hitching again.

  “You did,” Mary said. “That was good.”

  Helen worked out how to give a better smile.

  Cynthia paced nearby, angry.

  I was angry, I realized. This was very explicitly everything I’d been striving to avoid.

  “I’m going to have to cut away an awful lot of skin,” Duncan said. “We’ll have to explore when we’re that far, and see how deep we end up going.”

  “You know just what to say to a girl,” Helen said. “You’ve come so far, Doctor Duncan Foster.”

  Lillian handed Duncan the scalpel.

  “No snapping,” I said. “I know you’ll be tempted to jump one of us—”

  Helen giggled.

  “—But hold it back if you can.”

  Mary was already tying Helen’s legs, using wire to bind her boots together.

  “Oh,” Helen said. “I’m not sure it’s worth bothering about. I don’t think I’m very dangerous to anyone like this.”

  “Ha ha,” I said the words, rather than actually laughing. “Be serious now, so our doctors can do their work.”

  “I’m being serious, Sy.”

  I glanced at the others. Was there a chance, any chance, that she was engaged in another ruse? That she needed to convince us so we could convince the Professors and the small army that was surrounding us?

  Duncan was removing her skin, peeling it away with tongs, while Lillian raised Helen’s arm to view it better in the light.

  I set my jaw.

  That was serious, then.

  “Oh, you should know I have a stab wound from the fight on the rooftop, in my side. Something bitey squirmed its way inside of me, through that entry point. I pinned it down, squeezing it with surrounding muscles. If you get close to it, it might come unpinned, depending.”

  “Something bitey?” Ashton asked.

  “It got a few nips at my insides before I squeezed its head shut,” Helen said. “Nothing too bad, I don’t think, but I wouldn’t want you sliding your hand inside of me and coming out with a stump.”

  “Thank you, Helen,” Duncan said, unfazed. “That’s appreciated.”

  His voice was tense.

  For the time being, his focus was so overwhelmingly on his work that it looked like he was completely unaware of what the others around us were doing.

  Saving Helen first. Other concerns came secondary.

  I wasn’t doing much, but I couldn’t see myself leaving her side. I tried to think about the imminent situation with these soldiers who had no reason to let us go, and it was hard.

  A different kind of hard than it had been back when I’d run away the first time, and my Wyvern had run out.

  “I might need to take your left arm entirely,” Duncan told Helen.

  “Okay. That’s my fault. I needed to grab his shoulder for leverage. The contact was direct, that’s why it progressed as much as it did.”

  “I’ll handle the arm,” Lillian said.

  “If we get out of this okay, I’ve got my creator on a leash to put me back together, right?” Helen asked.

  Duncan and Lillian seemed too preoccupied to answer.

  “That’d be the plan,” I said.

  “It’s good that we captured him, then,” Helen said. She closed her eyes, and for a moment I worried she wouldn’t open them again. “Good job, Lambs.”

  Duncan continued to strip away flesh. He applied powder as he went, to keep infection and the flow of blood down.

  “Crown and Lords, there’s so much interconnection,” he muttered under his breath. “You’re a complicated person to work on, Helen.”

  “I’m special that way.”

  He continued working. Here and there, he cut away sections of muscle. The commentary seemed to stop for a daunting length of time.

  He’d turned to using gestures instead, communicating with Lillian. Helen couldn’t move her head enough to see. I couldn’t see very well, either.

  “You can say it,” she said. “I’m not going to be upset. It’s interesting, being taken apart, the feelings of cold wet air between skin and the rest of me. I dare say it’s fun.”

  “You’re not the one I’m concerned about,” he said.

  Helen sighed dramatically.

  “Do you need me to go?” I asked.

  “No,” Lillian said.

  “Just offering,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Worrying about what you’d be getting up to would be mo
re distracting than the inconvenience of having you here.”

  “I can feel the affection, how many years in the making?” I asked.

  “I adore you, you lunatic,” Lillian said. She severed the last major connecting piece attaching Helen’s arm to the shoulder. “If you have any doubt about that, then I urge you to be mindful of the fact that it’s dark, we’re in a warzone of your devising, the amount of rain is ludicrous, and I’m saying that as someone who spent most of her life living in a city where it doesn’t ever stop raining—”

  “Fair,” I said.

  “Except today’s forecast isn’t just heavy, it’s capable of melting flesh,” she said, pointing at me with Helen’s arm, before sweeping it around to indicate our surroundings, “we’re surrounded by soldiers—”

  Duncan paused in his work, glancing around. He returned his attention to the excisions.

  “—and I could go on,” Lillian said. “You’re not the whole reason I’m here, but you’re some of it, and I certainly wouldn’t be in this particular situation if I wasn’t attached to you on some level. You complete and utter loon.”

  “There’s no need for name calling,” I said, under my breath.

  “Was there really a need to carve a puerile insult into the back of the Infante’s head?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Did it make a difference?”

  I glanced at the others. The Professors weren’t in earshot, the soldiers were keeping a wider berth, as focused on the infante as they were on us. They were keeping their distance from the Noble’s body, even though he was clearly deceased. Concern for the plague, or was the man’s presence so daunting that he cowed others even in death?

  Mary leaned forward, kneeling on Helen’s arm, “Duncan. I’ll take over here. I’ve watched long enough and I have a fairly good hand.”

  Duncan handed her a scalpel.

  “Did it make a difference?” Lillian hissed at me.

  “Some, small, but not in a major way. But there was more reasoning behind it.”

  “Really,” Lillian said.

  “Okay, not reasoning, but…”

  Lillian arched an eyebrow, looking at me.

  “Comprehensive instinct,” I said. “If we lost… where would he go? Here. He’d be mindful of what his soldiers saw, so he’d want to stop them. It diverts his focus. Maybe we get a chance to signal our people,” I said, my voice quiet. “Maybe we don’t. Either way, while he’s preoccupied limiting any danger to his pride, they have more of a chance to get away.”