Twig

by wildbow

  “You might be thinking she should be using chaos and storms because that’s how you work,” Mary said.

  “Might,” I admitted.

  “We’re close,” she said. “We should start preparing.”

  “On that note, Lillian, Duncan, if you had to, could you quickly, cleanly kill that Tangle down there?”

  “Kill?” Lillian asked.

  “It’s ours,” Ashton said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s Fray’s. We just happen to be using it. So I have to ask, could you kill it?”

  “No,” Duncan said.

  “I could pull something together if you gave me an hour.”

  “Okay, that wouldn’t be fast enough,” I said. I turned around, and I made my way through the Lambs, leaving them at the very front of the ship. I faced the group that had come up to the top deck. “Beattle Rebels and other Academy-educated types!”

  My voice carried. I immediately had everyone’s attention.

  “I need a quick answer! Who can devise a solution to kill the Tangle down there before we actually get to Radham?”

  A few people looked bewildered.

  “Blow it up?” somone asked. One of our soldiers, but not Academy-educated. He’d been a thug, once. We’d rounded out his training with guns, explosives, and other things. He would be one of the last of Archie’s people, maybe?

  “Wouldn’t work unless we had a big enough explosive,” I said. “Anyone else?”

  I saw a hand go up.

  Junior. Head of the Rank, our master poisoner.

  “Good man. Get to it, get what you need,” I said.

  He rounded up his people, and they hurried below deck.

  I was getting strange looks. Including from the Lambs.

  “It’ll be good to have if we need it,” I told them.

  Nobody answered.

  The crowd was filled with our past enemies. There were enough I couldn’t recognize that it confused my senses. Bea’s followers were into self-modifications, and it didn’t help matters when the physical alterations were often my first cue that someone was a spectre. Horns? Could have been the Brechwell beast, and it could have been someone who’d wanted to look intimidating.

  We were drawing nearer. The rider who was painting the trail was at the base of the wall, and was working on scaling it. They’d chosen a warbeast rather than a horse because warbeasts could climb.

  The problem was that climbing was slow, even with a warbeast that was good at it.

  Mary gestured, and we backed away from the front of the ship. Others retreated as well. I felt some trepidation as I eased my way past Avis and Warren, past the Snake Charmer and Percy. Past Sub Rosa, the Humors, Cynthia, ghosts and soldiers, the Fishmonger, Devil, Primordial Child, and scattered nobles.

  At the edge of the Academy closest to us, there was a flash of light. The sound reached us a moment later.

  “Brace!” Mary hollered.

  The artillery shell hit the side of the ship. Our course shifted, then self corrected as the creatures hauled us forward.

  When we’d talked about how we needed to use the craft to assault the city, we’d outlined a path that would place us closer to the Academy. It was closer than the point where the Infante had landed, and now it was becoming clear why he hadn’t chosen to assault the Academy and the walls around it. The Academy had defenses beyond the creatures that guarded it.

  At a tower further away, another artillery emplacement fired.

  The shot hit somewhere near the prow, detonating on impact. That one would’ve hit one of the metaphorical horses of our metaphorical chariot.

  We were damn close now, but every fraction of a mile that we plunged forward put us further into harm’s way. Those who’d ascended to see Radham as we drew nearer were ducking below deck. We were the last in line to descend, because we’d been the furthest forward.

  Two more shots came our way. One drifted, hitting field off to the starboard side. Another struck low. Aimed more at the Tangle.

  The Lambs started to head below. I clung to the railing, glanced back, and then put one finger to my nostril, blowing out the pill I’d snorted up into my sinus cavity.

  The next round included a more distant tower, which apparently saw fit to open fire now that we were closer. Three shots in all.

  We were belowdeck before they hit home.

  Narrow windows near the front of the ship provided a view of the scene. One of the explosives ripped a hole in the hull, opening a space around where the window had been. Smoke and the seemingly endless rain of water and debris obscured our vision.

  We were slowing. The explosions had damaged the rigging the Tangle used to haul us forward, and it had pulled away, only partially attached to us, the leash extended. It clambered up the wall to the best of its ability, after the rider with the smoke. It ascended far faster than the rider did.

  The Infante’s craft, however, still had some forward momentum. We slammed into the wall and rode up against the topmost edge. Rubble and sections of wall crumbled down around the deck and around us.

  The fluids and blood that flowed down the wall, over the intact window and across the damaged hole suggested we’d collided with the Tangle.

  Well. That complicated things.

  More artillery fire struck us.

  Problematic, that we were close enough for them to shoot at us.

  “They’re hitting the rear. I don’t think they have an angle,” Mary said.

  More artillery shells struck us. Tail end, again.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Unless they’ve got incredibly clever and coordinated people manning the artillery turrets on top of those towers, tricking us into poking our heads out before they obliterate us.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Hayle,” Lillian said. “But I don’t think Hayle would be on those towers.”

  We headed for the stairs leading back up to the deck. Junior met us at the base of the stairs, and tossed me a canister.

  “Look after Wendy,” I told him. “Or find someone who can and follow.”

  “Got it,” he replied.

  There was no need for a ramp, with the way the wall had come down. The rubble formed its own access point. The Tangle had divided in two, and the ‘head’ was climbing up onto the top of the wall.

  The lower half was groping its way up the wall, toward the hole we wanted to use to pass into the city. The gap between the prow of the ship and the wall was forming a wedge it couldn’t quite force itself past, and it didn’t have the complete senses to figure out a way. It groped blindly, pawing with a limb made of a warbeast and a dozen soldiers.

  We passed beneath the groping claw, into the city.

  I knew what the others were looking at as we stopped and got our bearings.

  We were standing at the edge of a field. A bridge stood a distance ahead of us. Not the bridge, but familiar nonetheless. We were on the same tier of land that Lambsbridge occupied. The road between the Academy and the Orphanage was a little ways ahead of us, stretching from our right to our left, and we were about a third of the way down it.

  Artillery fire struck near the Tangle at the walltop. Stone and wood crumbled in equal measure, and the Tangle fell. Behind us, the other Tangle was climbing up.

  I pulled the pin and threw the canister at it.

  Gas erupted around it. There was a dull moaning sound, as if each of the bodies was making a small sound, and it began to lose strength.

  The rebels took the opportunity to come over the deck, where they hadn’t had the confidence to come past the thing. I spotted Junior.

  “We need another!” I shouted.

  He stopped, made a face, and then reversed direction.

  “Was smart,” Lillian said.

  “Hm?” I asked, trying to take in the surroundings.

  “I was thinking we had to kill it. He was thinking he needed to take it down ten percent, across the entire body, weakening the protein bonds that tie one body to another. That’s all it takes.”
r />   “Wonderful!” I said, not even really paying attention. “Good job, Junior.”

  “He’s not here,” Ashton said.

  This was deceptively familiar ground. It was a scene I’d seen countless times in my life, enough that it had solidified among my more durable memories, but it was set askew, painted over. The terrain was tilted, and the movements of Tangles and the damage to Tangles had littered the area with a number of bodies that seemed almost ludicrous. Some of those bodies writhed and moved as Harvesters ate or tried puppeteering them. The lower ground and ditches were congealing with bodily fluids, rain, and the plant matter that had disintegrated in the acid rain, forming a black slurry of mud.

  We started forward, picking a path that would take us closer to the gates. They were open, too damaged to be closed.

  There was more artillery fire, aimed at the Tangle we’d brought with us. It hit the wall or sailed over it.

  We were wet, dressed in dark uniforms, crossing a field of blighted crops, blood, and bodies; it meant we were almost camouflaged. We moved with more purpose than the twitching bodies did, however, and we were a more concentrated mass.

  The camouflage got us partway to our destination before they took notice.

  A tower near the gate fired a shell, the sound echoing.

  Aimed at us.

  “Right!” Mary shouted. There was a momentary resistance. The way the plume of smoke that pointed skyward looked to be angled, they might have thought she was pushing us into the way of the shot. She spoke with more venom. “Go right!”

  The rebels with us moved. I was already weaving through the ones who weren’t moving fast enough.

  It hit ground to our left. Wind had carried it a considerable distance. It wasn’t close enough to clip any of us, but loud enough that I lost the ability to hear with my left ear, and the shock of it took the legs out from several people.

  “Go, go!” I shouted, leading the way through the ankle-deep soup of acid water, dead organic matter and mud. Each step sucked at my boots.

  Broken and dying Tangles roused as they took notice of us. Leeches that protruded from orifices reached yearningly in our direction, and the bodies clumsily followed after. Our rebels shot the ones who were close enough to be dangerous, stabbed at a few who were too feeble to be more than an inconvenience, and ignored the remainder.

  There was another shot. Mary called out the direction. We moved to avoid it.

  It was a different kind of shot, this time. Three explosions landed near us, and more shrapnel or debris followed, kicking up sprays of mud and dirt everywhere between us and the tower it had originated from.

  One of those explosions hit two of our stragglers. Another six near them fell over, the shock of the nearby impact enough to knock them out or kill them.

  The shrapnel knocked down one long-legged fellow to my left.

  Jessie’s stitched, holding Jessie with one hand, gathered up three of the fallen, slinging all them almost carelessly over one shoulder.

  We pushed forward, moving forward because anything else would have meant remaining a target indefinitely.

  The tower that had been firing on us changed targets. An order had been communicated. I looked to see why, and I saw that the Tangle we’d brought was moving along the walltop, approaching the walls and towers of Radham. It had its sights on the tower above the Hedge, the training hospital that served the civilians of Radham.

  We were clear to make it the last third of the way to Radham itself. We approached the gates, Mary motioning for our squads to hang back. The wall provided cover from the cannons it supported. I gestured for people to keep an eye up.

  There were no soldiers guarding the gates. A Tangle crept through the landing area where the checkpoints had been in wartime, ignoring some bodies and absorbing others. Acid water formed pools around and beneath it, diluted enough to only sear and blister the flesh that was being repeatedly smashed into puddle after puddle.

  The coast was clear?

  Mary moved to push forward. I grabbed her arm, stopping her.

  The tangle flopped. It clawed its way past apparent civilians and wounded, and absorbed a Crown soldier. It splashed again in the water.

  My prey instinct screamed.

  High above us, artillery fired on Fray’s tangle. Even bisected, it was large enough to be a threat.

  I gestured for the others to wait.

  “Why?” Mary hissed. “If they have any acid they could dump on us from the wall—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Because I think what’s waiting for us in there is worse.”

  “Worse?” Lillian asked.

  “The water’s wrong,” I said. “Ask Helen.”

  “Helen isn’t communicative,” Ashton said.

  “Well, if she could speak, she’d say it sounds off,” I murmured, hoping I wasn’t losing my mind.

  I gestured for them to wait again, then ventured forward.

  I passed through the gates we’d been lurking by, and crept closer, mindful of the smaller Tangle that could so very easily turn on me. They wouldn’t be easy to kill, and Junior hadn’t caught up to us.

  There was an open area that served as a place for visitors to stop and for checkpoints to set up, spacious enough for pallets of supplies or boxes of ammunition to be left to one side while multiple wagons could move freely through the area. Roads branched off from the gate plaza to the rest of Radham. Each fixture was reminiscent of a body part. The tower for the brain, Claret hall for the heart, the dormitories for the ribs, Bowels for the… bowels.

  This was the left hand. The roads were the fingers, reaching out and around.

  On the other side of the left hand, I could see Fray, standing on a covered bridge that extended between two guard-houses.

  Not broken-reflection Fray, not a fractured image. The real Fray, raven haired lipstick red, wearing a coat that wasn’t a Professor’s coat, but might as well have been.

  Seeing her like this, odd as it was, solidified the story the phantom images had been telling me for a long, long time. I was almost entirely certain of it.

  “Lambs,” I said.

  The Lambs advanced. They came to stand behind and to either side of me.

  “When the images in my head were trying to communicate something, I didn’t connect the thoughts.”

  “Sy?” Lillian asked.

  “It took some digesting. Thinking of things from different angles.”

  “From the time Avis was freed by an insider, we thought she might be working with Hayle,” Mary said. “We talked about that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I stared at Genevieve Fray. “That’s… definitely possible. More and more likely, the more we see and find out. I’d give it ninety-ten odds at this point. The only other option is that she went rogue late in the game.”

  “But it’s not what you’re talking about,” Lillian said.

  “Whenever I saw Fray, pictured her in my head, I couldn’t see her face without seeing it broken. But one thing was consistent, almost always.”

  “The images don’t mean anything, Sy,” Duncan said.

  “She always had Lambs with her,” I said. “She had you with her. Or Evette. She embraced them, she seemed… fond of them. Possessive.”

  “They don’t mean anything,” Duncan repeated himself.

  “They’re just me holding ideas in my head I’m not sure how to parse or connect, yet. The Lambs are Fray’s project. Not Hayle’s. We were always the primary or a primary focus of what she was doing.”

  “Why?” Ashton asked.

  I bit my tongue.

  I answered a different question, that hadn’t been asked. “She probably did multiple things at a time, every step of the way. She extended our leash when she leashed everyone. It’s why she was so happy to see us, so eager to talk to me. It’s why she was so willing to let us have the Beattle recruits.”

  And it’s why we’re not going to stop her, not in every respect. Many of our goals align.

  “Fra
y!” I called out. “Let’s parley!”

  She said something. Her voice didn’t reach us over the distance.

  What I wouldn’t give for Helen’s ears, now.

  She pointed. I couldn’t tell if she was giving direction to one of her pets or if she was warning us.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t change our circumstance. Artillery struck, and the Tangle we’d brought with us fell, crashing to the ground below.

  It stirred the water, which began to move of its own accord. A low-to-the-ground, camouflaged jellyfish, masquerading as puddles. I’d felt like the ripples were wrong, the sound of the rain against water oddly muted. This would be why.

  Fray turned to retreat as two superweapons clashed between her and us. Heading toward Hayle.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.16

  The clash of the two crude forces of nature made crossing the Academy grounds impossible. The Tangle might’ve had a brain, if I counted the modified warbeast that served as its head, but destroying that brain wouldn’t stop the Tangle. It would only render it impossible to control.

  The jellyfish seemed so heavy it had difficulty moving without making its gelatinous self ripple and roll in a direction, but it had the advantage of being big. It rocked itself back and forth, building up momentum, and rolled into the Tangle, gripping it and pulling it down onto its side. The sound and the ‘splash’ were muffled.

  I could see it start to build up strength, and to use similar mechanisms to get itself moving, now that it was agitated. All of the water within the Academy and much of the water beneath our feet, extending into the ditches and onto the roads leading down from the Academy was an extension of the creature.

  “How?” I asked, turning around.

  Mary turned. “Rifle!”

  Bea tossed her a rifle.

  With the bayonet, Mary sliced it across a puddle. The gap widened as the larger mass pulled one part through the gate and toward its fumbling struggle with the Tangle. The remainder was pulling together into a mass outside of the gates.

  “Hag Nerve,” Duncan said.