Twig

by wildbow

  We tuned it out. We paid attention to the patter of rain on the window. We knew the only enemies that remained to be defeated were across an ocean, years away from a confrontation, and were arranged here, in this room. Mary, Ashton, Lillian.

  “I trust you,” the Treasurer said. “I don’t know, but you have the greatest grasp of things here. You know the Lambs in ways we don’t, you know the enemy, you have experience with Primordials.”

  “I don’t know if I deserve that trust,” Lillian said. “But thank you.”

  “I can’t guarantee we’ll all go along with you, but maybe most.”

  “Maybe most,” one of the other Lieutenants echoed the Treasurer.

  We straightened. We felt a kind of peace. Fray’s conspiracy, the tools she’d devised, they’d been the last god to defeat.

  As we’d taken Power and turned it against the enemy, then taken Hayle’s unknown and visited it on him, we stood poised to take Fray’s conspiracy from her. The grand plan, the cards in her sleeve.

  She would desperately fight to keep us from doing so. Lillian would too.

  We walked around the desk, approaching the group, our thoughts turning.

  It was Ashton who got in our way. He held Helen up and out, so Helen butted into our chest.

  “Helen says no.”

  The conversation in the background stopped.

  “Helen can’t talk.”

  “She deserves a chance, just like me,” Ashton said. “You convinced Mary and Lillian you’re being honest.”

  “Not quite,” Lillian said.

  “Well it sounded like you did,” Ashton said. “And then you were less convinced when Sylvester started talking about using primordials as an option.”

  “Primordial-refined threats.”

  “Don’t be pedantic, Sylvester,” Ashton said, almost sighing as he said it.

  “Alright.”

  “Well, I think Helen and I deserve a chance to hear what you have to say and argue about it. I think we’re harder to convince, because Helen mostly doesn’t have ears or a mouth, and I’m stubborn. And as much as I like them, I think Mary and Lillian are very biased, because you’ve slept with them lots—”

  Someone in the back cleared their throat.

  “—and lots, and sometimes both at the same time—”

  “Move it along, Ashton,” Lillian said. Then, addressing the larger group, she added, “He’s referring to us sleeping in the same bed, for the record, when we were much younger.”

  Ashton frowned, turning his head and opening his mouth, his expression changing as if he was trying to formulate an Ashton argument.

  “Move it along,” Lillian said.

  “Okay, well, you’ve only slept with me a couple of times, like that one time at Hackthorn,” Ashton said.

  “Enough about that, please,” Lillian said. She was flushed now.

  “I’m not as biased,” Ashton said, firm. “I think we should talk to Duncan and I think we should leave this be.”

  “I think we should hold onto everything we can, as options and weapons go. We’re so close to having security for the first time ever, it’d be the worst kind of tragedy to get here and to lose that security immediately after.”

  “At what price?” Lillian asked.

  “Did I interrupt your one-on-one with Sylvester?” Ashton asked. “You’re all so terribly rude these days. It’s the rebel thing, I’m sure. It’s done away with your etiquette.”

  “I’m sorry. Carry on.”

  “You like the mice. There are mice all over the place. I think if you were the Sylvester I knew in the beginning, then you’d never want to risk hurting them, and I’m concerned you’ve forgotten that part. Or you’ve given it up, Sylvester.”

  “I made a compromise. I’ve wrestled with this, with everything, over a very long period of time. Everything I’ve taken in and digested has led me to this conclusion. I think you’ve been taking things in and digesting them too. I think you’re trying to be funny, to fill a role, you’ve been looser, more free, more creative.”

  “I’m trying,” Ashton said. “But it takes work for me. I think it takes you work to not slip away.”

  “I think you might be right.”

  “I like Abby, Lara, Nora, Bo Peep, Emmett, and Quinton. When I was reading my books and trying to figure out empathy back in the beginning, I was told to imagine my favorite people and I was told to imagine other people in their place. I imagined Helen, then, and that led to me getting yelled at a lot. It was very frustrating.”

  We reached out. We rested one hand on top of Helen.

  “The world has other Abbys and Laras, Noras, Bo Peeps, Emmetts and Quintons out there. Ones I haven’t met yet. If Ms. Genevieve Fray asked you what you wanted and what you believed, if that mattered, then someone should ask me what I want. I want to meet more of those people I’m very fond of. I don’t want to risk killing them, and I think that Fray is right and you’re the wrong person to trust with these primordial-refined projects.”

  “Alright,” we said. “That’s a good argument.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Should we hear Helen’s, before we respond?”

  “She can’t talk, Sylvester. Obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “So you’re going to have to imagine her arguing at you. I want you to imagine really hard, and come up with an argument that beats you, okay? Do her justice, give her a moment to shine. She likes those moments.”

  “I can’t do that, Ashton.”

  We stroked Helen, running a hand along the wadding of bandage-covered flesh.

  “I want to bring about a world that makes Helen happiest. Her ideal world, in a way.”

  “That’s not reassuring,” Lillian said.

  “I want to bring about a world that makes you happiest, Lillian,” we said. “One where you have every last thing you want, and yes, the stakes are high, it feels like the world is resting on your shoulders. But isn’t that something you wanted, in its way? You wanted to run an Academy and run it well, and deal with all of those pressures. You’ve been preparing for it for a long time.”

  We walked past Ashton, approaching Lillian.

  “I want to give you us,” we said, placing an emphasis on ‘us’. We let the word sit for a moment. “I want to give you a black coat you’ve earned, and family, and peace. I want the cogs and gears to fit together. Believe it or not, with everything else set aside or reframed, I think it could be achievable.”

  Lillian pursed her lips.

  “You know he’s good at this,” Fray said. “The deceit, the manipulations.”

  We shot her a look. Warning.

  “He is,” Lillian said.

  “But?”

  “But I’d like to believe it.”

  We nodded. We glanced at the group just outside the door.

  “I want the Beattle rebels and our other assorted allies to have what they wanted, when they offered us their help. A chance to finish their educations, a chance to bring about change that will see the history books. Security, safety, success, and something we haven’t had for a long, long time now. A shot at a life that resembles ‘normal’, at a time when it feels impossible to get back to that point.”

  “All the promises in the world,” Fray said.

  “I’ve been thinking on this very hard, for a very long time.”

  “I imagine you have,” Fray said.

  “Mary would make a fine Noble, and she would have her armies, her soldiers to train, and a mission unlike any other, one that might mark a turning point in history.”

  “And Helen?” Ashton asked.

  “Beautiful again. She’d have to be, to be a Noble. She would revel in the role, especially with some tuning. She could have the greatest of prey to hunt.”

  Ashton nodded.

  “Your friends would be taken care of, as a generation to follow us. They’d be free and they’d be together. You’d have them, and others like them, Ashton.”

 
Ashton was silent at that, but he looked introspective.

  We spread our arms. Emphasis, theater, trying to make ourselves larger, as if it was a demand for more attention.

  “I want Jessie to live. I want Jessie to be Jessie. I want to be greedy and have everyone, and I want to be greedy and claim my fairy tale happy ending. I want everything I’ve promised to all of you, because those same things would nourish me.”

  They were listening.

  “I want to win, and I want to turn this shitty, blighted, corpse-strewn landscape into something we can be proud of.”

  “At what cost?” Fray asked.

  “The cost has been paid,” we said. “In large part. It’ll be hard work to secure things. Taking all of these things I’ve described, they could be easy enough. Keeping them will be hard. Costly. It will require work and focus.”

  “And it’ll require you to have that bargaining chip, the world held at gunpoint,” Lillian said. She looked so terribly sad.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Mary, if you would?”

  “Would what?”

  “Search Genevieve. She’ll have the means on her. She wouldn’t trust it to other hands. Be wary of the needles in her fingers.”

  “The means?” Mary asked. But she approached Genevieve Fray.

  “I’m praying this is all an elaborate head game,” Fray said. She submitted to the search. Mary’s hands glided over her, searching, patting her down. Vials and tools came free, were held up for us to see, then tossed to the ground. “That Sylvester intends to break me in a different way than he broke Hayle. You’re better than this, Lambs.”

  “Of course we are. We’re of the same stock as Nobles.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  Fray reacted as Mary shifted to another location to search.

  “There.”

  We watched as Fray closed her eyes.

  Mary sliced at Fray’s blouse, to reveal what was beneath. She reached—and tentacles reached out, seizing her arm.

  Fray had a creature living beneath her clothing.

  “Down, Nina,” Fray said.

  The tentacles released Mary’s hand.

  Fray’s ‘means’ took the form of a key. She’d made a spot below her ribcage for the item to slide in. A sheath buried in flesh, so that the item could slide in, with only the uppermost end visible as a bar of dark metal against pale flesh.

  Mary hooked the item with one finger and pulled it free.

  A heavy iron key.

  “Wendy will tell us where it is,” we said.

  We paused for emphasis.

  “You’ll find out, but don’t tell anyone, least of all me,” we said. We watched as expressions shifted. Relief, almost. “Lillian safeguards the key. Mary safeguards Lillian.”

  We’d disarmed ourselves. The weapon was known, but we were no longer a threat. The hope we’d fostered would be free to blossom.

  We touched the small of Lillian’s back as we approached her. “We’ve won. We have what we need.”

  She stood taller. There was an element of the dream, here. The heady notion of possibility. She wasn’t alone, either. We’d claimed our third god, devoured it.

  “He wanted us to worm our way into the graces of the Crown,” we said. “To subvert it from within. A gamble, one that could be made once at best. We had to prove we were worthy, surviving to this point.”

  “We’re here,” Mary said.

  “We’re here,” Ashton said to Helen.

  Indeed. We were here.

  “Take Fray into custody,” we ordered.

  She stared us down as she walked past. There was no hint of a smile on her face. Much like Hayle in his final moments, she was left to wonder, to agonize.

  The key could be obtained later, as the situation called for it. To potentially have the ability to bring about the end of life on earth as we knew it, but for our small parcel of reality.

  When we’d come to our compromise, hearing out the voice, weighing everything and losing that fight to hold onto everything worth having and hold onto our sense of right, we’d realized it was untenable.

  There would need to be sacrifices, to preserve those things we so wanted.

  Previous Next

  Crown of Thorns—20.20

  The deal had been struck. The alternative had been erasure of all Sylvester had been. All but the shell, the flesh, and even that would have taken its beatings.

  The Lambs had to live, because they were integral, but we had to be prepared to eliminate them if they truly stood in the way. One Lamb’s death was worth the life of two others, if it came down to it. We’d striven to keep things from coming down to it.

  The enemies had to die. Fray, Hayle, the Infante. When all we’d had was uncertainty, the people who fostered that uncertainty and carried their own visions for the future were too dangerous. They pressured us from all sides and created too small a space for us to exist within.

  We’d had to compromise, to be willing to kill mice and damage relationships. We’d known we would have to play party to some of the same evils we had once condemned.

  We’d had to be prepared, even, to do worse than the Crown and Academy were prepared to. The arms race wasn’t a war of better technology and science so much as it was a war of freer and looser ethics.

  We’d had to embrace monsters we resisted, to accept their direction.

  We’d had to do as we were told, unflinching, when it truly came down to it, and we’d had to avoid looking too hard at what that voice sounded like, where it came from. We had abandoned the allusions between certain characters in our past and the roles they had in our minds.

  We’d had to surrender to the notion of being crafted to be Noble at the very beginning, and becoming Noble as a means to ends.

  While Sylvester had slept and dreamed his feverish dreams, his thoughts scattered so far that they seemed unrecoverable, the Lambs had administered the Wyvern’s poison. Sylvester had rebuilt his brain without thinking, and his unconscious had come across the closest thing he could have to a solution. He had fabricated a way of concentrating this sentiment, all of the individual terms of the deal, and pit it against himself.

  He had known, we had known, that to go against this fabrication was to risk erasure and oblivion.

  We stood at a hole in the wall. Floor to ceiling, nothing remained of this one part of the tower. The remainder of the room was a medical office, a doctor’s quarters for quiet study, when the broader lab space elsewhere on the floor wasn’t suitable. The rain hit the side of the tower and ran down it, and it poured across the opening as a sheet.

  Outside the office, further down the hall, some of the others were discussing what to do. One of Radham’s specialist doctors was providing information on the bowels, how accessible they were. The others, including Mary and several Beattle lieutenants were discussing the possibility of holding prisoners there en masse. Fray would be one of them.

  Beyond the front of the tower, stitched were arriving from various points in the Academy grounds. Clad in raincoats with heavy hoods or helmets with sufficient breadth to keep their heads dry, they moved in single file, arms loaded down with weapons. Those weapons were then deposited at the foot of Hayle’s tower.

  Squadrons were being disarmed, armories emptied.

  Elsewhere, we could see lanterns of the people overseeing the stitched soldiers that were carrying away the dead or cleaning up the Hag Nerve.

  Sylvester had recruited armies, gathered soldiers, and extorted others into playing along.

  We, however, had relatively few allies in this. Even the Lambs… that would be a transition. We would have to be patient, and we would have to wait for a time when everyone was transitioning into their new roles. Then, hopefully, they could acclimatize, they would wear their new skin, bear their new statures, and they would see the changed Sylvester.

  Until then, indeed, few allies.

  A small handful of those allies approached us, enteri
ng the office. Red. Goldie. Paul. Sonny.

  “You really did it,” Red said.

  “We did.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You sound different,” Paul said. He’d been Poll Parrot, once. Now he was Paul. He’d wanted to be a soldier, and he’d been given what he wanted. The deep scars of plague removal scarred one side of him, and his hand was a mismatch, a graft marred further by the way the plague had crawled across it. It didn’t seem as though it had much strength to it.

  “Not so surprising, that. I am different.”

  “You’ve been changing since we met you,” Red said.

  We nodded at that.

  “Wild, uncontrolled, scary, even to us.”

  “That won’t entirely go away. I won’t be controlled. I’ll probably scare most rational people.”

  “I can live with scary,” Red said. “You’ve all done what nobody else could do.”

  “You won,” Goldie said.

  “No. Not a win. A controlled mutual loss. Sylvester is gone, sacrificed. So are several of the Lambs. We traded one of ours for one of theirs, several times. We’ll do it again if we have to. Then, with the groundwork we laid, we get to our feet faster than the enemies we fight.”

  “Is it over?” Paul asked.

  “No. There are major cities to take. There’s an incredible amount of work to be done. In a way, this is just the beginning.”

  “The war is done, at least?”

  “This one. There will be more. But yes, this is over in the sense that the rebellions are toothless, there aren’t any major figures remaining in the Crown States who are prepared to contest our control.”

  Paul nodded. He looked harrowed, angry.

  “Do we have a problem?”

  “We did, before,” Paul said. “Now, I’m just trying to process this. I didn’t think we’d get here.”

  “Things will get easier because we have armies that can wear Crown uniforms and we have the ability to lie. We know most of their secrets, we have access to their projects, and we have access to their students and doctors. Once things settle, we’ll have the people.”