by wildbow
She was looking for things. There was a long list of possible things, and she found one of those things as she secured the high ground here. Hard geometric shapes, with right angles.
She ignored the flask that still occupied her hand as she leaped from high ground to high ground, avoiding the ditches. If there was a pond, there could be other collections of water.
The shape was small, and near the road. Examination revealed itself to be a carriage, much of the exterior changed into the black wood that would become black chunks, black splinters, and ultimately black dust.
Her feet kicked up the bones of a warbeast. The toes of her boots caught on the wires and fastenings that had given it a facsimile of life as a stitched. She stooped down to seize it, tore it up and away, and coiled it with her hands as she paced around the carriage.
One of the doors had fallen away, and the black wood had gotten inside. Two bodies, a mother and daughter, sat together, each holding the other. The material of their dresses wasn’t organic, so the black wood had left it alone, and the gold of the mother’s dress and the violet of the girl’s dress were startling after there being nothing but the blue of the sky. Black wood had grown up and around them, ensnaring their bodies and the fabric. The flesh had been dessicated, changed, and disintegrated, revealing the white bone beneath.
Fine dresses. She knew what to look for. This woman and girl were ladies of high station.
“My ladies,” she said, her voice muted by the dust. Her eyes roved over the interior of the carriage, over cushions that had disintegrated, over the lacquered walls, and over the finer details of their clothing. Her gloved hands traced their necks, then their fingers, searching for jewelry. A pendant. She dusted it off with her brush, but it wasn’t a locket. There was no engraving or message. She laid the jewelry on the bench. “Perhaps it’s a good thing if I can’t know your family name. I might resent you.”
She’d been told of family crests and colors, of the aristocratic lines and such. She’d known some would be invited to the festivities. In another scenario, could this mother or this daughter have conceivably been in attendance? Ordering her killed? Ordering her fucked? Participating in either? Would they have applauded as they watched her be beaten and battered for show?
“My name is Red,” she told them. “I can’t express my condolences for what happened to you. I can’t bring myself to feel any pity. You played your role in bringing about this world, this is what you wrought for the sake of your pretty dresses and beast-drawn carriages, your balls and manors. Most likely.”
With a gloved hand and her brush, she removed all but the most stubborn fragments of condensed black wood that had used to be the younger girl’s face. Much of it had retained its shape. Other parts had been deformed by the wood’s growth, where they were more exposed to the water and wind.
“Yet, in case you had no choice, born to a gilded cage with no clear opportunity to go… I’ll be your escort.”
There was a clasp on the wall of the carriage the two were facing. Red undid the clasp, then eased the table down, the hinges protesting. A share of the table disintegrated with the effort, but the rest seemed to be holding up. A slab of condensed carbon.
She tried to keep the largest pieces intact. The dress made things harder, so she cut it away, turning the knife to the seams, so the fabric would be left more or less in its panels and carefully arranged ties. She laid the largest sections of dress out on the table, and then placed head and part of the upper body on it. More had to be arranged so it lay in the gaps and cavities. Arms and segments of leg were gathered together into a bundle, placed so half of their length was within the chest cavity, a hand and foot were collected individually and set near the throat.
She broke away everything she could. One of the hands, however, was particularly stubborn, almost entirely intact, barely gnarled.
Red turned it over in her own hands, and found herself holding it, as if giving the young lady a handshake.
She recoiled at that, and hurried to put it down and be rid of it. The bones and densest parts of the young lady were gathered together into a bundle made of a dress she had no doubt been ecstatic to receive, and the bundle was tied together and secured. Barely more than a Crown stone in weight.
After the hand-holding moment with the girl, Red was more brusque with the mother. She used her knife to pry and break chunks away, to separate head and neck from torso, because she couldn’t have it be too bulky, and she couldn’t have it be too heavy. She had to whittle it down as best as she was able, keeping the woman down to just the bones.
She discovered the woman’s dress had a secret fold that could be reached through to find the leg. At that same leg, a pistol barely as large as Red’s closed fist was tucked into a garter holster.
“You have a story, miss?” she asked, dusting the thing off. “Is this to protect yourself, or for the confidence it gives?”
Red tested the gun, and found it jammed. She pocketed it.
Mother was bound into a bundle, one and a half stone in weight. Both mother and daughter were bound together.
The jewelry was collected, then bound into squares of fabric, a bit from each of the two’s dresses. It went into a side pouch of her bag.
“We have a long way to go,” she told them. “It’s been days of travel through this mess, no sound, and barely anything to see.”
That which hadn’t been protected was lost.
She was grateful to have been protected.
Red began bounding through the landscape, seeking out anything that might be suitable for a stop. She zig-zagged through the landscape until she spied a mesa-like bit of rocky outcropping.
“We’ll stop for dinner there,” she told the passengers, who were making her already heavy pack weigh that much more. She was making use of her natural athleticism.
It had been almost a day since she had come across a forest that creaked, in the early-middle stages of its transition to dust. The silence was maddening in its peacefulness, the landscape disorienting in its bleak serenity.
She’d wanted to get away. To understand what was out there. She’d spent so long in the labs, a prisoner, she hadn’t been able to see the outside world. Once she was freed, she had found out she wasn’t truly free, either. There were restrictions and threats of another sort. Ongoing skirmishes and civil wars, prohibiting travel to other places, plague, black wood.
She’d needed to get away. Sylvester had rescued her, but he had threatened to be another thing that bound her, one of the things that had scared her most, once she’d found out about it, experiencing Ferres’ trial runs and tests. To be killed was one thing, but to have the choice of how to face or feel about one’s own murder was another. Her relationship to Sylvester threatened to be a subservient role she wanted, that was not entirely of her own choosing.
She felt much the same about Paul, in a different way. With Paul, it wasn’t about leading and following. It was about giving and taking other things, and not being sure she was choosing that.
Sylvester was gone now. The Lambs were largely gone.
For months now, Red had traveled. She’d stopped in cities and towns, observing, taking notes, sending messages back to the others, and then she’d left again. It had only really been this corner of the Crown States that she’d started to feel the impact of all of this. Here, it was especially bleak.
Being out in the midst of all of this, she could find herself, free of others and their complications, she could decide how she felt about things like love and Paul and Sylvester and she could see through the glass eyes of her mask that the world wasn’t there waiting for her anymore, now that the dust had settled, literally and metaphorically.
There was nothing but the occasional set of bones, without enough about them to let her distinguish or name them. Choked ponds, spidery forests, and silence.
What had they fought for?
She reached the hilly outcropping of rock, high enough up that the dust didn’t really reach
it.
She was gentle with the bag as she set it down, accounting for her passengers. She was careful to dust herself off before pulling her mask off. Her hood came down, and she was careful with the antlers that were attached to the hood.
The air was stale. Her hair stuck to her face with sweat. All around her, it was charcoal darkness. Flat, forest, hidden swamps, hills, dusty clouds.
She cranked her flask more, then drank from it, emptying it. She paced as she did, walking over the largest, flattest bit of rock, surveying her surroundings.
Part of it was to look for a place to relieve herself. She spied one place, far off to the side, and approached it, starting the arduous process of peeling away the jacket and other conveniences, then starting on the skintight sleeves that protected her from black wood and plague.
An arrow struck rock an arm’s length away from her head. It shattered, and one fragment spun away, in an arc such that she could have caught it out of the air.
She turned on her heel, and she was running at a full sprint before her own gasp of surprise was even fully expressed. She dashed for the bag.
Four young men and women in red clothing were coming over the side of the rock, not far from her bag. All wore masks. Mercies.
They were like her. They were survivors in this bleak land that didn’t allow for life. They and others like them were the reason she was reluctant to set foot on the road. Traps abounded.
Her explorations were supplied, paid for, and encouraged with the idea that she would keep an eye out for certain things. The state of the black wood in various places was one of those things. Creaking wood. Settlements could be found and checked.
There were rarer things, too. Survivors outside of the major settlements were one of those especially rare things.
Enemies? She was supposed to watch for those. They weren’t necessarily rare, in her experience. There were enough out there. People who roved, Academy people wearing Academy gear, with no idea the war had been won, soldiers with their masks and rebels with those same masks, stolen from the dead. So many were hostile and dangerous. Almost always, she’d ran. Twice, she’d had to use her axe.
It was rare that she’d get caught off guard. Had they been more patient, she might have been caught with her pants down, she mused.
It wasn’t so bad as that, but it was still dire. She jumped behind a bit of rock on the mostly flat hill, and she glanced out only long enough to check on her bag.
Her mask was there. Her jacket, all of the equipment. Her weapons—even the small gun. Without those things, she might as well have been trapped on a small island, surrounded by sea and unable to swim.
They were doing what she was doing, in large part. They weren’t as covered up, but they might have been using similar equipment. They were roaming, and they were seeking refuge in spots like this, too inorganic to be affected by the black wood, too high up to be caught in the storms of dust.
“Hello!” she called out, her back still to the rock. Her voice sounded strange without the mask on.
“Greetings!” came the jovial response.
“I’m not much of a threat!”
“Nor are we!”
She patted her pockets, and she found a kerchief. She often used it to wet and wipe away the dust as she pulled off her outfit and washed up. She tossed it out to the side.
The arrow flew by a moment later.
“It’s awfully hard to convince our visitor we’re not a threat when you’re shooting at her.”
“I thought I could hit her.”
“You could if you weren’t useless with that thing. Give it back.”
“Not a threat?” Red called out.
“Not when Ansel is shooting!” came the jovial response. “But he’s not shooting anymore. It’s my bow, and I can put an arrow through a sneezing donkey’s arse without making it bleed anywhere you could see.”
She hung her head at that.
“You can,” one of the other Mercies said, “But that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed.”
“One in three times,” the Jovial Mercy said.
“One in five, at best.”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me go with my things?” Red asked.
“We need our protein, my dear, and you’re it,” Jovial said.
“Jewelry!” one Mercy said. The sole female one. “Watches. There’s a whole bag filled with things! She’s a looter!”
“I am not,” Red said. “The possessions go with the bodies.”
“One, two, three… hm. Twelve parcels. Some with fine things in them. Some with less fine things.”
“Twelve parcels. Two bodies,” another Mercy said.
“Three, could be,” the female Mercy said. “It’s hard to tell.”
“Still, something doesn’t add up.”
“It’s not as though we needed the excuse of you being a grave robber to eat and kill you, mind you,” Jovial said. “But perhaps it’ll feel more right if you feel as though you deserved it.”
She hated this. Being cornered, being contained, knowing that horrible things were coming.
What had all of this been for? How was it worth it? She’d steeled herself to get through Ferres’ training and treatments at Beattle, she’d helped the others, encouraged them, fought, and even played her part on Ferres’ stage, for the Lambs’ ruse. She’d dreaded it and it had been just as bad as she’d feared.
She had played her part in the war. She had played a part in the cleanup. She had played her part in the months that followed, patrolling, searching, mapping out a changed landscape, to make sure no disasters unfolded while they were without a leadership.
She felt so angry, and the anger was so familiar.
“I don’t know what tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, ma’am,” one Mercy said. He was close. “But if you’re kind enough to not put up any kind of fight, we’ll make it quick, so you’re dead for everything that comes after.”
I got this far, she thought, but the statement lacked in heart, and she worried she’d need all the heart she had for what was imminent.
She’d gotten this far, but the journey had been long and tiring. She felt heartsick, after seeing the depth of the darkness and the damage done. There were bodies, there were fallen villages and cities, and whatever the Lambs had said, they were gone now, and the words had lost some meaning, this far into the bleak wastes of the black woods, where civilization was so far away.
“I’ll cooperate,” she said, lowering her head.
“Thank you,” the Mercy said.
He stepped around the rocks that were providing her cover. She was quick to move, to act. She lunged at him, keeping him between herself and the Jovial Mercy who was wielding the bow. His guard was down, and he stumbled, while she tried to guide that stumble.
But as fast as she was engineered to be, he was engineered to be strong. She’d hoped to use momentum and timing to drag him toward the edge. She’d hoped to go over that edge with him, and be gone or in a hiding place by the time the Jovial Mercy was in a position to shoot. She didn’t manage to drag him more than the initial one step to the side.
An arrow cracked against the stone below her, shattering. The pain came a moment later. Jovial had placed a shot through the gap between his fellow Mercy’s legs, to graze her calf.
“I’ve been fighting for a long time,” she said. She stumbled back, and her injured calf didn’t want to bear her full weight. The Mercy right in front of her reached out and grabbed her. She spoke to him, defiant, “I got this far. I’m not about to stop struggling now.”
“There’s a point where you break, you know, where you have to stop fighting back, give up, and tend to other things.”
“And how is that doing for you?” she asked. “You get me, and then what? You subsist on the animals that retreated onto these mountains and places like this, you wait for them to run out, and you wait for the black wood to take over everything?”
“We have a chateau to go back to,” the female M
ercy said. “Books to read, food to look after, we’ll keep ourselves occupied until the Crown returns.”
“You’re Crown?” Red asked, her eyes widening.
“Of course.”
“So am I.”
The Jovial Mercy sniffed a laugh, as if one from the mouth was too much effort for the petty lie.
“In my jacket. There’s an envelope. Inside breast pocket.”
The small Mercy checked. She retrieved an envelope, then unfolded it, reading it.
“What is it?” the Jovial Mercy asked.
“She’s Crown. The letter is signed by others. She’s an envoy.”
“Where are you from?”
“Bathaven,” the Small Mercy said. “Other places before that.”
“We thought we lost Bathaven. Our messengers said the bridge washed out and things looked grim on the other side. I thought you had to be defectors, to be in an area with no settlement to fall back to.”
“Things were only grim because the people panicked. Now they’re quiet. We’ve been using the port when the weather is clear,” the Small Mercy said.
“We’re on the same side,” Red said.
On the other side of the group, the Jovial Mercy toyed with an arrow.
“We are,” Red said.
“I recognize the signatures,” one of the other male Mercies said.
“I expect you’re right,” Jovial said. He smiled wide. “I’m awfully hungry, though.”
Red’s expression faltered. She limped back a bit further, then remembered that the Jovial one had a bow.
“You were made to be loyal,” Red said.
The statement felt hypocritical to the point she thought her whole being was diminished by it.
“I was. I was also made to be hungry, to seek out my protein sources,” Jovial said. “It’s the funny thing about life, isn’t it? It finds a way around things. We adapt. I’ve adapted to my current circumstances. And they’ve adapted to me.”
The three Mercies didn’t look particularly happy. Their instinct was supposed to keep them loyal to the Crown. That didn’t give them the drive to push back when someone was being disloyal, perhaps. Or he’d bullied them enough to get them to cooperate up to this point, and they didn’t have it in them to fight back.