by wildbow
“The husband you picked for me had it done.”
“Nothing so grotesque, I’m sure,” Adelaide said.
“What even brought you to New Amsterdam?” Everard asked.
“I could ask you the same thing. You could have left.”
“We tried,” he said. “Our timing was wrong. There was supposed to be a boat this spring. We made the trip and were turned away. Imagine our surprise when we return here, only to hear the doorman is alarmed at the rabble that forced their way through, and that authorities are already contacted and en-route.”
Emily glanced at her friends. “The trains. It’s why so many were coming back. They weren’t allowed to leave.”
“Quarantine concerns,” Everard said.
“What a shame,” Emily said, with no emotion in her voice. She wondered if it was one of the other groups, isolating and rooting out key players in aristocracy and business.
Her father certainly didn’t look happy. She’d seen that unhappy expression on his face many a time, but it had typically been reserved for her misadventures and delinquency.
“We’re hoping the ports will open soon,” Adelaide said. “We’re expecting ships next fall.”
They won’t.
“What shall we do with them?” the officer asked.
“Will you behave?” Everard asked. “We can have all of that stripped away, the tattoos removed, the eyes replaced.”
“I would sooner kill you than let that happen,” she answered.
“Please,” Adelaide said. She drew closer, hesitated, then closed the distance. “Candida.”
“That’s not my name.”
“It’s the name we gave you,” Adelaide said. She sniffed. “You reek.”
“That might well be the cigarettes,” Emily said.
“Not ladylike, those. Phallic, stinking things. Unhealthy, the Academies say.”
“Oh yes. Unhealthy. If only I were immortal, and didn’t have to worry about such things.”
Her parents exchanged glances. Her mother said, “It’s not the cigarettes. You smell like sex and sweat.”
“I should hope so, after six goes at it.”
Everard made a face. Emily only glared at him, staring him down.
“Why do you have to make it all so hard?” he asked.
You tried to sell me. I was the currency you used to bet your chips on a particular horse, and that horse was put down.
“Why couldn’t you have ever made it easy for me?” she asked.
“We gave you everything,” Adelaide said. “You seem to glory in perverting it. Ruining those things. It’s a wonder you haven’t soiled this place more than you have.”
She glanced at the mess. Considering the people she kept company with, it was so mild as to be laughable.
She caught Junior’s eye. He gestured. Fight. Question.
She shook her head slightly.
“Tell us you’ll cooperate, that you’ll be good. We can discuss fixing what you’ve done to yourself. Perhaps, if the local authorities are willing, we could have them take your friends into custody, and free them, contingent on your cooperation,” Everard said.
“Whatever you need, Mr. Gage, sir,” an officer said.
“Thank you.”
“The local authorities are so obedient. You’ve climbed the ranks, haven’t you?” Emily asked.
“Even with the fate of the Lord Baron Richmond, the tragedy that was, we were elevated by our association with him.”
“Ah,” she said. “Were you? I would say that was the most tragic part of it all, except I wouldn’t want to undermine how very horrible the rest of it was.”
“His death was a great loss. Then you disappeared. You played at being dead for a time, only to resurface, tried your hand at playing dead, but we had eyes on you—and then you disappeared for a considerably longer period of time, appearing only today,” Everard said. “For the best, perhaps, considering the last word was that you were associating with rebels.”
“Rebels?” the officer in charge asked.
“I would recommend treating her colleagues here as such,” Everard said, with a kind of finality.
“You’re aware that the penalty for even suspected involvement in rebel groups would be death by execution?”
“I’m aware,” Everard said, staring Emily down, before he couldn’t stare into the void of the raw, translucent orbs any longer. His sculpted, Academy-given lips twisted with disgust. “Arrest her with them. But postpone her execution, at the very least, if you can. I do have hope she’ll come around.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You really don’t know me at all,” she said. “Thinking I can come around.”
Everard drew closer, until he was shoulder to shoulder with his wife. He was smaller and shorter than Emily, with all the augmentations she’d had.
He reached up for her face, and she caught his hand.
She squeezed it, watching his expression, wanting to see just a little bit of the pain. She heard the parts of his hand grind into one another. She saw his expression tested, but she didn’t see it break.
“Let him go,” the officer said.
She let Everard go.
They were led as a group toward the lift. Thick fluids churned through tubes as the lift made its way toward the ground floor, their small crowd of delinquents and rebels with shackles on, arms behind their backs, while officers lined up behind and to the side of them, guns in hand.
Drake stood by her, his upper arm pressing against hers. That ended when her father intervened. Drake was pulled back by men in uniform. Everard stood to Emily’s left instead.
“You really want to do this?” she asked.
“Not in the slightest,” Everard said. “But what other option do we have?”
“Leave us to this. Admit there’s no rebel involvement. Go to one of your other homes. Accept that I served my role and elevated you in status, and leave me to lead the rest of my very, very long life as I see fit.”
He shook his head, and he remained silent, as if he couldn’t even dignify her with a response. He could dignify her by making her a Noble’s wife, but… it terminated there.
“Does the lobby of this building have a phone?” Junior asked.
“Of course,” Adelaide said.
“Shush, dear. Don’t entertain them.”
“Of course,” Junior muttered. “Like it’s assumed.”
The lift’s door opened. They stepped out into the lobby.
“We’re on Crown business,” Junior said. “It’s meant to be discreet. Before things go any further, I’ll have to ask that I can make a phone call.”
The officers exchanged glances.
“I was the fiancee of the late Baron Richmond,” Emily said. “Adelaide and Everard Gage will confirm this. Take that into account and hear me when I say that you must allow that phone call.”
“She was, but—” Adelaide said.
“Shush,” Everard said. “It’s fine.”
Junior smiled.
They approached the desk. Junior took the phone. He paused for a long moment before dialing the number, as if he had to remember.
It was a much longer moment before there was a response. He stood where he was, waiting.
“Junior,” he finally said. “Yes, my Lord. Yes, my Lord.”
He held the phone out to Emily.
She took it.
“It’s Emily, my Lord,” she said.
“You don’t ever have to call me that.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Shall I leave this to Junior?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Do visit. That’s not an order. Only a wish.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
There was a soft sound of amusement on the other end.
“Hand the phone to the person in charge.”
She extended the phone toward the head officer.
She watched as he listened. Whatever he heard, he wasn’t given a chance to
speak, much less utter a ‘my lord’. Not until the end.
“Yes, my Lord,” the officer said.
Emily watched her parents’ expression transform. Puzzlement, then something between concern and hope.
The officer hung up. He kept his hand on the bar of the phone while it rested on the cradle, then glanced at the secretary at the desk. “That was the true number?”
“Yes, sir.”
The officer nodded. He turned to Junior. “My apologies for the inconvenience, sir.”
Junior smiled. “Please take the shackles off.”
The officer motioned. Officers in the retinue hurried to oblige.
“What is this?” Everard asked.
“You can shackle them,” Junior said.
“What!?”
Junior glanced at Emily.
“They were directly implicated in the Baron Richmond’s death,” she said. “That in mind, keep them alive.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the officer said.
“I don’t understand,” Everard said.
“I think you do,” she said. “It’s really very simple. You and your ilk owned and ran this country. You ran it into the ground, as a matter of fact. Now it’s no longer yours, and debts are coming due.”
“We’re your parents. Your family!”
“You never even resembled family, let alone parents,” she said. “You’re traitors.”
The officers stood ready to cart the two away. They looked to her for leadership, expecting their orders.
She didn’t like it. It resembled what she’d seen and done as the Baron’s fiancee.
The Lords and Ladies of Radham had asked her if she wanted a greater role in things. She had refused. She had her family. She looked at Drake.
“A question, before they go,” Junior said. “Though I suppose I could interrogate them properly, with chemicals—”
“There’s no need,” Everard said. “We’re loyal to the Crown. This has to be a misunderstanding or a lie. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, without chemicals.”
“You said you expected ships next fall?”
“Yes,” Adelaide said.
“Incoming or outgoing?”
“Incoming,” she said. “It was the talk of Trimountaine Port. We’re hoping—were hoping, that we could sail out with them when they left. You can’t imprison us, none of this makes sense—”
“That’s enough,” Junior said. “That’ll be all.”
Their group remained in the lobby while the officers, Everard, and Adelaide left.
Together, they all returned to the lift, many rubbing at wrists. Couples paired off and friends met to converse.
“Incoming guests?” Drake asked. “How? How would we even know?”
The questions echoed her own thought processes, even if the direction of those questions didn’t. In many things, she worried. In other things, she was far from alright. In most things, even, there was anger or pain.
Some of that had quieted, with this. Some of the fears had been put to rest, the demons slain. Her parents were gone, and with luck, would never darken her path again. Old pain there, yes, but never to be present or future pain again.
Monstrous, perhaps, to turn on her parents like that, to let it happen. But she wore that monstrousness with pride.
Her hand with its clawed fingertips reached for and found Drake’s.
“A singular guest, I imagine,” Junior said. “As to how, I have to think our Lords and Ladies sent out an invitation.”
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Forest for the Trees—e.4
Lacey’s hands shook. She clasped them together, then unclasped them, balled them into fists, and then clasped them together again. She leaned on the railing, high above the city, elbows resting on the wood, her eyes roving over the city below, where countless citizens were clustering at vantage points and railings like hers, trying to see what was coming. She gazed over overgrowth and water.
It was fall, and the wolf clover thrived more than anything. It had been found in the late summer, disseminated over the fall, and it had survived its first winter. The Academies of the Crown States had devised and disseminated the strains, crossbreeds, and other materials as winter gave way to spring. The black wood was still there, the soil was tainted with the stuff to the point it was stained. But the clover had spread over the summer. The Crown States were now painted in a palette of black and green.
The cities affected by plague had been more or less reclaimed. The black wood had consumed the worst of the plague growths, but there was concern of resurgence, so those cities were occupied primarily by the Mercies.
Everyone had been working so hard. Lacey was put in mind of the times when exam season and the culling of the bottom percents of the student body had come around. Times when everyone had been fighting to stay afloat, because they knew that if they didn’t give their all, they would have nothing. This mentality had run through the most recent seasons.
People fought even harder now that the war was over. Studying, figuring out answers, figuring out the balances, and how to use piecemeal scraps of cats and cockroaches to form a passable ecosystem.
It had been over a year.
A long, long time ago, she’d been told that she did the things she did out of selfishness. She had been told that she extended kindness toward a wild and terrible child for herself, not for that child. The words had annoyed her, shaken her, and even cut her. She had pulled away. She had thought, naively, that it would be her last involvement with the project.
The problem all along had been her failure to see that the wild, terrible little boy had come from somewhere. He had learned from great teachers. She had learned to be on guard against him, and she had failed to see what the first of the teachers was doing. Whatever direction she turned, whatever path she took, she was pulled back in. By the boy. By the Lambs. By Hayle.
She wrapped one fist in the other hand and squeezed it until she knew it would hurt to hold a pen or a scalpel tomorrow, if tomorrow came.
She could have left. She always had the ability to walk away. She could have attended a less prestigious Academy and graduated with honors and accolades. She could have found a Professor to marry and been his assistant and partner.
On paper, as regrets, those options seemed so clear, so plain. She could spell them out like any project outline, in thesis, hypothesis, costs, goals, applications. She could have drafted each one with the letters with the carefully chosen language that were meant to sell the idea to the people with the resources to make them happen. In her work with poisons and drugs it was Professors and Headmasters, even whole Academies that she wrote those letters to appeal to. In this choice of life paths, it was her parents, colleagues, friends. Herself.
She couldn’t have left. In her naivety, she had taken on a project with immense responsibility. When she had been rebuked, she had said what she had thought were final, parting words to the Wyvern. She had told him that she knew him.
That knowledge had been the trap, that pulled her in, that drove Hayle to keep her close and involved, so he could guard what he was doing, that compelled her to be here, right now, trying to summon her courage.
A sea creature was making its way to the Eastern shore of the Crown States. Other sea creatures and weapons were gravitating toward it. She couldn’t see the battle or the frothing of the water, but she could see that the great sea creature continued its inexorable approach, and the water around it was dark with the floating bodies and viscera of its hundred challengers.
It wasn’t the largest creature in the world. It probably wasn’t. It wasn’t the most powerful.
It would, all the same, hit the shore, and the Crown States could well be broken by that arrival. She had absolutely no say in the outcome. Her say had been in the beginning, when she’d played her part in setting this in motion.
She was terrified in a way she never had been before. There had always been a way forward, the notion that she could return to her laboratory
and try to figure out her options or if there was a solution. There was always ground to retreat to in times of war, when she was one of the people who served the back lines. Her position as one of the people closest to the headmaster of a top Academy meant that in times of plague or other catastrophe, she had always had some right to be one of the ones who were secured an out.
It was only the noxious child she had helped create that latched his claws in her, creating any uncertainty in her footing. That facet of things had only gotten worse with time and distance.
She straightened, turning her back on the scene. The fear she had wasn’t because of the great sea beast or the potential devastation it threatened to bring with it. The poisonous child wasn’t a child anymore.
They had claimed a neighborhood. The residents had largely been evacuated, and the ones who hadn’t left were incentivized to leave. Ten manors on a cliffside were now in the process of being transformed. Teams of students were running around, setting their work into motion. Wood grew so quickly she could follow the formation of branch and the expansion of trunk with her eyes. All was charcoal black. Harvesters crawled through everything, chewing away anything that wasn’t part of the greater construction.
It was claustrophobic, to enter a building that was forming around her. The light was fading as the growths rose up, elaborating on and exaggerating the features of the manors. Ten separate buildings were made more uniform in design by the shared material that formed them.
“My lord,” Duncan could be heard from down the hall. “Could I beg you to please don some clothing?”
“My Duncan, I will get to it when necessary. Abigail and I are deciding what I should wear.”
Lacey rounded the corner. Duncan stood with his back to the wall beside the door that was open a crack. The girl with the soft white curls stood on the other side of the door, wearing a fine dress. She went by Bonnie these days. The latest Quinton sat beside her, very un-lamblike in its behavior as it sat there with the wariness of a guard dog.
“My lord, it has been two hours now.”
“My Duncan, I am very much capable of looking at a clock and keeping track of time, as is Abigail. Don’t fuss.”
Duncan looked like he was going to say something, then spotted Lacey. He relaxed once he recognized her. “We’re nearly out of time, my lord.”