by wildbow
Others were gathering and preparing. Duncan had arrived, which meant the others would be on their way.
Lacey could see Red and the other fairy tale creations. They had been done up pretty, but many had left monstrous features in place. Bonnie—Bo Peep—was in their company.
Shirley was present, too. The woman had made herself mayor of one of the cities to the west. The Lords and Ladies had recently made her an aristocrat proper. Shirley was in the company of a lanky, white-haired man, with a cast to his features that suggested they had been provided by the Academy. They were close.
Emily Gage was present. She’d done away with her monstrous features in part, solely for this event, but she was still an imposing woman.
Each had seen facets of the Wyvern when Lacey hadn’t been looking. Witnesses in their own ways, perhaps. Each compromised in ways Lacey wasn’t.
She wished she could compare notes with them and she doubted it was possible.
This particular beast had flown its coop.
“How are the others?” Lacey’s companion asked, as they walked the outer perimeter of the interior garden plaza. More guests were arriving by the moment.
“If you had asked me an hour ago, my Lady, I would have said I knew them well enough to say. Now… I’m not sure I have a grasp of any of them. Of any of you, I beg pardon, my Lady.”
“Riddles and enigmas.”
“One fusses and makes others fuss. One is compelling and frightening at the same times. The next is dwelling on arming themselves against the wrong thing.”
“And the next?”
Lacey glanced at the Lady beside her.
“Speak openly. If our guest doesn’t take to our hospitality, it could be your last chance.”
She said it in such a cavalier way. That this was all so critical a thing.
“You should be the most concerned of all of us, my Lady. You remember everything. You should see what’s unfolding with the most clarity, shouldn’t you? The others are caught up in the details, they’re dwelling on their personal perspectives, their needs and drives, the imminent threats and dangers. You’re equipped to see the big picture, the greater agendas, and how those details connect into something greater.”
“You think we’re missing something?”
“I think each of you have touched on pieces of it, my Lady. I hoped and felt you might be the one who would take those pieces and pull them together.”
“I played my part in getting us to this point. This meeting was always going to be part of the greater plan.”
“You didn’t see him toward the end, my Lady. Not around the time they besieged Radham, killed Hayle, or confined Genevieve Fray.”
“I did see,” the silver haired young lady said. She drew in a deep breath, then smiled. “I saw it in a dream, you see. Words spoken while I was asleep, all left unsorted. Ones I can forget or interpret, or that exist only in abstract. I would even say they’re my most cherished, special memories.”
Lacey felt her partially prepared response wither in the midst of her vocal chords, at those final words.
That response died when the young Lady said, “I believe in him.”
Lacey stopped in her tracks.
Her walking companion progressed a bit further, then paused, looking back.
“My Lady,” Lacey said. “I wouldn’t want to cause trouble, but—”
The silver haired young lady waved her off. “Speak frankly. Without titles, if it’s easier. Barely anyone is in earshot, and I trust all present who could listen in.”
“I—I beg your pardon. But really, truly. I spent the last decade of my life mired in this project. I’ve kept tabs on everything, I’ve followed along, I saw Project Wyvern at its inception, from that angry little boy that Hayle had delivered to our offices to the young man who killed Hayle and watched him die. He’s a shapeshifter of the mind, a sponge, a… puzzle.”
“He is.”
“It’s impossible to say anything for sure about Sylvester except that you can’t believe him. You can’t trust him. Once you do that, you’ve lost. Only disaster follows. Please. If all the years I’ve spent being involved in this count for anything, it needs to be that you hear and realize that. You can’t believe Sylvester. You can’t believe in Sylvester. He’s very possibly the scariest and most dangerous person in the Crown States, and I say that with your guest disembarking onto your shores.”
“I’m sure you’re right. I won’t deny your long and storied experience when it comes to Sylvester and the Lambs. It’s a large part of why you’re here.”
“Please, my lady.”
“But he isn’t Sylvester any longer.”
“Please.”
“And we’re no longer Lambs.”
With that, Lacey knew she had lost.
☙
An entire city bent at the knee with his arrival.
He was a giant. His humanity had long been discarded. He was only human in the face he wore and his rough shape.
He strode down the carefully swept road, his retinue of fantastical beasts on either side of him and behind him. His beard was heavy, his hair long, and his footsteps had gravity, which made the bowing heads near him bend lower.
He had no carpet unfurled before him, but he had one trail behind him. Tubes, wires, and conduits of all sorts followed him, flowing from his back and shoulders, arranged in fine, orderly lines behind him. For every ten steps he took, there was a set of servants to take up position at the trail of fluid-filled tubes, to ensure that everything flowed straight and without issue. He took corners and traveled bends in the path, and the team worked discreetly to manage the trail so nothing caught, nothing became disorderly.
The trail extended to the mouth of the great sea beast that had borne him across his ocean, down at the harbor. The beast had unfolded itself, turning itself inside out to provide functional accommodations at the harbor, the revealed buildings taller than any building in the not-immodest city.
The bellowing of trumpets marked his approach and words were spoken to announce his coming, further down the road. His steps were measured.
The words were spoken as he passed through the gates. The hush was such that the words could have been whispered and most would have caught them. “You are graced by the presence of your rightful Lord King Adam, Emperor of the one hundred nations, bearer of the Crown, sword, and scales!”
All were already bowing, scraping the ground. The Lord King gazed at his subjects. He raised his eyes to look at the building that was still erecting itself, black branches reaching for the sky as it grew, shapes forming into arches and decoration.
“You,” the King spoke. Most present startled at the sound. “Have succeeded in drawing my attention.”
His head turned, taking in the surroundings.
“If this is an attempt to kill me, you should know this isn’t my true body. Your attempts will fail. If this is a mere farce, then the perpetrators of it should announce and explain themselves.”
“If I may, Lord King” one figure said, rising, only to segue straight into a deep, flourishing bow. His dark hair was long, and he was Noble in appearance, with sharp green eyes and a taller frame than even many Nobles. “I would announce those who invited you.”
“You may.”
“Lord Asher.”
The young man appeared to be close kin to the first, but was red haired, his hair tidily taken care of. He was adolescent, but had all of the hallmarks of anyone Noble-made. He had a woman of similar age beside him, still bowing. They wore clothes of similar colors, both in dark blues, in the finest fabrics.
The expression that Lord Asher wore was an unflinching one.
“Lady Helena.”
A beauty, possessed of grace. There was artistry there that few beyond the Lord King himself, his Queen and his Prince could lay any claim to. Most importantly, she carried it all with the bearing of someone that had known it from birth.
She smelled like blood.
“Lady
Margaret.”
Another beauty, if a sharper one, in the dangerous glint of her eyes and the way she held herself. Had he seen her in another context, he would have believed she was any of his new Nobles, still learning their new bodies. Promising. Dangerous.
“Lady Jessica.”
Something else, there. Confident, but not nearly as immediately dangerous as the other two announced, supposed Ladies. Silver haired, modest, alert, her hands clasped together. She immediately went to the side of the tall man that had announced her, her hand on his arm.
One of the key players in this, then.
“You may, if you so desire, my Lord King, call me Lord Simon.”
The King stared at the assembled group. He looked at the crowd, and he saw the assorted monsters, the rough-edged hiding in the back rows, the ones decorated with tattoos and other things no true aristocracy would harbor.
“Let’s do away with the audience of this particular theater.”
Lord Simon gestured with one hand. The assembled crowd turned away, filing into the back hallways and doorways. In less than thirty seconds, only the announced Lords and Ladies remained, alongside two young individuals in lab coats, a boy and a girl.
The girl approached the Lord Simon and stood at his other side. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and he stared down the King.
“The stage is a good one,” the King observed. He looked up, where the branches were striving to meet in a steeple. “I’ve not seen one quite like it.”
“Thank you, my Lord King,” Simon said.
“It represents something. Transformation, growth, and timing.”
“Yes, Lord King. I’m gratified that came across.”
“I have never met any with the gall you supposed Lords and Ladies have on display here.”
The girl in the white coat that stood beside this Simon was scared, he observed. The boy who stood in the back was. The remainder were better at hiding it, if they were capable of feeling fear at all.
He went on, “That you would even try this ruse suggests that you know things few get to survive knowing. The existence of your audience suggests you’ve talked about these things.”
“Yes, Lord King. We know these things.”
“You’ve waged a war, clearly. You killed my kin.”
“Yes, my Lord King. Most here have Noble blood on their hands, in some form.”
The King moved through the room, traveling slowly.
Most, if taken at face value as Nobles, were only of the caliber that would be called bastards. Odd, that the one doing the speaking was one of those. Some were better, or had more promise.
“You managed to draw me here with your invitation. Now you’ll likely die for what you’ve admitted to me. You did this for a reason. You wanted my ear.”
“Yes, Lord King.”
“You have it.”
“Lord King, we would humbly request your sanction for our plan to wage war with the Crown Empire in its entirety, to ruin the Academy structure, and to behead the nobility. Yourself and ourselves excluded, of course.”
“You continue to call yourselves Nobles.”
It seemed to surprise more than a few of them that he’d chosen to dwell on that part of things.
Simon seemed to take it in stride. “Yes, Lord King. Absolutely.”
“Why?”
“Because the nobility under you is more farce than what we’ve posed here, Lord King. We proved our value by taking your Crown States as our own. I believe wholeheartedly that we’ll be better nobles than the nobles your Academy manufactures.”
“You would destroy our Academies, not just behead and replace our nobility.”
“They’ve grown too powerful, Lord King. In cutting them down, we would bring them in balance. It is in fact the reason we first decided we would approach you with the idea of a deal. We believe that you, being who you are, you would have to feel some degree of frustration with the state of the Crown as it is beside its brother, the Academy.”
“You would wage war with the Crown Empire. One broken nation against a hundred?”
“Yes, Lord King. We would, given an opportunity, colonize every place you’ve rendered unfit for habitation. We would stage wars from these grounds. Competition is healthy, yet the Crown never loses. You need an enemy or your people will wage a war against their own. They’re dangerously close to doing that. Even here, they were.”
“That plan of yours would require a great deal of time.”
“Generations, Lord King.”
“It would require my silence.”
The tall young Noble smiled. “Yes, Lord King. Your arrival or the arrival of your kin was inevitable. We thought we would invite it, so we could answer it appropriately, and make our best offer.”
“As offers go, it is not a very good one. War and death for me and my people.”
“The alternative was that we would raise the spectre of primordial-derived superweapons unleashed on the world at large, my Lord King.”
“You would not even be the first to do so.”
“We imagine not, Lord King. We would hope—” Simon paused. “Well, perhaps not hope, but we may be breaking from pattern in that we’ll relinquish this leverage. We would hope others would do the same in similar circumstance, but we suspect we’re striking new ground in doing it this way.”
The young ‘Noble’ turned to the girl in the coat.
She hesitated, the Lord King saw.
But she turned over the iron key.
Simon approached, and he reached up to hand the Lord King the key. “The experiments are ready to be unleashed with a turn of the key, Lord King. They’re sitting dormant in the red-decked boat on port. You’ll want to dispose of them, I imagine.”
The key almost disappeared in the Lord King’s palm, as he held it. It was almost weightless.
“You believe this. You’d throw yourselves on my mercy to make it happen.”
“Belief is all we have. Belief that you’d have to find this necessary, interesting, or valuable. That you can’t possibly be satisfied with the way things are.”
“I’m the most powerful individual in the world. Why would I not be satisfied?”
“We’ve lived in that world, Lord King. We’ve seen it from the lowest to the highest points. The audience you saw ranged that same gamut. If you’re a representative of that world in near-totality, then you have to have seen the need for it to change. You must have seen and recognized that monstrousness at the core of things. The darkness. The ugliness.”
“Must I?”
Simon touched his own chest, “It’s standing right in front of you, calling itself a Lord, my King.”
Others reacted to that, to varying degrees. The one in the back. The young woman with the dangerous eyes, ‘Margaret’.
Lady Jessica didn’t react. She raised her hand, holding Simon’s, and kissed the back of it.
“My King,” Lady Jessica said, as she lowered their hands. “The Academy wanted control and it pushed that control to the point of slavery. The result was rebellion. Your Crown wanted power and it exercised that power, breaking that which didn’t bend. Lord Simon here is a representative of every aspect of that. He was made to absorb and adapt, to mold himself to environments. He molded himself to us first. He molded himself to your world last.”
“And I’m supposed to trust him, knowing this?”
“Trust them. They’re the reason I’m here and wanting good things. They’re the reason I didn’t use the key. Well, as something more than a token,” Simon said.
The Lord King looked down at the key that rested in his hand.
“You’re not the first to make a bid or to pose a challenge,” the King said. He looked between them. He saw Helena’s hand on Asher’s shoulder, the look she cast back over her shoulder at the male Doctor. The way Lady Jessica and Simon and the female doctor stood together, and how the female doctor looked back at Margaret.
All knit together, their body language woven into one anothe
r.
“If you were to give us the chance, we can be the ones who succeed,” the young Doctor said. “We’ve come too far to do anything else, I promise you that much, Lord King.”
They might just.
The King clenched his fist, destroying the key.
“Do as you will.”
Previous End
Table of Contents
Taking Root 1.1
Taking Root 1.2
Taking Root 1.3
Taking Root 1.4
Taking Root 1.5
Taking Root 1.6
Taking Root 1.7
Taking Root 1.8
Taking Root 1.9
Taking Root 1.10
Taking Root 1.11
Taking Root 1.12
Enemy (Arc 1)
Cat out of the Bag 2.1
Cat out of the Bag 2.2
Cat out of the Bag 2.3
Cat out of the Bag 2.4
Cat out of the Bag 2.5
Cat out of the Bag 2.6
Cat out of the Bag 2.7
Cat out of the Bag 2.8
Cat out of the Bag 2.9
Cat out of the Bag 2.10
Cat out of the Bag 2.11
Enemy (Arc 2)
Lips Sealed 3.1
Lips Sealed 3.2
Lips Sealed 3.3
Lips Sealed 3.4
Lips Sealed 3.5
Lips Sealed 3.6
Lips Sealed 3.7
Lips Sealed 3.8
Lips Sealed 3.9
Lips Sealed 3.10
Enemy (Arc 3)
Stitch in Time – 4.1
Stitch in Time – 4.2
Stitch in Time – 4.3
Stitch in Time – 4.4
Stitch in Time – 4.5
Stitch in Time – 4.6
Stitch in Time – 4.7
Stitch in Time – 4.8
Stitch in Time – 4.9
Stitch in Time – 4.10
Stitch in Time – 4.11
Stitch in Time – 4.12
Enemy (Arc 4)
Esprit de Corpse – 5.1
Esprit de Corpse – 5.2
Esprit de Corpse – 5.3
Esprit de Corpse – 5.4
Esprit de Corpse – 5.5
Esprit de Corpse – 5.6