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My arms were drenched in blood, fingertip to elbow.

The rain pounded down on the rooftop, it formed a waterfall at the edge of the building that was damaged. Wood creaked and groaned as the building shifted. All around us, the city itself stretched itself skyward, stone grating on stone, distant muscles as large as any street no doubt working to lift sections of the city up and away from the plains that had surrounded it.

We made no sound. The Infante, too, was silent, but not because he was dead.

You don’t like it when others see you bleed. It disturbs the illusion.

His clothes had burned and melted away from the upper body, and it was clear where lifeforms squirmed and writhed within him, visible in and near the gouges and holes we had made in him.

He could have used them, to slow us down, to distract, even to attack. He was holding back his strength.

He was a pillar of strength, in many ways, tall, stout, indomitable. We could wound him, but killing him seemed almost impossible. Even serious attempts to disable were questionable at best.

The noble’s blood streamed from my elbows to my fingertips, and the thick fluid formed tendrils that stretched from my fingertips to the ground.

It felt like more time had passed than in reality.

I reached into one of my pockets, aware I was getting it filthy with blood. I gestured- nothing fancy. It was a gesture anyone would have understood.

Mary tugged on Gorger’s arm, hauling him back and away. His mouth yawned open, a second kind of mouth that was a wormlike, muscle-laden esophagus relaxed, loosening its hold on the Infante’s head.

For an instant, it looked like the Infante wasn’t going to let Gorger go, even though Gorger had released him. His arms were extended to either side- an eruption of tentacles reaching from one palm to Gorger’s hand, arm, and shoulder. The other held Gorger’s wrist, with red veins spiderwebbing out and around from the point of contact.

The Infante looked like he was crucified, one knee on the ground, arms out to either side, his head bowed. Wounds marked him.

But he wasn’t a man. Like this, close up, clothes done away with, his inhumanity had been laid bare. The flesh, the fat, the muscle, the monstrous things that peeked out of his wounds before he flexed the muscle, flexing the wound closed a fraction, it marked him as something else.

“Ask for help,” I said. “Beg. Call your underlings.”

He raised his head. It was here that he would have seen the match.

“I’m just making a suggestion. But I know you’re too cowardly to do it.”

“Cowardly,” the Infante said. His voice was quieter than usual. His allies were close enough that anything else could have been construed as him doing as I’d suggested, seeking their assistance. “Begging? Pleading? Calling for assistance?”

I smiled.

“You’d be well advised to listen,” Lillian said, her voice distorted by her breathing mask. “Concede this battle, bow your head, admit defeat. Walk away, lick your wounds.”

“Physician, you would do well to partake of your own prescription,” the Infante said, his voice low. “Can you conceive of any possible reality where I do as you suggest?”

“No,” Lillian said.

“Even if you did want to listen, we wouldn’t let you,” I said.

“I thought I’d suggest it, and assuage my conscience, harming the helpless, using all of my Academic knowledge to try and disable your knees and hips,” Lillian said.

“I can smell the chemicals,” the Infante said. “I can smell the pinewood and sulphur in your hand, Sylvester. I won’t bow, you won’t show mercy. Let’s be done with this discourse.”

My hand was still so covered in blood that I could barely see any skin, beyond some of the knuckles and where it had scraped away from beside my thumb, when I’d reached into my pocket. I opened it, then thumbed open the matchbox.

The others backed away, Gorger retreating toward the hatch, growls and other sounds suggesting that the Infante’s minions had seen him.

I struck the match and threw it as a single motion.

The chemical ignited with a whoosh, rolling into the air up and around the Infante in a way that suggested some of it was airborne, before it had caught the flame.

The Infante, midway to working his way to a full standing position, burned. Things from further down the warehouse took notice of the light and sound. The primordial-spawn superweapon would be among them.

I allowed myself a second to take in the scene, the Infante as a silhouette, surrounded and framed by flames. He didn’t scream or flinch.

Then, collecting Jessie, Duncan and Ashton helping to get her into position, I turned to go.

Only minutes had passed. We’d moved in waves, as coordinated a dance as any battlefield we’d navigated, but we’d been moving in and out of a space not much larger than a lady aristocrat’s walk-in-closet, some of us stepping back as others had stepped in.

The ones who hadn’t been actively getting their hands dirty had been preparing for their own activities or checking the surroundings. I’d been checking.

There was a path out. It wasn’t perfect, but it served. We went up, climbing one set of pipes and the framework that held one chimney to the wall, to reach a shattered window.

Hoods up and jackets overhead, we went out the window, into the acid rain.

Duncan was the last out. Not even a full second after he’d slipped past the spears and blades of glass, the first warbeast lunged after him, snapping. A weasel, writ large, with jaws like a bear trap of bone and muscle, the flesh peeled back and away, so grafts and augments could be added or modified to keep the jaws at their most effective.

Duncan dropped down, and we caught him. The weasel-warbeast was scraping its neck and belly against glass as it fought its way out of the window, eviscerating itself. One of its kin was climbing on it to get through the window, but rear limbs had lost their grip, and it held on with foreclaws alone.

Another lunged out, leaping onto the rooftop we occupied. Mary, one hand in her pocket, stabbed it with a short blade that she held in the other hand, before it could fully recover from the landing.

There was noise at the side of the building, suggesting creatures were making their way outside. I could see only hints of it – some weren’t acid-proof, and they shied away from the rainwater, getting in the way of any that were.

A weaker Tangle was draped across the street far below us, long, thin, not quite integrated, its pale silhouette being that of a snake. It was trying to fold itself together into something functional and strong, but it had been damaged, and its attempts to knit itself together were trying and failing to turn gaping wounds into something functional. Lying as it was in the puddles, the effect of the rain was far outweighing the harvesters’ ability to piece it together or make it functional. It looked like the flesh would slough from the bone soon enough.

There were soldiers and experiments here and there, but the battle lines had shifted, moving to points further away, Radham’s forces retreating closer to the Academy, while the Infante’s forces had followed. The ones who remained were the ones who were hunkering down in places that were still dry and intact, licking their wounds and shooting the occasional Tangle that limped or crawled too close.

None looked up enough to see us.

We leaped over to the next rooftop, Mary first to land there, with Lillian close behind. They were there to reach out for me, keeping me steady. I appreciated it- not because my balance was bad, but because I had Jessie on my back and I didn’t want the coat I’d draped over Jessie and I to fall away, exposing us to rain.

We circled around the building, pursuing the Infante’s soldiers and forces, which had pressed their advantage as Radham had retreated.

I was all too aware of the rain, of the long seconds which seemed to pass in slow motion as we stepped out from under eaves and away from the sides of buildings that blocked the downpour when the wind blew it in the right directions.

The building we’d met the Infante in was still in plain view. The chemical fire we’d started was blazing, catching on wood. The orange light of the flame was visible through the windows, even if the flames themselves weren’t.

“How’s Helen?” I asked.

“I haven’t had time to check,” Duncan said. “It looked like she got hit hard. She’s durable, but-”

But.

“Mary?”

“Lillian put my arm back, but I don’t feel like I can use it for fighting.”

A Jessie who can’t voice her memories. A Mary who can’t fight. Ashton is limited in what he can do since half our enemies are wearing quarantine suits with masks. Helen can’t get a grip on herself, let alone anyone else.

Then there’s you, the voice said.

How fitting, then, that we would find ourselves here, I thought.

The Duke was standing in the rain, wearing a hooded cloak, the point of a sword sticking out from one side, the hand that gripped it shrouded. The rainwater ran down onto the cloak and around him, pooling on the ground. The front line of the battle was ahead of him.

His doctors stood to the side, where they were out of the rain.

I dropped to the street, dancing out of the way of harvesters that were writhing through the water. I ducked under the same eaves the doctors were hiding under, where they were safe from stray gunfire and the rain.

One of them drew a weapon. He relaxed slightly when he recognized me, my face peeking out from beneath the jacket that covered my head, shoulders, and Jessie.

A whisper I hadn’t caught, a subtle signal or enhanced senses let the Duke know we were here. The Lambs collected behind me, and we collectively shrank back into the shadows and the gloom. Still facing more or less forward, the Duke half-turned to glance our way, looking at us out of the corner of one eye.

Were a distant observer to take in the scene, it was a coin toss if they would notice us.

Berger pulled off his mask. He blinked a few times, then winced. He turned his attention to us.

“Professor,” I said. “We meet again.”

Our last meeting had been when we had turned him over to the other Lambs. He had been our hostage, and Lillian had wanted him as a bridge to contact the Duke with.

We’d hoped to stop the Infante from seizing the Crown States.

“He lives?” Berger asked.

“The Infante lives,” I said. “But he bleeds. He burns.”

Berger’s expression shifted. He seemed grimly satisfied with that.

“The Golden Calf?”

“The primordial spawn is out there,” Duncan said. “Either it’s giving chase, or it’s waiting for its masters orders.”

Berger nodded. He glanced at the Duke.

“Will you come with us?” Lillian asked. “We… the Lambs helped as much as we were able. Sylvester and Jessie made sacrifices, trying to help us help you. If you’re ever going to help us, we need the help now.”

“If I may, my lord,” Berger said, bowing his head. “We’ve discussed this thoroughly. I’ll speak for you if you allow it, and you can correct me if I’ve misinterpreted your stance.”

The Duke dipped his head into a slow nod. It was an eerily placid, calm gesture in the midst of a battlefield, where smoke was still thick in the air, the gas thankfully having dissipated, the rain pouring down, the soldiers firing their guns and shouting just fifty paces away.

“Speaking for myself, the Infante has my loved ones,” Berger said. “Speaking for my Lord, I know that everything and everyone he’s invested his life into is held ransom. We’ve been asked to bow our heads, to sacrifice ourselves on this altar, and we’ve been assured they’ll be treated fairly.”

“You really think they’ll be allowed to live?” I asked.

Berger glanced at me. There was a dark expression on his face.

“Stupid question.”

“If he gets a prompt, quiet death, I’ll consider that fair,” Berger said. “I’ll consider it possible that he could live, shuffled off to live with a Doctor, a Professor, or an Aristocrat, to carry on something resembling an ordinary, modestly wealthy life. Possible but not likely.”

“This is a fulcrum point,” Mary said. “Things teeter on a blade’s edge.”

“To what ends?” Berger asked. “Do you want to stop the Infante? Salvage things? Our communications were discovered. The Crown States are doomed, written off. In a century or five, they’ll dust off the maps and the books, they’ll return to the Crown States, and they’ll reclaim it. Purged of all enemies and threats, free to be populated by the loyal.”

“The loyal,” Lillian said.

“Yes.”

“The loyal won’t be created by manipulation or craft,” Lillian said. “They won’t be made by propaganda, misinformation, rewritten history or a steady removal of the Academy’s enemies. They’ll be engineered. They’ll be grown in vats and pieced together from the dead.”

“Most likely,” Berger said.

“I don’t want that future,” Duncan said.

“Are you offering an alternative?” Berger asked.

I met the Duke’s eye. I saw him staring, rigid, his jaw set, water streaming off of his hood. His hair was disintegrating into sodden clumps where it tumbled out of the hood and over one shoulder, the rain dissolving it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do we have a place in this alternative?”

“No,” I said.

“You’re asking me, asking us to sacrifice ourselves, to give up everything we’ve worked toward, and allow it to be done away with in entirety, in the worst ways possible, even. You’re asking us to do it and to get nothing in return?”

“Your son, the boy,” I said. “I don’t remember his name. But he might have a place.”

“The Lord Duke took pride in the Crown States.”

“There is no more Crown States,” I said. “Only plague and black wood.”

“You’re asking for what little we have left. You’re offering nothing in return.”

Mary spoke, “Sy’s offering you a chance to fight. A chance to take one last defiant action. A shot at removing the most dangerous man in the Crown States from the world.”

“For chances and shots, I’m to condemn the boy?” Berger asked. “We’d try, we’d fail, and we’d be consigned to the Crown Capitol’s pits, with every person who we’ve worked with since coming to the Crown States, every family member, every loyal servant, and every other person we’ve stayed in touch with over the years.”

“What makes them special?” I asked.

“What makes your Lambs special?” Berger asked, his voice rising.

The Duke shifted his cloak. Moving with slow carefulness, he reached out, hand slipping out from beneath the folds. It settled on Berger’s shoulder.

The rain continued to pour down on top of us. Someone from the battle lines was turning back, calling out. Berger looked in the man’s direction.

The battle was ongoing. The distant battlefield was eerie looking, almost a painting in the broad, vague strokes that painted it, the streets having blurred as harvesters had drawn out the materials, the hard shapes and openings of buildings smoothed out into funnels by the harvester’s work. Radham seemed to have the means to direct Tangles in small part, and they were using them to delay and hamper the attacking forces. I wondered if it was similar to Ashton’s mechanisms.

“Nothing,” I said. “Well, a great deal makes them special, but that’s not what you’re asking.”

“Why should I lose everything and everyone I hold dear, when you won’t?”

I was very aware of the Lambs who were arranged behind me. I was aware of the state of them.

You’re losing them, the voice said. They’re slipping away as you speak. And if you let them go, then I’ll have no reason to hold back. Our deal will have ended.

I blinked, slow.

“Because, if you’re honest with yourself, if you step away and look at what this world is and what it’s becoming… we’re really not far from a reality where everyone is condemned to the pits. Everyone is lost. Maybe not this generation. Maybe not the next. But surely, somehow, if you cherish anyone, anything, any legacy at all, you can’t let them win, destroy it all, and erect some… mockery in its place. Rewritten history, modified, subjugated, and broken people.”

“You might well be giving me too much credit,” Berger said.

“If that’s so, then I’m really sorry I spared you, way back then,” I said.

The fires were rising from the building where we’d left the Infante.

A hollow, eerie bellow sounded, extending over the city.

“That would be the golden calf, I presume?” Duncan asked.

“Yes,” the Professor next to Berger said.

“The Infante is coming. He’ll have his pet with him,” Berger said.

“And you’ve given your answer?” I asked. “You won’t help? You’re speaking for the Duke in that?”

“Almost,” Berger said.

“Almost?”

“I can’t speak for the Lord I serve, but in speaking for myself, I don’t believe you’ll bring about a better world.”

I tilted my head to one side, watching Berger.

“We treated you pretty fairly, all considered,” I said.

Berger didn’t reply. Beside me, Mary placed bullets in her gun. She exchanged guns with Lillian and loaded the other, too. Duncan and Ashton were kneeling by Helen.

“Fine,” I said. “Point taken. But you’ve worked with Lillian. You’ve seen Duncan. You’ve communicated with them, tried to fight for a better future alongside them, steering the Infante away from trouble.”

“Insofar as that’s possible,” one of the Professors said.

“You’re… you’ve lost, you’re faltering. You seem resigned to your fates. But pass the baton. If Lillian and Duncan aren’t the kind of Doctor you want to succeed you, then I don’t know who else would serve.”

The Golden Calf howled yet again.

“I’ve met some doctors I could recommend,” Ashton said. “But that’s not the point.”

“Hush,” Duncan said.

Berger glanced at the Duke.

The Duke lowered his head, reaching down to Berger’s belt. He retrieved a handful of vials.

“That’s a yes?” I asked.

“Shh, Sy,” Lillian said. “Don’t go and say something that changes anyone’s mind, if they’re leaning toward helping.”

“I’m not going to change anyone’s mind,” I said.

“You could,” Ashton said.

I shut my mouth.

Berger held the vials that the Duke had retrieved and put in his hands.

“Combat drugs?” Lillian asked.

The Duke turned, facing the burning building.

He’d left one arm extended.

“In your condition-” Lillian started.

Duncan touched her arm.

The rain continued to pour down. Berger extracted the drug with a syringe, and he placed the syringe point into the Duke’s arm.

“We’ll have to get past the Infante to reach the ship,” Mary said. “Are your people on board?”

“Guarded,” Berger said. “They’ll be shot before we get close enough.”

“Get us to the Infante’s ship. We’ll get close enough.”

Berger nodded.

“We’ll have to find a way to stop the Infante,” I said. “Are there drugs? Any mechanisms? Chemicals we could use?”

“No.”

“If we take out his Professors, what happens?”

“He’ll recruit others. They’ll be worse at maintaining the delicate balances and keeping the plagues and weapons within him from harming him, but he’ll survive. He’d be able to get himself restored to peak condition, if only because they’d keep him alive and well until he made it back to the Crown Capitol.”

The fighting was picking up. We weren’t terribly far from the Academy itself, with its high walls, at the highest elevated point on the city that had raised itself in stages. I had a feeling harvesters had warped the exterior walls, elaborating them, smoothing them out and reinforcing the bases, but it was hard to see in particular.

The Tangles had united into a few greater forms, comprehensive enough to be able to climb from the ground at the base of the walls to the tops of the wall. Much of the artillery fire and gunfire was aimed at them.

Duncan picked Helen.

“How is she?” I asked.

“There’s damage to her brain or spine, going by how nonresponsive she is. I’d need to perform exploratory surgery to tell, and this isn’t a good surgical theater.”

I set my jaw.

I shifted my grip on Jessie. The others pulled coverings into place, protecting them from the rain we were about to venture into. I was very aware that the fabric would start to give way if we subjected ourselves to too much of it.

I heard the sounds of the Golden Calf, and I could visualize the Infante, not far from it. Three Infantes, as possible positions, possible stances. I could imagine him in a range of conditions.

The Lambs have to destroy him.

The Duke, beside us, stretched.

“Donn’t,” the Duke said. His voice was rich, the words crude, as painful to listen to as they must have been to utter.

I turned to look at him.

“Donn’t… disappoint me,” the Duke spoke.

Thunder rumbled, and we we ran, ducking our heads down, jackets and hoods pulled up. The Duke almost resembled his old self, but his expression was a stricken one. One I recognized, in a morbid way, the expression mirroring sentiments I’d harbored in my heart in my darkest moments.

The Duke of Francis was going to die, for the burst of vigor and focus he was demonstrating now.

He kept his head down, his movements efficient, not graceful but not graceless either. I knew that kind of movement too: it was the mechanical movement of someone who had to keep putting one foot in front of the other because there was no guarantee they would be able to resume moving if their rhythm broke or if they stopped.

A Tangle rose up, striking out from an alley. It wasn’t large, composed of four people, but it was relatively intact.

The Duke ignored it, even as it found its footing, moving to strike at him.

I lunged, moving clumsily with Jessie at my back. I cut more to slow it a fraction than to stop it. It clubbed at me and hit Jessie.

Mary threw knives. With the wires attached and the knives embedded in flesh, she hauled to one side, pulling it off balance and toppling it.

The Duke had barely budged or reacted. He couldn’t spare the strength or effort for anything that wasn’t our primary enemy in this.

But, as we ran, he held his sword arm out, his hooded cloak stretching down the length of his very long arms. It had been black once, but it was mottled, the color bleeding out of it, the parts where the fabric was tight against shoulder and head were outright bleached.

The length of cloak he’d extended and the sweep of his arm provided a canopy, sufficient to shelter Lillian, Jessie and I.

The shattered city was staring to slow in its growth, the rumble quieting. The sound of war on the ground, across the city, and at the foot of Radham Academy itself seemed to increase in volume, as the dull sounds of the city’s shifting ceased to mask it all.

I saw the Infante, standing in the street. He let the rain wash over him. His flesh was bleaching and mottling less than the high quality fabric of the Duke of Francis’ cloak.

I saw the Golden Calf. The two-faced helmet had been unclasped, but its face wasn’t visible. It hunched over a tangle, it ate, the helm blocking our view of its face and process of eating. Its back and body were bulging, larger for the mass it had taken into its body. Its arms were longer, stouter at the shoulders.

We slowed our pace. The Duke, not wanting to stop, continued moving, circling around to one side.

The Infante was scorched, flesh peeling from body in black, twisted clusters rimmed by red, damaged flesh, fluids streaking him as they flowed from open wounds. He didn’t look weaker, for the damage that had been done. He didn’t hang his head any lower, he didn’t bow down. He didn’t look less, wearing his battle wounds rather than his highest-quality robes.

The Lambs were glancing around us. I looked around us, and I recognized many of the storefronts, though display windows were thoroughly barred and shuttered. I recognized the shape of the street. I didn’t remember, but it was a place close enough to my heart that I couldn’t forget it entirely.

We were very close to the orphanage.

The Golden Calf reached up, closing its helmet, doing up the clasp.

I saw the Primordial Child, standing in the background, watching.

“How dangerous is it?” Duncan asked.

“They create primordials in the Crown Capitol, in the most controlled of environments. They cut and pruned until they came to a conclusion. Few of the resulting creations were truly capable of anything,” Berger said, his voice muffled by the mask he’d returned to wearing. “Even of those few, most are only fodder for research and advancing Academy knowledge, primordial-derived advancements that greater minds than mine may spend a decade or more reverse-engineering.”

The Duke moved, lunging for the Infante, blade in one hand.

The Calf, as far from its master as the Duke had been before the attack was initiated, was fast enough interpose itself between Infante and Duke before the Duke could strike. It parried the blade with a backhand swipe of a claw.

The Infante hadn’t so much as flinched or glanced the Duke’s way.

His focus was on us.

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