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1The Crown - Nobles
2
3The Lords of Ladies of the Crown Empire, they are the "rulers" of the land, enhanced with top-of-line medical science and equipment to give them a supernatural mythos. With some exceptions, no two nobles are the same, due to the various and different types of doctors and professors they employ.
4
5[SPOILER="General"]
6We don't know the specifics, but we are told of at least one illegitimate Noble
7[QUOTE=Esprit de Corpse 5.9]
8“There,” Jamie said.  “Man with the red tie?”
9
10I looked and saw a man, blond haired, with a jaw prominent enough that it looked like it had been surgically modified.
11
12“Nobility,” Jamie said.
13
14“Here?” I asked.  A two-legged cat might have had as much sense to walk into a wolf’s den.
15
16“He’s illegitimate.  Of everyone here that might hate the Crown and the people that fall under its umbrella, he probably hates the Crown the most.”
17
18“Tall order,” I said.  I grabbed a tiny cake.
19[/QUOTE]
20
21The Duke claims that there are many Nobles of similar age to Lilian at that point in the story (around age 12)
22[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.13]“Were I to start talking about the Lambs and how things work, my hopes for the project and the possibility for the Crown, heads would turn.  I know how I was when I was young, my brain working the way it does, and I have many family members who are roughly your age,” the Duke said.  He arched one eyebrow and looked at Lillian.  “My younger relatives might well want to be Lambs, as a lark, or to have a way of stretching their legs as I did earlier today, I would imagine you’re the easiest one to replace, should we need to make room on this team.”[/QUOTE]
23
24Noble anatomy
25[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Boys]Noble anatomy, modified to be stronger, faster, inhuman by most measures.[/QUOTE]
26[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Girls]
27Four nobles.  Augmented physiology, augmented minds.  They were, as Mr. Percy would have said, ‘top notch‘.  Absolute monsters.  Depending on what unfolded, the Lambs might find themselves in a fight by the day’s end.
28
29It wasn’t a situation the Lambs would survive.
30[/QUOTE]
31
32Why they like the added height, wear armored clothing, and aware of their surroundings
33[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Girls]
34The Nobles were tall.  They liked that, being above the common people.  Mary was far from full grown, with a three-quarter foot to grow, if she compared herself to the woman who was supposed to be her mother.  The legs would be her best target.
35
36But that wasn’t the whole story.  The jackets the Duke and Baron had been wearing were heavy, and they flowed oddly as they walked.  There was something in them, armor.
37
38She had to attack from the front, knowing that the one she chose as her target was quicker, faster, and very aware of what was going on around them.
39[/QUOTE]
40
41On Mary's personal belief's in fighting the Nobles
42[QUOTE=enemy Arc 7 Girls]
43Topple her enemy, target the spine.  She tried to picture the scenarios unfolding.
44
45Not the throat or the jugular, unless she could do that as part of something else.  The spine was a better target.  Cervical four, third bundle was a likely target, but would only shut off breathing, freezing the diaphragm.  She would get pulled away, the doctors would swoop in.  They would fix the noble in the time it took them to die from a lack of breath.  Depending on how their bodies had been changed, that could be a very long time.
46
47Thoracics one through four had places she could drive a blade in to shut off the heart, lungs, and larynx.  Drive in the blade, do as much damage as possible, shut off heart function or ability to breathe.  Hard to do if the back was armored and protected, if the twins might have open backed dresses, or she could reach in past the collar.  It was worth keeping in mind, reciting that play in her head as a possibility.
48
49If she could drive the blade in, knowing how small it was, then it would be harder to fix, the damage more severe.  It would require something harder than any one part of her body.  Something from the environment.
50
51She could do it if her hands were bound, it would be harder but possible.  But being restrained was the least of her concerns, as she imagined different factors.  They might not fall, even as she leveraged a kick that could break ordinary bone into one of the more vulnerable parts of the human body.  Their spine might be protected.  She might not be able to access and keep a blade.  Her hands might even be bound, which wouldn’t stop her, but it could cost her the time she needed to grab the blade and follow through.
52
53She would die.  That bothered her less than the cold hollow emptiness that Helen had articulated so well, the loneliness that took hold inside her even now at imagining Helen’s dead eyes staring off into space, or Lillian in horrible pain.
54
55She would die, but even if she tried, if she was clever about it, the nobles who remained might think twice about giving personal attention to the Lambs who remained.  If they deferred to another method of execution or torture, then the remaining Lambs might have a chance to escape that they wouldn’t have with the nobles.
56[/QUOTE]
57
58How even drastic alterations by the rich doesn't compare to the Nobles
59[QUOTE=Bleeding Edge 8.1]
60Husband and wife. He was a middle-aged gentleman with obviously altered features, cut a little too sharp.  His face was clean shaven, his blond hair waxed to the point that it looked artificial through and through, as if it were finely carved of wood.  He wore a jacket with tails and thin slacks, and held a bone cane, more for style than out of any need for one.
61
62She was a woman who’d had more work done on her body than most.  I might have taken her for his daughter, but she was wearing the open-front blouse that was so common to yesteryear’s high courts.  The cut of the dress bared the space between breasts, and the resulting picture was decorated with low-hanging jewelry and framed with ruffles and lace.  It would have been the style for Lillian’s mother when the woman was Lillian’s age or a few years older, if Lillian’s mother was born to a good family.
63
64That dress told me a lot.  It suggested she was forty, for one, her apparent age cut in half by good care by good doctors.  It wasn’t unfashionable, but it took courage or reasons to wear it when she could have an easier time following modern fashion trends.  The risque styles of dress had been a reaction or signal of support to the Crown around the time the infighting between Crown and Church had started.  It was very possible that she or her entire family had a deeper stake in that particular fight, remembered even today.
65
66She also had a tic, one finger moving rhythmically where she thought we couldn’t see, one hand in the other arm’s sleeve of her.  If I remembered right, it was a problem common to people who had had certain augmentations placed within their forearms.  A precursor to the same sort of thing that let Fray hide needles in her fingertips.
67
68No, even from the way they held themselves, and the ease and care with which they moved, it was clear they were augmented from head to toe.  Grafts, physical alterations, drugs, changes to their biological construction at the ground level, and more.
69
70They weren’t nobles, but by golly, they wanted to be.
71[/QUOTE]
72
73More about how the line of succession works
74[QUOTE=Bleeding Edge 8.2]
75“The runaway.  It sounds like she had good reasons for leaving home.  Being pushed into marriage with a noble?”
76
77“The Baron, no less,” Jamie said.  “The Duke got started early in terms of military strategy and leadership.  The Baron?  Sixty-four nobles would have to die before he got his shot at the Crown, possibly sixty-five if the Infante of Crown Hispana gets a younger sibling this year.  The Baron is closer to the Gages in social rank than to the Duke.  Five steps below the Duke, four steps above the Gages.  Few opportunities, few reasons to go out and do things.”
78[/QUOTE]
79
80The surgeries Nobles go through
81[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
82“I move for transplants of parts A, B, and D between steps twenty-seven and thirty.”
83
84“On what basis?”
85
86“Temperature of the transplanted parts is deviating by point four percent high while they’re sitting in the cold rigging.  I’m putting it down as risk level three.  Nobody marked anything below thirty with higher risk than that.”
87
88“Convenient.”
89
90“Thanks for the reminder.  Putting down step thirty-four as risk level two.”
91
92“We can argue about that in a second, you sneaky bastard.  Cameron, justify risk level three?”
93
94“The latest version of Wollstone’s recordings, cilia in the trachea are down on Ian’s global vulnerability scale as a thirty-three nine, damage to the cilia now would increase maintenance further down the road, and could lead to post-operative infection.”
95
96“We could give him a new trachea if it comes to that.”
97
98“Which is why I argued for three, Adams.  A new trachea has its costs too, which I would argue raises it above a two on our crude priority list.”
99
100“Fine.  Well argued.  I’ll second.”
101
102“Thank you.”
103
104“I’ll third if you don’t give me a hard time about thirty-four, I’m too tired to argue.  Good.  Let the record keeper take note that I got a nod from Cameron.”
105
106“I might give you a hard time in a second.  Put it on the board, nurse?  Don’t lose track of the numbers as you move everything.”
107
108“Yes, doctor.”
109
110“I know you jokers in black coats are going to insist on blabbing about priorities like a bunch of old hens while I’m elbow deep in vat-grown intestine, but can we please make a rule where the nurses keep quiet?  I’ve gone and forgotten the length of the cut.”
111
112“Four-fifty.”
113
114“At least you’re good for something, Berg.  Sectioning four-fifty.  Are you going to be done step twenty-two in the next minute?”
115
116“Yes, yes.  I’m a useless sod, that’s why I’m in this room.  Nurse, you there.  You’ve been shuffling your weight from foot to foot.  Go scrub down, get the good professor here something to eat, scrub up, and hand feed him while he works.  He’s getting cranky.”
117
118“I’ll have step twenty-two done in twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two… one…  Done.”
119
120“Out of the way of the stomach cavity.  Organs going in.  I hope you dunces have been careful about this.  If he gets a hernia in ten years because I had to fumble around for two minutes getting your organs in the right places instead of taking the time to set the intestines into place-”
121
122A voice cut through the conversation, deep and heavy.
123
124“If my nephew gets a hernia in ten years because of incompetent work done today, you collectively pay the price.”
125
126“My apologies, my lord.”
127
128“Lord Archduke, sir.”
129
130“My lord,” the third voice spoke.
131
132“My lord,” echoed the fourth.
133
134“Stop with the bowing and scraping.  Look after the boy.  He’s in pieces on four separate tables.  I would like to see him put back together before the night is over.  Aimless formality at this stage is in poor taste.”
135
136Wet, sucking sounds, squelching, and spatters marked the silence that followed.  There was no negotiation, no discussion of scales, ratios, values or markers.
137
138Heavy footfalls drew closer to the table.
139
140On the table, the boy, blind, unable to breathe or move anything but the stump of one arm, reached up for his uncle.  Further down the table, the hand that was joined to the stump by tubes both real and unnatural opened, fingers splayed, reaching in the wrong direction.
141
142The uncle’s hand ran along the child’s bare scalp.
143
144“It hurts, doesn’t it?” the Archduke murmured.
145
146The boy opened his mouth, pleading, but the mouth wasn’t joined to anything.
147
148“To this day, I still remember being on tables very similar to these.  Different procedures, different advancements.  But I remember the agony.  A lifetime’s worth of pain in one night, at the age of three.  Then another lifetime’s worth at the age of five, and at seven, and one last time at ten, to bring it all together.”
149
150The hand stroked the boy’s head again, large enough that the bottom end of the palm grazed one ear and the fingertips grazed the other.
151
152“You’ll endure tonight, then have two more nights like this, and you’ll be done.  You will be state of the art, and you’ll be art, my little Duke.”
153
154The boy tried to move his body, but some pieces weren’t connected, and other pieces weren’t in the right place.
155
156“I came to talk to you because I want you to pay attention.  Cherish this pain.  Come to know it and carve it into that beautiful brain we gave you.  You’ll choose to inflict pain on others thousands of times in your lifetime.  You’ll condemn entire cities to agony so dire that people’s bodies destroy themselves, their own muscles trying to tear bones from sockets and break their own backs.”
157
158The boy felt a soft kiss on his forehead.
159
160“Two years ago, we gave you a great mind.  Now we give you a body to suit.  Remember tonight, because it is the last night you are human in any way.  From tonight until the day you pass from this world, you look down on them.”
161
162Another caress of the head, and the hand was taken away.
163
164The boy stared in the Archduke’s general direction with eyeless sockets, and gawped with a tongueless mouth that lacked wind to make a single utterance.
165
166The heavy footsteps retreated.  The only noise was the wet sound of guts being arranged in a stomach cavity, the rhythmic knocking and whooshing of machines, and the sound of fluids in narrow spaces.
167
168*****
169
170The room emptied.
171
172“Over here.  The boy can hear.”
173
174Footsteps retreated.  The boy was alone, no longer being handled by three people at once.  He opened and closed his hand.
175
176He could strain and hear the distant conversation with the ears he had been given two years ago.
177
178“The boy is supposed to be in pain?”
179
180“Nobody said anything about that.”
181
182“The Lord Archduke just did.”
183
184“We weren’t told in advance, is what I mean.”
185
186“We cornered ourselves.  If we continue to apply the nerve controls to minimize the pain and he reports it to the Lord Archduke, we’ll be known liars.  If we cut it off and the boy remembers, he’ll know we could have spared him the pain, and he could seek vengeance at a later date.”
187
188“We should have said something while the Archduke was here.”
189
190“I didn’t see you stepping up.  I know I didn’t want to interrupt that intimate moment.  I was too busy shitting myself.”
191
192“Enough bickering.  We need to decide what we’re doing.”
193
194“We’re dead either way.”
195
196“It’s a question of whether we want to stay in the boy’s good graces and risk the Archduke’s wrath, or the reverse.”
197
198“The reverse could see the Archduke wrathful all the same.”
199
200“Enough with the bickering.  You’re children, all of you.  We can’t follow the spirit of the Archduke’s expectations, but we can follow the letter of them.  Disconnect the nerve controls, let the remaining painkillers wear out.  It’ll be worse with the backswing.”
201
202“Not quite worse.  By Wollstone’s third ratio, we can expect-”
203
204“Enough bickering, Adams.  If anyone asks, the backswing adds to the agony, and compensates for the fact that he’s feeling almost nothing right now.  He’ll get that lifetime’s worth of agony.”
205
206“If anyone asks, the fact they’re asking means our goose is cooked and we’re as good as dead.”
207
208“Yes, well, say what you will, but I think we’re in this together from here on out.  I don’t know about you lads, but I was told that if I bollocksed this up in any way shape or form, they would search out every person I cared about, snuff them, and then erase any and every record of us from history.  I do have people I care about.”
209
210“We all do.  We keep mum on this.  Agreed?”
211
212“Agreed,” three voices spoke in unison.
213
214“Let’s get back to work, then.”
215
216“I want my tracheal transplant bumped up.  We spent time talking.”
217
218“I’ll help you.  Give me a hand with the eyes, leading up to that?”
219
220The four professors returned to the table, now cooperating.
221
222The discussion and the noise of the doctors starting work anew came to a sudden stop.  Hands that held body parts remained where they were, momentarily frozen.
223
224“Lord Duke,” Berger said, quiet, “I know I do far too much in asking anything of you.  Let me say only this.  If you’ll forgive us of this, I will give you a lifetime of service so devoted that other nobles will look on you in envy.”
225
226“Agreed,” one of the professors echoed, barely audible.  The remaining two joined in, echoing him.
227
228A switch was flicked.  The boy Duke jerked.
229
230“Painkiller at three percent and ticking down.  He’s feeling it, but the edges are dulled.  We’ve got about ten minutes before painkiller is clear.  Can the next person with a free moment go fetch the nurses?”
231
232Lying on the table, the Duke clenched one hand.
233
234******
235
236His body was new, he’d been looked after for the last time, and at ten years old, he stood taller than the average man.  Even with a cane, it was hard to move his new arms and legs without stumbling now and again.
237
238The first three nights of agony had added to him, or taken away weaknesses.  Mind, body, and power.  The fourth had made him noble, physically better and more beautiful.  His genetics had been better than some, and he’d been presentable even before the last series of operations.  Some weren’t so lucky, and were cooped up away from the public eye for a full decade.
239
240******
241
242Every day, he was thrust into situations and others expected him to keep up.  A small failure could weaken his standing in the eyes of his extended family, and open him up to a lifetime of sabotage or small abuses.  A larger failure could ruin his chance of achieving anything at all before he died.
243
244But, for the very first time since he was three years old, he was without the quartet of professors that looked after him, the tools they had implanted within him, and the adjustments they had made to his body and mind.
245[/QUOTE]
246
247Nobles have fine hairs for detecting movements around them
248[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]Fine hairs on the backs of his hands and neck alerted him to movement behind him. He didn’t startle, and kept his reaction slow as he looked back at the twins.
249
250*****
251
252He raised a hand.  The hairs on the back of his hands and neck were telling him about the movements all around him, the sway of branches with few leaves, the movement of wind, the movement of the twins, as one reached around Richmond to run a finger up and down her sister’s back, and now the approach of a military commander.  He moved his fingers slightly, letting his brain interpret the signals, reading the wind.  The one with the mustache and thick head of hair beneath his helmet, it seemed.  One of the good ones, as the mere humans went.
253
254“My lord.”
255[/QUOTE]
256[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]The Duke sensed someone approach the tent, and turned.  The Baron and Baronet twins looked over, as well.[/QUOTE]
257
258Can understand and focus on their facial muscles
259[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
260“Fair point.  But I meant that you have that look about you that I’ve only seen on two occasions, when you stood in the midst of a sea of corpses.”
261
262Did he?  The Duke wondered, studying his own expression with a calculated measure of where and how his facial muscles were arranged.
263[/QUOTE]
264
265Nobles can alter their mental processing and perceptions
266[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
267The Duke didn’t answer the question.  He stared, watching, thinking.  Between the sea creatures in the water, his forces here at the east end of the city, his forces at the south end, and the mountains to the north, he had them boxed in.  He let his mind take the ideas and let the rest of the world slow down so he could think over everything in detail.
268
269He didn’t know enough about the mountains.
270[/QUOTE]
271[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
272When he was three years old, his mind had been altered, to allow him to better control how fast he thought, and how he perceived the passage of time.  He had only mastered it a few years ago, and controlling it took effort that often left him exhausted at the day’s end.  Still, he kept up the practice, and his control improved.
273
274In this moment, he let his awareness speed up, to better survey things from all of the angles.  A part of his thoughts were dedicated to making sure he maintained the same speed and pace.  Slowing his pace by a fraction would signal to others that something was wrong.
275
276He contemplated how he might go about this, if this prison was indeed intended for him, if he needed to run, or else face imprisonment for the rest of his days, bereft of the doctors who were supposed to tend him, slowly going to pieces over decades.
277
278In the end, he decided that he couldn’t beat his mother and aunt in a fight.  At least, not like this, with his body so new and untested.
279[/QUOTE]
280
281More about the quality difference of nobles in different standings
282[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]The young Duke allowed himself to peer over the room, looking at each of the people within.  They were sculpted, every one of them altered, set one half-step away from ordinary people.  But where the trained eye could see the difference in quality of work, like the vast chasm between the Duke and his cousin Richmond, it was clear that the room was filled with lower quality nobles.[/QUOTE]
283
284Mundane and experimental routes of nobles
285[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
286The Baron Richmond wasn’t as impressive as the Duke, because he hadn’t had the same clout, power, and money that was needed to get the very best doctors for the very best surgeries and experiments.  Richmond had gone the mundane route, and mundane remained very, very impressive, paling only in comparison to the likes of the Duke.  The Twins had been taken down the experimental route, more monstrous than a self-respecting noble would allow, riskier and more questionable.
287
288But still the very best sort of work that was out there.  The sort of work I suspected Ibott wanted to do.
289[/QUOTE]
290
291More about Noble biology and their defenses against normal bullets vs the new enhanced ones
292[QUOTE=Thicker Than Water 14.4]Then, in short succession, two more splintering sounds.  These were regular bullets, powerful ones capable of punching past a handspan’s width of wood and still flying true enough for the bullets to embed in the floor or opposite door of the carriage.[/QUOTE]
293[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.17]“Nobles favor a layer of something like armor, an interskeletal barrier between their skin and their muscle or bone structure.  Normal guns are meant to ricochet, their bullets move slowly, to pass into the subject and bounce around, doing grievous harm.  Few think twice of this.  But the Crown has reasons for perpetuating this standard.  Those slower, bouncing bullets aren’t so effective against the nobles.”  Bullets sink in and stop at the armor, or they bounce right out.  The noble bleeds but doesn’t stop.  They appear immortal, and enemy morale suffers.  The myth that surrounds them grows.”
294
295*****
296
297“These bullets penetrate that layer.  That armor helps strips the outer shell off as the bullet passes through, and what remains unfolds and expands as an umbrella might,” Mauer said.  His hand, all fingertips and thumb meeting, tapped my chest, hard, then opened up, fingers splaying.  “The final part of the projectile sometimes punches through on exit, or joins the expanded metal in complicating the efforts of doctors and staff.  Especially uncareful or hasty doctors might even do further harm to themselves, if an expanding bullet finishes expanding too near a prodding finger or working hand.”
298
299“It wouldn’t be as effective against an ordinary person,” Lillian said.
300
301“It might, if it hit hard bone, but no, it isn’t meant for ordinary people,” Mauer said.  “The guns are long range, they’re accurate, and they’re felt before they can be easily reacted to.  This incident isn’t the important part of what I’m doing.  Killing the Duke, it means something.  But after one or two more incidents, they’ll realize what it really means.”
302
303That unless they find you and stop your group from manufacturing these things,” I said, “No noble can ever show their face in public again.”
304
305“And they need to show their faces,” Mauer said.  “It’s why they go to such efforts to tailor themselves and make themselves into dangerous weapons.  That was why I could be sure the Duke would show himself in one way or another, when he was positive the scales were tipped and victory was in hand.”
306[/QUOTE]
307
308Despite the effectiveness of the bullets, the maker is confident that Nobles can augment themselves to better defend against it
309[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.17]“They’ll respond,” Mauer said.  “At some time in the next year, they’ll finish arguing among themselves, rally, and arrive in force.  Newly augmented, so they can be more confident against these guns.  Things are going to change, and they’ll fear that.  That’s a fear that makes them predictable.”[/QUOTE]
310
311Nobles tend to marry once
312[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.18]“The deal… marriage is essential.  You hate the idea, I know, but don’t take the bait if he offers a compromise that doesn’t include it.  If he does, it’s probably a ruse, and he plans to kill us all at the next opportunity.  Nobles only marry once, usually, and if he’s not willing to look you in the eye and agree to the idea of marrying for the tidbit of knowledge you can offer him, then he’s not really staking anything on the deal.  If he takes the offer, then he thinks you have something, and you have leverage.  Not a lot, but some.”[/QUOTE]
313
314More enhanced Noble senses
315[QUOTE=Thicker Than Water 14.2]He was true to form.  Monte spoke, “Shall we stay like this all the way to New Amsterdam?  My arm won’t get tired.  I can smell the blood coming from the back of your throat.  I can see your muscles moving as you hold yourself back from gagging.  If you try to vomit, you might tear your own throat open.  How many hours is it?”[/QUOTE]
316
317The skill of Noble Doctors
318[QUOTE=Thicker Than Water 14.2]“Each member of our group here has our own doctors, who are occupying the next car and keeping miss Shirley company.  There are twenty four doctors in that train car.  Many were the top of their class in their respective years and Academies.  They can bid with ideas, from their polished, Academy-trained brains.  The doctor who can devise the most fiendish punishment for miss Shirley gets a reward.  Predicated, mind you, on their follow through after the fact.”[/QUOTE]
319
320More about Noble classes
321[QUOTE=Thicker Than Water 14.3]
322“What I’ve been piecing together, what we’ve been piecing together,” Jamie spoke to me, “Is that these nobles are very small.  They identify by their families.  The Mothmonts.  By places.  Leeds.  But they sure as hell aren’t major players in those families or places.  Monte is the one with the highest rank and he’s only a ‘lord’.  They’re small.”
323
324*****
325
326“They’re not just small nobles.  They’re brand new nobles.  They’ve probably been raised by their families in houses like Richmond House was for the Baron.  This might be some of their first exposure to the world, their first time being expected to act.”
327[/QUOTE] 
328
329While not salvageable with Noble killing guns, Noble doctors can revive Nobles in some cases
330[QUOTE=Thicker than Water 14.5]
331“Are their corpses salvageable?”
332
333“No, father.  They’ll try, the bodies are only thirty minutes cold, but the damage is extensive.  It’s the new guns.”
334
335“Go to the labs, August.  Don’t interrupt the man, but talk to Jeremy’s lead,” the Infante said.  “He’ll be upset, already thinking about leaving, if the revival isn’t possible.  If we don’t catch him, he’ll convince himself to leave by the finish of the mandatory three tries.  We want to keep him.”
336
337“Yes, father,” ‘August’ said.
338
339“Tell him that the Lady Charlotte needs an attending first.  That’s a move up for him.  A fresh start.  She was only just born.”
340
341“London, uncle?” the Falconer asked.
342
343“My brother will owe me one,” the Infante said.
344[/QUOTE]
345
346More about young Nobles
347[QUOTE=Thicker than Water 14.15]
348“I’d offer something to help,” Jamie said, “But I don’t know much.  Augustus is close to the Infante, and is in the Infante’s neighborhood when it comes to the line of succession.  The way things unfold, he probably won’t ever wear the crown, barring incident.  Children are born, they’ll fill up the space between Augustus and the Crown, but… it’s not entirely out of the question?”
349
350“Yeah.”
351
352“From what I read in the news, he’s only just ventured out from noble holdings to take a hand in affecting the world.”
353
354“Reminds me of the young nobles that I met on the train.  They were new to the world too.”
355
356“Stems from the work they have done on them, I think.  They need time to recuperate, so they’re fully prepared and fully recovered by the first time they show their faces,” Jamie said.
357
358“Can’t show the public the wrong face.”
359[/QUOTE]
360
361Nobles (of an unknown amount) are actually random individuals taken as children to be transformed.
362[QUOTE=Thicker than Water 14.18]
363“They made your friend into a noble?” Shirley asked.  “A clone of her?”
364
365“Our friend was a clone,” I said.  “And the original was… discarded.  She found her way here, or to a place like this one, or… no.  It makes more sense if she never made it this far.  Or if these people never made it that far.  Children collected from various places, using a quota system, then gathered, tested and examined.  If they met criteria…”
366
367Jamie picked up the thread.  “Reaction times, recall, attractiveness, natural strength, endurance, flexibility, overall health, anything along those lines.”
368
369“Yeah.  They’d be whisked away.  The rest of the children go up on an auction block for the Academies, as test subjects.  To obfuscate, explain why children are being collected and transported?  There is a demand, after all.  And then when someone gets too close, gets one or two steps away, burn it all.  I wonder how much Percy knew.  Mauer said Percy knew enough to point him and Fray in this direction.”
370
371“Percy had her, and he… sold her?  Traded her?” Jamie asked.
372
373“Assuming it’s the Academy proper that’s focused on meeting quotas… he traded to someone in the Academy for some lab equipment, maybe.  Or for knowledge.  Or he traded her to Cynthia, and Cynthia made the trade, looking for something similar,” I said.
374
375“Why?” Jamie asked.  “Why does the Academy do it this way?”
376
377“That’s a mystery we’re going to have to solve,” I said.
378
379Jamie frowned.
380
381“Much like the Twins,” I said.  “The Baron’s low status.  He knew something about this.  He- he laughed, when I asked where the children go.”
382
383“I think we could benefit from studying the narrative,” Jamie said.  “The Falconer, you called her.  She was distant.  The Baron and Baronet Twins, distant, again.  Brought on board at a later age?  Explained away as distant relations?  While more effective projects, worked on from birth, are said to be direct relations.  Or they are direct relations, and the like of the Baron is… supplementary.”
384
385“It might not be how early they were brought on board,” I said.  “It could be that he learned, he was allowed into the loop, and he took it badly.  All that ugliness in him, what if he just stewed in the knowledge that his nobility was a farce.”
386
387“A farce,” Jamie echoed me.
388
389“Yeah,” I said.
390
391“This is big,” he said.  “Bigger than showing a noble can die.  It’s showing that nobles aren’t real.  The way you were talking about Mauer.  We want to be careful how we use this.”
392[/QUOTE]
393
394Nobles (and the Crown) can and have layed waste to continents
395[QUOTE=Bitter Pill 15.14]
396Yet you decided not to use that information.  And it wasn’t because the timing was wrong.”
397
398We walked, and we crossed from empty street to a busier one with some crowd.  Fray indicated a turn, looping back in the direction we’d come.  I obliged.
399
400“Did you think they wouldn’t cover their weakness, Sylvester?  I put other pieces together.  I was uniquely positioned to see the greater chessboard.  My grave concern is that you are the most dangerous element possible.  Smart enough to see the truth, yet not informed enough to see that for any piece we could take, the cost is far, far too great, and reckless enough that you might take that piece regardless.”
401
402“Flattering,” I said.  “Uniformed Sylvester.”
403
404“You’re focusing on the wrong aspect of this.”
405
406“Then please, inform me,” I said.
407
408“You’re already informed, Sylvester.  This is where the recklessness comes into play.  You know exactly what the reality is.  It’s a common saying among anyone from families at dinner tables to rebellion leaders to members of the Academy.  The Crown does not lose.”
409
410“There’s a first time for everything.”
411
412“This wouldn’t be the first time, Sylvester.  I’m sure this has happened.  Other people, groups, and nations have devised the means by which to deliver fatal blows, in times where the Crown was younger and more vulnerable, when events conspired against it.  It isn’t easy to grow an empire, so soon after the upheaval required for the Crown to become what it is now, so soon after the rise of the Academies and everything they meant.  There have been other opportunities.”
413
414“Yet the Crown doesn’t lose?” I asked.
415
416“It feels wrong, doesn’t it?  Or when you consider the sheer power of the biological science and the military at the Crown’s disposal, yet pay mind to the fact that the Crown has only seized a quarter of the world?”
417
418“They move slowly, establish their Academies, secure every region before moving on.”
419
420“Absolutely, they do.  But Sylvester, there’s more to it.  There are regions, places I’ve borne witness to, which are sealed off.  They use things like the same cloud seeding we see at Radham, only to ensure death rather than parcel out leashes.  They use grown walls like you no doubt saw at Tynewear, only far taller, and they flood the areas on the other side with biological agents, parasites, and weapons.  They tell people that these were the places where disasters happened.  That this is why only the Academy can be trusted with the knowledge the Academy disseminates.”
421
422I looked over at Fray.  She seemed somber.
423
424“The Academy is the sorest of losers, Sylvester.  They suggested to us that the places they showed us were several of a handful.  I have reason to believe they number in the hundreds.  Places where primordials were loosed, where academies were reclaimed, knowledge disseminated, weapons turned against the Crown and Academy…”
425
426“Places where people spoke of secrets that could cause irreparable harm to the Academy.”
427
428“Yes, Sylvester.”
429
430I fell silent.
431
432“They have laid waste to continents, in whole or in part.  If they can’t win, then they ensure nobody can.  If they rule a world that they’ve reduced to a half the normal size, they still rule.  Given science and sufficient time, they can fix what they leveled.  When they do, the world will be theirs.  Unopposed.  The Infante, the Judge, is someone who oftentimes handles these sorts of decisions.  Even nobles like the Duke are rightly terrified of what he might decide.”
433
434“Just like that,” I said.
435[/QUOTE]
436[QUOTE=Head over Heels 16.8]
437“If Mr. and Mrs. Block were found, it was their bodies.  Maybe written record, but even there, we are careful.  If they or anyone like them were in a position to be found, they would be killed pre-emptively.  I’ve had my turn, once, ensuring this was done.  With luck, you will too.”
438
439The two were silent.
440
441“Nobles represent our best work, our best people.  Yet you know that some of them, despite our best efforts, despite breeding going back to before the Crown Empire was an Empire, and was only one island country in the middle of a place we called Europe… some nobles disappoint.  I know the both of you have met the Baron Richmond.  He would be an example of such a disappointment.”
442
443“Yes father,” was one response.
444
445“Yes uncle,” was another, softer response.
446
447“The Blocks… you could say they’re responsible for the nobles being as noble as they are.  Much like how Florence talked about dressing one way, putting on makeup, learning manners, Mr. and Mrs. Block were among those responsible for one stage in the noble’s development.  They are in a unique position to know just how many disappointing individuals there are that the public never sees, do you understand?  The faces and natures of nobles who never properly become nobles in the public eye.”
448
449The two children remained quiet, clearly taken aback with the gravity of what was being said.
450
451“Pride, reputation, and status are things that build on each other, and we have built very tall towers in the last century.  At the top, the towers are supported by people like my wife.  Her family, and families like hers.  At the bottom, the towers are supported by a firm foundation, given food and stone and all the resources they need by a people who look up and respect the height and fortitude of those constructions.  But when an empire grows to a certain measure of strength, it cannot be torn down by guns, weapons, or warbeasts.  Only by division from within, a severe crisis of faith.”
452
453I felt Eric’s hand tighten on my throat, only by a little.  The regular breath my body was providing became insufficient.
454
455“This would be such a crisis, Father?”
456
457I hadn’t been taking very deep breaths before, so the strangulation was going further than it might otherwise.  I couldn’t even defend myself.
458
459“Who can say?  But I think the Crown Empire would rather risk a thousand wars over one test of that faith and pride.  Because they can win a thousand wars, but one such test?  We don’t 
460[/QUOTE]
461[QUOTE=Head over Heels 16.11]
462“In another world, if we had been able to save Sylvia there, if my allegiances lay elsewhere, would she be a candidate for the Block?”
463
464“One as young as this?  No.  We only collected the very young from the best breeding stock, for the ones we needed to work with the most.  We usually tapped the aristocracy in those cases.”
465
466“Right,” I said.
467
468“You don’t seem to know very much about it, yet you aren’t asking many questions.”
469
470“I’m trying to lull you into a false sense of security,” I said.  “I am curious just what things really look like at the top.”
471
472“The Lord King?”
473
474“I’m insinuating that he’s not at the top, Professor.  It’s the Academies, isn’t it?”
475
476“It’s a delicate balancing act.  The true monsters and the men who made them.  We pull the strings, if you’ll excuse my using the term, and they obey, but…”
477
478“There’s always a risk of mutual destruction, should you push them too far?”
479
480“It helps that only a handful of them have really figured out that the very best of the men in black coats are calling most of the shots in the end.”
481
482“And if this story gets out, then the altercation is forced.”
483
484“Perhaps,” Berger said.  “Probably.  There are other problems, like the ones I spelled out for Florence and Charles.”
485[/QUOTE]
486[QUOTE=Gut Feeling 17.3]
487“Mary Cobourn, as we saw her, was the Falconer, a young noble in the charge of the Lord Infante, modified heavily.”
488
489“What?” Lillian asked.
490
491“Not unique to her.  It’s the case for all nobles.  Selected from the crop that’s sent to the Block, modified, indoctrinated.  There is no family tree, they get allocated to locations with histories made up based on how high quality they end up.  There is no Crown, really, because the Academy controls the process.  Many of the nobles don’t know, and if they were to find out, it’s not out of the question that it could spark an internecine conflict between Crown and Academy as they cease working together with the top dogs each feeling smugly superior of the other.”
492[/QUOTE]
493
494How Nobles and Academy bigwigs secretly communicate
495[QUOTE=Dog Eat Dog 18.6]
496I spoke.  “There’s a code you use when communicating with other professors, Academies, and nobles.  A higher level of security.”
497
498“Is there?” Ferres asked.
499
500I raised my eyebrow.
501
502She sighed.  “There is.  For all that your abilities are vaunted, you Lambs haven’t been able to crack it, hm?”
503
504“We know where the numbers are.  Stop gloating and just tell us what the numbers mean.”
505
506“Implants.  Mine is under my left thumbnail.  It looks like blood but isn’t, it’s an agent with a specific chemical balance.  It takes two minutes with the lab in my office to extract and find out the current percentage.  They’ll check the date and time of any messages I send against the number in the margins, match it against the same chemical they have in their offices.”
507
508“No bruising?” Jessie asked.  “I haven’t seen any physical markers.”
509
510“That would defeat the purpose,” Ferres said.
511
512“It’s all very complicated,” I said.
513
514“They pushed for higher security after the infiltration of the communications office in Radham.  We did have measures before, but we had to change them when she went rogue.”
515[/QUOTE]
516[QUOTE=Enemy I Arc 18]He sorted through the mail, skimming each letter.  Chemicals in one side of his throat allowed him to track and remember the numbers used with the security measures on mail.  With each such letter with a number in the margins, he was able to verify that the sender had used the appropriate codes.[/QUOTE]
517
518More about what might have went into Noble creation
519[QUOTE=Lamb I Arc 18]
520Mary’s thoughts touched briefly on what Sylvester and Jessie had said about the Block.  Her thoughts touched briefly on the vague image of this noble that supposedly shared blood and history with her, and the glass coffin the noble had laid within.
521
522How many of those monsters had been human once?  How many others had been pieced together from components that were obtained from human donors?  Any one of them could have benefited from root cells, muscle transplants, or sections of brains, if not whole brains then molded with drug regimens.
523[/QUOTE]
524
525Some lesser nobles can survive a massive explosion and fall from great heights
526[QUOTE=Root and Branch 19.4]Applause shook the main hall of Hackthorn.  Lesser nobles, Doctors, Professors, students, soldiers, experiments, and more.  More still filed into the space, each bringing their entourage, each bringing their own protection.[/QUOTE]
527[QUOTE=Root and Branch 19.6]Our students were backing off.  Many, including Bea, had fled for one of the bridges.  They were shutting the gate, and the people below us were just now realizing it.  In places below, students and rebels were slipping away, setting up roadblocks and other obstacles.  It would buy them time to reach secure points, to run to the lowest-floor doors of dormitories and the admin building.
528
529*****
530
531There were no more attachments to the exterior of the main building- only to the bridge that connected it to the admin building.
532
533*****
534
535The enemy was attacking the gate now, setting something strong and powerful at the door.  I could hear the crunches, the bangs, and the chops that were like axes on wood.  I could hear glass break, and knew that there were things that weren’t human that would be crawling out through the broken windows and onto the exterior, out toward the bridge, giving chase.
536
537*****
538
539“Just in time,” Davis said, meeting us at a waiting window.  “They’re coming over the bridge now.  There’s a lot more of them than we anticipated.”
540
541*****
542
543The bridge detonated, a rolling explosion that caught first at one end, then the middle, and finally at the end closest to the main building.  Wood, stone, the garden baskets that had lined either side, bits of metal and a portion of the enemy’s front-line capable troops tumbled through the open air.  I hoped there were some young nobles among them.[/QUOTE]
544[QUOTE=Root and Branch 19.7]
545“Some of the nobles on the bridge we just blew up are climbing out of the rubble,” she observed.
546
547“Really?” I asked.  “That’s pretty impressive.  Pick one out, make him or her our measuring stick?”
548
549*****
550
551I focused on the rubble, and saw two nobles.  A young Lord had already emerged, and a young Lady was in the process of moving rubble to free her legs.  Both were dirty and both were bleeding in places.
552
553The Lord began stripping down.  He stood there almost completely naked for a short time while he picked through the various dead in the wreckage, shaking their less tattered clothes free of dust before donning them.
554
555The Lady was more hurt.  She crawled forth, made her way to the nearest piece of rubble she could sit on, and began tending to her injuries, including a smashed leg.  I couldn’t see much of what she was doing, given the angle and the distance.
556
557They would look after themselves to the point they could show their faces without too much shame, and then they would rejoin the proceedings.
558
559*****
560
561"Five tried to cross the bridge here and only two climbed out, for what it’s worth.”[/QUOTE]
562
563Lesser nobles still have incredible speeds, notice when they are being watched, and can combat hazardous warbeasts with only slight injuries
564[QUOTE=Root and branch 19.11]
565 I could see the admin building itself, more a gnarled twist of wood and vines than a proper building now.  I could see the distant silhouettes of the nobles who stood or sat on the roof and the branches that were reaching over it.
566
567They barely moved.  Almost anyone else would have gotten impatient, paced, or given some indication that they were talking among themselves.
568
569I wondered how much of their decision to stay as still as they were staying was because they were trying to conserve their energy and strength, how much was because they knew they were being watched and they were trying to unnerve us, and how much had to do with the fact that they had left their humanity long behind.
570
571*****
572
573I was pretty content to watch Lillian smiling, with the occasional glance spared for the Nobles, who had shifted their position a little as the overall footing had changed.  Three of them had gathered together to talk.
574
575[/QUOTE]
576[QUOTE=Root and Branch 19.13]
577The Nobles stood on the rooftop, amid the bodies of scattered warbeasts and experiments.  Ribcages had been torn apart so they spiked skyward from otherwise unrecognizable piles of meat and gristle.  Skulls had been bifurcated, some so neatly that it seemed inconceivable that it had been done in combat, while others had been divided in a messy way, skull fragments sticking through torn flesh and scale.
578
579It was getting late, and we’d decided that they were too relaxed up there.  We’d taken care to ensure the warbeasts didn’t suit as food.  The ones who scattered the rooftop and hung from the branches that had grown across it were only a small share.  Some had been bloated, filled with gas or parasites.  Junior and Poppy- Persephone?  Prissy?  I wasn’t sure of her name.  Whoever she’d been, she and Junior had made sure that many of the warbeasts, when slain, had smelled as pungent as possible.
580
581My sampling of the smell had revealed it to be something like faeces mixed with perfume.  I’d prepared myself in advance of the sample by liberally coating every inch of my body, hair, and clothing in powder, inside and out, changing out of the clothes in question right after.
582
583Even with that, only Ashton had been willing to keep me company for the twelve hours that followed.
584
585The Nobles were holding up remarkably well.  One or two had been lightly injured by the second wave of warbeasts we’d sent their way.  When they’d realized the traps hidden within the beasts, they’d changed their tactics, parrying tooth or claw while physically throwing the beasts off the rooftop.  It was harder and more hazardous, when most of the beasts were several hundred pounds.  Most beasts had accelerated reflexes and enhanced strength.  Some had barbs in their fur to make letting go that much harder.
586
587The Lady Gloria was one of the injured.  She had torn off her sleeves and used them to wrap the wound at her middle, and she was the only noble who wasn’t standing, seating herself on one corner of the roof, her head turned our way, the wind periodically blowing her hair this way or that.
588
589The rest stood, pretending to be impervious to the elements.  They had been up there since dawn, and now the sun was going down.  The light was fading, and the Nobles on the rooftop were getting harder and harder to make out.
590
591*****
592
593We passed a window.  I peered through, raising my binoculars.  The light was worse, but I could make out the Nobles.
594
595We passed the next window, and the combination of light and angle made it next to impossible to tell if the Nobles were there.  I met Mary’s eyes.  “They’re gone.”
596
597“I saw,” she said.
598[/QUOTE]
599
600A lesser noble, Wharton, may be similar to the Baronettes. Still unbothered by rifle fire and crushing a warbeast
601[QUOTE=Root and Branch 19.13]Duncan hauled open another cage.  His Grabber pawed its way forward, tentacles lashing this way and that as it felt its way, exploring the world beyond its cage.  It was the size of a horse, but its body was lighter and its legs longer and stronger.  The thing’s children were closer to large dogs in size.  All headless, all with tentacles framing the stumps where the necks should have begun.
602
603*****
604
605It was also a mask, something meant to grab my attention, and distract from the reality that one of the figures in the smoke had gone very still.  An illusion, or a hollow Noble like the sisters had been, or- I had no idea what.  But I saw the silhouette of one of the Nobles standing in the fog and smoke, and in the next moment, he was also charging forward, a mere five paces from me.
606
607A rifle shot caught him.  He barely stumbled, but he did stumble a little.
608
609One of Duncan’s larger tentacle-hounds caught the noble.
610
611Even with tentacles catching at his leg and both hands, he managed to lift the thing up, then dash it to a bloody ruin on the ground.  The time it cost him and the limited mobility meant he caught two more rifle shots.  Lillian and Jessie.
612
613“Hold, Wharton,” Carling said.
614
615Wharton, the attacking noble, moved forward a few steps, then stopped.  Whatever rifles had been aimed his way fired again, but they didn’t seem to catch him.  He was practically unbothered by the fact he was being repeatedly shot.
616[/QUOTE]
617
618Nobles are dependent on their Doctors to an extent
619[QUOTE=Root and Branch 19.15]
620“I’m not even ‘Lady Gloria’ anymore, then.  Two of my three Professors are sick with dehydration and hunger.  Their care of me has floundered,” she said.  “Being atop that building over there for a day and night hasn’t helped matters.”
621
622“That was the intent,” Mary said.  “We might not be able to defeat Nobles, but we can drive home just how dependent you are on them.”
623
624“One among many of a series of realities I’ve suspected but never had to face,” Gloria said.
625[/QUOTE]
626
627Nobles seemt to have issues breeding
628[QUOTE]It was another kind of contingency.  If the Lambs faced the same dilemma that Nobles the world over had, if breeding proved difficult, and if we couldn’t create our successors as so many Nobles did, then we would need a way to strike out, ensuring the Crown couldn’t flourish in our absence.[/QUOTE]
629
630[/SPOILER]
631
632[SPOILER="The Duke"]
633The Duke is 16th in line to the thrown, led armies, and is placed in charge of Radham
634[QUOTE=Lips Sealed 3.10]“Radham will be looked after by a Duke, I believe the man is sixteenth in line for the Crown, and he has led armies in war,” Hayle said, looking at me. “If I actually have to convey to you why you are not to get on his bad side, I’ve failed on multiple levels.”[/QUOTE]
635The Duke's arrival entailed a heavy and top of the line guard of a variety of creatures and people
636[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaugher 6.1]
637The Duke was there, and as royalty, he was surrounded by a guard of sorts.  The gauntlet of creatures investigating each and every person that came or went was part of it.  Some of the weapons were top of the line, too.  Two giants were sitting on either side of the door.  Skinless, with three or four layers of muscle and bone set atop one another, with gaps suggesting what lay beneath.   Humanoid warbeasts, capable of using weapons.  Probably from another Academy.  They didn’t move much, probably to reduce the amount of resources they consumed.
638
639As we approached the gate beside the Hedge, we were subjected to another battery of searches.  As the tentacles and prehensile noses stretched toward her, Mary heaved out a sigh.
640
641For my part, I got the one with a sense of humor.  It prodded at my face, repeatedly, apparently aiming for my nose and eye.  I squinted and tilted my head a few times, dodging the pokes.
642
643I couldn’t begrudge it that, though.  If the roles were reversed, I would have annoyed people all I could, knowing there was nothing they could do about it.
644
645I snapped my teeth as it got too close, again.  As the experiment overseer rose from his seat, I drew my badge.
646
647He waved us on through, the search ending prematurely.
648[/QUOTE]
649
650The Duke's altered appearance and voice
651[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.5]
652He rounded the corner at the far end of the hall.  As he reached the window, he extended a long arm and rapped the window, startling the birds just outside the window, scattering them to the air.  A smile touched his lips.
653
654He was taller than a man should be, and he was beautiful.  His overall appearance made me think of the face cards of a deck of playing cards.  All of the pieces put together could have and should have made him look inhuman, but they only barely toed the ‘human’ side of the line.  Shoulders and upper chest broad, waist narrow, legs lean, features sharp, with long arms and legs.
655
656His blond hair was parted sharply, the majority of it tumbling down one side of his face and down one shoulder, more extending straight back behind him.  His clothes were as fine as clothes got, with a decorated jacket in black and gold, the tail of it extending behind him, nearly to the ground.
657
658Despite the heavy clothing, he had alabaster skin, without the slightest shine of sweat.  He could have been sixteen or thirty, none of the usual indicators were there, but he carried himself like a sixteen year old might, while logic and what I’d heard of the man told me he was much older.  He loomed, slouching just slightly, as if under the weight of the golden spill of hair and the heavy jacket.
659
660My assessment of him was interrupted somewhat, as I was falling to one knee as soon as he appeared.
661
662“Hm,” he made a sound, amused.  The voice was deep.  Altered, augmented.
663
664*****
665
666As one, we stood, straightening.
667
668It was the eyes that got me. They were eyes that made me think of countless people we’d gone after and killed. People who’d been pushed too far, or who’d gone over the edge before we even found them. A little too much in the way of whites around the edges, they didn’t blink enough. Tension did it, adrenaline pumping hard and fast through the veins for too long, muscles too tight in the face. People under a deep, profound, long-term sort of stress and those with mental illnesses often had those eyes.
669
670He didn’t strike me as someone who was under any stress. His movements were too languid.
671
672“The Lambs,” he said, voice quiet and tender, yet still deep enough to reverberate, nearly musical in tone, “I was looking for you.”
673
674We’ve been actively avoiding you, I thought.[/QUOTE]
675
676He has 4 Personal Doctors and how others react to him
677[QUOTE]The Duke of Francis was accompanied by four doctors. All four stood behind him, waiting for instruction. We were frozen. There was no talking without being asked to speak. No moving without permission to go. From the time he’d been born to now, his world had revolved at his whim. Only his family members would be able to gainsay him or check his conduct. As far as I was aware, the next member of the Crown was on the other side of the Crown States.
678
679Long, strong fingers touched the side of my face, stroking me as if I was a pet.
680
681His index finger slid under my chin, then lifted it, turning my face up, not so I could look at him, but so he could look at me.
682
683Wearing the wrong expression could be dangerous.  If I looked like I was frowning or sullen, he might take offense.  If I smiled, he might be pleased with me, which could be worse.
684
685“Hm!” he made that amused noise again.  His hand dropped away from my face.  “Look at you.”
686[/QUOTE]
687
688About his modifications and how Helen is almost looks Noble
689[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.5]
690He moved over to Helen.  I watched out of the corner of my eye as he stroked her hair, took the collar of her dress in hand and adjusted it, before bending down to tug at her belt, straightening out wrinkles in the fabric.  He touched her face, running a thumb over her lips.
691
692“Beautiful,” he said.
693
694Helen smiled.
695
696The Duke smiled back.  “Those doctors that accompany me back there, they’re the best at what they do.  They create art.”
697
698He gestured at himself, as if to demonstrate.
699
700“They made me immortal, or close enough to count.  They made me beautiful, strong, and quick.  They made me dangerous enough to dispatch anyone who might seek to take my life.  Yet here you are, and you could pass for a cousin of mine, with the same treatment.”
701
702Helen bowed a little, a coy smile on her face.
703
704My heart pounded in my chest.  The Duke’s thumb pushed its way between Helen’s lips, then lifted one up, making her sneer.  Looking at her teeth, as one might the proverbial gift horse.
705[/QUOTE]
706
707Apparently able to read Helen's intentions
708[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.5]
709You look like you want to say something,” he said.  “Speak.”
710
711“I was crafted by Professor Ibott, lord,” Helen said, demure.
712
713“Hm!” the Duke made that noise again.  It was probably a tic, or he didn’t realize he was doing it.  Or maybe he didn’t care.  “He’s made noises about wanting to dine with me.  I had a glimpse of him and I soured on the idea.  But seeing the work he does… hm!”
714[/QUOTE]
715
716Enhanced Lungs and voice
717[QUOTE=Lambs to the Slaughter]“I’ve been homesick,” the Duke said, as quiet as he was capable of being, with a voice and lungs modified to give him the ability to effectively address crowds.  “Having you nearby might be like having family close at hand.  You’d be little more than a toy, but wouldn’t that be fun?  You could play at being a noble lady.”[/QUOTE]
718
719Not falling for Helen's deception
720[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.5]
721Having a knife in hand this close to the Duke, of all people, could be a death sentence for her and all the rest of us put together.
722
723Casually enough that it wouldn’t draw attention, Mary extended the knife forward, and pressed the point against the back of Helen’s dress.  She pressed with enough force that it penetrated fabric and sank into flesh.  A spot of blood welled around the cut.
724
725Helen didn’t move or jump.
726
727“The Lambs won’t suffer unduly for the loss of one?”
728
729“They’ll be less effective, of course, but no, not unduly, lord,” Hayle said.
730
731I knew it was what he had to say, but I went from thinking the best of him to loathing him in the time it took him to finish the sentence.
732
733Mary twisted the knife.  Helen didn’t budge a hair.
734
735I couldn’t figure out the point or intent behind the action, if Mary had intended a different result or not, but Mary quickly resumed a normal standing position as the Duke moved, turning.
736
737He still cupped Helen’s face.  He looked down at it.
738
739She’d changed her face.  Not so much it was definable, but tension here, relaxation there, a fractional shifting of features, a smaller scale version of what she’d done to emulate Melancholy.
740
741The Duke’s expression was haunting, or perhaps haunted.  Looking at him, I fully believed he saw through the ruse.  That Helen had made herself just a little bit uglier or stranger.  He wasn’t a stupid man.
742
743He let her head drop down to its resting position, from where he’d moved it.
744
745She relaxed her features.
746
747He lifted her chin again.  She added the strange tension, even less than before.
748
749“Perhaps not,” he finally said.  There was a long, tense pause.
750[/QUOTE]
751
752Catcher's impression of the Duke
753[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.6]“The Duke was giving the orders?” Jamie asked. “Assigning you your missions?”
754
755“He was.”
756
757“Have you met him?” Lillian asked.
758
759“No. But there was a dialogue. He gave us tasks. We accomplished them. We would get one or two days to breathe or heal, then he would give us another set of tasks. A lot was said, in terms of expectations and results. I walked away thinking he knows what we’re comfortable doing better than the team that created us,” Catcher said.
760
761******
762
763“I like the Duke,” Catcher said, to the rest of us, as he took his weapon back from Gordon and Mary, strapping it to his back. “I would not want to be in the same room with him, or have to endure a conversation with him, but I like him.”
764
765“Based on the… what, scraps of paper with written instruction? The ‘dialogue’ of job given and job completed?” I asked. “His intuition and command?”
766
767“Yes.”[/QUOTE]
768
769More on his presence and how people react to him
770[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.10]
771Our approach as a group was somewhat staggered, as Lambs came in ones and twos to kneel before the Duke.  Jamie first, then me a few seconds later, then Helen and Lillian as a pair, Gordon and Mary, with Gordon helping Mary ease down to her knees as he knelt himself.  Dog didn’t kneel, but there were anatomical issues there. He bowed his head instead.
772
773“Stand,” the Duke said.
774
775We stood.
776
777“I heard you left as a group.  I asked to be notified the moment you were seen returning,” the Duke said.  “Dog, Catcher, it is nice to put faces to the names.  Faces that aren’t from medical sketches, at least.  From the injuries, I assume you found something out?  Gordon, speak.”
778
779“Lord, there are at least twelve of the enhanced clones in the city.  We found their base of operations with Catcher’s help.  We couldn’t run down the clones, but we killed three and captured a different type of clone.  Percy’s.  They’re in the rear hatch of the carriage.  Three rescued children are within the carriage itself.”
780
781The Duke indicated the carriage with a hand.  Soldiers and one doctor approached it.  “Continue.”
782
783“He’s distributed the clones to several cities or several points in this city, my lord, with his own clones producing further generations.  They’re taking a viral approach.  Occupying our cities, proliferating within, then spreading.”
784
785The Duke remained very quiet for a moment.  Not a single person present dared speak.  Many of the people on the road around the Academy campus were keeping their heads down, sharply aware of the Duke’s presence.  People a third of the way across the Academy grounds probably sensed the shift in tempo and focus, all rippling from this one location.
786
787“How severe a problem do you believe it is?” the Duke asked.
788
789“At this stage, it might be manageable, my lord.  They won’t have spread very far in the last year.  They might only be working on the second generation now, but that could mean ten to twenty sites.  Individually, they’re dangerous, they have incredible amounts of spatial awareness and tracking ability.  They are training themselves in combat, but their ability isn’t high.  Not yet.  They rely more on their natural ability, their environment, and picking the place and time of their attacks to win.”
790
791“This ability?”  The Duke cut in.
792
793“Lord, we think it’s echolocation, derived from the escaped experiment we named ‘Whiskers’.”
794
795“I know the one you’re talking about,” the Duke said.
796
797I was a little bit surprised at that.  I was a little more concerned that Gordon hadn’t had the chance to finish speaking.
798
799*****
800
801The silence lingered as the Duke seemed to take it in.  Nobody was permitted to speak without permission, and there was more to say.  It felt uncomfortable, having the things left unsaid hanging over our heads.[/QUOTE]
802
803Figuring out Avis's treason
804[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.10]
805I could tell how the conversation was going to go.  I could play it through in my head, muddy as it was, and I could see several ways it could go poorly.  We weren’t used to being around the nobility, and Gordon had made a tactical error.  He hadn’t divulged the most critical, dangerous information, and now he wouldn’t get a chance to do it without being rude.  Being rude could have repercussions.
806
807“This is effective work,” the Duke said.  “I’ll allot you some time to rest and heal before assigning you another job.”
808
809“Thank you, my lord,” Gordon said.
810
811“My lord,” I said, quickly.  I spoke at the same time I raised my eyes and saw the ruling body of Radham opening his mouth to speak.
812
813“Sylvester,” he said.  His tone had the faintest hint of danger as he said, “You seem eager to speak.  Don’t waste our time.”
814
815“Lord Duke, there’s another facet to this that needs mention.  They were using Academy resources.  Vats, chemicals, uniforms, this carriage, chemicals, and very possibly communication.”
816
817“Communication?”
818
819“My lord, it’s only speculation, but they were using birds.  They tried to burn the cage and their papers as Dog and Gordon made their approach.  I only recovered remains of the cage.  There are no guarantees, but-”
820
821“Enough.”
822
823I couldn’t meet his eyes, but I was aware of how he was moving and how he stood.  He seemed to assert himself, straightening.  He began pacing.
824
825Having the Duke pacing before us was nerve-wracking.  He was moving his hand, as if to punctuate thoughts he wasn’t sharing with us.
826
827******
828
829“Sylvester,” he said, coming to a complete stop as he whirled on me.  His coat flared behind him.  His eyes fixed mine, wild with too much white around them.  My entire body jolted with the accidental eye contact.
830
831“Sir,” I said.  No!  No!  “I- I mean, my lord.”
832
833Wrong word, sir was.  Wrong, very offensive word to use when referring to a noble.
834
835The word seemed to hang in the air.
836
837“Do you know the name of the woman who manages the birds and all incoming and outgoing communication in Radham?”
838
839What?
840
841Memory was Jamie’s strength.  It was most definitely not mine.
842
843I could have named Jamie, could have said something, but then the agitated, upset Duke would be focusing on him.  Whatever weirdness Jamie had brought up, even if he’d changed the paradigm between us, I wasn’t about to do that to him.  No, especially now, I wasn’t willing to.
844
845“I don’t know, my lord.”
846
847“Avis Pardoe,” the Duke said.  “She manages the phone bank, and she looks after the birds who transmit more secure messages.  She was subtle, to work against us like this.”
848
849“Yes, my lord.  I know the person, the name escaped me, I’m sorry,” I said.  A little too fast, all together.  I might as well have been rambling.
850
851“I last saw her in Claret Hall, right behind me,” the Duke said.  He straightened a little.  He still gestured, his eyes moving in a way that reminded me of Mary’s, earlier.  “Dog, Catcher.  You were just in active duty, and you assisted the Lambs.  I would not begrudge you if you said you weren’t in fighting form.”
852
853“My lord,” Catcher said.  “I am able and willing.”
854
855“For the time being, we’ll dispense of formalities,” the Duke said.  “I won’t brook disrespect or disobeyed orders, but there’s no need for titles.  Foley, I want available forces to converge here.  Cut off escape routes.”
856
857What was he doing?
858
859“I’m not sure I understand,” Gordon said.
860
861“Then I’ll explain what I know.  After our last discussion, I had the men at the entrance to Radham Academy questioned about these women you described.  Off-duty soldiers have been partaking of the services of some ladies of the evening.  They were recognized, and while thoroughly frisked, they thought that a professor or, ahem, a dignitary had arranged for the women to come visit.  As of right now, by their recollection, two such women entered Radham and have not yet left.  Did you intercept the bird leaving the enemy’s headquarters?”
862
863“No, my lord,” Gordon said.  “I’m not sure if there was a bird.”
864
865“Avis Pardoe may have received a warning.  If she’s not already running, she’s braced for us to come after her.  We’ll enter and move through the building.  The other usable weapons of Radham Academy are out of the city or preoccupied.  The uninjured Lambs will address this, in addition to Dog and Catcher and every able bodied man I can summon.  I’ll lead the capture.”
866
867He’ll lead?
868
869That spooked me more than anything Avis could bring to bear.
870
871“Do what you do,” the Duke said.  “Keep me informed, relay information back to me in as timely a fashion as you can.”
872
873“Yes, my lord,” Gordon said.
874
875“I told you to forget the title,” the Duke said.  “It wastes time.”
876[/QUOTE]
877
878His equipment
879[QUOTE=Lamb to Slaughter 6.10]The Duke snapped his fingers, then pointed. The doctors who’d accompanied the Duke had little bags with wheels and handles. He was pointing at one bag.
880
881It reminded me of our signals, but it was different. Our signals were something cooperative, that we’d devised between us as a matter of course, because it seemed only natural. For the Duke, he expected people to do as he bid, and people who spent any length of time around him adopted a way of thinking that involved anticipating and predicting the man every step of the way.
882
883One doctor had opened the bag, withdrawing weapons. A sword, one-handed, and a pistol. Both were overly ornate.
884
885The Duke stood, eyes surveying the building while the doctor strapped the weapons onto his belt.[/QUOTE]
886
887Savvy enough to not leave things to chance
888[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.10]
889There were more soldiers approaching.  I could see others further along, approaching from a distance to surround the building.  They were keeping their distance, picking positions where buildings would obscure the view.  Somehow, knowing what the ghosts were capable of, I didn’t believe that Avis was oblivious to any of this.
890
891The Duke only watched, listened, and reached out to stroke Helen’s hair in an absent way.
892
893It was gratuitous force. A hundred armed men, Dog, Catcher, the Lambs and the Duke himself, to catch three people?
894
895This was a man who, given the opportunity, left nothing up to chance.
896
897******
898
899My mind was struggling to draw up explanations even as fast as I provided them.  “We Lambs push in, spreading out while remaining in contact.  Catcher knows the hand signals.  We keep eyes on one another, watch each other’s backs.  Signal with right hand, relay with left.  If you see a signal, relay it.  As we extend in, the Duke and Mary can advance, Mary selectively informs the Duke what we’re saying and doing, keeping in mind that the Ghosts can hear us.  The Duke, in turn, can give orders to the soldiers and stitched.  Soldiers complement what we’re doing.  At our signal, Dog and Catcher can move.”
900
901I glanced at Mary, who looked back my way, and there was emotion on her face.  She was upset.  Galled, to use a clever word for it.
902
903Being left out or being told she was incapable, both struck to the heart of who she was, stinging her at her core.
904
905I hated to leave her with the Duke, but it made the most sense.  Of all of us, short of Gordon, she was the one who could deal with the man, impress him, and yet not impress him to the degree that he wanted to take a Lamb for himself.
906
907“Avis knows we’re here.  She’s got ghosts with her.  If we leave ourselves exposed in any way, they’ll get us like they got Mary.  But she’s a smart woman.  Has to be, to have that position.  I assume the Duke is using this show of force out of concern for any bioweapons or other failsafes she stashed in the event she was caught.”
908
909“It was a consideration,” the Duke said.  “I trust your ability to manage it more than I trust the common soldier.”
910[/QUOTE]
911
912Claims to have experienced true fear only a few times in life and more of his thinking
913[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.10]
914“She’s been at this for a while.  Maybe since she joined the Academy.  She’s been fearing being caught and having the entirety of the Academy collapse in on her since day one.  Every time she’s sent a bird out with a message intended to work against the Academy, she’s been fearing what might happen if it got intercepted, if the wrong person read it.  She’s worried if someone would say the wrong word and turn her in.  That’s a fear that eats at you and even consumes you.”
915
916“How interesting, to hear how people think,” the Duke said.  “I can’t imagine living with fear.  I’ve only experienced it a few times in my life.”
917
918“Wariness,” I said.  “Having to be on guard, think everything through.  You surely experience that when you look at the maps and plot strategy for the war, my lord.”
919
920“I do.  But I do not fear anything when I do it,” the Duke said.  He observed, “Dog and Catcher have returned.”
921
922“I see them,” I said.  “The thing about that fear, is I don’t think she’d be content to sit back and let it wash over her.  You can’t be that passive and rise to the position she did.  She’d take measures.  It would have to be subtle, something that wouldn’t get found, and it would have to be effective.  Something that would give her the security that there was a way out at any time.”
923
924I was saying this not just to elaborate on the enemy, but to convince the Duke that this was a bad idea.  If he’d be willing to send someone else, or reconsider using the Lambs.
925
926“A bomb would not be likely,” the Duke said.  “Poison gas or no, we have the like of Dog and Catcher to identify something like that.”
927[/QUOTE]
928
929More on how quickly people obey him
930[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.10]
931The doors banged as the stitched pushed them open.  We marched into the hallway, the rows of rifle-wielding stitched taking up so much space that bystanders were being squeezed out or pushed up against the wall.
932
933The ground floor was shaped like a cross, with a long hallway leading to a crossroad with a desk in the middle.  Offices and services were set off to either side of the hallway.  Beyond the desk was the north hallway, leading to the door that Dog and Catcher watched.  All of it was worked up in dark wood that gleamed with lacquer and resin, with gold trim and deep red woods here and there for accent.
934
935And the people – there were hundreds of students in the space, and as large as Claret Hall was, it made for a jumble.  More so when they reacted to the approach of a full regiment with chaos and confusion.
936
937The soldiers went out, checking offices to either side.  The hand signals came out from Gordon.  I relayed it back.  No sign.
938
939“Hear me!” the Duke proclaimed, and his voice boomed down the length of the hall.  Before he was even done speaking, people were dropping to their knees.  “By order of the Crown, lay on the ground with your arms straight out above your head, and we will know you are no enemy of ours!”
940
941It was as if an invisible wave was crashing into the crowd.  There was no question, there was no hesitation.  Every person in the crowded hall dropped, and many had already been in the process of kneeling or kneeling already.
942
943Well, that was his contribution, I supposed.  We hadn’t had the element of surprise to begin with, and now we didn’t need to worry nearly so much about the people who were lingering.
944
945Helen raised a hand, signaling.  Escape.  She swept it out to point to people behind us.
946
947I passed it on.
948
949“If you’re within five paces of me or behind me, you evacuate,” the Duke said.
950
951I heard the people shuffling, scrambling to get off the ground and head for the South door.
952[/QUOTE]
953
954Fighting and Defeating a Ghost in it's element
955[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.11]
956The stairs above where we’d been were on fire.
957
958There were any number of offices in this hallway, each one with windows looking in at the hallway, and windows looking out. Just around the corner from where Gordon was was the vantage point we’d used to spy on his conversation with Shipman. Because the building was a square, the hallway ringing it, there was plenty of space for a set of rooms in the center of it all, these ones had windows for us to see within, the bottom of each sitting at shoulder level for me. A reference library, a room with a long table and many chairs, a tea room, all of which were littered with bleeding corpses. Each had windows that failed to give us a view of the ghosts, and each had multiple doors, so one could pass from any point in the hallway or pass from room to room.
959
960The fire Gordon had signaled us about was at the opposite end of the building. Around two corners, or through the room with the table and chairs. It seemed strategically set to limit access to the upstairs, the flames set on and around the only other set of stairs. Wood burned but didn’t ignite. The designers of the Academy weren’t so stupid as to make the building well and truly flammable.
961
962That said, while I imagined the wood had been treated to make it less likely, I wasn’t sure it was impossible for a proper blaze to take hold. If it was only the surface of the wood that was treated, or only the floorboards, then there was a risk.
963
964*****
965
966They’d left us no apparent way up, short of quenching the fire.
967
968If it weren’t for the windows that seemed to be everywhere, I might have said it was the best possible environment for our enemy to be fighting in. Too many avenues for access and escape. Two strides in any direction meant passing a door that a ghost could be lurking behind.
969
970*****
971
972A full six of them were there, crouched, poised, waiting, using furniture and the low wall beneath the window to hide, each of them in the position a sprinter maintained pre-run.  All amid chairs and round tables, each table furnished with kettles and little bowls of tea bags.  There were pastries and baked goods here and there on plates.
973
974With the cacophony of noise affecting their clarity of echolocation, it took them a full second to register my approach, as I threw myself at the full group of them.
975
976Knife in hand, blade pointing down, I swung down and at an angle.  I nearly lost the knife as it caught on the front of one of the ghost’s throats.
977
978I’m shit in a fight, but that’s all the more reason to keep it from being one.
979
980As fast as I’d been to get close to them, I reversed direction, heading for the door.  I threw the knife, and this time, I was pleased to note, the person I was throwing at had to move to avoid getting hit.
981
982I was in such a hurry to get out of the tea room that I fell over on passing through the threshold of the door.  I watched the ghost I’d cut gurgle.  She clutched at the wound on her throat and she wasn’t able to stop the blood from flowing out.
983
984They rose up as if they were buoyed by some force I couldn’t see, puppets on strings, or stitched in the first moment they were given power, all as one, a collective.  Each and every one bristled with hostility, the stress of the glass noises clear in their faces.
985
986I rolled to one side, so they could no longer see me through the doorway, expecting them to come lunging out, swarming atop me.
987
988They didn’t.
989
990******
991
992Figuring out where the ghosts were went hand in hand with figuring out why they hadn’t retaliated.  I figured both out as I looked back to check on Lillian and Jamie.
993
994The Duke.  He’d emerged at the top of the stairs.
995
996Everyone else, stitched included, was crouched over, keeping low to the ground.  It made us all harder to see, and it meant the enemy couldn’t reach through a broken window to attack or grab.  The Duke didn’t care about either.  He stood tall, surveying the situation.
997
998“You’ve stopped,” he said, his voice carrying down the hall.
999
1000“Fire in the way, and we’re kind of busy killing these guys and trying not to die,” I said, the words escaping my lips.
1001
1002“Sy,” Gordon said, voice soft.
1003
1004But I saw the change in the Duke’s expression.  He approached, footsteps heavy and swift, coat moving behind him.  I had the impression of an onrushing train, and I was stuck on the tracks.
1005
1006It was a ghost that saved me.  She approached from the room with the table, leaping through the shattered window, straight for the Duke.
1007
1008He saw her and he turned, one hand reaching out.  She contorted in the air, twisting just out of his reach, before landing on the wooden floorboards with both hands and both feet.
1009
1010The Duke drew his sword and cut in the same motion.  She slipped out of the way of that strike as well.
1011
1012His pistol fired without even leaving the holster.  His hand had come down, he’d pressed the hammer down and adjusted the angle, while touching the trigger in the same motion.  She’d already danced to one side.  He fired twice more from the hip, before drawing the pistol and firing three more times.  At the end of the hall, Jamie and Lillian threw themselves flat to the ground to avoid getting hit by one of the stray bullets.  Lillian shrieked.
1013
1014“Hm,” the Duke made an amused sound.  He sheathed his sword, then reached to his belt before sliding bullets into his pistol.  The ghost took the opportunity to duck through a doorway, running through the conference room with its long table and many chairs.
1015
1016“You see what we’re up against, my lord,” I said.
1017
1018“I do see,” he said.  He drew closer, and put one finger under my chin.  He offered only the lightest touch, but I still rose to my feet.  He spoke, “I also heard the insolence in your tone.  I’ll remember it.”
1019
1020My heart skipped a beat in time with the click of his pistol, as he closed it up and cocked the hammer, just a foot from my head.  He tossed it into the air and caught it with his other hand.
1021
1022Then, so suddenly I wasn’t sure I’d processed it right, he grabbed one of the sections of window frame with only scant glass shards remaining, and carried through on the movement to hurl it violently across the tea room.  It crashed through the window there.
1023
1024I only barely saw the ghost move, abandoning her cover where she’d been standing.  The Duke’s arm was already extended, pistol pointing.  In the eyeblink the ghost’s head was visible, he put a bullet through it.
1025
1026“Hm,” he made that amused sound again.
1027
1028He walked past me, and he did it in a roundabout way that had the pistol in his hand touch my face.  It traced along cheekbone, catching on the ridge of my nose, and then stopping there, between my eyes, before he moved on.  He was tall enough he didn’t even need to move his arm or change the angle of his wrist to do it.  His arm hanging down at his side put his hand at eye level for me.
1029
1030“I heard you say that you killed the one,” he said, as he walked away, “Lying on the floor, throat cut?”
1031
1032“Sy isn’t normally-” Gordon started.
1033
1034“You’re not the one I asked.”
1035
1036“I am, lord,” I said.  I figured formalities couldn’t hurt, given circumstances.
1037
1038There was no response, nor any explanation over the question.  Or perhaps the question was the response.
1039[/QUOTE]
1040
1041Easily moving an 18 person wooden table
1042[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.11]“The fire is barring your way?” he asked. He wasn’t asking me, Gordon, or Helen. He was talking to Jamie and Lillian.
1043
1044“Yes, my lord,” Jamie said.
1045
1046“I see,” the man said. He stepped into the conference room.
1047
1048Helen and I gave Gordon a hand in standing, and I was a little surprised at how much help he needed. He was sweating a little.
1049
1050As a trio, we approached. I could see Mary at the center of the group, with Jamie and Lillian. She looked better than Gordon did.
1051
1052Wood scraped against wood, a haunting, awful sound. The long table looked like it could sit eighteen, the wood of the tabletop two inches thick and very probably dense. Rather than legs, it had boards of the same thickness at two ends, poised diagonally. The Duke pushed it across the floor, out the double doors on the far end of the conference room, until it sat beside the fire that stood between us and the stairs.
1053
1054Broad shoulders strained as he tilted it. The table fell on its side. Another turn, and it landed upside-down. The heavy table’s top squashed the fire and sent licks of the flaming chemical dancing over hardwood.
1055
1056He raised his pistol and fired down the length of the hall, toward the tea room.[/QUOTE]
1057
1058Beheading 4 Stitched in one swing
1059[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.11]We reached the third floor of the building, and came face to face with stitched.  None of the four were armed.  None even appeared hostile.
1060
1061******
1062
1063“You know you can’t kill me,” the Duke said, as he stepped into the hallway.  He very casually put a sword through the throat of one stitched, then swiped it to one side, beheading the other three.[/QUOTE]
1064
1065Raised for any eventuality and calling out Avis's bluff
1066[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.11]
1067“I’ve been preparing for this eventuality for years,” Avis said.
1068
1069“I’ve been prepared for any eventuality since birth,” the Duke said, very quietly.  “You’re building something.”
1070
1071“Built.  It’s done.”
1072
1073“No it’s not.  You’re biding your time,” he said.  He advanced further into the third floor.
1074
1075The Lambs, too, climbed a little higher.  I could see across the floor, now.  A lot of open space.  There were few walls, and the floor sat in a depression, the staggered steps down doubling as seats or benches, with pillows here and there.
1076
1077A social area.
1078
1079“I’m done building,” she said.  “I’m just having a drink.  It’s taking a few goes to get all of it down.”
1080
1081“A combat drug,” Lillian whispered.
1082
1083“Whatever you need to do,” the Duke said.  He smiled, as he picked his way around the staggered steps.  He leaned his head one way, to try and look beyond the wall that only extended partway down the room.  “I’m hoping for a good contest.”
1084
1085“Contest?” Avis asked, and her voice sounded different.  “Never.”
1086[/QUOTE]
1087
1088Fighting Avis and her Ghosts
1089[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.11-12]
1090It was an echo of a thought that had passed through my head as I’d cut the ghost’s throat.
1091
1092I didn’t even see the catalyst.  The depression in the floor ignited, the deepest part filling up with fire, clearly filled with an odorless accelerant of some kind.  Stripes of flame swept up the stairs to each corner of the room, separating it into four quadrants, the Duke cut off from us.
1093
1094The sound of glass shattering and the roar of flame below us suggested our retreat was being cut off.
1095
1096I fought to keep my breathing under control, my thoughts in focus, and the sound didn’t help in the slightest.  The Duke was chuckling, and the chuckle became a laugh.  He stood with flames within feet of him, arms spread, weapons in hand.
1097
1098We didn’t even matter.  This fight, this scenario, it was all for him.
1099
1100******
1101
1102The room had been built and grown in such a way that the furniture was an extension of the room, rather than an addition to it. The only walls that weren’t exterior walls were standalone, decorative more than anything, with benches built into them, facing tables. Nothing we could lift up to copy the Duke’s trick and form a bridge over fire.
1103
1104Not that I necessarily felt confident, with the sparks flying around.
1105
1106None of the walls were connected to any others. They might have been once, with walls removed as this part of the building was repurposed; an octagon with the diagonals removed.
1107
1108Two of the walls separated the staircases on either side of the floor from the main area; I was looking past one to see the sea of fire in the center of the room. The other two walls did much the same thing for rooms on the north and south faces of the building, with balconies extending those rooms. The two rooms served for private conversation, and one of them was a hiding spot for our quarry.
1109
1110******
1111
1112“Those floorboards,” Gordon commented.  His face looked drawn, especially in the light of the fire.  “They’re burning.”
1113
1114My eyes moved to the area he was looking at.  Sure enough, the floorboards were catching fire.
1115
1116Every second floorboard.
1117
1118“She modified the room,” I spoke the realization aloud.  “Maybe the building.”
1119
1120The Duke turned his head, noting our presence, and I saw a smile on his face.  He was cast in hues of orange and crimson, tall enough that the top of his head touched the smoke that was concentrating at the center of the ceiling and slowly creeping out toward the edges.
1121
1122He leaped from a standing position, and the wall in front of us broke my line of sight.
1123
1124He’d crossed the pool of fire.  Approaching the other end of the building.
1125
1126I saw figures in the shadows.
1127
1128“Ghosts!” Jamie called out.
1129
1130“I know,” the Duke said.  But he ignored them, approaching the northernmost wall.
1131
1132Ghosts crept nearer.  The room didn’t offer much cover, and they didn’t seem to know how to use the fire or smoke for cover.  It wasn’t physical enough for their senses to process.
1133
1134Still, there were five ghosts there, and possibly two more we couldn’t see, if I was keeping count right.  I probably wasn’t keeping count right.
1135
1136The Duke stepped around the wall, pistol going out, and fired four times.  A large, dark shape darted out, passing around the far end of that wall, leaping well over the wall of flame that cut across her path.
1137
1138Fast, agile.  That would be the combat drug.
1139
1140******
1141
1142I clenched my teeth and endured, watching, trying to figure out what Avis was doing.
1143
1144As she rounded the end of the wall that was furthest from us, I could get a better view of her.
1145
1146She’d altered herself to the point that she looked more experiment than human.  Four white-feathered wings framed her.
1147
1148Her hair, skin and clothing were dusted white, too – she’d covered herself in a powder, and much of it had been concentrated on her head.  The effects of the combat drug were obvious.  Her muscles were strained tight, and it included her face and neck.  Her eyes were wide and unblinking, her lips parted to show teeth and gums that were too red.  The bloodshot edges of her eyes and the crimson of her flushed lips were slices of red in an otherwise pale, powder-mottled complexion.
1149
1150She’d taken off her lab coat, and wore a top that consisted only of a bit of cloth and straps to hold it in place.  The same straps that held her harness on provided a little bit more security in binding the set of wings to her back.  The feathers were slick with fresh blood, and that blood had been covered with more powder in turn.  Bony, insectile limbs reached around her, hooking into flesh of rib and breast.  At her shoulder, one had been shattered, a bullet grazing flesh, leaving the point of the limb embedded in flesh, the other end twitching.
1151
1152Moving quickly, low to the ground, wings folded close to her back, she leaped through flame.  The feathers didn’t ignite, and she didn’t react to any burn she might have sustained.
1153
1154The Duke was a matter of steps behind her.  She was faster, she was more agile, and she was apparently fireproof, or fire resistant.  She could presumably fly, or she’d been able to, before the one hook had been damaged by a bullet.
1155
1156She wants to run, to fly, I thought.
1157
1158******
1159
1160The Duke’s gun fired twice.  He hurdled one six-foot wall of fire with seemingly no problem, landing on the bench by the western wall, opposite us.  He called out as he picked his way across it, closing the distance, “You gave yourself wings, Avis.  Why don’t you fly?”
1161
1162“You know why,” she said.
1163
1164She was so close to us.  Five or six paces.  Three, and I could have possibly had an angle to throw a knife at her.
1165
1166The ghosts crept closer to the duke, staying just out of arm’s reach.  He didn’t seem to pay much attention to them, except to hold one sword out in the direction of the nearest one, so the woman would run herself through if she lunged.
1167
1168“I could promise to hold my fire,” the Duke said.  “I’m good for my word.”
1169
1170There was no answer from Avis.
1171
1172I followed the Duke’s line of thought to its natural conclusion.  She doesn’t want to fly because she’ll be a sitting duck in the air, without cover.  She knows how good a shot the Duke is.
1173
1174******
1175
1176The Duke had to pick his way across the room more carefully as the fire took over more of the area.  He took a step to one side as flame touched one of the cushions a matter of feet from the Duke, only for the cushion to explode in a violent roll of fire.
1177
1178A ghost appeared, airborne, taking advantage of the Duke’s turned back.  She landed astride his shoulders, and, so quickly it looked like I’d missed something, she began slamming a knife into the side of his neck, once, twice, three times.
1179
1180He tossed his sword down, reached back, and grabbed her.
1181
1182She slammed the knife deep into his face once, as he hauled her around in front of him.
1183
1184One-handed, he tossed her into the pool of fire at the center of the room.
1185
1186The Duke made that amused sound.  He turned, a little overdramatically, his coat sweeping out around behind him.  His eyes were wide, the heavy lines in his face catching the light and shadow of the fire and smoke, the veneer of humanity no longer visible.  The gaping wound in his cheek wasn’t helping matters.
1187
1188He spat out what looked like a full mouthful of blood, directly at the flame.  It hissed in response.
1189
1190That much blood, the knife had to have gouged the roof of his mouth.
1191
1192“Reminds me of home,” he called out, to Avis.  His voice was different, with the wound.  He spat again.
1193
1194******
1195
1196“Will we have our duel after all?” the Duke asked.  “I’ve been handicapped.  I was stabbed no less than thirteen times.  One pole of some sort was thrust through my leg.”
1197
1198He barely showed it, though blood ran down his clothing and dripped from a few spots here and there.  There was a steady and unbroken stream of blood trailing down from the wound in his cheek to the edge of his chin, where it carried on.
1199
1200“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”
1201
1202“I can’t imagine any sort of true satisfaction,” the Duke said.  He was smiling.  He spread his arms, and he looked like the giant of a man he was, especially in contrast to Avis’ frail form.  “A snack of a conflict, rather than a meal.”
1203
1204“With all due respect, my lord,” I said, not taking my eyes off Avis- I fully expected her to make the leap at any second.  I said, “Where the heck are you taking in your meals?”
1205
1206“I don’t,” he said.  “Not here.  But home?  I’ve always sparred with my brothers and sister.  That’s a meal.”
1207
1208“You’re making this out to be something trivial?” Avis asked, eyes narrowed.
1209
1210“You are trivial,” the Duke said, with the confidence that nothing else was even possible.
1211
1212******
1213
1214“I’ll chance being shot. If you want to catch me on the way down, feel free to try.”
1215
1216Then she started to topple backward over the railing. The Duke lifted his pistol, aiming skyward, rather than shooting.
1217
1218I bolted, running.
1219
1220I felt rather than saw the movement of the knife, just to my left.
1221
1222It raked her shoulder, and it caught her wing. Feathers and fire-resistant powder flew into the air. I saw her eyes, already wide and bloodshot, go wider.
1223
1224I dropped, throwing myself forward. I reached past the rails of the railing, grabbing-
1225
1226I seized a strap of her top with both hands. Her weight dragged me forward, my head and ribs slamming into the rails. I managed to keep my grip.
1227
1228“Let me go,” she said. Her fingernails bit into my arm. “Let. Go!”
1229
1230My fingers started to give. She was lighter than she should’ve been, more modifications, no doubt, but I wasn’t strong. I felt a pain in my hands that suggested they’d be hurting for days.
1231
1232And then the burden was lifted.
1233
1234“Power, and powerlessness, hm?” I heard the Duke speak, close.
1235
1236The Duke loomed over me. He grabbed her as she kicked and fought, and held her so she was face to face with him. An angel with the face of a demon and a demon with the face of an angel.
1237
1238She’d enhanced her strength with the combat drug, but for purposes far from fighting the Duke. Only to fly, or to make the attempt. She wasn’t up to fighting the Duke, even as he drew a syringe from one pocket and plunged it into her neck.[/QUOTE]
1239
1240His Doctors patching up his wounds
1241[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.13]
1242“Avis,” the Duke spoke.
1243
1244The noises ceased.  Her eyes found us.  The Duke stood, his doctors behind him.  His wounds had been patched up, now virtually invisible, and he’d changed both shirt and coat for something less bloodstained.
1245
1246******
1247
1248“If your chest hurts,” the Duke said, “It’s because of the day’s surgeries.  I imagine the drug you took was intended to kill you if you didn’t take a very specific antidote, but my doctors are very good.  You are going to live, Avis Pardoe.”[/QUOTE]
1249
1250He can physically control the perceptions of time within his mind
1251[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.13]“My lord,” I said. “May I ask?”
1252
1253“Ask.”
1254
1255“Lord, time is kind of of the essence, isn’t it?
1256
1257“It is. Time is the operative word, as it happens, Sylvester,” the Duke told me. “You know, I’m very interested in the brain. You raised the topic with Avis Pardoe, and the timing felt serendipitous.”
1258
1259“Time and brains, my lord?” I asked. I felt as if he was getting at something.
1260
1261“While you were looking after your fellow Lambs at the Hedge, seeing that they got the care they needed, I was busy looking after Mrs. Pardoe. All four of my doctors worked on her. One worked on her brain. She’ll experience time in a very different way from now on.”
1262
1263It dawned on me. “With utmost respect, my lord, I’m assuming she won’t think you were gone for a few minutes?”
1264
1265“She won’t feel as if I was gone for a few minutes, no. In terms of raw thinking ability, I’m sure she’ll be able to rationalize it and logically work out that time is passing normally. But she’ll think faster in some ways and slower in others. Perhaps she’ll feel as if it has been days. Weeks, more likely?”
1266
1267He made it a question One of his doctors gave him a nod, and a murmured, “M’lord.”
1268
1269“Months aren’t out of the question?”
1270
1271“No, my lord. Not out of the question,” the Doctor said, quiet. “Without patience or pacing, years or decades aren’t out of the question either. It depends on her coping mechanisms. If she tries to keep count of passing seconds and minutes, it will seem more pronounced. The watched pot, in this case, never boils.”
1272
1273“No torture, no pain, no mutilation,” the Duke said. He looked pleased. “I’m doing nothing more than giving her the time she needs to reconsider her stance. After that, I will let her consider whether to turn in people she worked with, and whether to join the Academy in earnest, working to put herself back in our good graces. I suppose we might have her report the whereabouts of her family and acquaintances, for future leverage. I imagine it will be a productive night.”
1274
1275“My lord,” Lillian said.
1276
1277“Lillian, was it? You’re the student.”
1278
1279“Yes, my lord.”
1280
1281“Speak your mind, child.”
1282
1283“I don’t- I think what you’re doing is torture. Worse than anything you could do to her body, my lord.”
1284
1285“I’d think a student was more on top of what the Academy is capable of doing, Lillian,” the Duke said. “Is it truly so bad?”
1286
1287“I wouldn’t wait too long, my lord. You may be underestimating how frail the average person is.”
1288
1289“Good advice,” he said, nodding. He touched her hair. “Good child. I’ll see to her after we’re done talking, then, rather than waiting the full thirty minutes.”
1290
1291Lillian ventured a smile.
1292
1293“I hadn’t considered. My doctors said it would be effective, and I almost didn’t believe them, but the principle wasn’t unsound, giving her more time to think, so to speak, or giving that time a different sort of meaning."
1294
1295******
1296
1297“My lord,” I said, “Was something similar done to you?”
1298
1299The Duke smiled. “It was. I do suppose I’ve had the advantage of it being the case from birth, something I’ve learned to harness, while our guest is experiencing it new, not a shift from a walk to a canter, or vice versa, but to a different vehicle altogether. Even I wouldn’t enjoy the deprivation of sensation she’s experiencing now. Doing nothing with my time is an alien idea to me, and wouldn’t have been permitted regardless. I wouldn’t say I think faster, but I can devote exactly the right amount of time to a problem as is needed. Brains are so fascinating, aren’t they?”
1300
1301******
1302
1303“When my brothers, sister and I were asked who was willing to come to Radham, the research being on brains here was one reason I volunteered,” the Duke said.  “As clever as this small alteration to my own brain is, it’s crude.  I often find myself wondering if my own heirs will have better brains.  If it’s possible that one of you will be the model for the next generation of nobles.  Or perhaps one of you will, when given permission, explore other options and open the doors to a new age.”[/QUOTE]
1304
1305Noticing that Lambs various faults during their brief time together
1306[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.13]
1307“With all due respect, my lord, you were testing her.  We all have default behaviors we go back to when we’re on unstable footing.  Lillian’s a good soldier, she defaults to shutting up and following orders, to insecurity and not speaking up when she needs to.  If you move forward with either of the options you’re thinking about, you will utterly destroy her.  You will hurt the Lambs, lord Duke.”
1308
1309“A strategic break, nothing more.”
1310
1311“We’re growing, my lord, we’re still young, we’re not fully developed.  Jamie’s improving by leaps and bounds, Lillian’s getting better.  We’re evolving the team dynamic.”
1312
1313“‘Evolving’ may be the wrong word,” the Duke said.  “Going by reports and what I’ve seen, things might be trending in the opposite direction.”
1314
1315He’d noticed.  The realization almost took my breath away, stealing my ability to argue.
1316[/QUOTE]
1317
1318Verbal sparring with Sylvester and detecting his being seen as a hostile by Sy
1319[QUOTE=Lamb to the Slaughter 6.13]
1320“As an experiment, you’re too muddled with one another to assess independently,” the Duke spoke.  “I have the distinct impression you’re arguing with me.”
1321
1322“My lord, I would say I’m arguing for the Lambs, not arguing against you.  Forgive me, but when I talked about my views in front of Avis, I couldn’t help but feel you and I are on the same page, of similar views on where we should be collectively headed.  Let me add my views to yours, and yours to mine, my lord.”
1323
1324“Presumptuous, too,” he said.
1325
1326Oh.  Well.  That was that.  I’d gone and offended him.
1327
1328“I’ve had others challenge me like this,” the Duke observed.  “Trying to appeal to my desire for excitement and challenge by arguing points, being reckless in conversation with me, foregoing custom and formality.”
1329
1330I didn’t dare speak at this point.  I’d let my mouth run off with me.
1331
1332“I’m trying to decide if you’ve crossed the line that the rest did in trying to challenge me,” he said.
1333
1334“My lord,” I said.  I waited for an indication I had permission to continue.  He gave it, raising his chin a fraction.  “I wasn’t actively trying to challenge you.  I swear this.”
1335
1336He nodded.
1337
1338“I’ve read your file, Sylvester,” he said.  He touched the side of my face.  “You talked about the behavior we all return to when we’re on shaky footing.  I know this is where you go when you’re insecure, how you function as a living being.  I do believe you when you say that, and it does inform my answer.”
1339
1340As much as you know and believe that that, I know that you default to playing with the lives of those around you.  When the world doesn’t suit you or make sense, you reorder it.  You’re good at reordering it.  A builder more than a destroyer.  But you’re too big of a man, Lord Duke.  You’re a giant among mere mortals, and the most trivial actions you undertake are ones with massive ramifications for the rest of us.  That’s how you function.
1341
1342Except you’re not a dumb giant, trampling over everything in your path.  You know just how small we are.
1343
1344“You’re seeing me as a threat, you’re studying me, and you’re working out a plan of attack,” he observed.
1345
1346“Sy,” Jamie said, just behind me.
1347
1348No, couldn’t dwell on Jamie, had to focus.  As if mirroring the thought, the Duke raised a hand, indicating with a raised finger that Jamie should stay silent and stay out of this.
1349
1350In this, too, the Duke and I were on the same page.
1351
1352“What are you thinking, ‘Sy’?” the Duke asked me, staring down at me with eyes that showed too much white.
1353
1354“My lord.  I’m thinking that you’re smarter than you’re acting right now.”
1355
1356If Gordon had been present, I was pretty sure he would have socked me one right there, to shut me up, then worked to beg for mercy.  He was being looked after for his heart.  Mary might have stabbed my butt like she had Helen’s, just to make it clear I was being stupid.
1357
1358But this wasn’t a man who accepted half-measures.
1359
1360“Precious Sylvester,” the Duke said.  His body language and voice softened.  He smiled, and his tone became something very dangerous, alongside the gentle phrasing and volume.  “I think you should explain yourself very carefully.”
1361
1362“The Lambs are a unit, my lord.  We developed to cover each others’ weaknesses.  I, myself, was pushed forward to patch a gaping hole in the group.  But splitting us up now is like clipping a rose branch when it hasn’t budded yet.  You know you can let us reach a more complete state before evaluating us.  You have people come to you wanting to challenge you because you want to be challenged, you signal it, you outright asked for it with Avis.”
1363
1364“I signal this?” he asked.  Not a question so much as a challenge.
1365
1366“You’ve talked about home.  You want what you had there, on a deeper level.  Back home, I have to assume, if you bared your throat like you’re doing here, someone would seize the opportunity.  You’re doing it here, I’m seizing, and I’m hoping I’m doing it well enough you’re going to accept it where you’ve rejected others.”
1367
1368He stared down at me.
1369
1370“First of all,” he said.  “You forgot to call me ‘lord’.  I have a grave appreciation of formality, Sylvester.  It signals respect.  Forgetting something so simple is a telling blow to your attempt to earn my respect by challenging me.”
1371
1372I didn’t budge an inch or give any outward sign or change of expression, but interally I was screaming and running around in circles.
1373
1374“Second, your argument hinges on the notion that you’re not yet done developing to your full strength.  Yet your Gordon is near the end.  You’ve had more injuries.  Your group dynamic is reportedly and observably breaking down.”
1375
1376He let that point hang in the air.
1377
1378I ventured a response.  “My lord.”
1379
1380He gave me consent to continue, a dismissive backhand swipe with the fingers of one hand.  His eyes and body remained stone still, not budging.
1381
1382I lowered my eyes.  “We’ve had more injuries because we’ve been taking on more challenging missions.  If the Lambs are breaking down, if we’re dying or nearly done, let the first Lamb die or break away before you take any action.  You only lose the opportunity to work on the most perishable of us, and you stand to gain our loyal service in the meantime.”
1383
1384My eyes still lowered, my heart pounding, I couldn’t see his expression, nor how much I’d succeeded or failed in swaying him.
1385
1386It was a massive weight on my shoulders, wondering if I’d doomed myself or doomed the group.  I let that weight be something real, driving me to the ground.  Eyes fixed on the floor of the hallway in the Bowels, I dropped to my knee.  I heard and felt the movement of Jamie and Lillian behind me.
1387
1388“That was my plan already, Sylvester,” the Duke said, above me.  “You’re not entirely wrong in your judgment of what I was doing.  The Lambs are not ready to be broken up.  We already have enough experiments capable of acting independently, too few who work as a collective.  I was thinking aloud, wanting to see your response.”
1389
1390“Yes, my lord,” I said.
1391
1392“You’re forgiven for this.  Stand.”
1393
1394I stood.  My hands shook a bit as I did.  I hooked my thumbs into the pockets of my shorts.  The fact that my shirt stuck to my back had nothing to do with the summer heat – we’d spent the last while in the Bowels, and it was cool this deep underground, if not quite refreshing.
1395
1396“You are not, however, forgiven the transgression earlier.  I know it is your nature, but I did say I would punish you, and I do what I say.  I will decide on something fitting.”
1397
1398“Yes, my lord,” I said.
1399
1400“Your fellow Lambs should be going straight from getting care to having their appointments.  Have yours as your doctors are able.  I expect you to be ready for another task before the week is over.  The war wages on, and our enemy is catching up to us in fits and starts.”
1401
1402“Yes, my lord,” I said.  My voice was joined by Jamie and Lillian’s.
1403
1404******
1405
1406“My lord?” Jamie asked.  “Forgive me.”
1407
1408“What is it?”
1409
1410Jamie’s eyes remained fixed on the ground.  With just a bit of sweat on his nose, his glasses slid down the bridge of the nose.  He pushed them back up into place.  “It’s customary for the Lambs to fill each other in, so none of us are in the dark or lagging behind the others.  Most often that’s me.  But we’re going to talk to the others, and we’re going to talk about this conversation.  May I ask, if Sy hadn’t spoken up, would this have ended differently?”
1411
1412“I would have given it thought first, much as Avis is giving her matter some consideration right now.  My instinct is that you would have been disbanded,” the Duke said.  “Dear Lillian thrown to the nobles, perhaps, Helen ordered to my apartments, the rest of you left to fend for yourselves, with every expectation you wouldn’t fend for particularly long, but you’d see to the most essential tasks in the meantime.”
1413
1414“Yes, my lord,” Jamie said.  “Thank you, my lord.  Knowing that will make this easier to convey to Mary and Gordon.”
1415
1416The Duke declined his head in acknowledgement.  He swept his fingers to one side to dismiss us, and we were gone.
1417[/QUOTE]
1418
1419Hunting the monsters in the Bowels with the Baron and understanding the Lamb's actions
1420[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Boys]“We’ll be taking our leave.  I did promise Baron Richmond a hunt today, we’ll be visiting the underground labs to see what can be loosed.  Keep the Lambs separate, watch for their hand-signs, see to their appointments after or during, so we can be sure they won’t coordinate or correct one another’s stories.  Though I imagine they would have already, were they lying.”[/QUOTE]
1421
1422His height and armored clothing
1423[QUOTE=enemy Arc 7 Girls]
1424The Nobles were tall.  They liked that, being above the common people.  Mary was far from full grown, with a three-quarter foot to grow, if she compared herself to the woman who was supposed to be her mother.  The legs would be her best target.
1425
1426But that wasn’t the whole story.  The jackets the Duke and Baron had been wearing were heavy, and they flowed oddly as they walked.  There was something in them, armor.
1427[/QUOTE]
1428
1429He has fine hairs that allow him to sense his surroundings
1430[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]Fine hairs on the backs of his hands and neck alerted him to movement behind him. He didn’t startle, and kept his reaction slow as he looked back at the twins.
1431
1432*****
1433
1434He raised a hand.  The hairs on the back of his hands and neck were telling him about the movements all around him, the sway of branches with few leaves, the movement of wind, the movement of the twins, as one reached around Richmond to run a finger up and down her sister’s back, and now the approach of a military commander.  He moved his fingers slightly, letting his brain interpret the signals, reading the wind.  The one with the mustache and thick head of hair beneath his helmet, it seemed.  One of the good ones, as the mere humans went.
1435
1436“My lord.”
1437[/QUOTE]
1438
1439He's been experienced with war ever since he was six years old
1440[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]He had seen battlefields since he was six years old, and had studied battlefields for just as long.  Teachers had posited scenarios and he had been asked to solve them, or to find the best answer if it wasn’t solvable.  There very rarely was any middle ground between the two, in his experience.  They both called for radically different kinds of thinking.[/QUOTE]
1441
1442He personally considers the Baron to be a low-level threat
1443[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
1444Richmond was as dangerous as a snake too, but that was all the more reason for the Duke to enjoy his company.  He imagined it was how ordinary people saw the world.  Didn’t life seem so much more like life with that breath of danger, where any bystander in the street could be a threat to one’s person?  A killer, an enemy to the state and its people, looking for a target?
1445
1446Yes, the risk was very low, but a natural wariness kept the mind sharper.  That narrow possibility, however very slim it might be, it had to help, didn’t it?
1447[/QUOTE]
1448
1449The forces the Duke can call to bare and his calculations
1450[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
1451For every citizen carrying a torch down below, he had one stitched soldier, and those soldiers were gathering at the periphery of the city now, in tidy rank and file, twenty five soldiers to one handler.  The soldiers were equipped with uniforms and guns.  The citizens wouldn’t be.
1452
1453That wasn’t counting the Crown’s rank and file soldiers, either.  A two to one numbers advantage, his forces had the high ground if they were advancing down the slope toward the harbor, and he didn’t even need to fight to win much of this conflict.  Fire and noxious clouds would flow downhill in advance of his troops and kill or cripple nine in ten members of the opposition.
1454
1455Fifty warbeasts were ready, shackled and caged, ready to assault the city, and to his experienced eye, every one of the warbeasts his forces had at their disposal had been born this year or the year before.  Newer, better, stronger.  The best Radham Academy had to offer.
1456
1457******
1458
1459He quickly calculated the number of homes in Lugh, and estimated the population at one hundred and ten thousand.  A full third of that number was scattered, still, too far on the fringes to really feed into the center mass that was organizing so readily.  Men and women who worked in quarries and on farms at the outskirts.  Some were already being put to gunpoint by the Crown’s forces, or their homes were being torched.
1460
1461Was it that more than eighty thousand people might die in the next twenty four hours, the vast majority on the enemy’s side, that woke up his blood and breathing so readily?  Death, blood and pain, if not directly by his hand?
1462[/QUOTE]
1463
1464He can alter his perceptions 
1465[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
1466The Duke didn’t answer the question.  He stared, watching, thinking.  Between the sea creatures in the water, his forces here at the east end of the city, his forces at the south end, and the mountains to the north, he had them boxed in.  He let his mind take the ideas and let the rest of the world slow down so he could think over everything in detail.
1467
1468He didn’t know enough about the mountains.
1469[/QUOTE]
1470[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
1471When he was three years old, his mind had been altered, to allow him to better control how fast he thought, and how he perceived the passage of time.  He had only mastered it a few years ago, and controlling it took effort that often left him exhausted at the day’s end.  Still, he kept up the practice, and his control improved.
1472
1473In this moment, he let his awareness speed up, to better survey things from all of the angles.  A part of his thoughts were dedicated to making sure he maintained the same speed and pace.  Slowing his pace by a fraction would signal to others that something was wrong.
1474
1475He contemplated how he might go about this, if this prison was indeed intended for him, if he needed to run, or else face imprisonment for the rest of his days, bereft of the doctors who were supposed to tend him, slowly going to pieces over decades.
1476
1477In the end, he decided that he couldn’t beat his mother and aunt in a fight.  At least, not like this, with his body so new and untested.
1478[/QUOTE]
1479
1480Duke's strategy
1481[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.15]
1482The Crown’s forces were capable of committing a hell of a lot more explosives and firepower than they had.  But in feeding the damn thing, and in holding back firepower, I was starting to see what was really at work.
1483
1484Somewhere along the line, the battle lines had shifted, the Duke made his play in a way that probably wasn’t even perceptible to the people fighting on the front line.  All they would’ve known was that they were losing, suddenly, being pushed back, despite the monsters that was tearing through the Duke’s forces.
1485
1486It was like a macabre chess game, where the pieces were building-sized, and every movement of one swept across and landed atop crowds, leaving dozens or hundreds crippled and maimed.  In this macabre game that only the Duke, Mauer and I could understand on any level, the Duke had gone to great ends to push his forces up, isolating the worst of the primordials behind his own lines.
1487
1488Now he held onto it, at the cost of stitched life and human life both.  If it grew too weak, he threw warbeasts at it, to make it harder to shoot at, to feed it and give it the fuel it needed.  If it grew too strong, he ordered more shots of artillery.
1489
1490Control.  When it comes down to it, the Academy has control and seeks power, and the Crown has power and seeks control.  By intertwining to the point they were frequently indistinguishable, they maintained both, and they continued to expect both in every situation.  The Duke had orchestrated a situation where, if my gut feeling was right, Lugh would fall, and the Primordial would eventually die.
1491
1492Except that death would only happen if and when the Duke allowed it, and the Duke would only allow it if Mauer recognized the stakes and surrendered.
1493[/QUOTE]
1494
1495Had implanted spies throughout Mauer's army
1496[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.16]
1497“What will it take to save the lives of the people in this city?” Mauer called out.  “My own life?  My surrender?”
1498
1499His voice carried so well.  He’d always been at his best on the stage, addressing a group.  Now he addressed the Crown forces.  The Duke was near enough to respond with his own powerful voice.
1500
1501One voice natural, the other artificial.
1502
1503“I don’t think you have any plan to surrender,” the Duke responded.  “To give your own life?  Perhaps.  With the explosives you planted on either side of the street?  Did you hope to take me with you?  Or just to take me?  Because you won’t have either of those things.”
1504
1505Mauer reacted.  He backed away a step.
1506
1507“When you rule over rabble, Reverend,” the Duke said, “You lose sight of who the individuals are.  There is no organization, the people in command do not know the people who are subservient to them.  Clever, talented individuals can blend in with the rabble.  They can fan out through the area, they can watch your men, and they can surreptitiously disarm those explosives.”
1508[/QUOTE]
1509
1510Survived being shot by a Noble killing bullet
1511[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.16]
1512Mauer reached out with his monstrous limb, as if supplicating, then let it drop, heavy.
1513
1514I heard the gunshots, loud, crystal clear, and high.  So many of Mauer’s guns had been lower quality, older.  The Crown’s good quality but in such a way that it could be mass produced.
1515
1516These shots were different, and the sound was oddly disconnected from the Duke’s reaction, as he took a step back, staggering.
1517
1518My right hand found Lillian’s, squeezing it.  I would have held Jamie’s too, but my arm was in the sling.  When I looked at him, his eyes were as wide as mine were.
1519
1520Fray and Mauer hadn’t just been working on the primordial.  I thought of the Engineer, and the others they’d had with them.  Powerful people, ones with resources and connections.  Mauer, all this while, knowing that spies might be looking, had been holding this card up his sleeve.
1521
1522One shot sounded after another.  And as the Crown forces heard and saw what was happening, they began to open fire as well.  Mauer was already retreating, taking cover behind the wagon he’d been using as his stage.
1523
1524Through the chaos that quickly billowed out of the silence, the sweet song of those guns could be heard.
1525
1526I wasn’t sure if it was because he’d sensed us somehow, or if it was sheer luck, as bullets punched through him and tore out the other side, casting out sprays of blood and bone as they exited, but the Duke looked our way.
1527
1528A bullet passed through his skull.  Fragments of metal joined bone and brain on making a messy exit.
1529
1530I heard Mauer’s forces cheering.  To them, Mauer had won, proven the lie.  That the Crown didn’t always win.
1531
1532I wasn’t so sure it was about to play out that way, and from Mauer’s body language, as he strode through the lines of his people, he wasn’t so sure either.
1533
1534The Duke might still be in play.
1535
1536*****
1537
1538“We already did, once.  The guns that shot the Duke have a distinctive sound.  That sound was the signal for an attack on his rear lines.  Our elite soldiers have already signaled that they successfully opened fire on the Duke’s home tent.”
1539
1540“So they can’t heal the Duke,” Lillian said.
1541
1542“A precautionary measure, in case he was faster to react.  It doesn’t matter.  We hit him.  The noble has been slain.”
1543
1544From a range that he didn’t think guns could shoot from.  Longer range, high accuracy.  Something special.  Still…
1545
1546“I’ve seen him get shot before and survive,” I said.
1547
1548“Nobles favor a layer of something like armor, an interskeletal barrier between their skin and their muscle or bone structure.  Normal guns are meant to ricochet, their bullets move slowly, to pass into the subject and bounce around, doing grievous harm.  Few think twice of this.  But the Crown has reasons for perpetuating this standard.  Those slower, bouncing bullets aren’t so effective against the nobles.”  Bullets sink in and stop at the armor, or they bounce right out.  The noble bleeds but doesn’t stop.  They appear immortal, and enemy morale suffers.  The myth that surrounds them grows.”
1549
1550I nodded.  I’d seen the Duke in battle.
1551
1552“These bullets penetrate that layer.  That armor helps strips the outer shell off as the bullet passes through, and what remains unfolds and expands as an umbrella might,” Mauer said.  His hand, all fingertips and thumb meeting, tapped my chest, hard, then opened up, fingers splaying.  “The final part of the projectile sometimes punches through on exit, or joins the expanded metal in complicating the efforts of doctors and staff.  Especially uncareful or hasty doctors might even do further harm to themselves, if an expanding bullet finishes expanding too near a prodding finger or working hand.”
1553
1554“It wouldn’t be as effective against an ordinary person,” Lillian said.
1555
1556“It might, if it hit hard bone, but no, it isn’t meant for ordinary people,” Mauer said.  “The guns are long range, they’re accurate, and they’re felt before they can be easily reacted to."
1557[/QUOTE]
1558[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.17]
1559“Lord Infante, he hoped to lure in others that stand between him and the throne.  In the recent skirmish in Lugh, he found out about guns designed to kill nobles, and secured an alliance with the man who made them.  The Duke of Francis-”
1560
1561“Is left with half of a brain.  A vegetable in a pretty package.  I’m aware.  This neatly explains how that came about.  The attack is arranged for later, then?”
1562[/QUOTE]
1563[QUOTE=Thicker Than Water 14.5]
1564Sitting in a chair near him was the Duke of Francis.  Intact, no damage, dressed as impressively as he’d ever been.
1565
1566But, as I looked, the sharpness was gone, the light absent.  He moved his hands, placing one over the other in his lap, and the movement was slow.
1567
1568*****
1569
1570Gordon and I watched the Duke’s eye move.  There was a delay.  As if it took willful effort to direct his eye, to fixate on us.  Whether there was recognition or a complete mental blank, the man gave no indication.
1571
1572“A pity you’re not up to talking,” the Infante spoke.  “Your counsel would have been appreciated.”
1573[/QUOTE]
1574[QUOTE=Thicker than Water 14.10]“It’s very cold, as trails go.” Mauer said.  “There were two people who knew the full story about how this worked, and just why they had a protocol like this in place.  One of the two people was the Duke of Francis.  I put a bullet in him, destroying his brain.  Word from within the Infante’s castle is that he drools and doesn’t eat unless a tube is pushed into his throat.”[/QUOTE]
1575[QUOTE=Lamb Arc 14]
1576“Ccome,” the voice said.
1577
1578Her blood ran cold.
1579
1580She turned her head, and she saw.  Sitting in a chair at the other end of the garden, the Duke still sat.  So still in the evening gloom, all dressed in black, he was easy to miss.
1581
1582“Did he hear?” Ashton asked.
1583
1584“More concerning is did he speak?” Duncan asked.
1585
1586Lillian, quickly joined by Mary, approached the Duke.
1587
1588Stiff, unsure, she bent into a bow.
1589
1590“Lilliann,” the word came.  Uneven, not flowing as a word should, drawn out, awkward.
1591
1592“My lord,” she said.  “You can speak?”
1593
1594“A tthird off my mind gone.  Slow.  Unnn-befitting forr aa nobble, I know-w.  But aa-ugmmentations… cann speak iff Ii consscentrate.  Concenntrating alll my life.”
1595
1596“Yes, my lord.  Does- does the Infante know?”
1597
1598“Nno.  You will nott tell himm-m.”
1599
1600She glanced at the others.
1601
1602“Why us?” she asked.  Then, “My lord.”
1603
1604“For Ssylvesster.  Yyou keep, inn your medicinne bag, W-wyvverrn?”
1605
1606“Yes,” she said.  She didn’t append the ‘my lord’ this time.
1607
1608“Willl hellp mme work arround damaged parrts.  Iin exchannge, I willl be ann allly.  The innfannte, more dangerrous thann you knoww.  I knoww things.  Uniite the Llambs.  I sso sswear this.”
1609
1610*****
1611
1612“Perhaps on a future visit, my lord?” she offered.  “It’s something the Lambs will need to discuss.”
1613
1614With glacial slowness, the Duke nodded his head.
1615[/QUOTE]
1616
1617The Dukes political power
1618[QUOTE=Gut Feeling 17.3]
1619“They don’t, and it doesn’t,” Lillian said.  “At least, we don’t think so.  We talked to the Duke, insofar as he can talk.  He told us he was concerned the Infante wouldn’t stop until he had all of the Crown States.  Sealed and burned to the ground.”
1620
1621I looked at Jessie.  We’d heard something like that.
1622
1623“The Duke told us the Infante might loose every single last one of the superweapons in the Crown States.”
1624
1625My heart dropped out of my chest at that.  Every city and every town within a short distance of the Academies themselves has one.
1626
1627That wasn’t what we’d heard before.
1628
1629“If we can get Berger to the Duke of Francis, he can revive him, and there’ll be an effective voice of dissent in play,” Mary said.  “The Duke is of a lower station but not so low he can be ignored.  He has resources, and if the Infante wants to preserve any appearance of propriety, he’ll have to stop or wait.  That’s the mission.”
1630[/QUOTE]
1631[QUOTE=Gut Feeling 17.5]
1632“There has to be something we can do,” she said.
1633
1634“There is,” Berger said.  “But it won’t be as direct as you’re imagining.  The Duke of Francis knows people, and if his interests align with yours, which I think they do, he’ll do just that.  But things are rarely simple.  I’ll need assistance to get close enough to him to try fixing him, and you’ll be that assistance.  We’ll need to cooperate to get the right words to the right people, and again, you’ll play a part.  This is not impossible.”
1635
1636“Improbable,” Lillian said.
1637
1638“The Duke of Francis can talk,” Duncan said.  “He asked for Wyvern, and we provided it.  He seems better every time we see him… not that the Infante knows.”
1639
1640“Ah,” Berger said.
1641
1642“Is that a problem?” Duncan asked.
1643
1644“No.  But it was a risk.  There was a chance it would have exacerbated the damage to his brain.  He chose to make the gamble when he asked you.  A gamble on two fronts, as it was something the Infante might have figured out, on top of being something that could have cost him the remainder of his life or faculties.”
1645[/QUOTE]
1646[QUOTE=Enemy arc 20]
1647The Duke was brought forth by a team of vat-grown servants, and followed by two of his professors.  Adams and Berger, if Lawrence was remembering right.
1648
1649They looked weary.
1650
1651The Duke looked almost normal.  He held himself with poise, he looked at everyone with eyes that seemed no less alert than any other person’s might be, he looked healthy and even magnificent, and only his silence might mark him as unusual to the untrained.
1652[/QUOTE]
1653
1654Using combat drugs to handle his impairment and fighting the Golden Calf/Infante
1655[QUOTE=Crown of Thorns 20.9]The Duke lowered his head, reaching down to Berger’s belt.  He retrieved a handful of vials.
1656
1657*****
1658
1659Berger held the vials that the Duke had retrieved and put in his hands.
1660
1661“Combat drugs?” Lillian asked.
1662
1663The Duke turned, facing the burning building.
1664
1665He’d left one arm extended.
1666
1667“In your condition-” Lillian started.
1668
1669Duncan touched her arm.
1670
1671The rain continued to pour down.  Berger extracted the drug with a syringe, and he placed the syringe point into the Duke’s arm.
1672
1673*****
1674
1675“Donn’t,” the Duke said.  His voice was rich, the words crude, as painful to listen to as they must have been to utter.
1676
1677I turned to look at him.
1678
1679“Donn’t… disappoint me,” the Duke spoke.
1680
1681Thunder 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.
1682
1683The Duke of Francis was going to die, for the burst of vigor and focus he was demonstrating now.
1684
1685He 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.
1686
1687*****
1688
1689The Duke had barely budged or reacted.  He couldn’t spare the strength or effort for anything that wasn’t our primary enemy in this.
1690
1691But, 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.
1692
1693The length of cloak he’d extended and the sweep of his arm provided a canopy, sufficient to shelter Lillian, Jessie and I.
1694
1695*****
1696
1697The Golden Calf reached up, closing its helmet, doing up the clasp.
1698
1699I saw the Primordial Child, standing in the background, watching.
1700
1701“How dangerous is it?” Duncan asked.
1702
1703“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.”
1704
1705The Duke moved, lunging for the Infante, blade in one hand.
1706
1707The 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.
1708
1709The Infante hadn’t so much as flinched or glanced the Duke’s way.
1710
1711His focus was on us.
1712[/QUOTE]
1713[QUOTE=Crown of Thorns 20.10]The Infante glowered, his veneer of humanity pulling away.  He was burned, but the burns hadn’t penetrated far past the surface, his skin almost seeming to grow tougher where the fire had seared it.  He remained unfazed by the life and death fight between the Duke and the Golden Calf that was moving back and forth around him, the two combatants within his arm’s reach at times.
1714
1715******
1716
1717It wasn’t a Lamb that stepped to the fore.  The Duke pulled away from his fight with the Golden Calf.  With long strides, he charged at the Infante, sword leveled for the higher noble’s throat.
1718
1719The Infante grabbed for the sword, and the blade dipped, danced around, then returned to course, aimed for the jugular.
1720
1721With a quarter-turn away, the Infante had shoulder and arm catch the blade instead.  His flesh suffered what looked to be a shallow cut as he turned his back to our Duke of Francis.
1722
1723He swung his fist in a backhand, not even looking at his attacker.  The Duke stepped back and away, turning and bringing his sword up to catch the Calf’s claw.  He was disarmed.
1724
1725“Syylvester,” the Duke said, his vowel hitching, as if he was a stitched with a faulty wire, movements replicating.
1726
1727In the next moment, the Calf had gouged him three times, digging deep furrows into his chest and stomach.  I could have laid my arm into those furrows and covered them with skin, with no bulge to be seen.  From the look of the slices of black, there were dark gaps hinting at cavities beneath.
1728
1729It was a modest distraction, but the attack had bought us a chance to retreat.  Mary had found her feet, dragging Jessie with her.  I climbed to my own feet and backed away, stepping into the shelter of a shop.  Duncan and Ashton dragged Helen into shadow.
1730
1731“You’re mad,” the Duke said, drawing a pair of blades to defend himself with- scaled down to my size, they might have been daggers, but the Duke was tall and his idea of a ‘dagger’ would have been a short sword in my hands.
1732
1733“You say that like you’re surprised,” I said.  “You know this, you know what I am.”
1734
1735“Nno,” the Duke said.
1736
1737The Calf attacked again.  It was fast, it was strong, and it sat askew in my mind’s eye, too hard to calculate and predict.  It didn’t stop to breathe, it didn’t slow, it only seemed to stop to think, to work out how best to dismantle its enemy.  The Duke stopped both claws from striking him by parrying with his blades.  The Calf headbutted him.
1738
1739The Duke of Francis’ head was a weak point.  He tried to adopt a fighting stance, and the blade fell from his right hand.
1740
1741“Sorry,” I said.
1742
1743“Wanted-” the Duke said.  He looked at the Infante.
1744
1745I filled in the gap.  I wanted to stop him.
1746
1747*****
1748
1749We were all at either side of the street now, with the Duke, Infante and the Calf in the center of the road.
1750
1751The Calf moved to finish off the Duke.  The Infante stopped it.
1752
1753“Was it-  worth it?” the Duke asked.
1754
1755“None of you survive the day,” the Infante said.  “‘Worth’ is irrelevant.”
1756
1757“Absolutely worth it,” I said.
1758
1759The Infante reached out for the Duke, using his plague-ridden hand to seize the man by the face.  There was almost surrender on the Duke’s face as he was seized.  No fight, no effort to defend himself.  He’d spent all he had.
1760
1761No.  Not quite.  He reached out and grabbed the Infante’s arm, brought a leg around and hooked the Infante’s.  He was holding on, burdening the High Noble, hampering him so we could run.
1762
1763That didn’t stop the Infante for telling the Calf to come after us.  It barely hampered the Infante from turning, walking as if there was barely any obstruction.
1764
1765But he wasn’t running.  That counted for something.
1766[/QUOTE]
1767
1768[/SPOILER]
1769
1770[SPOILER="The Baron"]
1771The Baron's description and Noble anatomy
1772[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Boys]
1773The Duke and the new noble were wearing hunting clothes, pants clinging to their legs, long jackets.  The noble in the Duke’s company was younger, no older than eighteen, as far as age could be estimated by appearance when a noble was concerned.  He had a pointed, jutting chin, stood tall at seven feet, narrow and long-necked.  A swan turned human.  Graceful, imperious, and, Gordon knew, swans were absolute bastards when met face to face.
1774
1775Like the Duke, the man’s hair was long and golden, but his hair was straight and flowed straight down his back, more supple than hair should be.  He wore a checkered scarf in yellow and black.  His teeth, as he smiled, seemed wrong somehow, too uniform and white, and his fingers were especially long, poking out of the embroidered sleeve of a hunting jacket.  The nails were long and sharp, and the fingers were marked with jewelry.
1776
1777He wore a sword, Gordon noted.  Noble anatomy, modified to be stronger, faster, inhuman by most measures.  Gordon couldn’t say why, but he had the vague sense that the man could and would draw and use that sword to dispatch anyone who insulted him.
1778[/QUOTE]
1779[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]The Duke turned his attention to the Baron, taking his time in doing so.  The Baron was a snake of a man, and everything about him completed that particular picture.  Straight golden hair swept back from his hairline and straight down the man’s back, his checkered scarf conjured scales to mind, and his method of dress was tailored very close to his body, marking a very lithe, sinuous figure, complete with long, jeweled fingers.  The teeth, eyes, and jewelry the man wore were designed to draw the eye.  When he desired it, he could beguile the unwary, drawing the eye this way, that way, and then lashing out in the next moment.[/QUOTE]
1780
1781His position in the Hiearchy
1782[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Boys]
1783“This is the Baron Richmond,” the Duke said.  “A cousin.  We were near Brechwell when we heard of the situation in Brechwell.  Genevieve Fray spotted and effectively cornered.”
1784
1785Lower in status than the Duke by six orders of nobility, Gordon estimated.  He wouldn’t speak out of turn.  That was good.  Gordon could imagine the man establishing his presence through violence and the making of examples.
1786[/QUOTE]
1787
1788Hunting the monsters in the Bowels with the Duke
1789[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Boys]“We’ll be taking our leave.  I did promise Baron Richmond a hunt today, we’ll be visiting the underground labs to see what can be loosed.  Keep the Lambs separate, watch for their hand-signs, see to their appointments after or during, so we can be sure they won’t coordinate or correct one another’s stories.  Though I imagine they would have already, were they lying.”[/QUOTE]
1790
1791His height and armored clothing
1792[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7]
1793The Nobles were tall.  They liked that, being above the common people.  Mary was far from full grown, with a three-quarter foot to grow, if she compared herself to the woman who was supposed to be her mother.  The legs would be her best target.
1794
1795But that wasn’t the whole story.  The jackets the Duke and Baron had been wearing were heavy, and they flowed oddly as they walked.  There was something in them, armor.
1796[/QUOTE]
1797Baron's appearance and how he can mislead opponents
1798[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]The Duke turned his attention to the Baron, taking his time in doing so.  The Baron was a snake of a man, and everything about him completed that particular picture.  Straight golden hair swept back from his hairline and straight down the man’s back, his checkered scarf conjured scales to mind, and his method of dress was tailored very close to his body, marking a very lithe, sinuous figure, complete with long, jeweled fingers.  The teeth, eyes, and jewelry the man wore were designed to draw the eye.  When he desired it, he could beguile the unwary, drawing the eye this way, that way, and then lashing out in the next moment.[/QUOTE]
1799Showing some insight about the Duke
1800[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
1801Richmond turned his head toward the Duke.  He smiled.  “No.”
1802
1803“No,” the Duke agreed.  “How did you know, my friend?”
1804
1805“You have that look in your eyes that I’ve only seen when you’re in a fight.”
1806
1807“This is a fight,” the Duke said.  “Parry, thrust, move, counter-move.”
1808
1809“Fair point.  But I meant that you have that look about you that I’ve only seen on two occasions, when you stood in the midst of a sea of corpses.”
1810
1811Did he?  The Duke wondered, studying his own expression with a calculated measure of where and how his facial muscles were arranged.
1812
1813Even I can learn something new from someone lesser like Richmond, he mused.
1814[/QUOTE]
1815
1816Sensing someone approaching
1817[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]The Duke sensed someone approach the tent, and turned.  The Baron and Baronet twins looked over, as well.[/QUOTE]
1818
1819More about his clout and personality
1820[QUOTE=Countign Sheep 9.13]The Baron had less clout than the Duke did, but he had less reason to keep up appearances.  It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he could take issue with someone and then slap them down.[/QUOTE]
1821
1822More about his appearance and battle armor
1823[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.3]
1824The Baron Richmond didn’t look like a person at all.  Too tall, his features alien, but not in a way I could pin down.  His hair was too fine, perhaps, moving like gossamer rather than hair, moving in a very ethereal way in the wind.
1825
1826He was dressed for battle, with a cape and pauldrons that wrapped around his upper body, concealing torso and arms, a helmet with gold tracing, and boots with the same.  The end of a scabbard was visible below the end of the cape.
1827[/QUOTE]
1828
1829Lifting Sy up by the hair one handed
1830[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.3]He nodded, took one step to bridge the distance between us, and seized me by the hair.  When he lifted, my feet left the ground.[/QUOTE]
1831
1832Has faith in his doctors
1833[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.3]“I meant it,” the Baron said.  “Do what you will with him.  I’m taking the other one back to my tent to question.  Don’t kill him, my orders about his eye have to stand for at least a few years more.  Break him, or take him apart, so long as he can be unbroken and put back together.  The doctors are good enough that anything short of plunging a knife into his heart will be fine, I imagine.”[/QUOTE]
1834
1835Seeing through Sy's play-acting and surprising Sy
1836[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
1837In the haze of pain, my head still throbbing, I drew a vague series of connections between the thought of the heart, what the twins were saying, the blood that still dripped and trickled from my eye, and the sound of battle.
1838
1839“My lord,” I said.
1840
1841“A brave lad, you are,” the Baron answered, so quick to utter the words that it was as if he was pouncing on me.  “Don’t tell me you dare to ask for mercy.”
1842
1843“We know where the other Lambs might be, my lord.  Or the general area.  We can signal them.  But we need soldiers to get that far in.  I’d say they might have other information, but I’m not sure.  It would, at least…”
1844
1845I hesitated.
1846
1847“I’ve been a member of the courts long enough to know when someone is trying to manipulate me.”
1848
1849“My lord, It would mean that your noble sisters, miladies, would not have to share.”
1850
1851“Let’s pretend you’re not spinning a web of deceit in front of me.  What do you want for this?  Again, little Lamb, I stress that we’re pretending you’re not being canny.”
1852
1853He was speaking through grit teeth, not because of any emotion, but more as if he was holding himself back.  I could imagine him plunging that sword into my back, just for the satisfaction of the act.
1854
1855And all of the stitched soldiers in the area would watch it happen with dead eyes, and the soldiers would look away and tell themselves that I’d done something to deserve it, because that made life easier to live.
1856
1857The Crown and the Academy made monsters like this, and it made rules and hid things that kept these monsters from seeing true justice.
1858
1859“Mercy, my lord.  Less, in any event, if you would be so kind.  I lost my best friend a year ago, and I just lost my eye.  I’m not a fighter, I’m a manipulator who seems to be surrounded more and more by people he can’t manipulate, and I manage, I do good work when I’m able, but the drugs I take, I pay for them in agony.  I’m so tired of hurting, my lord, please.”
1860
1861He didn’t answer.
1862
1863“Brother,” the Twins spoke in unison.
1864
1865“I know what you’re going to say.  He’s play-acting, at least in part.  I hope you realize that, you two.”
1866
1867“I realize,” one of the twins said.  The other added, “But he’s clever enough to make a good offer all the same.”
1868
1869Something in the distance screeched.
1870
1871“I think attempting to manipulate a noble warrants the worst sort of punishment,” the Baron said.  “The Duke of Francis thinks this child’s manipulative play is entertaining, and it reminds him of home… but when I’m reminded of home I want to spit.”
1872
1873“Do you know what else warrants punishment, dear brother?” one twin asked.
1874
1875“Underestimating a noble.  If he thinks he can try something against us, exhausted, soaked through, bleeding and missing an eye, then why don’t we oblige him?  If he’s asking, he doesn’t even know what the two of us are.”
1876
1877That last sentence sounded so amused that it alarmed me.  Despite myself, I looked up, shooting a look at the twins.
1878
1879It was, perhaps, that glance that won the Baron over.  He smiled.
1880[/QUOTE]
1881[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.3]
1882“I can’t find the place on my own, my lord,” I said.  I looked at Jamie.  “I need him.”
1883
1884The group turned their eyes to Jamie.
1885
1886“You’re the one with memory,” the Baron said.
1887
1888“Yes, my lord.  I know the area and the layout.  I remember where we last saw them and know the locations they might be in.”
1889
1890“Then he stays, and you go,” the Baron said.
1891
1892That caught me off guard.  With the pain and distraction, I wasn’t thinking straight, and I’d let myself fall into an obvious trap.  Baron Richmond wasn’t a great contender in the political arena, but he didn’t miss anything.
1893
1894I didn’t have a ready answer, and I couldn’t have voiced it anyway, without it being more manipulation and weaker footing for me and for us.
1895[/QUOTE]
1896
1897The Baron went for the mundane Noble route
1898[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
1899The Baron Richmond wasn’t as impressive as the Duke, because he hadn’t had the same clout, power, and money that was needed to get the very best doctors for the very best surgeries and experiments.  Richmond had gone the mundane route, and mundane remained very, very impressive, paling only in comparison to the likes of the Duke.  The Twins had been taken down the experimental route, more monstrous than a self-respecting noble would allow, riskier and more questionable.
1900
1901But still the very best sort of work that was out there.  The sort of work I suspected Ibott  wanted to do.
1902[/QUOTE]
1903
1904Baron surviving a massive explosion
1905[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.16]
1906The soldiers caught up with us, a corpse slung over one shoulder, another two soldiers carrying a skull and canvas bags that looked heavy.
1907
1908“Those are the explosives?” I asked.  A lot.
1909
1910“Mauer said yes, and if we’re walking away from this, we’re not bringing all of this with us, so we might as well be thorough.  Brought someone who knows this stuff.”
1911
1912*****
1913
1914“That building’s front door is open,” I said, pointing at what looked to be a store in the middle of a residential area.  The building was more ramshackle than some, with three floors and an open roof.  Tattered lengths of cloth with the ends tied bound together were draped over the roof, poked up into a point above by a long pole, a tent-like arrangement to keep water off the roof itself.  “We’ll set up up top.”
1915
1916*****
1917
1918Mauer’s soldiers set the bags at the roof.  One unwound a coil of wire, an electric fuse, and led it down the stairs, tucking it in along a wooden strut that ran down the stairwell.
1919
1920With a prybar, he freed one step from the surrounding boards and wall, lifting it straight out.  Placing it back down, he put something metal between the step and the nearest board.  When a foot came down on the step, it would compress the metal, create a connection, and in that same moment, the explosives in the bags would blow.
1921
1922“Head outside,” he said.  “I have to attach the wire.  If a mistake happens at any point, it’s here.”
1923
1924*****
1925
1926One of Mauer’s men spoke, “He’s here.”
1927
1928I wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
1929
1930You took my eye, you bastard.  Let’s see how much of you this takes out.
1931
1932A whistle cut through the air.  Not Jamie’s.
1933
1934It was the Baron, calling out to his sister.  Crown soldiers spoke, calling out to each other.  The door banged against the wall as they shoved their way through.
1935
1936I heard the whispered words, “He’s not going inside.”
1937
1938I closed my eyes.  I listened, and I heard the Baron call out.  “Sisters!”
1939
1940His voice rang through the night.
1941
1942I prayed, not because I truly believed, but because in this moment, I really would have liked it if there was a bloody, vengeful sort of god looking down on us.
1943
1944The explosion was a rollicking walloping series of hits, one after another, building on each other to rip away all my hearing and most of my breath.  As my hearing returned, my vision went, dust rolling out to blanket everything and choke the air.
1945
1946“Move!” one soldier called out.  A hand shoved me.  The soldiers ran, and the Lambs were dragged with them.  “That hit him!”
1947
1948“He’s dead!?” Lillian cried out.
1949
1950“No, but that’s going to hurt ‘im!”
1951
1952“We should go back, finish him, pick through-”
1953
1954“No!” was the one word response.
1955
1956“If we can damn well finish him off-”
1957
1958“He’s a noble!  If he needs finishing off, he’s too dangerous to get near!  Only noble that’s safe to be near is a dead one!”
1959
1960Frustration welled up in me.
1961
1962“If he’s hurt, he’s not going to be attacking!  It’s good, it’s good!”  A hand clapped on my back.
1963
1964He’d tried to call out to his sister twice, and when he hadn’t gotten a response, he’d been suspicious.
1965
1966We were letting him live, and I knew for an absolute fact that the man would recover and he would plague us.
1967
1968*****
1969
1970The Baron was seated, one of his sisters seated behind him.  He didn’t stand as we made our approach.  He’d donned a cloak, and wore it over his head and shoulders.  A metal brace had been fit over one arm, screws puncturing flesh, and his exposed flesh was alternately bandaged and scalded.  The eyes behind the bandages were open so wide that I had to wonder if his eyelids had been burned away.  That illusion was broken as he blinked.
1971
1972But it wasn’t all burns.  There was an awful lot of damage that seemed like there had been more tearing and ripping of the skin, connective tissue, and the flesh.  I could study the wounds and try to envision how they had come about, telling myself a story in reverse, and the mental image that came to mind was of the Baron half-buried by rubble, tearing himself free, with such force that skin came off.  Things had been put back into a roughly approximate position and held there with the bandage, then covered with fresh clothes, primarily black and green.
1973[/QUOTE]
1974
1975Baron taking notice of weaknesses or making his own
1976[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.18]
1977“I’m not offering you the Lambs,” Mauer said.  “I arranged this because I was asked to.  By that girl there.”
1978
1979The Baron fixed his bulging eyes on Emily.  She didn’t flinch.  She was steel, from head to toe.  Too rigid, but it was better than backing down.  I looked at her as he saw her: a girl, horned, clawed, teeth sharpened, eyes altered, her muscles changed to make her faster, more powerful, her skin marked with tattoos.
1980
1981“Trash,” the Baron said.
1982
1983She reacted slightly, surprised.  I saw the Baron’s eyes taking that in.  She would pay for that tiny reaction in spades, because he would know he could demean her.  I hated him a little more for that.  Emily had earned my respect in the time I’d spent with her.  But the Baron was a monster, one that fed on weakness and created weaknesses where they didn’t exist.  He’d cut straight to my core, and I’d been fighting monsters since I could remember.
1984[/QUOTE]
1985
1986Modulating his expression for his own purposes
1987[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.18]“And here I was, trying to be fair,” the Baron said.  Eyelids appeared around the bulging orbs and then narrowed, giving him a sudden, sly look.  His facial features had been altered to give him finer control over them.  The bulging look up to this point had been at least partially intentional – the other part would be the sheer damage to his face.[/QUOTE]
1988
1989How guarded his home is
1990[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.9]
1991“The Baron?  His behavior,” I said.
1992
1993“Stays in Richmond House, most days.  The house is guarded by leftover Academy projects, warbeasts and weapons that don’t crowd the place up too bad.  The ones that aren’t housetrained, bigger and nastier, they lurk in the woods between here and there.  The screw-ups go to him in wagons that get checked at three different places, near start, middle, and end.  When there haven’t been enough or when Baron or Twin get in a mood, they get in their wagons and come down here in a procession.  About twice a year, at unpredictable times, there’ll be other nobles with them.  Those are the worst times.  Nobody’s safe, and they usually want a lot of people.”
1994
1995*****
1996
1997“Church with no symbols.  It’s a symbol unto itself, isn’t it?  A slap in the face of people who are most in need of the church as a refuge.  Hollow, empty, bastardized.”
1998
1999“Something like that,” Mcormick said.  His daughter had walked over to him, where he still sat in the chair.  He put his forearm across her narrow shoulders.  “Some used to make a habit of dropping flowers in front of the door, as surreptitiously as they could.  The Baron’s doctors invented a beast that could sniff people out by the oils their fingers left on the flowers or something.  It’s not the first time that something has happened with one of the churches that are around town.  They’re there to tempt us, to bait us.  All of this, it’s a game to that noble, a farce.”
2000
2001*****
2002
2003“When and if he comes into town, it’ll be with a guard?  How many?” Mary asked.
2004
2005“Varies.  Fifty soldiers.  Plus some beasts his doctors have put together.  Four or so wagons, they’re nearly identical, each with soldiers standing on the outside, one hand on a railing, another on their gun.  I’d give you particulars, but they don’t come down this road often enough for me to have seen ’em.  They’ll park, soldiers get out, so they’re all ready with guns up, some protecting the Baron, some going after the family he’s targeting.  He’ll emerge only sometimes, protected by circled wagons and by a squadron of soldiers, and if he doesn’t leave someone behind with their Firstborn, the house will be left alone for a few days before the neighborhood gathers, assigns duties, and work together to clean up.  Once the house is scrubbed and the things moved out, someone else gets moved in.”
2006[/QUOTE]
2007
2008His new apparel and modifications
2009[QUOTE=In sheep's clothing 10.13]
2010The Baron arrived in the far corner of the Plaza from where we stood, and that was partially my intent.  He stood taller than the last time I’d seen him, which suggested modifications, and he looked positively regal.  In any other circumstance, the man might have been laughed at for dressing up to the extent that he was, but he had several advantages here.  The crowd was his, and he had the opportunity to meet and greet the important people before his enemies did.  This event, too, was all about him, and few would attack a man who was celebrating a wedding or engagement, whichever this was.
2011
2012He was tall, like the figures in myth were tall, pale, with sly eyes and straight golden hair.  The colors of Richmond were worked into his clothes, black intermingled with yellow for the lining, and emerald for the draping jacket and slacks.  He wore high boots, I noted, and I imagined that people would see that as reason to adopt the fashion.
2013
2014Provided the night went well for the Baron and the noble still lived.  No need to curry favor with a dead man, of course.
2015
2016His expectations of how the night would go clearly differed from mine; he wore a gold circlet.  It was a ballsy move, wearing something so close to being a crown or coronet, especially with other nobles due to show up.  It signaled ambition, and his confidence moving forward.  I could imagine five or ten different ways that he could use that one simple detail of what he wore on his head to shape the coming narrative.  Whether Fray or Mauer attacked or not, the relationships he sought to make or capitalize on with other lesser nobles, if he wanted to actually provoke someone…
2017[/QUOTE]
2018
2019Detecting Mary
2020[QUOTE=In sheep's Clothing 10.18]
2021We reunited with Mary and Chance, and Lainie ran up to her cousin, throwing her arm around him.
2022
2023“What happened?” Mary asked.
2024
2025“Ran into trouble.  It doesn’t matter,” I said.  “He saw you?”
2026
2027“I was quiet enough.  It’s like he has eyes in the back of his head.”
2028
2029“But did he see you?”
2030
2031“No,” Mary said.  “I ducked out of the way as his head turned.”
2032[/QUOTE]
2033
2034Had better doctors than the Twins
2035[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.18]He had better doctors than either of the Twins, and it had taken more than one Lamb to take out any of the Twins. [/QUOTE]
2036
2037Throwing a rapier hard enough to impale it into a wooden pew
2038[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.18]
2039He felt the weight of his rapier in his hand, as if testing it.  Then he hurled it.
2040
2041I didn’t move a muscle as the blade plunged into the pew nearest me, the end wobbling with the force of the impact.
2042
2043“Take it,” the Baron said.
2044
2045I glanced at the blade, but I didn’t move.
2046
2047“Take the sword, Sylvester.  I’ll wait.”
2048
2049I took a step forward, watching him, and reached up for the handle of the blade.  I tugged, and it didn’t come free.  I pulled again, and it moved down like a lever might, while the tip remained embedded.  A third tugged hauled it free.
2050[/QUOTE]
2051
2052Easily tossing around Sylvester and smashing a pistol to pieces with a swipe of his hand
2053[QUOTE=In sheep's Clothing 10.18]
2054His narrow, bright-green eyes mocked me.  He moved left, then right, fine clothes and too-fine hair moving like quicksilver around him.  Only his face seemed like it was in focus, steady amid hair and clothes that flowed almost like water might.  He moved forward, stepping up onto the seat of the pew.  He stepped onto the back of the next pew, then down onto the seat of it, cutting a direct path toward me.
2055
2056He picked up speed as he closed the distance.  Both hands on the rapier’s handle, I moved to intercept, ducking low, aiming for the lower stomach and groin, stabbing.
2057
2058He slapped the blade with the back of a hand, the slap carrying enough force that I felt it in my shoulder.  He closed the distance, stepping so close that the toes of his left shoe nearly touched the toes of my right one.
2059
2060His right leg, however, came up.  His knee caught me in the chin.  My teeth were already clenched tight together, and I wasn’t sure if that helped or not.  Teeth might have broken if my mouth had been open and driven closed, but as it was, the impact shook my head and its contents.  I tumbled to the ground, the rapier falling from my hand, and was left sitting in the leftmost aisle, staring up at the man, while the various candles around the church seemed to brighten until they blinded me.
2061
2062*****
2063
2064He was waiting patiently, as I reached for and found the rapier.  I wavered a little as I got to my feet and straightened.  My eye wandered.  Candida was still sitting on the stage, now with a glove removed, folded up, and pressed to the bleeding wound at her throat.  Beside her was my imagined Lillian, ever silent.
2065
2066The lights remained so bright I could barely see the Baron.  He walked toward me, confident.
2067
2068“I was raised being taught that we all have a place in the world, Sylvester,” the Baron said.  “But I’ve come to think of that as complete and utter tripe.  The world isn’t that inflexible.  We break new ground on a daily basis.”
2069
2070I made like I was going to retreat, then stepped in, swinging.  Again, he used his hand, striking at the flatter side of the blade, as if this was all proceeding in slow motion.  I was more prepared for it this time, and recovered enough to make a quick slash in the opposite direction.  This time, as his hand moved toward it, I turned the blade.
2071
2072He, too, changed the position of his hand.  With the same ease he might toss his hair with a movement of his hand, he moved the blade up and away, the flat of the blade momentarily sliding past knuckles and the back of his hand.  It was so forceful I nearly lost my grip on the blade as it went from being pointed in his general direction to being pointed the complete other way.
2073
2074Reaching down, he seized me by the collar.  With a heave, he lifted me and threw me into the pews, through one of the decrepit bodies that decorated it.  Dust and death filled my nostrils, while wood found its way into my solar plexus and the side of my neck, leaving me groaning and coughing.
2075
2076“Advancement is possible.  So is falling,” he said.  “And both are very difficult, painful things.  Change always is.”
2077
2078He found where the rapier had fallen, put his foot on it, and kicked it, sending it skidding across the floor to me.
2079
2080“From the moment I was reborn as a proper noble, taken apart and put together as something greater, I grabbed hold of that idea.  The pain and difficulty that go hand in hand with change.  I was bitter, Sylvester.  I realized how this system really works and where I stood in the grand scheme of it all.  I saw the injustice of it, and it ate away at me.”
2081
2082*****
2083
2084I pulled myself to my feet, pulling away a tattered bit of cloth that had transferred from the body to me before I reached down for the sword.  I coughed.
2085
2086“And here I’d wondered if you’d taken something into your mouth, hoping to spit it at me at an opportune moment.  Not with that cough, though.  What was I saying?” he asked.  He was approaching along the pew.  He hooked one toe at the base of the skull of the body I’d just been tossed through, flicked it into the air, and caught it with one hand.  ”  They saw me as dangerous, so they hobbled me even further.  Put me here.”
2087
2088He punctuated ‘here’ by throwing the skull, straight down to the ground.  It shattered.
2089
2090As I retreated, trying to catch my breath, I moved past my imagining of Jamie.
2091
2092“And here I’ve rotted.  Stagnated.  I’m a symbol, don’t you see?  I’m a noble, seemingly nothing more, nothing less.  I’m here because they needed a noble here.  I’m expendable.  It would drive anyone mad with boredom, left to write letters and beg for permission to go elsewhere or to visit another noble.  Just me…”
2093
2094He moved quickly, three running steps without any warning he was doing it.  I only barely got the sword around in time to swing it in his direction, trying to ward him off.  He moved back just enough to let it move past him, then hooked one toe behind my ankle, toppling me to the tattered black carpet that ran through the middle of the church.  I wasn’t even fully settled there when he kicked me, sending me rolling.
2095
2096Mere pain was an old companion of mine.  I could deal with that more than my skull being rattled or my breath stolen away.  I gripped the sword harder.
2097
2098“Just me and the freedom to do with my little township what I wanted.  I latched on to that idea I’d been convinced of as I was reborn.  How closely linked pain and struggle are to greatness.”
2099
2100I stood again, one hand at my chest where he’d kicked me, rapier again in hand.
2101
2102*****
2103
2104“Don’t worry, Sylvester,” the Baron said.  “I’m not one of those fanatics who put far too much stock in Wallace’s Law or anything of the sort.  I’m not going to say that I’m creating better people by doing what I do to them.  I simply like to see people suffer, to see how it unfolds, what it reveals about them.  And I like to see what it lacks, compared to the suffering that goes hand in hand with greatness.  That is where I find you amusing, Sylvester.  You straddle that line.  So talented, yet so small.”
2105
2106Small.  I did feel small.  The hits I’d taken to my stomach and chest were making it hard to breathe, and that paralleled the crushing loneliness I’d been feeling for a while now, compounding it, as if I could no longer shake it or turn my mind from it.
2107
2108*****
2109
2110He stepped close.  I moved the sword, then abandoned it, ducking in closer, too low to be in his reach, as I freed the knife from my boot.  I turned, looking to hamstring, cut the Achilles tendon, for any vulnerable area-
2111
2112His hand caught mine, effectively trapping my hand as it gripped the knife handle.
2113
2114He squeezed, and I felt the strain in the small bones of my hands, fingers threatening to break and dislocate as he ground them against the knife handle.
2115
2116My free hand went back, seizing the gun I’d put behind my belt.  I brought it around as fast as I could, and he struck it with his hand.
2117
2118Fragments of the gun scattered the pews and grounds of the church, struck so hard the chamber, barrel, and handle had broken free of one another.
2119
2120He backhanded me across the face, very casually, then slapped me.
2121
2122Before I could even see straight again, he backhanded me again.  I moved my head, trying to put myself out of his reach, and was struck across the head.  The jewelry on his fingers had cut me in a dozen places.  I had blood running through my hair and down my face.
2123
2124*****
2125
2126The Baron let go of my crushed hand, and I felt my numb fingers losing their grip on the knife.  I caught it with my other hand just before it fell to the ground, and we were so close together that I knew he hadn’t seen.
2127
2128*****
2129
2130I stabbed, and his forearm caught mine, deflecting the blow.  The hand at the end of that forearm caught me by the side of my head.
2131
2132Again, he threw me bodily into the pews, but this time, the throw coincided with pain that swallowed up all vision in my good eye, filling it with darkness and stars.  I felt blood flowing.
2133
2134I blinked, struggling to make out the situation and surroundings.
2135
2136I could see him dusting himself off with one hand, the other hand held at a distance.  He let the ragged bit of tissue fall to the floor and then crushed it beneath his heel.  My ear, torn from my head.
2137
2138“What did you expect, Sylvester?  That you would taunt me with the death of my last sister, and I would bare my neck, show you a moment of weakness?  I know where I stand in the grand scheme of things, I know where I come from and where I’m slated to go.  Where I was slated to go, that is, before you and Mauer handed me the key to a greater future.  My sisters… are not so important.  I have no attachment to them.”
2139
2140Again, he made his approach.
2141
2142He wanted to break me.  He sought to keep on giving me chances and taking pieces of me, until I finally gave up.  Why?  To see some glimmer of what lay within me?  For amusement?  Because I was the closest thing he had to a peer?
2143
2144*****
2145
2146“I’ll wrap this up, change clothes, and go to greet the nobles.  If you’re the only troublemaker to show, I’ll find that disappointing, but I’ll find other ways to amuse myself, knowing that the bastards who’ve been lording their power over me will soon get theirs.”
2147
2148“I know,” I said.  I backed away as he approached, and my injured face managed a smile.  “I talked to the Infante before I came here.  He arrived early, and I told him what you were doing.”
2149
2150I got to watch as his expression transformed.  The amusement dripped away.
2151
2152“I see.  I suppose I should deal with you now and handle that.”
2153
2154There were no more games, and there was no more intent to break.  He stalked toward me, a gleam of murder in his eyes, and I didn’t have the tools to stop him.
2155
2156He grabbed me by the throat, lifting me off the ground.
2157
2158Then, with a remarkable sort of ease, the heel of his hand pressed in and something gave, taking away my ability to breathe.
2159
2160There were no final words from him.  No mockery, no comments.  His green eyes stared into mine.  I tried to breathe and to cough, and only produced the wheezing crackle of air pushing hopelessly against cartilage.  I could breathe, but only a whisper’s worth, not enough to survive.
2161[/QUOTE]
2162
2163Baron gains Candida's Immortality and how his adjustments mean it'd take an hour of hitting him with a sword to behead him.
2164[QUOTE=Bleeding Edge 8.1]
2165“What alterations, sir?” Gordon asked.
2166
2167“She’s immortal,” Adelaide said.
2168
2169“Immortal, ma’am?” Lillian asked.
2170
2171“We don’t know the particulars.  The doctor who started her on the regimen left for the war and hasn’t yet returned, though we’ve corresponded by mail.  Exceptional fellow.  He says that the drugs he’s given her will extend her lifespan indefinitely, and give her some healing ability.  If it doesn’t, or if there are problems, she should last long enough for care to advance to the point of being able to fix it.”
2172
2173“Some experiments have been done that seem to be pointing in that direction, sir, but the level of care required is high,” Lillian said.  “Immortality exists, but it’s paradoxically fragile, enough that even many nobles avoid it.”
2174
2175“Her doctor thinks he’s unraveled it, and our daughter was the test subject.  We provided the funding.  There was and is a massive chance she’ll die from complications, but the chance to pioneer something like this, we had to take it.  Setting her above the rest.”
2176[/QUOTE]
2177[QUOTE=Bleeding Edge 8.11]
2178Drake’s eyebrows went up.  “Immortal?”
2179
2180“Not like that,” Candy said, too quickly.  “It can die, we can hurt it.  Just like I can be hurt.  I can die.”
2181
2182The ‘I think’ was on her lips, left unspoken.
2183
2184“What are they talking about?” Drake asked.
2185
2186“They’re using the wrong word.  Immortal isn’t right.”
2187
2188“It’s the word your parents used,” Gordon said.
2189
2190“It’s not accurate!” Candy raised her voice.  She looked more wild animal than person for an instant, in the flare of anger.  She appeared to try and visibly calm herself down.  “No.  They hired doctors to experiment on me, they extended my lifespan, made me more susceptible to some problems and resistant to others.  They’re trying to pass it off as something it isn’t.”
2191
2192“Extended it how much?” Drake asked.  “Ten years?  Twenty-five?  Fifty?  A hundred?”
2193
2194“I don’t know!” Candy shouted, wheeling on him.  “I won’t know until I get there!  If I get there.  The doctor said I might become ugly and said I might lose my mind to a kind of treatment-related dementia before I’m forty and then in the next breath he said I might live three-”
2195
2196She stopped herself.
2197
2198She remained there, panting for breath.
2199
2200“Three?”  Drake asked.  “Unless you were misspeaking, and you were going to say three-ty years…”
2201
2202Candy didn’t budge an inch or give an answer.
2203
2204“Three hundred?” he asked.  “Three thousand?”
2205
2206“Three hundred,” Candy said.  “At a minimum, the doctor thinks.  Probably longer.  Maybe three thousand.  Maybe thirty thousand.  I don’t know.  I think the doctor didn’t know either, he said one thing to my parents and another to me, I got the impression he didn’t care so much about what my parents thought, so long as I outlived them and they never saw if it was real immortality or not.  All I know-”
2207[/QUOTE]
2208[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.18]“That sword won’t do you any good, Candida,” the Baron said.  “My organs are protected.  My throat can’t be cut, and you’ve given me immortality, you stupid girl.  You’ll have to whittle at me for an hour, and neither of you have the strength to do that.  If either of you move one step closer, I’ll call my guards.”[/QUOTE]
2209
2210His sword can penetrate his own armor
2211[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.18]
2212Both of his hands seized me, fighting me, up until Candida managed a second thrust, piercing his lower chest.  I managed to sink it in as deep as it would go.  I’d managed the right angle.  Past the bone inside the eye socket, and into the cavity where the brain was.
2213
2214He froze.  The rapier blade kept one of his arms from moving to intercept me.  The other groped me, searching for a hold.
2215[/QUOTE]
2216
2217Resistant to poisons
2218[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.18]The Baron would be mildly resistant to most poisons[/QUOTE]
2219
2220Baron was once a clever Noble rising the ranks
2221[QUOTE=Thicker Than Water 14.5]The Infante set his eyes on me.  “Richmond was clever, once upon a time.  He could have climbed a fair way up the ladder, done more with himself, and done more for the Crown.  But he learned the wrong lessons along the way.  Tragic, but all too common.  His death at your hands was just.”[/QUOTE]
2222
2223[/SPOILER]
2224
2225[SPOILER="The Baronets"]
2226
2227A description of their appearance 
2228[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
2229The Baronets were identical in a way twins and even clones rarely were, each in old fashioned white gowns with fur collars, with pale, straight  blond hair.  They sat shoulder to shoulder, one with a hand in the other’s lap, caressing, the other with a hand at her sister’s chin, tracing the bottom lip with a gloved finger.  Both were leaning forward in the chairs that had been set down for them for a view, but not yet standing or intruding.
2230
2231In unison, their eyes flicked up at the Duke.  In unison, they smiled, hands going down to their own laps as if they were small children that had been caught doing something naughty.
2232
2233He didn’t particularly care.  In fact, he would rather they kept to such things if it kept them amused.  Their other form of amusement involved payments to families and quiet threats to ensure those families didn’t ask any questions about the whereabouts of their loved ones.  He didn’t have to busy himself with such things, but the people who worked for him did, and it was so much trouble to go to for a pair of bastards.
2234[/QUOTE]
2235The infamy of the Baronets
2236[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Boys]
2237“My sisters will want to participate as well,” the Baron said.
2238
2239“Do you think so?” the Duke asked.
2240
2241“They’ve been so bored, and have complained about being left out of the hunting trip.”
2242
2243“Very well, the twins as well.”
2244
2245The twins.  The words were akin to a bell in Gordon’s memory.
2246
2247Gordon had heard of the twins.  To be exact, he’d heard about them in the context of the mad nobles.  On the flip side, mention of mad nobles as a general topic invariably meant mention of the twins.
2248[/QUOTE]
2249
2250More on their behaviors
2251[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 7 Girls]The Twins were torturers with a retinue of doctors and madmen who catered to their whims.  The bodies might well be on display.  What was left of them, if they were lucky enough to be dead.[/QUOTE]
2252Seeming to glide even over uneven terrain
2253[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
2254“Stand.  Step closer, and have a look for yourself,” the Duke said.
2255
2256They stood.  Rather than walk, they seemed to glide, even on the uneven terrain.  They found positions on either side of their brother, hands falling on different positions on his body as they gazed out over the landscape of Lugh.
2257[/QUOTE]
2258
2259Sensing someone approaching
2260[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]The Duke sensed someone approach the tent, and turned.  The Baron and Baronet twins looked over, as well.[/QUOTE]
2261
2262The Baronets appearance, bloodlust, and uncaring of weather
2263[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.3]
2264His bastard sisters.  I had nothing against bastards, I was probably one myself, but for the nobles, those things mattered.  The Baron Richmond was disenfranchised by virtue of his lower status.  Too powerful to deal with the common people on any level, too low in status to wield any meaningful power.  The bastard twins were below him in status.  Were it not for their brother’s continued hard work, they might have found an early grave to assassins or other subtleties.
2265
2266They were beautiful, I had to admit, wrapped in heavy coats, though theirs had albino wolf pelts around their otherwise bare shoulders, and were a stark, startling white.  Pale skin, pale fur, and white cloth that surrounded them and with the bare shoulders, suggested they weren’t even dressed beneath the overcoats.
2267
2268They reminded me of Helen, if I imagined a Helen with more bloodlust, and the inability or an unwillingness to suppress it. Their hands were all over their brother.
2269[/QUOTE]
2270
2271More about their bloodlust and controlled movements
2272[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2273We were flanked by the twins and a squad of soldiers.  The soldiers I could deal with, if the cards fell down right.  The noble twins, however, I wasn’t sure how to handle that.
2274
2275I’d drawn them this far using sadism.  Now, to look at them, or to look at one of them, since it was too obvious when I looked to the one to my left, I could see an energy in her stride.  Her eyes were alert, and she swishedmore than she had earlier, in her brother’s company.  The way she moved played with the flow of her coat, and with what must have been a massive weight in fabric, that simple playfulness utilized more strength than Jamie and I had between us, too.  The placement of her feet wasn’t automatic, but chosen.
2276
2277I’d seen that swish in Mary, and I’d seen the predatory alertness in Helen.
2278
2279Another person in my situation could have taken the same clues and suggestions and ended up with one of a dozen different conclusions, even someone else with more years of studying people under their belt than I’d spent on the Crown’s green earth.  The less talented ones would have read the added movement as annoyance, dissatisfaction, irritation, ill temper, or drugs.  The Twins were hard to read, and their expression didn’t suggest anything positive or negative, but bias and a few misleading elements like the periodic use of nails as the one caressed my scalp and the tension in her hand could have thrown someone off.
2280
2281The more talented ones would have read it as excitement, childlike enthusiasm, playfulness or simple restlessness.  There were only three people I’d ever met who I suspected understood people well enough to guess at something like arousal or hunger.  If I hadn’t had the benefit of knowing Helen or Mary, I might have been one of them.
2282
2283But I did have the benefit.  Putting the two together, that mix of confidence and an aching desire to stretch their muscles and act, with that bizarre mix of hunger and arousal?
2284
2285It wasn’t an emotion most humans had any experience with.  Bloodlust.  It only existed when killing and hurting were an intrinsic part of one’s makeup, and the need to exercise it became a need as fundamental as eating and breathing.  The rush, the intensity, it left one wanting to feel the sensation again.
2286[/QUOTE]
2287
2288Knowing that the Lambs were leadign them into a trap
2289[QUOTE=Enemy Arc 8]
2290I forced myself to unclench my hands, and with communication with Jamie being so limited, not wanting to move my hands so much that the Richmond Twins might notice, I could only keep it in one sign.
2291
2292Aggression.
2293
2294It was a sign in the abstract, and while we’d used it for regular activity and for combat and other encounters at the outset, as we’d developed more accurate gestures we’d relegated it mostly for conversation, to encourage someone to take a more in-their-face approach to arguing with someone, to lean on them more, to attack if an opportunity was seen.
2295
2296To sign charge would have been misleading, as would attack or hurt.
2297
2298By avoiding eye contact, leaving the gesture, I was leaving it up to Jamie to read.  He had only one task at present, one avenue to act and one reason to speak.
2299
2300“Turn right.  Main road, my ladies,” he said.
2301
2302He pointed us in the direction of the plague men.
2303
2304In the corner of my eye, I saw the twin to my right smile.  I could only assume the other one was wearing a matching expression.
2305
2306The reaction was alarming.  I wanted them to open their mouths to talk to me, to taunt, and to shed some light on what was happening.  It was as if they were well and truly aware of what we were doing.
2307
2308Marching straight for the nearest fight.
2309[/QUOTE]
2310
2311Sensing nearby enemies
2312[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2313We went to one side of the street, half of the soldiers accompanying us.  Jamie and the other twin went to the other.
2314
2315My heart rate picked up as we separated.  My captor gestured something I couldn’t see, and the soldiers took cover, hiding.
2316
2317We were a few streets up from where the wagons had been.  The Twin that held me had her back to a wall between two houses, and held me close to that same wall.  The soldiers were packed into the dark, narrow space.
2318
2319“Shh,” the Twin told me.  There was no need for the instruction – Her hand on the back of my throat, she adjusted her grip, and the tips of her long fingers pressed down on my windpipe, blocking off my flow of air.
2320
2321All I could do was endure, let the anger burn in my head, and seek opportunity.
2322
2323Enemies are close, I thought.  You’re brimming with bloodlust, you want to fight, and you can’t do that with us in tow.  Not easily.  You separated us to make it harder for us to collaborate and break free while you’re stepping away to pick a fight.
2324[/QUOTE]
2325
2326Revealing her body and her hidden twin within her, hidden weapons inside of her, and enhanced hearing
2327[QUOTE=Coutning Sheep 9.4]
2328The captain of the unit that accompanied us reached back, and caught the bulk of her coat as she slowly shrugged it free, letting it fall.
2329
2330I turned my head to look, and saw her looking down at me from her relatively towering height.  All ivory skin.  To call it pale would have been a misnomer.  She was statuesque, and she was utterly naked beneath her coat.
2331
2332And, like the weaving cut of a jigsaw puzzle or a snake entwining her body, I could see a thread of gold.  It moved as she did, more a liquid vein than something more serious, tracing a corkscrew path down each arm, around her back, down one shoulder, and reaching down to short-trimmed pubic hair, before breaking apart to spiral down each leg.
2333
2334As she moved, the line, narrow as it was, broke in two.  The two halves of her body separated.  Her breast seemed to leap out and down, before wrenching itself to one side, the skull within stretched against skin as it pulled to one side, opening its jaw wide.  Half of a head of wet golden hair draped out and down to cover the nipple.
2335
2336The front of the breast was the back of the creature’s head, and that breast, however soft it might have looked, was probably hard to the touch.  Weighing no more than eighty pounds, the creature pulled away from the Twin, leaving her incomplete, nearly half of her body carved away with her none the worse for wear.  Half of the flesh of her legs and feet, half of the flesh of her arms, and much of her chest cavity didn’t exist.  It had simply been a spot for this thing to nestle into, a fit with but one seam.
2337
2338The thread of gold to beautify a singular scar for a monstrous alteration to her body.
2339
2340She arched her back, as if in ecstasy, and the thing reached into the void at one side of her body, grabbing hold of her spine, and withdrew two spikes of metal that ran parallel to it.  Like the claws of a praying mantis, the spikes were pointed at one end, sharp-edged, and had knobs of bone at the fatter end.  The creature that had pulled away pressed the ends of its upper limbs into the knobs until something clicked in a very solid way.  Three fingers were now at the ‘elbow’ of a long limb, the spike extending the rest of the way.  It moved on all fours, spikes against the ground.  It was twisted, gnarled, hunched over at the shoulders, a skeletal gargoyle charcoal in color with strips of ivory flesh winding around it, giving it form and the ability to move, crowned by long golden hair that seemed out of place on the figure, draping one side of its face and running down its back.
2341
2342“Were you listening, sister?” the Twin asked, her voice a mere breath.  “Did you hear them?”
2343
2344The thing rasped out a breath, gurgling.
2345
2346The twin bent down and kissed it on the forehead.  “That’s right.  Seven.  Don’t go and leave the seventh alive because you want to be fair.  Kill him together.”
2347[/QUOTE]
2348
2349Scaling buildings with enhanced speed and killing 7 men in a few seconds, showing explosive strength
2350[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2351The gargoyle climbed the wall so fast it might as well have flown.
2352
2353Up the space between buildings, touching both walls with overlong arms, onto the roof, and gone.
2354
2355Not one second later, I heard the heavy blast of an Exorcist rifle, then another.
2356[/QUOTE]
2357[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2358“Quadruplets, milady?” I asked.
2359
2360“No, Lamb,” she said.  “Our precious younger sisters,” she said.  She used that still-iron grip to usher me out into the street where the approaching plague men were.
2361
2362The seven men were dead.  Two of the skeletal gargoyle twins were perched amid the carnage, each a mirror to the other, licking blood off of the spikes with long tongues.
2363
2364The younger sisters would have been bastards too.  I could imagine how the story went.  Their Baron father, exasperated, might have decided they should be hidden, that the bitter and biting tongues of nobles talking to nobles couldn’t have more fodder.  With the other set of twins just three years older, ready for their first set of operations.  By the time people found out that there were two more, the Twins would have had a chance to demonstrate their effectiveness.
2365[/QUOTE]
2366[QUOTE=Coutnign Sheep 9.4]
2367Fear, respect, and anger mixed in equal quantity as we reunited with the other group, all the while approaching the carnage the golden-haired gargoyle-twins had wrought.  I could see the holes the spikes had punched in neck, chest, and stomach, and the places where slashing cuts hadn’t just torn throats out but had destroyed them.
2368
2369Explosive strength in a small package.
2370
2371One opened its mouth wide, and with only a dark membrane of flesh, there wasn’t much to keep that skull-face from opening all the way, sharp teeth bared.  The tongue stuck out and waggled at me, two feet long.
2372
2373The other only huffed for breath, the thin covering of gray-black skin at the two nostrils on the noseless face flaring open and closed repeatedly.  Neither had been hit by the shots from the advanced rifles.
2374[/QUOTE]
2375[QUOTE=Esprit De Corpse 5.1]A rifle with a bayonet hung behind his back.  I’d heard people refer to the particular brand of rifles as ‘exorcists’.  They were single-shot, heavy, ugly weapons, but they made big holes, they were easy to reload, they were reliable, and they were well made.  The name ‘exorcist’ had probably come up because they were supposed to put spirits to rest.  Or was it because they were supposed to help the little guys stop the real devils of the battlefields?[/QUOTE]
2376
2377Armored fur-coat and wearing it without much strain despite losing most of her mass
2378[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2379She’d been slender for a person of her stature, statuesque, and it had made me wonder to see the weight of her coat, the way it moved, and her strength in how she moved even as she wore it.  Armor panels within the fabric, I suspected.  Plates of steel or iron to catch bullets, perhaps, if not simply for effect.
2380
2381Seeing her now, with perhaps a third or two-fifths of her mass now scampering over rooftops, I was left to watch as she took the weight of the coat, barely sagging under the burden.
2382
2383She reached out to touch my face with an ivory ring and pinky finger, and the two added fingers and a thumb of charcoal-colored bone that had unfolded to extend from the gap.
2384[/QUOTE]
2385
2386How the Baronets went down the experiment route 
2387[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2388The Baron Richmond wasn’t as impressive as the Duke, because he hadn’t had the same clout, power, and money that was needed to get the very best doctors for the very best surgeries and experiments.  Richmond had gone the mundane route, and mundane remained very, very impressive, paling only in comparison to the likes of the Duke.  The Twins had been taken down the experimental route, more monstrous than a self-respecting noble would allow, riskier and more questionable.
2389
2390But still the very best sort of work that was out there.  The sort of work I suspected Ibott wanted to do.
2391[/QUOTE]
2392
2393The youngers weren't social creatures
2394[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2395The eyes, if there were any, were small and dark, in eye sockets filled with shadow.  No expressions beyond mouth opening and mouth closing, a unique language of gurgles and hisses.  Not social creatures.
2396
2397They were killing machines.  Fast, strong, with explosive strength.
2398[/QUOTE]
2399
2400The baronets communicating without speaking and enhanced sensing, stronger than Dog and Catcher, but also possible weaknesses
2401[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2402In an instant, both sets of Twins turned their heads to look in the same direction.  Two sets of eyes and two sets of skeletal eye sockets remained pointed in the same direction.
2403
2404A moment later, the younger twins were dashing through the darkness, never in a straight line.
2405
2406We continued our brisk walk, the Twin letting go of my neck to keep one hand on my head instead.
2407
2408Three civilians, dead before we even reached them, still-dripping blood painting the road and the faces of buildings on either side of them.  The same savage, efficient killing we’d seen with the plague men.
2409
2410On par with Dog and Catcher, or the Hangman, in terms of quality, if not stronger.  But there had to be drawbacks.  A reason the Richmond twins didn’t have the younger twins out at every opportunity.  If the Academy could make experiments that dangerous, there had to be a reason there weren’t a handful on every battlefield.
2411
2412That kind of explosive strength… perhaps a lack of stamina.
2413
2414Not enough to warrant them being this uncommon.  They probably needed a stern hand, too.  Or a particularly loving one.  Being raised with a sister, it was effectively full time care with a trainer.  One they were dependent on?  Were the elder twins a food source?  An absolute necessity?
2415
2416We found another pile of bodies that the younger twins had assaulted.  More civilians of Lugh, though these ones had guns.  Militants, enemy soldiers that might have fired on us.  They hadn’t even had a chance to pull a trigger before the six of them were cut down.
2417
2418******
2419
2420Impatience suggested I was right.  That the younger twins couldn’t be out and about for too long before they needed sustenance, rest, and the security of nestling into their elder sisters.
2421
2422There was a window of opportunity here.  Within a few minutes, maybe five, but no more than fifteen, the killing spree would end, and so would the elder twins’ patience.  But with the younger twins called back and put away to rest.
2423[/QUOTE]
2424
2425Noticing Sy's plan and his signing
2426[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]
2427“Sir,” I said, turning around.  In that same moment, he grabbed me by the shoulder.
2428
2429The Twins both looked at me, heads snapping around.  Alert, aware that I was trying something.
2430
2431With that simple fact, the plan had failed.  The lantern I wanted was behind me but out of reach of the hands that were shackled there.  I couldn’t pull away, grab it and make a move all at once, not without him reacting.
2432
2433I didn’t have an answer.  I gestured.  Help.
2434
2435“They’re communicating,” the twins spoke, their voices out of sync.  They could barely move while they took in their sisters.  “They’re using their hands.  Break their fingers.”
2436
2437“Yes, miladies,” the voices sounded in unison.
2438[/QUOTE]
2439
2440The enhanced senses
2441[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.4]The asymmetry mattered.  The tongue sticking out, the nostrils flaring.  The symmetry as the group had turned their head, all four Twins at once.  Their senses were altered.  They’d been aware of every threat well ahead of time. Taste, smell, with enhanced hearing across the board.[/QUOTE]
2442[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.5]“The Richmond twins were out of sync only once, and that’s when the little one was sniffing at the air, the other one sticking its tongue out,” I said.  “Why not act in sync?  I figured it would be letting their guard down, to stretch their tongues at the same time.  Why?  Senses.”[/QUOTE]
2443
2444Trying to determine the Baronets weaknesses, the incredible modifications done to them, and durable enough to take any bullets not from an Exorcist rifle with minimum damage
2445[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.7]
2446“Twins.  We need a countermeasure.  Think about it.  Jamie, explain the twins.”
2447
2448“They smelled you,” she said.
2449
2450The words came across as abrupt.  I was anticipating a certain pacing and pattern to her speech, I’d had years to get used to the measure of time she took to take things in, to wait to see if any of us spoke before adding her opinion.  It didn’t surprise me that she spoke, but it did catch me off guard.
2451
2452“Enhanced hearing and smell was Sy’s take, yeah,” Jamie said.  “Small, black, recessed eyes that they didn’t seem to rely on.  They interlock with their older sisters to form one complete, adult body-”
2453
2454“What color are they?”  Abrupt.
2455
2456“Black,” Jamie said.
2457
2458“Charcoal black,” I clarified.  “Dull, not glossy.”
2459
2460“Except for the parts where you see the skin, from the interlock,” Jamie added.
2461
2462Lillian nodded, taking in the words, even while her thoughts were somewhere else.
2463
2464“Is that important?” Jamie asked.
2465
2466“Maybe.  How much did their chests move when they stood still?  Did they stand still?”
2467
2468“They breathed harder than seemed necessary,” Jamie said.
2469
2470Had they?  I hadn’t noticed.
2471
2472******
2473
2474“…and bony pincers instead of arms.  They were attached after the fact,” Jamie was saying.  Right back onto the subject of the Twins.
2475
2476“That’s interesting.  Were the legs okay?  Flexible?”
2477
2478“The legs moved,” Jamie said.  “They were fast.”
2479
2480“But the feet.  How was the mobility in the feet?”
2481
2482“Feet were straight out, almost one solid piece from knee to the end of the foot, maybe fifteen degrees of movement at the knee and at the ankle, with toes giving them traction.”
2483
2484“Did the toes wiggle?  Or did they look like metal, or bone, or-”
2485
2486“I didn’t see.  Puddles, and I wasn’t focused on the feet when there weren’t puddles.”
2487
2488“I’m getting this mental picture, but I’m not sure if my imagination is running away with me,” Lillian said.  Her voice was breathy, like she hadn’t taken in a full proper lungful of air before leaping into the thought.  She took in a partial breath, then cut it off to say, “It’s really hard to tell if I’m imagining it or understanding it.”
2489
2490“What are you thinking?” I asked.
2491
2492“I’m imagining a problem with oxygen.  The integration would take time to get right, they’ve got very contained physiologies with very dense bone, blood flow is low, redirected, or they went with another means of oxygen absorption altogether.  It would take time to get right, and it could go wrong easily, with catastrophic consequences.  The extremities nearly withered away, and in the case of the arms, weren’t salvageable or weren’t salvageable enough.  Chop them off, give them weapons.  Legs with the thicker bones were salvaged, and or they rely on strength and flexibility in the hip over the legs.”
2493
2494“Okay,” I said.  “How can we use that?”
2495
2496“That they made it work at all is incredible.  They can probably take any bullet that isn’t from an exorcist, with minimal damage.  No vital areas, fast, strong, with big bursts of energy.  When they plug into their sisters, they borrow blood flow.”
2497[/QUOTE]
2498
2499More of the damage they do
2500[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.7]A body, a recent death.  The corpse had been demolished, pieces of skull scattered across road, with massive puncture wounds I could have thrust a hand into.[/QUOTE]
2501
2502Ambushing tactics
2503[QUOTE=Coutning Sheep 9.7]
2504“The twins,” Jamie said.
2505
2506“Oh no,” Lillian said.  Strange to hear her speak when I expected Lillian to be horrified into silence.
2507
2508“Came from the east,” I said.  “Sudden attack, only one dead?”
2509
2510“Could be tired,” Jamie said.  He looked to Lillian.
2511
2512“They probably are.  If they plug into their sisters for the sake of borrowing blood flow and re-oxygenating, then they-”
2513
2514“Or it’s bait,” I said, cutting her off only because I suspected she would ramble.  I wheeled around, eyes scanning nearby buildings and surfaces.  I held the jar higher.  “They smelled us on the people we sent running, now they’re hunting us, and a body lying in our path slows us down, buys a chance to get in position and pounce.”
2515
2516I spun around again, now facing what had been our rear.
2517
2518*****
2519
2520“Then keep it in mind, but let’s focus on what we need to focus on.  I think we’re surrounded.”
2521
2522“Can you even be surrounded by two people?” Jamie asked.
2523
2524“When they’re the Twins?  Yeah.” I asked.  My eyes scanned the surroundings.  Wood piles, a shed, the eaves of a rooftop.  The shadows played tricks with my eyes.  Lillian’s comment about imagination playing tricks with the mind was an accurate one.  I was seeing the shadows pull themselves into configurations resembling skulls, bones, and praying-mantis like spikes at the end of their forelimbs.
2525
2526I’d done the tests for Hayle that involved drawing the perfect, clean white rectangle in my mind’s eye.  The trick for focusing my senses was similar.  I had to sort the visual information, look for the flow of things.  The way buildings were constructed had a sense to them.  The things that littered the ground were the same.  There was a reasoning at play.
2527
2528Once I had that mental image, I could see more distinctly.  My brain was rapidly catching up with what I was trying to see, the bits of visual noise and dancing shadow fewer and farther between.  I could recognize the spots in my vision for what they were.
2529
2530Within an attic window that overlooked the streets, I saw the younger Twins.  They were interlocked in their own way, both at a small window, one practically hanging off of the other so it could occupy the narrow space, dark skull faces surrounded by darkness, peering through.
2531
2532Could they see after all, or were they simply there because it positioned them well to attack?  They were thirty metres out, across the street and two houses down, and if they wanted to attack, they could charge through the glass, run, and hit us within a few seconds.  If they wanted to be subtle about it, I was sure even their limited limbs could open the window, allowing them to slip out and close the distance while we meandered on, unaware, or focused on the body.
2533
2534My heart was pounding.
2535
2536I gestured for silence, and indicated the direction of the Twins.
2537
2538The Twins in the window didn’t move.
2539
2540Slowly, surely, Jamie raised the rifle to his shoulder, aiming.
2541
2542In the blink of an eye, the Twins in the window were gone.  They hadn’t exited through the window- they were moving through the home.  That put them on the street level, and it gave us zero idea of which direction they would come from.
2543
2544“Run!” I shouted, grabbing Lillian’s arm, hauling her with me.  Have to get to a better position.
2545[/QUOTE]
2546
2547For every meter people ran, they crossed five or six
2548[QUOTE=Coutning Sheep 9.8]Two enemies.  Faster than us, better coordinated, stealthier, stronger, and more aware of our environment.  For every meter of terrain we crossed, I had to imagine they crossed five or six.[/QUOTE]
2549
2550Fire might be effective?
2551[QUOTE=Coutning Sheep 9.8]
2552“Fire,” I said, “Will it work?”
2553
2554“Yes,” Lillian said.  Then, “No.”
2555
2556******
2557
2558“They won’t want to get burned, the pale flesh on the outside will be vulnerable,” Lillian said, finishing the thought she’d nearly dropped altogether.
2559
2560******
2561
2562“But if they really want to kill us,” Lillian continued, “The fire won’t really slow them down.  They’ll get burned and they’ll get patched up later.”
2563
2564The fire still worked, then.  At least until we upped the stakes.  The Twins were vain, and that had to extend to the younger Twins.  The older ones wouldn’t use them like this if they were going to turn around and go back to their brother with scars and scratches still needing serious attention.  They would avoid it where possible.
2565[/QUOTE]
2566
2567Stalking the Lambs, moving fast even while tired, and using second senses to avoid being aimed at
2568[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.8]
2569Too late.  I was already leading her and Jamie over to the corner of one street, where the rubble at the foot of one building burned like a bonfire, not yet spread to the building proper.
2570
2571I had the jar.  The contents could distract enough that Jamie could theoretically get a clean shot.
2572
2573Then what?
2574
2575The four of us stopped, standing near the burning rubble.  The light the fire cast was uneven and sporadic, with the rubble in and around it casting very misleading shadows.  My senses were already primed to pick the twins out of the background, but it was far from easy.
2576
2577The road formed an intersection here.  The far sides of the street had short walls and parked wagons, crates and fences.  There was far too much cover, but at least the roads were clear and open.  We stood on one corner, just beyond the sidewalk, with the bonfire roaring to one side, the damaged building looming high above us.  One of the less sturdy, sloping buildings, a tenement.
2578
2579*****
2580
2581My eye scanned the shadows around us.  The younger Twins should have caught up with us already.
2582
2583*****
2584
2585Hubris noticed the movement before I did.  I didn’t wait to verify with my own eye, hurling the bottle into the edge of the flame.  A roll of fire erupted, illuminating the Twin, who leaped back and away.  The spot in my vision that followed after the brighter light made it easier to lose track of the skeletal form as she disappeared into shadow.
2586
2587In my peripheral vision, I saw Lillian’s head turn.
2588
2589“No!” I said.  “Keep eyes in all directions!”
2590
2591Jamie had turned to look too.  He turned his head to look the other way, leveling the rifle, aiming, and I could see the change in his posture as he spotted the other Twin making her approach.
2592
2593Another second, and she would have impaled him.  As it was, she threw herself back from where the Executioner’s barrel pointed, landed with arm-spikes and feet on the ground, a ‘belly’ that was a knot of organs and dessicated flesh wrapped around a spine now facing the sky, and a moment later had bounded off to one side, without even flipping herself the right way around.
2594
2595And the fact that I was looking meant-
2596
2597I turned.
2598
2599No, the first one wouldn’t come from the same direction she had.  The side?  Too obvious.  The fire?
2600
2601I put my hand out, gesturing to Hubris to watch my back, as I turned my attention away from the most likely directions the first Twin might have used to approach.
2602
2603Peering past the thick smoke that rose from the fire, I could see the Twin scaling the wall, twenty feet above our heads.
2604
2605“Above our heads,” I said.
2606
2607I didn’t want to take my eye off her, but if there was a remote possibility of her throwing herself off the side of the building, over the flames and onto us, I needed to be able to do something.
2608
2609I turned my attention to the rubble, reaching, close enough to the flame that I thought my clothes might catch.  I found a length of wood and hauled on it, lifting-
2610
2611“She’s moving!” Lillian cried out, voice going higher.
2612
2613My gaze went up, even while I still hauled on the wood.  Too long to be a proper weapon, thin and supple, it was a baseboard from the house, or a long, grown piece of floorboard.  The end of it traced a half circle on the road to my right as I pointed the thing in a different direction.  Still, I was able to haul the end of it up, pointed toward the Twin.
2614
2615Not even a pointed length of wood.  There was a one in five chance, if she leaped, that I’d be able to put the end of the length of wood between her and her target.   The wood wouldn’t survive, but she would be knocked to the ground or knocked back into the fire.
2616
2617The twin on the surface of the building did move, and my heart leaped as I tried to track the potential angle of the jump, with zero depth perception to go by.
2618
2619Instead, she put her claws up onto a windowsill and climbed through.
2620
2621“They’re not moving as fast as they were,” Jamie said.  “They’re tired.”
2622
2623“They’re still moving pretty fricking fast,” I said.
2624
2625“Yeah,” Jamie said.  “They’re being careful.  This one over here has a second sense about my gun.  I start to move the gun to aim at her and she slips away, disappears.”
2626
2627Looking for a hole.
2628
2629******
2630
2631“Got eyes on one,” Jamie murmured.
2632
2633“I don’t know where the other is,” I said.
2634
2635Hubris didn’t seem to know either.
2636
2637“She’s upstairs,” Jamie said.  “She opened a window.  She could come jumping through, or she’s trying to draw the eye while she approaches from another direction.”
2638
2639“Right,” I said.  “Good.”
2640
2641They were going to circle us independently and attack the moment they saw an opportunity, and we would lose one of the Lambs.  I couldn’t think of a scenario where that wasn’t the case.  If anyone happened across us, Crown or rebellion, then the distraction would probably kill us.  If the elder Twins happened across us, then we would be as good as dead.
2642
2643I could break the jar of stink, but again, I had to ask myself what followed that.  The enemy would be distracted, Jamie would get one shot off, and we’d have another Twin or another in our midst.  All four of us would die.
2644
2645It was like a rhyme or litany in my head.  Every time I followed a train of thought, it led to the same line.  An echoing refrain of doom, gloom, and the end of this particular group of Lambs.
2646[/QUOTE]
2647
2648Another possible weakness
2649[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.8]
2650“Lillian,” I said, careful not to raise or lower my voice, “You had another idea.  You mentioned it a moment ago.  A way to counteract how the Twins work.”
2651
2652“Yes!” she said, too intense.  “I think!  But I need-”
2653
2654I was ready for the ‘but’, and cut her off.  “What is it?”
2655
2656“They need to have a way to open themselves up to their sisters.  They-”
2657
2658She stopped as Jamie startled, jerking his rifle a distance to his right.
2659
2660“Keep going!” I ordered.
2661
2662“They probably have sphincters or other controls that allow blood to come in from the connection to their sisters.  A chemical reaction.  If I had a chance to try a catch-all means of getting them to open themselves up, maybe their bodies would open the doors, with blood pouring out, or it would hamper their ability to reconnect with their sisters.  But-”
2663[/QUOTE]
2664
2665The Lambs being toyed with and juked by the baronets
2666[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.8]
2667It was a bluff, one more thing to keep them at bay.
2668
2669That same bluff came at a cost, because it drove them to attack sooner than later.
2670
2671The attack was an unexpected one.  I didn’t even see the Twin at the window.  There was only the object, briefly lit by the flames as it whipped top over bottom.
2672
2673“Jamie, move!” I called out, grabbing Lillian, hauling her to one side.  Jamie took a step forward.
2674
2675A vase bigger than my head crashed onto the street in the midst of the group.  There was still water in it.
2676
2677Off-balance from having to get out of the way, Jamie was slow to move the rifle to track the one on the ground.  It threw itself to one side, then closed the distance.  My lack of depth perception wasn’t wholly responsible for the sensation that it simply appeared.  It was fast, and it was a hell of a lot faster when it was lunging right for us.
2678
2679Jamie tried to put the rifle’s bayonet blade between himself and the Twin.  The long spike of bone that jutted from its one arm struck the rifle to one side, nearly disarming Jamie.
2680
2681I was already swinging my broken length of wood towards the twin.  The attack was inevitable, I just needed to stop the follow-up.  Each twin had two spikes of bone, and the other spike would be stabbing right for Jamie’s heart.
2682
2683My stick swung through to hit empty air, the very end splintering against the road.
2684
2685The Twin was retreating, dancing out of the way before Jamie could reassert his grip on the rifle.
2686
2687There was no real expression on its face.  Shadow-colored flesh formed a thin, gnarled veneer over the bone, with barely any visible musculature.  The eye sockets were empty and dark, hiding eyes half the normal size, eyes that were probably mostly blind.
2688
2689Yet I had the sense that it was laughing at me, mocking, and that sense coincided with a sinking feeling I knew all too well.
2690
2691I’d taken wyvern to make my brain easier to mold.  I had taught myself new patterns, but it came with a drawback.  One of the patterns I learned was that I could rely on others to handle the fighting.  At best, I could do the ambushes and sneak attacks.  Catch the enemy off guard, make sure they didn’t have the chance to fight, and I was fine.
2692
2693Give them a chance, and I felt this sinking feeling, that things were now out of my control, and I was at the mercy of our enemies.
2694
2695I turned my attention up toward the building where the vase had come from.
2696
2697In that same moment, Hubris growled, lunging.
2698
2699The other Twin, in the time it had taken me to turn to my left, swing my stick and turn back to my right, had dropped down two stories, moved around behind me, and lunged.
2700
2701Hubris caught the spike of bone that was meant for Lillian’s throat, clamping it in his teeth, his weight pulling the spike down and away, the spike’s forward momentum continuing, so that Hubris slammed into Lillian.
2702
2703But, as I’d observed in the moment Jamie had nearly been disarmed, each Twin had two spikes.
2704
2705Neat, precise, and so fast I didn’t even see it, the same Twin threaded its other spike of bone through Hubris’ middle and into Lillian.
2706
2707Time seemed to stand still.
2708[/QUOTE]
2709
2710Overpowering Hubris, Lilian, and Sy, taking no damage from fire
2711[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.8]
2712A tearing, agonized noise ripped itself from my throat as I brought the edge of the stick around, point aimed at the Twin’s throat and collarbone.  She tried to move, but Hubris still held one limb, and the other was stick inside the pair of dog and girl.
2713
2714The point hit dead on, all of the force I could humanly bring to bear driven into a vital area.  The broken end of the point splintered, and the splinters raked across the twisted black-gray flesh that covered her spine.
2715
2716No damage.  It was like she was skin and skeleton, and all of my effort couldn’t even break the skin in any meaningful way.
2717
2718She pulled a point free of both Hubris and Lillian, and I could hear Lillian make a pained sound.
2719
2720A backhand slap with the bone spike broke the middle of my stick, and I only barely kept it from catching me in the chin, point bisecting the skin of my face.
2721
2722I floundered, off balance, stepping back to catch my footing, arms moving out to the sides, not even sure what I could do if I was armed and the Twin was standing still to let me hit her.
2723
2724Not that she was.  The limb she’d brought up to break my stick and nearly cleave my face in half was still in the air, poised, point aimed at me.  She moved forward, bringing it down.
2725
2726My balance was such that I could have regained my footing, but I would stop backpedaling in the process, and the spike would strike home.  I chose the other option, losing my balance while still moving back.  The point struck the road between my knees as I fell.
2727
2728She moved the point to one side, and I was too slow to move my leg back and out of the way.  The point of the spike-limb cut the meat of my calf.
2729
2730She took a step toward me, raising the limb to bring it down again, then stopped.
2731
2732Her head turned, attention turning to Hubris, who still held her other limb, holding her back, even though his hind legs no longer worked.
2733
2734She stabbed him again with her other limb, and he used his forelimbs to heave himself to one side.  The movement was small, but it meant that the lance of bone caught him at one side of his head and the ruff of his neck and shoulder instead of between the eyes.
2735
2736“No!” I heard the shout.  “No!”
2737
2738Lillian made a throwing motion, but she didn’t actually throw anything.  The motion was meant to shake out the contents of a bottle, except it was a weak motion, the contents not flying far enough.
2739
2740The Twin danced back and away, about three long paces, before swinging its arm out.   Hubris was thrown loose, body sailing through the air to hit a wall, hard.
2741
2742A moment later, the Twin was gone, retreating.
2743
2744Lillian was alive.  She’d even pulled off the bluff.  Something that smelledlike something the Twins should fear.  A small mercy Lillian had lacked the strength to successfully get the stuff on the Twin.  If she’d hit, the Twin would have realized the ruse.
2745
2746I flipped over onto my stomach and moved to Lillian’s side.
2747
2748She was clutching her bag with one arm, and the little bottle with another.
2749
2750The bag had traces of blood on it from where the spike had penetrated Hubris and hit the bag.  It had absorbed the blow.
2751
2752Gently, gingerly, Lillian pulled the bag to one side, looking down, before wincing.  There was more blood, and that creative, flexible part of my brain went to great lengths to envision how the blood had run down the spike, through the bag, and pooled there.
2753
2754But no, the spike had gone right through the satchel and into her midsection.
2755
2756Lillian stared down at it, then let her head fall down, short brown hair getting mussed up with snow, wet, and ash.
2757
2758“Vital,” she said.
2759[/QUOTE]
2760
2761How deadly the Baronets are to even squads of soldiers
2762[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2763“The Twins,” I said.  Again, I had to raise my voice.  It was somehow hard to put words together.  I felt emotionally shaken, and while I could use Wyvern to center myself and bring myself to a point where I felt like the usual Sylvester, it bothered me that I had to.  The more I looked at Mauer, the harder it was.  Still, I managed, “We were running from them.  The Twins have pet weapons that are fast, they stalk, pick off the weak or tear through an entire squad, and then they leave.  They’re accompanied by Crown soldiers, and they’re absolutely, one hundred percent confident that they can take what you throw at them.  If you send your men out to the-”
2764
2765“The northeast,” Jamie said, pointing.
2766
2767“-Then those men are going to run into the Twins, and they are going to die.”
2768[/QUOTE]
2769
2770If given the chance they could kill an entire rebel camp with ease
2771[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2772“If we ignore the ones who were chasing you, what do you expect will happen?” he asked.
2773
2774“They infiltrate your lines, they kill us, your lieutenants, or you, if not everyone,” I said.  “Given the chance, they might even make it look easy.”
2775[/QUOTE]
2776
2777Against 40 armed soldiers, it could go either way
2778[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2779He didn’t even blink at that.  “What does it take to kill them?”
2780
2781“Lillian knows,” Jamie said, “But she’s in the care of your doctors.”
2782
2783“In terms of men with guns, then,” Mauer said.  “How many?”
2784
2785“Forty, at the very least,” I said.  “Might give you good odds, if they know what they’re doing.  But if things go south, I don’t think there’s a nice middle ground where half the men die and you hurt the nobles.  If your men start dying, they all die, toppling like dominoes.  Those creatures are like bolts of lightning, they’ll strike one target and carry on through while the rest are still getting their footing.”
2786[/QUOTE]
2787
2788A rifle shot only glances off their skin
2789[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2790I kicked myself forward over the fence.  A short four-foot drop, and I was stepping foot on wet, frozen lawn, the ground simultaneously harder than it should be for soil, but giving under my weight, as the sodden ground beneath the frozen layer caved in.  I gripped my rifle, holding it in both hands, ready.
2791
2792One running step.  Two.
2793
2794Like a stone three times her weight, and with just as much impact, the Twin dropped onto the porch stairs in front of me, all four limbs meeting the frozen slats and boards.
2795
2796Placing herself so that my body was between her and the group of ten.  Not enough that I was guaranteed to block the shot, but enough to raise the question.
2797
2798Someone shot anyway.  It missed.
2799
2800“Eyes forward!” Jamie shouted, voice high with alarm.  “Look in the direction I-”
2801
2802More gunshots, not aimed at me.
2803
2804I threw myself to the right.  She threw herself to her left, almost faster than I did, matching me and keeping me positioned between her and the group.  She had to extend a spike out to slam it into the wall of the house and arrest her sideways movement.
2805
2806Right.  She wouldn’t kill me, but she could maim me and then leave me to watch her decimate the group.
2807
2808I raised my rifle, aiming.  In much the way Jamie had dealt with, she hurled herself away, leg strength allowing her to dive to one side, her profile narrow, spikes extended out in front of her, so she could slip through the gap between the railing and the short set of stairs at the base of the porch.
2809
2810Spikes caught the ground, and I could see as they punched through the harder, colder layer and sank into the yet-unfrozen mush beneath.  I could hear it.
2811
2812A part of me expected the other Lambs to be there, to capitalize on it.
2813
2814But the group of Lambs had dwindled.  There was no Gordon, no Mary, no Helen to capitalize on that moment of weakness.  There was only me.
2815
2816Mary was at my shoulder and Gordon stood in front of me, pushing the barrel of my rifle, as I swiveled to point it at the Twin, already squeezing the trigger a moment before I had her in my sights.
2817
2818Forelimbs caught in the ground, she used her forward momentum to bring her legs over, forward, setting them on the ground, and hauling her spikes up and out.  It took a moment for her to reassert her balance, to bend her legs in preparation for another bounding leap, directly at the group.
2819
2820The rifle fired, violent, bucking in my hands and kicking back against my shoulder where I hadn’t positioned it perfectly.
2821
2822I caught her, right across the back.  A dark fleck of something flew off.  I didn’t see what, and I didn’t see the full extent of the damage as she spun in a half circle, caught her balance, and hopped over the fence.
2823
2824Then she and the other twin were gone.
2825
2826I could hear the gasps and the shouts of the ten.  The disbelief.
2827
2828I didn’t turn to face them, and I didn’t speak, instead focusing on ignoring the pain in my shoulder and the ringing in my ears as I brought the rifle up, using the battered bayonet blade to slice at the clothesline.  I grabbed it with a numb hand and hauled it down.
2829
2830“I hit one,” I said, as I hopped over the fence, rifle in one hand, cord in the other.  “I’m pretty sure that gets me a reward.”
2831
2832They looked at me like I was crazy.  But that wasn’t exactly right.  I was sane, and I’d been talking crazy, up until this point.
2833
2834This was real for them, now.
2835[/QUOTE]
2836
2837Dodging the majority of a surprise attack and a bullet unable to damage her limbs
2838[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2839The twin was in place to attack.  There was nothing saying she would attack now, but I imagined she was angry.  I’d made her sister bleed.  We had no idea where that sister was.
2840
2841“Cross the street!  Fast!” I called out.  My hand went up, signaling Jamie.  Behind.  Three…
2842
2843Boots tramped on the road.  We were moving directly away from the younger twin, now, slightly toward Mauer’s lines, and toward the soldiers and the elder twins, if they had been ahead of us.
2844
2845Two, I gestured, as I called out, “Be ready!”
2846
2847The explosions continued in the distance, the dull noise baffling and muting the finer sounds around us.
2848
2849One, I gestured, the gesture segueing into the sign for behind.
2850
2851“About face!” Jamie and I called out, at the same time.
2852
2853As one, the entire squad turned.  Too slow, some, others confused.  One or two might not even have known what ‘about face’ meant.
2854
2855But most did.  Half of those individuals saw the twin, at the other side of the street.  They fired, their rifle shots and pistols firing in time with mine and Jamie’s.  One of the others threw a bola.
2856
2857She was too fast.  A leap to our right, reacting as she caught a singular bullet to the limb, hard enough that her spike-limb scratched against the road.  Footing secured, she leaped back, crashing through a window.
2858
2859In the midst of it, the thrown bola did a lazy spin before landing halfway between us and her.
2860
2861“Holy mother of god!” Tattoo Belly gasped the words.  “Holy mother, I was looking back and I didn’t even see her at first.”
2862[/QUOTE]
2863
2864More on their durability
2865[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2866“We shot her and didn’t even break the skin!” Lookout said.
2867
2868“The old man here hit exposed bone.  Thicker end of the spike,” Jamie said.  “It probably hurt.  Might have fractured bone.  I don’t know.  Lillian said the bone was hardened.  Carbon-dense, heavier than lead.”
2869
2870And it’s pissing them off, I thought.  This isn’t what they’re used to.  Pain and being predicted.  Those dense, hard bones take energy to haul around.  Efficient as they are, they’re getting tired and they’re getting more emotional.
2871[/QUOTE]
2872
2873Brutally attacking and killing rebel soldiers, destroying a rifle barrel, and wounding Adam, a Bruno with enhanced muscle and skin
2874[QUOTE=Bleeding Edge 8.3]
2875Though it was chilly, without even the sun for light, the man had his shirt off, the straps of his overalls tied around his waist.  He had virtually no body fat on his frame, and more muscle in his forearm alone than I had in my entire body.  Tattoos covered him, his arms and back an artist’s doodle pad of fish tailed goats, mermaids, and other scantily-clad women.
2876
2877I watched as he lifted a crate onto the bed of a cart.  The crate was filled with metal, and rattled, the cart’s end bobbing as it adjusted to the weight.
2878
2879He was a ‘Bruno’.  While Bruno was slang for a brute, a guy that was more strong than smart, it also was the term used most often to describe the men and the exceedingly rare women who went to back alley clinics and walked out with more muscle than they’d had when they started.  Sometimes it was drugs, sometimes it was a rewriting of their physical makeup, and sometimes it was grafts, from vat-grown sources or from animals.
2880
2881Most did it because the cost of the procedure was low, compared to the added dollars they could make being manual laborers.  It meant a year or two to pay off the medical expenses, then a few decades of living like a king.  Relatively speaking, anyway, in a place like Lugh.
2882
2883But the drugs meant dependency and tolerance.  The rewriting of one’s makeup always had other consequences in the long run.  Grafts from animals meant possible rejection or having to take drugs, and grafts from vat-grown life didn’t always last that long, meaning more surgeries and replacements.
2884
2885It amounted to the same thing.  A shortened lifespan.  Maybe a halved one.
2886
2887*****
2888
2889“We’re looking for work,” I said.
2890
2891The Bruno belted out a laugh.
2892
2893Altered lungs, to go with an altered heart.  Adding seventeen stone of raw muscle to your frame means needing more oxygen to that muscle, and a heart to push that blood around.
2894[/QUOTE]
2895[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2896“There!”
2897
2898For the people to aim and fire even as I was turning my head, they had to have been paying attention to our left flank, watching out for the twin we’d just shot at.  The rifle shot exploded right next to my ear, and was doubly worse because I hadn’t even seen the gun or anticipated the shot.
2899
2900But the twin was already moving.  Showing herself and retreating in the same smooth motion.
2901
2902There was no reason to do that unless-
2903
2904“Incoming!” I shouted, “Turn-”
2905
2906The other twin dropped like a stone, right into the midst of the group.
2907
2908Her two forelimbs plunged down with her.  Spikes of bone, as hard as steel and heavier than lead, one through Bat’s shoulder.  The other went through Scrub-Brush’s collarbone and out the front of his ribcage.
2909
2910He’d been the only one that was a decent shot in our group, I was ninety-percent sure.  He’d had calluses on his fingers that suggested he spent whole days with his gun in his hands.  A hunter, if I had to guess, one who had picked up their gun during past military service and had kept it well maintained since.  Smart enough to shut up and follow orders without comment or complaint.
2911
2912Forelimbs firmly planted in two members of our group, she swung her feet up in unison.   Sharp talons at the ends swept up Brawler’s face, from chin to hairline, tearing up everything between.  Cheeks shredded enough I could see teeth past the blood and meat, eyes just gone.
2913
2914I told them to watch our right side, I thought.  The person who’d shot at the twin had been one of the ones who had been supposed to watch the other direction.
2915
2916The twin remained there, spike forelimbs still thrust down, anchored in meat that had yet to collapse to the ground, feet pointing straight up, a grisly handstand, one that showed her gouged back to me, held for one second, two seconds-
2917
2918I knew, seeing it, that there was no action anyone would take that would stop her from killing at least two more people.  If the fight were chess, she had us in check, and none of us had the instincts or skill to see how or why.  We would make our next move, blind, and it would be the wrong move.
2919
2920Goiter stabbed at her with a bayonet blade.
2921
2922Easily, fluidly, she moved out of the way, letting her body fall back and away from the thrust.  She yanked one limb out of the old man, bringing it over her head and down, slashing it with a deceptive speed, far faster than the slower movement of the rest of her body.
2923
2924At Adam.  He brought his rifle up, blocking the slash.  The twin’s limb came down through the construction of metal and wood.  The former bent and broke, the latter splintered.  The weapon came apart in two uneven halves.
2925
2926She was left with one arm still inside Bat-nose’s shoulder, the girl doubled over, torso twisted as she tried to avoid having it wrenched apart by the movement of the twin’s limb, and her other limb down at Adam’s midsection.
2927
2928Swipe.  Slice Adam at the lower stomach, cutting an inch deep.
2929
2930Haul one limb out of Bat-nose, and bring it up and around, cutting the woman with the glasses from lower ribs to shoulder, carrying on to aim for Adam’s throat.  He caught the limb in one hand, and, as if she expected it, she tugged the blood-slick bone back out of his grip, leaving it still pointed at him.  At a tall, broad-target who had zero way of getting out of the way in time.
2931
2932It was Lookout who moved, swinging overhead, using the makeshift bola like a flail, down at the arm.
2933
2934The weight at the end swing over, around, cord encircling the folded limb twice before cracking ineffectually against bone.
2935
2936One limb possibly bound, but she was still a killing machine, smack dab in the center of the killable.  The people who were reeling or outright dying from her attacks were in the way of the people who had any chance of doing anything.
2937
2938Again, Adam grabbed at her, seizing her by the upper arm.
2939
2940Don’t- I thought, but he was already doing it, and he couldn’t read my mind.
2941
2942It was the wrong thing to do, throwing her to one side, away and out of the group, but there were no right things to do.  While she moved, she raised her legs, talons cutting again at Glasses, and once at Tattoo Belly.  She hit the ground, less graceful with one limb wrapped in the bola-flail, but I could see how she was swift to get her feet under her, ready to move.
2943
2944I hadn’t been able to shoot while she was in the midst of the group, with so many bodies blocking my shot.  Others were in the same boat.  I recognized the impatience I felt, and I knew what it meant.  The tables had been turned.  One side wounded, left wanting to retaliate, and finding themselves frustrated instead.  An opening was now given, just like when we’d crossed the street, our backs to the twin, soon to be followed by the reversal.
2945
2946“Hold fire!” I shouted.
2947
2948Too late.  The speed of the air moving from my lips to their ears was slower than the impulse from their brains to their fingers.
2949
2950The members of the group who weren’t blinded, mortally wounded, disarmed, or in agonizing pain fired.
2951
2952To someone who didn’t see exactly what she’d done, it was like she could read minds, dodge bullets.  She hopped and slid to one side, head low, three available limbs skidding on the road until they found traction.  No less than five guns were fired at her – three rifles and two pistols, and not one bullet touched her.
2953
2954But she’d known we would be impatient, wanting to shoot.  She had performed in situations almost identical to this countless times in her life, often enough to know the time it took most to aim and pull the trigger.
2955
2956While our people worked to reload, she lunged to intercept her sister, who was crossing the street, heading right for us.  The one twin would cut the binding without breaking stride, and would run into our midst a split-second before the first person managed to reload, carrying out the second half of the twins’ bloody dance.
2957[/QUOTE]
2958[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.11]
2959The twin had come down like a nail driven by a hammer.  One member of our group killed, another injured to the point that I couldn’t expect her to be useful.  The rest had taken varying degrees of damage, ranging from blindness and near-disembowelment to deep cuts.
2960
2961The nail had been dealt with, but the group was still nailed down, in a manner of speaking.  This number of people was a critical liability.  They weren’t running, they were still too shocked and traumatized to properly bolt for safety, and even if I somehow drove them to move, it would be horrendously disorganized, muddled by the state of the group.
2962
2963Old scrub-brush, dead.  The brawny Bruno, blind and missing most of his face.  Both were as good as dead.
2964
2965Adam, who I hadn’t wanted to bring, had one arm, not hand, cupped against the wound at his stomach.  Bat-nose, who I’d analyzed so thoroughly, had a hole through the top of one shoulder and out the armpit, the shoulder itself likely dislocated.  I had no idea how hurt Glasses was, but two good cuts meant I had to put her in the same category: those three would slow us down.
2966
2967Tattoo Belly was scratched.  Lookout, Glassblower, Salt, and Goiter were uninjured.  They were also, with the possible exception of Goiter, people who couldn’t fight.
2968
2969Too many people were moving for the cover of the alley, but the injured and blind members of the group were obstacles more than teammates.
2970[/QUOTE]
2971
2972Powerful voices for their size and some Exorcist Bullets can penetrate skin
2973[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.10]
2974But the scenario wasn’t going to go as they had planned. I  hadn’t fired.  I aimed, looking down my rifle’s sights.
2975
2976The one who had just cut through our ranks wasn’t aware, but the twin who was charging our way saw.  She changed direction, moving explosively, tackling her own sister, to knock her off course.
2977
2978I suppressed a smile, exhaling slowly.  Her timing was off there, too.
2979
2980Patience.
2981
2982The two sisters, tangled together, placed perfectly for one bullet to penetrate the both of them.  I squeezed the trigger.
2983
2984The bullet pinged off the street, a miss.
2985
2986Fuck!
2987
2988I could sense Gordon’s disapproving eyes on me as I fumbled to reload.  Don’t fight, Sy.  You’re bad at it.
2989
2990While I joined the others in trying to reload in time, knowing it wouldn’t be fast enough, another shot rang out.  The bullet passed through one twin’s back, out the front.  Thick black blood and bone fragments sprayed out, and she collapsed into her sister.
2991
2992Jamie.
2993
2994Jamie had held his fire, too.
2995
2996The twin with one bound limb struggled to rise with the weight of her sister on her.  There was a glimmer of emotion to the haste, and that emotion mirrored the fumbling movements of the people around me who were trying to reload faster than their numb hands were allowing.
2997
2998Awkwardly, moving on three limbs instead of four, she backed away from her sister’s body, pausing.
2999
3000Her skeletal jaw opened, and she screamed, far louder than her narrow frame should have allowed.
3001
3002The scream was joined by two others, just as inhuman.
3003
3004It was the elder twins, each with a rifle, stalking toward the rear of our bleeding, crippled group.
3005[/QUOTE]
3006
3007Elder Twins reload superhumanly fast
3008[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.13]I could feel the fear and panic.  Both elder twins had raised their rifles.  They fired, one shot after another.  Good rifles.  Probably accurate.  With the body of the blind Bruno between me and them, I couldn’t see if they were hitting us or not.
3009
3010*****
3011
3012I took in the scene beyond our little group.  I couldn’t see the elder twins, but I had a sense of where they were.  Each time they fired their rifles, I could place their locations.  Striding or stalking forward, with all of the tense muscles and barely restrained power of a pair of jungle cats, they fired relentlessly, reloaded with practiced motions, and then fired again.
3013
3014Four shots each, a pause so short I couldn’t believe they were prepping another four bullets, and then four more shots.
3015
3016A spray of blood coincided with a sound like a great weight dropping onto wet gravel.  It was Goiter, too far out, not benefiting from the blind man’s mass and cover.  Goiter had been aiming at the elder twins.
3017[/QUOTE]
3018
3019The leftover younger distracting Jaimie
3020[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.13]The younger twin didn’t even react to the death, her eyes fixed on Jamie, her body jerking left and right, forward and back.  Every adjustment was to throw him off as he changed where his rifle pointed.  With every spare moment, her teeth snapped and gnashed at the clothesline that bound her trapped limb.  Her elder sisters were shooting, and crossing that general trajectory meant risking getting shot, so she waited, watched, and distracted.  The hesitation might have been helped with a frustration with her own limited movements and insecurity, however that strange life-form might process such a thing.  She’d lost her sister, and she was lost.[/QUOTE]
3021
3022Elder Twin not going down to an Exorcist bullet
3023[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.13]
3024I completed the throwing motion, letting myself fall forward.  Jamie, having stepped slightly out of the cover the blind Bruno provided, put a bullet right over my head.
3025
3026Not at the younger twin, but at the elder.
3027
3028*****
3029
3030“I shot her,” Jamie said.  “She didn’t go down!”
3031
3032Scared, uncertain.
3033[/QUOTE]
3034
3035Bending a gun barrel
3036[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.13]
3037She was there, in the window.  I’d dropped my weapon and held Jamie’s, which he’d just fired.  All the same, I tried for my third feint of the night, aiming it at her, trusting that she wouldn’t know it wasn’t loaded, that she would reflexively jump away as she had so many times.
3038
3039But she’d been paying attention to the gun, where it was, the fact it had fired its shot.
3040
3041I thrust it at her, jabbing with the blade in an ineffectual way, still sprawled on the ground, facing the window, and she swung a spike to smash the barrel, bending it visibly.
3042[/QUOTE]
3043
3044Punchign through a floor and door
3045[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.13]
3046“And the little one?”
3047
3048“She’s patient,” I told Jamie, my eye on the staircase, on the hallways and doorways.  “Even in the darkest, blackest rage she’s experienced in her life, she knows-”
3049
3050The younger twin made her entry, tearing through the floor above us and the ceiling in a shower of plaster and wood splinters, dropping.
3051
3052She’d fixed the issue with the binding at one limb, but she remained off balance.  Used to working in concert with a sister who could instinctively cover any gaps, more coordinated with her own movements than the Lambs ever were, she landed to one side, leaving us a direction to run.  We took it.
3053
3054Through a dining room.  I slammed the door behind us, buying us a few more steps.  The violence with which she destroyed the door and tore through made my eye widen, putting an idea in my head.
3055
3056I knocked over a chair, putting it in her way, grabbed a wheeled tea trolley and pulled it back into the path behind me.
3057
3058******
3059
3060The tea trolley in place, I slammed the kitchen door.
3061
3062“Helen!” I called out,  grabbing the kitchen cabinet to arrest my forward movement.  Rather than run, I swung my feet up onto the counter.
3063
3064Don’t try to fight, I thought.  Can’t fight.  The longer we draw this out, the worse it goes.
3065
3066Ambush.
3067
3068A spear of carbon-dense bone punctured the door near the knob.  It shifted angle dramatically, tearing at the wood even worse.
3069
3070Then it pulled back, disappearing.
3071
3072She knows we have one working gun.  She’s wary of being shot.
3073
3074*****
3075
3076The twin slammed bodily into the door.  The door opened, the top swinging in.
3077
3078I leaped.  One foot went out, touching the door, while one hand caught the top of the door.  I hung there for a moment, my grip and sideways momentum keeping me in place, eye watching below me.
3079
3080A half-second after the door had crashed open, sooner than might be expected, she dashed in, low to the ground.
3081[/QUOTE]
3082
3083How the younger twin body works like alligator jaws and her death
3084[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.13]
3085I landed on top of her, all hard bone and edges, and I embraced her.
3086
3087She had so little muscle.  The muscle she did have had to move heavy bone, so it was very specialized toward that task.  Lillian had given me clues, talking about the low range of movement.  Lookout’s bola had been another, showing just how much difficulty she’d had tearing the remaining cord when an ordinary human might have been able to extend their arm and have the cord snap.
3088
3089An alligator’s jaws.  Powerful as an alligator’s jaws were, if the mouth was held closed with a human’s hands, the muscles weren’t powerful enough to haul it open against the resistance.
3090
3091Arms pinned against her side, me on her back, she could only use her legs, and those legs were limited in movement, solely for climbing, running, and kicking at opponents who weren’t hugging her.
3092
3093Not that she didn’t try.  She had talons, and she scratched for my shoes and calves.
3094
3095Her head turned, teeth snapping, and I had to pull my head back and away to avoid having my nose or chin taken off.
3096
3097I heard a heavy knock.
3098
3099She’d released a spike, with the thing no longer extending from what should have been her right wrist.
3100
3101Fingers free, ‘hand’ able to move, she brought long fingers around and started to dig them into my forearm.
3102
3103For long seconds, we thrashed, her kicking at cabinets and furniture to try and move us across the floor, to violently push me against cabinets, against the wall, trying to loosen my hold.  She tried to stand, and I tangled her leg with mine, keeping mine straight, to keep her from getting both feet under her.  I wasn’t even sure she could stand without her forelimbs to help.
3104
3105With the finger-bones digging into flesh, I had to admit I was losing my grip.
3106
3107I wasn’t Helen.  I couldn’t take this someplace, utterly destroying my target.
3108
3109I could only hold her mostly still, long enough for Jamie to draw near, and slam the rifle’s bayonet blade into her eye socket.
3110
3111The blade kept her head mostly in place.  She couldn’t do much except dig her fingers in deeper as Jamie changed the angle of his rifle, turning the barrel more toward the top of her head.
3112
3113He pulled the trigger, firing a bullet into her brainpan.
3114
3115Slowly, wincing in pain from a hundred new, small sorts of hurt, I made my way to my feet.
3116
3117*****
3118
3119Jamie nodded.  He pulled the rifle free of the now-shattered eye socket, and jammed the bayonet past ribs and into the chest cavity, once, twice.[/QUOTE]
3120
3121Elder Twin aim-dodging and shooting another rebel while missing 1/3rd of her body
3122[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.14]
3123Ahead of me, one of the Richmond Twins stepped out of the shadows, putting herself directly in our path.  Her eyes were wide, and they were wild.
3124
3125Without wasting a moment, I raised my rifle, aiming and firing. Gordon might have approved the minimal hesitation in the action.  Mary would have shaken her head at the miserable aim.  What would have been a glancing blow became a miss as the woman took one step to the side, a slower, lazier version of what her smaller counterpart had done, swaying out of the way of my rifle’s point.
3126
3127In the next moment, I pivoted on my toes and ran for cover.  The others had skipped the shooting part and gone right for the cover, and some of those people, wounded, were slower than I was in getting there.
3128
3129The Twin held a rifle in one hand.  She raised it, aimed, and fired at the mass of our group.  Salt, the boy with sailor’s clothes, toppled, shrieking in a high voice, reminiscent of a woman’s.
3130[/QUOTE]
3131
3132Taking an Exorcist bullet without flinching, shooting another Rebel, and whistle communication
3133[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.14]
3134The glassblower looked over cover, aimed, and fired.  Hit home.
3135
3136Yet the Twin didn’t seem to care.  Blood welled out of the wound.  She’d finished reloading, aimed, and fired.
3137
3138The cover the glassblower was behind wasn’t quite good enough.  The woman shrieked, splinters and a bullet catching her upper arm.
3139
3140The Twin raised her fingers to her mouth.  She whistled, tremolo, like a bird’s song.
3141
3142The whistle reminded me of the noise the younger twins had made.  A twin language, shared among the four.
3143
3144I heard the answer, distant.  A different sort of song.
3145
3146“She found your friend.  He’s secured,” the twin said.
3147[/QUOTE]
3148
3149Dislocating Sy's shoulder
3150[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.14]
3151I struggled, but it was futile to begin with, and even if I’d been able to break free, I would have been slower than she was.  Casually, the Twin reached past Glasses and the Lookout to seize me.
3152
3153She didn’t lift me up into the air.  Her hand gripped me, fingers digging in deep, and with one hand, she held me with her arm extended down at her side, my head at her mid-thigh, my body slightly bent forward.
3154
3155She dropped her rifle.  One hand seized my arm.  She gripped it, and she pulled it back behind my back.
3156
3157With virtually no effort at all, she lifted it back and up beyond its tolerance.  I felt a flare of pain, blinding agony, and felt bone grind against bone, muscle wrenching with a weird springing sensation, too hot, then too cold.
3158
3159When she let go of my arm, it dangled, shoulder disconnected from everything else.  Attached by some yet-untorn muscle, some connective tissue, and by skin.
3160
3161I found it in me not to scream, somehow.  My breath being caught in my throat played a part in it.
3162[/QUOTE]
3163
3164Swinging Sy like a fan and running twice as fast as any human, later recovering from the deadly gas
3165[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.14]
3166Something metal clinked.  Unable to move my head, I rolled my eye to see.
3167
3168Before I could see the source of the clink, I saw the a white mist unfold from what must have been a metal canister or glass jar.  The twin, seeing it, lifted me bodily, nearly breaking my neck as she swung out, using my body as a kind of fan to push the smoke away, backing away in the same movement.
3169
3170She released me with a snap motion that suggested she’d been trying to break my jaw or neck in the course that she tossed me aside.
3171
3172Both of her hands went to her face.  A trickle of blood flowed out of her nose.
3173
3174All of the emotion she’d been barely repressing gave way.  She howled, ragged and mad, glaring at me in abject hatred.  Glaring past me, to Jamie, and at Lillian, who was walking with Jamie’s support.  There were soldiers behind them.  Lillian’s escort.
3175
3176Then she fled, one hand still to her face.  She ran with power, not the sheer speed of her younger sisters.  Bounding movements, each one powerful enough to carry her twice as far as an ordinary human stride might.
3177[/QUOTE]
3178[QUOTE=Counting Sheep 9.18]His sister looked almost pristine, wearing a more concealing change of clothes that masked the fact that much of her body was missing.  Only one side of her cleavage was laid bare for eyes to settle on.  She would be the one who had screamed at me, losing her composure.[/QUOTE]
3179
3180A single Twin can still be intimidating
3181[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing]And I could see the Baron’s sister.  The sole surviving Twin.  A giantess compared to the crowd she walked through, a monster that, even more than the Baron, made the citizens of Warrick shrink down and away.  That she’d arrived alone stirred faint murmurs from the crowd, and a sharp look from her immediately silenced those same murmurs.[/QUOTE]
3182
3183A single Twin fighting Mary and Sy, defeating Mary, shifting her body, and choosing to die
3184[QUOTE=In Sheep's Clothing 10.15]
3185Stay?  Go?”  Mary asked.
3186
3187My eyes swept over the room, Ruth Bloxham, our hostages, and the doctor.  I could see the items strewn across the bed.
3188
3189“Stay,” I said.  “How long?”
3190
3191“Seconds,” Mary said.  She was already reaching beneath her skirt to retrieve the ribbons she’d bound around her thigh.  She wound them around one hand.
3192
3193“You four, back away from the door,” I said.  “Doctor, keep treating Ruth.”
3194
3195“You’re insane!” the man said.
3196
3197I pointed the gun at his head.  I circled halfway around the bed, until I was at the foot of it.
3198
3199Small room, not much elbow room for a fight.  Mary reached over to the bed, grabbing two tools from a leather set of surgical implements.  She already had wire in her hand.  She went straight to the door, winding one loop of wire around the hinge.  Then, with the tools in hand, she pushed the wire through the space between the top of the door and the frame.
3200
3201“Strong, tall, fast, heightened senses.  Her body opens up, used to be two people nested in one body.  The baron’s doctors would have given her something,” I said.  I looked at the doctor who was working on Ruth.
3202
3203“Nothing to say,” he said.  His eyes were fixed on his patient, neck stiff, head rigid, as if he would fight me if I tried to turn his head or budge him from his current position, even on a physical level.
3204
3205Mary slid the wire down from the top of the door, until she had the wire stretched at a diagonal across the other side of the door, all done without having opened it.  She stood beside the door, wire wrapped around the handle of a knife,  A whole loop worth of slack hanging from her other hand, every muscle tense.
3206
3207*****
3208
3209It was as if he’d summoned her.  The door swung into the room, banging against the wall.  The Twin had to stoop as she came through the door.  Pale, eyes wide, face contorted, golden hair already disheveled from her march across the town hall.
3210
3211“Lambs.”
3212
3213The wire was too low, cutting across her chest, not her throat.  Mary remedied that, hurling herself at the Twin, knife out, her other hand manipulating wire.
3214
3215The second length of wire settled, loose, around the Twin’s neck and shoulders, around the time she saw Mary.  Mary hauled back, tugging the wire tight.  The twin’s hand moved as fast as the wire did.  Fingers went up and between the wire and throat.  One hand was pinned, flesh sliced, palm outward.  Mary hung there, feet against the Twin’s chest and stomach, suspended by that same wire, facing the Twin.
3216
3217They almost had the same look in their eyes.
3218
3219“Little girl,” the Twin spoke, her voice barely impacted by the weight of a seven-plus stone girl hanging off of her neck.  “Do you really think you can win?”
3220
3221She started to take a step forward, and then stopped – the wire was still bound at one end, wrapped around the hinge.
3222
3223“My lady,” one of the guards outside spoke.  It was almost a question.
3224
3225My hand inched toward the bomb with the gas.
3226
3227“Stay,” the Twin said.  “It’s handled.”
3228
3229“Yes, my lady.”
3230
3231She didn’t even sound concerned.
3232
3233One of the noble’s hands was trapped under the wire, but the other one was free, hanging at the Twin’s side.  I saw it, and I knew Mary saw it.
3234
3235Mary’s foot, poised against the Twin’s stomach, slipped from its position.  The hand flashed out, grabbing, to capitalize on the slip, and Mary’s foot snapped back up as fast as it had dropped, this time with a blade.  A feint.
3236
3237As fast as the Twin’s hand was moving, Mary only needed to put her foot in the right position, toe pointed, to let the blade plunge through the hand.  Knives in the soles of her boots.  Flick the foot out with the right motion, the knife swung out, until it pointed forward.  Flick back the other way or knock it against some part of the environment, and it went back in.
3238
3239*****
3240
3241She let her other foot leave the Twin’s upper chest, her body suspended between the boot-knife that impaled the Twin’s hand and the hand that held the knife, wire extending from that knife to the Twin’s neck.  Her foot free, she flicked it, drawing the blade, and swept it toward the Twin’s wrist, a half-foot from her other boot.
3242
3243She got two quick slashes in before the Twin pulled the hand back and away.  Mary’s boot-knife came free of the hand.  Both boot-knives immediately found a home in the side of the Twin’s stomach, kick, kick.  Then they were out again, in again, as Mary moved from one side of the Twin’s body to the other, like an ice climber hurrying out of the way of a catastrophic amount of falling ice, still hanging by one hand from the knife and wire.
3244
3245*****
3246
3247The Twin started to reach for Mary again.  Mary’s foot moved, ready to intervene, and the Twin stopped there.
3248
3249Then the free hand reached back, taking hold of the door.
3250
3251In one wrenching movement, she tore the door from its hinges.  Mary avoided the first swing of the improvised weapon, wincing as half of the door splintered around her, punching into the wall, but she didn’t avoid the second or third hits.  She scrambled back and away, until she was near me, still holding the knife, moving it in quick circular motions to unwind the thread around the handle.  It stopped short.
3252
3253Out of thread.
3254
3255*****
3256
3257I heard the tap as Mary knocked the toes of one boot against the floor to set the knives back inside her boots.  She was bleeding badly.  Her skin had been shredded near her temple and ear, and some of the tag of skin that hung loose had hair on it.  She pulled her lips back from her teeth, showing how bloody those teeth were, then spat blood onto the floor.  I put my hands out to balance her as she returned the other knife to the sole of her boot with a tap on the floor, wavered, and nearly lost her balance.
3258
3259The twin, possessed of more lack than she’d had before, pulled her hand out from beneath the razor wire.  The act of doing so meant dragging meat against the wire, slicing it clean off the fingers.  The wire caught as it found a groove between those charcoal-black finger bones.
3260
3261Her eyes still fixed on us, she pushed, her hand straining against the wire, skeletal fingers clawing at the air as she worked them.  While she did so, however, she wasn’t just loosening the wire around her neck.  The wire was biting into the flesh at the back of her neck.  Anyone else would have worried about paralysis.  Not her.
3262
3263She took half the flesh on her fingers off as she did it, but she managed to slide the hand out from under the wire.
3264
3265Mary spat blood again.
3266
3267*****
3268
3269Her hand went up, found Mary’s wire, and traced it back to the damaged door hinge, which had been half-torn from the wall in the process of the door’s removal.  She gripped the hinge, then ripped it the rest of the way from the wall.
3270
3271Mary was hurt.  She wasn’t the sort to deny help when it was given, but she also wasn’t the sort to ask for it.  That she’d asked suggested she was spooked.  It was possible that she wanted me in the fray to make up for whatever issues her injuries had introduced.  Balance the scales once again.
3272
3273“I understand, milady,” the doctor said.  “Do you want us out of the way?”
3274
3275She reached out, seized Ruth Bloxham with one hand, and moved Ruth to the corner of the room opposite Mary and I, propping her unconscious body up against the wall.  Her hand lingered there, finger extended and pointing.  “Stay.”
3276
3277The doctor obediently retreated to the corner.
3278
3279The Twin was bleeding considerably.  Her hand, wrist, throat, and stomach had been sliced and punctured in multiple places.  Blood welled out and pooled beneath her.  She hardly seemed to care.
3280
3281As Mary and I watched, the woman’s flesh parted.  A golden seam appeared, across chest, circling around one breast, then moving to the side of the ribcage.  Mucousy fluids extended from the sucking meat on one side of the divide to the meat on the other.
3282
3283She reached up, in-
3284
3285And Mary threw a knife.  The Twin was just fast enough to avoid having the knife strike her in one eye.  Her hand came out of the divide with a rapier in it.  All charcoal-black bone, roughly five feet in length.  I knew how dense and heavy that material was, but she had no trouble holding it like she might a fencer’s foil.
3286
3287Our hostages were cowering, ducked down low.  I saw Lainie practically curl up at the sight of the weapon, head hung, not even willing to look.
3288
3289The room wasn’t that large.  Between the length of the Twin’s arms and the length of the weapon, there wasn’t much room to maneuver.
3290
3291Her foot was the first thing to move, coming out, catching the edge of the bed, and kicking it toward us.  It flipped as it came, wooden base, headboard, footboard and all.  I didn’t have to worry about the harder edges, as it was mostly the mattress that came flying my way.
3292
3293“Down!” Mary cried out.
3294
3295I went limp, letting myself sprawl, mattress threatening to pin me between bed and wall.
3296
3297The rapier’s point punched through the bed, mattress, and into the exterior wall.
3298
3299I more or less crawled to the end of the bed, making a point of pushing along the various medicines and tools that had fallen off the bed and against the wall.  I crawled free, and saw Mary and the Twin fighting again.  Mary was slower.  She couldn’t move and throw a knife at the same time.  She found opportunities to stop, get her bearings for a half-second, and then throw, before she threw herself out of the way of the next swing or thrust of the sword, or pre-emptively repositioned herself.
3300
3301My eye went to the stuff that had fallen from the bed.  Medicines, drugs, sharp implements.  I saw the powder that the doctor had planned to use against Mary and I.  I saw his eyes widen as I grabbed it, pulling off the lid.
3302
3303“Milady!” he warned her, as I hurled it.
3304
3305Her free, damaged hand went out, blocking the incoming object, swatting it out of the air.  A cloud of white powder billowed from the impact point.  She moved away from it, putting herself in the corner, her hand up near her face to block one of Mary’s knives from striking her head while her movements were more limited.  The knife sank into her already mangled hand.
3306
3307*****
3308
3309So much chaos and noise surrounding us, and Mary and the Twin were so still.  It wasn’t an even fight.  Mary was more hurt than before, and the Twin wasn’t moving any more slowly or suffering on any perceptible level.
3310
3311The twin was taller than average, a foot taller than a very tall man might be, but in her sheer ability to be indomitable, seemingly untouchable and unreachable, she seemed a giantess, too big for the room.
3312
3313*****
3314
3315I hefted the bottle.  This label I could read.  Sterile alcohol.
3316
3317I knew I could have improvised something with the bottle, given a moment, a rag, and a source of flame, but I doubted Mary had it in her to hold out that long.  Holding the neck of the bottle in two hands, I hurled it.  I realized, too late, that the Twin was watching me, ready.
3318
3319She caught the bottle out of the air before it could strike any hard surfaces.
3320
3321She drew her hand back, ready to fling it back at me, and a flying object struck the bottle, shattering the upper half of the bottle in the Twin’s hand.  Fluid and broken glass showered one hand and one side of her body.
3322
3323The Twin used her free hand to wipe the worst of it off.  Her eye fell to the doctor, who lay on the floor, bleeding out.
3324
3325She thrust, without a glance toward Mary, and Mary only barely avoided the rapier’s point.  Without drawing back, the Twin swept her blade to one side, practically flicking Mary across the room.  A spray of blood flew out where the rapier’s edge had caught Mary in the side.
3326
3327“Is it only you two?” the Twin asked.  She sauntered my way.  I backed up until my feet bumped against Mary’s body.
3328
3329I felt hollow, completely and utterly alone in the world, though I was surrounded by a small crowd, and a larger one surrounded much of the rest of the building.
3330
3331I couldn’t even reach for the imaginings of the other Lambs, because I wasn’t sure if Mary was dead or seriously hurt, and I couldn’t be distracted.
3332
3333I was left to stand alone.
3334
3335“Only us,” I said.  “I didn’t expect to run into you this soon.  Wanted to talk to the doctor here, figure out a strategy, for dealing with you and for dealing with your brother.  It’s… kind of a damn shame that you showed up as soon as you did.”
3336
3337“A part of me wants to taunt you,” she said.  “Talk about what will happen to the other Lambs, after this.  But you should know by now, and I don’t think you’re worth the time and the breath.”
3338
3339I thought about the other Lambs, and I thought about how I was already saying goodbye to them.
3340
3341But to give up even the glimmer of hope?  To know that they were gone?  Say goodbye to another Lamb forever?
3342
3343“I know that look,” the Twin said.  “Backed into a corner, fight or flight.  But you’ve got nowhere to go, and you know you can’t beat me in a fight.”
3344
3345At my feet, moving against the back of my calves and my ankles, Mary stirred.  She wasn’t in fighting shape, and she wasn’t, I knew, playing possum.
3346
3347“I was hoping to see that look of despair,” she said.  “I haven’t gone ten minutes without wanting it, without wanting to see it and then tear your face off, to preserve it forever.”
3348
3349My eyes followed the point of her rapier.  The damn thing was long enough to be a lance.  She moved it left to right, right to left.  A snake charmer charming the snake with the movement of the flute, only I was the snake.
3350
3351*****
3352
3353She drew the rapier back, then thrust it, straight for me.  I threw myself to the side, tumbling to the floor and skidding as I landed atop vials, pill-bottles and tools.  Nothing I could really use, at a glance.
3354
3355She drew back, ready to stab again, and I knew her target was Mary’s body.
3356
3357“No!” I shouted.  Too loud.
3358
3359Howls and screeches echoed through the building at the cry.  They responded more to speech than to anything, and they responded here.  One of the firstborn beyond the door broke past the soldiers, and came tearing into the room.
3360
3361It didn’t even have the sense to dodge or minimize the damage as the Twin swung the rapier.  Had it been one step back, the rapier might have missed.  One step further forward, and the rapier would have had to cleave through the meat of the throat, the bone of the spine.  It was a strong material, but I doubted it would make it through.  As it was, it cut cleanly past the flesh at the front of the firstborn’s throat.  A backhand swipe disemboweled.
3362
3363There was no more time.  My hands were empty.  I’d had a gun.  It was-
3364
3365I turned my head, and I saw the hostages.  The gun was in arm’s reach of Simon and of Chance.
3366
3367As if in slow motion, Chance reached for the gun, then slid it across the floor.
3368
3369I swept it up off the ground, then ran toward the twin.  Firing at range wouldn’t work any more than a half-dozen serious stabbings had.  Fast as she was with the rapier, it was ungainly.  I closed the distance, hurling myself at her, saw the weapon come around, and dove.
3370
3371I mentally recited an apology for everyone who was about to get hurt or die, but I knew that this was something I’d do ten times over, if it meant Mary had a chance of making it through.
3372
3373I moved the gun near the Twin’s leg, and I fired it, the bullet aimed at nothing in particular.  In the wake of the shot, I heard screams, and howls, many of them from the street.
3374
3375The hammer of the gun struck the metal, and it created sparks.  The spark touched the alcohol, and half of the Twin swiftly went up in flame.  I flipped over onto my back to look up, to see, and I knew immediately that it wouldn’t be enough.  Smoke and fire reached up toward the ceiling, flesh burned and I could smell it burning, but she didn’t scream, and she didn’t flail.  Instead, she let the rapier fall to the floor.
3376
3377I hurried to move out of the way while she was half-blind and preoccupied.  One of her limbs, a hand or a foot, clipped me, and sent me sprawling, reawakening the recent injury to my shoulder that adrenaline had quieted.
3378
3379To a backdrop of screaming, I scrambled back, until my back was against the wall.  I panted from the burst of exertion, and watched as the Twin opened up her body, unzipping it, reaching for something within herself that would serve to end my existence or to stop the burning and free her to resume her cold rampage.
3380
3381She drew her hand out with an organ within it, bulbous and unrecognizable.  She squeezed, and fingertips and bone punctured the flesh to let liquid cascade out.  It drenched her arm, and where it did, the alcohol wicked off, the fires going out or dropping to the floor.  She held it high, and she let the liquid rain down over her.
3382
3383So much effort, and she didn’t even burn properly.
3384
3385Fire was the most common answer to the Academy’s creations, and she’d been given a clear answer to it.
3386
3387I picked myself up off the ground.  To my left, Mary was doing the same
3388
3389*****
3390
3391 I reached into the folded towels, and took hold of the poisonous gas.
3392
3393I hucked it at her.  Half-disassembled, limiting the spread of the flame by keeping herself in distinct pieces, she wasn’t as mobile.  The gas erupted around her, forming an opaque yellow-green cloud, the little globe continuing to billow as it fell to the ground.
3394
3395“Cover your mouths!” Simon called out.
3396
3397I saw a glimpse of the Twin as she backed away, moving to one corner of the room.  She was pulling herself together.
3398
3399*****
3400
3401I was already walking forward into the gas, breath held, bending down to fumble for the source of the billowing gas.  Once I had it, I held it close to my body to minimize how much it spread.
3402
3403My eyes teared up, my vision swimming in a way very unlike vertigo.  I could only see the smoke, billowing and noxious, and feel it burn my nose, mouth, ear canals, dickhole and asshole.
3404
3405But, as I got closer to the end of the room, I could see the windows, pale squares of yellow-green in the midst of the smoke.  I saw as one of her hands smashed the window, and how the gas suddenly flowed toward the opening in the glass.
3406
3407I could see the dark shadow and silhouette of the Twin, and the light of the fires that still burned at one of her hands.
3408
3409I plunged the smoking globe into the fissure of the Twin’s body, saw her tense and react, and braced myself for the retaliatory strike.  It hit my arms, my upper body, my head, all at once, the shock spreading through more than half of my body as it knocked me off my feet and onto the ground.
3410
3411Not as strong a blow as it might have been.  She couldn’t see me.
3412
3413The hit did make me take in an involuntary breath.  The entire inside of my mouth burned in a way that reminded me of disinfectant poured on a wound, but it treated my entire mouth as that wound, and made me feel like every affected surface would erupt in ulcers, if it wasn’t already.
3414
3415Coughing, sputtering, I staggered out of the worst of the smoke, stumbled into a wall, and collapsed against the ground.
3416
3417The hostages, Mary, and Ruth were mostly out of the worst of the smoke.  Especially now that it was contained.  The Twin hadn’t accessed the globe, she wasn’t pulling it free and tossing it at us.  She didn’t scream or taunt us.  Only silence.
3418
3419My breath wheezed as I stared into the smoke.  I realized I wouldn’t see anything, and looked away.  I looked to Mary, who sat against the wall, bloody and battered.  She had a nasty cut running from belly button to shoulder blade.  I wasn’t sure how deep it was.
3420
3421*****
3422
3423Chance and Simon opened windows, staying as far from the smoke as they could, mouths covered.  The smoke began to clear.  The Twin was there, sitting against the wall much as Mary was.
3424
3425Bled, burned, gassed, and to look at her, she was still breathing.
3426
3427I patted myself down, and found no weapon.  I looked to Mary, and saw her holding a knife out.
3428
3429I took it.
3430
3431I approached the twin, while Mary threw more knives toward the door.  I saw the twin meet my eyes.
3432
3433“He didn’t even care,” she spoke, her voice ragged, ravaged by the smoke.  I thought she should cough, given what I was experiencing, but she didn’t.
3434
3435“The Baron?” I asked.
3436
3437“He took that woman as if it was payment enough.  Didn’t care.  Immortality was more important than our sisters.  He smiled.  He laughed for his guests.  Didn’t want me to wear black, to mourn.”
3438
3439“To be fair,” I said, “You’re awfully hard people to feel sorry for.  You want to be mourned?”
3440
3441“We were supposed to-” she wheezed a breath.  She tensed, like she was going to swing for me, try and execute me on the spot.  Something didn’t let her.  “Supposed to have him, if nobody else.  Him.  But we’re just bastard children.  Even to him.  Now-”
3442
3443I could hear movement outside.  I gestured to Mary.
3444
3445“-Now I die alone.”
3446
3447“Yeah,” I said.  I choked back ten different sorts of emotion.  I didn’t sympathize with her, but I could sympathize with what she was saying.  “I don’t suppose you’ll give me some advice on how to deal with your brother?”
3448
3449She shook her head.
3450
3451I wasn’t surprised in the least.
3452
3453A part of me, hearing what she’d said, wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t fighting more.  The damage wasn’t that severe.  She could have mustered the strength to hit me, fought to the door, gotten access to a doctor, and gotten patched together.
3454
3455But she had no reason to.  Not anymore.
3456
3457“Then… Want to help me help you move along?”
3458
3459I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard me, but then she slouched.  As she did so, her body came further apart.  I could see how the gas had affected the meaty inner layers.  It looked like the inside of my mouth felt.
3460
3461She strained, and I saw her bones shift and move.  Her entire body was reconfigurable, to help the doctors do their work and to make room for her little sister.  Her ribs pulled back and away, exposing organs in her chest.
3462
3463I sank the knife into place.  I had to grip it with both hands to rake it across the surface.  I watched as it strained, gushing blood, and then stopped beating.
3464
3465I stepped back and away.  The other Lambs surrounded me.  Gordon, Jamie, Mary, Lillian, Ashton, Helen, Hubris… all watching as the Twin slowly died.
3466
3467I saw the peace on her face, and every sense was aware of the violence and chaos all around us.  Warrick had finally snapped, and it wasn’t pretty.
3468[/QUOTE]
3469
3470[/SPOILER]