38. Where the Dark Flowers Bloom
Alistair jerks in Briar’s grip, turning to the side as blood spatters both of them, shockingly hot.
The moment it’s over, Briar lets the knife fall to the floor, no longer feeling compelled to hold on to it - they don’t realise their mistake until Alistair grabs Briar by the collar and drives them into the ground with a long shout of rage.
Fuck. He’s not dead. Wounded, yes, with a gash in his neck that looks ragged and nasty, but well enough to drive his elbow into Briar’s throat, leaving them gasping for air that won’t come.
There’s a moment of completely directionless panic around them, and then Briar hears, through the sound of their own wheezing, Hadley’s voice raised in shrieking command: ‘Pips, grab anybody with a cape! Get them down, make them stay down!’
If Bastian had issued such a command, it’d be a bloodbath, lungs crushed beneath eager schoolboy knees.
As it is, her grasp of Conduct seems powerful enough to elicit a burst of chaos - Mons scattering, shouting their own Workings, the sound of running feet and muffled bodies hitting the floor.
There are far more pips than capes, and Briar thinks of a video they saw once, fascinatingly horrible, of a livid swarm of ants taking down a bird a hundred times their size.
There’s too much noise, now, for anyone to command the entire room - and Alistair, who Briar suspects is the one person here truly capable of bringing everything to a screeching halt, is now clutching his neck with one hand and trying to strangle Briar with the other.
‘How fucking dare you,’ he’s shouting, his voice hoarse, the cut still freely bleeding.
Briar’s hand reaches for the knife, and their slick fingers close around the handle; they swing for Alistair, slashing indiscriminately before the blade slips free of their grasp, and the pressure on their neck is relieved just for a moment as he throws himself back and out of the way.
Briar follows him, manages to get in a quick jab to his windpipe with their open fist, and as he bends over on the floor clutching at his throat, unable to breathe, Briar realises that if he can’t breathe, he can’t talk, and if he can’t talk—
‘I’ve got one!’ There’s a flash of blonde plaits and then a small body comes careening into Briar, hard hands pushing them down against the floor.
Briar looks up to see that Evie - little Evie, with the cherries in her hair - has tackled them.
Of course. They’re still wearing the stupid fucking cape.
To any pip in the thrall of Hadley’s working, Briar is the enemy.
‘Get off,’ Briar grunts, pushing at her. ‘Evie, it’s me.’
Evie’s eyes dance with recognition, but she just says, ‘Someone come and help me, quick! Briar’s too strong.’
More pips, and suddenly Briar is that baby bird, surrounded by determined ants. They can push each one off individually, but together they’ve become an immovable force.
‘Hadley,’ Briar shouts, but they can’t tell who’s still in the cavern, who’s capable of helping - and any moment now Alistair is going to regain the power of speech, and it’ll all be over.
They turn their head to the side, fighting for space, and see that Alistair is rising up onto his knees, purple-faced and still choking.
‘Use . . . the knife,’ he says, each word a ghoulish effort of breath. Briar watches with horror as Evie looks around, pleased to have a job to do, then seizes the knife from where it’s fallen and comes back to Briar practically skipping.
‘Don’t,’ Briar says, even though their words are powerless.
Evie crouches without self-consciousness, the ungainly squat of a toddler, as she leans over Briar and judges the angle to their throat.
Her hand flies through the air, and then freezes, arrested mid-motion, as Briar hears Hadley shout, ‘Stop.’
‘Do it,’ rasps Alistair, but then Hadley is there, saying, ‘Drop the knife, pip.’
The boy kneeling on Briar’s chest shifts, and it knocks the wind from their lungs completely.
Briar reaches for Hadley, trying to draw her attention, to get her to free them from under this mass of determined legs, but it seems like all of her focus is going into keeping the sharp end of the blade from finding their skin.
Beyond the point of it, still hovering dangerously close, there’s a war going on in Evie’s head.
Briar can see it passing across her face, the battleground between two wills, as Hadley grabs hold of Evie’s arm and tries to pry the knife from her that way.
Evie’s hand jerks, and Briar is sprayed with fresh blood as Hadley falls back, clutching her palm.
‘Get her,’ Alistair says, his bloodshot eyes now trained on Hadley.
Evie pivots, her arm reeling back to strike, and even when Hadley hisses ‘Stop,’ she doesn’t come to a complete halt.
They’re tussling for the knife now, Hadley trying to push her away, stronger than her but not powerful enough to overcome Alistair’s command.
He’s on his feet, close enough that Briar can see him in their periphery, so they grab for his ankle, leaving a smear of blood on his pristine white sock as he stumbles and goes down hard on the stones.
It’s all the opening Hadley needs.
‘Kill him.’
Evie turns, her lip caught between her teeth in concentration, and Briar can see the exact path the knife will take, the fact that she’ll succeed where they failed.
‘Stop her,’ Alistair says, a command thrown out to the world at large, so strong that even Briar makes one last valiant effort to get to their feet.
It doesn’t work. They’re still trapped as the knife is snatched from Evie’s hand by a boy with a bandage on his wrist - Orpheus, Briar thinks fleetingly, no – and driven, hard, into the soft and easy target of his best friend’s chest.
‘Fuck,’ someone’s saying. ‘Fuck.’
Hadley’s speaking too, and the pips restraining Briar finally let go, Briar’s lungs filling with mercifully cool air as they turn over, heave up onto all fours, then stagger to their feet.
‘Holy shit, Buck,’ someone else says, ‘that’s Lord Sinclair’s daughter.’
Evie is lying on the ground, eyes open, still breathing; Briar drops down next to her, heedless of Alistair, heedless of anything but the rise and fall of her chest, the dark patch where blood is blooming.
‘Hey,’ they say, ‘Evie. It’s okay. I’m here.’
They gather her up, her skinny frame unbearably light, and think of the Working. They ignore the sounds of shouting, of hiccupping sobs from nearby, of Hadley’s voice rising to a panicky pitch. Nothing happens. The blood continues to spread, soaking the white of her shirt.
‘Get Bastian,’ Briar says, glancing up at Alistair, grey and covered in gore, swaying like he’s clinging to consciousness. ‘He can fix this, Alistair. Get Bastian.’
They try again, eyes squeezed shut, cradling her close to their chest as they whisper to her, like it might help. Please, please, please don’t let her die.
Bastian had done it. Brought Briar back from the brink, as if it had never happened.
But Briar isn’t Bastian, and as they hold Evie, muttering quietly to her, the Working interspersed with comforting nonsense, believing with every fibre of their being that any minute now he’ll be right by their side, Bastian fails to appear.
‘What did I do?’ Orpheus is saying, his voice high and shrill. ‘Evie? What did I do?’
Her breathing is too laboured now, a frightening rattle, and Briar turns to the boy sobbing at their side and says, ‘Just - hold her hand, okay? Hold her hand, she needs her friend.’
Orpheus fumbles for her fingers, drops them, then gathers them up and clutches them tight.
They’re both bent over her, two sentinels keeping a hollow watch, when she goes still.
Briar presses their fingers to her neck, desperately searching for a pulse. What are they supposed to do? Mouth to mouth? Chest compressions? But she’s bleeding so much from her chest, so that can’t be right.
‘She’s dead?’ Alistair says. He’s so close that Briar flinches away from his voice, as if they’re still trying to keep Evie away from him. As if it’s not already too late.
Because she is dead. And there’s nothing Briar can do about it.
‘You killed her,’ Briar says. They look up at Alistair, who’s agape with shock - until he narrows his eyes, then looks up at Hadley.
‘No,’ he says. ‘She did.’
It’s strange to watch it in real time, the way the world spins backwards to clean up the messes of supposedly great men; the story Briar already knows will be told so that Alistair Buckingham can keep his place at Temple, his title, his cape, his future.
The room, already half-cleared of fleeing Mons and the pips chasing them, seems to come to stillness.
Then Belcourt, who’s managed to Work himself free of pips, makes a move towards Hadley; Hadley throws her arms up to stop him, and the two of them go down hard, Hadley’s head glancing off the blunt edge of a rock as she hits the ground.
Briar has had enough.
They stand abruptly and punch Alistair, hard, in the throat.
He blacks out instantly, eyes rolling back in his head before he even hits the ground.
Good. Good. Then, there’s Belcourt; he starts speaking, the Working unformed, his specialism a mystery - but Briar gets to him first, employs another jab to the windpipe, ensuring blessed silence.
He keeps trying, his lips moving, but it doesn’t take.
‘Come on,’ they say to Hadley, helping her up onto her feet. She’s conscious, confused, the white crown of her hair sticky with blood. Briar has to sling her arm over their shoulder, her weight dragging.
She sent Briar in here to kill Alistair; likely, to die. Briar should just leave her here. But they can’t.
A quick glance around the cave confirms that Tate and Westby are nowhere to be seen.
‘Orpheus,’ they say. ‘Come on.’
Orpheus seems beyond speech, beyond reason - but he lets Briar haul him up with their free arm, then follows them, as if he’s just grateful to have someone telling him what to do, perfectly obedient to the last.