by Voss Foster
And Kimmy smiled. "I could say the same thing."
They laughed, again like things weren't all kinds of fucked up. Was I the only one really affected by this, this time around? Everyone had to take their turn getting screwed up by a case once in a while, and this time, I guess the pointer landed on me. I cleared my throat and waited until I had everyone's attention. "One little thing maybe worth mentioning. She wants us to kill her."
The room hushed for a single heartbeat, broken by King sighing heavily. "Are we killing her, Swift?"
"Of course not. But Dash is right. She's been asking for us to kill her since she appeared in the office." He sighed, holding up his hand to silence any oncoming comments. "Yes, she popped up down in one of the storage rooms. So did the folks after her. Ice elemental, troll, and an elf. Not afraid of a fight."
King snorted. "Anything else you're forgetting to tell us?"
Swift shrugged. "If it makes a difference to any of you, she looks human. She's a hag. About five-hundred years old, but looks about thirty, so not showing any characteristic signs of her nature."
"A five-hundred year old hag?" Bancroft leaned forward, his blue eyes wide and his face just a little milkier pale than usual. "They're fearsomely powerful after just one century. Her power must be…immense."
"Well, she is a Class-A, so I'd say that's a fair bet." Swift smiled slightly at his own remark before continuing. "She hasn't given us any trouble. She does her best to keep herself in check. No blow ups or anything to speak of. As long as it stays that way, it'll be pretty basic protective custody, by order of Ambassador Cyrex."
Things were wrapping up, which meant now was pretty much my best chance to bring up my big concern. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut and toed the line, but… well hell, I knew that wasn't going to happen, no matter how prudent it might have been. "Swift? Do we address her mental state with all this?"
"What about her mental state do we need to address?"
"Lenva is suicidal, and there are protocols to go through if we have somebody obviously suicidal under our care."
"We don't play by the same rules when it's a Class-A." King shook her head, her mouth set into a deep frown. She brushed her free hand back through her short shorn blonde hair. "Anything dealing with Class-A containment, that's down to the Kingdoms."
"It sure wasn't down to the Kingdoms when they tried to kill every human on the planet Earth a year ago. They were perfectly happy to let us clean up their mess when fucking Jörmungandr broke out and started destroying everything. Now that someone's clearly mentally unstable and emotionally wrecked, they're the supreme, wise arbiters?"
"Dash." Swift's voice was hard, and he stood up as tall as he could. Guess my play didn't land. At all. "Go home, get some rest, and you report to my office when you're back on shift tonight. Before you go on duty."
My belly roiled, my limbs felt weak, and heat rose up from my toes to the tips of my hair. Part shame at being admonished in front of everyone, and part anger on behalf of Lenva, at the way she was being treated so differently than anyone else, like her psychological state—pretty clearly a fucking bad state—didn't matter.
But if I hadn't at least tried, could I have lived with myself?
The meeting broke and I headed for the doors, but not before a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder. I looked up into Gutt's olive eyes. They were bright with concern, and the downward set of his mouth drove that concern home. "You too tired for breakfast?"
"I don't need sympathy pancakes or whatever you're planning, okay Gutt?" I did my best to sound positive and okay with everything that had just happened…probably didn't work, knowing my face and my mouth. Especially since I was running on a quarter cup of burning hot coffee and a couple hours' sleep on a government issue cot.
Gutt sighed, but he didn't let go of me. "I feel you need a brief reminder that I can lift a car over my head, Dash. Come to breakfast."
"Why?"
"Because you had a rough night, not a much better morning, and you're my partner." He quirked up one of his sparse eyebrows and cracked the knuckles of his free hand against his chest. "I would hate to have to insist."
I took a few breaths. I was grumpy as hell, and that was making everything else worse. I forced myself to remember that Gutt had actually behaved better than I'd expected him to. He barely freaked out about the Class-A at all, and he was perfectly cordial with Lenva while they were discussing Droshheim. Hell, I'd liked that conversation, too, in spite of how little it did to assuage any of my own worries. Gutt didn't talk much about his home Kingdom. Of course, I never asked. He didn't ask about Rhode Island, either. We always had other things to focus on.
Gutt was my partner…and my friend. And he wanted to go to breakfast because I was having a shitty day at work. "You're paying. Your paychecks are fatter than mine."
"As is my ass, so I wouldn't dream of splitting the check. You'd be paying far too much for whatever pittance you end up eating." His face finally broke into a tusky grin. "Come on. You'll drive, since I don't have a car."
"What, no remote transport for me this time?"
"I'll remote transport the car, but I thought you'd like to have it to drive yourself home when this is all done. Unless you'd rather walk."
Chapter Six
I'd never been to this particular diner, but it had a very classic look. Smooth lines everywhere, waitresses in pink and teal frocks with white aprons, black and white checkered floors polished to a shine. They also had particularly roomy booths, which I had a feeling was a pretty big plus in Gutt's book. Judging by the half-preet clientele, that extra size was probably intentional for the titanic races. Ogres, orcs, trolls, and all their ilk.
After we ordered, and after Gutt flirted with the water elemental waitress who was very interested in his job at the FBI, Gutt leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. "It really bothers you, doesn't it? Everything with Lenva?"
"Of course it does. She hasn't done anything wrong as far as any of us know." He wouldn’t like this, and I also wouldn't change his mind, but he wanted to know. "This isn't like Jörmungandr. She's not doing anything, she's not killing anyone. She wants us to kill her. She's scared, she's in the Mundane for the first time, and we're sitting on her so the Kingdoms can make a better cell for her." He wanted this talk? I'd do him the honor of laying it all out for him.
"She is a Class-A, Dash. I speculated it, and she confirmed it herself. While it's possible she's lying, that seems rather at odds to her stated desires. A case of mixed messages at the very least."
"I believe that she's a Class-A. I believe that she's powerful. We have no information on her to know what she's capable of, or what she might have done. And so far, the name Lenva of Droshheim isn't pinging anyone's major danger alarms." I took a swig of the weak coffee the waitress had poured. Weak, but just as scaldingly hot as the cup King had pushed over to me at the meeting. "That's the crux of the issue. We don't know, and if she's not scary enough to set everybody off like Jörmungandr was, how bad can it really be?"
"It's true, Jörmungandr was considerably more well-known." Gutt nodded a couple times and sipped his tea before continuing. "Did anyone ever tell you about the Seven-Fingered Hand? I know you're aware they existed, but how much do you know about them?"
"They were a terrorist group. What do they have to do with anything?"
Gutt set his cup down and folded his hands on the tabletop. "They're…rather cogent to the current situation in many ways."
"Why? They wanted to capture Class-As for their own purposes too? You think they're connected to the people after Lenva?"
"Hardly. The Hand believed that every Class-A should be free to roam wherever they may please. Nature wouldn't have created something so dangerous without a reason."
"I'm not over here arguing for mutually assured destruction, Gutt."
"I'm aware, Dash. I'm simply trying to get across that this isn't a new argument. Even today, long after the Hand has vanished, every Cla
ss-A sealing is a contentious affair. I've seen three sealed away in my lifetime, and with Lenva, two unsealed. Every time the decision was made, there were detractors." He blew out a long breath that puffed his cheeks. "There was even one I didn't agree with."
"What, you got to weigh in?"
"Of course not. But the Mundane is not the only place that treats politics as a spectator sport. Everyone follows the larger goings on of the Kingdoms, and a Class-A sealing is such an exceptional situation, it attracts a lot of attention."
"So you get where I'm coming from? Is that where this is heading?"
"I do understand where you're coming from, Dash. I still believe firmly that Yaarle should have been kept free. Monitored, certainly, but kept free. He was a greater dragon, and a pacifist to the core according to all accounts. Even the testimony of those who wanted him sealed. He was powerful to be certain, but he caused very little damage."
"What was so dangerous about Yaarle that they had to lock him up, then?"
"His presence acted as a magical amplifier. Anyone using magic within his radius of effect was greatly empowered. So was any magic already present. Barriers between Kingdoms became impassable, buildings were destroyed by people simply trying to start fires in their hearths, several elemental children were sealed so strongly at birth that they lost their magic permanently."
I tried to wrap my head around all of that, and to be honest? The whole thing just made me fucking sad. "So they…put him somewhere no one could reach him."
"More than that. Yaarle's sealing is considered one of the strongest ever performed. Possibly the strongest. Because of his unique effect on magic, his seals are all but impossible to break. Maybe actually impossible."
"It's tragic, but what else could they do?"
"Dampen his effects and keep him for study, to aid in other sealings, to reinforce the barriers used to keep prisoners in place. I believe there were many places Yaarle could have been useful and led a fulfilling life, and no personal reason he should have been locked away on his own like that. And the permanence of it also made me particularly uncomfortable. Still makes me uncomfortable, if I'm being entirely honest."
"All right, but what about when someone tried to use him to do some unthinkable horror? Release a dozen other Class-As who weren't so nice as he was?"
Gutt nodded. "Exactly. You're arguing the same case they did in order to get people to agree to his sealing. All you're missing is a proclamation that his own magic was also amplified. All it would take would be one misplaced piece of magic and he'd catch himself in an infinite feedback loop with unknowable consequences to the world around him."
The waitress delivered our food—Gutt's twin plates of eggs and hash browns and sausage links plus my blueberry pancakes, since I needed a hit of sugar to my system stat—and, after exchanging thank yous, I started in on Gutt again. "What point are you trying to make? That I'm no better than the Kingdoms so I don't have any room to judge, or that I'm just like the most fearsome terrorist group in the history of the Kingdoms?"
"Neither. I'm not here to antagonize you, Dash. If I wanted to do that, I certainly wouldn't have gone to the trouble of taking you out to breakfast." He sighed and closed his eyes for several long moments before continuing. "I just want you to know that these aren't easy decisions, and that I haven't made up my mind about Lenva either. She seems perfectly nice, and who knows why they sealed her five-hundred years ago? For all we know, she's an illegitimate child of someone powerful and her abilities made a convenient excuse to get her out of the way. Maybe she destroyed entire cities. As you've already said, we don't know."
"But you're ready to hand her to the Kingdoms when this is all over anyway."
He slapped a hand on the table. "Dash, you're living with preconceptions instead of listening to the actual words I'm taking the effort to say to you, and I know you're not so tired that you're not processing these very simple concepts I'm presenting."
That was all true, but it didn't do anything to quench the injustice burning in my stomach. "You told me that, for once, something wasn't our problem. Why am I supposed to believe you don't want to shunt her aside?"
Gutt deflated into the bench and all the tension slipped from his body. "Dash, she's a Class-A. She knocked my magic out of my system. I wasn't thinking when I said that, but I would hope that you know me well enough by now to have some idea of my character. And if you think I would stand by and allow a total malfeasance of justice in the name of preserving protocol, then I've failed to show you anything about myself over the past year."
Damn. Damn damn damn. He sat forward and ate in silence, not making eye contact. I started to eat too, but even the sugar bomb of pancakes, blueberries, and syrup didn't break through to me.
Was I being unreasonable? If I posted this all on Reddit, would the masses decide I was the asshole this time? I thought back to Gutt dealing with the shapeshifters. He'd been so angry about the mere thought that shapeshifters could be real. As far as he was concerned, they were a myth.
Their existence challenged everything he knew to be true in the world. It scared him…and he'd been afraid when his magic gave out. Who wouldn't have been? Gutt was our main magical defense in the OPA. Casey wasn't trained in any kind of combat or defensive magic and Rothiel, Oona, and our remote transport tech Zar were all highly specialized for their jobs. If something went wrong and he was out of commission, it was more than just him that was in danger.
Gutt wasn't an angry person, as a rule. He only got that way when things were distinctly going pear-shaped, or when…he was afraid of something. Shapeshifters being real? That was a threat against everything he knew and believed. Terrorists coming after us in Central Park? That was a very pear-shaped situation.
And a Class-A who could wipe out his magic, and potentially the rest of the OPA? Well, when I stopped thinking about how nice Lenva seemed and all the grander moral implications, it clenched my asshole to think about, too.
But he'd pushed through magical overload sickness in Central Park in order to keep us all safe. In spite of his upset at the shapeshifters, he stood tall and fought, not only against them, but later for their rights. Hell, a decade ago, when the Kingdoms hadn't even wanted to send anyone after their escaped convicts in the Mundane, Gutt was one of the voices shouting them into submission. So did I think he would do the right thing, once the chips were down? If I was willing to eat a little crow—absolutely.
Halfway through my pancakes, I tried for nonchalance. "So we wait and find out what we're dealing with."
"That does seem the most logical route, don't you think?" Gutt laid his silverware down and stared straight into me, eyes hard and wide. "Dash, if this is wrong—"
"You don't need to convince me." I nodded and met his gaze straight on. "I'm a dumb flighty human who mistrusts authority. I'm the one who needed to get my own shit straight." I still didn't like any of this, but at least our little breakfast chat was enough to remind me who Gutt truly was. "If I thought you wouldn't do the proper thing, then yeah, that was on me."
Slowly, his normal, tusk-baring grin split across Gutt's face, pulling up slate-blue lips. He went back to his second plate, the first already all-but spotless. "I'm fine standing by you if it's the correct decision, Dash. But we don't know what the correct decision is right now."
"Well…I guess we just wait for Kimmy or the ambassador. Whoever gets us some information first." I went back to silent—but much more comfortable—eating. I had at least Gutt as a solid ally. Swift knew how I felt about the whole situation. And King…well, King was as likely to stand by authority for authority's sake as I was.
I wouldn't be standing completely alone out in the wilderness. And as far as I was concerned, protecting her from the Kingdoms was as much a part of my job as an OPA agent as protecting her from anyone else who would wish her harm. If I thought she didn't deserve to be locked up, I'd fight as far as I was legally able.
My worry was just how much I was legally able to do whe
n it came to Class-A containment. From the sounds of it…not much. Which really just meant I'd need enough sleep to get crafty if it came down to that.
Once we'd cleared our plates and Gutt had paid up the tab—I did try to pay for my share, but he insisted otherwise—we headed out, Gutt with a phone number in tow from the waitress. I shook my head, chuckling. "You been working your charms on her for a while?"
"Not at all. As I've told you, I'm quite a handsome troll. And with such a dangerous job, well I can hardly blame anyone for finding me all that much more desirable."
I clapped him way up high, which at his height meant just between the shoulder blades. "I'm going to try and pack a week's worth of sleep into…" The muscles in his back were tight against my fingers, tense. "Gutt."
"Don't go to sleep just yet, Dash." His voice fell out, a harsh whisper, and I caught a whiff of ozone as he raised up a golden ring of light, just a foot away from my face. "We're apparently not quite finished with our shift."
All the more I needed to hear. I reached for my Glock, still tucked against my ribcage, and took immediate stock of the street around us. It wasn't crowded, but certainly busier than I would have wanted for a firefight. A few cars drove past per minute, but more importantly, this stretch of road had a good number of businesses, and people tended to walk between them. Just in a brief glance, I caught a human man with two babies in one of those double strollers, a pair of dwarves chatting as they licked ice cream cones, and five business-suited professionals meandering on their own, preet and human alike. Could it be one of them tripping Gutt's senses?
I caught the rainbow shimmer of remote transport to my left, and whipped around just as a sharp dagger pressed against my sternum. The ice elemental from before, smirking. Her free hand glistened with frost. "Hey sugar. You have a nice breakfast?"
"Pretty good." I shifted in place, not drawing back from the knife, because I was fairly certain she wouldn’t appreciate that, but enough to cover me swinging my Glock a little higher. Without notice, hopefully. "You want this to go down the hard way, or do you want to come along peacefully?"