Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “So,” Wren said. Sergei braced himself. “Tall, Black and Dapper, huh?”

  Andre Felhim.

  “We met, yeah. To discuss breaking the contract.” The agreement that bound Wren to the Silence, for a monthly retainer and the promise of their resources as she needed them, to be on-call as they needed her. Only the Silence was in disarray, internal politics and policies making that contract a danger rather than a safety. It had been a totally private meeting…unless they were talking about bumping into Andre and Jorgenmunder at Rockefeller Center? Damn it, he’d barely run into the man, in a purely public place!

  Fortunately, Wren had gotten distracted. “Money still landed in my account, first of the month. Do I have to give it back?”

  Bless her for the mercenary she was. “No. If we can make it through the next few hours without them calling you, it’s yours, no strings. They’re already in breach of contract, by not giving us all the information we needed to accomplish the Nescanni situation; they’re not going to push it.” He hoped.

  “Sergei…All this was fascinating. Really. But you were supposed to be getting rid of the damn contract, not schmoozing with Andre over money. Especially money I’d feel dirty about having in my account.”

  She heard what she said, and then backtracked quickly. “Not that I was going to return it, or anything…”

  “It takes steps,” Sergei was saying. “Andre—”

  “Andre wants you by his side, fighting his battles. I can understand that. But—”

  “Andre knows I’ve made my choice.”

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know you’ve made your choice? Because it’s sounding a lot like you’re still heeling to Andre’s command. Or you could have just had a nice little conversation with him last week, and let me tell him to go take a hike, instead of hustling me away like the girlfriend as wasn’t supposed to meet the wife.”

  It was a low blow. They both knew it was a low blow. Wren had the decency to look ashamed the moment the words left her mouth.

  “I’ve told him no, Wren. But if we can slip out of the contract—and out of any dealing with him at all—without him losing face, you get to keep the money we were just discussing. So what’s the problem?”

  He didn’t think she was annoyed simply because he was seeing the old man. Although, in some way, that would make sense that she found it threatening. The lonejack way was a mentoring system. To her eyes, Andre was his mentor. Mentor trumped everything except birth parents, and sometimes even them.

  In any case except this, she would have been right. But heart trumped everything, for him. Everything.

  “I told him no and I meant it. I’m not getting involved in his battles. Not while we have our own to fight. And not after, either.”

  “Sergei.” The crowd in the bar was too loud to impart the full level of amusement and resignation she clearly felt, but he could see it on her face. “You can tell him no until the cows come home and go back out again. He won’t believe it. And neither will you.”

  “I made my decision. Do you think—” He was starting to get annoyed.

  She put her hand on the crook of his elbow, her fingers curling into the cloth of his jacket, pressing the flesh underneath. Her touch, as always, both soothed and tingled, his skin practically twitching in anticipation of current hitting it.

  “I think you’re loving, and loyal, and smart, and all those other qualities that make you a great partner, on both the business and personal side. And I think—I know—that Andre had you first, and had you when you were still young and malleable, and you’re never going to be able to cut through all the hooks he has in your psyche.”

  Sergei had no comeback for that.

  “Partner.” That was a low blow, there. It was more intimate than “lover,” or “sweetheart,” even when she said it in that exasperated tone. Maybe even especially then. “You’re the one always telling me to finish the job. And you’re not finished with Andre. Not yet.”

  All that got her was an exasperated sigh, more sensed than heard in the noise of the party. Wren had no idea why she was playing Devil’s Advocate—she wanted out of this contract as badly—more!—as Sergei did. But something about it made her feel awkward, and it wasn’t simply giving up the stipend they had been paying her. Although that was part of it, yeah. The Worth-Rosen job was going to keep her healthy for a while longer, and the current situation—pun unavoidable—had given the Council more important fish to fry than her ownself, but…

  “The money has blood on it,” he said.

  Wren couldn’t argue with that. Lee’s blood. Sergei’s blood. The unknown Silence operative struck down in a suspicious accident before she could meet with them in Milan. The people who suffered from the Nescanni parchment here in Manhattan, because Silence infighting prevented them from getting access to all the data. Blood everywhere.

  “Does that mean it won’t pay the rent, the utilities, and the grocery bills? The repair work my slicks—” the light-absorbing bodysuit she wore on night jobs “—so desperately need?”

  “No. I thought you’d maybe have trouble with it. I guess I was wrong.”

  “Pragmatism first. I won’t do something I think is wrong. I haven’t done anything for the money that either of us thinks is wrong. Right?”

  Sergei said his former employers were Good Guys, all for righting wrongs and helping the helpless. And she had no beef with the kind of cases they took on, based on the little she’d seen. Bad stuff happened, and you needed to clean it up. Protect the innocent, or even just the oblivious. But…

  “But I don’t want to get tied up in their infighting, especially if Andre’s going to want us to fight his battles, not the stuff we signed up for. There wasn’t any rider on the contract for that.

  “This is where I’ve chosen to be.” He said it with such firmness she finally believed him. More, she believed that, if he said it that way to Andre, the old man would believe it, too, finally.

  “I know. So you do what you can,” she said, sliding her hand down his arm, fingertips touching the back of his hand lightly, feeling the tendons tighten under contact, as quickly as they’d tensed at her first touch. “Do what you can and I’ll take care of what’s left.” His gaze met hers, pale brown eyes meeting darker ones, and she smiled before taking her beer and mingling with the crowd.

  Much as she’d love to blow off this party and take her partner back to the nearest apartment, there would be time enough to celebrate the New Year with him. For now, she was on another kind of job.

  “Hi. Hey there. Hey.” Unlike her partner tonight, Wren was able to slip through the crowd tonight as though she were greased. People moved aside for her without seeing her, and the words went unheard into the white noise she seemed to generate; a side-effect of whatever it was that made her an effective Retriever. Someday she ought to volunteer for some kind of study or something, except the only people likely to make it worth her while would be the military, and thanks, but no thanks.

  “Hey. Hi. Oh.” A snippet of conversation caught her attention and she went into full listening mode, like a hound scenting game.

  “You really think they can pull this off?”

  “Not a chance. But at least we’ll go down fighting.”

  “I sent my kids to their mom’s.”

  “You hate that bitch.”

  “Yeah. But she loves the little brats. She’ll keep ’em safe.”

  The voices rose out of the happy din, less pessimistic than casually resigned.

  “I’ve been working on a new cantrip. Protective, but with a hook, gets triggered when I die, takes my killer with me.”

  “Nasty.”

  “Yeah. Made me feel slimy, making it. You want a copy?”

  A long pause, then—“No. I’m just…call me a wuss, but if I’m gonna die, fine. I don’t want to take anyone with me.”

  Wren made note of the two speakers, and moved on. That spell might be something of intere
st, if not to her—she was more the mind of the second speaker—then to the Troika.

  “Hey, bébé!” A drunken reveler swung Wren around in a tipsy do-si-do, and then staggered off into the crowd. Wren laughed, shaking her head. She had no idea who that woman had been, and suspected the woman had no idea who she was, either. Just a drunken grope in a crowded bar.

  Well, at least she’d been cute, in a sort of boozed-up way.

  A voice came from another corner of the bar. “Okay, so you tell me what Howe is up to. Because Christ knows we’re not getting the full story from our so-called leaders.”

  The voice was the next step beyond exhausted, and Wren naturally gravitated toward it, trying to see who was speaking. If she knew them, that would be of interest. If she didn’t—also of interest, but for a different reason.

  “Valere!”

  Fuck.

  The heavy hand on her shoulder kept her from engaging full “disappear into crowd” mode, anchoring her in place. She could disappear, if she wanted to, but it would be obvious now, and considerably rude.

  “Yes?” She looked pointedly at the hand on her, noting the thick silver ring on the index finger, the black stone drawing the eye directly to it. On principle, Wren looked away. Anything that drew the eye that overtly was either a. nothing you wanted to look into or b. trying to distract you from something you should be trying to see.

  “John Merrian.”

  The name meant nothing to her. She wasn’t sure if it was supposed to or not.

  “Just wanted to say, nice job at the Moot. You told us, and told us good.”

  John Merrian was a heavyset man, thick fingers leading to a thick arm, leading to a total lack of neck and a wide, rounded-jaw face topped by a brush-cut head of black hair. But his face was surprisingly kind, and the lines around his mouth were more from smiles than frowns.

  “Keep it up. Getting our asses kicked is a good thing, no matter what the grumps say.”

  He released her, and moved back into the crowd. Caught in some sort of invisible stasis, Wren stared after him for a long instant, unable to move. “That was…strange,” she mumbled to herself finally. Sergei said there would be changes, people who would insist on seeing me, now, no matter what I did. I didn’t believe him.

  Mentally giving herself a shake, Wren kept moving, having to duck under the arm of a rather elongated Talent waving his beer around as he led a group in a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” several hours early—for an instant, Wren felt the pang that came whenever something or someone reminded her of Lee, whose “Tree-taller” nickname was come by honestly.

  Happy New Year, my friend, she thought. I hope, wherever you are, you’re having a good laugh at what you started….

  “Excuse me…hi, Happy New Year, yeah.” A circuit around the bar, and she found herself in the corner, by the windows looking out onto the street, perched on a short wooden stool with a new beer in her hand and absolutely no idea who had bought it for her.

  “Oh no doubt.” A woman, off to her left. “If you place two spells, layered over each other, you don’t double it, you increase the toxicity exponentially.”

  All right, that was interesting. And totally not what she was here to overhear, worse luck. Still, worth noting, since that was the second time she’d heard people discussing actual Talent-work. If one of the side effects of all this teamwork and playing-well-together was that Stuff got shared horizontally, among peers, and not just from mentor to student, the way things always had been done…

  That could be as much a change to the Cosa as KimAnn’s own personal ambitions regarding the Councils. For good or ill, Wren had no idea.

  Time enough for that to come out in the wash, or whatever. Assuming there’s a wash to do, when all this is done.

  “Night, Wren. Happy New Year. Happy Truce.” The voice broke into her semifugue working state, and she looked up in time to see a hand raised in passing, someone shoving their arms into a coat and pulling a hat down over their head, exiting before she could react, or even determine who the speaker was and if she knew them.

  That was the fourth time it had happened, tonight. Four times more than usual. No, five times more, because they were not only seeing her, they were reacting to her, and acting as though it was totally normal.

  The question she found herself wondering was, did these people see her because they were now looking for her—or were they looking out for her? Was she really a positive, or did her newest, bestest friends have a guilty conscience prompting this new hyperawareness?

  No way to tell. Not right now, anyway. So she noted down everyone who looked at her, rather than slipping past her—and made special note of those who looked at-and-then-past her. If that wasn’t guilt, it was fear, and she was going to have those individuals looked closely at, first thing in the New Year.

  “Time, gentlemen, ladies, lonejacks. Time!”

  Someone was standing on the bar, clanging on something loud enough and discordant enough to cut through the noise and clamor.

  “Time!”

  Wren glanced around, but there was no clock on the wall, and in a crowd full of Talents there were no wristwatches to glimpse at, either, not even a cheap one you might not mind having totally destroyed by current-contact.

  “Say goodbye to the old year’s shit, and in with the—”

  “New shit!” someone yelled, to mixed laughter and boos.

  “You’re all a bunch of heathens and do not deserve this lovely toast I am about to make.”

  Wren placed the speaker now: Menachim. One of the few Pure Talents who was able to function past his fiftieth birthday without even—as far as anyone had been able to tell—a hint of wizzing. Pures were the total opposite of Nulls; they had nothing in their system that impaired current, which made them the most susceptible of all the Cosa to wizzing, or being overwhelmed by the current they used to the point of insanity.

  “To my brothers, my sisters, my cousins, my loves, and those of you I can’t stand.”

  By the time Menachim had gotten three words into his speech, the entire bar was silent. They could all feel the current rising, outside and within, triggered by the Pure’s words and intent.

  “To my brothers, my sisters, my cousins, my fellow warriors in the battle to come.

  I give you courage. I give you faith. I give you strength. And I give you pride.”

  Almost unwilling, Wren felt all those things surge inside her, swelling her veins like current-fire, burning out the doubts, the hesitations, the what-ifs and why-nots. Even knowing what he was doing, technically, she was still swept up by it. By the expressions of the faces around her, she wasn’t alone.

  “We are the Cosa Nostradamus. We are the Weirdbloods. We are the protectors of our fatae cousins, and their students, as well. The world does not dance to our tune, but gives us music that we might dance with it.

  “So dance, my brothers, my sisters, my beloveds. Dance. For tomorrow…we will have hangovers that could kill a horse!”

  To that, Wren could and did raise her glass. As she did so, there was the sound of heavy thudding bursts starting outside, as people let off firecrackers a few minutes ahead of the yearly fireworks display over the East River. Madmen, everyone out there, crushing together in the cold, just to see some sparklies. All right, they were lovely, impressive, totally unmagical sparklies that often rivaled Gandalf’s much-vaunted fireworks, but the crowd was too much for her. She preferred seeing in the New Year indoors, a good drink and good cheer and…She scanned the room, and spotted her partner, coats over one arm, coming toward her with intent written all over his face.

  Suddenly, the desire to bring in the New Year properly, overran any thought of sticking around to do any more eavesdropping.

  Sergei rolled over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for the haze to clear from his eyes.

  He heard the drawer of her nightstand open, and then the cool weight of a tube of Bactine landed on his open chest.

  “You did
n’t burn me,” he said mildly. Not, he added to himself, anywhere the Bactine could reach. He didn’t have to go to a doctor to know that his internal organs were taking a beating every time they had sex. It was the same thing that happened whenever she grounded excess current in him, used him to store power until she needed it. Only here, now, he didn’t have the excuse of her safety, her effectiveness, to justify it.

  His fault, purely his fault, for encouraging her to let go entirely. She was already starting to pull back, and he couldn’t blame her, even as his body craved the touch of her current.

  The problem was, his orgasm, never mild, was three times as intense when the surge of current that accompanied her own climax “leaked” into him.

  She rolled onto her side, and cuddled against him, arms folded, her head resting on his chest so that she could feel him breathing. He wasn’t much for postcoital cuddling, but his skin prickled, anticipating any leftover current.

  “And even if I did, you couldn’t stop, could you?”

  “I…” I don’t know. And he couldn’t lie to her.

  “Fuck. All right. That’s it.”

  “No more sex?” He knew he sounded like a kicked puppy, and they both let out nervous laughter at the tone.

  “Never been a fan of cutting off my nose to spite my face. I’m a Talent. I can control this. And you don’t tell me any more ever to let go. Not ever.”

  She was so fierce, so strong, that he could only smile. Her mentor had nicknamed her “Wren” because she was as innocuous, as inconspicuous as that tiny brown bird, but Sergei saw her as a tiger, tawny-striped in the grass and fierce as any great cat could be.

  “Don’t you smile at me, mister,” she warned, but he could tell from her voice that she was about to fall into her usual postcoital snooze so he merely pressed a kiss to the top of her head, rearranged them both so that she wasn’t resting on his current-battered kidneys, and let himself drift off into sleep with her. He couldn’t help it: sex made him sleepy. It was a good thing his Wrenlet wasn’t one for company after sex, either. At least not the awake kind. She fell asleep before he did, half the time. Compatibility was a wonderful thing.