Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “I had been assuming the worst,” Sergei admitted. He had a sudden craving for a cup of tea, but that would require getting up and going to the kitchenette in the back of the gallery space, and he didn’t want the tea that badly, to interrupt the briefing. “But no, the guy seems surprisingly decent, for a politician.”

  “Damning with very faint praise.”

  “Indeed. He was stupid enough to keep copies of things he shouldn’t have had, and now someone knows about it—that someone being not unwilling to use the copies, either on our client or the original owner.”

  “But it is dirt? We’re not stealing back something that’s going to be used against us, or anything, are we?” He wasn’t taking her queries as her not trusting his research skills, but just natural caution after the Nescanni disaster, and her own recent toe-dip into the client-management side of things. They’d been played too many times, lately.

  “Oh, it’s dirty,” he assured her. “This guy may be council, not Council—” and Sergei stopped, bemused by how stupid that sounded “—I mean, he’s a borough councilperson, not a Cosa Council member, but that doesn’t make him lily-white pure and clean.”

  And that would be enough for her to play with for a little while; figuring the best way to approach this job being the best possible nonlethal distraction from setting up the Patrols, or keeping people reminded that they were under truce, or her fallback obsession, that damned horse she pulled out and worried at whenever things weren’t moving on other fronts. God, how he wished he’d never accepted that job for her. The one thing she hadn’t been able to settle, one way or another, in her entire career, and he was beginning to think it was sent to haunt them, not its actual owners, for all eternity…

  “You’re fussing.”

  “I am not.” It was an automatic retort. “I’m being thorough. I was being thorough. Now it’s all yours.”

  He had done everything he needed to do: taken the queries, sorted, evaluated, brokered the deal, done the client background research. That was as far as he could go. Everything going forward required his partner’s specialized skills.

  Wren didn’t seem convinced, but took the materials from him and, sitting down on the sofa, one leg curled under her in her usual pose, began to sort through the information.

  Sergei was pretty sure he wasn’t fussing. But he would, deep down and quietly, admit to himself that he was a bit…overanxious. And not all of it had to do with his concern for Wren’s state of mind. He really didn’t want to leave her alone, not now, but there was a trip on his schedule that had been set up almost six months ago, and…

  “Sergei.” Wren was looking at him, sensing something.

  He forced a smile. “I’m okay. Going to go make some tea. You want any?”

  “Ugh.” She shook her head, and went back to the papers, reassured.

  He slipped out of the office, a quick once-over of the gallery space reassuring him that everything was running smoothly: Lowell was speaking with a customer who was clearly just killing time, looking at a watercolor that showed a dove overlaid over the Manhattan skyline. It was exquisitely done, but lacked the sense of soul that would have gotten it off the wall and into someone’s collection. The artist showed real potential, though, and someone would buy it to say they had something of his, when he hit his stride and the quality work skyrocketed in price.

  The kitchenette barely deserved the name, but there was a sink and a minifridge, and enough room for his electric kettle and Lowell’s four-cup coffeemaker. Running the water until it was cold enough to go into the teakettle, Sergei stared at the tiled backsplash, willing himself to stop thinking. His willpower, however, wasn’t up to the level of even a tyro Talent, and his thoughts kept circling around to his own justifications. If he didn’t get his head straight, he was going to be no use to anyone.

  Why are you pushing her so much?

  Because he was trying to prove to himself that he did have a role to play in Wren’s life, still. Between her reluctant move into becoming a major Player in the Cosa, even if she hadn’t realized it yet, and the fact that she absorbed—like a sponge—almost everything she needed to know about the basics of running a freelance business like theirs, he was painfully aware that she didn’t really need him as the “front” anymore. The original need for obscurity, for cutouts between her and the clients, was ironically being reduced as her reputation increased: people might try to kill her, but nobody would turn her in or double-cross her.

  So?

  So…he had to do more. Be more…something. Because going back to “only” being a businessman, no matter how emotionally engrossing he found the art world? That didn’t appeal to him.

  It was laughable, really. He’d thought, when he left the Silence, that it was all he wanted: an ordinary, commonplace, not life-or-death world. But obviously not, since he kept getting involved in life-and-death things every single damned day. And night. And…

  And that led to the real problem, didn’t it?

  You’re a junkie. You’ve always been a junkie. If it wasn’t the Silence, it was the thrill of the Retrieval secondhand through Wren, and now this damned thing with the Council, and the fatae, and every damned magical creature on the entire damned coast, apparently.

  “Nothing wrong with the adrenaline kick, every now and again. It’s not like I’m jumping out of planes. Exactly.”

  Sure, and it’s better than getting hooked on drugs, better than alcohol, but it’s still a jones, your need to meddle and fix and be in the thick of things. You’re not even an adrenaline junkie. No: you’re a responsibility junkie.

  Fine. Accept it, own it, move on. Why is it becoming a problem now?

  That was something he had the answer to, already. It hadn’t been a real problem, before, because he could focus all of his attention, his need, on Wren. It had been just the two of them, and she needed him as much as he needed her, so it was…what was the phrase? A closed loop.

  She wasn’t so deeply tied with the Cosa—hell, the Cosa wasn’t deeply tied with the Cosa—before this, so they hadn’t impacted him. Now, however…it wasn’t competition or jealousy he was feeling. Then what? He touched at it like a sore tooth; probing, testing.

  You’re not Cosa, no. But you are connected. Through Wren, through the friendships you’ve made. Lee, yes. But more than that, the fatae he had encountered: P.B., unbelievably, undeniably loyal. Shig, with his desert-dry sense of humor. Rorani, the dryad Wren so adored. Creatures that used to make him uneasy, and now were associated with laughter, and companionship.

  It wasn’t the bond they had first agreed to, Wren and himself. Everything had changed, even beyond the physical aspects of it. He wasn’t the man he used to be.

  So, who was? You changed, you rolled with the changes.

  This is your world now; you need to find where, exactly, you fit in.

  And how you can keep that spot, keep her and keep the world you’ve gotten to want, without everyone around you getting killed.

  “Duncan.”

  “Andre.”

  It was almost polite, if you didn’t listen for the undercurrents. Once, not so long ago, Duncan had been one of several up-and-comers within the Silence’s hierarchy, a part of the machine that served their motto: To Defend and Protect Against the World’s Darkness. Once, long ago, he and Andre had been—not friends, but coworkers. Comrades.

  Now, Andre walked carefully around the man, while Duncan moved in far more rarified circles, answerable only to the full Board of Directors, so far up in the rarified levels that Andre did not know anyone who claimed higher access. Duncan came down from his offices seldom, preferring to move people like chess pieces around him, setting the board to his own satisfaction. Duncan was cold, methodical; damned good at his job and covertly hungry for more, even as he amassed more power than anyone was comfortable speculating about. It was purely Andre’s imagination that the faintest whiff of sulfur and smoke followed the other man whenever he appeared. Probably.

  T
here was no one above Duncan you could go to for assistance. You could only work with him…or fall by the wayside.

  The hallway bustled with activity, the daily hum of the Silence: at any given moment teams were being sent out to deal with situations, and each team had its own support system to back them up with information and resources.

  Ideally, that was. In recent days, the information had been faulty, and the resources scarce. At least, for Andre’s teams.

  Duncan was the director of Research & Dissemination. Information came from him. Information—the lifeblood of the Silence—being choked off by Duncan’s hand on the controls.

  Andre needed to know why. But he needed to be careful. The hand on the controls could oh so very easily become a hand around his neck.

  The memory of Sergei’s face guided him. His former protégé, his former right-hand man. The Silence had played him, used him. They would use him again, if the need arose. That was the way the game was played.

  But Andre had been a game-runner for too long to let himself be passively played in turn, even by such a master as Duncan had proven to be.

  “Might you have a moment?”

  Duncan turned to one of his underlings, an intense-eyed young woman with exquisite bone structure and the warily coiled presence of a cobra. “Melissa, please take everyone on up to the room and start the meeting. I’ll join you later.”

  “Of course,” Melissa said, not even glancing at Andre and yet managing to project resentment at this outsider who was taking her boss away from this meeting.

  Cadre, Andre thought. Duncan had gone beyond team, and created a cadre.

  “Now,” Duncan said, his narrow, aesthetic-looking face more at home over a cassock than a two-thousand-dollar suit. “What can I do for you?”

  This would have been better done behind closed doors. He was not being given that courtesy. Fine. Andre was not without skill of his own, and one of the sharpest had always been to know when to go for the jugular.

  “I want in. Whatever it takes to get my people what they need to get the job done, I’ll do it.”

  Only the slightest twitch of the corner of one eye gave it away, but Andre felt a deeply hidden flicker of satisfaction at the tell. He had succeeded in the impossible. He had surprised Duncan. Now all he had to do was stay alive long enough to use that fact.

  nine

  The night was quiet, the way only a major city can be, after all the clubs and bars had closed down, and the sober and the drunk alike made it to bed, and before the morning workers started their shifts. Into that silence there was a sudden sharp noise that could have been a thunder crack, or a transformer blowing, or a flash of scentless gunpowder.

  “You catch that?” a voice piped up from beside Nahir’s ear.

  The slight, Sikh man in a dark red snowsuit and a traditional turban looked at the sky and frowned. “Could be anything.” But he was already increasing his pace, walking in the direction his companion indicated, fast enough that the foot-high piskie had to cling to his ear to keep from falling off her shoulder perch.

  For the sins only Allah knew about, the two of them had drawn the sixth corner quadrant for their patrol: not much except run-down concrete housing complexes and a handful of good-intentioned parks gone to hell, rounded out by the never-ending noise of the highway running alongside the East River.

  At four in the morning on a cold, snow-blown Friday, the only ones who should have been out were drunk twenty-somethings, an occasional stubborn—and frozen—homeless person, and a pair or three of weary, frost-hardened cops. Nahir didn’t expect to find any of them at the heart of this disturbance, and he wasn’t surprised.

  Static was discharging off the blacktop of the old basketball court. Tar not being the most naturally current-producing of surfaces, Twinkletoes was right to point it out. Something was up.

  Under the corona of current, five middle-aged men faced off against each other. Three of them were down to slacks and shirtsleeves, showing either a total lack of common sense or an impressive level of macho in the face of the weather. Or, more likely, they were using a significant level of current in order to keep themselves warm. Conspicuous consumption, Cosa-style. The other two had more practical jackets and gloves on, one a Polartec squall jacket over his jeans, the other wearing a long black wool overcoat and a brimmed wool hat, to keep the snow off.

  Those two were the ones Nahir approached. Anyone willing to look like a weak-wuss in what was clearly a pissing contest was either completely clueless, and thus a danger to themselves and everyone else in the area, or justifiably cocky, and a danger, period.

  The other three were probably just arrogant assholes, secure in superior numbers—and might already be at their limits. They could wait.

  “Gentlemen.” That was probably giving them far too much credit. “Stand down.”

  Another bolt of current sizzled underground, shaking the blacktop and giving Nahir a bad case of hotfoot. One of the assholes—#3 on the left—jumped and swore as the bolt struck home, right through his soles. Sneakers, which meant rubber soles, Nahir noted. That was some seriously directed current. Also, must be tough to multitask enough to stay warm, maintain a defense, and plan a counterattack.

  “Gentlemen, stand down,” he warned them again.

  “You want I should buzz them?” Twinkletoes asked, sotto voce in his ear. He could hear the anticipation hum in her voice, without even turning his head to look at her. Piskies; Allah bless them for the mischief-makers they were. And this one, still a teenager, and so worse than most.

  “No,” he said firmly, then, “not yet, anyway.”

  “Back off, boy,” Overcoat said. “This is a private matter.”

  “Tolja they should have issued us uniforms,” Twinkletoes said. “A badge, at least. I’d love to flip ’em a…badge.”

  Nahir choked back a totally inappropriate laugh, and sent a quick ping back to Patrol leader, a mental snapshot of the moment, giving them a face and a voice to work from. That was his skill-strength, and why he had been chosen for Patrol: the combination of memory and strong mind-to-mind contact, the latter being an unusual gift. Contrary to popular wishes, telepathy wasn’t in the top ten of uses current could be put to.

  It only took a minute for the Patrol captain to relay his information to the brains at Truce Central, for them to check records, and ping back the relay with a name to go with the face.

  Unfortunately, that minute had been enough to let the assholes regroup, and go back on the offensive. Blue current wove through the air, looking like ribbons his daughter tied in her hair on special days. Only these ribbons were three inches wide, and had teeth on either edge, looking for skin to latch onto.

  “Mister St. Meyers. Stand down, you and your friends. In the name of the Cosa and the Quad, I order you to stand down and cease breaking the Truce with unauthorized use of current against fellow members.”

  “Stupid speech,” the piskie said.

  “Shut up.” He knew it was stupid, yes. And useless, too, as Overcoat struggled under hungry current, and Polartec sent out a nasty stream of purple-flecked static to cut the ribbons, with mixed success. Defensive stuff, that, totally within the scope of the Truce—but only by very careful interpretation.

  “Twinkletoes, now would be a good time to do that flutterby-bye thing….”

  She extended her wings, then paused. “You okay on your own?”

  “You going to be any particular help if I’m not?”

  Piskies were great as distractions in a fight, especially if your opponent wasn’t used to being buzzed by Tinkerbell’s punk cousin, but there was little they could do against a prepared, current-wielding opponent more than twenty times their body mass.

  “Right. Off to fetch the cavalry. Give ’em hell, turban-boy.”

  She lifted off, and Nahir reached down to grab a chunk of his own current from his core. He wasn’t great shakes as Talent went, but he’d meditated and recharged before coming out on patrol, and so he would
be able to distract them, at least.

  He only needed to do that. The nearest Patrol pair was only a dozen blocks away, and somebody at the HQ had to be half-decent at Translocation, to get troops here quickly if needed. He hoped so, anyway. That hadn’t been covered in their briefings.

  Before he could decide how to stage his distraction, Asshole #2 staggered and fell to his knees, bleeding from the nostrils, the blood shiny black under the flickering streetlamps overhead. One core-depleted, and down for the count. But rather than evening the odds and making the assholes rethink their position, it just seemed to get them more riled up. Any blood in the water, even if it was their own.

  “Stand down!” Nahir snapped again, aiming his words at St. Meyers, as the name he knew and the only guy who seemed to have brought brains to the party. “Back off and go home.”

  “Those asswipes called us out!”

  Ego would get you every time. Nahir had tangled with a neighborhood gang, back when he was a teenager, new to this country. He had gotten a gutful of what ego could push you to, then; enough to last him all this life and into the next. None of the players here were teenagers. They had no excuses.

  “Back off, or this is just going to escalate. Do you want to go down in history as the schmuck who killed an entire city?”

  “Fuck off,” Polartec snarled.

  “I can’t do that, my friend. I don’t want to go down in history as the schmuck who let you go down in history.”

  Right now, he had the advantage, however slight. Backup was coming. All he had to do was distract them. Keep them from attacking each other, because someone dying was the exact thing that would break apart the Truce, send each faction into a frenzy of finger-pointing and paranoid self-defense, and that was exactly what he was there to prevent.

  Asshole #1 was about to say something, and Nahir made a judgment call not to wait and see if it was a comeback, abuse, or a spell. He struck.