Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “I speak for the Truce Board.

  The Truce Board speaks in me.

  Hold, you five

  For disciplining.”

  As poetry went, even Nahir knew that it stank on ice. As a cantrip, designed to put oomph into the blow of current he delivered, it was a thing of beauty. He felt the waves of current rise up in him, met by four strains of power washing through him, from outside: the Quad picking up on and working with the spell, exactly the way they’d promised when it was taught to all the Talent taking part in the Patrols. Next thing he knew, he was on his knees, weaker than a runt puppy, and the five troublemakers were laid out on the ground, bound with shackles of current at hands and feet, wads of the stuff shimmering to mage-sight in their mouths, stifling any counterattack they might have tried to speak.

  You could direct current without verbalizing, but it was a lot more difficult unless you were top-tier. And top-tier didn’t scuffle in common playgrounds.

  “Nice work.”

  From the voice, coming somewhere over his left ear, Twinkletoes was back.

  “Thanks,” he managed, watching as shadowy figures moved in from behind him and started carting the idiots off, presumably to be seen to by the Truce Board. Good riddance, and not his headache any longer.

  Speaking of which…

  “I need coffee. And a Tylenol.”

  A human hand helped him up off the ground and offered him a flask. Nahir hesitated, then swigged it anyway. He felt a burn start in his throat and down to his gut that was harsher than any diner coffee, and twice as effective as Tylenol.

  “Good work,” the district Patrol leader was saying to him. “We’ll cover the rest of your shift—you go home. Fairy-juice only lasts so long, and you’re going to crash, hard, after that for at least forty-eight hours. Report for debriefing when you wake up.”

  Fairy juice, huh? “Right,” Nahir said, and—with Twinkletoes giggling in his ear—staggered off for home, and bed.

  Truce Headquarters was the grandiose name they had given to the back room of a local Portuguese bakery. The apartment they had met in previously was still being used for meetings, but a bakery could handle a better flow of foot traffic without raising eyebrows, as Patrol leaders reported in, and new Patrols went out. The split locales were useful for another reason: there had been a quick and unanimous consensus not to leave all their players in the same location, just in case they were sold out again. The Cosa could, occasionally, learn from their own disasters.

  As with the apartment, the bakery was Cosa-owned: the family was from a long line of Talents who had been in Manhattan since the Dutch were still clearing the land above Canal Street, the youngest of the line a teenage daughter who was studying with Michaela’s old mentor. Lines and lines of family. They didn’t call it the Cosa only as a joke.

  The long worktable had been cleared of flour and was now covered with papers and half-empty take-away coffee cups. Most of the Truce Board—the Double Quad, plus the Council additions—were at the other building, but Bart, the Council Rep, and a handful of various Talents pressed into reluctant duty had been huddled around the table, hanging over a map of Manhattan; placing, moving and removing markers as updates came in and plans changed.

  “Quadrants one, five, and nine are quiet, or at least reasonably not badly behaved. Two, three, seven, and eight had minor scuffles, mostly one-on-ones that were broken up without fuss. Mostly it’s cabin fever and the resulting hijinks. If we’d just get a thaw, let people stretch their legs, maybe see some sunshine…”

  Despite, or perhaps because of the willpower required for successful long-term current-working, most Talent either lost their sense of humor early on, or channeled it into mischief-making and pranking. Wren had been in the middle of a few of those pranks herself, before one went south and she lost her taste for them. Pranking could be—mostly was—harmless, but when you kept Talents locked down and deprived them of the usual social outlets because of the snow, add in a touch of nerves and paranoia—she was only surprised that the pranks so far hadn’t gotten ugly.

  The fatae currently reporting wasn’t a breed she recognized. Not unusual, but it still surprised her, every time she came face-to-face with a new breed. It—she couldn’t tell a gender—looked too frail to be let out alone, but the scarring on one of its gossamer wings and the wary but confident way it stood told a careful observer that it might not break as easily as it seemed.

  Wren was sitting in a corner, well out of the general fuss and bustle in the room. The only other person who was still was Colleen, the Council representative—or as Bart had unfairly but not unjustly tagged her, the Council Mouthpiece. A slender young woman with brunette hair perfectly shaped into a 1940s-style chignon, Colleen was reportedly KimAnn Howe’s own student. That rumor might or might not have been true—unlike most, Madame Howe kept her mentorships hidden from public view—but the Double Quad was careful to say nothing within her hearing that was not fit to be heard by the woman in charge of the Council, and Colleen was careful to return the favor.

  The Truce might be holding, but it was an uneasy bridge, and not one you wanted to dance on.

  That said, Colleen was undeniably capable, competent, and irritatingly smart. Wren didn’t like her, particularly, but she’d want the girl at her back for as long as the Truce held, and not one instant longer.

  “Yo.”

  Wren was broken from her thoughts by the entry of a new player to the hum and flow of the reporting room. The man looked familiar. Not a lonejack, not even Cosa. She rummaged through the mental filing cabinets and came up with a reference: the Retrieval in November, between the chaos of the Council facedown and Sergei’s cutting ties with his old mentor, Andre, and the psi-bomb attack, and…well, it had been a busy month, but she remembered the face. The movers who had been moving the mark, Melanie Worth-Rosen, out of her apartment. The older one, who had gone to help the Japanese fatae-Retriever, Shig, when Sergei had “roughed him up” as part of their planned distraction.

  Not Cosa, not Talent, although he was—in her limited experience—a pretty good guy. So, who was he, and why was he here?

  “Morgan.” Colleen greeted him, almost casually, as she looked up from her notes.

  And the Council Mouthpiece knew him. Curiouser and curiouser. He nodded to her in return, but looked to the fatae Quad to report. Innnteresting, yes. Have to remember that not all Council are assholes, and not all Nulls are bigots….

  “We had some trouble over in quadrant six, East Side,” he was saying. Hands loose by his thighs, shoulders straight but not tensed, face tired, yeah, but his gaze was alert and his body language overall spoke of unwired, unstressed, active…activeness?

  So not a word. I’m full of not-words, these days. I need about twelve hours of sleep, and a little less coffee.

  “Five respectable citizens of the testosterone-fueled sort got into a school yard shoving match. The Patrol in that area took them down, when reasoned discussion proved less than effective.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not even a hint of irony or sarcasm.

  “Who was the aggressor, Council or lonejack? Were there any fatae involved? Any non-Cosa?” The questions were thrown at him from every side of the table.

  Morgan shrugged, a “don’t know, don’t give a damn” sort of shrug. Wren admired it, with a pained sort of nostalgia. She used to be able to do that. “The Patrol didn’t stop to ask, I’m guessing, and you all look alike to me.”

  Beyl’s gnome assistant giggled at that, and the griffin swatted him gently with a forepaw. Tacky to laugh, even if it was funny. Particularly with the comment coming from a Null.

  Wren tagged Bart, the closest Quad member, with a ping-query pointed at the man, Morgan.

  Martial arts expert, he sent back. The drakneef—a sense of recognition to the name: the delicate-looking fatae reporting earlier—hired him to teach them basic self-defense, when the vigilantes became a real problem.

  He was the one who gave that fatae the quiet conf
idence she’d sensed? Wren was impressed. But why was he here? Who was paying him, now?

  He showed up when the Patrols were being organized, volunteered to help. Got voted to quadrant captain a week later, and not just ’cause nobody else wanted the job.

  The fatae trust him?

  Bart snorted, causing the person standing next to him to glance at him curiously. Ask me, he’s the only one they do trust. ’Case you missed it, not a lot of lovey-dovey touchy-feely good vibes going around, for all that the Truce is holding.

  Trust Bart to get to the meat of the matter. He was the Manhattan representative for a reason, and it wasn’t his adorable personality. “No-bullshit Bart” was his nickname in the construction business, he’d told her more than once, with real pride.

  “So long as nobody’s getting killed,” she said out loud. “Trust is overrated, anyway.”

  “Trust will come,” Colleen said, moving closer to Wren.

  Wren ignored the response to her words. Nobody asked the Mouthpiece into what had been a private conversation, but there she was, anyway.

  “Those on the front lines, the lonejack and the Council, the fatae and human. They are learning to rely on each other, guard each other’s blind spots, use the network and support we provide, to keep the city safe.” Colleen smiled, a practiced, peaceful, “we’re all drinking the same Kool-Aid together” smile that made Wren’s scalp itch. “It is a good thing that we are building, out of troubled times.”

  Bart looked at the Mouthpiece, and Wren could see the same thought in his mind as was rising in hers, even without benefit of tagging. Smooth and pretty words, trying to whitewash over her boss’s previous bad behavior, as though to make all the ugliness not have happened because now they were all on-board with the peace, love and friendship? Someone should remind Miss Priss that the Council had wanted as little as possible to do with the fatae, even now.

  And even if you left the fatae out of the equation, and pretended that the Mouthpiece was only talking about the humans…it still made Wren deeply uneasy. Not that she had ever been a die-hard adherent of What Had Been, Must Be, but what was the nature of a lonejack—the stubborn, separatist, individualist pain-in-the-ass maverick—once each individual became part of the collective, no matter how quickly gummed together? And, if this went on for very long—would there be any way back? Or would Madame Howe have won through the back door of good intentions where coercion and threats failed?

  Wren didn’t have a clue. And that was definitely making her twitchy, even when the news seemed good.

  Not your problem. You’re only here in an advisory position, and when the shit hits the fan and fingers start pointing, you’re not the face the pointers were going to reach for. She hoped. Her instinct was to run, hide, get while the getting was still good. Well, screwed that but good, didn’t ya? You may not be front and center, but you’re a long way from the nearest exit, now.

  “Maybe so,” was all she said now in response to the Councilwoman’s words, “maybe so. And maybe not.” She rose from her chair with what she hoped was casual grace. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a few things to take care of, elsewhere.”

  Time to start listening to her instincts again. Let politics and policing occupy others, for a while. Bart and the rest of the Quad were better suited to those sorts of mind games, anyway, and Bart certainly would enjoy it more. She wanted the ground firmly under her feet and a solid result in her hand. And money to pay the rent, yeah. Time to go to work: thanks to Sergei, she had a new Retrieval to plan.

  “Valere, we need you here.” Bart was cranky as only a foul-tempered New Yorker could get running on coffee fumes and two hours of sleep, and Wren didn’t want to deal with it.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Ms. Valere, I really think that—” the Mouthpiece started to say, and suddenly Wren had. Had. Enough. Enough of the leash they were trying to slip around her neck, enough of the careful wording and the tiptoeing, and the way everyone seemed to think that she would be oh so happy to do this one more thing for them.

  She wasn’t, and she wouldn’t, and there wasn’t any way any of them could make her.

  A dip into her core, a twist, hardly even thinking about it, and she went no-see-me. Another twist, and even a Talent looking for her couldn’t see her. A third twist, like slipping down a familiar waterslide, and the other woman forgot she had even been speaking to her. Bart shook his head, puzzled, then turned away back to the rest of the room.

  This was more than no-see-me. She had disappeared from their recent memories, as well.

  She shoved her hands into her pockets, and touched the locket, still resting there.

  “That’s rude, Jenny-Wren.”

  She was sixteen, sitting very quietly in the back of the classroom. He had been working at his desk when she came in, wrapped in layers of no-see-me, holding back the giggles at the thought of sneaking one past her mentor, literally.

  She should have known he would have sensed her. No matter how good she was, he always knew.

  “How…?”

  “You smell of that godawful gum you’re always chewing. You sound like a cow chewing its cud.”

  Wren took the gum out of her mouth and looked at it, then put it back in her mouth.

  “You’re very Talented. You could probably have slipped past me if you’d thought about covering all the senses, not just sight. But it’s rude,” Neezer said again, then closed the essay book he was grading and looked up in her general direction. “So don’t do it just because you can. That’s rude, too.”

  Wren stopped just outside the door of the bakery, looking down at the slice of almond cake she had lifted out of the display counter. Habit. Habit to take what appealed. Habit to slip into no-see-me when she didn’t want to be bothered anymore.

  “That’s rude, Jenny-Wren.”

  She was losing the memory. Sharp at the center, but fading and fraying at the edges, his voice fading in and out. Every year, Neezer faded more and more. Even touching the locket, his picture, his sense inside, couldn’t hold back the inevitable.

  It ached, that loss; if she let them come, the tears would be bitter in her stomach. She didn’t let them come anymore.

  She tossed the pastry into a nearby trash bin and wiped her hands on her coat, then pulled her gloves on, wrapped the scarf around her lower face, and headed home, determined to drop all political shell games the same way she’d dropped that cake.

  She didn’t like being rude. But sometimes, you did what it took in order to survive. To escape.

  Being polite hadn’t gotten Neezer anywhere. He had still wizzed. Still left her.

  That thought gnawed at her brain until she forcibly locked it down and put it away. Only that allowed all the other thoughts to rush her, fighting for space and attention. Sergei. Job. Weather. Her mother. Money. The Truce Board. Lee. The fatae, who were, for some reason, counting on her.

  Easy to say you’re going to let go of the entire business. Tougher to actually do. The thoughts followed her from Truce Central, for the length of the 6 train and the cross-town bus, jolting forward and back with the movement of street traffic. She scored a seat by the window, with nobody squished in beside her, but not even that victory distracted her. Not even the unaccustomed sight of a clear blue sky and distant winter sunshine could shake it from her brain, like a terrier fixated on one particular doggy bone. She picked at a scab on the back of her hand, a scar still healing from that scuffle with the hellhound, and let her mind run over the things she had seen and heard. Nothing settled into place; it was a mosaic of broken bits. Broken truces. Broken promises. Broken bridges falling down. She frowned. No, that wasn’t the way the old kids’ song went. Not broken, London. “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”

  The bus came around the corner, and she signaled for a stop. Getting off the bus, she pulled her gloves back on—it might be bright, but it was still cold—and started walking to her apartment, still chewing over what she had seen and heard.

&nbs
p; There were enough clues, she knew it. But she wasn’t a detective. She was a thief. What did she know about solving things like this? What right did she have to stick her finger in and stir it up?

  What are we becoming? What have we done? Did I advise them to do something really, really stupid?

  “Of course, you’re assuming we’re going to survive the winter….”

  “Jesus, Danny!” Wren didn’t, as far as she knew, have a history of heart attacks in her family, but she almost started a new chapter, then and there. “How the hell—”

  “You were practically broadcasting, darlin’.” Danny looked human, from ankles to ears. Only the ever-present cowboy boots hid his maternal inheritance, distinctly fatae hooves, which had moved him from the NYPD to private practice when the force started cracking down on yearly physicals.

  Bullshit. Wren was too tightly closed down, naturally and by personal inclination, to send anything without intent. Even assuming someone could “find” her current-signature to eavesdrop on, which was almost as masked as her physical presence, even when she wasn’t working. You had to ping with intent to find her, not just open your psychic ears. Unlike some, who never seemed to hush.

  The Mouthpiece had picked up on her conversation with Bart, too. Maybe she was leaking, just a little. That was a disturbing thought, and she didn’t want to be thinking it.

  “You were stalking with intent,” she accused him, trying to distract herself.

  “Technically, ‘stalking’ implies intent. So that’s redundant.”

  Wren bit the inside of her cheek to keep from making a response. Only thing worse than a cop was a former cop.

  “So. Want to tell an old friend how things’re going?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Danny had the most efficient information highway in the city: his former fellow cops, snitches, respectable citizens, and some not-quite-legit characters all went through the Danny-toll at one point or another. If he had to come to her to get Intel, that meant the Truce Board was, miracle-of-miracles, leak-free.