Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  And she also knew enough not to draw attention to it.

  “Himself will want my full report,” was all the Researcher said, slipping off the counter and making oblique farewells. “Bren, Poul.”

  The two of them nodded, then Bren went back to her typing. Poul, taking the message, went on down the hallway and into the office next to Andre’s. It was currently empty, so Bren assumed he was going to do some work while waiting for the old man to come in. None of her business, so long as he wasn’t hanging over her shoulder getting mixed up in hers.

  “Did you do it?”

  “Excuse me?” Sergei paused with his tea halfway raised to his lips. Andre had barged into the gallery just before they opened, taking Lowell by surprise as he set up the day’s brochures and business cards on the front desk, and gone directly to the hidden sliding door of Sergei’s office. The simple fact that the old man knew where the office was slowed Lowell’s reaction down, and by the time he got to the doorway himself, Sergei waved him off.

  “It’s all right,” he said to his assistant. “You deal with the front.”

  Lowell wasn’t happy, but he didn’t argue.

  “Did you do it?” Andre asked again. He had always been graying, from the first day Sergei met him, but now the close-cropped black hair was more gray than black, and the wrinkles in his ebony skin were deep-set creases around eyes and mouth. And none of them came from laughter.

  “Do what?” There were a great many things that he had done over the years, but he wasn’t going to cop to anything until and unless he knew what the old man was talking about.

  Andre stared at his former protégé, sitting calmly behind the desk, eyebrow raised in query, his steaming cup of tea placed back carefully on a coaster next to the computer screen.

  “Might I have a cup of that?” he asked, letting his shoulders settle back into a more relaxed position, the angle of his elbows softening, his face becoming at once both more serene, and sadder.

  “Of course.” He spoke into the intercom. “Lowell? If you would be so kind as to fix our guest a cup of tea? The Black Rose, with milk, no sugar.” Sergei then indicated the leather sofa. “Please. Sit.”

  Andre slipped off his heavy overcoat and hung it on the brass coat tree, then sat without any of his usual grace. He wasn’t wearing his usual suit and jacket, instead a dark blue sweater over a black shirt, and black wool trousers. He looked as though he had come from a library filled with leather-bound books, where he had dandled a grandchild on one knee, and a picture book held open on the other.

  “Two of our people were murdered this morning.”

  Sergei absorbed the information without outward emotion. “Unfortunate, but not exactly unusual. The life of a Silence member is a risky one, we all know that before we sign on.”

  He wasn’t as cold as he sounded; he probably hadn’t known the victims—Andre would have used that on him already—but he might have. He had worked there for a very long time, long ago and far away. The last time he had gone into the Silence building, he had run into too many old friends among the Handlers, the men and women who worked directly with the field operatives. The last time he had ventured into their territory, he had lost some of those, as well.

  He gave a moment’s thought to Michael. The old man—old when Sergei had first joined the Silence—had refused to speak to him. In fact, he had begged Sergei not to speak to him.

  At the time, Sergei had thought it was a reflection on his, Sergei’s status within the Silence—the rogue who got away, the insider-turned-outsider. Now, he had to wonder if there had been something going on among Handlers even then. Some unease that had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with internal politics…

  Andre leaned back against the comforting leather embrace of the sofa. “They were murdered at the same time, in the same way, and dumped on our front steps.”

  “All right, that’s a little more unusual.” Sergei also leaned backward in his chair, palms flat on the desk, in plain view. If Andre was jumpy, best give him no cause to jump. But poke. Prod. Get as much out of him as possible, without giving anything in return. Those were the rules to play by. “And your first thought was to come here and ask if I had anything to do with it? Because the Silence doesn’t have any real enemies?”

  He badly wanted to ask if the bodies were anyone he had worked with. If it had been Michael, or Adam, or Jordana, or Leslie or…Better not to ask, not to know. Stick to the attack. Never show any chink Andre might exploit later, because you knew damn well that he would.

  Andre smoothed the fabric of his slacks, in a move that could have been fastidiousness, nerves or a delaying action.

  “Andre?”

  “They were strangled and left on our steps with a warning about a ‘Burning’ to come.”

  Sergei waited for further details. “And this means…?”

  “The Burning, my boy, is a term that has some resonance among your Cosa. It refers to the persecution of witches and those who use magic.”

  “A persecution the Silence has been known to take a hand in,” Sergei said calmly. Not often, and never without perceived cause, but hands washed in blood, nonetheless. Another secret he’d kept from Wren. “So it may be that someone in the Cosa has a specific grudge. Why come to me, accuse me?”

  “They laid these bodies on our doorstep, Sergei Kassianovich. I am not being entirely metaphoric here. They were discovered this morning by the cleaning crew, the warning burned into their skin.”

  Oh. The Silence’s building was one of the best-kept secrets, maintained since the plot of land was first purchased in the 1950s. A great deal of money had been spent to keep it more off-the-radar than even Wren could manage.

  Two murders, a Cosa-specific reference, plus an implied we-know-where-you-are threat against the larger organization. Yes, he could understand why gazes might turn in his direction—or Wren’s, although anyone who knew her at all would know how unlikely violence was from her.

  Him, though? The Silence had trained him, praised him for violence in the greater cause.

  “It wasn’t me, Andre.”

  It was all he could do or say; either his former boss believed him, or he didn’t. If he did, it might or might not carry through to the rest of the Silence, who would never forgive him for taking up with a lonejack, anyway. If Andre didn’t believe him…Well, that would be too bad for the old man, wouldn’t it?

  “And Miss Valere?”

  There was a chime outside, and Sergei hit the remote that opened the door. Lowell brought the tea in, a full silver tray service with cream, sugar and narrow Italian butter cookies the bakery down the street specialized in. Lowell had many skills, and the ability to smell money on a potential customer was one of his best, second only to his ability to make those potential customers feel deeply valued, if not outright cherished.

  “Thank you, son,” Andre said, accepting a steaming cup from the tray. Sergei accepted a refill from the teapot, then nodded at Lowell to indicate that he should leave the tray on the desk.

  The conversation did not resume until after the door had closed behind his assistant.

  “Wren has no love for the Silence.” In fact, Wren had great hate for the Silence, on several levels, and almost all of them totally justified. “But can you see her killing someone, marking their bodies with a message, and then dumping them on your stairs? She’d be far more likely to get into your bedroom at night and leave a rude message written with a Sharpie on your still-breathing body.”

  That almost got a flicker of a smile from Andre. Wren didn’t like him, but he liked her.

  “It doesn’t matter if you did or did not do it. You are the most likely—in fact, the only reasonable suspect, in the eyes of those who will take action.”

  “You’ve lost that much power, that you can’t do anything? Or…” Sergei looked at his former boss with knowing eyes. “You won’t do anything. Because if Duncan acts against me, and it’s proven—if I prove that it was someone else, th
en Duncan will have been shown as fallible, not only in not being able to protect the Silence, but also incapable of striking back against those who would harm the organization. His information will have been shown, publicly and irrevocably, to be flawed.”

  Information was the lifeblood of the Silence; it was what they traded in; who did what to whom, and the means to set it right. Or, Sergei amended to himself, with a tired, low-level bitterness, to set according to what they deemed right.

  “You’re a bastard, Andre Felhim.”

  “I do what I need to.” He put his teacup down on the small table that was placed next to the sofa for just that purpose, and leaned forward, engaging Sergei’s attention completely. “I had to know if you were involved in this, in any way. And I wanted to warn you. If that makes me a bastard, then so be it.”

  He stood, adjusting his sweater with a tug, and reclaiming his overcoat from the coat tree.

  “Do what you need to do, Sergei Kassianovich.” For the first time Sergei could remember, the patronymic did not set his teeth on edge. “Do as I trained you to do.”

  twenty

  Sergei had waited all of ten minutes after Andre left before doing anything. Ten minutes spent sitting, quietly, his hands folded in front of him.

  Was Andre playing him?

  Yes.

  Was Andre lying to him?

  No. Probably not. Most likely not.

  Had Andre told him everything?

  Assuredly not.

  Did that change what he needed to do?

  No.

  A full ten minutes, until his tea had turned cold and bitter, and he shut off his workstation, turned off the lamp, and took his own coat off the rack and left the gallery.

  “I won’t be in tomorrow,” he told Lowell, scooping up a mint out of the bowl on the counter before pulling on his gloves and tucking his scarf more firmly under his chin.

  “We’re supposed to get a delivery tomorrow—”

  “You can handle it,” he said, and was gratified, in a distant way, to see Lowell’s already perfect posture straighten and broaden even more.

  Lowell was good. He had to tell the kid that, more often. It was just tough to remember, most days.

  The streets were cleared, for the moment. A few cars were parked on the side of the road, coated with ice on the windows, a dusting of snow on the hoods and roofs. He hoped to hell the owners had quality lock deicers, otherwise they weren’t going to be getting into the cars any time soon.

  He stood in the cold air and debated with himself. Go home, and wait for Wren to get in touch with him? Go to her place, and hope that she was there, that she would let him in? Stop in at Truce Central, even though there was no more Truce, and see if anyone would give him the time of day? He didn’t know, without her, where he stood with the supernatural community. He was the reason the Silence knew about them—did they know that? They must, by now. On the other hand, he was also the reason many of them were alive. And he was still Wren’s partner. He thought. He hoped.

  “You Didier? Of course you’re Didier, who else would you be?”

  He turned in the direction of the voice, and blinked at the sight of the creature standing in front of him.

  “You’re…”

  “Yeah, I know, I hear it all the time. Notoriety’s a bitch.” To the passerby, he was merely a particularly grotesque old man, wizened and bent, with a face like a dried apple and drool threatening to appear at the corner of its pale-skinned lips. Only the creature’s dark red eyes gave its species away: demon. Wren had told him that demon all looked different, except the eyes; she hadn’t said that one of them looked like Koshschey. Koshschey the Invulnerable. Koshschey the Damned. Koshschey the Murderer.

  “You are Didier, right?”

  “Ky3eH ApaKoHa. I mean, right, yes, I am.” The sight had shocked him back into Russian, as though he were a six-year-old terrified by his father’s stories, all over again.

  “Good, because if I had the wrong street again I was going to hand in my courier’s badge and go hibernate for another decade or seven. I hate this city.”

  Of course it spoke Russian. Sergei had trouble keeping up, mentally translating in his head and stumbling over a few words. “You have a message for me?”

  “Yeah. You’re supposed to meet Herself at Dante’s. Half an hour. Was more time but these damn streets twist and turn on one another, I swear to god Kana’ti couldn’t find its way through this without a compass.”

  The demon turned and walked away, its message delivered. Sergei stared after it, trying to parse what he’d just been told. She hadn’t come to get him herself, had sent a courier, a demon to fetch him like an errant schoolboy.

  And yet, could he blame her? At least she was still calling for him, for whatever reason. Maybe she couldn’t get away, or she was around too many lonejacks to use a phone safely—or all that were available were mobile phones, and those crapped out if she so much as looked at one, these days. There were a dozen reasons why she wouldn’t have come to the gallery herself, and only half were because she was still angry, or upset….

  Only when it had passed a couple of students and disappeared around the corner did he realize that he had no idea where Dante’s was.

  It turned out the place was in Manhattan, although the Javits Center was not an area he typically thought of for food above the grease-cart level. He walked in and a waiter—an overweight, bald-pated man in traditional black pants and white shirt, and a drooping mustache—rushed over and directed him to the right table. They were seated, he noted, out of the direct line of sight of the doorway, in an alcove without windows, with an emergency exit off to the side. He approved, then wondered who had chosen it, and why; he wanted Wren thinking smart, but there was a fine, scary line between planning for a fast exit, and anticipating a gunfight.

  “Where the hell have you been?” The object of his thoughts looked up from the table, lines forming between her eyes as she frowned at him. Her hair was pulled back into a tight braid, and she was wearing all black. Retriever-mode, even if the black was jeans and a turtleneck rather than her slicks, or the less expensive, more easily explained sweats she sometimes used.

  She was working, even if she didn’t know it, consciously. He wasn’t going to start a fight, not here or now, but—“Next time, send directions with your invite, okay?”

  Wren had the grace to look abashed, but only for a moment. In point of fact, if he hadn’t been able to call an old friend in the restaurant business and ask for help, he would never have gotten here at all. From the outside, the place looked like a warehouse: an abandoned warehouse, specifically. He’d almost told the cabdriver to forget it and take him home. But the smells that hit his nose the moment the door opened made him willing to forgive any cosmetic default, so long as someone put a plate of something in front of him.

  “You guys are taking this whole ‘Cosa’ thing a little too seriously, don’t you think?”

  From the looks he got, Sergei suspected that he wasn’t the first to make the joke, and it hadn’t been funny the first dozen times, either. He reached over and tore off a chunk of garlic bread, and closed his eyes in ecstasy as the warm bread, butter and garlic did terrible, wanton things with his taste buds.

  All right, so there were real benefits to having crisis meetings in downscale Italian restaurants, yes.

  It was back down to the lonejack’s Quad, Wren, and a man with long orange-red hair that Sergei didn’t recognize but seemed to be leading the meeting. After so many months of having fatae at elbow and heel, it felt strange to be surrounded only by humans.

  “The local police department is also working on the case.” The man resumed speaking, once Sergei had settled in. “Our connections there are keeping tabs on anything that may come up. So far, their findings echo that of my PUPs—the bodies are normal, in all ways except the manner of their death.”

  “You are referring to the remnants of current found on them?” one of the unknown faces asked. “Their mann
er of death was strangulation. Cruel, but normal, as these things go.”

  “Yes. My apologies.”

  Sergei was willing to bet that this guy had never misspoken himself a day in his life. He knew who he was now—Ian Stosser, the co-founder of the PUPIs, or Private Unaffiliated Paranormal Investigators, the Cosa’s answer to the metro CSI labs. Sergei made a point of knowing the identity of as many movers and shakers as he could, no matter what they were moving or shaking. You never knew when you might need someone.

  “Do we even have names? Affiliations?” Michaela, tapping a pen against the side of her place; uncharacteristically jumpy. “Are these souls innocent scapegoats, or do they have some connection with what has been going on?”

  “Again, we don’t know just yet.”

  “Does it really matter? They were Null, yes?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “I should say, that as far as we know, they were not members of the Cosa, neither Council nor lonejack. That much we got from the Council, before they slammed the doors shut.”

  “What?” Sergei hadn’t heard about that.

  Michaela filled him in. “KimAnn has decided that, with the Truce broken, and these murders, she has no obligation to do anything other than protect her own. They’ve called their members off Patrol, and are not offering any more information.”

  It didn’t surprise Sergei at all; the Council had come to the Truce Table for their own reasons, which involved KimAnn trying to keep control of her organization in the aftermath of a rather spectacular power grab. With humans—Nulls—being killed, and Talents suspected of the murders, she could use that as a justification for her actions and as a reason to close the borders, as it were, as well.

  “We keep acting as though the murders were in retaliation for the angel’s death. Why?”

  “Because I don’t believe in coincidences,” Bart said grimly.

  “Nor do I,” Stosser said. “But sometimes, what look like coincidences are simply things happening within the same geographic and chronographic areas.”