Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “I almost understood that,” Wren muttered, but Sergei suspected only he heard her. The past few months she had been making an effort to stand out, shaking off her natural tendency to meld into the background noise in order to be heard and seen by the rest of the Cosa. But since the angel was killed, she had faded a little, and he wasn’t even sure she was aware of it.

  He didn’t mind, at all. He’d never been comfortable with her taking such a front-and-center position, even as he understood the need for it. It might be parochial, or sexist, or just overbearing of him, but he wanted her out of the spotlight—and therefore out of the sights of whomever was gunning for Talents.

  He knew better—barely—than to say any of that. He was still in the doghouse with her for recent events: she might not have brought it up, and he wasn’t going to say anything, either, but he knew. If he ended up sleeping alone tonight, it was his own damn fault. She had warned him, and he had pushed anyway.

  The waiter came by with a menu, and he waved it away, asking only for a glass of the house red. The way his stomach was tied up in knots, suddenly, he didn’t think food was such a good idea after all.

  After the meeting broke up, and the plates were cleared away, Wren stayed at the table while everyone else stood up and said their goodbyes. Sergei pushed his chair back, but didn’t stand up. Bart swirled the dregs of his wine in his glass, thoughtfully, and didn’t look at either one of them.

  Bart was an opinionated, arrogant jerk, who never hesitated to say what was on his mind and damn the fallout. Recent events hadn’t put any diplomatic polish on him, either. But he was smart, and he was a survivor, and Wren had every intention of listening to whatever it was he was about to say.

  “They’re idiots.” Bart’s sideways glance at his departing fellow Quad members made it clear who he was talking about. “Well-meaning, and good people, don’t get me wrong, but they’re idiots. All this discussion about who and why and what can we do about it…they’re missing the point, and I don’t know if it’s intentionally because they’re scared, or they honestly are too dumb to see it. But either way, it makes them idiots.”

  “And what do you see?” Sergei asked.

  “That we’re being played.”

  Well, duh. Wren was suddenly less impressed with Bart.

  “Okay, yeah, you figured that out already. You’re not an idiot, either of you. At least not when you’re out of bed.”

  “Excu—” He steamrolled right over her.

  “But the question everyone’s been asking is the wrong one. They’re asking why.”

  “And you know why?”

  Bart scowled. “You ever play war games? No, of course you didn’t. You probably never even played Risk, did you?”

  Wren looked at Sergei. He was the strategic one, the chess player. Her partner was still sitting back in his chair, carefully not showing anything on his face. That meant he was listening, and listening intently. She hadn’t wanted to bring him in on this, not with her suspicions, her fears. But she needed him, damn it. They needed him, and his brain, and his knowledge. She would keep her fears locked in their boxes, for now. Until there was proof, one way or the other.

  “You have an enemy. A big, bad enemy, with powers you don’t have, powers you don’t understand. What do you do?”

  “Find their enemy and make him or her your ally?”

  “Not bad, and that’s part of it. But—”

  “Divide and conquer,” Sergei said. “Find the enemy’s soft spot, and cut there, deprive them of their support, their allies.”

  “Better. What do you use for a knife?”

  Sergei tapped the table with his forefinger, his eyes going clouded, like he was looking a million miles away. Wren felt a surge of glee at being half a step ahead of him. “You use something of theirs, something they’d never think to question. Like, oh, paranoia or extreme reluctance to trust anyone.”

  “So we have someone or several someones who know the Cosa well enough to use their own weaknesses to take them down. That’s the how. You said you knew the why.”

  “I just told you. Someone who is afraid of us, of what we are.”

  Wren frowned. “List’s small, there.”

  “The government knows about us, somewhere, in some office or another. Enough of us have been useful over the years, in various wars and wartime scenarios, there have to be records. How many people believe it is another question, though.”

  “I shall hereby refrain from the obligatory Mulder and Scully joke,” Sergei said with grave dignity.

  “If you make reference, it counts as the obligatory joke,” Bart said.

  “It does not.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “All right, focus, gentlemen.” Was she the only person in the entire world who hadn’t liked that show?

  “No need to. I know who did it.”

  “What?” She had missed something, somewhere. Not an uncommon occurrence when Sergei started seriously cranking on something.

  “Not what. Why.” Sergei blinked, frowned, and pushed away from the table. “I need to take a walk.”

  There were few things scarier than Sergei’s mind on that full-forward push, Wren decided. He had his head down and smoke practically pouring out of his ears, and you got the feeling that if you were to step in front of him you’d wake up a week later with tire tracks across your head, or something, and he wouldn’t even have noticed. But was he thinking for them…or was he trying to decide who to betray now?

  Stop it, Valere!

  They had left Bart back at the restaurant, and were presently walking down Eighth Avenue toward the nearest subway station, dodging icy patches and piles of shoveled snow as they went. Not that she minded the fast pace, exactly; she was dressed for the weather, but the wind kept sliding under her turtleneck and sending shivers up and down her skin.

  So do something about it, you idiot. She shook her head; God save her, she really was an idiot sometimes. Or maybe her brain was so focused on the big problems, it forgot how to solve the little ones.

  Crooking a mental finger at a small strand of current in her core, she coaxed it up and out of the pile. Just a bit, enough to do the job and no more.

  “Winter’s chill

  Is boring to me:

  Warm my flesh.”

  Sergei checked his pace half a step. “Did you say something?”

  She looked at her partner, already feeling the spell take effect as tingles touched the epidermal nerve endings like reverse goose bumps. “Nope.”

  It was petty, she knew. But he could just make do with his expensive jacket and cashmere scarf. She wasn’t going to give him any more current until he admitted that he had a problem, damn it. And not after then, either. God, she had to retrain herself, too. She wasn’t going to be able to work current on him, either, no matter what…like not cooking with wine around an alcoholic…fuck. Okay, focus on the problem at hand. If you all die tomorrow, it won’t matter worth a damn. If you both survive, then you can have a major-ass Intervention and force him to deal with this.

  And what if he won’t? she asked herself. What will you do then?

  She didn’t know. She’d already tried being the strong one, the one in control, and that didn’t work; she wasn’t going to compound the failure by being stupid and pretending it would work if she just tried a little harder, put in a little more effort. She’d tried walking away, and that was just as abject a failure; she’d been bouncing her brain off his for too many years now to go cold turkey, especially in the middle of this mess.

  “Talk to me,” she said instead. “You said you knew who…why,” she corrected herself.”

  “It’s my fault. I was afraid of it, and now I’m…not entirely certain, but pretty damn near sure certain.”

  “Your fault? How…” She stopped, stared at the point between his shoulder blades as he kept walking. No. No, oh no…

  She gave him the opening she didn’t want answered. “The Silence. You think it was the Silenc
e—but why? You said you knew why.”

  “I have to talk to Andre again.”

  He stopped at the stairs leading down to the 1/9 train, and looked down at Wren. For the first time in months, she was reminded how much taller he was than she; so many of their conversations recently had been held horizontally.

  “If you don’t want to come…”

  “Am I going to want to kick him when he answers your questions?”

  That got a faint smile out of him. “At the very least.”

  “Lead on, Macduff.”

  They weren’t back on. They weren’t even getting onto getting back on. But they were on the same train heading for the same goal—literally—and Wren would work with that, for now.

  Especially if she got to kick Andre Felhim in the ass. Hard.

  The subway wasn’t crowded, and they each got a seat. Wren was inwardly relieved and disappointed that the car was just crowded enough that those seats weren’t together. She wasn’t sure being pushed up against him was where she was ready to be, just yet. Although it still beat being pushed up against the rather large woman next to her…while winter subway riding was better in some ways than the summer—the smells were better, for one—the fact was that the same number of people wearing winter coats made space tighter than it should be. At least they were done with both the preholiday buying frenzy and the post-New Year’s sales buying frenzy; overloaded shopping bags on mass transit should be considered deadly weapons. Especially when carried by little old ladies with attitudes.

  Across the car from her, Sergei looked like he was sleeping; eyes closed, posture slightly slumped but still alert enough to warn off potential muggers. She took the opportunity to study him, comparing the visual to the image she still carried in her head from the first time they met:

  The car slammed to a halt, the crunch of metal and plastic echoing across the park. Instinctive, what she had done: using current to cushion the impact, kept the impact from being far worse, suppressing any sparks that might have ignited the fuel tank. Genevieve slowed to let Joe go by first—he was a cop, he’d know what to do. He tossed her his phone, yelled for her to call the accident in. She dialed the number, speaking to the dispatcher, even as her eyes scanned the scene in front of her. And then the driver got out, staggering even under the helping hands, and looked up and stared at her, through all the people and chaos…. And she knew he knew who she was. What she was. What she had done.

  And he very clearly, very carefully, mouthed “thank you” to her.

  Sergei Didier then had been wearing a suit that cost more than her mother paid in rent on their place. His hair had been darker, more stylishly cut, and the lines on his face had been, ironically enough, deeper-cut than they were now. He had looked like what he was: a burned-out businessman facing a crisis.

  Now…he dressed more casually, even on his most client-heavy days, even in his choice of suits and ties. His hair was touched with the first hints of silver, and the lines around his eyes and lips creased upward in laugh lines as much as with tension.

  You’ve been good for him. Even with all the bad, the worries, the stupid things you do to each other, the stupid things he does to himself, he’s better now than he was before.

  Before, when the Silence had him. When the man they were going to see now was his boss.

  He had warned her, back when the Silence came in to save the day, and her bank account, that there was a price to pay for dealing with them. She had listened…but she hadn’t remembered.

  The Silence held secrets, and used their people to bear the weight. They played close to the vest with all their cards, and they’d hide the ones in the river, if they could. What secrets was Sergei still carrying? Was it possible to escape? And what did they have to do with the Cosa’s enemies today?

  Think. What do you know about the Silence, Valere?

  They were a watchdog organization, according to her partner. Their mission statement was to protect the innocent against larger, darker forces.

  Their funding came from a bunch of Dead White Guys with an overdeveloped guilt complex, back in a previous century.

  They were set up like a corporation in a lot of ways; one branch not always knowing what another was doing, and a lot of infighting and turf battles, based on what was happening with Andre, and Sergei’s mention of this guy named Duncan.

  And that was about it, sum and total of her knowledge. She hadn’t bothered to look, even when she signed on with them, trusting Sergei to deal with all of that. Even when Silence operatives burned them on the Nescanni job, she’d left it to Sergei to deal with the particulars, limiting her involvement to snarking at Andre.

  You can’t do that anymore she thought to herself as the train pulled into their stop. You’ve been letting him take too much, stuff you should be handling—like current, the guilty voice in her head said, like she needed reminding—and that’s not good for either of you. Especially ’cause he’s never going to say no…and you can’t say no to him, either.

  One was personal, and one was business, and once they’d been separate things. Or, at least, they’d managed a halfway decent firewall between the two. Now…

  Wren needed to relearn that wall. For both their sakes.

  Wren had never actually been to the Silence’s headquarters before. She hadn’t even known it was in the city, although that made sense, considering Sergei had been based here, when they met. She was expecting something suitably Gothic, or maybe ultramodern.

  She wasn’t expecting him to lead her to a small, somewhat dingy coffee shop in SoHo. Hopes of a secret password, maybe a shady-eyed waitress and a sliding door in the back, were dashed when instead they got into a booth, the vinyl upholstery squeaky but surprisingly well-padded, and were handed oversized menus by a waitress who looked like she came right out of Don’t Give a Damn Central Casting.

  “We meeting someone here?”

  “Maybe.” He was shut down, even to her. Fine. She’d been surprised he’d even let her tag along—face it, as little as you wanted to get involved with the Silence, he wanted you involved even less. So, okay, why is he letting you in, now?

  “Why’d you let me come along?”

  “Because you scare him.”

  Wren felt both her eyebrows go up in surprise at that. She did? Most excellent…

  “Also, you need to hear this directly. Because I might not tell you.”

  “Huh?”

  But the waitress came back before she could push for clarification. Sergei ordered a cup of tea, hot, and the chicken-fried chicken. Wren, having had a real meal at the restaurant during the meeting, just asked for a diet Sprite and a plate of fries.

  “Craving salt and grease. That time of month?”

  “Do guys say things like that just to piss us off? Yes, that time of month. Which I know you knew already because you keep better track of those things than I do.”

  They’d been working together for three years before she realized that he never booked her a job the week her period was due. Even once she’d confronted him with it, and explained that she wasn’t one of those females who couldn’t function for cramps, he still gave her that week off, no matter what.

  Their drinks and her fries were delivered just as Sergei looked at his watch for the first time. It was an old-fashioned, very expensive gold watch, one that required winding twice a day, and he was careful to take it off before they got into any kind of intimate contact, or he was going to be dealing with more than one lonejack….

  He hadn’t taken it off before going to the meeting. She felt a momentary burst of guilt about that, for not letting him know what he was walking into, then pushed it aside. It was still working, so no harm no foul, right?

  “Didier.”

  That wasn’t Andre’s voice. It wasn’t Andre, either, standing next to their table, but a very tall, slender, ohso-leggy blonde. Exactly the sort of woman Sergei used to date, back before, when he was doing the whole Man About the Art Scene thing.

&nb
sp; Wren waited for the old surge of jealousy to rise, but only felt a little ill this time. Maybe because Sergei didn’t seem all that thrilled to see the woman?

  “Bren.”

  He didn’t make any move to introduce the two of them, so the blonde did it herself.

  “My name is Bren. And you’re Genevieve.”

  Wren hated her given name; the only people who got to use it were her mom, and Sergei when he was trying to make a point. But she didn’t want this woman using any of her nicknames, either, so she just inclined her head in acknowledgement of the statement. Someone would tell her what was going on, eventually.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Sergei. And she really shouldn’t be here.”

  “Free country. Public diner.” Oh, he really wasn’t happy to see the blonde, no. That made her feel much better.

  “You know that’s bullshit,” Bren said, her face tightening like someone with too much BOTOX trying to grimace.

  Sergei shrugged. “Tell me what I need to know, and we’ll both go away.”

  “Are you trying to get killed? You, and her, and everyone who’s ever touched you?”

  Wren blinked, and got very, very still, the inherent skill that made her a Retriever effectively taking her off the radar of everyone in the coffee shop, even—for the moment—her partner. It was tougher to go away from him like that, but she could still do it. She didn’t know why she did it, right then; some instinct that told her Not Being There was the right move.

  Wren had learned the hard way to listen to those instincts.

  “Tell me what I need to know, if Andre’s too afraid to be seen with me.”

  “Andre doesn’t know you’re here. I intercepted the information before he got it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you walked away from him, Didier. So why should he come to you now?”

  Wren’s ears were definitely perked forward, now.

  “What interest does the Silence hold with the Cosa?” Sergei asked.