Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “None. You know that. They don’t approve of magic, unless…”

  “Unless it’s performed under their aegis.” His gaze sharpened on her. “Bren. What is happening with the FocAs? Andre mentioned something, a while back. He was going to have Darcy look into it.”

  Bren sat down, almost shoving Wren aside, in her invisibility. “They’re disappearing. You know that already. We thought, at first, they were leaving the Silence, that we were pushing them too hard, making them choose between loyalties…”

  Sergei nodded, impatient. He and Wren had discussed this, gone over the possibilities. He had hoped that Darcy would be able to give actual names, so that Wren could check with the families themselves.

  “That’s not it. The ones who’ve gone, they’re gone. Their families haven’t heard from them at all. Even their Handlers are at a loss to explain it.”

  “Exactly when did these disappearances start?” If it coincided with the lonejacks who disappeared…

  “As far as Darcy can tell, almost two years ago, for the first one.”

  Wren shook her head, forgetting that Sergei wouldn’t see her. The timing was off. KimAnn hadn’t started anything active then; at least, not outside the Council itself.

  “Two years?” Sergei, a former Handler, was outraged on half-a-dozen levels, and both Bren and his partner shied away from the anger in his voice.

  “It wasn’t noticed because, well, you remember what it’s like. FocAs have more leeway than most, and their Handlers are…”

  “Mavericks.” Sergei was amused despite his anger; he had been one of those mavericks once, so much so that he’d left the game entirely. Or tried to, anyway. Not for the first time Wren thought that he’d Handled her quite nicely, if for their mutual benefit and enrichment.

  “Idiots, is what I would have said. But then…some of them went missing, too. The Handlers.”

  “And nobody was bothered by this?” This time, Sergei didn’t sound surprised or angry at all; he was on the scent of something.

  “Andre was. Sometimes, I think Andre’s the only one who gives a damn anymore.” She played with the straw of Wren’s soda absently, twirling it between two fingers of her left hand. “Sergei. You and I never saw eye to eye. I never understood why you got away with the things you did, why you left—and why they let you come back. Your partner’s not as hot as all that, that the Silence couldn’t survive without her.”

  Wren winced. That stung, but it wasn’t untrue, or something the two of them hadn’t wondered about, too.

  “But recent events…Darcy’s not the only one who can put two and two together and come up with fifteen. The only thing the Silence cares about is making the world better. Safer. More even-handed. And they do whatever it takes, use whatever they get, to make it so.”

  “You knew all this already. We all did.” His voice sounded flat, uninterested, but Wren knew her partner. He was quivering on the edge of his mental chair, scenting blood in her words. Whatever he’d come here for, this woman was about to give to him.

  “I think maybe they’ve gone too far.” She folded the straw in half, then in half again, clenching it so firmly the tube was flattened. “I think they’ve become proactive.”

  Sergei went even more still, in a way that was almost Retriever-like. “Weeding out the unpalatable influences?”

  “Possibly. Probably.”

  “How probable?”

  “I don’t know. Darcy might.”

  “Find out.”

  Bren looked as though she might argue, but his expression probably told her it would be useless. Or maybe she actually liked being given orders; some people worked better when told what to do; she’d seemed uncomfortable taking the initiative, coming here on her own, so maybe this made her feel better.

  Whatever her motivations, she dropped the straw, wiped her hands on Wren’s napkin, and got up and walked out of the diner without a backward glance.

  Sergei sat there for a moment, then turned to where Wren was, silent-still, and seemed to focus on her again, even though she hadn’t let up on the no-see-me.

  “You heard?”

  “I heard. I don’t think I understand, though. What’s so bad about being proactive? Isn’t it better to prevent a problem, rather than solve it?”

  “The Silence defines ‘problems’ as anything that causes trouble, or makes life difficult.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “For humans. You hate my…what did you call it, fataephobia?”

  “You’re better, lots better these days,” she started to protest.

  “Yeah. I am. But the Silence isn’t. From what Bren’s saying, what Andre was seeing, it’s getting worse. And they don’t define human as human, Wren. They define it as Null. Talents—if they’re FocAs, they can be used, but lonejacks? Council? A taint in the blood, an evolutionary path gone wrong. If they can be brought to the Silence’s way of thinking they are allowed. If not…

  “And the fatae? Animals. To be harnessed, hunted, or eradicated.”

  “Like the vigilantes,” Wren said, finally, only now, feeling horribly stupid, Getting It.

  “Like the vigilantes,” he said in agreement. “Come on. Bren was right. Being here is not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Go back to being invisible. If anyone wants to take a potshot it should only be at me.”

  Wren didn’t bother arguing. Unlike the warming spell, excluding him here would be more stupid than petty. But she didn’t want to argue over it, either, and she didn’t want to think about the fact that already she was breaking her vow not to touch him with current….

  “Sway harmful intent;

  Give them another target

  For wrongful ire.”

  It wasn’t as good as a bulletproof vest, and wouldn’t stop anyone with a real mad-on, but if anyone was just idly looking, they’d keep going until they found someone else to be peeved at.

  Sergei shivered as they stepped through the diner’s door; the cantrip taking effect, although anyone observing them would think that he’d simply gotten a blast of cold air. She knew better. It was the same shiver he gave, the down-the-spine one, he made during sex, just before orgasm.

  And how much damage did you just do to him there, with that one touch? How much current can his body handle? How much damage does it take, before his internal organs give up and break down? She needed to talk to a doctor, someone who could be trusted to understand, and give her a straight answer, and not spill…right. Good luck finding that nonexistent paragon…

  “You were used. Manipulated.” The speaker tossed down a sheet of paper on the table in front of KimAnn, as though daring her to pick it up. She ignored it.

  “Nobody manipulates me.” They had arrived unannounced, without fanfare or the usual preparations that were required before one Council leader hit another’s territory.

  “Oh, I’m sure the original idea was entirely yours. It has all the hallmarks of your ego all over it—how only you could save us from the coming danger, the threats of Outside. But where did the coming danger come from? Who fed you that, Madame Howe?”

  “Everyone knows…”

  “Everyone knows that we have always walked a delicate line, a compromise between what we are and what Nulls fear. We have worked with governments, private agencies…we have made compromises and alliances, and we have always remained true to the Charter, without jeopardizing our existence—or threatening others.

  “And then, suddenly, there is risk…and we must think that the risk exists only because of the belief you have, that all Talents must come under your sway.” She started to protest, and he ignored her. “No one else heard of this risk. No other Council felt the need to take the steps you have taken.”

  There were four of them standing in front of her: Louise, from the Midwest Council, out of Chicago. Bee, the Tucson-region Council. Randolph, down from Quebec. And Jenne, elderly but hardly frail, to represent the Pacific Northwest. Missing were Lizzie from the Green Kingdom, and anyone from
the Gulf Coast, which was still reeling from recent natural disasters. They had other things to worry about than what was going on out on the East Coast.

  “And so you endangered us all. For what? For your own ego—fine. We certainly understand the desire to expand your horizons, to enrich your holdings. And had it been merely that, we would have overlooked your recent alliance with the San Diego Council. But you allowed yourself to be influenced by outsiders.”

  “I repeat, that is untrue.”

  Bee stepped forward, forcing her to look at him. Bee was barely three feet tall, and oddly misproportioned, but the current inside him was unmistakeable. An opponent once said that being current-slapped by him was like getting stepped on by T rex. Not only did you have no doubt who it was, but you weren’t getting up again anytime soon, either.

  “You have not been alone in investigating this organization, the Silence. We too have been looking. And what we have found is that your spies were compromised.”

  “Impossible!”

  He slapped one oversized hand down on the paper before her. “Read, woman.”

  Unwillingly, KimAnn looked down at the sheet. He removed his hand so that she could pick it up. Reaching with her left hand for it, her right picked up and unfolded a delicate pair of glasses and settled them on her nose so that she could make out the relatively small type.

  It was a medical report, assessing the mental condition of one Mally Jones. The paper went on in rather graphic detail, describing the various forms of deprivation and reprogramming used on the woman, up to and including her most recent sighting, calling in to report to her masters on New Year’s Day.

  KimAnn didn’t recognize the name, but that meant nothing. She learned very few names, now; her days of reaching out were over, now others reached up to her.

  “This is quite sad, but otherwise…”

  “This is proof,” Jenne said, the only one who seemed genuinely regretful for being there. “Mally Jones was one of the people you based your reports to the Council on. One of the people you used to justify your actions, to build up the threat against us, the terrible danger all Talent faced.

  “The only problem is that this report came—at great cost—from the files of an organization that bears us no good will.

  “Your informants, your trusted sources, were members of the Silence, brainwashed into doing whatever their masters asked of them. In this case, feeding on your fears and suspicions, leading you directly down the garden path they chose.”

  KimAnn didn’t crush the paper in her hand, but the tremor that ran through her wrist indicated she dearly wished to. “I will destroy them….”

  “You will do nothing.” Louise: solemn, but with an unmistakable undercurrent of satisfaction.

  KimAnn looked up, and only then noted that the four had created a half circle in front of her—and that her own people had, somehow, at some point, been removed from the room.

  “We have tolerated you because you are an elder, and powerful, and part of the Council tradition. No matter how you flaunted your disregard for the Charter, for the bonds which bind us all together, for the very reason the Council was formed—”

  “To protect us!”

  “To protect us from ourselves.” Louise was picking up steam as she spoke. “This organization, this Silence? They can harm us only if and when they know about us, they find us. This all can be laid at your door, Madame Howe. Had you not tangled with the lonejacks, harassed and attempted to intimidate them, none of this would have come to pass. The vigilantes would have been discovered and dealt with as so many others have in the past, and we would have weathered this storm and come out on top. We might even then have been able to use that occasion as one to bring the lonejacks to us, peacefully, within the bounds of the Charter. But you—you have made us visible. Have made us into targets. Not only your own people, crime enough, but ours as well. We have done what was needful, in order to put suspicion back where it belongs, but the damage has been done, and cannot be undone.”

  “In light of that, you have been judged, KimAnn Howe, and found guilty. The sentence is without appeal, the punishment swift and without malice.”

  There might have been time to run, to try and stage some defense, some kind of counterattack, but in the end, there was a certain dignity which must be maintained. Her position, her pride, demanded it.

  She rose, meeting each of her judges’ gazes evenly, without flinching, in turn.

  “I did what I believed was needful. I did what I believed was the right thing to do, the only thing to do in order to preserve our ways of life, our goals and our values. I would do it again, if the chance were offered again.”

  “And that is why you will never be given the chance again.”

  The four Council leaders didn’t do anything as clichéd as hold hands, or even gesture. There was no sound, no indication of anything happening. But KimAnn could feel the heat increase in the room as current rose, generated not off the wiring, or even the power reservoirs mumbling to themselves in the basement of the building, but from the air itself, the electricity interacting with the biological matter of the Talent in the room, drawing on both; becoming a real, definable, physical presence beside her.

  The Old Ones, the sources of wisdom, might have looked like this, she thought, her last thought before the presence grasped her tenderly by the face, and consumed everything that was important to her.

  When it was done, KimAnn stood facing the four, her face still as proud, still as determined, and more than one of the judges felt a surge of pride in her strength, as though it validated their own, somehow.

  They also felt a chill of fear. As she had been laid to waste, so might any Talent; burned out: the opposite of wizzing. Not too much current, but none.

  “Your personal income remains yours,” Bee said to the woman. “We will not interfere further in your life, or what you do with it.”

  KimAnn turned to stare at him, her gaze unblinking, the expression on her patrician face hard as stones.

  “What life is that?” she asked. “Money? Belongings? You think they ever meant anything?” She didn’t wait for any of them to answer, but turned away, moving away from the four to look out the window, her delicate hands resting on the old oak sill. The power which had always rested within her was faded, her core cold and empty, aching with loss.

  “Go, now. You have what you came here for. Leave me to what is left to be done.”

  None of them could contradict her words, so they left her, alone.

  twenty-one

  By midmorning, everyone knew that there had been some sort of shake-up within the Council. The Mouthpiece, Colleen, had disappeared, was not answering current-pings, or knocks on her physical door. Even the Council members who had remained within the Patrol program were missing, come time for their shift, and across the city you could practically hear the slamming of doors and shooting of dead bolts as the Council turned inward, abandoning even the pretense of interaction with the rest of the Cosa.

  “They’re running like rats.”

  “They’re not running. They’re burrowing. When this is all over, they’ll come back out…but we won’t have forgotten.”

  The tone was grim to match the mood. The rental hall wasn’t quite filled—there were too many among the Cosa who had been injured in the last Moot to risk another, and people were gun-shy about gathering now—but those who had appeared were wound up tight and fierce.

  Wren had attended three Moots in her life, which was three more than most lonejacks ever got, and four more than she ever wanted to deal with. Moots were supposed to be last-ditch, the trumpet call to order, the summons to all, to deal with things that had to be faced.

  One was bad. Two qualified for “living in interesting times.” Three was apocalyptic in nature, and everyone knew it.

  “We have neither option. We do not have the resources that would allow us to burrow…and where would we run to? This is our home. This is our home. We’re New Yorkers, dam
n it!”

  There was a grumbling of approval, and a rumble of dissent, and Bart backtracked slightly. “All right, no we’re not all New Yorkers. You know damn well what I meant. Nobody but nobody makes us leave our homes unless we want to go. Anyone here want to go?”

  The “no!” that answered him might not have been much by tent revival standards, but for lonejacks it was a clarion call.

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  There was no platform, no balcony to observe from. Bart stood in the middle of the room, on a ladder-back chair, the other three members of the Quad nearby, supporting him, amplifying his voice to every corner of the space. Wren had commandeered a chair for herself, and was perched on the back of it, giving herself a little breathing room. Sergei stood near her; not by her side, but close enough so that anyone not carefully observing wouldn’t notice anything off. When he moved too close, she got tensed up and nervous, distracted, and moved away. After the third or fourth time, he got the message and stayed a safe distance away. Everyone’s attention was on Bart right now, anyway.

  “All right, all right, everyone quiet down.” Rick stood, speaking directly from the floor. Bart yielded to him as though it had been choreographed; it might have been—Wren wasn’t going to underestimate the Quad any longer. They’d been through the fire and were still standing; that was more than the Council could claim.

  “Fine. We can’t count on the Council. Big deal. When have we ever counted on the Council?”

  There was more muttered agreement from the floor, this time unanimous.

  “We did something unprecedented this year—we came together. Not out of fear, or in a mad rush, but as an organized, rational whole, aware of our individualities but working toward a common goal. And not just lonejacks but fatae, as well.”

  All right, so that was a bit of an exaggeration; no more than you heard in any political rally charge-’emup, and probably a lot more truth than in most. Wren was about par on the cynicism level of her fellow lonejacks; they knew they were being manipulated, they knew why, and they were letting it happen. Exactly what the Quad had planned on. Wren wasn’t sure she was comfortable being led that way, even in a strong cause and by people she—mostly—trusted, but there was no other option. If they splintered now, they would lose, and with far more at stake than merely their freedom from Council control.