Burning Bridges

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Now, we have to not only act together, we have to keep it together. That means working with information, with our brains, not from fear or misplaced aggression.”

  More muttered agreement, with some nervous laughter. Lonejacks were as known to rush into the fire as away from it; the Council had used that, almost successfully, against them just the summer past.

  “So, to keep us all on the same page, and let it be known what’s what, I’m going to turn the chair over to Nick Lawrence, one of the top dogs and co-founder of the PUPs.”

  Nick “Nifty” Lawrence was a mobile rectangle: square head, square shoulders, all the way down to oversized square feet. He didn’t need to stand on the chair to get people’s attention: he gathered it, in exactly the opposite way that Wren deflected it; naturally, and without conscious thought.

  “People. Not going to waste your time here, none of us has the time to waste, least of all me. Not going to waste your time telling you what you already know: one of the angeli was killed in a dramatic fashion, left in a deeply dramatic fashion, without caring who found it or when—indicating that they had no fear of official reprisals or indeed any sort of notice at all.”

  “So much for New York’s Finest,” someone said.

  “Hey, at least they don’t discriminate. They hate everyone.”

  “People. Attention, please. We have since released the body back to the angeli—”

  Wren did not want to know how that exchange had gone, since the angeli hadn’t given permission for the PUPs to do an autopsy. Then again, this was the second of their kind killed by the vigilantes; they were probably pissed off enough to accept any means of getting back at…uh-oh.

  Did anyone put a stall on the angeli from taking matters into their own hands?

  She sent the query out on a tight ping to the Quad; there was a faint delay, then she saw Michaela lean over to Beyl and whisper something. The griffin dipped her beak and said something in return.

  They have been promised a share of the action so long as they do nothing until given word. Michaela’s mental tone was weary, and carried with it the visual tinge of exasperation like a waft of red smoke. Best Beyl could do.

  Wren forced her attention back to Nifty. The angeli would do as the angeli would do, as always, arrogant bastards that they were.

  “We identified the trace as being true current—and no, I’m not going to explain to you lot how we did it. Not that any of you could understand, anyway.”

  Speaking of arrogant: the difference was that Nifty had earned the right. If he’d been Null he’d have MIT or Caltech in his résumé—he was pure inventive and intuitive genius. Who else would have thought to bring current to investigative sciences, to determine magical use or influence? More, who would have been able to actually do it, and then train others to follow?

  “But it’s confirmed within acceptable parameters that the traces were in fact from current-use. A hundred percent certainty that the killers used that current to hold the angeli down while they cut him.”

  Not surprising, that. Nulls, enough Nulls, could swarm an angel, sure. But he would have made enough of a fuss that his brothers would have found him. And Wren didn’t care how many Nulls you had on your side: a host of angeli were going to eat them on toast.

  “The interesting thing was that, within a seventy-eight percent certainty level, the killers were neither lonejacks…nor Council.”

  Wren frowned, as did half a dozen people in the room. Not everyone fell into the two categories, of course. Some Talent were disinclined to be lumped even with such a loosely knit organization as the lonejacks were…had been, she corrected herself. Some came from families that went their own way, dipping in and out. But most of those were low-level Talent, and certainly not the sort who would go up against the angeli!

  But there was one type of Talent who might. A Talent who might be neither lonejack nor Council…who might have stepped outside of the Cosa itself, as far as they were accounted for….

  Nifty was half a step ahead of her. “Some of you know people like this, who have taken jobs elsewhere, who never speak of what they do, never discuss their jobs, their affiliations…some of you have sibs, children, who took these jobs…and have disappeared. They were not victims of the Council’s maneuverings, nor the anti-fatae, antimagic movement…but their own employment. Their own employers, turning against them, using them…using them against us.”

  He was a powerful speaker, not for his voice, or his looks, or even his current, but the passion he took to each word, the faith he put in his information. Like an evangelist, you believed and followed because he believed and led. Wren suddenly thought, apropos of nothing, that this man could have been very, very dangerous if his goals had aspired higher than forensics.

  “Who? Who was it?” A roar from the crowd, a bear of a voice, deep and scary-sounding. Others took it up, shouting, demanding to know who it was who had turned their relatives against them, to attack and kill an angel.

  Beside her, even through the distance between them, Wren could feel Sergei shift uncomfortably. It was his knowledge that had brought them here—and his knowledge that had brought the Silence to them in the first place. Never mind that he hadn’t known, hadn’t realized…it was still going to be damning. He knew that, felt it in the crowd.

  I’ll protect you, she thought at him, as loudly as she could, as forcefully as she dared. She had the responsibility for him. She had brought him here, in all senses of the word.

  Nifty shook his head, indicating that he could not answer that question. Bart took over, his grating personality best suited to building the bonfire that the Quad wanted burning brightly tonight.

  Wren only hoped they’d be able to contain it.

  “It does not matter who did this deed, but that it was done, and under what orders. At first we stood by and waited, while our cousins the fatae were threatened, harassed by unknown humans. ‘Not our problem,’ is the first retort of all species, and while there may be shame in it, there is also a certain selfish honesty. Forgive yourselves that. When the time came to stand with our cousins, we were there. They know that. And they are willing to stand with us now.”

  Beyl came forward from the back of the room, her feathers sleeked back and her claws gleaming, every inch the warrior she was. Next to her, a nissanni elder, to represent the aquatic fatae. There were no fire fatae—most of them were in hibernation for the winter, just as Rorani the dryad and her kin were.

  “For generations we have been passive. We have remembered that, just as the human Talent are our cousins, so, too, are the Nulls. They live, they feel, they are sentient and worthy of respect. We—the Cosa Nostradamus—have never struck out against them, even when such a strike might have been justified.”

  All right, technically that wasn’t quite true. There was that whole “dragon” era of unpleasantness in Europe and Asia, and the Aztecs might have a few words about angry feathered flying gods…. But it made for good speechifying, Wren had to admit that.

  “But we will not strike now, blindly. It must be a focused blow, a well-placed injury. And to do that, we must gather our forces, and determine the best way to do this. You may be called upon, individually or as a breed, to aid in this. For now, we ask your patience, a small while longer.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Sergei was holding his body carefully upright, muscles tensed as though he was afraid that he might step wrong and hurt someone. The irony of that, that he was surrounded by several of the most determined, if not the strongest, Talent in the tri-state area, not to mention several fatae who outmuscled him on a purely square inch basis, and he was worried about hurting them? Wren didn’t know whether to laugh or shake her head in despair.

  She’d probably do both, before the day was over.

  “I don’t understand.” Beyl had settled herself on the floor, her wings folded around her in close approximation of a nesting pose. Michaela and Bart were seated on the sofa, while the other two membe
rs of the Quad paced the small room restlessly.

  They had ended the meeting over an hour ago, and—after sending the bystanders and secondary commentators home—had gone into huddle mode. The Quad had expected that it would be a simple matter to get the information that they needed from Sergei; they had, in fact, expected him to take them by the hand and lead them to the Silence’s door.

  Wren didn’t know what she had expected. Watching her partner now, she knew only that they weren’t going to get anywhere, hammering at him like this. The more they tried to coax him, the uglier it would get.

  “Don’t you care?” Bart launched himself off the sofa and directly into Sergei’s face, even allowing for the six inches of difference in their height. Wren, aware that the fuse had just been lit, wondered if the other lonejack liked the view up Sergei’s nose. It was one she, another six inches shorter than Bart, knew all too well.

  You’re losing it. Tighten up and focus. Something’s going to break, one of them is going to say or do something that will lead us out of here. This is what you do, you look for the openings, you find the soft spot. So do it, damn it. He’s not your partner. These aren’t your siblings, your cousins. It’s a job. A scenario…

  She took a deep, quiet breath, then another, pushing herself down away from the tension in the room, away from the physical awareness of her body, down the wide, flat slope into the core of herself, where the icy hot energy of current coiled like a nest if vipers. Fugue state; the best mode from which to observe. It was hell on her reaction time, but she didn’t need to worry about that, here. She hoped.

  “What about the bodies thrown down on their steps?” Sergei didn’t step away from Bart’s invasion of his personal space, but Wren recognized the look on his face, and in a less serious time she would have started taking bets on who would throw the first punch.

  He looked around the room, meeting each of his opponents’ gazes squarely. “Why does nobody care about that? These were human beings, possibly totally innocent beings. Members of the Silence, yes, but of no known blame in any of this. Someone killed them, branded their skin and dumped them with no respect. Because they’re Nulls, does nobody care?”

  “We care,” Michaela said, still keeping calm, still seated in an almost relaxed pose on the sofa. “But we cannot let their deaths distract us from our own safety. For all we know, they were sacrifices made by this organization to further cast us into disorder, soften us for their final blow, whatever it might be. We cannot know. We cannot let it stop us.”

  “You’re the only one who can help us,” Beyl said, her feathers lifting and lowering in a nonexistent breeze, sign of her agitation. “Wren knows only some of these humans…you know them all. You know their thoughts, their ways. You can help us bring them down.”

  “You’re asking me to help you destroy an organization that has done good for generations, that has saved lives, at great cost to themselves, because a few within the organization are afraid. How then are you any different than from them?”

  “Is that what the Indians said about the Europeans? The Incas about the Spaniards? We’re talking about our survival here, Didier. And either you’re standing with us…or you’re not.”

  Deep in fugue state, Wren suddenly couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t bear the pressure against her skin, on her bones, weighing her down and buzzing like elementals on a bad bender. Too much current being roused outside, and she couldn’t withstand it. Current swirled in her core in response, serpents of deep blues, reds, golds, and greens slithering around each other, rubbing staticky coils in a hissing, spitting noise that was giving her a headache. No wonder Talent didn’t play together well. It was building, it was all building, in all of them, and it was getting out of control.

  Is this what it feels like to wiz? I can’t think, can’t deal with this….

  “Wren?”

  Sergei, standing there in front of her. She always felt the urge to make tea for him, when he was coming home. Reached for him in bed, before she even woke up. Trusted him to cover her back, to bring her coffee in bed, to hand her the towel when she got out of the shower. Needed him. Wanted him. Loved him.

  “Go.” Her voice was sparse, hoarse, coming from miles away.

  “What?”

  “I can’t…I can’t deal with you. I can’t…”

  I can’t be responsible for killing you. And I will, if you stay. You’re being stubborn and you can’t help being stubborn, but if they continue to direct all this current against you, even involuntarily…like calls to like and I can’t keep it under control, around you. Not when it’s used to resting itself in you.

  “Just go, Sergei. Walk out of here, and don’t look back.”

  “Zhenchenka…”

  “Listen to the woman, Didier.” Bart, standing behind her. She could feel him through the confusion, his current reaching out to hers even as his hand rested on her shoulder; safe, reassuring static, his own current now under control, if barely. He was at no risk from her own, he knew how to protect himself. She couldn’t ground in him. She had no desire to ground in him. Around her, an entire room of people who were safe because she did not desire them.

  “Sergei. Go.”

  He looked past her, at Bart. At the room around her. He didn’t look at her.

  And he went.

  In the end, they went on what little they knew, what they could surmise, and a series of wild-ass guesses. Classic lonejack territory. There were five of them on point; more on call in an instant’s ping. Two men, two women, and one fatae—Danny, muttering under his breath about crazy lonejacks and crazier Nulls.

  He stopped, and stared at the building, somehow menacing in its total lack of menace. “I thought it would be, I don’t know…taller.”

  “Funny.”

  The ex-cop shrugged, unapologetic. “I thought it was.”

  “There’s nobody in there.” Rick shook his head in disgust.

  “What?” Wren looked at him, then at the building for confirmation. It looked…she didn’t know, like any other building on the street. Totally ordinary…and kind of unnerving for being ordinary. Danny was right; she’d expected it to be…taller.

  “There’s nobody in there.” He looked up at the moderate-height building, then past it into the leaden sky. “Gonna snow again.”

  “Can you please stay focused?” Bets was seventy if she was an hour, and had been born short-tempered. She was also one of the few strong old-timers left, after the Council’s heavy hand, and had demanded a spot on the sortie by right of survival. Nobody had dared suggest that she wasn’t up for it.

  “I am being focused. Feel it?”

  Wren could. Not like a lightning storm forming: there wasn’t any current swirling in the ether, but the air was alive with something nonetheless; a shimmering ugliness that had its own weird appeal, as well. You could get seduced by it, if you didn’t pay attention.

  Michael shoved his hands into the pockets of his parka, and tucked his chin into the scarf wrapped around his neck. “Your partner warned them.”

  “No. He didn’t.” Wren didn’t know much anymore, but she knew that. “He wouldn’t give us what we wanted…but he wouldn’t go the other way, either. That’s his hell. Being moral in the middle.”

  She knew that now: if he had been trying to play them, he would have. The fact that he didn’t, that he walked away…The pain inside him was no game. None of this was a game.

  She looked at the building, trying to feel the flow of current inside it. There was a faint trickle, but nowhere near what it should be. That was what Rick was talking about, not just that there weren’t any people in the building, but that they had cut power. “They’re many things, but they’re not stupid,” she said. “Never stupid.” Without electricity, the lonejacks would have less to draw upon. It wouldn’t surprise Wren at all if there was a sudden power outage citywide any minute now, to ensure that they were handicapped. If it didn’t happen Wren suspected that it wasn’t because they did
n’t want to, but that someone had stopped them, and rightfully so. Too damn cold, too damn dangerous, for people to be without power with another storm coming on.

  “So, they’re not here. Where?”

  “Can’t hunt ’em.” A tiny, tinny voice at ear level. “Gotta luuuuure ’em.”

  A piskie, one of the larger ones: almost two feet high but barely five pounds, including its wild mass of hair. Wren fought down the urge to swat at it when it hovered to close to her face.

  “Love them?”

  “Luuuure them, idiot human. Lure them, not love them. When you look like prey, the predators come. When you look like easy prey, the smart predators come, even when they know better. And then we give ’em something to be really scared of.”

  “Like a bird dragging its wing.” Bets understood. “We give them a target they can’t resist…but what wouldn’t they be able to resist?”

  “The ones who killed those humans,” the fatae said, almost purring.

  “We didn’t—”

  Wren nodded, understanding. “They don’t know that. They wouldn’t believe that even if we told them a thousand times, with iron-clad alibis and a witnessed confession from the actual killer.”

  “How?” Bart asked, more to himself than anyone else. “And—where?”

  The piskie grinned, showing off teeth that had been sharpened to even more unnerving-than-usual points, making it look like the rabid offspring of a kewpie doll and a vampire bat. “We gots us an idea.”

  twenty-two

  “This is like a protest march!”

  “What do you know about protest marches?”