Bring It On

by Laura Anne Gilman

  None of them were talking to humans, no. But they were there, almost sixty-five percent of the fatae who were invited. That was better than she had hoped for: a majority were still willing to listen.

  But no dryads. Rorani had not shown up. Wren was disappointed by that, but hopeful the dryad—mother of the fatae, she was called—would show up before the evening was over. They needed her, to give whatever happened validity.

  A heavy hand on her shoulder: she managed, barely, not to flinch.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I’m not sure about a damn thing. But we all agreed, something had to be done.”

  “Yeah.” For all his annoying personality, Bart was about as pro-fatae as they came—he employed a bunch of them in his landscaping company, and not just because they worked cheaply. “Separately, the damned Council’s just gonna pick us off. You notice? Since we started organizing? No more grabs.”

  No more lonejacks gone missing, no. But more fatae were dying. It was escalating, in fact.

  And the psi-bomb set off outside her house wasn’t the only one reported: three other lonejacks reported similar blasts, each of the three doing considerably more damage than her own. That report had come in last night; late, because the lonejacks involved had been injured, and were only now getting in touch with their area representatives.

  On one hand, it was good to see that the plan, such as it was, was working: lonejacks were sharing information in a coherent and timely manner, not just exchanging gossip over coffee, the way they used to. It was a tribute to Lee’s memory, for a lot of them. The formal gossip-mining he and P.B. had started, over the summer, was being carried on.

  On the other hand, it showed that the Council wasn’t backing down from their plan to intimidate lonejacks into coming in under their oh-so-protective umbrella. They had just taken a different approach.

  She didn’t bother pointing any of this out to him. He knew. They all knew. As much as the fatae needed them, they needed the fatae, too. They had to learn how to work together, all of them: not in a block, the way the Mage Council insisted Talents work, but as cohesive individuals.

  Wren hadn’t been a stellar student, even when she was paying attention, but she did remember her history classes well enough to remember one particular phrase: “We must all hang together. Or assuredly we will all hang separately.”

  She didn’t bother mentioning that to Bart, either. Instead she scanned the crowd below them, leaning on the railing with her fingers curled around the iron rail. Sergei threaded his way through the crowd, his normally noticeable height and shoulder-width not as obvious among the larger fatae.

  “You know what to do?” It felt odd, speaking to someone like this. It wasn’t like working with Sergei and the others, arranging the Retrieval—that had just been a question of reassuring herself that everyone knew their parts. Once set in motion, she hadn’t had to pay attention to them, only herself. Here, she was the one directing the action; she had to keep them all on the page.

  Bart nodded. “Yeah. I got it. You really think this is going to work?”

  “It has to,” she said. Which wasn’t really an answer.

  Stephanie entered the room, and everyone turned to watch her walk, even the straight women and gay males. She just had that kind of a walk.

  Wren was aware of an extreme—and extremely annoying—flash of jealousy when Sergei’s head turned as well. She used to handle it much better, his being red-blooded and breathing. Weird, that being in a relationship made you more aware of your own insecurities, rather than less. Or maybe it was just that you actually had something of value to lose…

  “People! All of you, winged, weirdboned, and otherwise!” Her voice carried throughout the room, actually a former gym. Wren and Bart were standing in what used to be the track circle, above. Weirdboned was a term Wren hadn’t heard in years—it was an old, old, old-fashioned way of referring to Talents. Old as in Revolutionary-war, old. She knew it only because Neezer had referenced it once, in one of his endless lectures on Why She Shouldn’t Use Current to Shoplift, and she, curious, had looked it up.

  A piskie threatened to dive-bomb Stephanie’s head, and she grabbed it by the legs and pulled it down to face level, staring directly into its eyes before letting it go. Its roost-mates snickered and settled down, more amused at her being caught than the treatment she received. Piskies were like that. They took as good as they gave.

  “Thank you for coming tonight.”

  Wren had vaguely been aware of Bart leaving her side, but it was still a bit of a shock to see him step onto the raised dais, along with Michaela and Rick, to join Stephanie. Together they looked pretty damn impressive, she had to admit. Almost official-like. It helped that they’d dressed up for the occasion: Rick and Bart were both wearing dress slacks and shirtsleeves, and Stephanie was every inch the Connecticut Professional in a skirt and jacket. Even Michaela had made an effort, trading in the worn, ripped jeans and cammo tank top of the earlier meeting for a neater pair of black jeans and a white cardigan-style sweater.

  “Thank all of you for coming tonight. We’re aware that this is, in a word, unprecedented. But times change around us, and we either change, or we suffer for it.”

  There was a vague noise from the audience, one that Wren thought indicated agreement, but she wasn’t entirely sure. She held her breath, hoping that they’d be able to stick to the script that had been hammered out…

  “We have no secret, no hidden agenda.” That was Michaela stepping forward, the lights glinting in her blue-dyed hair, that and her so-fragile bones making her look almost fatae. “No pre-decided plans. No decisions already made—we’re not going to insult you like that.”

  The noise this time was a little louder, more obviously positive, if not entirely believing. They liked that, the crowd did. Good.

  “Is there anyone here who doesn’t know why we’ve called this Moot, this rather exceptional, inclusional Moot?”

  A few of the fatae made as though to say they didn’t, but seemed hesitant to speak up around so many humans. She had thought about using P.B. or Shig to jump-start discussion, if needed, but they each had their own, different problems. P.B. was too well-known, too closely linked with herself, and through her the lonejacks, while Shig was too unknown, too obviously a stranger, and therefore suspect.

  “Because you need us,” one of the fatae finally said. A Leshi; shaggy-shouldered, with a two-pronged rack set into his skull. Young, then, but adult enough to have a voice within his tribe. His body language practically screamed testosterone-aggression. Wren had only encountered one of them before, in a run-down, fatae-friendly hotel in midtown when she and Sergei had helped fend off one of the earlier vigilante attacks. She wondered if they were related; she hadn’t thought that there were many in the area.

  “Because we can offer each other what we need.” Rick might be out of his usual leathers, but he still moved like he was wearing them, and the belligerent fatae-buck backed down a step.

  “You’ve never given a damn about us before.”

  “If you believe that, why are you here?” came a shout from across the room. “Go back to your caves!”

  “Hey!” Rick still had a leather-wearing voice, too.

  “Not all humans treat us like animals.” A quieter voice, near the front. Wren craned her neck to see who it was. Winged, and elongated, and no species she recognized, not that there was any great shock in that. “For the killers who hunt us, there are those who help us. We—my people—have a champion who teaches us to defend ourselves, because he does not wish to see fatae blood spilled.”

  “You hired him to teach you,” someone else said, dismissing that claim.

  “And he takes our money, and teaches us well. What more do you ask?”

  The winged fatae made his—her?—point. It wasn’t discrimination if you were being treated the same as everyone else, in terms of services offered.

  “We’re not asking you to join us,” Bart said.
“We’re none of us big on the joining thing.”

  Some laughter there. Good.

  “But you know we’ve been having problems. And we know you’ve been having problems. So maybe we can help each other out, neighbor to neighbor. Cosa helping Cosa, the way it was supposed to be.”

  “Don’t see Council here. Council’s Cosa, too.”

  “Are they? Not by my book they’re not!” An angry voice, from the back of the room. Wren couldn’t tell if it was fatae or human. Not that it mattered, she supposed. It was—

  Her thought stopped cold, running into some kind of mental wall. Something wasn’t right. Wren couldn’t put her finger on it, but the tone, the underlying feel of the room, had changed. There was still the orderly arguments below; the foursome and she had agreed that they wouldn’t expect anything other than arguments for the first hour, until everyone had it out of their systems, more or less. Danger or no, extraordinary Moot or no, these were still Cosa they were dealing with; still lonejacks. They needed to argue. Otherwise they wondered why everyone was humoring them, and got defensive. This was different.

  Wren let the sounds of the debate going on below her fade to the back of her awareness, like watching television in the background. Resting her hands lightly on the banister, feeling the cool steel under her fingertips, she summoned fugue state; not a heavy working trance, just enough to let her focus cleanly.

  Slipping down a gentle slide, feeling the tendrils of her core embrace her, wrap around her, she opened them up, transforming them into psychic ears of a sort.

  Nothing.

  A wall of dead air outside, like a stormfront stalled and quiet.

  Too quiet.

  She felt ill, the tendrils turning inside her restlessly, searching something familiar. They didn’t like the dead silence, either; it made them uneasy, waiting for a storm to break, a blow to land.

  Nothing was that silent. Nothing living. Not unless…

  She had a sudden flashback, a memory of the summer past, when she encountered a dark space for the first time; a location entirely Null, impenetrable to current, unfriendly to magic.

  This felt like that. But that was impossible. There was no Null space here, not in the middle of Manhattan, one of the most current-charged, electrically alive places on earth. Was there anything that could mimic the feel of a dark space? If so, Wren wasn’t sure she wanted to know about it.

  A memory, resurfacing unwanted. Fourth of July, when she was, what, ten? Maybe nine. Her mother was dating a guy who lived in Manhattan, and he had invited them to have dinner and watch the fireworks. Huge crowds, people in tight masses of excitement and anticipation, and Wren, all four-foot-something of her at the time, pushed and shoved by adults and teenagers who didn’t see her there, despite her bright red T-shirt and green Statue of Liberty head-piece. Her mother held her hand tightly, looking up to the sky at the exploding sparks, and couldn’t understand why her daughter, who usually adored the crackling energy of fireworks, started to cry…

  People. Outside. Nulls.

  A lot of them.

  Sergei. She had to get to Sergei. She had to get his attention, somehow…

  But he was down there, in the crowd, and she didn’t want to do anything that might cause a panic, not with the mass down there already on edge, not until she knew for certain…

  Sergei. The sense of him, always close under her skin, too many years of working together, feeding off each other, emotionally and current-wise. The endless dozens of times she had grounded herself in him, taken from him and fed back into him. Even before they were sexual partners, there had been a bond Wren had counted on. Had depended on. Had used, most recently, to save his life, his soul, from the all-consuming hunger of the Nescanni parchment.

  She reached for that now, and, trying hard not to panic, not to startle him, reined in the impulse to tug the bond, instead treating it like a whisper-thin thread, stroking it like the sinew of a harp. Listening to it resonate, she followed instinct and impulse, moderating the sound from random music to words.

  Part of her wondered how she knew to do whatever it was she was doing; the other part focused back on the sense of the dark space, moving ever-closer.

  Sergei. Partner. Don’t react. Just listen.

  She had no idea if she was getting through, just continued shaping the words out of the thread-music.

  Trouble coming. Human. Null. Outside. Not sure what kind.

  It might be nothing. It might be a busload of theater-goers, coming in from the Greater Suburbia, synthetically-Null from job-stress and exhaustion. Might be anything.

  There was a knocking noise, a dull, almost rhythmic sound, from outside, and Wren felt rather than saw the attention of the crowd shift. The four-wheeled troika felt it, too, and scrambled to get their audience’s attention back, just before the front door of the gym slammed open, and the first Cosa member went down under a baseball bat.

  Alarm! It wasn’t needed, now, but Wren was already in fugue state, and she could feel how quickly confusion and surprise was turning to panic and chaos. A little direction never hurt any brawl. Especially direction from someone with an overhead view of the action.

  Coming in from the front door, side gate, stage-left window. The others were barred, probably to prevent basketballs from crashing through glass, or other activity-related damage. Small blessings; it kept all but the smallest fatae from escaping, but also limited the ways the vigilantes could come at them.

  No guns. At least as much as she could sense; pneumatic pistols or the like might be flying under her awareness. She wasn’t very good at this sort of thing, damn it!

  Those who can fight, focus on the ones with bats. Those who can’t, or won’t, drop down and get out of the way!

  Some of them heard her; too many didn’t. Bodies went down under the attacks, and screams and shouts rose up into the air.

  Current could be a decent weapon—if you were prepared. But very few Talents could jump into action without warning, and the fatae were…fatae. Useless. She could use current—but how to make sure she only harmed the attackers? No way. She was a Retriever, damn it, not a fighter.

  The scent of blood mixed with sweat, and rose into the air. Wren almost gagged, the trauma sending her rising up out of fugue state. Only extreme force of will kept her there, kept her focused.

  Sergei! A yank, now, on that bond, and he responded. Anger, a hint of fear—for her, for those around her—and a growing desire to find the attackers, do them violence. Normally she avoided thinking about the levels of anger and violence that lived inside her partner. Right now, it might be their only hope.

  Sergei prided himself, rightfully so, on never losing his cool. Ever. It was what made him effective. Efficient. He could step outside the moment and do what needed to be done in order to close the deal.

  So it bothered him not at all to shoot a man in the back.

  Partner!

  Wren’s cry sounded in his head, and for an instant he was confused—was it an echo of her earlier cry, or—

  The sharp burn of a knife cut answered that. Damn, damn damn, she couldn’t have yelled, “Duck!” or, “To your left”? Shutting down his awareness of the pain, Sergei backhanded the guy with the knife, gratified to see his attacker go flying across the floor on his backside, knocking into another knot of fighting and scattering those players like bowling pins.

  Too many, he thought, using the moment to size up the room. Too many, too organized, even for vigilantes. He was making an assumption there, but it seemed warranted, since most of the attacks seemed to be aimed not at the lonejacks, but the fatae. Someone had set this up. Someone had told the vigilantes that the fatae would be here, in number.

  Someone had sold them out. Someone who didn’t care if a few restless, unaffiliated magic-users got killed, too.

  “Valere!” A bellow, a war-cry. “Valere, out!” The hell with the rest of them; he had to get his partner out of here.

  He risked a look up to the balcony where sh
e had been playing Field Marshall, and swore. She was still there, leaning too far over the railing and calling out warnings to those below in the fight. It would only be a matter of moments before the fighting moved up there, if not sooner. And while Wren could hold her own in a fight, all the tricky moves in the world didn’t help against a brute with a large enough stick and the willingness to use it.

  Ducking an overmuscled goon with the aforementioned stick, Sergei headed for the stairs.

  Three steps into the melee, and his handgun was useless. Even if he’d been willing to fire into such a closely packed crowd, the number of agitated Talents made the risk too great. Not that they could use current to affect the weapon directly, not without coming into contact with it, but the noise might startle them into an unplanned, unfortunate release of current.

  He didn’t mind taking damage when needed. But getting whacked with a bolt of current wasn’t high up on his to-do list, despite what Wren thought.

  “Knees! Knees!”

  A tiny form whizzed past Sergei, almost tripping him up.

  “Knees!”

  The voice was P.B.’s, chanting under his breath as he ran alongside Sergei. The human was puzzled for a moment, then as another small form swarmed past them, he realized that the demon was giving instructions to the half-dozen piskies moving with him. As per instructions, they would peel off periodically and attach themselves to the kneecaps of Null humans—how they could tell the difference, Sergei didn’t know—and bit down, hard, in the fleshy area behind.

  Pisky teeth were sharp. Without fail, their victims staggered and went down.

  “Knees!” P.B. said again, and started up the stairs half a step ahead of Sergei, even with his much shorter legs.

  Someone grabbed Sergei from behind, around the neck, and he felt himself being pulled backward.

  “Get her out of here!” he managed to shout. Hopefully it wasn’t too garbled. There wasn’t any need to specify who he meant. P.B. would understand—and understand why, too. Wren might think she was merely an advisor, but this alliance wasn’t going to work without her. If this attack was designed not only to take out as many fatae as possible, but to prevent them from gaining possible allies, then Wren was as much at risk as any of the fur-skinned, bark-haired, bewinged creatures around them.