Laura Gilman - Dragon Justice

“Now, if it were boys gone missing, that would be unusual. Unless an elf-wench’s gone hunting, they tend to be safe.”

Elf-wench. That was even worse than “trooping fairies.” I was so never going to use that in a Lady’s hearing. In fact, I was never even going to think it.

“And nobody’s been talking trash about humans again?”

The da-esh paused, then looked over at Og. I guessed he would be more likely to hear—and maybe partake of—any such trash-talking.

Og looked sulky, his mouth drawn in a tight little frown. “Nobody dare trash-talk,” he said, and his tone was that of a ten-year-old grounded for the first time. “Not since The Wren do what she did.”

What had The Wren done? Was this tied into… No, didn’t know, didn’t want to know, didn’t want to have to take any notice, official or otherwise. If Wren had won us goodwill among the fatae—or at least put the fear of Talent into them—then I’d use it and be glad.

“But,” Og went on, and it was like the words were getting pulled with pliers from his throat, “there is a thing.”

“A thing?” I was prepared to bribe, if needed—we had a slush fund for that, not all of it in cash—but the da-esh beat me to it, placing one large hand square on the top of Og’s head and pushing down with obvious threat. “Talk, or I eat your brains for breakfast,” he said.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t an idle threat. From the way Og’s eyes rolled up into his head, he was, too.

“Whispers. Not even whispers. Loud thinking, maybe.” He squirmed a little under the weight of the hand, then shrugged, all pretense of resistance going out of him. “I hear talk in the Greening Space. The piskies talk. Humans, too many humans, pissing off fatae already there. All hours, sleeping and eating and shitting there.”

“A full campsite?” I was suspecting they didn’t have official permits, but Central Park was large, and a few people could probably disappear for a while, especially in warmer weather. A settled camp, though, would be harder to hide.

It’s tough to shrug when you’re being squished from above, but Og did his best. “Whispers. They hide, but they are not good enough to hide from piskies.”

Piskies were the Cosa Nostradamus’s official gossips—tiny, inquisitive, borderline-rude pranksters who didn’t understand the meaning of the word privacy and wouldn’t have cared if they did. They looked a bit like one of those old-style Kewpie dolls crossed with a squirrel, or maybe a mouse lemur—big eyes, grasping claws, fluffy tail, and a topknot of hair that came in colors that should not be seen in nature. Most of the Cosa Nostradamus despised them, but people I respected—namely Wren Valere and Ian Stosser—listened very carefully if a piskie spoke to them.

“A campsite of humans in Central Park,” I repeated, to make sure that I wasn’t misunderstanding.

“Children-humans,” Og corrected me. “That was why the piskies whispered. Young humans. They thought they might play with them but they threw pinecones and rocks and drove them away, instead.”

The pronoun abuse in that sentence nearly gave me a headache, but I was able to follow it. “The children drove the piskies away. They didn’t want to be found.”

That meant that there had to be at least one Talent in the group, or someone familiar enough with the fatae to know that either the piskies weren’t a hallucination—a common enough belief—or that if you were trying to keep a low profile, you did not invite piskies to hang around.

“Human-children…” In fatae-terms, that meant teens, not little kids. “And no adults?”

Og rolled his yellowing eyes up at me again. “How should I know? I only know what piskies whisper and they’re piskies.”

Valid point. The fact that they liked to gossip did not mean that they got the facts straight, or wouldn’t embellish or pare down to make the story more interesting.

“Enough?” the da-esh asked, and I nodded. He lifted his hand, and Og popped up like a cork, glaring at me like it was all my fault his rounded scalp had gotten polished.

My mentor had spent his entire adult life walking various halls of power, putting a word in one ear, a hand on another shoulder, coaxing and pulling events and people into patterns he approved and could use. I was starting to see—on a far more crude and after-the-fact fashion—why it was so appealing.

“My thanks,” I said, and my hand moved off the table, leaving a suitable donation to the da-esh’s bar tab. Before Og could grab at it, I had turned and left.

Out on the street, I got out of the pedestrian flow, leaned my back against a building, and called the team.

*hey* A tight ping, but broad enough to reach the original Five—Pietr, Sharon, Nifty, Nick, and myself. Nobody else needed in on this—they hadn’t time yet to build up useful contacts.

Sharon and Nifty came back right away, clear question marks forming in my awareness, with Nick’s query half a second later. Nothing from Pietr. He must be busy.

*anyone hear any chatter along the rat-line the past week or so?* The actual ping was less actual words than a query and a feel for what I wanted. Group-pings were hard enough to maintain without wasting the extra energy trying to shape words, too.

*piskies?* Nifty was dubious.

*nothing here* Sharon came back, and Nick echoed that.

*what’s up?* That came from all three of them, in varying degrees.

*job for Stosser. tell ya later*

Their awareness faded from mine, and I was alone in my head. Pings weren’t really communication, the way you would talk to someone, and it wasn’t telepathy, either: there was, so far as anyone could tell, no such thing as real telepathy, although the incredibly tight, almost verbal pings Venec and I could manage might come close. That said, pings were damned convenient, and I could not understand my mentor’s reluctance to use them more—it was very definitely a generational divide. I had long suspected that J would probably still be using a wand if he thought it wouldn’t get him laughed out of the bar.

I started walking again, not really having a direction, but I thought better when I could pace. So. Piskies. I had been casting a wide net, hoping to pull in something that would give me a specific direction. Now that I had it…I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Investigate immediately? Gather more information and see if there was backup for what was—admittedly—a vague mention by an unreliable source? Go back to the office and report on my morning’s work, and ask Stosser for further instructions?

That third choice wasn’t even an option. Ian was a brilliant people-shmoozer and politician, and the driving force behind PSI, absolutely. As an investigator, though? Not so much. In point of fact, he sucked at tight-focus detail work. I could ask Venec, but he’d sounded occupied with his own shit, whatever it was, and anyway, even if he was here he’d just give me one of those Looks. And he’d be right to do so. I was dithering, and that was so unlike me I had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk—earning dirty looks from the people who had to swerve around me—and wonder what the hell was going on.

“Y’know, I really don’t like this job.”

I took a step, frowning. The words had come out of me, driven by kenning-chill I could still feel shivering in my bones. Maybe it was time to stop and explore that a bit. Talk it out, Torres. Ignore the nice people carefully not-staring at me, and talk it out. Pretend you’ve got an ear-thingy on and there’s someone on the other end of the line…

Venec. His eyes half-closed, leaning against a wall like his shoulder bones grew out of it, listening to everything I said and everything I wasn’t saying.