Laura Gilman - Burning Bridges

It was simple, but it sure as hell wasn’t easy. Even in the cold air, Wren felt sweat drip under the wool cap, down the side of her face. Using current burned a huge amount of calories.

In contrast, the door really was easy: a turn and a bump, and the lock gave way.

Inside the store, the air was thick and dark. A few faint red lights indicated emergency exits, while a white glow illuminated the glass cases behind the wooden counter. The locket was in one of those cases.

Wren was a Retriever; she was hired to take items belonging to her client, and nothing more. Even on a training run like this, you kept discipline. But there were so many pretties sparkling there, abandoned by their owners, just waiting to find new homes….

Watch it, she thought sternly. That’s how people end up with Bad Things following them home.

Selecting one thin thread of current, she shaped it with a picture of the locket, and released it like a butterfly into the store.

The current was blue and yellow, like a butterfly itself, and the strength of her visual made it move like one as well, flittering from one glass case to another before finally alighting on one in the far corner.

“Gotcha” she whispered. The butterfly broke into tiny sparkles, fading into the air as Wren approached the case. Keeping her tool bag balanced on her leg—you never, ever put your kit down on the floor, for fear of leaving a trace—she withdrew the thin pick P.B. had been looking at earlier and made short work of the sliding lock.

She picked the locket up off the small acrylic stand without touching anything else, and slipped it into her pocket.

And that was that.

“Seven minutes thirty-two seconds,” P.B. said, checking the stopwatch as she came back across the street, having carefully closed the door behind her, and allowed the alarm system to reconnect without a tremor.

Wren shook her head in disgust. “That’s just…sad.”

“You get distracted in there?”

“No. Okay, a little. But not more than ten seconds’ worth. Simple job, no problems, I should have been in and out in six minutes, tops. Damn.”

“Yeah, obviously you’re getting old and sloppy, and the hot new Talent’s gonna come up behind you and take all your jobs.” He handed her the stopwatch and dusted snow off his backside. “Watching you train is about as exciting as watching snow fall. I expected at least something blowing up. Can we grab breakfast, now?”

Wren looked up at the sky, as though expecting to see the sun—or an answer of sorts—appear from behind the clouds.

“Valere?” He looked up, as well, then up at her face.

“Something’s building. And we’re not even close to being ready.”

The demon shrugged. “One thing I’ve learned? Nobody’s ever ready, cause what happens is either worse or better than what we were expecting, and never exactly what we planned for.”

She reached into her pocket and touched the locket again. The cool metal filled her with a sense of calm, but no voice came out of her memory to advise her. “So what do you do?”

P.B. scratched his muzzle, and shrugged again. “Burn that bridge when you get to it?”

Wren laughed, the way he meant her to. She let the locket fall back into the depths of her pocket, and she pulled her gloves back on. “Right. Let’s go make Sergei make us pancakes.”

The minor adrenaline rush of her training run had worn off completely by the time lunch came around, and Wren was struggling with the desire to chew her leg off, if it would give her a way to escape.

She had once joked with Sergei about the terrifying prospect of an organized Cosa. Sitting in the now overly familiar meeting room, she had proof to back up her own incredulous laughter at the joke; a week of discussions and negotiations and yelling at each other, and maybe an hour’s worth of progress had been made. If that.

She looked around now, taking in the room the way she might a Retrieval site, half out of boredom, half just to keep in the habit. The remains of a platter of sandwiches and flaccid pickles, the notepads and pens, paper coffee cups and soda cans littering the table. The scene could have been any conference room anywhere, in any office. Or maybe, she thought, the better analogy was a teacher’s staff room. Less tech, more opinions.

And a considerably wider range of species than in your average boardroom or school.

The Truce Board—a boring but practical name someone had come up with—now officially met in an empty apartment of a building belonging to one of the Council members. Wren had scoped the place out when she came in, the never-ending habit of a renter in Manhattan, and decided that—even with the upgraded facilities and parquet flooring, she’d rather keep her own place. But the apartment had a large main room that, when filled with a long table and a bunch of faux leather padded folding chairs, could hold everyone who was required to be there. And the kitchen had not one but two coffee machines running. She approved.

Turning her head slightly to the left, she let her gaze touch on the players: the four lonejack representatives, Jordan and another Council member she didn’t know, and four fatae: Beyl the griffin, a piskie named Einnie, a solid, square-faced trauco with the unlikely name of Reynaldi, and a strange, frail, lovely young woman dressed in veils, whose back was hollow like a dead tree. She wasn’t introduced, and nobody seemed to pay much heed to her, which made Wren pay careful attention to everything she did.

Between the delegates and the advisors each of them had brought along, like reluctant seconds to a mob-scene duel, it was controlled chaos. The voices were loud, but involved, not angry, and there were more arms waving in emphasis than she’d thought could be attached to the number of bodies in the room. Everyone had an opinion about how to implement the Patrols, and enforce the Truce, and nobody wanted to hear anyone else’s points or rebuttals, and at least once the trauco threatened one of the older Council gentlemen with bodily harm for the crime of being—direct quote—a dweeb.

Bored. Yes. She was very, very bored. And there wasn’t anything worth stealing here, even for the practice value. The owner had made damn sure of that before offering it up.

Wren leaned back in her chair, feeling it creak dangerously as she balanced on two legs. “Looks like everything’s under control, here.”

The gnome sitting next to her—Beyl’s assistant—snorted, sounding enough like P.B. that Wren did a double take at it. Demon were a created breed: was it possible that there were gnome bloodlines involved? The height was close…

And when she started contemplating the genetic makeup of the fatae breeds, it was time and past for her to get the hell out of there. Three hours of waiting around for someone to say something she could contribute to, and all she’d gotten was a bad case of numb-butt. Her time was worth more than this.

Wren put the chair back on all fours and got up, moving through the bodies until she got to the one she needed to speak to.

“And if you think that we’re going to allow—”

“Bart.”

“I’m busy here, Valere.” The NYC representative was brusque even when he was in a good mood, which he decidedly was not, right now.

“Yeah, I can see that. I can also see you guys have got everything under control, and I hate fiddling my thumbs. When you need me, call.”

“Or you’ll wipe yourself out of my line of sight anyway?” he asked.

Ooops. Nailed.

“Go,” he said in dismissal, and went back into his argument without missing a beat. He hadn’t even turned his head to look at her.

Wren slipped out of the room without anyone noting her pass by, without having to actively invoke her no-see-me. Boredom apparently brought it forward naturally. That explained why she’d never gotten caught when she cut English class, back in junior high. Odd, that she’d never made the connection before. Then again, she wasn’t often bored, either. She—and Sergei—spent much of their waking time ensuring that.