LITMIR.BIZ

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his hands palm flat on the table. His fingers matched the rest of him: squared-off and well-manicured. Ayexi, by contrast, was disorganization personified: his hair looked like current had run through it and his clothes as though he had just come from an assignation, with the tails of his shirt not quite tucked into gray wool slacks, and his leather shoes scuffed around the toes.

      “The fatae representative. I don’t know who they are sending.” She had hopes, though. If only it weren’t winter, Rorani would be awake and the obvious choice. But in winter she was dormant, and even if they could coax her from her tree, the dryad would be too groggy to handle negotiations.

      The door opened again, and a young female human held it open for the newcomer. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, mademoiselle,” the fatae entering said, nodding to them all inclusively.

      Wren let out a sigh of relief. “Good afternoon, Beyl.”

      There was a God, and he did listen to prayers. Wren took her seat next to Sergei, allowing Beyl’s assistant—a gray-skinned, flat-eared gnome—to clear a space for the griffin to crouch at the table.

      Griffins were born negotiators—the breed was herd-based, so they thought in terms of group benefits, but they were also meat-eaters, so they had a predator’s instinct. And Beyl had led her herd for longer than Wren could remember, so she knew how to face down challenges.

      Plus, her claws and hooked beak kept opponents wary and a little nervous. Making a Council member nervous was never a bad thing, in Wren’s book. Even if they were all supposed to be on the same side, right now. Or coming to the same side, which was what this meeting was all about.

      Wren closed her eyes for a moment as the greetings and seatings went on, feeling a headache threatening. It was the kind her mother used to complain about on really bad days, the kind with the little man with a sledgehammer standing on the bridge of her nose.

      Oh yes, she told the little man, this was going to be so very, very ugly. The Council had tried to intimidate lonejacks into Council-approved behavior, the fatae were skittish around all humans, and lonejacks never behaved well under stress, ever.

      And you have nobody to blame but yourself for being stuck in the middle of it all. She could have walked away. She could have said no when the lonejacks had asked her—cornered her—to help represent them. She could have said no when the fatae asked her to bring the Talents to discussion. She absolutely should have said no when the Council started to make inclusionary noises.

      She seemed incapable, these days, of saying no. Not to jobs, not to personal appeals, not to anything. She was going to have to have a word with herself about that at some point, when she had another one of those near-mythical spare moments.

      Michaela went straight to the chase, while Beyl was still getting her tail set in the chair. “Thank you for agreeing to meet here today, gentles. Here’s the deal—we’ve been faced for almost a year now with the reality that there is a strong, scary group out there, going after supernaturals. We’ve been calling them vigilantes, after their own advertisement, but in truth they are nothing but bigots with baseball bats. And while they’re confining the bulk of their bloody activities to the fatae at this moment, the assault on the All-Moot last month is a strong indication that any member of the Cosa Nostradamus will be considered fair game to them.”

      There were nods of agreement all around the table. Council members had given the All-Moot—the Cosa’s version of a town hall meeting—a pass, but even they knew what had happened; someone had given word to the vigilantes that there would be a gathering of fatae that night, and they hadn’t bothered to pull their blows when a human lonejack got in the way. Part of the reason the Council had come to the table now was a desire not to be blamed for that disaster by the rest of the Cosa. The other part had to do with more internal politics: the head of the Council was trying to protect her own ass in the wake of some less-than-stellar behavior on her part, and she couldn’t afford to have enemies on the outside of the Council, as well.

      “In short,” Michaela went on, “if we don’t stop chewing on each other’s tails, they’re going to have us all by the throat. So it stops. Here. Now. At this table.”

      A little blunt, but Wren couldn’t argue with the approach. If you’re going to hit them over the head with an ax, might as well get it over and done with in the first stroke, right?

      Bad analogy—the little man with the sledgehammer took another whack, and she tried not to wince too obviously, for fear of being seen and misunderstood by others at the table.

      “As the individuals most directly menaced by these humans,” Beyl said, her beak creating an oddly clipped, almost British colonial-sounding accent, “the fatae have come to the table willingly, looking to create an alliance which will—”

      “Save your feathered posteriors.”

      “Protect us all,” Beyl said, ignoring the Council snark. Ayexi looked as though he was kicking Jordan under the table, were he so ill-bred as to do such a thing.

      “Indeed,” Michaela said, as though Jordan hadn’t spoken. “And we thank our cousins within the Cosa, both for their aid in recent days, during the All-Moot and the days since then, and for their assistance in years past.” A reminder to lonejacks and Council alike, that the fatae had been there for humans before in days of war and danger, here and in other continents, other times.

      “The Council has officially gone on record as being dismayed and disgusted by the attacks on our fatae cousins,” Jordan said. “And we have agreed to call a cessation in recent developments, in light of this external threat.”

      The general mental snort at that particular word-weaseling was audible to everyone, and Jordan went on quickly, as though to drown it out with his words. “However, we have yet to see any reason to believe that this is more than the actions of some confused, if hostile Nulls, acting against individuals they see as being dangerous.”

      “The Omaa-nih are dangerous?” Beyl sounded as angry as Wren had ever heard the fatae. “Startling-looking, yes—” the four-legged ’nih had almost-but-not-quite-human faces, which tended to freak Nulls out, if and when they noticed “—but peaceable to a fault. They eat grain, do not use weapons, and yet three of them alone have been killed in the past year!”

      “To us, no,” Jordan said, shaking his head in a manner that Wren supposed was meant to convey some kind of deep, paternal sadness and, well, didn’t. “To a Null who sees nothing other than—forgive me, honored representative—a speaking beast? Especially a Null who, for whatever reason, has let their sense of wonder lapse? Indeed, then dangerous an Omaa-nih is.”

      Wren never wanted to agree with Jordan on anything, but the bastard was right. The Omaa-nih were the size and shape, mostly, of elk, and most humans didn’t want their reindeer to talk, no matter how popular Rudolph and the rest of Santa’s crew might be this time of year. Jordan was also missing—intentionally, she suspected—the point. She tapped her finger on the table, catching Michaela’s gaze.

      “The vigilantes did not discriminate when they attacked the Moot,” Michaela said, picking up the current-whiff of suggestion Wren sent her. “Human Talents were harmed, and killed, as well. If they were not aware that the fatae had human connections before, they do now—and have shown no hesitation to attack.”

      “A onetime event, in the confusion of battle…”

      “Council member!” Beyl had the best mock-shocked voice Wren had ever heard, like a fourth grade schoolteacher. The Retriever stifled the totally inappropriate urge to giggle. “Are you defending these vigilantes?”

      “Of course he is not,” Ayexi said, so smoothly Jordan didn’t even have a chance to get huffy at the accusation. “He is merely playing, dare I say it, devil’s advocate. We must be aware of all possible interpretations, in order to make the best countermoves in our defense.”

      Ayexi was good. He was cool, and smooth, and on the surface you might think he was discussing china patterns, or the price of something he had no interest in buying. But Wren could see the faint twitch over his

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