Chains and Memory (28 page)

“Or move house,” he said, which made me go diving for my tarot cards. They said the odds of anyone showing up at my door were low—presuming I could trust a reading that close to my own life. I should ask somebody at FAR to check. Except, of course, there was no way I could afford their services.

I couldn't even afford an assistant to filter the garbage from the new account, which was looking increasingly necessary. It seemed like every third person in the world had ideas for how to replace the shield; another third had foul words for me instead. Michele, the leader of the Palladian Circle, had taken on the task of wading through the muck, for which I owed her an enormous debt of gratitude. Robert had offered to help her by answering the trolls and the idiots, but I suspected that wouldn't end well. Once upon a time, we'd called his sense of humor “unseelie.” I tried to avoid using that word these days, but it didn't mean Robert had changed.

I also didn't expect the response I got at—I found myself thinking of it as “work,” and had to stop and ponder my choice of word. FAR had been work, until Crystal City. I didn't know if I would ever go back there. Certainly the paychecks had stopped, replaced by much smaller ones that were my training stipend. Which made the people at the Aegis Building—Guardians and other trainees alike—my co-workers.

Most of them ignored me. They already knew everything useful I might say; my reports on the sidhe had long since been disseminated through their ranks, and beyond that, I was just a trainee. The day after the interview, a couple of them stopped me in the halls to deliver pointed comments about my priorities being in the wrong place. It was clear they thought I was being selfish. But none of them were Fiain, and so I didn't so much take their opinions with a grain of salt as toss them out entirely.

The Fiain in the Corps weren't the only ones who supported me, though. When we started training with Grayson, Julian and I had eaten our lunches in the cafeteria with Inola, Neeya, and other wilders I knew from Toby and Marcus' house. After the interview went live, I found myself at the center of a growing and ever-shifting crowd, only some of them wilders, discussing the theory and pragmatics of possible replacements.

It was an exhilarating experience. I couldn't follow half of what flew past, and knew by the subliminal buzz that there were another dozen conversations being carried out via telepathy — less to keep people from eavesdropping, more to save the speakers from having to make themselves heard over the din. But we'd said more than once that we had knowledge and resources Medina Perez couldn't have dreamed of . . . and now I saw just how true that was.

These people weren't specialists. Whatever idea we eventually settled on, we would need the assistance of experts in the relevant fields, professors at places like Welton. Guardians were trained in quick response tactics, fixes that would last long enough for someone else to arrange a better solution. But that also meant they were used to thinking outside the box, applying unconventional methods to unexpected problems.

And best of all, they lived for challenges. Back when I was fifteen and first had the idea of becoming a Guardian, one of my mother's co-workers had said something that stuck with me.
Two kinds of people become Guardians: wilders and adrenaline junkies.
My call to arms had awoken a hint of the latter response, giving them a chance to stretch their creativity to the limit. In fifteen minutes on the first day alone, I heard people suggest everything from fostering wilder children with the Seelie Court — that was Inola's idea — to crafting sympathetically-bound poppets that would take the brunt of anything an infant wilder dished out.

I didn't contribute very much to these discussions. How could I? They gathered around me, not because I was leading them, but because I'd blown the starting whistle for the race. My presence helped organize the cafeteria. People working on shield replacements sat near me, leaving the rest of the room for everybody else. We had every wilder in the place — bar Neeya, who always stayed nearby, but rarely spoke. She just kept watching me and Julian.

I ignored her as best I could, and focused my attention mostly on the ordinary bloods. Their behavior was startling, and kind of a relief. Guardians were more accustomed than most to working in close proximity to wilders. They still practiced the usual habits, avoiding gaze and touch, but if somebody bumped into one of the Fiain at the coffee machine, they didn't drop their cup. What mattered in this crowd was your skill at the job, and your willingness to put your life on the line for it. Here, even more than among wilders alone, I felt like I could be accepted.

One refrain came up again and again. “You've got to assume the sidhe have this problem,” a woman named Marta said. “So how do they deal with it?”

The question of the millennium. “I'd like to ask them,” I said.

“You may get your chance.”

The voice was Grayson's. She waved me back into my seat before I even realized I'd risen from it. I just barely swallowed the urge to say “Professor?” Instead I asked, “What do you mean?”

My answer came, not from her, but from the ceiling. The loudspeakers came to life, echoing through a room that fell silent in record time. “All Guardians and trainees to report to the Pearce auditorium immediately.”

In any other group I'd ever been a part of, there would have been an immediate clamor as people started speculating what was going on. I felt the buzz of telepathic conversations in the air, but every full Guardian instantly put down their food or drink and headed for the door, followed a half-beat later by the trainees. These were emergency personnel; when they were told to do something immediately, they took that as a literal order.

Julian and I exchanged glances, but neither of us spoke. We'd get our answers soon enough. Until then, we were just wasting breath.

The Corps chief was waiting in the auditorium: Radha Sarabhai, a woman I'd seen at a distance but never met. When the flow of people into the room stopped, she closed her eyes for a moment, probably scanning the building to make certain nobody vital was missing. Then she opened them and said, “The White House has just issued a public announcement. They will be meeting with representatives of the Seelie Court in three days. Divinatory forecasts predict two large marches on the National Mall that day, one pro-sidhe, the other anti. The probability of conflict is high, and so we've been instructed to mobilize all personnel for the event. That includes trainees.”

My heart skipped a beat. When she said “trainees” . . . did she only mean the ones going through the usual process, like Neeya? Or did that include Julian and me? Him I could see; he was mostly ready for it. Me, not so much—not to mention the sheer recognizability of my face.

Now was not the time to ask. Other people had more important questions. And it seemed Guardians had adopted the wilder method of telepathic queuing, which I'd seen a few times at Toby's house, because Sarabhai nodded at a woman who'd made no gesture I could see. The woman asked, “Has anyone made estimates of trouble elsewhere in the city, while our forces are focused on the Mall?”

“Yes,” Sarabhai said. “The probability is lower, but we're covering that eventuality regardless. Reinforcements will be temporarily seconded to us from neighboring regions.”

Someone near the front of the room asked about measures to keep the two groups from colliding. I was busy parsing another part of Sarabhai's announcement.

She'd said the White House was meeting with the
Seelie
. Not the sidhe as a whole. Not the Unseelie.

Not yet, anyway. The two Courts had managed enough of a détente to appear together at the U.N. announcement, but it seemed it didn't go any further than that. I had to assume the Unseelie might come later; it was too much to hope for that our government would treat them as entirely hostile. And Sarabhai, answering another question, specified that we were to protect any sidhe who might show up, regardless of Court. Half the room shifted uneasily when she said that, but she quelled us with a look. I saw her point, though I didn't like it: expecting random people on the street to check eye color before they reacted was a bad idea. The Seelie had gotten their foot in the door first; I would count that as a victory.

Assuming their visit didn't result in D.C. being burned to the ground, of course.

I'd be doing my part to prevent that, though. After Sarabhai designated a slate of senior Guardians as captains for the event, I sought out Grayson. She didn't have that title, but she was the person I reported to here. “Am I on deck for this?” I asked.

“You're a trainee, aren't you?”

“Yes,” I said, “but—well, let's be honest. Me on the streets is not exactly going to help defuse anything.”

Grayson smiled faintly. “You'll be in street clothes, not a uniform. Trainees will be circulating in the crowds, in telepathic contact with their unit captain. Put on a pair of sunglasses, Kim—it's time to do your duty.”

~

The last time Julian had seen this many Fiain in one place, he'd still been living at the Center.

They weren't the only ones out patrolling the National Mall, of course. They were joined by SIF agents, Park Police, and the Secret Service, some of those forces making their presence overt with uniforms, others in plain clothes. But the Guardian Corps had sent all the wilders to the pro-sidhe march; anything else would have amounted to throwing a match on a pile of gasoline-soaked rags.

The results were odd. Most of the crowd still tried to avoid him, but some were making an effort to overcome that reaction, realizing the hypocrisy in cheering the sidhe while shunning their closest genetic relations. One young man distributing flower wreaths even tried to embrace Julian, who shied back reflexively. There was hypocrisy in that, too—wilders avoided contact for the sake of those around them; if that young man didn't mind, then caution was unnecessary—but Julian fundamentally wasn't interested in changing his own ways for anyone other than Kim.

“Ugh.” The sound came from behind him; he knew even before he turned that it was Neeya. “Do you know that one fellow asked if he could kiss me? Went on and on about how he's heard that the kiss of a wilder is ‘thrilling.' I bet I know where he got
that
idea from.”

Julian knew what she meant. He'd gotten a few comments of that type at Welton, from people who had an entirely wrong notion of what a wilder's touch felt like. One good staredown had gotten rid of them—most of the time.

“We should stay spread out,” he said, scanning to Neeya's right and left.

“Why, so you can avoid me some more? Don't pretend you haven't been doing it. I know you,
a leac
.”

She called him
stone,
as he called her
spark
: old pet names for one another, from their days of studying Irish as a ritual language. Right now, though, she was the one who resembled stone, stubborn and unyielding, her feet planted solidly on the trampled grass.

And she was right. He
had
been avoiding her, ever since Grayson gave them the shield keys. He couldn't tell her he had them, and
not
telling her ate away at him. He wasn't in the habit of keeping secrets from Neeya, but this one wasn't his to tell; it could get Grayson in a great deal of trouble.

Only if I tell someone else,
Neeya would say. The problem was, he couldn't trust her not to.

She wouldn't do it on purpose. But the knowledge would burn inside her, until others saw the fire and went digging for its source. Sooner or later they would find out what Neeya knew, what Julian knew, what Grayson had given away. He trusted his little sister with everything . . . except this.

Even as he thought that, Julian knew it wasn't the whole truth. But it was easier to think about that secret than the other one, easier to focus on the way Neeya might fail him than on the way he'd failed her.

He'd promised to get rid of the shield. Not just to find a replacement; not just to give wilders the ability to restore each other's gifts after they'd been gutted. He'd promised to
get rid of it
, so that no one could ever use it against her again. And he couldn't. Doing so would kill her.

He couldn't tell her that. Even if he wasn't worried about betraying Grayson, he couldn't make the words come out. Julian cursed himself for a coward, but he couldn't admit to his sister that he would never be able to fulfill his promise.

“I'm sorry,” he said, not even sure what he was apologizing for. Avoiding her, keeping secrets, failing.

It softened her, but only a little. “We used to tell each other everything,” she said, her voice almost too quiet to be heard above the crowd.

Before he went to Welton. They weren't encouraged to communicate with anyone outside the Center; he'd sent her only a few messages after he went away. More than he'd gotten from his own elder brother, after Kristof left. And by the time Julian himself was out, Kristof was dead, killed in the line of duty.

None of those thoughts were helping him. His pulse beat in his throat with the need to get away from the topic, before she made it impossible for him to focus. “Neeya, I can't deal with this right now. We have work to do.”

“Trainee work,” she said with a sniff, covering the moment of sorrow.

He answered that with a look. It might not be full Guardian duty, but they wouldn't be out here if they weren't needed.

She had a sense of responsibility, even if she liked to complain about it. “Fine,” she growled, taking refuge in annoyance, and stomped off. The crowd parted to let her by.

They were out of place here, both of them, and not just because they were wilders. The mood around him was joyous, celebratory. People wore bright clothing, sang songs, waved banners and danced wherever there was room. The people here believed, or at least hoped, that the return of the sidhe would bring great things. He was willing to bet the other end of the Mall had a profoundly different atmosphere, and did not envy those on duty there.