Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [43]
“They did, however, perform the original spell. Or at least they’re willing to take the credit for it.”
“Told you so,” she yelled back, and he heard the sound of something heavy and possibly metallic hitting the ground, and her swearing faintly. When a moment passed and there was no further noise, he went into the kitchen and picked up the mug of tea that was steeping, waiting for him and then—having judged enough time had passed for her to recover from whatever minor disaster had occurred, joined his partner in the office. She was sitting on a short stool next to the filing cabinet-table on the other side of the room, fiddling with a large, ungainly lock that looked ancient. He sat down in the only other chair, at her computer desk. A screen saver of parachuting monkeys was activated, indicating that she hadn’t used it recently. He turned his back to the monkeys, swiveling around to watch her instead. He should get back to the gallery. Lowell had been borderline snide this morning about his “running off.” There was going to have to be a “me boss, you underling” meeting in the near future, he could tell. Christ, he so didn’t have time for that.
“That means that nobody under the Council did the grab,” she said without pausing in her work. “And no member was approached to do the job, either—since the mark was one of their installations, they would have been bound to report it to the Council.” The same as she would, by courtesy, in a similar situation. Probably.
“Would the Council then have told us, now that they officially know you’re working the job? And have gone through channels to ask for assistance?” He sipped the tea, chuckling slightly as he saw the logo—it was one of the gallery’s mugs, which he bought by the dozen to stock the kitchenette.
“Good question. Probably. They’re as susceptible to bad press as anyone. More, actually. So they’d want it back in place too, you’d think, no matter what he and his have done to piss them off since then. It’s not like he was the original client, anyway, not unless he’s a lot older than his records claim.”
“His grandfather, Frants the First. Is that why they’re so tight-mouthed on the original job they performed? Or do they just not like to be thought of as bragging?”
She snorted. “Council. They don’t like to share the air with us, much less information. It’s the principle of the thing as much as the money. My gut, though, says if it’s a mage, he or she’s a rogue.”
Sergei had heard her mention rogues before, but only in passing, and never with a lot of detail attached. “Is that common?”
She gave the lock one last try, then put her tools down on the table next to it. “Common enough—maybe one Council mage every decade or so starts believing their own press, thinking they’re better than the others, able to sidestep the Council rulings, that sort of thing. When they catch ’em, which they always do, they kick ’em out—like you said, bad form to have members dissing fellow mages. Especially if they’re willing to work against other Council members.”
“Yes. That was the impression I was given.” He tapped his fingers in a tattoo on his leg, less nervous than thoughtful, trying to sort the pieces in his brain.
“Once they’re freelance,” she told him, “they usually fade out of sight. Nobody will hire them, which makes one unlikely in our case—unless the thief was taking it for his or her own reasons….” Sergei made a mental note to follow up on that possibility. “But the Council, natch, never admits that the mage in question ever even existed.”
“Nobody wants a mage who works on his own?” That surprised him enough to still the finger-tapping. Lonejacks, Talents who refused to fall in with the Council, often worked freelance, like Wren. Although from what she had told him, most didn’t work at all, using their skills solely for themselves, or not using them consciously at all.
Wren made an up-down motion with the flat of her hand, palm upraised as though she were weighing something.