Page 58 of The Rising Tide
Aldrun swallowed. “Know who’s crazy,” he added. “Because lots of people have guns, but it’s the crazy you need to be aware of. Anyway, I could feel armed and crazy get off the ferry. And then about the time I’d taken the skiff from the station on Kerry’s Spit, it was just gone.”
The station was on a small spit of land accessible to the mainland by car. In order to access the Spit, the tiny police force was outfitted with a number of watercraft and owned a small garage of scooters and bicycles that they transported by skiff. Lucky reflected, not for the first time, that being a cop for this little archipelago had some complications.
“Look,” Aldrun said into the silence. “I asked around. Lots of people were really happy to tell me about the new magician and his fabulous act, and how the two jerks who couldn’t keep their mouths shut got ‘disappeared.’” He licked the corner of his mouth and eyed the rest of the cupcake with unfettered lust. “And you just made me a cupcake out of thin air. So I sort of need to make sure you’re not… I dunno. Rasputin or Loki or someone who does bad things with magic, okay?”
“Well, those guys aren’t dead,” Scout told him. “Is that what you needed to know?”
“Are they being detained against their will?” Aldrun asked warily.
“No. My people are very catch and release. You’d approve.” Scout waved his fingers. “Go on, take another bite. You know you want to.”
Aldrun did, a slightly smaller one that did little to save his dignity. “Well, yeah, but they’re crazy people with guns! Where did you release them!”
“Close to their home spawning point,” Scout said, nodding “You know, where the other crazy people with guns reside so they can go be crazy people with guns together.”
You,” Aldrun said, looking a little hunted but still eyeballing the rest of the cupcake, “are making my head hurt. If they had guns and bad intentions, you are supposed to turn them over to the police!”
“No,” Scout said, not even glancing in Lucky’s direction. “No, because if they have guns and bad intentions, andfriendswith guns and bad intentions, then all I’m doing is making this peaceful little island a nexus for crazy people with weapons. But if I send thembackto their friends, with no memories of how they got there or where they’ve been or anything about the Drift at all, well, they’ll still be assholes with guns, but they will be where you expect to find assholes with guns, and cops with Kevlar and helmets can go take care of them.”
“But—”
Scout waved his hands in the air. “We can’t fix everything!” he said shortly. “I just got rid of bad guys without bloodshed. I’m calling it a win.”
And then he yawned and sagged against Lucky a little. “I’m really tired,” he said, and his irritation seemed to be entirely internal. “I’m tired, and now I’m cranky. You and Piers and Lucky talk about this. I’m going to nap.”
Lucky gave a glare at Piers and Aldrun for good measure and helped Scout back to the rumpled bed.
“Well done,” he said softly, pulling the blankets up to Scout’s chin before kissing his forehead.
“Then why was he looking at me like I was crazy?” Scout asked, sounding plaintive.
“Your brain works a little faster than the rest of the world’s, baby. You need to let the rest of us catch up.”
“Upstate New York,” Scout announced, and then he fell immediately asleep.
Lucky took a moment to look at him fondly before returning to the kitchen area to join the others.
“So,” Miller Aldrun said thoughtfully, licking his fingers for the rest of the cupcake icing, “that was the Great Gestalt.”
“Yup,” Lucky told him. “Any other questions?”
“So, you and he….”
“Like this,” Lucky replied, twining his fingers together. While they hadn’t been like thatyet, he figured he had plans for that night. “So you’ve got a… a mechanical magic thing too.”
“A what?” Poor guy. He looked lost.
Leave it to Piers, with his innate pomposity or whatever to set him straight.
“Gestalt there figures there are three kinds of magic users,” he said. “There are wizards who havebigmagic sort of baked in, and witches who learn how to pull the magic out of the world with spells and potions and whatnot, and, well, us. We have small, specialized skills—mechanics, like in a video game. So we’re mechanics of luck, really.”
Miller blinked, and Lucky got a five-second glimpse of somebody rearranging their world around new information.
“What… what mechanics doyoutwo have?” He frowned, and Lucky noticed that one of his eyebrows seemed perpetually up, as though he was regarding the world with skepticism all the time. Given that Piers seemed to havebotheyebrows up, as though continually surprised, he figured these two guys together might be a laugh riot, and he found himself rooting for Miller Aldrun and Piers whatever-his-last-name-was.
In answer, Piers raised both his eyebrows and the lights in the kitchen all went out.
And then came on again.
