Rook

Poppat.
    “No,” said Myfanwy, her eyes fixed on the uniform someone had handed her. The outfit she’d worn to the office that morning would not be at all appropriate—she was certainly not going to trip about some haunted house in a skirt and heels.
    “But I cannot possibly allow a member of the Court to enter a manifestation site without an escort, and all the local troops…” He trailed off.
    “All the local troops have been liquefied,” Myfanwy finished for him. “I’m not certain that an escort would do me any good anyway. And if I’ve got even the smallest chance of helping our people, then”—she took a deep breath—“I have to go in.”
    Poppat gripped her arm desperately. “Myfanwy, we both know this is not your field. I can’t let you go in there alone.”
    “No” came a firm voice from behind them. They turned to see Shantay zipping herself into a Pawn combat uniform. She’d coiled her hair up at the back of her neck and suddenly looked much more dangerous. “She’s not going in alone. I’m going in with her.”
    “Absolutely not,” said Myfanwy. “There may be legal precedents for you coming along to observe, but can you imagine the repercussions if a Bishop of the Croatoan was harmed on a Checquy op?”
    “Yeah, but you’ll probably be dead too, so it’s not like it’ll be your problem.”
    “Well, then,” said Myfanwy. “As long it causes me no inconvenience.”
    “I’m not letting you go in there by yourself.”
    “You don’t get a say,” said Myfanwy tartly. “And even if you did, the voice didn’t request an American Bishop, it requested a Rook.”
    “
The voice
can go fuck itself!” said Shantay. “I’m sure the boys and girls you sent in there were good, but I can handle myself, and you need someone to cover your back.” Myfanwy wavered and Shantay, sensing an advantage, pressed it. “Honey, don’t take offense here, but we live in a small world. News gets around, and our dossiers on you are at least as detailed as yours on us. So I know this sort of thing isn’t your forte. You need a strong arm backing you up, and that’s going to be me.”
    It might not have been Thomas’s forte,
thought Myfanwy,
but I’ve got a few tricks of my own.
Still, she didn’t like the thought of going into that house alone.
    “Fine,” she said finally. “You can come.”
    “Like there was ever a question,” sniffed Shantay, pulling out an extremely large handgun and checking it over.
    “Excuse me, but what the hell is that?” asked Myfanwy.
    “What?”
    “That bloody cannon in your hand!”
    “It’s my gun,” said Shantay innocently.
    “Where on earth did you get it?” asked Poppat. “There’s nothing like that in the armory.”
    “It was in my purse.”
    “Your purse?” repeated Myfanwy. “How did you get it through Customs at the airport?”
    “The airport? Honey, we arrived at the embassy. Why do you think Bishop Morales was so tired? She stepped us between the cities.”
    “Oh,” said Myfanwy, momentarily stunned by the strangeness of the world she’d been born into.
    “Now what kind of gun are you going to take?” asked Shantay.
    “I am not taking any kind of gun.”
    “You are definitely taking a gun.”
    “Is that a fact, Dirty Harry?” asked Myfanwy, eyeing Shantay’s weapon.
    “Honey, I can punch my fist through a tank if I put my mind to it, and I am taking a gun.”
    “Fine, I’ll take a gun. But nothing that weighs more than I do.”
    P oppat tried to insist on accompanying them, but Shantay pointed out that it was needlessly cruel for him to leave all responsibility to some poor schmo of a second-in-command.
    “Actually,
I’m
the poor schmo of a second-in-command,” Poppat confessed. “The head of the Bath section, Pawn Goblet, called in sick yesterday. Flu.”
    “Talk about sucky timing,” Shantay commented. The American Bishop was cracking her knuckles and her neck in a very military manner. Myfanwy was having difficulty bending her arms—the jacket she’d been given was her size but was made out of Kevlar, leather, and plastic and felt like it had been constructed of wood. “You know, it’s been years since I did anything like this,” remarked Shantay. She and Myfanwy were standing on the doorstep of the house, being given a final check-over by the techies.
    “Oh, yeah?” Myfanwy was trying to figure out how she had suddenly acquired two knives and a large pistol. “How many years?”
    “One and a