Nice quality, though. Ornate, with an artistry that suggested a craftsman had helped to put it together.

“I’m fine,” I said. I brushed at my outfit. “Thank you.”

“Emotion powers are volatile,” the cape said.

“I’m well aware,” I said.

“You have to be careful with them in situations like that. Even if the effect is something you think you understand, it isn’t always simple. Two people can have different reactions to the exact same feeling.”

“Yes. I do know that. I assessed the moment.”

“She’s aware, Ambrosius,” I heard a woman say.

Ah.

I turned to look at my mother. She’d been no more than fifty feet away from me and I hadn’t even seen her. She was wearing her costume, modified since I’d last seen it. There was some shoulder decoration, decoration around the gloves, and the emblem at her chest, brass tracery decorating and elaborating on the seams and the divisions between colors. Light from car headlights flickered as it found gaps in the retreating crowd to dart through, illuminating diagonal lines and ‘x’ marks that broke up the plain white of the costume.

“She’s been a cape for three times as long as you,” Brandish said. “She’s a good cape.”

“Three times?” he asked.

“Well, not really,” she said. She smiled. “It’s something I tell myself, that she was a born heroine. The powers and the costume came later.”

“That’s your daughter, Brandish?” the filament duplicator asked.

“One of them,” she replied.

The duplicator turned to the big guy in armor. “Ambro, her group helped save some of the stations from the portal fuckery.”

The big guy in armor turned his molded face with the closed eyes my way. There was a pause, and then he said, “Thanks.”

“Yeah. I wish we could have done more,” I said.

“I know that feeling,” he said. He turned to Brandish. “I’m going to go. Watch things?”

“Yeah. Of course,” she replied, smiling like there was a joke in there.

Maybe the decade or two of seniority.

“You look nice,” Brandish said. “Not in costume?”

“I’ve got somewhere to be,” I said.

“Your friend’s appointment at the court?” she asked. When I raised my eyebrows, she said, “I do pay attention, Victoria.”

“I’m running late,” I said. “She needs backup, and if this traffic thing keeps anyone, she might not have many people on her side.”

“Don’t run,” she said. She reached out to touch my arm. “Talk for a minute. We can talk about little things that don’t matter, if you want. I miss my daughter.”