The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (46 page)

I sensed celebration in the morguemobile, as they pulled into my metasense range, just outside of the campground.  Sky was still going strong, and – no shock – Biggioni was back to life.  That bitch was one tough Focus.  Keistermann was still, and from her appearance, quite permanently dead.

Keaton was sleeping, which was good.  Soon, we would exchange words.  Arm words.

The Canadians came in as well, behind the morguemobile.  I hadn’t invited them, but, well, lack of invitations had never stopped them before.  Besides, Nameless, in his panic, wanted to chat up Shadow for Guru training, now that he had discovered his warrior soul or whatever insane mystical Crow crap filled his mind.  I guessed he had convinced his entire crew to escort him.

“I don’t know which of you has precedence,” I said.  “Would it be okay for me to let the two of you work it out?”

“I doubt there will be a problem, Tiamat Crow-Rescuer.”

More cheers.

I got down off the semi before the Crows could drag me further into the mythic world where they lived.  Crow-Rescuer, indeed.  I wanted the political effects of my accomplishments, not the fucking name!

---

“Just tell me the name wasn’t your idea,” I said, as I glowered at Gilgamesh.  Then hugged him and kissed him.  The heat from Gail’s household campfire warmed my back.

Gail grabbed me and gave me a lusty kiss, as well.  “You should hear the name they used to hang on me, until Thomas the Dreamer changed it.  Clumsy Angel.”

“Angel’s a good name,” I said, guessing the change.  I hoped the name would last.  I had my doubts.  I suspected she would always be the clumsy angel…and loved her for it.

“We won?” Gail said.  Not for the first time.

“We won.  Not perfectly cleanly, but we won.”  I bounced on the balls of my feet and captured Gail’s eyes with my gaze.

“Gail, you’ve proven yourself in combat, espionage, upper-end politics, and now in crazy leading-Transform insanity.  Arms, like the Nobles, are big into graduation exercises, and your accomplishments in the last month counts as a big graduation exercise.  Consider yourself graduated.  Don’t get cocky, though, or I’ll make you wear a dress with a big red ‘S’ on the front.”

Her eyes opened wide, but she didn’t smile or laugh as I expected.  She got all serious on me, putting on a passable version of an Arm’s stone face.  “Thank you.  Thank you very much, Carol.”

Gail’s household gathered round the campfire in the frigid December air, and amid the shouts of ‘tell, tell!’, I told my story.  My tale took longer to tell than to do, to tell the truth.  The household hung on every word, as this served as an impromptu version of one of Gail’s household’s rituals,
story-time
, and we were now all linked together by the juice.

Not too far away, at a different campfire, Tonya told her story to her survivors.  Too much had happened during their separation, their minds in different worlds.  Tonya and her people weren’t used to losing so many in combat, and grief poured from them like blood.

Lori and Sky wandered around, never more than a couple of feet from each other, with what remained of the Inferno battle squad at her back, introducing Sky around to the Crows as a new Guru.  As she introduced Sky, she sold the Crows on the idea of training, both for combat, and training on how to deal with Focuses in households.  Inferno had their own rituals for grief, which they would save up until they returned to Chicago.  Despite their many household funerals over the years, this set was going to be bad.  I would need to attend, as well.  They were mine, too, these days.

The Canadians waited.  I found their patience ominous.

Nor were they the only ones who waited.  I corralled the other goddamned son of a bitch who waited, as soon as I could get him alone, which took a goodly long while.

“What is it?  What’s going on?”

“Soon,” he said.  “Can you trust me?  It’s not my place to say any more.”

I nodded, feeling for him.  The tightrope he walked grew thinner each day, all my fault.

---

Keaton scrabbled up away from me, toward the front part of the truck where the bodies lay in rows; I stared at her as if she was prey.  “The fucking morgue is the right place for you, Keaton.”

“I’m injured,” she said.

“So am I.”

“There are big holes in my mind.”

“Took you long enough to see it.”

“If I fight you, I’ll kill you,” Keaton said.  “I don’t want that.”

“You lost.”

“I lost.”  In her own mind, she had already lost the challenge.  Hell, she had been waiting for me to do this ever since Haggerty finished the Eskimo Spear quest.

Stupid loyal me.

“Your dream is over.  We crushed Bass’s dream.  Next time we encounter Bass, she’ll be a Hunter.”

“Yes.”

“You betrayed us all to Bass by listening to her.”

“I did not,” she said, her first bit of defiance.  “I pledged to kill the first Focuses after reading those Crow notes I got from Shadow, weeks before I tagged Bass.  I knew from the instant I tagged Bass that she wanted to be boss Arm, and had a plan.  I followed the adage of keep your friends close and your enemies closer.  I figured she’d never be able to carry out her plan if she never left my sight.”

“She carried it out anyway.”

Keaton’s posture slumped and her gaze left mine, to study my feet.  She didn’t answer.

“I won over all the Crows, Stacy.  Personally.  They call me Tiamat Crow-Rescuer.  The juice music project puts all the witches in my back pocket.”

“They’ll stab you in the ass,” Keaton said, still studying my feet.  “You got Shadow’s info, too.  They can’t help it.”

I shook my head.  “I told you this before, but you weren’t listening.  We finally have the leverage we’ve always wanted on the Focuses, and it’s the Crows.  Backstabbing Focuses don’t get Crows; a Crow walks out on the Focus he’s partnering with if the Focus becomes treacherous.  If a Crow walks this kills Transforms, and Focuses will do nearly anything to keep their Transforms alive.  All we Arms are responsible for is making sure our Crows are free willed, and poof!  Instant solution.  There’s other levers involving Arms and juice, but, well, in the long run, I think those levers are only cake icing.  We’re the catalyst, Stacy.”

“I’m out of here, then,” Keaton said.  “Lots of turf to the south speaks Spanish, and so do I.”

Right.  So the psychotic midget can regain her strength and fall for another idiotic conquer the world scheme?  Not on my watch.

Slam.  She didn’t even try to defend herself as I knocked her against the side of the truck.  “No.  You take my tag, or you die.”  I let my defenses down enough to let Stacy know I hoped for door number two.

So did she.  She hadn’t said or done anything, yet, but I could see it in her eyes.  Keaton was going to work up her nerve and let me kill her.  Fight me and then walk into a fatal attack.  Simply ceding me leadership of the Arms and dominance over her wasn’t going to happen.  Not with her psychotic fractured mind.  Losing would destroy her.

Then the unexpected happened.

“Hey, pipsqueak!”  Armenigar’s voice, loud, from outside the morguemobile.  “You even think of winning this fight, and I’m going to grind your bones into paste, and make sure they heal into pretzels.  I’m not going to interfere in Hancock’s fight; you and she get to slice each other to ribbons until it’s decided fair and square.  But I’m next, midget!”

“You tagged each other?”  Keaton’s eyes lit up as she stared at me.

Over the months of combat, metasense shielding had become so ingrained it was habit.  I let my defenses down enough that she could read my juice structure. “
You tagged each other!
”  Keaton screamed and leapt at me.

The fight was on.

I guess some things truly are intolerable, no matter how beaten and suicidal one is feeling.

The fight took four minutes and twenty-two seconds to finish.  In the process, we turned that refrigerator truck into a pile of scrap metal.  Desecrated the dead, too.  I can’t even come close to explaining the fight, at least not to anyone who isn’t an Arm.  Like the fight between Chevalier and Shadow, we fought not only to see who could beat the crap out of the other, but to see whose version of reality was dominant.  Only we weren’t going to stick dross constructs in each other’s heads, we were going to do the job using Arm basics – the dominant Arm forcing a tag on the other Arm.

The fight wasn’t all physical.  In the realm of the physical, Keaton could still defeat me, even with my advanced speed tricks.  She had combat tricks hidden away in the back of her mental arsenal that were fucking unbelievable.  No, the fight revolved around the concepts of confidence and face.  Presence.  Predators.  Arms are complex, half in the world of might-makes-right, and half in the world of politics-makes-right.  The tags I wore, not only the Arm tags but also the tags of the Focuses and Crows who were part of my coterie, my peers and subordinates, were of utmost importance.

Unfortunately, the fight took about twice as long as it should, though, because of Keaton’s insane Tonya tag.  That thing strengthened her like the core of a goddamned skyscraper.  It had already altered Keaton’s self-image, from that of the Keaton who chose to follow Bass’s model, to a self-image more akin to mine.  I can’t explain the rest to a non-Arm; the best approximation I can give is, after my victory, Keaton’s reality had to change less than if she hadn’t shared tags with Tonya, but her mutual tag with Tonya made these changes much harder.

I won anyway.

“I am yours,” Keaton said, and this time the tag took.  What remained of her crawled into my lap and huddled up against me.  Above, a four foot wide piece of corrugated metal, one of the few pieces of the morguemobile still standing, swayed in the breeze.  The fight and the groveling over, I could once again hear the ongoing victory party.

Oh, how wonderful it was to hear those words from Keaton’s lips.

“Ma’am,” she said.  “Ma’am, I hadn’t had the nerve to ask before, ma’am, but did you get the Arms?”

“I hold the tags of all the Arms save Bass,” I said.

“But did you
get
them?  Did Bass grab any?”  So soon defiant.  I wondered if I needed to humble her again, but I doubted she would survive.

She actually cared for the Arms, at least as a group, if not individually.  This was new, or, perhaps, old, a reversion to the way she had behaved after she rescued me from the CDC and before my first major screw-up reminded her why other Arms got on her nerves.  “All but one of Patterson’s poorly trained baby Arms.  The rest are mine, tagged, in person, and still with me.”

“Something’s missing, though.  Something’s wrong.”

Oh.  “Rayburn fell in the fight, defending Patterson.”

“Fuck.”  Keaton began to cry, big heaving sobs of tears, and didn’t stop.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I gave her mangled remains to Tonya and told Tonya – no, ordered her – to get some Crow to fix Keaton.  The days of headcase Arms were over, if I had any say.

I would fix myself, or so I told myself.

I didn’t mind Armenigar’s interference in the fight.  The old me would have gotten aggravated, because Armenigar’s interference made things less clean.  Less clear.  But through Armenigar’s tag, I had learned an important new truth: sometimes, the world
did
need a big swift kick in the ass to get things moving.

I don’t want to be the big boss of everything!
December 25, 1972

Vivian Titus – Focus #20 – May 1958.  Focus Titus was a legal secretary before she transformed, and helps the other Focuses and their Transforms with legal paperwork of all kinds.  “Because we are Transforms, and because the rest of society distrusts us, we are held to higher standards than everyone else.  Thus, there is no room for error, whether you are filling out your Income Tax forms, mortgage applications or even a driver’s license application."

Gail Rickenbach:

“You can’t sleep, either?”

Van shook his head, and then sat up.  His shadow flickered against the wall of the tent from the dim light of the few campfires still burning.

“How come?”

“Things.  Like where we go from here.”

“Like what, Van?”

“Well, you’re carrying some other man’s baby.  There’s blood under your fingernails far too often.  You’re becoming a leading power in the Transform world.  I’m just a normal.”

“Uh huh.  Just as many stupid pointless Transforms as there are stupid pointless normals.  The reverse is true, as well.”

Van thought.  He had been stewing on many things for months.  Not talking.  Saving things up for after the crisis was over.  Gail firmly hoped the crisis was well and truly over.

“There’s some Inferno normals who disagree.”

“Hold it,” Gail said.  “I thought they were big on the idea of including normals in their plans and ideas.”

“The Inferno normals are as worried as I am, Gail.”

“Why?”  Gail sensed where this one was going.  She had thought many of the same horrible thoughts, herself.

“There’s a war coming, a war between the Transforms and the normals.  Not today.  Not next year.  But soon.  Within a decade.  The Inferno normals don’t understand how normals can remain a part of Transform households.  I don’t, either.  Gail, Transforms are better than normals at everything except caloric efficiency.  That’s just the truth.  And as we’ve seen in the last year, the thin veneer of civilization is fragile on all the Transforms.”

“Huh?”  Not to the last, but to what came before.

“Normals need less food to survive,” Van said.  He understood, without having to ask.  “Our only advantage.”

Gail rubbed up against Van, and got him to massage her shoulders.  Van was right.  The gap between a normal and a Transform was just too large, and Major Transform was worse.  “You might Transform yourself.”

“What if I don’t?  What if I’m one of the immunes?”

“What if we can be larger than just our bodies, Van?”  Untried ideas percolated in her mind.

“I don’t understand.”

“Interracial marriages.  Cross cultural marriages.  Marriages between people of different social strata.  Between people of different economic backgrounds.  People make them work.  People, their souls if you want to call it that, can be larger than their bodies.”

“Uh.  Those marriages are harder to keep going, though,” Van said.

“I’ll give you that.  When they work, though, both people find a way to contribute anyway.  The contributions don’t need to be equal.”

Voices and commotion from outside the tent interrupted them.  “Now what?” Gail said, angry.

“I don’t know,” Van said.  “But we probably need to find out.  Let’s keep in mind this idea of people finding a way to contribute despite…”  He stood and helped Gail up, and she hugged him.

“We’ll work out something,” she said, and put her index finger on the tip of his nose.  “Don’t you worry.”  They slipped on their clothes and their cold boots, and then walked out of their tent to follow the crowd.  Of all things, a taxi had driven into the campground, and a man, a Transform, was handing his Focus out of the taxi.  A taxi?

Gail almost stumbled.  The Focus had a juice structure unlike anything Gail had ever seen.  An order of magnitude more complex than hers or Tonya’s.  Sky shot overhead, on one of his manic leaps, carrying Lori with him.  He managed to get to the Focus before anyone else, and he gave her a great hug and swept her off her feet.

“How did you know to come?” Sky said.  “This is perfect!  I’d have never thought of it.  But it’s perfect.”

“Gracious, Sky,” she said, her accent a twin of Sky’s, her voice slow smooth angelic butter.  Then she turned to Lori.  “Congratulations on getting through another unwanted adventure without losing your baby, Lori.”

Of all things, Lori bowed.  “Thank you, Madonna.”

Ah.  The Madonna of Montreal.  Gail first learned of the
name
through Van’s book, though Gail had been dealing with the Madonna in the Dreaming for years.  The Madonna was the only Dreamer Gail knew of whose waking name matched her Dreaming image.  In the Dreaming, the Madonna was firm, enigmatic, and sad.  So very sad.  In person?  Hell, she even
appeared
the same as she did in the Dreaming.

Carol walked up to Gail’s shoulder.  “Trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Gail said.  “Why would she be here, now?”

Despite the crush of people, the Crows crept in as well.  All sixty or so of them, about as deferential as Gail had ever seen – well, metasensed – Crows to be.  Even the hangers back, the ones who had vanished when Carol and her entourage showed up, had returned.  They all wanted to get in close.

Strange.

“I’m praying she’s here to save us from ourselves,” Gilgamesh said.  He had been tagging behind Carol by only a step or two, and it was clear to Gail what Gilgamesh and Carol had been up to since they turned in for the night.  Something about fights and Arms and sex…

“Explain?” Carol said, to Gilgamesh.

“Only if I’m wrong,” Gilgamesh said.

“Hello, Commander,” the Madonna said, and dropped some of her protections.  Carol’s eyes widened when she finally took in the Focus’s juice structure.  Carol always appreciated beautiful Focus juice structures.

“Hello, Madonna,” Carol said.  “Did we fulfill the promise you saw in the Cause when you made sure we ended up with the Eskimo Spear?”

The Madonna nodded.  “Let’s find somewhere to talk.  There are times where a meeting in person will accomplish more than a telephone conversation.  You, you, you, you, and you, as well,” the Madonna said, as she pointed.

Sinclair:

“They’re in that tent.  All the important people,” Amy said, as she lay beside Sinclair on an old tarp, her arm cradling Sinclair’s head and shoulders.  Normally, she wasn’t frisky with Sinclair, and he doubted she was being that sort of frisky now, but you never could tell with Arm Haggerty.  She was down today.  All the other Arms seemed to be flush with the thrill of victory, but Amy metasensed as morose.  Sinclair was sure she just needed someone to talk to and touch after she healed herself back into one piece.  He understood the need after his own experiences this evening.  “Guess what.  We’re not in the tent.”

“Consider how Duke Hoskins is going to feel, Amy.  Likely the most important meeting of this whole extended mess, and not only is he not included in the meeting, he’s not even here in the campground.  You could put out a sign on anything that isn’t a physical fight saying ‘no Nobles need apply’, and you would be right, based on the way we treat the Nobles.”

“Tonya as well,” Haggerty said.  “Though she earned her sign.”

“So, are you going to break with the Commander?” Sinclair said.  She had hinted at it, beforehand.  Before Patterson took Keaton.

“Do
you
want to break with the Commander?” Amy said, in return, radiating distress.  Sinclair wondered if she had lost someone she cared for, and then wondered if she had anyone she cared for that much.  Amy seemed so oblivious to care.  Thousands of friends, but no loves.  If she had lost someone, the someone must have been special.

He knew better than to ask.

“Me?  Are you crazy!  I’m just a gnat.”

Amy poked Sinclair in the stomach, then took his snap-brim hat from his head and put it over his crotch.  Artificial joviality.  “The Crow who convinced Focus Keistermann to ally with the Cause?  The Crow Master of the Blue Ridge Barony, supporter of Duke Hoskins, the battle leader of all the Nobles?  Author of Shadow’s magnificent brochures that are going to change the Transform world?  Some
gnat
.”

“I want to go and do something real.  Prove I’m worth inviting to support my own Nobles in a fight.  Stop being a second banana.  Hell, I wouldn’t mind working my way up to being a second banana.  ‘Remember to smile’, says Shadow.  ‘Make sure you tell everyone about the benefits of Noble households,’ says Shadow.  Being just another Crow Master grates and annoys, after a while.”

“You want some Arm training?” Amy said.  “It does wonders for sulky Focuses.”

“No thank you,” Sinclair said.  Arm training!  A short Arm
negotiation
with Keaton nearly drove him into climax stress.  Arm training would kill him.  He tried to relax, and not even think about the concept.  Just watch the stars.

A few minutes later, a bedraggled and angry Focus stalked by, and then stopped.  Turned to them.  “What are you two doing, anyway?”

An angry Beth Hargrove.  Sinclair wanted to run and hide.

“Come over here and find out, Beth,” Amy said.  She extended her other arm in invitation.

“Sure, Amy.”

Of course they knew each other.  Amy knew everybody.  Back when his barony had been without a name and its major purpose in life had been to protect Focus Keistermann’s household for a pittance, Amy had been a frequent visitor to Sinclair’s Noble household.  She and Hoskins had this thing going, apparently ever since the Battle in Detroit.  The only question was what to call the thing; not quite love, but more than sex.  The
thing
involved an excessive amount of posturing and braggadocio.  Lots of physical sparring, as well.  He had talked to Amy enough during her visits to learn that she loved to meet people and make friends.  She wasn’t a pushover.  A few lesser Nobles made that mistake and paid painfully for the pleasure.  If you were friendly to her, though, she was normally quite friendly back.

He felt a momentary stab of sorrow when he thought about Focus Keistermann.  So proper, and they had never been close, but he would miss her.

Hargrove settled in on the other side of Arm Haggerty.

“What’s got you so ticked off, Beth?” Amy said.

“What doesn’t?  It’s official.  I thought there still might be hope, but just after we left for Pittsburgh, Newton eloped with Elspeth.  They’re on their way to Salt Lake City as we speak.”

Amy chuckled.

“It’s not funny!”

“Eloped isn’t exactly the right word for what Major Transforms do when they start acting strange.”

“Okay, what is the right word?” Beth said, her bitchy Focus side out.  Sinclair hadn’t seen her since the Battle in Detroit, where she had been, well, rather humiliated.  He was impressed that she got invited to participate in the Pittsburgh attack.  Everyone was getting a step up in the world but him.  He got cast out, he got saved, he persevered with what he thought was the top Noble household around, but did Shadow suggest he become a Guru?  No.

Worthless.

“Dumped.  He left you for another Focus, Beth.”

“I know that!  He used me, two-timed me, ditched me, cut me off, creeped me out, ArRrrrRgh!”  Beth pounded the ground, and then threw herself up against Amy.  In the process, Sinclair ended up with his fingers intertwined with Beth’s.  Embarrassed, he gave them a gentle squeeze.  “If I ever get involved with another Crow again in my life, someone hit me on the back of the head, hard!”

Sinclair repressed his sudden urge to vanish into the night.

Beth paused again, trying to figure out why Amy’s sad eyes were twinkling.  “So,” she said, to Sinclair.  “Who are you, sir?  One of Amy’s motorcycle engineers?”

“No, Focus.  My name is Sinclair.”

“Sin
clair
,” Beth said, her voice quiet and almost breathless.  “Oh, that was good, Beth, real good,” she said, to the stars.  She turned back to Sinclair.  “Master Crow, forgive me.  I’m just angry at Newton.”

“Oh, you’re not the first Major Transform to be angry at the Newt.  He’s rather much to handle.”  Sinclair told Amy and Beth the story of a Crow meeting in Boston that included Lori and Sky, after the rescue of Hancock from her incarceration in the CDC, where Newton, as a wet-behind-the-ears baby Crow, had broken Lori’s well hidden and highly secret fake Crow letter-writing identity.  He had the both of them howling in laughter by the time he was finished.

“So, Focus Hargrove…”

“Beth.”

“…Beth, I want to congratulate you on your success in the battle in Pittsburgh.  I…”

Beth interrupted.  “Uh, me and my people were just driving the trucks and doing body extraction.  Leadfeet, corpses and pitchforks, that’s us.”  Oh, Beth could be nasty when she needed to.

Sinclair whispered “Sorry.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Beth said, the bounce back in her voice.  “Ever since I told Gail I’d help her, it’s as if the world decided to staple a ‘kick me’ sign on my butt.”  Beth then told a story about Adkins planting a traitor among her Transforms, and where it got Beth.  She wasn’t half bad at storytelling, herself, Sinclair noted.  It wouldn’t have taken much to make that story a ‘pity me please’ story, but, instead, she told it as a comic romp, even making the part about begging for her life from Lady Death sound hilarious.