The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (21 page)

Unfortunately, she didn’t have any good tricks ready, and Merry was a legitimate mature Arm, more than six months past her graduation.  Del felt the sinking in her stomach telling her she had over-extended herself.

Nothing to do but deal with the challenge, however.  She let her knives fall into her hands, settled into a combat stance, and tried to come up with a good trick.  Unsuccessfully.

Merry, however, instead of responding to the challenge, hit the floor in apology.  Del snapped her fingers at Mona and pointed to the door.  Mona fled the room.  Dottie breathed a sigh of relief and watched the confrontation.

“Ma’am,” Merry said, “I didn’t mean to offend.”

Del stalked over to Merry, and Merry lowered her head farther.  “Mona is
mine,
” Del said.

“Of course, ma’am,” Merry said.  “I didn’t mean to offend.”

Hell, Del thought to herself.  Of course Merry would impose her dominance on the junior Arms in the vicinity.  But Del’s dominance of Mona, and Dottie for that matter, should take precedence.  Del wondered how the hell an organization of multiple Arms was supposed to work in actual practice.  Del would be dominant, but how was the next most senior Arm supposed to exert her dominance on the others without impinging on Del’s rights?  This business of an actual Arm organization was far more complicated than Del had anticipated.

Del nodded at Merry and allowed her to stand, but she still suspected she would be dealing with a challenge as soon as the current crisis passed.  If Del wanted to keep control of an Arm as senior as Merry, she would need several really good ideas.  Like some knowledge of how to manage a real Arm organization.  Merry would find the current situation intolerable, and would challenge because she had to.

Damn.

“Any more phone calls?” Del said, turning away from Merry and facing Dottie. She pushed the impending dominance fight into her quiet pools, where she could hopefully come up with a solution without exposing her vulnerability beforehand.

Del had delegated the rest of the phone duty to Dottie and put her efforts into lair defense.  Since her last check-in, she and Theresa had rigged three more traps, even one in the escape tunnel.

“Yes,” Dottie said, grinning with obvious delight at Del’s dominance of Merry.  Del sighed internally.  Merry would almost certainly make Dottie pay for that delight, and there wasn’t a damned thing Del could do about that.  “Billington called to report that she and Naylor took Julius.  Julius was actually on her way out, but her people screwed up and left a map with a fingerprint on where they were going.”

Now that was one dumb Focus and household, Del thought.  “Did you tell them about the no-contact from Ma’am Keaton?”  Now going on eight hours.  Del wondered briefly how Ma’am Keaton would react to all of Del’s recently acquired subordinate Arms.  Surely Ma’am Keaton wouldn’t take offense.  Surely.

“Yes.  Billington said she was going to take Julius and lie low, and she said Naylor’s going back to her home base, but I think they both lied to me.  I think I know why: Billington’s convinced Patterson took Keaton, and Hancock’s organization knows Patterson won, because they’ve gone quiet.”

Del nodded.  That’s what happened when you put a normal in charge of communications: you got someone who was unable to lie.  Hancock’s people should have continued reporting as if nothing untoward had happened.

Merry Bartlett, now back in her chair but with her feet on the floor instead of on the table, slapped closed the cover of the Chrysanthemum report and tossed it on the document stack containing all their information on Fingleman, Julius and Patterson.  She cracked her knuckles and stood, already recovered from her brief humbling.  A fully trained graduate Arm, Del realized, was going to be a bitch to deal with.  “Keaton got set up, and, no, it wasn’t the Commander.  The Commander’s people weren’t spending any time figuring out the details of what we were doing.”

“So, what were they doing in their free time?” Del asked.  She didn’t understand the mindset of the Commander’s Arms, save that most of the time it sounded as if the Hero was still the boss Arm over there, at least as far as philosophy was concerned.

Merry closed her eyes for a moment, in thought.  Making a decision about what to say.  “Research and development, or, more appropriately speaking, exploiting the fruits of their research and development.  You’ve heard rumors of the new trick allowing a Focus to pass juice to an Arm?”

Del nodded.

“That’s backed up by some ultra-secret juice pattern codification system, under the code name ‘juice music’.  They’re already able to pass instructions for juice patterns in written form from one Focus to another, as long as they’re familiar with the system.”

“Shit,” Del said.  She had heard the term ‘juice music’ and thought it some waste-of-time art project, to allow the Focuses to compete with the Crows’ artistic dross constructs.  “That’s huge.”

“You’re telling me.  The Boss knew about it, of course, but wasn’t telling any of the rest of us.”  Bartlett pointed a finger at herself.  “See this thing here in my juice structure?”

“That partial tag thing?” Del said.  She paused.  “I presume it’s not one of those natural tags I can sense but nobody else can?”

“Given how this was discovered, I can guarantee you aren’t the only Arm who can sense such things,” Merry said, a smile on her face.  “It turns out the Commander’s Arms have been spending most of their spare time disseminating a new tag technology and firming up their internal group hierarchy, so they can all work together much better.  It’s gotten to the point where the Commander’s able to house
all
her Arms in Chicago without any territorial disputes.”  Del inhaled, thought for a moment, and then realized the Commander had figured out how to solve the problem Del faced now, of multiple Arms in one organization.  She, too, understood the danger of Sylvia Bass.  “This tag variant is called a Webberly tag, and it’s a mutual tag with Betsy.”  Arm Whetstone.  “When I’m working on one of the Boss’s projects with Betsy, I’m dominant, and when I’m helping Betsy with one of the Commander’s projects, she’s dominant.”

Dottie gave Merry a blank look, not at all comprehending the power of such an arrangement, or the point of Merry’s long digression.  “So you’re saying this couldn’t have been treachery from the Commander and her allies because they were too busy with this insanity?”  They didn’t
need
treachery.  They would bury everyone else with all their new technology, bury them six feet deep.

“Uh huh.  It only just
looked
like the Commander ditched the Hero’s ‘push the Cause’ program.  She didn’t, and if you’re getting any treachery vibes at night about that crew’s activities, it’s
that
, not setting us up to fail in our attacks on the first Focuses.  I’m afraid we did that ourselves, by not having the Commander planning our attacks for us.  Planning military operations is
why
she’s called the Commander.  Of course none of her attacks failed.”

Sinclair: December 20, 1972

Sinclair paced.

The rubble piles behind Duquesne Glass felt exposed to him, although Rumor insisted the factory yard was safe.  The glass factory was located along the Monongahela, several miles to the south of downtown Pittsburgh, next to a huge US Steel complex.  It had been a favored Crow meetpoint for years, considered safe because the slag piles were just out of Crow metasense range of the Patterson compound.  Just past sunset, and the night cold slowly settled in.  The distant vibrations of traffic and the lap of the Monongahela against its banks disturbed what could have been perfect silence.

Save for Midgard, Gilgamesh and Sky, the whole damned flock was here waiting to talk to the Commander, hiding among towering mounds and shadows of empty buildings.

“Master Sinclair, you’ve probably never been safer in your life,” Duke Hoskins said.  Attempting to calm Sinclair again.

“It’s not just this location, it’s what’s going on,” Sinclair said.  This wasn’t a bad location.  The night shadows made the flock of them almost invisible against the giant piles of slag.  “A part of me says this is the wrong fight, another says that no matter how insane this is, we need to do it.  Did Sky ever tell his story about how Patterson appeared to him during the Commander’s rescue from the CDC, your grace?”

Hoskins grunted the affirmative, as did Count Dowling, though Count Dowling accompanied his grunt with an eye roll, indicating he had heard the story far too many times.

“Going up against Patterson means we’re going up against a Focus who somehow can manipulate dross like a Crow, who can somehow, impossibly, manipulate élan.  Just thinking about such things makes me want to panic,” Sinclair said.

Hoskins nodded, but didn’t speak.  The other Crows – Shadow, Occum, Rumor, Orange Sunshine, Newton and Zero – quieted their conversation.  Amid the faint sounds of traffic, Sinclair heard the grumbling of motorcycles, five of them, approaching from the south.  Then nothing.

Many people approached, coming in through the rubble under a witch’s metasense shields.  Their metapresences were nothing more than the faint static of shields, and even that was only detectable within a quarter mile.  The people split up into three groups, one coming directly toward the Crows, the other two angling off to the sides.

The approaching group revealed themselves as they rounded the nearest pile of slag.

“Commander Hancock, Hero Haggerty, Focus Queen Rizzari,” Shadow said, soft spoken and gracious as always, making sure to include their nicknames as commonly used by the Nobles and associated Crows.  “Welcome.  I see you’ve opted for independence, Commander.”  The other two groups were presumably Rizzari’s bodyguards.

Hoskins came to Sinclair’s side, with a sniff and a shiver of anticipation indicating his Noble’s blood was up for a fight.  No feel of hostility toward the three who approached.  Hoskins targeted his hostility at the Commander’s enemies.

They exchanged hand-sniffs all around, the odor of combat prevalent on the three women’s hands.  Violence and war lived deep in the human psyche, and any Crow shaman worth the name could sense the signs of recent battles within the combatants.  These three had been fighting Focuses and their households in the past day.

Still, these three warrior women knew their courtesies.  The two Arms kept their predators leashed, wearing the gentle personas they often presented when dealing with Crows in professional and casual situations.  Focus Rizzari wasn’t carrying Lady Death upon her at the moment, but the perky Focus Crow-friend persona she had used to win the hearts and minds of so many Crows over the years.

“The time seemed appropriate,” the Commander said, relaxed and polite.  “I remember at one point, you promised me support should I decide to venture out on my own.”

“Yes, I did promise that,” Shadow said.  “What Crow and Noble support are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for support in two areas.  First, I need to figure out why Keaton lost.  I also need to figure out what the hell’s going on with the two unknowns who left fifteen minutes later.”

Sinclair trembled a bit, hearing Kali’s name, a reminder of how the leading American Arm was now in Patterson’s hands.  The assembled Crows and Nobles echoed him, each in his own way.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that,” Shadow said, then turned to Rumor.  Nodded.

“Commander,” Rumor said.  He stood as tall as a Noble, but rail-thin.  “Arms Keaton, Bass and Rayburn, along with Crows Snowcone and Kincaid, and a group of sixty-two well-armed soldiers-of-fortune, in five vehicles, including two tractor-trailer rigs, exited the Pennsylvania Turnpike at exit 6, to the east of Pittsburgh, and drove west on I-376.  They exited I-376 onto the William Penn Highway, before the Squirrel Hill Tunnel, and proceeded north.  They left all their vehicles save one in the parking lot of a shopping center at the corner of North Robinson and Frankstown Rd.  Following that, they paced the remaining vehicle, a metasense-interfering tractor-trailer rig likely stolen from Crow Guru Chevalier, all the way to the backside truck entrance of Hilltop, Patterson’s compound.  The trailer contained a military howitzer, and they used it at an absurdly depressed angle to blow a hole in the truck entrance.  The Arms, the Crows, and the troops entered Patterson’s compound, got entangled in one of the compound’s fixed juice pattern defenses, and surrendered without a fight.”

The Commander hid her reaction.  “Without a fight.  They all surrendered?”

“Commander, I believe that when the three Arms surrendered none of the other attackers remained conscious.”

The Commander whistled and shook her head.  “We’ve never faced juice weaponry that potent.  I didn’t think juice weaponry could be that potent.”

“It is when mixed with élan,” Rumor said.

“What about the two escapees?” the Commander said.  “Were they part of Keaton’s attack crew?”

“I wish I knew the answer to your question.  Patterson covered the two with her best metasense protections, and my guess is that they were either Arms or Combat Focuses.  Neither were Crows or Beast Men, of that I’m convinced, and neither matched the juice signatures of any of the three Arms in on the attack.  They left on a single motorcycle, and quickly left the Pittsburgh area, heading west.”

“Unknowns, then.  They have a mission, and we’re not going to like it when we find out what the mission is.  If either of them surfaces again, could you tell me or my people?  Immediately?”