Amy produced a set of keys she had procured on the way in, opened Sir DeWitt’s door, and motioned for him to come out. He brushed by the Arm on the way out, and slunk away, head down and miserable. Amy turned to Sinclair and gave him a quick dirty look, then walked off, sticking very close to DeWitt.
Amy’s dirty look contained a lot of information, and Sinclair concentrated on parsing it out. She had been teaching him, off and on, how to do the Arm mind-reading trick, a trick based on a careful and focused study of someone’s tells and physiology. Most Crows couldn’t learn that trick, but a few could – Gilgamesh, of course, and Shadow – but Sinclair hadn’t thought he would be able to until Amy had leaned on him. Strangely, he got the trick to work by maneuvering his mind into a state where he could think in an overly analytical and linear fashion, a painful endeavor. According to Amy, it took her much longer to learn the skill, because she needed to come at it from a different direction than the other Arms did, and she thought Sinclair would be able to use the tricks she used.
Unfortunately, Amy’s dirty look held too much information for Sinclair to parse, so he let it percolate through his mind as he walked down the jailhouse corridor. ‘Dirty look’ was of course a misnomer, as the information also came through her posture, heart rate, body temperature, and juice structure. Half way down the stairs to the first floor, he suddenly got it. And gulped.
Translated into English, the message was “This is not DeWitt. This is a Crow in disguise.”
A disguise good enough to fool Sinclair. Somehow, the Judges had found a way to duplicate the feel of a Noble belonging to the Blue Ridge Barony. Sinclair checked DeWitt, again, and found nothing amiss. What if Amy was wrong?
“I’ll handle this,” Sinclair signaled to Amy, after they reached the meet point. The location was a fresh one. Amy arranged it as soon as they left the jail, along with precautions she wouldn’t tell anyone about.
He was pissed. Every damned thing that could go wrong, had. If the problem was incompetence of his people, there would be something he could do, but this? The only thing he could think to do was to beat his head against the nearest brick wall.
As it was, Sinclair became more convinced by the moment that Amy was right, and the person they had rescued wasn’t DeWitt. This faux DeWitt acted just a little off, not asking any questions about changes in procedure or location. Their new meet point wasn’t their current hideout, but a small roadside park, nothing more than a public outhouse and a couple of picnic tables. In particular, Beth’s household and the Duende Tlacolula Familia weren’t here, just the Corpserider motorcycle gang of Amy’s, gunning their engines and frightening off any more normal visitors.
Sinclair led Sir DeWitt into a large tent someone set up behind the outhouse just for this interrogation. The stuffy tent was dim, lit by the green glow of sunlight showing through canvas.
“I’m not happy that you were captured, your grace,” Sinclair said. “As punishment, you’re sentenced to be in your half-form for the next week. Start changing, now.”
“Yes, Crow Master,” DeWitt said. He sat down, and started to meditate. The real DeWitt would take six hours to complete the changeover to his leonine half-form, and he would end up ravenous for both food and élan.
For the false DeWitt, this was just an act. They didn’t do punishment like this in the Blue Ridge Barony. Sinclair knew about this method of discipline from Squire Stidman; this was the form of punishment that Enkidu meted out. For some reason, the Hunters considered their half-beast forms abhorrent. Human form was fine, as well as the combat form, but due to some flaw in the Law, or something in Hunter society, the Hunters detested the half-beast form. Punishments in Sinclair’s Barony were always the shit jobs that none of them ever wanted to do, often literally: latrine duty, house repairs, cooking and cleaning topped the list.
Sir DeWitt would have never acquiesced to so inane a non-punishment. In addition, as with all of the Barony’s Nobles, when DeWitt got punished and sentenced to four hours of cleaning, he would do eight.
Sinclair sat down beside the intruder, readying himself for anything. “So, Crow, which of the Judges are you, anyway?”
“What are you talking about, Crow Master?” the faux DeWitt asked, coming out of his faux meditation.
So it was going to be that way, eh? Sinclair didn’t answer, but just stared at the intruder. He reached his left hand into his pocket, and touched the various Blue Ridge Barony symbols it contained. He manipulated dross. The masquerade was a mistake on someone’s part, because from a shaman’s perspective pretending to be part of the Barony made a person part of the Barony and open to Sinclair’s manipulation.
The disguise vanished with a muted flash, to reveal a young dark-haired man in judicial robes. Their eyes met, and the intruder Crow reached for a knife under his robes. Sinclair let him take the knife, and then forced the Crow’s hand to drop it. Dross based illusions grabbed at Sinclair’s eyes, but with the strengthening of will Occum taught him after the casting-out episode, such relatively minor wizard tricks no longer affected him. Yes, this Crow’s masquerade was a big mistake. Sinclair smiled.
A muscled hand appeared out of nowhere to grab the Crow’s arm, just as the intruder tensed his muscles to run.
“Gotcha!” Amy said, startling Sinclair and nearly driving the intruder into climax stress as the Arm became visible. Sinclair didn’t know Amy lurked in the tent with him, and likely a good thing, as he wouldn’t have been nearly as convincing if he knew otherwise.
The intruder Crow let loose a massive skunking at Amy. It should have laid her low, but instead it fell off the Arm like water. Midgard’s work. After the skunking failed, the fight vanished from the face of the intruder. The vile dross at their feet sucked itself out of the tent, likely more of Midgard’s wizard work.
“Harm me, and DeWitt dies,” the intruder said, his voice reduced to a low squeak.
“So, La Brea, let me tell you how this is going to work,” Amy said, all predator, as she lifted the Crow off the floor by his neck. “You’re going to signal Guru Athabasca that DeWitt is to be freed and sent here. When DeWitt reaches this location, we’ll free you. In the meantime, you’re going to answer all of our questions.” Pee dribbled down La Brea’s leg as his feet scrabbled at the dirt tent floor, and he let loose three tiny skunks at Amy in helpless panic.
Amy had leapt far ahead of Sinclair, and he took a moment to figure out Amy’s comments. She had picked up on Stidman’s description of La Brea, and identified him, backed up by one of Stidman’s comments that this particular Crow was known of as the most adventurous of the Judges. Truthfully, since adventurous Crows were rare, La Brea was likely their only ‘field operative’. Stidman’s evidence supported the fact that La Brea had been the Crow who had delivered the information on Focus Fingleman to Zielinski in Boston. Amy must have decided the improbable long-range signaling trick Dr. Zielinski deduced was in fact real, that La Brea’s purpose was to spy on their group, and that he would be continually sending out messages. That meant that his Guru, Athabasca, was listening most of the time.
“Free me now,” La Brea said. He shut his eyes, tight, and he looked about ready to die. “Free me now, and leave Oregon and Washington. All of you. Or else My Master’s Master, Guru Jester, will deliver DeWitt to the Hunters.”
Shit.
Sinclair couldn’t let that happen. Doing so would be an utter failure of his duty as a Crow Master. He just didn’t see anything he could do. He looked at Amy, but she flew well ahead of him, again. What she showed him, with her face and posture, was very simple – “I know you have a problem with this. Let’s talk.” In the meantime, Amy began to hogtie the Crow. La Brea wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.
---
“I’ve stripped him of his last bits of dross and put a dross repulsion on him so he can’t get any more,” Midgard said, rubbing his dark hands together and attempting not to smile. His black trench coat vibrated with the motion of the truck. “That’
s one helpless Crow we’ve got here, folks.” Wizard or not, La Brea wasn’t going to be pulling any tricks if he couldn’t get any dross to work with. They were well out of La Brea’s earshot, leaving the task of holding La Brea to the Corpseriders. Nor were they sitting still. Amy believed the best way to prevent La Brea’s friends from trying to rescue him was to keep moving. She didn’t want him anywhere near their main camp, either, not wanting the other side’s Crows doing any close up metasense examinations of the Tlacolula Familia.
They talked in the back of a panel truck driven by Squire Stidman. Duke Hoskins and Warden Jane, who had freed Diane, one of their Monstrous commoners, from the Portland Transform Detention Center when they were grabbing false DeWitt, joined them as they crossed the border out of Multnomah County.
“We’re screwed,” Hoskins said, claws crossed and glaring. He rode the bumps of the speeding truck with an easy flex of his legs. “I hate to admit it, but we’re screwed. Sir DeWitt is a fine Noble, but there’s no way he’s going to be able to hold out against a Crow Guru for any length of time. Everything we know he knows, and everything he knows they’re going to know within in a day or two. Our edge, the Tlacolula Familia and all the rest, is all gone, unless we do something now.”
Amy nodded. She remained uncommonly quiet, still in ways that human beings weren’t still. “If we put La Brea to the question, they’ll kill DeWitt. Is DeWitt’s death worth the information we can get from La Brea? We can’t keep La Brea around, because he’s a sieve.”
“Give me a day, and I can shut off La Brea’s metasense. He won’t be able to signal then,” Sinclair said. The day’s events made him twitchy, even with Hoskins at his side. Too many shocks, with the expectation of more to come. He wasn’t holding up his end of the deal, dammit. He needed to do something more effective than sit around, fight off panic and be angry.
Midgard nodded at Sinclair’s statement. The Crow wizard didn’t say, “Well, at least a Crow Shaman is good for something besides feeding the pet beasts”, but he did think the thought. A fair assessment of Sinclair’s worthless capabilities, Sinclair decided.
“DeWitt’s death isn’t worth it,” Hoskins said. “We don’t have enough Nobility with us, and we’re behind enemy lines. I hate the suggestion, but we may need to admit failure and do the exchange La Brea suggests. Leave Oregon and Washington.”
“Can’t you track Sir DeWitt using the pheromone flow?” Warden Jane said. She had been knifing the wooden floor of the white panel truck about twice every minute. She had already carved a noticeable divot. “If we could find him, we could attack. They’ll have him defended.”
“I’m not that good at cloud reading,” Hoskins said, and reddened further, an interesting trick in his crab-like half-Beast form.
All the eyes turned to Sinclair. They all knew he had been getting training in the Dreaming from the ever-weary Madonna of Montreal, and night training did carry over to the meditative uses of the pheromone flow. After sunset, the whole world should be open to him.
“I could give it a shot,” Sinclair said, expecting failure. Then again… Nah, that wouldn’t work, either. Yet, an idea this screwy might have something to it.
“How long?” Amy said. Like all of them save Midgard, she was furious, and an Arm’s quiet rage was far more terrifying than that of an attacking Hunter. Amy also suspected something else she wouldn’t talk about, and Sinclair didn’t want to call her on it. Yet. Not until he screwed up his courage.
“Twenty minutes.” If he couldn’t locate Sir DeWitt in twenty minutes, DeWitt couldn’t be located.
Amy nodded, then stood and banged on the sliding panel that separated them from the driver’s compartment of the truck. “Find me a phone booth,” she said, to Stidman. Then she turned to Sinclair. “Try to locate him with the flow. That’ll give me twenty minutes to bend some ears.” She then grabbed the CB handset, a long reach deep into the driver’s compartment, and ordered the rest of their crew to meet them at the phone booth. Sinclair understood. If they stopped, they were a target. They needed backup, and Amy took a chance that the secret of the Tlacolula Familia would get out…that is, if it had ever been secret, given the seeming omnipotence and omniscience of the Judges.
Sinclair meditated in the now empty panel truck, and opened himself up to the flow. Within a minute, his mental chessboard appeared. The Madonna’s training had improved nearly all of his capabilities with the pheromone flow, including speed, but he still experienced the Dreaming as a chessboard. The pieces were now more alive than before, though, and he could do more with them.
Twenty minutes. Not much time, but he had fibbed, a bit, when he told everyone how long it would take. In his mind, a plan came together, a plan he would never be able to sell directly, nor one that he would follow if he could come up with any other way.
He wouldn’t need this plan if he found DeWitt.
Unfortunately, he knew too much to think he could find DeWitt. He studied his chessboard and found everyone in his Barony, all the Major Transforms who showed directly in the pheromone flow, and all the rest of his people, who showed indirectly due to the effects of the Barony superorganism. No DeWitt. Months ago, even before Chevalier started the event chain that had ended up with Sinclair cast out, he realized Enkidu could mask himself in the pheromone flow. He never figured out where Enkidu’s ability came from. From the Judges, possibly. Or maybe it was a native ability of Chimeras, and the Judges learned it from the Hunters. In any case, the Judges hid in the flow, as well, able to thwart the many tricks the Madonna had taught him about Dream-screening and location-scrying.
That left his plan as the only viable idea, dammit all to hell. However, before he presented his plan, he needed advice. In his mind, he relocated his position in the flow to northwest Canada. No Commander. He had talked to the Commander two weeks ago and learned that Beast, now calling himself Mizar, wasn’t ready to be taken south.
Sinclair sought them out in the Calgary area. Nothing. Then the Chicago area…and found them. However, his cursed luck held, and they were all awake. From what the Madonna taught him, they were engaged in deep conversation. The Madonna had all sorts of tricks, though, for dealing with this sort of problem.
The better your juice linkage with a Transform, the easier to signal them if they’re awake, the Madonna had said. Well, that meant Sky, because of their close juice connection through Shadow. Sinclair visualized a baseball bat into his hands, and swung it at Sky’s chess piece head. He dashed Sky’s night sky symbol to pieces, which then reformed. Sky didn’t start to meditate and drop into the flow, so Sinclair swung again. A smile crossed his lips, as he had always wanted to do this to Sky. He resolved to keep doing this until Sky realized what his headache meant.
A few minutes later, all five of them suddenly dropped into the flow, including the chess piece in the shape of a house-cat, which resolved itself into an impressive tiger who felt like an Arm.
“Sinclair, what’s the emergency,” the Commander signed. Madame Butterfly, thankfully. A Chimeraic beast, who had to be Mizar, flanked her, along with a patch of night sky (Sky), the tiger, and a woman scientist in a lab coat. He had never seen Focus Rizzari in the flow before, as herself. All sorts of good changes had happened to the group, up north.
“I don’t have enough time for a full explanation, but here’s the situation,” Sinclair signed back, feeling suddenly small in the presence of so many significant Major Transforms. “The Judges, the Crow group in Washington and Oregon who secretly back the Hunters, took one of our Nobles captive. We’re here to shut them down and to stop them from supporting the Hunters, but our first attempts failed miserably. I believe we can salvage the situation, and I was looking for some political advice.”
“Hey, he’s not one of our juice family,” Mizar signed. “Go away! Scat! Roar!”
Of all the damn things, Mizar’s sign of ‘roar’ had enough Chimera terror in it to almost force Sinclair out of contact with the Commander. The Commander turned to loo
k at Mizar, and her image changed from butterfly to knife. Only, it wasn’t the old horrific blood-dripping butcher knife of old, but a stiletto. Perhaps Beast had tamed her inner beast.
“Don’t do that, Mizar! That’s impolite!” the Commander signed. Sinclair felt her pull on her tag with Mizar. Mizar pulled back, but didn’t try to force Sinclair out of his presence again. Instead, Mizar studied him, potential dinner.
Well, that answered that. Whatever method they used to tame Mizar didn’t involve turning him Noble. Mizar didn’t operate under any Rules.
Hmm. Sinclair put some sideways thoughts together, and then buried them deep. Boss Chimeras and boss Arms would drive each other nuts. Inevitable, based on the fact they reflected humanity’s strengths and weaknesses writ large, the mundane cultural stereotypes grown to epic proportions. Here, as with Hoskins and Haggerty, was more evidence that boss Arms and boss Chimeras would be continuing the eternal fight between men and women. Amplified. Hera and Zeus, for gosh sakes – or in this case, Tiamat and Marduk. They would squish the Crows and Focuses! Well, perhaps not. They did have the numbers…
“The question?” the Commander signed. Pay attention! Avoid getting squished!
“We need help, big help,” Sinclair signed. “In particular, Crow Mentor help. However, I thought I’d ask your advice first before charging out on my own, because I don’t want to mess up any political arrangements you’d set up that I don’t know about. My gut feeling is to invite Shadow in to help. Would you have any problem with that?”
The Commander paused and thought, then started to sign. “I wouldn’t have any problems, but Haggerty would. Wherever Shadow goes these days, so go Focus Biggioni and Arm Keaton. You would all probably end up tagged by Keaton, and there’s no probably with regard to Haggerty, and it won’t be mutual.”
Ouch. “That would be positively impolite of me, then,” Sinclair signed. “Chevalier?”
An Age Without A Name (The Cause Book 5) Page 7