No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5)

by Randall Farmer

  My God! Those were withdrawal scars. Directed withdrawal scars.

  He barely controlled his panic. Had he entered the belly of the beast? He looked longingly at that wooden staircase that led out to safety. Occum could easily be Wandering Shade. Gilgamesh might be dead in moments.

  He fought his panic by concentrating on his compassion for the women Transforms. Their withdrawal scars would never heal; only Major Transforms healed from such maiming. He tried to figure out a way to help them.

  He could sick up on them and try to make their scars beautiful. Some of the artist Crows did that sort of thing, but Gilgamesh’s sicked up dross constructs were functional, not beautiful. Still rather cartoon like, despite the lessons of a half dozen Gurus. He couldn’t take their extra juice away; he wasn’t a dross removal expert and couldn’t remove the bits of black goo that contaminated their juice structures. He couldn’t do anything for them.

  He might put them out of their misery, but the Nobles would likely consider his actions an attack.

  Hitting them with ‘spend money’, assuming he could do that one right in a mildly stressful situation, wouldn’t help, either.

  He could do nothing.

  He might as well admit it. He heard the Skinner barking at him in his memories about this very lesson.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “I’m not here to help Master Occum, but to learn from him, and perhaps to teach him things to help him protect you…”

  A paw batted at his left shoulder, and he turned to look at Count Chocula or whatever, who was nearly growling at him. “Sir,” the Count said. “Master Occum does not protect us. We protect him.”

  Gilgamesh had a sudden urge to lie like a rug and tell the Nobles he ate critters like them for lunch, and he was no cowering and trembling Crow who needed protecting. Truthfully, though, he wouldn’t mind having Focus-style bodyguards. However, not Beast Men, or Nobles or whatever they were calling themselves today.

  The five remaining somewhat sane women broke his heart, doubly because he could do nothing to help them.

  “How did they end up in withdrawal?” Gilgamesh asked Duke Hoskins.

  “When a woman Transform is nearly ready to turn Monster, her juice destabilizes,” the Duke said. “We can take her juice as it turns to élan. Master Occum directs some of what spills out to a nearby male Transform. We have problems with timing, though, and with overshooting. Reducing their juice count too much. These are all logistical issues needing further study. Master Occum is working on triggering early juice destabilization, which would fix most of these problems, but he doesn’t have the trick fully mastered yet.”

  Gilgamesh agreed their logistical issues needed further study. Some of the women Transforms did look a bit Monsterish, and one of them possessed echoes of a Monster’s glow inside her, as if she had spent a very long time as a Monster. Back and forth over the Monster line would be as bad as back and forth over the withdrawal line. Torture, utter torture, but…

  He slitted his eyes and looked sideways at the Duke, whose comments hinted at far more intelligence than Gilgamesh had originally guessed. “Your grace, may I ask from where these Transforms were taken?”

  “Ah. We have a great and noble Focus working with us, her Excellency Queen Rizzari. She knows all, and tells all, regarding Clinic Transforms who will go unclaimed. When all hope vanishes, the Clinics she has agreements with ask the Transforms if they are willing to undergo an experiment, and not one involving Arms. If they volunteer, they are sent to us.” He looked sad. “Also, we hunt.” Ah, the real truth. Woman Transforms in Clinics got snapped up much more often than male Transforms.

  “It must be hard on you when they die,” Gilgamesh said, sarcastic. Occum was running a Nazi death camp for Transforms and Focus Rizzari was helping! Dammit, we’re supposed to be the good guys!

  Keaton’s voice echoed in his mind: “We’re not the good guys, we’re the better guys.” Gilgamesh shivered.

  The Duke took out a handkerchief and wiped his left eye. The Viscount looked mournful, and the Count actually sniffed. Sniveled. “Oh, yes. It’s exceedingly painful. When they die, part of us dies with them. Someday, we hope to be able to keep all our Commoners alive indefinitely.”

  Gilgamesh avoided losing his temper, and took several deep breaths. If these guys were for real, they needed to take something more advanced than Remedial Nobility 101.

  Then again, who was he to complain? Two nights ago, in Wilmington, Delaware, he had comforted a despondent Crow trying to subsist off Focus Cottsfield’s traveling carnival show, which moved so often they left hardly any dross at all. Comforted him in a drain culvert, with an inch of water in the bottom of it.

  He had met far too many Crows who needed Remedial Crow 101. The book on Crow lives he was researching might be a cover for his real mission, but he planned to write the book anyway. He hoped his insights and data would help.

  “I must speak with Master Occum.”

  The room was pitch black, with a netting across the center of the room, just enough to mess up whatever passed for vision in a full dark room. Gilgamesh thought the room had been a storage room, once. Shelves still lined the walls. He barely picked out Occum with his night vision, and of course with his metasense. To Gilgamesh, Occum metasensed as a standard Crow, at least five years out.

  “So, Gilgamesh, we meet in person at last.”

  In his letters, Occum was firm, distant and polite. This was neither. He hadn’t thought Occum would be one of the perpetually angry Crows. Or was it just him?

  “Hello. I see you’ve made progress with the Beast Men. They…”

  “Nobles. Think of them as Nobles, and they’ll be noble. Funny how things work that way.”

  “Er. Yes, sir.” He paused, trying to think of a polite question. “They seem rather more intelligent than my captor, Enkidu, and Enkidu spent most of his time awake exercising his mind.” As well as getting help from his ‘Master’.

  “That’s because they have a Crow taking care of them, one who knows how.” Occum snickered, a rough rasping noise. “That’s the lot in life for Crows, you know. Taking care of other Transforms. Not fighting them. Ta-king care of them.” The last he said slowly, as if explaining something to a moron. “Of course, most of the other Crows would rather study their navels while living in cardboard boxes. Then there’s you, Gilgamesh.”

  “Me?” In what army had he become a category for describing Crows?

  “You.” Occum spat. “You know what Sky calls you?”

  “Uh, ‘Gilgamesh’?”

  “Sky says you’re not an adventuring Crow, but a con artist Crow who takes advantage of his friends by getting them to do dangerous favors, and then steals their Focus while they’re insane and recovering from doing the dangerous favor.”

  He hadn’t come all the way to Boston again to be insulted by Occum. Coming back to the perpetually rude east coast was unpleasant. In the rest of the country, they were at least polite to guest Crows, even if they pointed a gun at you and wanted you to leave. He was here to collect information, not harassment.

  Occum’s argument didn’t help him at all keep his mind on business. “Steals their Focus?”

  “Poor Sky, all gibbering insane, in a straightjacket and suffering mightily. Along comes the con artist Crow and where does he go? He goes to visit Sky’s lover, the Focus Rizzari. Well, well, well. Such a good friend, that con artist Crow. When Sky recovers and goes back to his lover, he finds the magic has gone out of their relationship. Focus Rizzari is distant and unloving. Why? She has fallen in love with the con artist Crow. So Sky is ready to stalk out, after flouncing around going ‘I’ll kill him, I will, I will, I will, eh?’ in that oh so grating voice of his, when Focus Rizzari says ‘Wait! Wait! I must tell you something, dear’. It almost breaks Sky’s heart to be called ‘dear’, but he stops, anyway.” Occum chuckled. “Want to know what Focus Rizzari said? Okay. What she said was ‘Oh, Sky, I am messing this up so much. Sky, I’m pregnant.’ What do you t
hink of that?”

  I think you’re in love with Focus Rizzari yourself, Occum, and it’s broken your heart. “It’s an amazing miracle.”

  “So, the big question I have,” Occum said, and clapped his hands. “Is whether Sky is the daddy or you are the daddy? Which of the two of you lovebirds rang our fickle Focus’s bell, anyway?”

  Enough was enough. Gilgamesh took a deep breath.

  “Unless someone has changed the laws of biology, Occum, you can write me out of this equation.” Well, perhaps that didn’t come out right. Equation? “She was already pregnant when I visited her.” He felt sorry for Sky. Gilgamesh hadn’t set out to woo Focus Rizzari. Not that he hadn’t fallen for her a little…

  “Oh, an arch comment from a con artist Crow. You mean there’s a limit to how far you can be pushed? Ready to run away, yet? But beware,” Occum said. “My boys are civilized, but as with normal men, civilization is just a thin veneer. They still have a big problem about chases. So hard to refuse, despite the Rules against it. Especially the Viscount, dear boy, he’ll still chase cars if I let him.”

  Occum, of all things, reminded Gilgamesh of the Skinner. “What I came here for was to ask if you had any insights into Crow Killer. Do you?” Gilgamesh said. Like: are you Crow Killer?

  “Of course I do. But does anyone ask me? No, they just write the same damned letters, trying to confirm if the rumors are true and I have indeed tamed Beast Men and turned them Noble. This isn’t some miracle, like they think. I just did what comes natural and it worked. No one asks me anything. They write and tell me what I’m doing is too risky. What if the Beasts go berserk and kill me? Like they would know, or care. If the rest of you Crows got off your ratty asses and did things instead of sitting around and contemplating your navels until they shined, your minds would improve to the point where you wouldn’t forget what you asked in your last letter.”

  Gilgamesh decided to play along. Too much time with the Beast Men had addled Occum’s brain. Stress did things to Crows, he knew, from personal experience. “I ask, formally, for you to bequeath your hard won knowledge upon me, if you please.”

  “If you please? How simply cutting.” Occum paced, back and forth across the dark room. “I could be Crow Killer, if I mastered Shadow’s trick. The masking.”

  Gilgamesh caught his breath. The Crow panic snuck up on him, screaming ‘run, run, there is danger here.’ Occum suspected Gilgamesh had figured some things out. But what did Occum think Gilgamesh had figured out?

  “Why do you say that?” Gilgamesh said. “Wouldn’t the masking be enough?” The only people who knew Gilgamesh’s theories about Crow Killer were the Arms. Perhaps Shadow, but what he told Shadow had been incomplete.

  Occum coughed laughter. “Boy, you’re dumb as a rotting stump sometimes. I can’t believe you’ve lived this long. You have all the information you need, sitting right in front of you.”

  “Let me see, then,” Gilgamesh said, getting tired of Occum’s game. He sicked up a concoction that Waveguide had taught him, which at the time he had thought nearly as worthless as ‘spend money’. Perhaps he should come up with a better mnemonic than ‘Light myself up at night so my enemies can shoot me’.

  The room lit up. Waveguide had a way with chemicals, and he said he had mimicked those in the ass end of a firefly to come up with this trick. Gilgamesh had the urge to shout “Fiat Lux” or some other nonsense, like a real wizard would. Despite all the tricks he had learned, he didn’t feel the slightest bit wizardly.

  The light showed Occum to be ugly, short, and emaciated below the waist. He was missing an eye, scars laced his face, and his arms looked like something out of a Popeye cartoon. The light Gilgamesh created faded away.

  “No, you damned idiot, I’m not Crow Killer.” Occum paused, and laughed painfully. “I will be, though, if I ever catch you mentioning a word of my appearance to Focus Rizzari. I’ll kill you personally.” Gilgamesh didn’t panic, not even one step. “Hmm. You didn’t flee. Surprising. Perhaps Sky was wrong about you and you’re not just a con artist. Wouldn’t be the first time Sky was wrong about something.”

  Shame was a horrific motivator, almost a palpable force, capable of moving any Crow against his will. Gilgamesh had seen it in Crow after Crow after Crow. Occum was too ashamed of himself to show himself to someone he respected and loved, or to those who might tell the tale. Predictable, if you thought about it hard.

  “You were a lobsterman before your transformation, weren’t you?” Gilgamesh said.

  “I don’t need your pity, boy.” Occum paused, a little shocked perhaps that Gilgamesh had made the connection to Occum’s poetry. “Nor do I want it.”

  Gilgamesh nodded. He understood, quite well. “There will come a time,” Gilgamesh said, “when we’ll have to fight Crow Killer. Your Nobles might be our best weapon, maybe our only weapon, against,” Gilgamesh paused, and took the obvious and fateful step, “him.”

  All these months he had been seduced by Carol’s story of Officer Canon, the Focus in disguise, and the red herring of the directed withdrawal scarring, a known Focus technique. From what he had metasensed today, directed withdrawal scarring naturally fell out of the techniques used by Beast Men to preserve their women Transforms. Carol originally thought Officer Canon was a man, but when she picked up his effeminate personality, she had reclassified him as a Focus.

  So how many Crows had Gilgamesh met who were effeminate? Perhaps twenty percent? More?

  Crap.

  His original wild guess had been right. The Beast Master Crow named Wandering Shade and Officer Canon were the same. He was Crow Killer and the Transform killer. Wandering Shade’s weapons were his Beasts. He could both make them and mask them. As Gilgamesh had feared from the start, Wandering Shade was a senior Crow.

  Two pieces of evidence said Occum wasn’t Wandering Shade. One, his Beast Men didn’t have directed withdrawal scarring, just the Commoners. Two, Occum wasn’t a senior Crow. He couldn’t mask himself. Hell, he couldn’t even illusion his broken body whole. He didn’t have the skill set.

  Or so Gilgamesh fervently hoped.

  “Of course I’ll help,” Occum said, and then laughed. “Won’t be because you asked, boy, though. Focus Rizzari’s going to ask me and I can’t refuse her anything. Except to meet her in person.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Gilgamesh said, meaning his words. “I have a hard question for you, one I’m hoping you will not take umbrage at me asking: what do you know about the Crow named Wandering Shade, sir?”

  This was a terrible gamble. If Gilgamesh had guessed incorrectly and Occum turned out to be Crow Killer, he wouldn’t be leaving this place a free Crow. Yet, he had committed himself when he nerved himself up for the visit. No reason to back away from the danger now.

  “Son of a bitch!” Occum said. The mutilated Crow stalked over to Gilgamesh, brushing aside the net and stepping into the remains of Gilgamesh’s light. He stuck a finger on Gilgamesh’s chest. “You figured it out. You are too smart to be wandering out on your own.”

  Climax stress almost took Gilgamesh’s mind away. “I find I must be leaving, now.” He stepped backwards, but Occum followed.

  “Not so fast.”

  Gilgamesh had guessed wrong. He practically felt Count Chocula’s hands on his shoulders, dragging him into one of those reeking cages. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and felt around for a ‘dazzle metasense’ rotten egg.

  “They’ll hunt you down and kill you,” Occum said, grabbing Gilgamesh’s arm and whispering. “You’re in terrible, terrible danger.” Oh. This was a proper warning, Crow style. Perhaps he had been hanging around the Arms for too long. “Yes, Wandering Shade is a Crow. Yes, Wandering Shade is the Crow who made the Hunters, the Patriarchs and who knows how many other small gangs of Beasts. However, Wandering Shade isn’t a known Crow. He’s a hidden Crow identity. He’s nasty, paranoid, despises Arms, sneers at Focuses, and is deathly afraid of being discovered.”

  Ah. “You and Wandering Shade
have exchanged letters, haven’t you?”

  Occum nodded. “Yes. Foolish of me, but I did. I needed help with my charges.”

  “You don’t use his techniques, though, the directed withdrawal scarring.”

  “Shit, boy, you’ve definitely done enough detective work to get yourself killed.” Occum shook his head. “My techniques are far more efficient. Safer, too.”

  “Then Wandering Shade isn’t a Crow Shaman, like you are.”

  “Shaman? Okay, okay, yes, that’s what I am, technically speaking. No, Wandering Shade is your standard issue dross construct slinging psychopath Crow Wizard from hell.” Pause. “You think he’s Crow Killer, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Based on what evidence?”

  Gilgamesh explained what he had pieced together from his wanderings, from the FBI, from the Arms, and from what he discovered in his visit to Focus Innkeep. “The masking at a distance trick shows insane power and control, something only a senior Crow could do.”

  “Shit dammit fuck dammit crap!” Occum said, stomping his feet and hopping up and down in his Skinner-like anger. “Who the fuck is Wandering Shade, though? Which of the senior Crows?” Occum started to pace, and with his metasense, Gilgamesh could sense the Nobles shifting restlessly. “If it’s Shadow, we’re goners. He’s our Guru, damn it! Why the crap did you have to figure this out! I was just starting to make real progress with my Nobles!” Occum grabbed him by the shirt, and shook him. Then let go and went back to pacing. “Dammit. We’re screwed. We’re so screwed our bones will be gnawed on by varmints from here to Albuquerque!”

  “If I vanish, could you pass this information along to Shadow, Thomas the Dreamer and Innocence? Those three are the ones who sent me out to hunt down the identity of Crow Killer.”

  “Only if you vanish,” Occum said. “There aren’t that many top end senior Crows, my boy, and the ones you named are half of the ones I know of. That means there’s about a fifty percent chance that one of them is Crow Killer and the highest odds are with Shadow. You’re talking a life or death coin flip, boy! Crap you’ve made a mess of things!” Occum growled, and paced, and cursed some more.