All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read online

  Stalin had every reason to glower, with the Focus Council recognizing male Major Transforms, and with the loss of her Attack Focuses, now in the custody of the CDC and out of her reach. Stalin sat. Gail made the introductions, not anywhere as nervous as Gilgamesh. He made sure he sat next to Kali. His life and freedom were now in her hands.

  “Ma’am,” he said, to Focus Adkins. He needed to think of her in Focus terms now, or he would blow everything he had worked so hard to arrange. “I would like to negotiate for the release of Crow Newton.”

  “I hear you,” Focus Adkins said. Her tamed cloud of gristle dross wafted across the street, blocking the front door of the café. “Do you think I’m at fault for what happened to the fool?”

  When in doubt, be honest. “Ma’am, I don’t know,” Gilgamesh said. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves. His heart still beat twice as fast as normal. “Crow Newton should have known not to approach the household of a Focus of your seniority. I can’t imagine why he did.” Actually, he could. The Newt was always pushing himself, trying to prove to himself he was a worthwhile, even adventuresome, Crow. Stick-to-itiveness was his problem, not courage.

  Adkins nodded. “Then you don’t know the story.”

  “Ma’am, I wasn’t aware there was a story.”

  “I see,” she said. She looked over at Kali, penetrating the disguise as if it didn’t exist. “Arm Keaton. What I want in return for my cooperation in this matter is a form of protection. I believe you’re the one who can deliver this.”

  “What form of protection are you talking about?” Kali said, a sneer on her face. She, unlike him, and definitely unlike Gail, had no intention of being polite.

  “From Arm Hancock,” she said.

  Oh. Gilgamesh nodded in understanding. Stalin must have learned about Tiamat’s mind-scrape of Hera, and figured Tiamat now knew Stalin had been the one behind sending her into withdrawal.

  “Four years,” Kali said.

  “Excuse me?” Focus Adkins said, archly.

  “I can offer you four years of protection, in return for the fool Crow and the story behind his capture,” Kali said.

  Gilgamesh kept his face blank. Tiamat had already agreed not to return to Chicago for the next two years, or seek revenge for her capture for two years after that. He wasn’t sure if this restriction extended to Stalin, but Keaton’s ploy here, getting something for nothing, implied so.

  What was he doing here, among people as hard as Kali and Stalin? Negotiating. Thank heavens Gail, the Clumsy Angel, remained a beacon of light in this pitch-black morass.

  A part of him was quite happy, though. If Kali ended up paying nothing to Stalin then he wouldn’t owe anywhere near as much to Kali as he feared he would.

  Focus Adkins turned to him. “I want no Crow payback for this.”

  “I can agree to myself, and Newton,” Gilgamesh said. “I’m not a Crow leader, though, ma’am, and can’t make any agreements for the Crow community as a whole.”

  “In that case, all I can require is that you represent my dealings with you as a negotiation in good faith, when you’re called to explain your actions by the senior Crows,” Focus Adkins said.

  “I can agree to that.”

  She nodded. “Then it’s settled.” She waved a hand in a regal way; one of her people brought over a cup of tea from behind the counter. “Crow Newton had fallen under the control of an enemy of mine, a Crow I once knew by the name of Richard, long ago, during the Quarantine years. I believe you name this Crow ‘Wandering Shade’.”

  “Ma’am,” Gilgamesh said, mentally scrambling, his voice nearly a squeak. This changed everything.

  “Son of a bitch,” Kali said. “Are you saying this is personal?”

  “It’s very personal,” Focus Adkins said. “Back during the Quarantine, Richard and I worked together, not as friends, but as allies, in the St. Louis Detention Center. Until the Crows betrayed the Focuses held in the CDC’s Detention Center you destroyed. We’ve stayed in contact over the years, by mail, each trying to convince the other to be reasonable.” Gilgamesh translated her comment as: betray their own. “I’ve never learned what Crow name he goes by. Over the years Richard’s tone became darker and darker, until I committed a well-known faux pas during the Arm Flap.” Driving Tiamat into withdrawal. “Then he congratulated me and offered up a formal alliance. I told him to go to Hell. After his charge, the Male Monster Enkidu, rampaged through Detroit, he sent me a letter calling me a moral travesty, promising his undying hate and threatening to skin me alive, tan my skin, and make a leather chair out of my remains.” She paused. “If he shows his face anywhere near here, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Well,” Kali said. “It sounds like we’re in agreement, then.” She cocked her head and met Focus Adkins glare. “Once this little deal is done, I would be more than willing to engage in further negotiations on that front.”

  “I can agree to such negotiations as well,” Focus Adkins said. She turned to Gail. “Don’t put this last bit into your newsletter.” Gail nodded.

  So, after all this time, they finally understood Rogue Crow’s interest in Detroit. Stalin had been his target all along. Enkidu’s rampage, triggered by Stalin’s Attack Focuses sticking their noses into Enkidu’s business near Chicago, was the trigger behind the expected wedding attack and many of the other unexplained events in Detroit, such as the attempt to blackmail Hard Luck into attacking Stalin.

  “If I may ask, ma’am, how did Rogue Crow set up Newton to be a danger to you?” Gilgamesh said.

  “Richard skillfully hid inside the Crow more bad juice than I have in my household, all set up with advanced Crow tricks,” Focus Adkins said. “Your friend was a bomb which would have gone off inside my household if I wasn’t already prepared for a Crow attack. I caught him on his approach to my household and neutralized him.” She smiled and stuck in the knife with her next words. “After his capture he chose to cooperate with me and tell me everything he knew.”

  Kali’s face turned to stone and her eyes turned to ice.

  “Ma’am, may I offer a word of caution?” Gilgamesh said. Stalin raised an eyebrow. “Arms are not Focuses, ma’am. I’m not sure how a Focus would react to your last statement, but to an Arm, those are fighting words.”

  Focus Adkins smiled. “Interesting. You don’t care that I know more about you, Gilgamesh, than any other Focus does. You do care that I now know far more about Arm Keaton than anyone but Focus Biggioni does.” She paused. Gilgamesh felt Kali readying for violence. “Gilgamesh, I’m negotiating with the head Arm, not some baby Focus who doesn’t know her place.” A dig at Gail, who visibly shrank at Focus Adkins words. “I understand full well that I can’t use this information to make the head Arm behave.”

  Kali relaxed. “It’s your armament in a mutually assured destruction stand-off.”

  “Exactly.”

  Gilgamesh had a bad feeling Stalin and Kali were far more alike than he wanted to think about.

  “You can believe that if you want,” Kali said. Now Gilgamesh felt Kali go in for the verbal stab. “I believe you’ve switched sides. You’re negotiating with Arms and Crows, allowing the negotiation to be written up in a Focus newsletter, and supporting the Council’s decision regarding recognition of male Major Transforms.”

  A flicker of anger crossed Focus Adkins face. “I’ve seen the light,” she said. Lying.

  Kali chuckled. “Let us see the Crow.”

  ---

  “Ma’am, can we talk?” Newton asked Kali, after they left the café and walked to their cars, parked a relatively safe block and a half away from Stalin’s household, and under guard by Focus Mann’s second string guards. Responsible, no doubt, for the cars’ continued possession of all their hubcaps. “Yes,” Kali said. She looked at him closely. “You’ve lost some of your skittishness.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I… Ma’am, I must confess that, before, I doubted you. I couldn’t talk to you in person, even though you wanted me
to. I’m willing to do that now.”

  Kali snorted. “You failed me, Crow. I have no use for you.” She turned away.

  Dammit! Gilgamesh wanted to thrash both of them, Kali for playing her mind games and trying to make Newton into a pet, Newton for being, well, the Newt.

  “Ma’am!”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Kali said, without looking back. “You want back in my good graces, serve Gilgamesh as you would serve me. When he says you’re ready, I’ll consider your offer again.” She climbed into her car, slammed the door, and drove off.

  Newton looked crestfallen. Yup, Arm Pet. Focus Mann’s guards stared around them, shocked. Keaton had just taken their car.

  The whole exchange was enlightening, in a bad way. Regaining Tiamat’s good graces, if this Detroit mess ever ended, would not be either easy or simple. Arms were just too difficult about relationship issues. Interpersonal friction, alas, was a challenge to them.

  “Climb into the car with us,” Gilgamesh said, waving at Gail’s car.

  “Car?” Newton said, his voice reduced to a rattish squeak. “With a Focus?”

  Gail put her hands on her hips and glared. Sylvie did as well. Gilgamesh repressed laughter.

  “I wasn’t giving you options, Newton,” Gilgamesh said. “Unless you’re ready to give up on Kali.”

  “That’s so unfair,” Newton said, acquiescing with a mutter and getting into the back seat of the car with Gilgamesh. “You’re all so unfair to me, all of the time.”

  “Ah, Focus Rickenbach, could you get a message to our household…” one of Focus Mann’s guards said.

  Gilgamesh ignored him. “Just listen,” Gilgamesh said. He turned to Gail. “Are you okay?”

  “No! I’m not okay,” Gail said, letting lose all the emotions she had kept bottled up inside. She took a deep breath. “That was horrible! Focus Adkins is…is…she stood up to Arm Keaton! I didn’t think anyone could stand up to Arm Keaton.”

  “I’m more surprised Arm Keaton could stand up to her,” Sylvie said. “She’s, ewwwwh, I don’t even have words for it.”

  “She’s not so bad,” Newton said. He ignored Gilgamesh’s glare. Hadn’t he just told the Newt to keep his mouth shut? “Or wasn’t, after she finished interrogating me about everything I knew. That was rough. Anyway, it’s all by house rules. I offered to write them down for her, which she didn’t appreciate, but I found it easy once I figured out the trick: any orders without juice in them you could ignore, while any orders with juice in them were based on a house rule, even orders from normals. It’s rather mesmerizing.”

  “Ah, ma’am,” Focus Mann’s guard said. Kurt, Gail’s chief guard, took him aside and they started talking.

  Gail looked at Newton and dismissed him as a lightweight. Gilgamesh preferred to think of Newton as a project. A project taking a whole lot of effort. “Do you think you could come by and look at the apartment’s furnace, Gilgamesh? I think we might have some work for you,” Gail said. Work that paid quite well, by Crow standards. He got about half the market rate, which he didn’t mind and which made the Focus and her people quite happy. He nodded. “Have you gotten anywhere on your problems?” Gail said, relentlessly curious as always. Gilgamesh shook his head. “Surely Wini’s story about this ‘Richard’ will help you on your quest to clear Guru Shadow’s name. It’s gotta be connected.”

  “Huh?” Newton said.

  Gilgamesh told Newton an abbreviated version of his kidnapping and rescue, and the appearance of ‘Shadow’. By the time he finished, they had finally left Adkins neighborhood and were halfway back to Gail’s household. “Unfortunately, I’m the only one who believes Shadow isn’t Rogue Crow.” He didn’t say anything about his still useless and not fully mastered walking zazen meditations. Far too sore a subject. Much like Kali and her reaction to the bill she had gotten from Corkscrew – Focus Fingleman – over the Bass rescue: a million dollars. Kali hadn’t decided yet whether to pay up, negotiate, tell Corkscrew to go to hell, or show up one day with an army of thugs.

  “He couldn’t be Shadow!” Newton said. “I met Wandering Shade. He’s nothing like Shadow at all. He’s angry. He’s also marked himself with the Law.” For a moment Gilgamesh wondered why Newton hadn’t been marked with the Law. Then he realized that Newton probably hadn’t met Wandering Shade’s standards.

  “Wandering Shade is himself marked with the Law, the same Law as his Beast Men?” Gilgamesh said.

  “Uh huh, that’s what I said.”

  Interesting. The ‘Shadow’ who had attacked Guru Arpeggio’s home hadn’t shown any signs of withdrawal scarring in his glow. Rogue Crow had to be good enough at his disguises to disguise his own glow.

  Which made his supposed ability to disguise himself as Shadow even more plausible.

  For the first time in over a month, Gilgamesh had hope.

  Chapter 8

  “Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.”

  – The Buddha

  Carol Hancock: May 1, 1969

  “Ma’am,” I said, respectfully, as Keaton opened the door. It was about 9:00 in the evening, not too late. I had just finished a fruitless conversation with Gilgamesh, now even more convinced Shadow wasn’t Rogue Crow. Hank, more nervous than usual because of the approaching Rickenbach wedding, bowed to Keaton. He was here to be both grilled and fucked by Keaton. I thought she would appreciate it. Every cat should have a songbird she can give as a gift to her master.

  When Keaton let me in, I bowed my head humbly, and then got a whiff of the air.

  “What’s that smell?”

  Keaton grunted and headed back towards the kitchen. I followed, and Hank tagged behind. In the basement, the clack of weights accompanied Bass’s exercise session. She would be about five months old as an Arm, now. I noticed that Bass still kept Keaton’s house a hell of a lot cleaner than Haggerty had.

  “Bass’s entertainment,” Keaton said. “Hell of a reek, isn’t it?” I pegged her at about a 125 juice count, high and tolerant. Excellent to see.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. A reek of rotting corpses, and other things even worse.

  Hank blanched, an amazing sight. As I had predicted, the introduction of Hank, Tom and Ying into my life had forced me to clean up my act. I no longer even owned a torture chamber. Which meant Hank was no longer used to the darker ways of us Arms.

  “I won’t let her go after people the way she wants to, so she picks up stray animals off the street,” Keaton said. “I swear she can’t even think straight unless she’s torturing something. It’s about time to make her clean out this set and get a new batch, though.”

  “Hmm,” I said, locking my reactions down tight. “She’s gotten into that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah,” Keaton agreed, as she pulled a piece of pizza from the refrigerator. She wasn’t being any better than I was about rigorous compliance with an Arm’s optimal diet. We drove Hank to distraction.

  I leaned against the counter and let myself seem casually respectful. Last month, Bass wasn’t being allowed out without supervision. I had wondered why, but hadn’t been interested enough to ask. Now, I understood. Downstairs, I heard the whimpering of tortured animals rising above the sounds of the weights. “She really prefers people, but I put limits on that sort of nonsense. She’s going to be hell on wheels when I let her loose, though.”

  Keaton studied Hank and waved the pizza under his nose. Yanking his chain – he was close to vomiting from the stench. “So you’ve recovered well from the operation, Hank? Ready for me?” Eissler’s advice on the subject of how to keep Arms happy had been correct.

  “Ma’am,” he said to Keaton, respectfully. Keaton was the sexually dominant one in their relationship. As if you had any doubts, of course.

  Keaton glanced at me and her eyes narrowed. “You’re sitting on something. Out with it.”

  I shifted mental gears in a hurry, dropping all thoughts of tortured animals, Hank a
nd sex.

  “I have a favor to ask of you, ma’am,” I said.

  Keaton crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

  “I would like to request additional combat practice with you while I’m here for my monthly visits,” I said. In each of my visits with Haggerty, as we went through figuring out our relationship, we always sparred in practice combat. Right now, Haggerty was teaching me combat techniques. It would be a bad thing if a stand up fight between us ever went the other way. I figured I had damned well better work on my combat skills if I didn’t want to find my relationship with Haggerty flipped.

  “Why?” Here it goes, I thought to myself. I had spent the last week getting my story straight.

  “Haggerty, ma’am,” I said, bowing low and letting a hard smile show through. “I think that some extensive combat practice might be a good idea.”

  Keaton paused for a second, with a little ice in her eyes and then said, “Good.” No argument, no price. Sounded to me like Keaton was a little nervous about Haggerty herself. “Keep an eye on her. She’s going to try and flip the dominance out of pure social clumsiness on a regular basis.”

  I nodded. “It doesn’t help that she has such crazy ideas. Her latest is that the core of the Dreaming is left over from the last Transform emergence, and we’re somehow connected to these previous-emergence Major Transforms, who she thinks are still alive, as ancient Monsters.”

  “Now you know how I felt,” Keaton said, zinging both me and Haggerty. Now that was just damned disquieting. I grunted in response, while Hank kept his mouth shut and his thoughts ultra-hidden.

  “Read this,” Keaton said. She passed me an envelope. “It will quiet your fucking nerves.”

  The envelope contained a short letter.

  Focus Bitch

  The time has come for you to pay the price you owe me. You’ll know when – when no eyes are upon you and the target is in your sights. You know who. Soon.