Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (6 page)

The wave swept up the Nobles as the Nobles swept up the women, a boisterous loving crowd that quickly changed direction and returned to the lodge home, leaving the Crows behind.

“Anyone here ready to see how Master Occum is doing?” Sinclair said, shaking his head.  “Come on, Guru Gilgamesh.  I’m sure we can find someone or something here to put you at ease.”

---

Starlight shone through the wide windows of the big common room of the lodge, a room lit only by six dim candles on handmade knotty pine tables at the edges of the room.  Guru Shadow had called them together for a meeting, not just the Crows, but all the ranking Nobles, the two Wardens, and the two Inferno diplomats, Autumn and Parker Maybray.  The only one missing was Earl Sellers, out hunting Monsters with two commoners and several Inferno people.  The room was quiet now, after the wildness of the Barony feast, and only those few with recognized rank remained.

“So, Occum, you’ve got yourself a Warden, now,” Sinclair said.  His soft voice shivered the darkness.  “Were there any problems with the Wardening?”

“Suzanne, why don’t you tell them?” Occum said.  Suzanne stared them down, aggressively uncomfortable to find herself among the Nobles and Crow Masters.  She was an appallingly ugly woman, with a fierce face, short dark brown hair cut pageboy style, and bad teeth.  Gilgamesh knew of her as an unpopular member of Flo Ackerman’s household, as well as Flo’s top woman bodyguard.  Knowing Occum, he had picked her for her looks.

“Jane recruited me,” Suzanne said.  “I was a good soldier, so Flo didn’t want to let me go, but Earl Sellers offered a sweet young thing in trade.  They decided they could cope.”  She really did have a beautiful smile, Gilgamesh noted, at least when she remembered to smile.  If you ignored her bad teeth, her smile lit up her entire face.

“Congratulations on becoming a Guru, Gilgamesh,” Shadow said, turning to him.  “That was a job well done.”

“So it’s legitimate?  I’m a Guru now?”  Gilgamesh felt no joy and couldn’t meet Shadow’s gaze.  Too many worries.

“It’s legitimate.  News of your trip, the fight with the Hunters as well as the big fight in New Orleans, is all over the Grapevine.  You’re definitely rating the respect due a Guru.  I’ve even gotten a couple of calls from Crows who want to study with you for a while.”

“Really?  Who?”

“Hmph,” Occum cut in.  “Let’s talk business first.  Then we can worry about whatever followers come calling.”

Shadow nodded.  “We have a lot of people here who’ve made progress.  I’d like to review what we’ve done.  Then we can talk strategy.”

As Gilgamesh had hoped, once Shadow rescinded his constraints on research and joined in the
push the Cause
project, the progress had been rapid.  Gilgamesh showed the crew his golf bombs, which everyone found most impressive.  Occum reported on the rapid progress on retrieving the commoner’s lost humanity, progress only possible because of many long days utilizing Shadow’s Mentor-level analysis tricks.

“I hate to brag,” Occum said, about twenty minutes in (and over Sinclair’s ‘oh, right’).  “But I managed to see a possible trick and make it work, mostly without Shadow’s help.”  Snort.  Gilgamesh swore he metasensed Shadow rolling his eyes.  “I can heal withdrawal scarring now.”

The room went deadly quiet.

“Impossible,” Sky said.  “We can’t do mind work.”  If Crows could do mind work, then they could have fixed Sinclair without having to go on their crazy quest.

“It isn’t mind work,” Occum said.  “It’s emulated Arm self-healing.  Now, don’t you battle-boys get any wild ideas – when we’re talking muscles and broken bones, the trick’s no better than what we Crows can already do.  However, for intractable problems such as adhesion scars, organ regeneration and physical brain damage – such as withdrawal scarring – it’s the
boss
.”

“That’s wonderful news,” Sinclair said.  “Can we fix our male commoners with it?”

“Of course, you overgrown knot,” Occum said.  “That’s what I developed it for.”

“Can you teach Sky this trick?” Autumn Maybray said.  As one of only three women in the room, and a representative of a Focus household rather than a Noble Barony, she seemed somehow
wrong
in this gathering of wild men, but the contrast didn’t seem to intimidate her.

Sinclair turned to Autumn.  “Whatever for?”

“For fixing household experimentation disasters.  Such as my left kidney, which currently
isn’t
,” Autumn said.

Occum snorted.  “If he can stand still long enough, I can teach him.”

“Thanks for the support, oh most puissant nearly a Guru Crow Master,” Sky said.  He juggled glass canning jars as he spoke.  “You all probably need to know that we’ve finished our end of the household redefinition project as well as the first round of documentation.  Based on our documentation, we’re starting to retune Charade” Focus Ackermann’s Boston household “with the help of her household Crow ally, Orange Sunshine.”

Gilgamesh turned away.  He knew this was coming, but the final news still hurt.  He and Sky had been wooing, to abuse a poor defenseless word, Focus Lorraine Rizzari for several years, the winner being the one to best show the way forward for integrating Crows with Focuses and their households.  His household dross-cleaning service hit the big time first, but its benefits paled before the possibilities of the household redefinition project.  The household redefinition project would save lives, unlike the simple monetary savings of Gilgamesh’s dross-cleaning service, and lives touched a Focus’s heart in ways money never would.

“Could you explain the last to me in small words?” Sinclair said.

“I’m training Sky as a Guru as well,” Shadow said, from his favorite dark corner.  “Another new path.  Like a Crow Wizard, Sky works with dross constructs.  Like a Crow Master of Nobles, he works at the subconscious level.  Everything he does is based on his enhanced metasense.  I even found a way for Sky to train other Crows to enhance their metasense.  Sky doesn’t have followers yet, but he will.”  Shadow smiled slightly.  “Likely trouble-making, adventurous Crows.”  The other Crows laughed.  Quietly, of course, as they were Crows.

“As you may have heard, Focus Rizzari and I have been working off and on for years on a project to tune a Focus household’s juice structure.  We tried all sorts of ideas that didn’t work.”  Sky paused, thoughtful, and then tilted his head to the side.  “Well, perhaps that’s too harsh.  Some ideas did work, but they didn’t leave the household Transforms in very good shape, as per Autumn’s comment about her kidney.  Some ideas only worked on a few Transforms, not the entire household.  The tricks behind the household retuning are the tiny juice patterns and dross constructs Focuses and Transforms naturally create, what we call
naturals
.  Out of the thousands of naturals the Focuses and Transforms spontaneously create, we found fifteen important to household functioning, and formalized them.

“The Focus and I finished the last hard slog a month ago, leaving us with months of busywork and the fear we would never be able to find a way to teach anyone else what we had done.  However, after Shadow started beating Guru into me and I found a way to augment my metasense with mathematically crafty dross constructs, I found a way to plow through the months of busywork in just a few days.”  The other Crows winced.  Sky’s metasense was legendary to start with.  “Once Focus Rizzari and I got our methods codified and written down, we ran some tests on Charade and found the tricks worked there, as well.  We’ve got a first draft of our operations manual out, and we’re working on a better one, but any decent Crow and non-pathetic Focus can make this work.  The only trick the Crow needs is that he needs to be linked to the Focus with an Affinity bond.”

“Back to Affinity?” Sinclair said.  Sky had tried Affinity bonds, by a different name, early on, and the attempt had failed in a spectacular fashion, driving a full quarter of Inferno into phobias and worse.

“Yes, and this time, it’s working.”  Sky waved his hands flamboyantly, the mason jars balanced now on his left knee.  “We’re doing now what you do when you bring a Noble or a Transform into your barony.”  Affinity links were ubiquitous among the Major Transforms, created when they shared senses or metasenses.  Normally they didn’t last.  “Lori does the manipulations, using my metasense to sense into both the juice and dross realms, and we personalize the link for each Transform.  I’m the Crow version of the household psychologist.  I identify the ties between juice structure and the Transform’s personality and behavior.”

Sky went on for well over an hour, describing the details.  Gilgamesh tapped his feet in impatience, as Sky had become even more long-winded.  He was scientific for once, though, his language now precise.  No more ‘glow’, it was all ‘metapresence’ and ‘juice structure’, finally separating the two, fixing a problem bedeviling Crow research efforts since Gilgamesh’s Philadelphia days.  Even better, in the entire hour, he didn’t say a single word in French.

“I know, this is a lousy sales pitch,” Sky said, at the end of the hour.  “Here’s the kicker: the retuning allows us to add four triads to Inferno.”

Gilgamesh sighed.  Four triads meant eight more women Transforms lives saved and four more male Transforms lives saved, in just one household.

Occum, ever the realist, dispelled their revolutionary dreams.

“Don’t get your hopes up.  This sounds good, but how many other households can we work with that closely?  These are Focuses, don’t forget.  They’ll betray you in a heartbeat, and it’s going to be years before Joe the normal Crow is going to be willing to walk into Jane the random Focus’s household and build the trust necessary to construct a household Affinity bond.  The only way we get away with it in the baronies is because we build it in from the start.”

Nobody answered Occum’s comment, and the room stayed quiet for over a minute.

Sudden inspiration drove away Gilgamesh’s fears and sadness.  “I need to learn this,” he said to Sky.  Ideas crashed through his mind, ways to make his Guru practice more than a sedate salon or artist studio.  “Will you teach me?”

Sky chuckled.  “Are you thinking about getting yourself a household?”

“I’m paying off Tiamat for her help in the Sinclair quest by helping her with the Clumsy Angel’s household.  I’m going to need something like this to get her attention.”  What better way to teach Crows about how to deal with Focuses than by introducing them to the country’s most interesting Focus household.

“Oooh,
her
.  She’s rough on Crows.  Luckily you already know her.”

“It’s because I know her that I know I’m going to need this.  Once she understands the benefits, she won’t be able to resist,” Gilgamesh said.  “How about a trade?  I teach you the gristle dross handling techniques in return for the tuning technologies.  If what I’ve metasensed about the dross buildup inside Inferno still holds true, you’re going to need them.”

“Deal.”

The people in the room applauded, Sinclair’s slow clap reeking of sarcasm.  The two Crows, divided by their love of Focus Rizzari, were back on speaking terms.

“This is all well and good, but aren’t we forgetting the danger that triggered this?” Gilgamesh said, anxious to change the subject.  “Tell me, Occum, how are you going to defend yourself if Guru Chevalier tries to disable
your
metasense?”

“Hah.  He can’t affect it,” Occum said.  “Not any of the Mentor-class wizards.”

“He’s right,” Shadow said.  “Occum works with the subconscious mind, his own most of all, and that’s where the metasense lives.  No one else would be able to wrest his subconscious control away from him without killing him.  Speaking of which, Gilgamesh, there’s a dross construct I need to show you that you’re far enough along to learn.  It will defend your metasense against disruption.”

Gilgamesh smiled, pleased.

“Occum, my old friend, you probably need to show these kind people what you can now do,” Shadow said.

Occum turned away.  “I suppose,” he said, and started his demonstration.  Occum raised his hand and flocks of birds descended on the house, he whispered and wild animals crawled up on his lap, he gave an order and the household dogs obeyed as if they had human understanding.  Illusions crawled from the pine walls, and he put the commoners to sleep with a touch.  The demonstration was magnificent, all extensions of the Crow Master skills, but writ large – he used symbols to manipulate the dross, tricks able to affect the body and the sub-sapient parts of the mind.  Working with Shadow, Occum took these skills farther than any Crow ever had.  Occum’s tricks had Sinclair bouncing in his seat with excitement and envy.

“So what do we do now, Shadow?” Occum asked.  “The mighty heroes have returned triumphant.  We wear our white hats and the problems are solved?”

“We won this round,” Shadow said, his voice sad from his shadow. “We did some things right, and Chevalier and his crew did some things wrong.  Our response convinced Thomas the Dreamer to lean on Chevalier and get him to quit harassing other Crows.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t decide the war, as there’s nothing in his agreement about harassing other Major Transforms, which he shouldn’t have been doing to start with.  Because we all work with other Major Transforms, it means that despite this agreement, we’re still targets.  I’m sure they’ll strike again, this time at our friends and associates.”