by Wen Spencer
“So, what’s this puzzle that you can’t figure out that you’ve brought me?” Lain proved that she was two steps in front of Tinker.
Stormsong had loaned Tinker a canvas messenger bag to carry the DNA spell sheets. Tinker spread them out on the butcher-block topped island as she explained how the oni had kidnapped the Stone Clan children.
“I’m afraid that the oni might have done something to the kids. It’s horrible to say this, but the best thing we can hope for is that the oni simply bred them with an animal. The hospice made sure that’s not a worry anymore. Considering what the oni did with the tengu—transforming an entire generation of humans into half-crows—I’m afraid of what the worse could be.”
Lain picked up the first sheet and studied it intently. “These look like DNA scans.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Lain picked up another and studied the two side by side. “It’s against the treaty to cull any genetic samples from elves.”
“I don’t think the oni care.”
Lain gave her a dark look. “I have nothing to compare these with. Are you even sure these are from the children?”
“Um, no.”
Lain sighed. “First you’re going to have to get DNA samples from the children and see if these are indeed matches. And it has to be you—I can’t do it.”
Tinker decided not to point out that the treaty no longer existed. If someone was going to get in trouble for this, she wanted it to be her.
“While you’re at it, any other baseline samples you can get me would be good. I would have to build an entire index to see what is normal before I can tell if there’s anything abnormal.”
Tinker winced. The elves were not going to like that. “I’ll see what I can do.”
15: Sacred Heart
If Oilcan really didn’t want to move, he probably could have sic’d Tinker on his condo board, but to be truthful, he had a three-bedroom condo because he liked having space for himself. It would be only a matter of time before having the five kids crowded in with him would drive him nuts.
He needed a much bigger place. He needed someplace like the abandoned hotel that he grew up in. Last time he checked, it was still standing empty. Nothing, however, could get him to brave the spring floods on Neville Island again. He had the barn in the south hills where he often did art, but it was very isolated. He didn’t want to drag the kids out where they’d be vulnerable to oni. The remote barn would probably give them nightmares.
If they were going to open an enclave, then it would probably be best to be out by the other enclaves. He knew it was the custom of incoming elves to go from one enclave to the next until they found one with space still available.
Once he started to actually think “enclave” the type of building became clearer in his mind. It would need a large public dining room, a hefty kitchen, multiple bathrooms, sleeping rooms for guests and separate sleeping quarters for the kids. Too bad he couldn’t just move the hotel from Neville Island out to Oakland.
There was a building, though, in Oakland that always reminded him of the hotel.
The oni had launched an attack on the enclaves from a house across the street from the faire ground. The elves had evacuated all the buildings and proceeded to level the block. The last building on the street had been a private high school before Pittsburgh first traveled to Elfhome. The lack of high school age kids had forced the school to close and it had been turned over to the EIA. It seemed to Oilcan that someone had been squatting in it over the years, but they would have been evicted along with the rest of the street.
“Blue Sky, have they torn down Sacred Heart High School?”
“Not yet.”
The elves were tearing down the buildings to keep the oni at arm’s length. Surely they wouldn’t mind if someone they could trust moved in.
#
Oilcan was less sure about his decision as he drove up to Sacred Heart. The east side of the street had stayed on Earth; it had been replaced by virgin forest that pressed up against the edge of the ruined sidewalks. The ironwood trees had been cut back for over a mile to create a wide-open field that made up the Faire grounds and doubled for safe tethering for the living airships. Flocks of indi, Elfhome’s near cousins to goats, were out grazing, splashes of white against the green. When he thought of this street, the idyllic faire grounds were what came to mind.
Less than a month ago, the west side of the street had been lined with stately brownstone townhomes. The houses had been reduced to rumble, making the street look like a war-zone. He never realized how much this street meant to him until he gazed at the ruin. The juxtaposition between faire grounds and brownstones had been idealization of the humans of Pittsburgh living beside the elves of Elfhome—and the war had torn it to shreds.
Baby Duck tumbled out of the Rolls, pointed excitedly at the indi and took off running. The others got out, milled about and then reluctantly followed. The indi had laedin warriors keeping watch over them to fend off wargs and oni. Blue Sky was along to make sure the Wind Clan adults behaved toward the Stone Clan children.
Oilcan was glad that the kids would be distracted as he checked out Sacred Heart.
The high school was a solid three-story brick building. The first floor windows were narrow as arrow slits but higher floors had huge bay windows that promised lots of natural light. Wide stone steps led up to an arched doorway. At one time a stout oak door had protected the opening, but it was laying in pieces in foyer.
Apparently the previous occupants had been oni. Bullet holes peppered the plaster in the foyer. The stone floor was smeared with blood, showing that the oni had been killed and their bodies been pulled from the building. Judging by the amount of blood dried on the carpet in the cavernous room to the right of the foyer, a sekasha had beheaded two or more oni and their bodies had gushed out all of their blood. Flies buzzed lazily through the air and the bloodstain writhed with maggots.
Oilcan steeled himself against the blood and explored deeper into high school. The building was everything he hoped, although hip deep in garbage. How did the oni live here without attracting notice? Were some humans this disgusting that no one noticed what animals the neighbors were? The volume of work needed to make the place livable was daunting. Still the bones were good. The first floor had three huge rooms that been a gym, library, and dinning room, a small warren of offices, two bathrooms and an industrial grade kitchen. The large backyard was already fenced in by a high brick wall, although piled with garbage. The twenty classrooms on the upper floors were large, littered with clothes but had sunshine streaming in through big, dirty windows. While the urine-soaked bathrooms lacked showers, there were enough of them that he could easily turn one into an elfin bathing room. The roof showed no signs of leaking. No one had gutted the cooper pipes. The hot water tanks were sound. The heating system had been upgraded in the last quarter century. The only glass that needed replaced was in the lower, smaller windows—they’d been smashed outward during the fight.
His grandfather always said that you needed a plan for everything from baking a cake to total global domination. He’d drummed project management into both of his grandchildren. Again and again, Tinker had used her training to change the world: from creating hoverbike racing to defeating the entire oni army single-handedly. Oilcan had always kept his projects smaller and more personal. This was going to be the largest project he had every taken on. Still, the key to any project was to break it into small manageable steps.
First things he would need were a chalkboard (this was a school after all,) chalk, and every dumpster he could get his hands onto.
#
The third floor of the school, Oilcan decided, would be the “family” level, while the guest rooms could be on the second. He picked out the room at the head of the stairs for himself. From it, he could keep watch over all the comings and goings. He’d cleared a path to the chalkboard and started sketching out a plan on how to make the kid’s life right.
There was no way he could get the building cleaned all at once, so he needed to prioritize the rooms. He would also have to fix the front door and make sure the back door locked tightly and any other entrances were secure. Utilities were on, but he wasn’t sure if all the light fixtures worked—he should check those before it got dark.
The building was silent except for the scratch of his chalk, so he jumped when someone said directly behind him, “I had no idea that project management was genetic.”
Last time Oilcan had seen Riki Shoji, the tengu was still pretending to be a human physics grad student that lucked into a job at Tinker’s salvage yard. All that remained of the disguise was the tone and cadence of Riki’s voice—a wry sense of humor that scraped along the baritone registry. If it wasn’t for voice, Oilcan won’t have recognized the tengu warrior as Riki. He stood in the door like a dark angel, wingtips brushing the doorframe. From the machine gun on his hip to the steel fighting spurs on his bird-like feet, there was nothing of the witty scholar Oilcan had called friend.
The only other person that ever triggered so many conflicting emotions in Oilcan—most of them negative—was safely dead by Pony’s hand. There was a point, just a few days ago, when Oilcan was sure he would kill Riki given a chance. That was before he found out that the oni had been holding Riki’s six-year-old cousin Joey as hostage.
It was an uncomfortable feeling knowing that Oilcan had the luxury of never having to decide how far he would go to protect Tinker. He never had to kill someone. He never had to betray someone that trusted him. If faced with the same choice, could he have saved Tinker by allowing the oni to torture someone that trusted him? Especially now that he intimately knew the horrors that the oni could inflict? Oilcan couldn’t even imagine choosing either and staying sane.
Rage had been wonderfully simple compared to what Oilcan felt now.
“What are you doing here?” Oilcan growled.
The tengu shifted uneasy. “I heard that you ended up with the kids we rescued yesterday.”
Oilcan took a deep breath and let it out. He knew that the tengu had been instrumental in the rescue but he didn’t know that Riki had been involved. Tinker had told him that as part of the Chosen bloodline, Riki had been considered the leader of the tengu prior to Jin’s return. It was why the oni kidnapped Joey Shoji; it gave them a hold on all the tengu through Riki. It would make sense for Riki to lead an assault instead of Jin. “And?”
“I’ve stayed at your place. It was okay for two, but way too small for six. I figured you needed help moving.” Riki nudged the mounds of trash that threatened to block the door. “Looks like you could use a lot of help.”
Oilcan scoffed and turned back to the chalkboard. What had he been writing? “Wish” was all he had written down. Wish he could go back to comfortably hating Riki? Not that he really was comfortable with all the rage he’d felt. It had felt like putting on his father’s skin.
Wish list. He needed to know what the kids had lost to the oni. If Merry was any example, the kids had pared their luggage done to what they must have to start a new life. If the kids were going to put the nightmare of their captivity behind them, they had to have those essentials back. Oilcan wrote “Barley: knives, Rustle: instrument.” Assuming of course Rustle could ever use his shattered left arm again.
There was a noise behind him and he realized that Riki had picked up a handful of the garbage and was carrying it downstairs.
Tinker had clearly forgiven Riki. She talked about how Riki had subtly protected her while she was held captive, and how adorable his cousin Joey was. Riki knew the oni; he knew what they could do to a child and what he was setting Tinker up to endure. How could Oilcan blame Riki for protecting Joey? How could he forgive Riki for hurting Tinker?
#
Oilcan still wasn’t sure how to deal with Riki when an odd tip-tapping in the foyer heralded the return of the children from the faire ground.
“Sama?” Merry’s voice echoed through the building.
“Up here.” Oilcan went out to the hall and leaned over the banister.
The children hadn’t returned empty handed; they had a pair of baby indi on twine leashes.
“Where did you get those?” he asked. Oh please gods, hopefully Baby Duck hadn’t stolen those too.
“They gave the indi to us.” Cattail Reeds said.
Blue Sky shrugged his shoulders when Oilcan looked to him for confirmation. “Tinker apparently put the fear of god into everyone. The enclave people were really nice.”
Merry wrinkled her nose at the smell as she eyed the trash-covered foyer. “What is this place?”
“This is going to be our enclave—once we get it cleaned out.”
The kids eyed the mess around them.
“Quiee,” Baby Duck said what they all clearly were thinking.
“Yes, I know it looks horrible,” he said. “It just needs some work.”
There was the rumble of a big truck outside and then the hiss of brakes. The first of the dumpsters had arrived.
#
Riki was in the kitchen, cleaning. He had slipped on the scholar disguise again; there was no sign of his wings or gun or fighting spurs. His sandals were so nondescript that they camouflaged Riki’s bird-like feet with normalcy.
Considering the emotional state of the kids, Oilcan was glad that if Riki was determined to be underfoot, at least he was doing it in the least threatening of modes.
“What are you doing here?” Oilcan whispered since the kids had followed him into the kitchen.
“First room on your list to clean is the kitchen,” Riki said evenly.
Oilcan scoffed and kept picking his way to the back door. “There’s been a change in priorities. I’m starting with the backyard.”
“Why?”
Oilcan pointed at one of the indi as it bleated as if in answer. He already assumed it would be days before the building would be clean enough to actually move into. While he could slip the chicks into his condo, they’d have to leave the indi here.
“Yeah, that could be a problem,” Riki said.
The backyard lacked any kind of a path to the tall iron back gate. He had to all but wade through the trash. Roach was waiting in the back alley, looking as soulful as the pair of elf hounds sitting beside him. Roach’s family handled most of the garbage collection in Pittsburgh. Their place was out by the airport in what was quickly becoming ironwood forest; they had to keep a pack of the massive dogs to safely operate their landfill business.
“Dude, you’ve got to be kidding,” Roach said in greeting. “You’re moving into this dump?”
“Probably.” He still had to check with Windwolf since the building was supposed to be torn down. The indi made cleaning up the yard a necessity regardless of the end result on the building itself. “Once I get it cleaned up and jump through a few hoops.”
The lock was rusted open—something else to put on his list—but the gate would only swing inward a foot or two before grinding to a halt on the trash spilling into the back alley.
“There’s a shitload to do.” Roach picked up a mangled office chair and tossed it with a deep clang into the dumpster still on the truck bed.
“Yeah.” Oilcan had been assuming that the kids would help, but as he moved aside the surface layer of trash, he was uncovering hidden landmines of broken glass and sharp rusted metal. He didn’t want the kids near the trash now. “I’m not sure how I’m going to do this.”
“I’ll call the team.” Roach gave him a worried look. “We’re still going race—right?”
“Yeah. It’s just going to be little crazy for a while.”
Roach laughed. “And this differs from most of this summer how?”
“Little crazy.” Oilcan measured with his fingers. “Instead of a lot crazy.”
“I can live with that. Tommy Chang called and asked if we were racing this weekend and if you’d be lead, and I told him yes. I’d really rather not have Tommy pissed at me.”
“I should
have my shit together by the weekend.”
Roach worked the hydraulic controls on the truck and dropped the big steel container within a foot of the wall. “You sure you want two more?”
“Yeah, out front so I can build chutes down from the second and third story.” The kids could work at cleaning out one room to sleep in if things turned sour fast with his condo association. The stuff in the classrooms seemed fairly harmless compared to the trash in the backyard.
“Okay.” Roach said and whistled to his dog. “Andy’s bringing the second one. I’ll tell him to drop it in front.”
#
There were ten tengu in the kitchen. Not a feather was showing, but they were unmistakable from the lean muscle builds, beak-like noses, and the flutter of nervousness that went through them as Oilcan walked back into the kitchen. The center island been cleared of clutter and they were gathered around it like flocking crows.
“Where are the kids?” Oilcan asked.
“Upstairs.” Riki pointed above his head. “I told Blue Sky to have them pick out rooms on the third floor and write their names on the chalkboard and make out wish lists.”
It was fairly down Oilcan’s to-do list, but the tengu weren’t on his plan at all.
“And the indi?” Oilcan asked.
“My little cousins have them across the street,” Riki said. “Indi are kind of stupid—they’ll eat plastic and other stuff that will make them sick. I figured it would be better to keep them out of the building until it’s cleaned.”
“Why are you doing this?” Oilcan growled.
“Because you need help.”
“Maybe I don’t want your help.” There was no “maybe” about it, but the logical part of him, the part most like his mother and so different from his father’s unreasonable passion, knew that Riki was right. He needed a lot of help to clean out the building and make it livable. He just didn’t want to acknowledge that Riki was right.
