Wolf Who Rules

by Wen Spencer

  Tinker took the gum and let the taste explode in her mouth. "What's your point? Is Pony old or young?"

  "That is my point." Stormsong took a piece for herself and put away the pack. "He's the youngest of the sekasha, but he's your First."

  "Are you trying to confuse me?"

  "Anything regarding you, Pony is in charge, but he's the youngest of the sekasha."

  This was starting to make her head hurt. "Are you talking . . . seniority?"

  "Seniority. Seniority." Stormsong took out a small dictionary, flipped through it, and read off the entry for seniority. "Precedence of position, especially precedence over others of the same rank by reason of a longer span of service."

  "Oh that's not fair," Tinker complained. "You get a dictionary. I want one for Elvish."

  "We don't have such things." Stormsong put away the dictionary. "They would be too useful."

  Tinker had to put "Elvish dictionary" on her project list.

  "Yes," Stormsong continued. "Pony needs seniority over those he commands, which he doesn't have because none of us are yours. What's more, when the bullets start to fly, we need to know which way to jump. Pony doesn't need to think. But the rest of us—we have pledged our lives to Windwolf; it's him we should be thinking of—but we know that only Pony is watching over you."

  "I told Windwolf I'd think about this."

  "Humans have a wonderful saying: assume is making an ass out of 'u' and me. Windwolf assumes that Pony will guide you in your choice, and Pony assumes that you know all."

  "So you're doing it."

  "Hell, someone has to."

  "If it's Pony's job, shouldn't I just tell him that I don't know shit?"

  Stormsong gave her a look that Tinker recognized from years of being a child genius.

  "Oh gods," Tinker cried. "Don't look at me that way!"

  "What way?"

  "The 'what a clever little thing' look. It horrifies me how long I'm going to have to put up with that now that I'm an elf."

  Stormsong laughed, and then lapsed into Low Elvish, sounding properly contrite. "Forgiveness, domi."

  "Oh, speak English."

  "Yes," Stormsong said in English. "You should talk to Pony, since those you hold need to work well with him. Let me give you pointers he might not think of—he is still new at this. Blind leading the blind and all that shit."

  "You're not going to take 'later' as an answer?"

  "Kid, how splattered with shit do you need to get before you realize it's hitting the fan? We're fuck deep in oni, Wyverns, and Stone Clan. Now is not the time to be worrying about chain of command."

  Stormsong had a way of driving the point home with a sledgehammer. Tinker just wished she wasn't the one being hammered. "Fine, point away."

  "What all sekasha want is seniority. To be First. Failing that—in the First Hand." Top five, she meant. "Forever at the bottom is a bitch. Pony was wise to seize the chance to be your First once he saw what you were made of. You've proved yourself with keeping both Windwolf and Pony safe from the oni—that's what a good domi does—so all of us are willing to fill your Hand."

  "But . . ." Tinker swore she could hear a "but" in there somehow.

  "It would be best for all—" Stormsong paused and then added, "—in my opinion—that you don't choose from Windwolf's First Hand."

  "Why not?"

  "Most domana fill their First Hand with sekasha just breaking their doubles. The domana want the glory a Hand gives them, and the sekasha see it as a way to be in First Hand. We call it a vanity Hand. The thing is that most domana can't attract a Second Hand because not only is the incentive of being First gone, the sekasha of the Second Hand have to be willing to serve under the First Hand. Likewise the Third Hand knows that they will be junior to the First Hand and the Second. Adding into this is the personality of the domana: does the positive of being beholden to that domana outweigh the negative of not having seniority? Many domana can only hold vanity Hands."

  "Okay." Tinker had assumed that all domana had multiple hands. Apparently not.

  "Windwolf's grandfather, Howling, helped tear us away from the Skin Clan and form the monarchy that keeps the clans from waging endless war. When he was assassinated, his sekasha became Longwind's—but not as his First or Second, since those were already filled."

  "Ouch." Tinker wondered how this related.

  "Yes, it was a step down for them—but they saw it as fitting since they had failed Howling," Stormsong said. "Windwolf wanted his First Hand to advise him on setting up in this new land, setting up new towns and lines of trade, something he didn't think doubles could help him do. So he approached the sekasha of his grandfather's Hands and they accepted. It would make them First Hand again, but more importantly, they believed in him. Wolf Who Rules has always lived up to his name."

  "So, the First Hand, they're all thousands of years old?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay." So maybe she wasn't so good at guessing age—none of the sekasha struck her as older than late twenties in human terms. Tinker finished setting the nonconductive pins that would hold the spell level. "Can you take down your shield? I'm going to set the compressor spell into place."

  Tinker didn't want to risk brushing the spell tracing up against an active spell. Stormsong spoke the command that deactivated her shields. A slight pricking that Tinker hadn't really noticed vanished, making her aware by its absence that she had been feeling the active magic.

  "Thanks." Tinker took the filigreed sections of the spell out of their protective packing and fit them into place.

  Stormsong watched her for a few minutes before continuing her explanation. "It was his First Hand that let Windwolf pull a Second and Third Hand made up of triples and quads."

  "So why—" Tinker paused to make sure all the pieces of the spell were stable and level. "Why shouldn't I take any of Windwolf's First? Wouldn't that help me, like it helped him?"

  "It would help at a cost to Pony. There's no way he could be First to one of Windwolf's First Hand. Also, the First Hand are the ones that see you most as a child that needs firm guidance until you finish growing up. Lastly, they're all technophobes."

  "Ick!" Tinker picked up her cordless soldering iron and started to tack together the pieces of the spell with careful, practiced solders.

  "The younger sekasha won't bring you as much honor as those from Windwolf's First Hand but they'll be the ones that 'fit' with you best. When Pittsburgh appeared, Windwolf realized that he needed sekasha willing to learn technology—and that recent doubles would be the most open-minded. That's when he picked up his Fourth Hand."

  "You don't think Pony will know that they'll fit best?"

  Stormsong sighed. "Pony's mother, Otter Dance, is Windwolf's blade mother."

  "His what?"

  "Otter Dance is Longwind's favorite lover among his sekasha." Stormsong explained.

  Tinker was missing the significance. "Pony is Windwolf's brother?"

  "Genetically? no. But emotionally? yes, in a way."

  "Oookay." Tinker wondered what Windwolf's mother felt about it. Did she see her husband having a lover as some kind of a betrayal? Or did the fact there was even a special name—blade mother—mean that it was somehow expected! Certainly Stormsong seemed to think this was nothing hugely remarkable.

  "It has been assumed since Pony's birth that he'd look to Windwolf," Stormsong continued. "In my opinion—that assumption did what all assumptions do."

  "Make an ass out of you and me?"

  "Yes. Pony is fucking amazing, but neither Windwolf nor Pony seem to realize it. Windwolf still sees Pony as a child, and he's not!"

  Tinker thought about Pony doing exercises up in their oni cell, wearing only his pants—chiseled muscles moving under silken skin dripping with sweat. "My husband needs his eyes checked."

  Stormsong laughed. "I'm glad you snatched Pony up. As long as you don't do something to fuck him up, maybe he'll one day realize how special he is. Until then, he's going to overcompe
nsate for what he sees as his own weakness. Pony might point you toward someone from the First Hand and then try to bow out—all in the name of doing right by you."

  Tinker focused on the last of the solders, clenching her jaw in annoyance at Stormsong's comments about Pony and Windwolf. It felt wrong to hear anything negative about either one of them, like she was being disloyal. Really, what did she know about Stormsong other than she was one of Windwolf's trusted bodyguards? Besides the fact that she nearly died for Tinker?

  Tinker sighed as she forced herself to consider that maybe Stormsong was right about all this—that it was vital she pick out four more guards immediately and that Pony needed a good slap upside the head. She found herself remembering that Pony had waited without comment for her to decide to accept Bladebite.

  "Is Bladebite from Windwolf's First Hand?" Tinker tried to sound casual about it.

  Stormsong nodded.

  And if Tinker hadn't dodged the question, she would be stuck with Bladebite trying to control her. She sighed. "How do I tell Bladebite no?" Surely she didn't have to tell him "yes" just because he had offered. That would be a stupid system—but the elves never struck her as completely logical. "Can I tell him no?"

  "You can say that you don't think you fit with him. That's copasetic."

  Copasetic. Tinker shook her head, remembering the days immediately after she had become an elf—everything made more confused by the fact that Pony didn't speak English or understand the differences between the two cultures.

  "When the queen called Windwolf to Aum Renau," Tinker said, "why didn't Windwolf leave you with me?"

  "My mother is Pure Radiance and my father is the queen's First. They have not seen me for a hundred years and wanted me there. Windwolf thought it unwise not to bring me."

  Tinker stared at the elf in amazement. "The oracle and a Wyvern? What the hell are you doing with Wind Clan?"

  "I had—issues—with court. Windwolf offered me a chance to escape all that and I jumped. Considering what my mother named me, she probably wasn't totally surprised."

  Yes, Stormsong sounded more like a Wind Clan name than Fire Clan.

  It occurred to Tinker then what "fit" was about. She felt comfortable sitting and talking with Stormsong. Annoying as the truth was, Tinker trusted her judgment. And it would be good to have someone who understood what it felt like to be the outsider.

  "So," Tinker said to Stormsong. "Are you offering?"

  Stormsong looked puzzled a moment, and then surprised. "To be yours?"

  "Yeah. I—I think we work."

  Stormsong blinked at her a few moments before standing, the scrape of her boots on the cement loud in the silence that fell between them.

  "I can understand if you don't want to." Tinker busied herself checking the solders. All that was needed was to cement the spell into place, wait for the cement to cure, and the black willow could be safely stored indefinitely. Or at least, until she figured out what her dreams meant.

  "I want to be honest with you." Stormsong paced the perimeter of the room in her long-legged stride. "But it's like opening a vein. It's a painful, messy thing to do."

  Tinker lifted her hand to wave that off. "I don't think I can deal with painfully messy at the moment."

  "You should know stuff like this before you ask. That was the whole point of the conversation. You have to make informed choices."

  Tinker made a noise. "I've been doing fairly well lately blindly winging it through mass chaos."

  Stormsong scoffed and then sighed. "I'm probably the most misbegotten mutt puppy ever born to the elves. Most people think my mother made a horrible mistake having me. I don't fit in anywhere."

  "At least you stayed an elf, instead of jumping species like I did."

  Stormsong laughed. "There have been times I wished I could. Just be human. Lose myself among them. But a hundred years of sekasha brainwashing made that impossible. I can't walk away from it. I tried, but I can't. I like being sekasha too much."

  "Not to belittle your difficulties, but I really don't get the problem. You're a sekasha. I need sekasha. We work together well—at least I think we do. Or is it that you hate my guts?"

  "I would die for you."

  Tinker wished that people would stop saying that to her. "I'll take that as a 'no, I don't hate you' and frankly, I'd rather you didn't die. Now, that's painful and messy, and not just for you."

  Stormsong laughed and then bowed low to Tinker. "Tinker domi, I would be honored to be yours. I will not disappoint you."

  12: TEARS ON STONE

  At first glance, Turtle Creek seemed the same to Tinker. Sunlight shafted through the Discontinuity in rays of blue. Mist rising off the chill gathered into banks of blue haze and then drifted out of the valley, existing momentarily as white clouds, before burning away in the summer heat. True, royal troops showed up as splashes of Fire Clan red—thus the lifting of the ban on Turtle Creek—but otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. It remained one big hole in reality.

  Tinker led her Hand down into the valley to where they'd marked the trees. The first sapling they found had nine slashes in its bark—which should have meant it would be nine feet from the edge of the Discontinuity.

  "That looks like only five feet to me." Tinker fingered the mark, wondering if someone might have added slashes after they left.

  "Barely five." Pony pointed at the next tree along the edge of the blue.

  The tree was marked with seven slashes but the blue came almost to its roots.

  "This is bad." Tinker murmured.

  "Domi." Pony had moved on ahead and pointed now at a tree inside the effect.

  She joined him at the edge of the blue; there were four slashes in the bark of the ghostly tree. "Shit, the Discontinuity has grown. How is that possible?" She motioned to the sekasha that they were leaving.

  "Now what?" Stormsong asked.

  "I'm going to need some equipment, then we're coming back."

  Tinker scanned the valley with her camera's infrared attachment over the valley, watching the screen on her workpad instead of looking through the eyepiece. In one window, the video feed showed the thermal picture, and in other windows, programs reduced the images to mathematical models. At the center of the Ghostlands, she spotted a familiar circle.

  "Something wrong, domi?" Pony asked.

  She realized that she had gasped at her discovery. "Oh—this here—this looks like our gate. See, here is the ironwood ring and here is the ramp over the threshold."

  "It is lying on its side?"

  "Yes. The current probably toppled it, though I'm not sure what is causing the current. It might be simple—" Her Elvish failed her. Did they have a word for convection? "Heat rises and cold falls. Basic science. It's what makes the winds blow. I think this is the same thing on a microscale—like a pot boiling."

  "Why not like a pond freezing?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps because there's a pool of magic below this, heating the bottom, but it's losing massive amounts of energy before it hits the surface—thus the reason for the cold."

  "Ah." Pony nodded like he understood.

  "Do you see this point here? Right where the gate is lying. Can you shoot this arrow to that point?"

  "With the line and weight attached?"

  "Yes."

  Pony considered for a moment. "Stormsong would be better."

  Among the sekasha, Pony was considered the better archer. Her surprise must have shown as Pony waved over Stormsong and explained what Tinker wanted.

  "When I have to make a shot, I do it with my eyes closed," Stormsong said. "I see where the arrow needs to be."

  "Ooookay." Tinker handed her the end of the line.

  Stormsong attached the line to an arrow, nocked it in her compound bow, pulled taut the string, and closed her eyes. For a moment she stood there, aiming blind, and then let loose the bowstring. The arrow soared straight and true as if it had nothing weighing it down or trailing behind. The reel whizzed as the line s
naked out after the arrow, the numbers on the meter blurring as they counted up the feet. Near the point Tinker wanted, but not exactly, the arrow shot into the ghost ground of the Discontinuity. It appeared on Tinker's screen as a dot of red heat compared to the arctic cold of the land, too far to the right. The reel fell quiet and the line ran taut out into the Discontinuity.

  Tinker sighed. "Close enough for horseshoes and discontinuities."

  "It's where it has to be," Stormsong defended her shot.