by Wen Spencer
"I'm trying to see how deep the Discontinuity runs. I figure it is deepest at the gate—it's close enough for that."
Tinker clicked on her mouse and the meter fed its number into the computer: 100 yards. Already the arrow chilled to blue, blending into the rest of the chilled landscape.
"Why does it matter how deep it is?" Pony asked as the reel started to click out as the arrow sank.
Tinker shrugged. "Because I don't know what else to do at the moment. I'm just fiddling around, poking at it until something comes to me."
"Will not the current affect this measurement?" Pony asked.
"Oh, damn." She muttered in English, and then dropped back to low Elvish. "Yes, it will." He was right. There was no way to know what was drift and what was the weighted end sinking. "I'll have to measure the drift and correct the measurements."
At least it gave her an excuse to reel in the arrow and try again to thread it through the heart of the gate. She flipped on the winch. The slack reeled in quickly but then the line went taut, and the winch slowed.
"Well, I'll be damned," Tinker said.
"What is it, domi?" Pony asked.
"The arrow hit something."
"The arrow went where it was needed," Stormsong repeated.
There were times Tinker really hated Elfhome—magic screwed with everything. "I didn't think anything would be solid enough to catch on the line."
"The line is solid."
"Yes, it is." She gasped as the implications dawned on her. "Pony, you're a genius. The line is solid."
"I cannot be that smart, domi, because I do not understand why that excites you."
"Well, it is an important observation. An object from this reality stays in this reality even after sinking into the Discontinuity."
"How is this important?"
"I do not know, but it is something I did not know before."
"Ah. I see."
The object appeared on the thermal scan, an oddly shaped mass of slightly lighter blue. By the naked eye, she could make out a boil of disturbance beyond where the line cut into the earth, creating a sharp V-shaped wake.
"It is big, whatever it is," Tinker said.
Pony unsheathed his sword.
"I doubt if it is anything living." Tinker backed up regardless. Gods knew what she was dragging in from between realities. "It is at—at . . ." She had to teach Pony English or learn more Elvish. What was Elvish for absolute zero? "It is frozen."
The thing hit shore. For a moment she thought it was a large turtle, and then the line kept reeling, rolling it. Long-fingered webbed hands and a vaguely human-looking face heaved out of the earth, rimmed with frost.
"Oh gods!" Tinker leapt back and the other sekasha drew their swords. The reel protested the sudden heavy load as the frozen body hit solid earth, the line vibrating. She killed the power before the line could snap. "Don't touch it!"
"I think it is dead." Pony had his sword at its throat just in case.
"The cold itself is dangerous. Don't touch it directly, but get it out."
Tinker kept her distance. The sekasha looped straps carefully around the outstretched limbs and hauled the thing out of the liquid earth. The creature was half Tinker's height and had a turtle shell, but also long scaly limbs and webbed feet and hands. Long straight black hair fringed a bare, depressed spot on a humanlike head, and its face was a weird cross of a chubby monkey's and a turtle's. It wore a harness of leather with various pointy things that could be weapons attached to it.
Pony pricked the creature with his sword, eyed the wound. "It does not bleed. It is indeed frozen."
"Ooookay," Tinker said. "It is probably safe to assume that it will stay dead, even if it thaws out."
"An elf would." Pony sheathed his sword.
"What do you think it is?" Tinker asked.
"It's a kappa." A voice called from above them.
Tinker and her Hand turned, looking upwards. Riki perched on branches of an ironwood, high overhead. He ducked back, behind the trunk, as the sekasha pulled out their pistols.
"Wait, don't fire," Tinker ordered. "Riki! Riki! What the hell is this?"
"I told you." He peered out around the trunk. "It's a kappa. Ugly little brats aren't they? In Japan, it's believed that they get their great strength from water in that brain depression and if you can trick them into bowing and spilling out the water, they have to return to the water realm to regain their strength."
Stormsong signed "Kill him?" in blade talk. Tinker signed back "Wait."
"It's an oni?" Tinker asked. "Or an animal?"
"That's a blurred line with the oni," Riki said. "I think you would call it oni—they're fairly clever in a homicidal way. The greater bloods made them by mixing animals with lesser bloods, just like Tomtom did with Chiyo. Legend has it that they used monkeys and turtles—a pretty sick mix, if you ask me."
"I didn't see any while we were making the gate."
"There aren't any in Pittsburgh. They're clever, but not enough to pass as a human."
"So you're saying it came through the gate?"
"The oni use them for special ops; they're strong swimmers and wrestlers."
Tinker looked back into the Discontinuity, the slow drift of blue mist. What were the oni up to? Were they just testing these strange waters to see where they led—or were they trying to salvage the gate?
Then again, was Riki telling the truth that there were no kappa in Pittsburgh?
"What are you doing here, Riki?"
"I need to talk to you."
"Talk? Talk about what? How can I even trust anything that comes out of that lying mouth of yours?"
"I'm sorry, Tinker, about everything that happened. I really am. I know you're pissed as hell at me, but I need to talk to you about the dragon."
"What dragon?"
"The one that attacked you. The one I pulled off you. The one that might have killed you and all your people if I hadn't called it."
"So it was a dragon?"
"Not an Elfhome dragon, but yes, a dragon."
"An Onihida dragon?"
"What does it matter where it's from? It's a freaking dragon. Can we just move on?"
"Just answer the fucking question!" she shouted at Riki. "It's rather simple. Was it an Onihida dragon?"
Riki paced the limb like an agitated crow. "For a long, long time dragons were worshipped as gods, both on Earth and Onihida. They lived in 'the heavens' and had great powers that they often used to help humans and tengu alike. All the legends about dragons go on about the heavens and traveling from to Onihida or Earth and back. What that mystical shit might have actually been talking about is travel between universes. So dragons may be native to Onihida—or might be from someplace else. I don't know."
If Riki had told her the truth about his childhood, he was raised on Earth and probably was less in tune with the mystical than she was. Not that she was particularly "in tune."
"The dragon cast an oni shield spell." She pointed out the flaw in Riki's "not from Onihida" logic.
"No, that's not oni magic, it's dragon magic. The oni true bloods figured out how to enslave dragons and stole their magic."
So he said—but how could she know if he was telling the truth? "Dragon magic? Oni magic? What's the difference?"
"Originally oni magic was only bioengineering, just like the elves."
"So the solid hologram stuff? Like your wings?"
"That's dragon magic."
"And the tengu? They're both oni and dragon magic?"
Riki did an angry little hop. "Tinker! I just want to ask you one simple question, not give you a history lesson."
"What do you want, Riki?"
"The dragon—when it attacked you—did it mark you with a symbol or tattoo or something like that?"
"Strange that you ask, but yeah, it put one right here." She half turned and patted her butt cheek. "It says, 'Kiss my ass.'"
Stormsong snickered.
"I know how pissed you must be, Ti
nker. Believe me, if this weren't important, I wouldn't come anywhere near you."
She scoffed at that. "What does this mark do?"
"So it marked you?" Judging by the excitement in his voice, it was very important to him.
Stormsong shoved Tinker suddenly behind her and activated her shields with a shout. At the movement, Riki jerked back out of sight. A second later, a bullet struck the tree trunk where Riki had been standing, ricocheted, and struck Stormsong's shield.
"Shields, domi." Pony triggered his own and pulled his sword.
Tinker felt a kick of magic from the west. She forced herself to find her center and cast the trigger spell. Her heart was pounding as the wind wrapped around her.
Sekasha emerged from the forest shadows; their wyvern armor and tattoos were the black of the Stone Clan. Five in all—a full Hand, the back two acting as Shields, which meant they had someone to guard. They halted some twenty feet off, tense and watchful.
"Lower your weapons," a female shouted in High Elvish.
"Lower yours! This is Wind Clan holding!" Tinker shouted angrily.
"It's a royal holding," The Stone Clan's domi came out from behind one of the ironwoods. "And you're conversing with the enemy."
The domi was short for an elf, several inches shorter than her sekasha, but willowy graceful as any other high-caste female Tinker had ever seen. She wore an emerald green underdress and an overdress with a forest of wildly branching trees over it. Her hair was gathered into elaborate braids, dark and rich as otter fur, twined with emerald ribbons and white flowers. Two small gleaming orbs circled around her, like tiny planets caught in her gravity.
"Yeah, I was talking to him." Tinker almost dropped her shield but then she realized that her sekasha hadn't put away their swords. "It's a good way to find out things you don't know. Like who are you?"
"Hmm, short and vulgar—you must be Wolf Who Rules' domi. What was your name again? Something unpronounceable."
"This is one of my issues from court," Stormsong murmured in English. "Lowest ranking introduces themselves first; it's a matter of honor. You outrank her, so she should go first. She's trying to provoke you since she can't call insult; you are still under the queen's protection."
"Fuck that. Who the hell is she?"
"Her name is Jewel Tear on Stone. She and the rest of the Stone Clan arrived this morning."
"Is she right about this being a royal holding now?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Shit!"
"You are talking to me, not her." Jewel Tear picked her way gracefully toward Tinker. Despite the sweltering heat and her long gown, there was no sweat on her creamy white skin. "You are Wolf Who Rules' domi? Tinkle? Thinker?"
Screw this. "Can you introduce us, Stormsong?"
"Me doing it would be a breach of etiquette and be considered extremely rude."
"Good. Do it."
Stormsong executed an elegant bow and said. "Jewel Tear on Stone, this is our Beloved Tinker of Wind."
Amazing how they all reacted as if she had slapped Jewel Tear. All the Stone Clan sekasha moved forward as if to attack.
"Hold," Jewel Tear snapped. She glared at Tinker for a moment, but then murmured, "You are such a rude little beast. I don't know if I should be flattered or horrified that Wolf Who Rules chose you after I cut him loose."
Tinker glanced to Stormsong, who nodded slightly, confirming that yes this was an old girlfriend of Windwolf's. Well, if it was a battle of wits that this bitch wanted, she'd come to the right place. "That proves what they say."
"Which is?"
"Only an idiot would turn down Wolf Who Rules."
"Your arrogance is only matched by your ignorance."
"I'd rather be unlearned than moronic—since it's so much easier to cure."
"When Prince True Flame learns of your treason, he will cure that arrogance too."
"I might have been talking to the tengu—but you let him get away." Tinker pointed out.
Jewel Tear spoke a spell and made a motion, and magic pulsed underfoot, pushing up through the ground, the low ferns, and then the trees to the very ends of the leaves. Tinker felt the ten sekasha standing around them, even Rainlily standing behind her. She and Jewel Tear echoed differently—their domana shields creating the change, or maybe their innate magical talents. Around them there were birds and animals unseen but now sensed.
She didn't, however, feel Riki—and by her angry look,—neither did Jewel Tear.
"Horse piss!" Jewel Tear hissed quietly.
"I was trying to get as much information out of the tengu as I could." Tinker rubbed Jewel Tear's nose in it. Interestingly, the female didn't take it gracefully.
"The oni subverted you when they held you prisoner."
"No, they did not." Pony answered the charge. "I stand as witness to my domi: by my blood and my blade, she never bowed her will to them."
There was noise of something coming through the woods toward them. Jewel Tear triggered her sonar spell again and the forest was alive with sekasha moving toward them, and at least two other domana. Tinker was going to have to learn that spell.
"True Flame is coming. We'll see what he has to say."
A wave of red washed around them as Wyverns surrounded them, and then, comfortingly, a tight knot of blue as True Flame and Windwolf entered the clearing. Jewel Tear dropped her shields, so Tinker followed suit.
True Flame glanced at the kappa all but forgotten on the ground, and then to Tinker and Jewel Tear. "What is going on here? Where did that kappa come from?"
"I pulled that out of the Ghostlands." Tinker stepped forward and gave it a slight kick to demonstrate it was frozen solid. "The Ghostlands must have instantly sucked the body heat out of it."
"She was talking with a tengu." Jewel Tear indicated the empty treetops.
"Yes, I was." Tinker saw no point in denying it. "We have a history together. He betrayed me to the oni and I beat the snot out of him for it. He found me and started the conversation."
"What did you speak about?" True Flame asked.
"I'm not sure what he wanted—they nearly killed me shooting at him."
Windwolf had moved between Jewel Tear and Tinker just as a sekasha would, his shields still up so he seemed to shimmer with anger. With Tinker's explanation, he took a step toward Jewel Tear. "How dare you?"
Jewel Tear jerked up her chin. "That was an unfortunate and unforeseeable accident. Forgiveness, Tinker ze domi."
Tinker nodded but Windwolf shook his head.
"If you harm my domi," Windwolf growled, "It will not be the Fire Clan that you'll be answering to."
"Wolf Who Rules—" True Flame snapped.
"I will not suffer future 'unfortunate' accidents. There will be no forgiveness."
True Flame studied Windwolf for a moment and then nodded. "That is your right."
Windwolf caught Tinker's hand. "Come." And he pulled her out of the clearing.
"Wait, my stuff."
"Leave it."
"No!" She jerked her hand free. "I'm not done here."
"You are for right now."
"No, no, no. I'm sick of this. Come here, go there, do this. My grandfather died five years ago, thank you, and I was happy making decisions for myself."
"These are royal holdings now." Windwolf swept a hand to take in the whole valley. "I cannot make her leave."
"So you're making me?" Tinker cried.
"Yes."
"No."
"Beloved. I do not trust her. I cannot stay here and watch over you now and I cannot make her leave."
As always, he seemed to cover all the options—leaving her no good choice but to do what he wanted.
This time she shook her head. "No. Again and again, you don't tell me enough to form my own options. All I know are your options and I'm not playing that anymore."
"Be reasonable."
"Reasonable? What is reasonable about taking the smartest person in this city and making them deaf and blind? I'm su
pposed to walk away from my work, leaving behind my currently irreplaceable equipment, because some female from the other side of the world is not playing nice in my backyard?"
"I told you that I cannot stay and I cannot make her leave."
"And those are the only options because they're the only ones you have thought of? You know, if I had a level playing field I could come up with options of my own."
