by Wen Spencer
Prince True Flame had suggested that if they recovered Jewel Tear before the Stone Clan sent more domana, everything would be fine. Tommy wasn’t going to leave it to the elves to find the female.
He circled Ginger Wine’s, considering all he knew about Chiyo, the oni, and what he had seen in the smoldering enclave. Chiyo had disappeared the night Lord Tomtom had died. Tommy had heard that Kajo wanted the pregnant female for the whelping pens. The kitsune abilities allowed the fox-tainted oni to wield a great deal of political power despite their status of lesser bloods. Normally Kajo wouldn’t have been able to cage Chiyo, but with Pittsburgh stranded on Elfhome she was fair game. Much to his father’s annoyance, Kajo had ordered Chiyo turned over to the whelping pens and its experienced midwives. The rumor was that if the kitsune survived the birth of her oversized puppies, Kajo planned to endlessly bred Chiyo to his kennel of wargs.
Something messed with his timing, making him rush the attack. One thing the oni were good at was waiting for the perfect moment—immortality gave them infinite patience when it came to hunting. What triggered the attack? The timing seemed randomly chosen—like something a human running on clocks would pick instead of the timeless oni.
And why had Kajo taken Jewel Tear? To use her as bait so the elves ran in circles, screaming at each other? If that was his plan, it was working.
The biggest freaking problem with this so-called war was that Kajo was keeping one step in front of the elves. What Tommy needed was the elves find the oni so that both sides would forget about his family.
Where the hell was Kajo hiding his army?
Tommy had known of a handful of small camps within the city, but they’d all been abandoned after Tomtom’s attempt to kill Windwolf exposed the oni’s presence. It was one thing to hide in the city when oni were myths, but now the humans were in the middle of a war they couldn’t ignore. Pittsburgh was a sprawling, half-abandoned city, but filled with eyes. Sixty thousand humans meant someone would notice masses of oni eating and sleeping and shitting. Even the humans should be able to smell a nest in this heat.
The oni had been gearing up for war since the first Startup. Thirty years was a long time to stay completely hidden, even in Pittsburgh. There had to be a main camp outside of the city. Certainly there were hundreds of miles of virgin forest in all directions. Prince True Flame might be right that the oni were taking Jewel Tear west, out of range of Spell Stones. Anything northeast of the city would be visible from incoming gossamers. Straight east was the train. . . .
Kajo had lesser bloods working the trains since the elves laid the last track. It would have been simple to load up a train in Pittsburgh, stop somewhere between the city and the east coast, and drop supplies to an oni camp. The oni could build as large a camp they wanted as long as they stayed out of sight of the train and incoming gossamers. Hell, if they stopped the train on one of the bridges, they could have used a crane and pallet system to load onto barges. That way they could ship heavy equipment without leaving a road for the elves to notice.
The odd timing made sense, too. Since Tinker had rattled cages at the train station, Kajo might be losing access to it shortly. Tonight might have been the last chance to move something risky—like a female elf.
If Tommy could find this camp, he could collide the elves and the oni together, and maybe get Jewel Tear back. Between the two, maybe his family would be left alone.
25: UNBOUNDED BRILLIANCE
Banging woke Oilcan. It sounded like someone was trying to break down the front door with their knocking. Oni wouldn’t knock, so Oilcan felt safe answering it. He slipped out of the safe room without waking the children.
The peephole showed a wall of sekasha on his porch. He recognized Windwolf’s First, Wraith Arrow, and Prince True Flame’s First, Red Knife, among the Hand of Wyverns. Red Knife stepped forward, eclipsing Oilcan’s view as the male raised his fist to knock again.
“Shit,” Oilcan breathed. Why were the Firsts of two clans pounding on his door? What could possibly unite them on his doorstep? The door jumped under the assault of Red Knife’s knocking.
“I’m here!” he shouted and worked the locks. “One moment!”
He jerked open the door. The sekasha had shifted slightly, and the three abreast were Red Knife, Wraith Arrow, and Thorne Scratch.
“Thorne!” he cried with relief and then realized she had her face set to the cold sekasha warrior’s mask. He’d seen it enough times on Pony to know that she was in full working mode. “What’s wrong?”
“This is him,” Wraith Arrow said quietly to the Wyvern First.
Red Knife gazed down at Oilcan, eyes going wide with surprise. “I know she’s tiny, but I did not expect him to be as well. Is this as tall as he’s going to get?”
The question scored a hit on Thorne’s face that was quickly smoothed back to warrior’s mask. “He is fully grown.” Thorne’s High Elvish was carefully polite. It was intimidating that even the sekasha were cautious around each other.
“He is older than Beloved Tinker ze domi,” Wraith Arrow added.
“Have you lost all influence on your domana that this is what you’re reduced to?” Red Knife asked Thorne Scratch. “Your clan was requested support, not offered babysitting.”
The muscles in Thorne Scratch’s jaw went rigid in anger, but she answered levelly. “I have sent word to my clan’s First that this is unacceptable. It will be rectified.”
Red Knife put a hand on Oilcan’s chest and gently but firmly backed him into the foyer. Sekasha flowed into the building.
“Forgiveness,” Oilcan said cautiously. If the sekasha were sparring with words, how long until they drew their swords? He didn’t want to be in the middle when the blades were drawn. “I don’t understand why you are here. Has something happened to my cousin?”
Wraith Arrow shook his head. “Domi has not been harmed, nagarou.”
Thorne Scratch all but ignored Oilcan in favor of keeping her focus on Red Knife. “This might be totally unnecessary.”
“Let us be done with it then.” The Wyvern waved a hand at Oilcan.
Oilcan’s heart jumped in his chest. Done with what?
Thorne Scratch caught hold of Oilcan’s left hand. With thunderstorms raging in her eyes, she molded his fingers into an odd position and lifted his hand to her lips. For a moment he thought she meant to kiss his fingers. Instead Thorne Scratch sounded out a long, drawn-out vowel. He felt an odd thrumming down in his bones, like he gripped hard to a big engine.
Thorne reshaped his fingers into another position and spoke another vowel.
The air pressure changed, making Oilcan’s ears pop like he just taken an express elevator in a skyscraper, and all around him the air distorted oddly.
Red Knife grunted while both Thorne Scratch and Wraith Arrow looked horrified.
“What—what just happened?” Oilcan asked. “What did you do?”
“What do you see?” Thorne Scratch kept him from moving his hand.
“There’s something—a shield, I think—around us,” Oilcan said. “What did you do?”
Thorne Scratch dropped Oilcan’s hand, and the distortion in the air rippled and vanished. She put on her warrior mask again, but the thunderstorm continued to rage in her eyes. “He doesn’t have the magic sense, but he retains enough of the genome to tap the Stones. He’d have to be trained, though, to use the esva.”
Red Knife laughed. “If he’s as clever as his cousin, he’ll pick it up quickly enough.”
Wraith Arrow still looked as if Oilcan had just dropped over dead. The Wind Clan sekasha wasn’t even trying to mask his grief.
“What is going on?” Oilcan struggled to keep his voice level. He could tap the Stone Clan Spell Stones? Judging by Thorne’s anger and Wraith Arrow’s grief, in the eyes of the elves, it changed everything.
“We’re trying to determine what is to be done with you,” Red Knife said, confirming his fear.
“What was the name of the one that started your bl
ood line?” Thorne Scratch growled.
He could understand Wraith Arrow’s reaction, but why was Thorne angry? “He went by the human name of Guillaume Dufae. He died a long time ago.”
“How long ago?” Thorne asked.
“Nearly three hundred years ago,” Oilcan said.
Red Knife laughed bitterly. “I was already a quad when he died then.”
Which meant Red Knife was well over a thousand years old and needed four numbers to count his age. Considering that perspective, three hundred wasn’t that long ago. Was that why Thorne was mad? That he hadn’t told her about his Stone Clan ancestor?
Oilcan tried to put it in human perspective for them. “We’ve considered ourselves fully human since his great-grandson, several generations back.”
“His true name,” Thorne Scratch said firmly.
“Um . . .” Oilcan pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to dredge up the name. Guillaume was a corruption of the Elvish name that meant “Unbounded.” What had been Guillaume’s middle name again? “I think it was Unbounded Bright—no, Brilliance. Unbounded Brilliance.”
A noise came from the direction of the safe room as the children gasped in discovery that that the foyer was filled with warriors. The sekasha glanced toward the noise, hands going to their ejae.
“It’s just the children.” Oilcan shifted between the warriors and the hallway.
Red Knife gave a dry laugh. “Your family’s courage is disproportionate to your size.”
“Courage comes from the spirit, not the body,” Oilcan said.
Red Knife nodded at the truth. The Wyvern First came to tower over Oilcan again. “How old are you?”
Oilcan learned a long time ago not to tell elves his age. A human never lived long enough to seem to be anything more than a child. “I’m an adult.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” There was no mistaking the edge in the Wyvern’s voice despite the politeness of the High Elvish.
Thorne Scratch gave her head a nearly imperceptible shake, telling him not to annoy the Wyvern.
Oilcan gritted his teeth and confessed. “I’m twenty-two years old.” It made him basically about five years old in elf terms.
Red Knife laughed, murmuring, “Just a baby.” He glanced down the hall again at the children cowering there. “Babies taking care of babies.”
“I am an adult now,” Oilcan stated. “My family is no longer immortal. I will not live beyond my doubles.”
“And yet you can tap the Spell Stones.” Red Knife shook his head and then turned to Thorne. “Stay with him until someone sane from your clan can decide what is to be done.”
* * *
“What’s happened?” he asked after the other sekasha had left.
“They’re dead. The oni killed them all,” Thorne said bleakly. “They took Jewel Tear. Forest Moss is not currently lucid.”
The gunfire had been part of a massacre. Elves that Thorne had known for hundreds of years had been cut down in the battle.
“I’m so sorry,” Oilcan said. “But I don’t understand how this relates to me.”
“If you can tap the Stone Clan Spell Stones, then you are Stone Clan domana.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are the only functioning Stone Clan domana in Pittsburgh at this moment,” Thorne Scratch continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “You are head of the clan.”
“No!” Oilcan caught her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Look at me! See me! I’m human!”
She studied him hard with her warrior mask on, but then she let the mask drop. She stepped forward and pressed her forehead to his. “I see you.”
26: PROVIDENCE
“Domi.” Pony woke Tinker in full dark. “The tengu have come to speak with you.”
She flailed in bed, momentarily confounded by darkness and the fact that her right arm was bound tight to her side. “Which ones?”
“It is Jin Wong.” Pony helped her sit up. “And I believe he has brought his entire household.”
Surely Pony wasn’t right; Jin’s entire household was all twenty thousand tengu.
“In the middle of the night?”
“You wanted to talk to them.”
She did? It took her a minute to remember that when they were splinting her arm, she had told Riki that that she wanted to ask him about greater bloods. Apparently Riki decided that Jin would have more information.
“Yes, I did.” Only, she wanted to talk to them in small, manageable numbers. All did not sound small to her. Now that she was awake, she could hear the rustle of wings, and distant drumming. “Get me some light.”
As Pony activated a spell light, Tinker stumbled into her closet to grab something to wear. She had on the blue cheetah-print cami and boy shorts, but she’d rather meet the entire tengu flock in something other than her Victoria Secrets. She grabbed a dress of deep green silk. She really needed to do something about her wardrobe.
Lemonseed was waiting as Tinker came out of the closet. “Domi, they are asking if we can cancel the defensive spells.”
Pony had on his warrior’s mask and gave Tinker a shake of his head, meaning he didn’t think it was safe to let down their guard. Lemonseed, though, was waiting for Tinker’s word.
When she had called Jin, he had come to her alone and unarmed, trusting that he’d be safe with her. He was asking her to trust him this time.
“Cancel them,” Tinker said. “And bring Jin into the courtyard. That way the overflow of tengu can perch on the roof.”
Lemonseed’s eyes widened at the thought of tengu on the roof, but she bowed and hurried away.
* * *
Tinker went out into the courtyard to find that all the spell lights had been removed, pitching the acre of peach trees into darkness. Black wings churned unseen in the sky overhead, masked by branches. Shrill flutes and thin tin gongs had joined the drumming, growing louder as the musicians came through the main hall.
Her Hand pressed in tightly around her, hands gripped tight to their ejae, ready to draw.
Small figures came spilling out the hall, carrying paper lanterns. Tinker lost count after the first dozen that swarmed through the courtyard, slowly lighting up the area as more and more moved among the trees. One came hurrying up to her. It was little Joey Shoji, dressed in a white tunic trimmed in red and carrying a lantern nearly as big as he was.
“Joey, what’s going on?” Tinker asked.
He pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh, Providence is coming.”
Jin had told her once that Providence was the guardian spirit of the tengu. As the Chosen, he was considered Providence’s child. From what she could gather, though, the guardian spirit was actually a dragon.
Did that mean there was yet another dragon in Pittsburgh?
Behind the lantern bearers came musicians. The flutes were shrill. The gongs looked like and sounded like battered cooking pots. The drums ranged in tones from high and thin to sharp and woody. They made a sharp-edged music with no discernible melody. Just as she thought musicians were playing completely solo to each other, they all sped up slightly at the same moment.
Finally Jin appeared, dressed in robes of white. He was dancing, slowly, mechanically, almost like a series of poses. Before each new pose, he would take a quick step forward, so that he was stuttering his way through the dark trees, like a series of still photographs.
Riki followed behind Jin, dressed in black, winged, armed with swords, and his face painted for war. A dozen armed tengu followed, all with swords but no pistols and rifles. Riki’s younger cousin, Kieko, was among the armed honor guard.
The possession included a small shrine being carried by a dozen males and a drum nearly eight feet across carried by another dozen. The big drum was settled into a stand; six drummers circled it and stood waiting. There was no sign of Providence. It seemed like an elaborate party to have without the guest of honor in attendance. Then again, if Providence was in Pittsburgh, Riki probably wouldn’t have kidnapped and
strip-searched Tinker two weeks earlier, looking for signs that she was Impatience’s Chosen. He seemed desperate for a new guardian for the tengu. Or was it that without Jin, Providence wouldn’t protect the tengu?
The thrilling near-discordant flute music suddenly stopped, and for a moment the only noise was the wind through the leaves.
All six drummers struck once, a single deep heartbeat of sound.
A second simultaneous downbeat. Then a third.
Then in a sudden, wild of assault of drumming, all the drummers, perfectly in time with each other, beat out one massive rhythm.
Jin moved to the shrine, bowed low to it, and opened the front.
Tinker gasped as she saw what lay inside the little shrine: a dragon hide.
Jin lifted out the hide and turned, holding the head above him. The hide settled over his shoulders, cloaking him from view. The flutes broke out in their shrill discord and the gongs clattered fast and furious.
Jin started to dance forward again, faster, but still in the odd stuttering poses. This time the poses made more sense. Each could have been a photograph of Impatience as the little dragon moved without the fluidity of life.
Tinker realized she had covered her mouth in horror and her hand was still pressed tight to her mouth. For one horrific moment, she thought that the skin might belong to Impatience, but the color was wrong: a deep gold instead of blood red. This was Providence? Or at least the skin of the tengu’s guardian spirit? What had happened to him? What kind of monster skinned a massively intelligent being? And why in hell had the tengu brought his skin to her? The elves’ insistence on burning their dead seemed suddenly sane and pure.
Jin the dragon danced in a wide circle around Tinker and her Hand. The big drum throbbed like a massive heartbeat against her skin as the flutes shrieked. The dragon head dipped and rose and turned in a parody of Impatience’s curious investigation of his surroundings. Empty eyes took in the night sky, the rooftops crowded with silent tengu, the honor guard kneeling on the ground, the little lantern bearers. Louder and faster the music rushed toward a climax.
