by Baen Books
Bare Snow gazed at her, nervously biting at her bottom lip. After a minute of fierce study, the elf took a deep breath. "I don't understand why you took me away from there. You don't even seem to know. You've gone place to place, asking 'who is this' and 'where does she belong' and being turned away. It annoys you not because you want to be rid of me, but because it makes you angry that my people act so coldly toward me." And as if her hands had a will of their own, she reached out to catch Law's shirt and nervously twist it between her fingers. "You've given me food, and clothing, and most importantly hope, and have demanded nothing back. And I don't—I don't understand. Why?"
Law had never been asked why. Most people assumed it was simply the way that she was; like the shape of her chin and the flatness of her chest. She looked more like a knight in shining armor than a princess that needed to be saved. Some assumed that she wanted to be a boy, but she didn't. Certainly it would have made a few things easier; like going pee in the woods. Under all the dirt, though, she was as girly as the next woman. A few people thought she might have some secret past, fraught with injustices and horror. In actuality, she had lived a fairly bland childhood.
"I like feeling strong." She finally settled on an explanation that felt right. "When you're dealing with your own problems, they seem massive and set as stone." Crazy parents. Being a star-shaped peg surrounded by round and square holes. Living on the fringe and liking it except for the fact that it made her feel like the little kid, hands always pressed against the candy store window, looking in but never able to go in and get what she wanted. Not even sure what she would pick if she could get in.
"When you wade into someone else's mess, their problems seem so small and fluid. Do this and that. Hit this guy. Find a new place for her to live. Ask around and find work for her. It all seems so—" She didn't know Elvish for "easy peasy" "—so simple."
Bare Snow nodded slowly. "Instead of being lost and alone and insignificant, it feels good when you're finally able to do something. Be important."
"Yeah." The gas pump shut off as the main tank hit full. Law shifted the hose over to her reserve tank.
Bare Snow grinned. "Good! Let's find the white automobile then!" She leaned against Law to draw in the dust on the Dodge's side panel. "Its license plate looked like this."
Most native Pittsburghers were fiercely proud if their plate number started with AAA, AAB or AAC. It meant they were in Pittsburgh immediately after the EIA took charge and the city became a district separate from Pennsylvania. Law had inherited the license plate along with the Dodge. When the wave of EIA workers and other newly arrived humans applied for plates, someone in the licensing department decided to jump the numbering system to BAA. This, of course, led to nicknames like B-plate and B-hole.
Bare Snow wrote "BAD 0001" in the dust. Either some B-hole had gotten lucky in the random assigning of numbers, or they'd bowed to inevitable and gotten a vanity plate that looked like it could be random. It was a plate you'd remember, though, and Law knew she'd never seen it. She was going to have to pull in favors to find the car. How many depending on what the B-hole had done. Would she just need to kick the shit out of this guy or did she need to get the cops involved?
"Was this the person that took you to that house? Did he hurt you? Steal something from you? Tell me everything."
Bare Snow's eyes went wide. "Everything?"
"Yes, everything."
Her name was Ground Bare in Winter as Killing Snow Falls in Wind. It was the root of all Bare Snow's troubles. Named within days of her birth, it was so fraught with ill omens that the temple priestess apologized to her parents even as she bestowed it upon their baby. After that, anything that went wrong was assigned to her presence. A boat lost to a storm? Bare Snow's fault. A red tide? A tsunami wave? All her fault.
Just as Law was starting to wonder if she'd accidently triggered a complete retelling of Bare Snow's life, the female leapt ahead nearly a hundred years. By then Law had finished filling up her tanks, collected her change, and nosed her way into the heavy traffic.
Five years ago, Bare Snow's mother had died while on a trip to Winter Court. At the time, the poor female had felt crushingly guilty. Had her cursed name killed her mother? Her father's death in the spring nearly broke her. Worse, the household she'd grown up in, that of her father's parents, wanted nothing more to do with her. They gave her a handful of coins and asked her to leave.
She had no other family within the Wind Clan. Unsure what else to do, she'd traveled to Summer Court. She arrived to discover that the town stood virtually empty until the Summer Solstice when the Queen was scheduled to shift residence to the northern capital. Bare Snow drifted through the vacant city, seeking a household that would take her. The Water Clan enclaves would not take her because of her name. The Wind Clan household refused her for her blue-black hair and stormy eyes.
After weeks of being rejected, a nivasa–caste male wearing Wind Clan Blue approached her in the street and quietly told her that she should go to Pittsburgh. She would find people that would accept her there.
At first it seemed as if the quest was blessed. The way to Pittsburgh was far quicker and simpler than she had imagined. She was able to board one of the cargo ships traveling the Western Ocean and then caught the train.
While she traveled she learned more about the Viceroy Windwolf and his household.
"He's of two clans, just like me. His father is Wind Clan and his mother is Fire Clan. He had the support of both clans to set up his holdings in Westernlands. He's asked a Stone Clan female to be his domi; although I've heard that has not gone well. She has yet to answer him. Despite his mixed blood, he gathers to him only the best to be his Beholden. Wraith Arrow. Dark Harvest. Killing Frost. His blade brother is the grandson of Tempered Steel and Perfection. And he holds Sword Strikes' daughter, who is mixed caste! But those are sekasha; they are perfection despite the circumstance of their birth."
She was sure that Windwolf's people would look beyond her mixed blood and cursed name. Her hopes, though, were quickly crushed. It had only taken her a day to get from the train station to the Rim and be rejected by all the enclaves, save Caraway's, which she'd been repeatedly warned not to approach.
"Why?" Law asked.
"Because of the clan wars." The answer seemed strangely condensed.
When Law was a kid with crayons, she always left the sky paper white unless she did a sunset of yellows and oranges. It was the mythical ocean that Law had never seen, the lakes and the rivers that were blue. To the elves, Bare Snow's answer probably would make as much sense as Wind Clan claiming blue as a color when there was a Water Clan. Bare Snow's last name was Wind; why shouldn't she go straight to the head of the clan in the Westernlands? How did she end up on the other side of the city?
"I had always thought that how my parents met was romantic: a chance meeting on a desolate island. I realize now that the years alone had been sheer torture for my mother. That she had been so lonely that she would risk her life to talk to another being."
Sensing that Bare Snow was about to go off into another long, long story, Law asked quickly, "So you talked with someone here in Pittsburgh? And they took you to the house?"
Just as Bare Snow was about to break down, a male approached her on the street. He claimed that there was a special area belonging to the Water Clan and that he'd been sent to take her to it. Law was fairly sure that was a complete lie. According to her high school civics class, as long as the gate was functioning, the city was to be wholly human owned. (Which always struck her as odd wording since if the gate wasn't functioning, Pittsburgh wouldn't be on Elfhome. That was the entire reason they called returning to Earth Shutdown.) Elves weren't allowed to claim anything inside the Rim. More importantly, humans couldn't settle outside of it. Newcomers liked to bitch and moan about that since it meant they couldn't go off and dig up emeralds or pan for gold in North Carolina.
"And this human, he had the Ford? The white automobile?"
&
nbsp; "Nae. Nae human."
"It was an elf?" Law thought Bare Snow had told her it was a human.
Bare Snow considered, screwing up her face as she thought. "Looked human. But he was not human."
"Huh?"
"I'd been to Summer Court. All the households I talked to had spoken in a very austere manner of speech. It is based on the Wyverns way of speaking, only more formalized. Here in Pittsburgh, there are only Wind Clan households, and specifically from those from the highlands. You can tell by the way they talk; it’s a very marked accent. Even the sekasha at Caraway's had it when he was using the Low Elvish. It means that the Viceroy must not use the very formal court language and thus his people feel no pressure to adapt."
Law wondered if she was ever going to find out how Bare Snow got to Fairywood. "I don't understand."
"All the humans I've talked with—Law, Ellen, Patty, Jon—they speak Low Elvish with highland accent."
Who the hell was Jon? Law didn't ask. She focused on the mystery human who wasn't a human. "This male didn't have the right accent?"
Bare Snow winced and spoke hesitantly. "It isn't that he didn't have an accent, it was he had too much of an accent. Not even the enclave elves speak as broadly. It was obvious that he was pretending. Once I started to listen closely, I picked up traces of old tongue, that no elf would ever teach a human, not even unintentionally."
"Are you sure?"
"The old ways have been rooted out. Young elves are not taught it. No old one would be so lax to use it without thinking."
"How do you know it then?" Law asked.
Bare Snow blushed and looked down at her hands. For several minutes, it seemed like she wasn't going to answer, and then she said quietly, "The gardener needs to know the weed from the flowers."
Usagi's place on Mount Washington was the kind of playful chaos that only a home with many small children and pets could achieve. The toys started halfway down the block, growing denser as Law neared the front door. She was sure that any home intruder would end up face down on the floor with a dozen Legos embedded in his feet. Certainly she needed to step over several large Tonka construction vehicles and two Big Wheels to get down the sidewalk. There was no yard to speak of; the two raised planters had given way to endless landscaping projects with said construction toys.
Bare Snow bent to examine the trucks, pushing them to and fro. She probably hadn't seen a cast-metal toy before. She was making motor noises for them just like a child would; maybe it was instinctual.
Usagi's door was painted Wind Clan blue. Law frowned at it, wondering if the white door in Fairywood had been an indication that Bare Snow was Water Clan. Why blue for Wind and white for Water? Law rang the doorbell.
After several minutes, the door opened and Moon Rabbit Warrior gazed up at Law. The little half elf was in her tweens but she looked six. She was naked except for a pair of butterfly wings strapped to her back and a pink tutu. Her long black hair was up in its customary pigtails, showing off her elf pointed ears. In the background, the commune's TV was playing a cartoon video at full volume. The sweet cinnamon smell of fire berries washed over Law; it smelt like Usagi had spilled an entire orchard of the fruit somewhere in her house.
As usual, Brisbane ignored all formalities and waddled into the house.
"Hi Moon," Law started. "Is Widget—"
"Mooooom!" Moon shouted at the top of her lungs. "It's Brizzy!"
"Is his mommy with him?" Usagi shouted from the kitchen.
"Yes!"
"Hi, Law! We're in the kitchen!"
Usagi's was a haven to human women who had found their way to Pittsburgh one way or another. They were in love with the idea of magic, elves, and a mystical other world, or maybe just completely disenchanted with Earth. Most of them had the reputation of being "elf groupies," sneaking illegally to Elfhome just to have sex with elves.
In truth, they were taking advantage of a loophole in the treaty. Elf DNA, starting with blood samples but also including children, wasn't allowed to be taken off Elfhome. Elf tradition stated that children couldn't be forcibly taken from their mothers. It created a little known and rarely exploited way to get permanent resident status in Pittsburgh.
It didn't guarantee a living nor did elves pay child support, (and Law wasn't sure if the males even knew of their children's existence). Usagi gathered together other female illegal immigrants with marketable skills to pool resources. They'd taken over an abandoned restaurant building and set up a commune. While each woman shouldered a shift of watching the children, they all also had part-time jobs outside the commune. It was part circus act, part logistical nightmare to get any one woman alone.
Law wanted the commune's newest addition, Widget. She was a cute-as-a-button African-American teenager who wanted to be a translator. She was whiz with the computer and had learned fluent Elvish online but hadn't actually managed to graduate from high school. Locals would hire someone without a diploma; Pittsburgh had a crying need for people with Widget's skills. The EIA wanted people who had doctorates in linguistics and they controlled the work visas. Unable to legally immigrate to Pittsburgh, the teenager had risked her life to swim the Ohio River at Shutdown in the dead of winter. (Of all the insane things! The girl had thought that river shark hibernated or something stupid like that. Biology was not her strong suit.)
Law had fished Widget out of the water and brought her to Usagi's. The girl hadn't gotten pregnant yet (maybe was still a virgin) so she needed to lay low. Law had been quietly connecting her with people like Ellen who needed part-time computer help and kept their mouths shut.
Law wasn't going to find out if Widget was home by asking Moon Rabbit. The little half-elf's attention was now locked on the porcupine. Nor was it polite to stand at the door and holler like a mad woman. She was going to have to venture deeper into the chaos to find Widget. "Kitchen" meant no work shoes and the like, so Law skinned off her rubber boots.
Bare Snow made an odd noise.
Law turned to find the elf pointing at Moon Rabbit, slack jawed. "Tauntiki."
Law only knew the word for "child" because Usagi often used it to call her children. As if summoned, Shield of a Thousand Leaves came toddling in after his older sister. Leaves had on a black cape, white mask and a top hat.
"Brizzy!" he squealed in a pitch that could break glass.
The appearance of a second oddly dressed child seemed to have broken Bare Snow. She went down to her knees to examine them closer. Which was good, because the herd of other half-elf children came thundering to the door to see Brizzy. They quickly decided that a new elf was much more interesting. Bare Snow disappeared in a wave of children, babbling in squeaky voice excitement. "Oh my god, her hair is blue--" "She's Mercury--" "No, no, it's long blue hair, she's Mars--" "What does your dress say?"
Leaving Bare Snow to the children, Law picked her way to the kitchen. The restaurant had been an expensive French cuisine place with a stunning view of downtown Pittsburgh. The dining room had been done in elaborate crown moldings with massive crystal chandeliers. At one time people had had to pay a hundred dollars for a plate of fancy food and amazing views. The elegant room now acted as the commune's common area. Normally it looked as if a tornado had dumped a thrift store onto a French palace. Today, though, it looked like several toy stores had been added on top of the usual chaos.
No matter what the family-area looked like, the kitchen was always spotless. Usagi had gotten the kitchen USFDA approved. The commune made the bulk of their money selling "Elfhome jams and jellies" on Earth. A surprise inspection when the kitchen wasn't clean would sink them. Usagi had replaced the restaurant's original swinging doors between the big kitchen and the converted dining room with dutch-doors. The standing house rule was the bottom half was always, always closed to keep out pets and children.
Today obviously wasn't normal for anyone, not just Law; the kitchen was a disaster zone. The sink had wicker baskets full of rinsed fire berries. On the two big commercial grade stoves
were several pots of bright red jam, a pan of boiling water with lids and a forest of thirty-three-quart water bath canners. With the exception of the stoves and sinks, every surface was covered with thousands of canning jars. The bulk were filled and labeled but scores were still empty. The heat of the kitchen was staggering. All the windows were open with box fans struggling to move the stifling humid air.
Usagi was a mini Martha Stewart: five two, blonde bob, and the business drive to make millions. Despite the chaos and heat, she wore a neatly pressed pink gingham apron and crisp matching kerchief on her head like some highly starched skull diaper. As usual, she looked like she could plow through hell while drinking tea with one pinkie raised. Just the sight of her always made Law feel like she was too tall, too awkward, and somehow all boy.
The feeling intensified as Law spotted Widget sitting in the far corner, right leg up, ankle obviously swollen by some injury, with an old fashion ice pack on it.
"Law!" Widget threw up her hands in an unvoiced demand for a hug.
Usagi was much more to the point. "Oh, thank gods you're here, we need help!"
Saving damsels in distress: the story of Law's life. "What in the world is going on, darlings?"
"Everything!" Widget smelled of Dove soap as Law gave her the demanded hug.
"It's been the week from hell," Usagi stated. "The nota inesfa were late coming in. The day before we started picking, Widget fell down the stairs."
"I'm so sorry!" Widget cried.
"It's not your fault!" Usagi waved off the apology. "I love the ferrets, and with this place we really need them to keep the rats out, but oh my gods, every time you start down the steps, there they are, wanting to play with your ankles."
A timer went off and Usagi turned off flames under the forest of canners.
"You didn't break it did you?" Law shifted the ice pack to examine the swollen ankle. If it was broken, it could be a hairline fracture.