by Wen Spencer
“We need to get her to the hospice quickly,” Pony said.
Rainlily swore softly. “That’s nearly five miles and on the other side of the river.”
“Take me Lain’s,” Tinker said. “It’s closer.”
Stormsong glanced back the way they came. “No, we have to move and we have to head into the city.”
#
Dawn was a blur light and motion, inexplicable starts and stops, and the sound of gunfire growing loud and more frequent.
There was a sudden crack of rifles and silence fell.
“Tinker!” Riki’s voice came from up high. A moment later he came winging down. “Domi! Tinker!”
Pony blocked the tengu male short of Tinker.
“She’s hurt?” Riki cried.
“How did you know to come?” Pony growled.
“We have lookouts all over the city. The one in McKees Rocks saw the Rolls go up. How badly is she hurt?”
Pony didn’t move out of the way. “We need to get her to the hospice.”
“I have a van close by.” Riki pointed in the direction of the car.
Pony glared at Riki without answering.
“Pony, trust him,” Tinker said.
“Yes, domi.”
#
Despite being Wind Clan healers, the hospice staff had always fallen into the “outsiders” range of the sekasha trust. The night had just shoved everyone down a couple of notches. Unfortunately the healers didn’t realize the change until they tried to use a pair of scissors on Tinker.
The poor scissor-wielder suddenly found himself face down on the floor. The following discussion was conducted in loud, fast and ultra polite High Elvish that Tinker had no hope of following.
“Oh Gods, not High Elvish!” Tinker cried. Everything was confusing enough without adding in a language she wasn’t fluent in. “What happened? Did someone hit him? Why?”
“They want to remove your shirt.” Riki seemed to be the only person paying attention to her, even though he was giving the sekasha plenty of space. He looked horribly out of place among the elves. He had dismissed his wings, but he was a head shorter than everyone else and the only scruffy-looking one.
It took her a minute to process, but when she realized that they intended to cut her Team Tinker T-shirt off, she objected. Loudly.
“It is just a shirt.” Stormsong said.
“It’s a very cool, limited edition shirt.”
“No belonging lasts forever.” Stormsong took the scissors from the healers. “And technically it’s my shirt, so it goes.”
It was gone before Tinker could form an alternate plan of dealing with getting it off.
Tinker had gotten to know all the healers at the hospice through one painful misadventure after another. Soothing Breeze of Wind was head of their household. She always seemed amused by how often Tinker managed to hurt herself. As Tinker gained sekasha, however, the healer kept her amusement more and more to herself.
At least, Tinker hoped that was why there wasn’t even laughter in the female’s eyes as she examined Tinker’s arm.
“I am so sorry but it is broken much worse than before.” Soothing Breeze used High Elvish but spoke slowly, so Tinker could follow it. “I’m afraid that it will be very painful to treat, ze domi.” And obviously afraid of the sekasha’s reaction to her pain. “It would be best if you let us give you saijin.”
“No.” Tinker growled. It seemed like every time she turned around, someone was dosing her with the narcotic. “Don’t you have something else for pain?”
Soothing Breeze glanced at Pony. Tinker couldn’t tell the healer was afraid that Pony would start lopping off heads or hoping that he’d just pin Tinker down and dose her himself. “Saijin is by far the safest we can give you. We need to set the bones, brace them straight, and then ink the healing spell into place. It will be long and painful. If you take the saijin, you’ll sleep through all of it.”
Tinker shook her head.
Soothing Breeze took hold of Tinker’s broken arm and pain jolted through Tinker so hard that it seemed like thunder. Tinker whimpered and all her sekasha shifted closer, as if yanked by a string. Cloudwalker put a hand on the healer’s shoulder.
“Forgiveness.” Soothing Breeze’s eyes went wide with sudden fear.
“I’m fine,” Tinker hissed. “Let her finish.”
“You should just take the saijin and sleep through this.” Stormsong said in English.
“No,” Tinker snapped. “Every time I’ve turned around this summer, someone has been drugging me with saijin. No way I’m not going to take it by choice.” She made the mistake of glancing at Riki, who been one of the people that had forcibly dosed her. Once to kidnap her, and another to keep her from realizing how easily she could escape. Judging by his sorrowful look, he was regretting the experience as much as she did.
The glance also reminded Pony of everything Riki had done to Tinker. He shifted next to the tengu.
“I’m fine.” Tinker growled, mostly for Pony’s sake. “Besides, saijin gives me nightmares that have the nasty habit of coming true.”
Soothing Breeze gave an apologetic look to Cloudwalker. “The pain will get worse.”
Oh joy.
“Just do it.” Tinker tried to brace herself against the promised pain.
She didn’t succeed.
It was like getting hit by lightning. Everything flashed white and she was only vaguely aware that she had screamed.
When her vision cleared, Cloudwalker had tighten his hold on Soothing Breeze and Pony had Riki pinned to the far wall with a palm to Riki’s chest. At least none of her Hand had drawn their swords yet.
“Leave them alone!” Tinker growled between clenched teeth. Her arm had been a low pulse of pain since she broke it; now it was hard, agonizing throb keeping in time with her heart. A whimper slipped out and a strongly felt, “Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.” If she made the healers continued without drugs, she’d probably just get Riki killed. “Get me the freaking flower.”
Pony snapped an order and one of the other healers fetched the glass jar holding a single large golden bloom of the saijin flower.
“Go home.” Tinker told Riki and then, because it seemed abruptly rude after all his help. “Thank you. Oh, and I need to talk to you about greater bloods when I wake up.”
Riki nodded but his eyes were on Pony, who still had him pinned.
“Pony, let him go.”
As Riki slipped out the door, Tinker held out her hand for the flower. If she had to take the drug, she was going to administer it herself. The sweet powerful scent only held bad memories for her. She steeled herself, praying that she wouldn’t have nightmares, and breathed deep. Sweet whiteness claimed her.
19: For the Win
Tommy and his cousins stormed the garage of Team Providence first. The building was completely empty of everything, even dust.
“We just not let them race!” Syn said as Bingo sniffed around the room, trying to find a scent.
Bingo shook his head. “They waited until the Post Gazette listed the teams. We provided the list after the teams all paid the entrance fee. The elves would see that as a contractual promise…”
“Fuck the elves.” Tommy snarled. “Okay, so to hit all of us at once, there had to be at least twenty of them. Were any of them part of Team Providence?”
His cousins shook their heads.
“Thirty tengu. We only need one. One little bird to sing.”
#
The tengu had at one time had been humans that lost their way onto Onihida through natural gateways. Gathered into one mountain tribe, they were conquered by an oni greater blood, who merged the survivors with the crows feeding on the dead. Typical oni stupidity—use what was at hand and not worry about the consequences. Thus the tengu were clever with languages, attracted to bright and shiny things and tended to flock together against their enemies. Like Tommy, the tengu had thrown in with the elves during the last battle, and won their limited freedom.<
br />
The Four and Twenty was the tengu bar in town. On a Friday night, it was crowded with tengu. Wading into it would have been an invitation for a full out war, with a good possibility that the tengu they wanted was not even in the crowd.
Tommy didn’t have his father’s talent. Lord Tomtom’s ability to pass an army invisibly through a crowd was the reason his father had been chosen to oversee the invasion of Elfhome. Tommy couldn’t completely mask a moving object from multiple watchers. With stage props, dark lighting, and concentration, though, he could pass as someone else in a crowded space.
He tore up one of his T-shirts to match the backless style favored by the tengu. With matte black paint, they painted a close approximation to the spell that was tattooed onto the back of every tengu. His black hair needed no work, but he wore a hat pulled low, to cover the fact his nose wasn’t a large hooked beak.
He startled Bingo at the door on his way out.
“Tommy?” Bingo sniffed a few times to verify his scent. “Why Riki?”
“He has some influence, so I’m going to use it. Besides, I can nail him cold.” They had worked with Riki during the summer, serving as a go-between as Riki spied for the oni. In the confusion following Lord Tomtom’s death, Riki managed to free his baby cousin and break free of the oni. Ironically it had given Tommy the courage to rebel.
“How are you going to know he’s not in the Four and Twenty already?”
“You’re going to sniff around the outside first. Still remember his scent?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
#
Four and Twenty was in the Strip District, giving Tommy reason to suspect that the tengu village was north of Pittsburgh. Tengu would fly in out of the dark on wings of glossy black feathers. With a word, they would cancel the spell that created their wings and walk into the bar. While Tommy masked them from the tengu coming and going, Bingo sniffed around both the front door and the back.
“Riki doesn’t seem to be here, Tommy.” Bingo drifted back into the shadows across the street. “Be careful. If you need me, just yell.”
The bar was crowded, but dim. Tommy avoided the bar. The people sitting there looked in too many random directions, and the mirror behind the bartender doubled his danger. Tommy slipped back to the corner of the room, trying to keep focused on his appearance while listening in to the conversations that he passed. He found an empty table without hearing one mention of racing. He wished he could take the hat off; it was muffling his hearing. Still, he could make out conversations that the various parties thought were under the general level of noise. He focused on each discussion around him in turn.
In the corner booth, four males were discussing the weather report for the next day. They made travel arrangements without indicating where they would be heading, but Tommy listened with interest. There were few places in Pittsburgh where tengu would find driving easier than flying. The racetrack was one. He didn’t recognize any of them, but as three got up to leave they called the fourth by name. Kenji. Babe’s cap bet was placed by a Kenji Toshihiko. Was it the same person?
Tommy caught Kenji as he counted out money for the tab. He slid into the booth and put out his leg, trapping the tengu into his side. Tommy said nothing, only glared; waiting to see if this male knew Riki.
Kenji’s eyes went wide. “Shoji, what are you doing here?”
“I’ve been worried about how things are going.” There, nice and vague.
The tengu male got a slightly guilty look on his face that he banished away. Oh, what is this? Something that Shoji—and ultimately—the spiritual leader wouldn’t like?
“The city is a powder keg.” Tommy poked at the tengu’s conscience. “One little thing and it’s going to blow to pieces. If it does, I’m afraid a lot of our people will be hurt.”
“Most of our people don’t go into the city,” Kenji said.
“The race tomorrow is sure to pull some of them.” Tommy said.
Again, another guilty look.
“I heard what you’ve done and I don’t like it,” Tommy said.
“Does your uncle know?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s only the one time. The only ones hurt by the phones going down were the oni brats. It was the only way to sucker them into a big payoff. They wouldn’t have taken a big bet at the long odds, and with each small bet, they would have adjusted the odds down.”
Damn right he would have. Unlike the people making the bets, Tommy didn’t gamble. Only outright fraud like the tengu could have forced him into losing money. He controlled the urge to rip Kenji’s throat out. He still had to find out how they planned to win the race.
The waitress came to collect Kenji’s bill.
“Let’s talk about this where we will not be overheard.” Tommy let Kenji lead him out the door, concentrating on keeping his appearance through the crowds. Once outside, he caught hold of Kenji’s arm and urged him toward where Bingo was hidden. His cousin gave a wolfish grin but stood silent as Tommy kept him invisible from the tengu. Once they were past him, Bingo quietly followed.
“You’re putting our people’s safety on the line to cheat on a race?” Tommy talked to distract Kenji as he led the tengu even father from the bar, where cries of pain wouldn’t be heard.
“We checked carefully. The rules allow you to switch out bikes up to the last minute.”
They’d found a loophole. Tinker had invented the hoverbikes, and up till now, was the only one that understood the blend of magic and technology enough to improve on the basic design. It was such common knowledge when Tinker sold one of her custom Deltas, Tommy could easily adjust the odds.
“I don’t see how you’re going to get your hoverbike past the oni brats.” Tommy hated using the words to describe himself. He spat them out in anger.
Kenji mistook his tone. “The dogs won’t be able to do anything. It took careful manipulations, but the Wyverns will be there—seeing what the newly found baby sekasha does in his spare time. We’re going to show up just before the first race, wipe everyone off the track with our bike, collect our winnings and leave.”
With the Wyverns unintentionally protecting them every step of the way. If Tommy didn’t get to the bike before they got to the track, there would be no stopping them without getting the elves involved.
Kenji finally noticed that they’d walk for several blocks into a warehouse district. He laughed nervously. “Are we walking back to the Nest?”
“Here’s far enough.” Tommy pinned the tengu to the wall. “Where’s the bike?”
Kenji looked at the hand pinning him, seemingly still unaware he was in danger. “I don’t know where they moved it to.”
Was he telling the truth? “Who would know where it is?”
“Look, you shouldn’t even get involved in all this. It could get messy. We didn’t want to get you or Jin pulled in.”
Behind Tommy, he heard Bingo shift with a scrape of boot on pavement. Kenji glanced toward the noise and went stiff with alarm.
“It’s an oni brat!” Kenji cried and tried to push Tommy aside.
“Yes.” Tommy lifted his head and dropped his illusion. “It is. Now, tell me, where’s the bike, or this will get messy.”
#
Unfortunately, they had to get very messy, but without learning anything useful. If Kenji knew where the bike was stored, he took the information to his death. After what they’d done to him, however, Tommy doubted that the tengu had ever known. At first light, they dumped his body into the river.
Tommy knew that his father would have raided the tengu village, taken hostages, and executed them for the surrender of the bike. He couldn’t. Even if he could bear to be that much like his father, the elves were watching him too closely. He’d be putting every half-oni in Pittsburgh at risk.
He didn’t know what to do. The race would start in a few hours and he didn’t know where the bike was being stored. The tengu had outwitted him so far at every step, so staking everything on a chance
to intercept it and destroy it would be stupid. He needed to act, not react. He had no proof that the tengu had defrauded him, while, for all he knew, this was a clever trap, forcing him to betray himself by cheating.
No, he needed a plan, one that the elves couldn’t object to. Kenji had admitted that the tengu’s bike could outstrip the Delta in speed. Speed wasn’t everything.
#
Tommy’s luck was good for once. John and Blue Sky were at the Team Big Sky’s pit at the race track, keeping to their habit of showing up early. The only sign of change was a basket of food from the enclave instead of their normal brunch of hot dogs and sauerkraut from the concession stands. John eyed him with faint suspicion as Tommy crossed the racetrack.
“I need help,” Tommy said.
“You?” John said.
“Yes. I put up all the money to rebuild my family’s restaurant to back my bets.” Tommy went on to explain how Team Providence had disrupted the phones in order to defraud him. “They have a new bike. It’s faster than yours. They plan on blowing you out of the water and bankrupting me.”
“It’s not my problem,” John said.
“They’ll take everything I own, including this racetrack. These bigoted frauds will be running the races; screwing people over whenever they feel like it. You think you don’t trust me—but if you really didn’t, you wouldn’t be letting your little brother race here. I run a clean track. For the last five years, I’ve kept this kind of bullshit out. You might be scared to let me anywhere near Blue Sky, but you’ve always felt this place was safe for him.”
John studied him, the line of his jaw tight.
Blue came to lean against his brother. “There’s nothing wrong with Tommy; he’s just trying to protect his family.”
“He does it by hurting people,” John said.
Blue shrugged. “He likes to fight. And so do I. John, what’s the point of me racing today if I’m not trying to win?”
John looked down at his little brother and then sighed. “Give me a minute to think.” He paced the pit for a minute. “Most of the racing bikes are stripped down so that they’re lighter. The Delta has a beefed up power plant and Blue is one of the lightest riders, so we’ve never stripped down the Delta.”