Wolf Who Rules

by Wen Spencer

  Afraid that she'd fry any of her computer equipment, she had stuck to low-tech project management. Settling on the loading dock's edge, she wrote "domi" on her pad of paper and then slowly circled it again and again as her thoughts spun around the question.

  Without question, she was Windwolf's domi—the queen herself had confirmed that. Tinker had assumed that domi meant "wife"; for a long time she simply translated it as "wife." Later, she had sensed that it didn't mean quite the same thing. And Windwolf never used the English word "wife" or for that matter, "married." He'd given her some beans, a brazier, and a dau mark. She rubbed at her dau between her eyebrows, feeling the slight difference in skin texture under the blue glyph. What the hell kind of wedding ceremony was that? And nothing else? Hell, when Nathan's cousin Benny had been married by the justice of the peace, they still had a wedding reception afterward. Surely the elves did something to celebrate a marriage—so why hadn't there been something?

  If domi didn't mean "wife," what did it mean? When she had talked to Maynard two months ago about it, she'd gotten the impression it meant she was married, but now she couldn't recall the exact words that Maynard had used. What she remembered distinctly was how Maynard had been carefully trying to keep his balance on the fence between the humans and the elves. Had she heard only what she wanted to hear? Certainly it would make a neater package for Maynard if Windwolf had married Tinker instead of just carried her off to be a live-in prostitute.

  Whispering in the bottom of her soul was a small voice that called her a glorified whore. She couldn't ignore the fact that the only thing she did with Windwolf was have sex. Great sex. Wives did more than that—didn't they? Nathan's mother and sisters went grocery shopping, cooked for their husbands, and cleaned up the dirty dishes but Lemonseed handled all that for Windwolf. Wives washed clothes—Nathan's sisters actually had long discussions on the best ways to get out stains. Dandelion, however, headed the laundry crew.

  Without thinking about it, she started a decision tree, branching out "wife" and "whore." What difference did it make to her? She never worried about being a "good girl" but at the same time, she had always been contemptuous of women who were either too dumb or too lazy to do real work, using their bodies instead of their brain to make a living. Could she live with all of Pittsburgh knowing that she was a glorified whore?

  Stormsong squatted down beside her, took the pencil from her hand, and scratched out "whore" and "wife" and wrote "lady." "That, domi, is the closest English word. It means 'one who rules.' It denotes a position within the clan that oversees households that have allegiance to them but are not directly part of their household."

  "Like the enclaves?"

  "Yes, all the enclaves of Pittsburgh owe fidelity to Wolf Who Rules. He chose people he thought could function as heads and supported the building of their households. It is a huge undertaking to convince people to leave their old households and shift to a new one. To leave the Easternlands—to come to this wilderness—to settle beside the uneasy strangeness of Pittsburgh—" Stormsong shook her head and switched to English. "You have no fucking idea how much trust these people have in Wolf."

  "So why did he choose me? And why do these people listen to me?"

  "I think that he sees greatness in you and he loves you for it. And they trust him."

  "So they don't really trust me?"

  "Ah, we're elves. We need half a day to decide if we need to piss."

  "So—I'm not married to him?"

  Stormsong tilted her head side to side, squinting as she considered the two cultures. "The closest English word is 'married' but it's too—small—and common."

  "So, it's grand and exotic—and there's no ceremony for it?"

  Stormsong nodded. "Yup, that's about it."

  A hoverbike turned into the alley with a sudden roar. Stormsong sprang to her feet, her hand going to her sword. Pony checked the female sekasha with a murmur of "Nagarou" identifying Tinker's cousin Oilcan as the sister's son of Tinker's father.

  Oilcan swooped around the extra barrels and dropped down to land in front of the loading dock where Tinker sat.

  "Hey!" Oilcan called as he killed his hoverbike's engine. "Wow! Look at you."

  "Hey yourself!" Tinker tugged down her skirt, just in case she was flashing panty. Gods, she hated dresses. "Thanks for coming."

  "Glad to help." He leaned against the chest-high dock. Wood sprites were what Tooloo had called them as kids—small, nut brown from head to bare toes, and fey in the way people used to think elves would look. Beneath his easy smile and summer stain of walnut, though, he seemed drawn.

  "You okay?" She nudged him in the ribs with her toe.

  "Me?" He scoffed. "I'm not the one being attacked by monsters every other day."

  "Bleah." She poked him again to cover the guilty feeling of making him so worried about her. "It's like—what—nearly noon? And there's not a monster in sight."

  "I'm glad you called." He pulled out a folded newspaper. "Otherwise I might have been worried. Did you see this?"

  "This" was a full front-page story screaming "Princess Mauled." She hadn't seen a photographer yesterday when Windwolf carried her through the coach yard but apparently one had seen her. She flopped back onto the cement. "Oh, son of a turd."

  Oilcan nudged against her foot, as if seeking the closeness they had just moments before. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have shown it to you."

  "You didn't take the picture." Lying down felt too good, like she could easily drift to sleep. She sat back up and held out her hand for the paper. "Let me see how bad it really is."

  She looked small, helpless, and battered in Windwolf's arms, covered with an alarming amount of blood. The picture caption was "Viceroy Windwolf carries Vicereine Tinker to safety after she and her bodyguards were attacked by a large wild animal."

  "What the hell is a vicereine?" she asked.

  "Wife of the viceroy."

  "Oh." There, she was married, the newspaper said so. "It still sounds weird."

  "Vicereine?"

  "All of it. Vicereine. Princess. Wife. Married. It seems unreal for some reason."

  She scanned the story. It was odd that while it was she and the five elf warriors in the valley, all the information came from human sources. It listed her age and previous address, but only gave Stormsong's English name, not her full elfin one of Linapavuata-watarou-bo-taeli which meant Singing Storm Wind. And the sekasha were labeled "royal bodyguards." Was it because the reporter didn't speak Elvish, or was it because the elves didn't like to talk about themselves? She learned nothing except that the news had a very human slant. It was odd that she hadn't noticed before.

  "Even after all this time, you don't feel married?" Oilcan asked.

  She made a rude noise and nudged him again in the ribs with her toe. "No. Not really. It doesn't help that Tooloo is spreading rumors that I'm not."

  "She is? Why?"

  "Who knows why that crazy half-elf does anything?" Tinker wasn't sure which was worse: that Tooloo was considered an expert on elfin culture, or that the people Tinker cared about most all shopped at Tooloo's general store. Her lies would spread out from McKees Rocks like a virus with an authenticity that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette couldn't touch.

  "Hell," she continued. "It was like three days before I even figured out that I was married—I don't even remember what I said when he proposed."

  "Does he treat you well?" Oilcan asked. "Doesn't yell at you? Call you names? Try to make you feel stupid?"

  She made the kick a little harder. "He's good to me. He treats me like a princess."

  "Ow!" He danced away, laughing. "Okay, okay. I just don't want to see you hurt." He sobered, and added quietly. "My dad always waited until we were home alone."

  His father had beaten his mother to death in a drunken rage. When Oilcan came to live with them, he was black-and-blue from head to knees, and flinched at a raised hand.

  "Windwolf isn't like your dad." She tried not to be angry at the c
omparison; Oilcan was only worried about her. "If nothing else, he's a hell of a lot older than your dad."

  "This is a good thing?"

  Tinker clicked her tongue in an elfin shrug without thinking and then realized what she'd done. "The elves have been so much more patient than I could ever imagine being. Windwolf has moved his whole household to Pittsburgh to make me happy, because to them, living here for a couple decades is nothing."

  "Good."

  "Now, are you going to help me with this tree?" she asked.

  "I'll think about it." He grinned impishly.

  8: CALLING THE WIND

  She had to learn not to be surprised when Windwolf popped up at odd times.

  She was stretched out on the back room's floor, making a copy of her grandfather's spell. Her attempts with a camera had failed, the magical interference corrupting the digital image. After what it had done to the camera, she had decided against bringing in her datapad to scan it. Instead she had Reinholds find a roll of brown packaging paper. She had covered the floor with paper, and now was making a tracing by simply rubbing crayons lightly across the paper, pressing harder when she felt the depression of the spell tracings. Working with the damaged spell made her nervous, and her dress was driving her nuts, so she had stripped down to underwear and socks and Oilcan's T-shirt.

  She'd worn the black crayon out, so she upended the box, spilling the rest of the crayons out onto the floor beside her. The array of colors splayed out on the floor shoved all other thoughts from her mind. She used to make magic pencils by mixing metal filings into melted crayons, pouring them into molds and then wrapping them with construction paper. The only bulk supply of crayons were the packs of sixty-four different shades, which she would separate into the eight basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white. It got so she could look at a spray of crayons and see those eight—but she was seeing twelve now.

  Since becoming an elf, she knew she saw the world slightly differently. Things she thought were beautiful had been suddenly nearly garish or clashed weirdly. This was the first time that she had proof that Windwolf had somehow changed her basic vision.

  "There you are." Windwolf's voice came from above her.

  She glanced up to find him standing beside her. "What are you doing here?"

  "I was told that you were here, drawing pictures—mostly naked."

  "Pfft." She focused back on the paper, not sure how she felt about knowing that her vision had been changed. In a way, it was like getting glasses—right? "I only took my boots, bra, and dress off."

  "I see."

  She glanced over her shoulder at him and blushed at how he was looking at her. "Hey!"

  He grinned and settled cross-legged besides her, resting his hand on the small of her back. "This is an odd beast."

  It took her a moment to realize he meant the damaged spell, not her.

  "Do you recognize it?"

  "In a manner of speaking. It is not a whole spell." He studied the circuits. "This is only an outer shell—one that controls effects put out by another spell."

  She had been focusing on the various subsections and hadn't realized that they didn't form a complete spell. Her knowledge of magic came solely from experimentation and her family's codex, which itself seemed to be an eclectic collection of spells.

  "It's possible that this machine sets up a spell-like effect." Windwolf motioned to the compressor. "And this shell modifies that effect."

  "Oh, yes. The heat exchanger could be acting like a spell."

  "These are Stone Clan runes. See this symbol?" He traced one of the graceful lines. "This subsection has to do with gravitational force—which falls within earth magic."

  "I didn't realize it was Stone Clan."

  "Where did you learn it?" he asked.

  "My family has a spell codex that's been handed down for generations."

  "This means that your forefather was a Stone Clan domana."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Such spells are closely guarded. The clan's powers rest on the control of their element."

  "Maybe he stole it." That appealed to her, a master thief as an ancestor.

  "With your family's sense of honor, that is unlikely."

  That pleased her more. She abandoned the tracing to roll over and smile up at him. "So my family is honorable, eh?"

  He put his warm palm on her bare stomach to rub lazy circles there. "Very. It shows in everything you and your cousin do."

  "Hmm." She enjoyed the moment, gazing up at him. The look in his eyes always made her melt inside. It still stunned her that someone could be directing such love toward her. How did she get so lucky? Of course her brain cared more about puzzles. "But I couldn't feel magic before you made me your domi."

  Windwolf shook his head. "The magic sense is a recessive trait. It would have quickly vanished in the following generations of mating with humans."

  "Would I be able to use their spell stones?"

  "I doubt it very much." Windwolf shook his head. "Only part of that is ability, though; the rest is politics. Even if you somehow retained the needed genes, the Stone Clan will not train my domi."

  "That's a bitch."

  There was a slight noise and Windwolf glanced toward it. One of the sekasha who came with him, Bladebite, took up post by the door from the machine room into the warehouse. The pallets with the black willow filled the dim room now. The door out to summer was just a distant rectangle of light on the other side of the tree. For a moment, all of their attention was on the still tree. Thankfully, the siphons were working—she could sense no overflow of magic—and the tree remained dormant. She needed to finish up so they could kick on the compressor and take the refrigeration room down to freezing.

  "I do not like you working close to that thing," Windwolf said. "The sekasha would not be able to kill it if it roused."

  "I know. It usually takes dynamite and a bulldozer to take one down. But I think my dreams are saying that it's a key to protecting what we have."

  "Dreams are hard to interpret."

  "Yeah, yeah, I know. That's one thing I did learn with the whole pivot stuff—this dream stuff is counterintuitive. What feels like the wrong thing is sometimes the right thing."

  The queen's oracle, Pure Radiance, had foreseen that Tinker would be the one person who could block the oni invasion of Elfhome—the pivot on which the future would turn. Oracles seemed to operate on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle; apparently telling Tinker how she was going to stop the oni would keep Tinker from doing it. Considering Chiyo's mind reading ability and Sparrow's betrayal, it was just as well that the oracle had been obscure. Thinking back, though, Pure Radiance must have known more than she told Tinker; having Tinker dragged to Aum Renau and kept there for three weeks allowed Tinker to strengthen her body, build a strong relationship with Pony, and learn skills she needed to kill Lord Tomtom, the leader of the oni.

  Nevertheless, the key to stopping the oni had been doing what they wanted her to do—which seemed to completely defy logic.

  "At least travel with a full Hand," Windwolf said. "Chose four more—any one of them would be proud to pledge to you."

  "I don't want to take your people from you. Besides, didn't you say that once I took Pony that I couldn't set him aside without making him look bad? How could you give me yours without insulting them?"

  "I cannot give them to you. They must offer themselves to you. It is their hearts, which I cannot rule, which you accept."

  There were times she felt like the conversation had been run through a translator one too many times. "How can I just choose four at random? Wouldn't that be me asking and you giving?"

  "They have let me know that if you need them, they would be willing to go. I have released all of them from their pledge so that they are free to go."

  "All of them?"

  Windwolf nodded. "With the exception of Wraith Arrow. I need him. You have gained much respect with the sekasha. And I am greatly
pleased."

  "Wow."

  "What do you think of Stormsong? Do you fit with her?"

  Fit with her? That was an interesting choice of words. Not "like her," which was what she expected Windwolf to ask. "She's a pistol. Sometimes it seems like she's two different people, depending on which tongue she's speaking."

  "A language can govern your thoughts. You cannot think of something if you have no words for it. English is a richer language than Elvish, infused with countless other tongues over time. And in so many ways, English is freer. Elvish is layered heavily with politeness to enforce the laws of our society."