Elfhome (Tinker)

by Spencer, Wen

  It wasn’t litter in the classroom—it was the furniture from his condo! Someone had moved him lock, stock, and barrel. There were little towers of cans from his pantry, stacks of his ancient DVDs and CDs and Blue-ray disks, and heaps of clothes still on hangers from his closet. Everything he owned had been carried up and dropped at the first clear place on the floor. His belongings created island chains in the moonlight. His mattress canted against the far wall beside the windows.

  “Sama?” Cattail Reeds came down the hall, carrying a spell light in one hand and a basket in the other. “Forgiveness, I didn’t have time to fix up your room.”

  “Cattail! Where are the others?”

  “Everyone else is asleep.” She yawned, waving the spell light back down the hallway toward the other classrooms.

  “Did someone bring your beds?” He hated calling them beds, as they were just mattresses and sheets.

  “Tinker ze domi had them brought from the small place.” Cattail had whiskers drawn on her face. He hadn’t seen any of the kids in the gym beyond Merry, but Tinker had obviously found them. “She brought food, too.”

  It was intimidating how much Tinker could get done while acting silly. She had fed his kids and made sure they had someplace to sleep. “Oh, good. How clean are your rooms?”

  “That is why we didn’t get your room straightened out.” She touched the whiskers on her face. “The Wind Clan was helping us clean our rooms. Ze domi made sure they were very kind to us. She said that we should think of ourselves as Pittsburghers first, not Wind Clan or Stone Clan.”

  Oilcan had forgotten to ask Tinker about the true motive behind the whiskers. By Cattail’s tone, the concept of “one people” obviously puzzled her, despite having benefitted from it. Sooner or later, he needed to talk to the kids about being sponsored by the Wind Clan or going on alone as Stone Clan. Not now, though; not in the middle of the night when they were both dead on their feet.

  “We saved this for you.” Cattail held up the basket that smelled of something warm and savory.

  “Thank you.” He accepted it with guilt twisting in his stomach. He should have been the one making sure that the kids had food, not the other way around.

  “Do you need help righting your room?” Cattail asked.

  “No, go to bed. I’m going to eat and then go to sleep. We can do it tomorrow.”

  He thought about the day as he cleared space for his mattress. The kids had amazed him with their strength. Just hours after being rescued from horrible torture, they had knitted themselves into a family, taking care of each other and working toward a better future. He knew it was in part, though, because they thought they had found a safe haven.

  He could remember after his mother had died. It was months before his grandfather knew what happened and could come get him. He was shuffled between foster homes, not knowing what was going to happen to him. By the time he reached Pittsburgh, he was a fearful mess. Only after Tinker had convinced him that she wouldn’t let anyone take him away could he get through the night without crying. Whatever courage he had during the day drained away with the light.

  The kids wouldn’t be doing so well if they realized how tentative their situation really was. He flipped down his mattress and sprawled onto it. The biggest problem was that he knew how tentative it was. It wasn’t even that he was human, but that he was only one person. He was anchor rider for Team Tinker, and both he and Tinker had been lucky not to be hurt in the smashups that occurred at the races. The city was at war, and the oni could attack any place, any time. One stray bullet and where would the kids be?

  * * *

  A hand on his shoulder woke him.

  Oilcan opened his eyes to darkness, unsure of where he was. Moonlight streamed through too large a window. The bed felt too low but definitely wasn’t one of his friends’ couches.

  “You left all the doors unlocked.” Thorne Scratch’s rough voice came out of the dark.

  “Um, okay.” He sat up in bed, remembering then he’d moved into the school down the street from the enclaves. Worried about the kids, he hadn’t thought about locking down for the night. “I’ll lock them.”

  “I already have.” She sat on his couch to pull off her boots. He was still sleep clouded enough that he didn’t realize what she intended until she stood and slid down her leather pants.

  She was staying the night.

  That afternoon, when he pulled to a stop in front of the school, she had walked away without saying good-bye or if she would be back. He’d figured last night had been a thing born of alcohol and too much pain to bear alone. A momentary lapse of reason not to be repeated.

  Perhaps from her perspective, one afternoon apart wasn’t enough time separated to warrant a good-bye. Last night, in his apartment, seemed a lifetime ago for him. Since she was hundreds of years old, though, maybe the day had passed in the blink of an eye.

  Which made this—what? A continuation of last night? Or was this more than a one-night stand on an epic scale? Could it ever be more than that since he was just human? Did it matter? Honestly, he wanted her there in his arms, strong and fierce and painfully vulnerable.

  The sex had all the slow glide of lovemaking, and afterward she pressed a tear-damp cheek to his shoulder as they lay wrapped together.

  “He never understood,” she whispered mysteriously. “But you do.”

  He was afraid that if he asked what she meant, she’d realize that she was mistaken.

  18: REPERCUSSIONS

  Esme walked into Lain’s without ringing the ancient hand-cranked doorbell. Tinker stood on Lain’s porch, shocked. She’d been taught to ring and wait for Lain to come to the door. Only uncivilized heathens simply barged into people’s homes.

  “Lain!” Esme’s voice drifted back as she went down the hallway.

  Then again, Lain usually dead-bolted her front door, which required ringing the bell to get in. It was odd that it was open in the middle of the night—although all her astronomer neighbors would be awake.

  Tinker glanced to Pony. He nodded, his face mirroring her concern. She cocked her fingers into the summoning, and they followed Esme through the dark house.

  Lain was all the way back in her dimly lit lab, a pitcher of lemonade and a platter of sugar cookies waiting beside her microscope. “I don’t know why I thought that the two of you together could do anything in a timely fashion. God forbid you hurry because someone is waiting.”

  “Things got complicated,” Tinker said in their defense. She signaled to her Hand to stand down.

  “Did you tell her?” Lain asked.

  Esme laughed at the confusion on Tinker’s face as she tried to connect the question to the last six hours of dealing with illegal DNA collection and the cremation of dead children. “Yes, she told me.” Esme caught her older sister in a hug. “God, you sound like Mother. You look like her, too.”

  Lain laughed bitterly. “Mother wouldn’t be caught dead without makeup.”

  “That’s true, but you shouldn’t be so old.”

  “I’m lucky to be old,” Lain said. “It means I’m still alive.”

  Which made Esme hug Lain harder.

  “Oh, stop that. I’m still angry with you for going off and nearly getting yourself killed.”

  “I only wanted you safe and happy, Lain.”

  “Like I could be happy knowing you’d sacrificed yourself for me.” Still, Lain relented and hugged Esme back. Tinker felt an unexpected stab of jealousy. Lain kept everyone but Tinker at arm’s length. It was surprisingly hard to know that someone else would be receiving her affection. “You’re still on my shit list for any number of things.”

  Esme laughed. “Now you sound like Nana.”

  “Stop making me older than I am!” Lain studied the whiskers on her face. “Do I want to know?”

  “I had to practice my technique for getting DNA unnoticed before trying it out on the unsuspecting.” Tinker unpacked the messenger bag of the swabs.

  Lain eyed the growi
ng pile with uneasiness. “How many samples did you get?”

  “How many swabs did you give me?”

  Lain shook her head. “I should have known you wouldn’t do it small. Good thing I only gave you a hundred. You do know who you tagged?”

  Tinker nodded. “I kept a list.” She found the list of names connected to the swab numbers. Between the elves’ long names and the need to quickly scribble down the information, she had used a code instead of writing out the full names. “It’s kind of cryptic at the moment.”

  “Cryptic is good.” Lain looked torn between glee and worry. “Are you sure you’re not going to get into trouble for this? I studied the treaty. If we destroy these without testing, we’re in the clear.”

  Esme laughed. “Oh, none of them seemed to know what hit them.”

  Tinker scowled at Esme. “The treaty is the least of my worries, and no, don’t destroy them. No one seemed to be the wiser.” Riki seemed suspicious; he knew better than anyone how much she could pull off in front of witnesses. She doubted, though, that he would talk to the Wyverns about anything he suspected. The tengu needed her safe and sound and protecting them.

  Esme continued to smirk at her.

  “What?” Tinker asked.

  “You just”—Esme made a slight crashing noise and motioned with one hand to indicate something being plowed over—“go right through people. I think it’s very funny.”

  Tinker scowled at her and turned back to Lain, who was gathering up the swabs. “One through three are the dead children. I’m four—just in case you destroyed what you had from me. Five through nine are my Hand. The other four kids are scattered in among the rest. I didn’t want it obvious that I was mainly after them. I hit Merry, too—she’s another Stone Clan child, but the oni didn’t get a hold of her. She’s number ninety-five.”

  “Good. She can stand as a control.” Lain stowed the swabs in a drawer and locked it. “I scanned in the spell. I’ll have to print off more copies.”

  Tinker checked the printouts on top of the printer and found that Lain had already printed a dozen copies. “Do you really need the spell? Can’t you use your lab?”

  “The spell might not be doing something as straightforward as a simple DNA scan. For all we know, it might be predicting what the children’s DNA would be if subjected to gene manipulation. We still don’t know if the scans you found were from the children, and a traditional lab scan might not produce the same results as the spell.”

  Tinker nodded, following Lain’s logic. “I’ll have to talk to the tengu. They might have some clue what oni spell-working—” Tinker frowned at the spell in her hand. “Damn. This is elf magic, too.”

  “Are you sure?” Lain asked.

  Tinker slowly shook her head. “Not really.” She handed it to Pony to study. “I’ve only done a little with healing spells. You and Grandpa were pretty much against me experimenting with them.”

  “For a good reason,” Lain said. “You could have killed someone if you got the spells wrong.”

  “Yes, and I understood that, so I left them alone. The first one I ever cast was to save Windwolf’s life.”

  Pony was shaking his head. “You are right that this is Elvish. The command word is ancient Elvish, common to the type that the Skin Clan would have used. I do not know enough about spell-working to recognize this, domi. Wolf would know.” He caught her look of surprise. “The domana are taught their clan’s esva and spell-working.”

  She sighed as it reminded her yet again of what she should know but didn’t. She wondered if Windwolf was home yet from the daily wild-goose chase of trying to find the oni encampments. She frowned as she realized that the Stone Clan domana always joined Windwolf. And this spell was printed from a computer or . . .

  Tinker turned to face both Pony and Stormsong. “Did Sparrow know spell-working?”

  “No, domi,” Pony said.

  Tinker continued to frown as facts pointed to a logical answer. “Sparrow could drive. Could she work computers?”

  Stormsong laughed. “She could drive badly. She could use the telephone with difficulty. Why she made the effort to learn is now obvious, but she hated technology. Computers were beyond her.”

  Tinker held up the spell. “Who printed off this spell then? I really doubt the Stone Clan knows computers well enough to set up and print a spell.”

  “The oni could have done it for them,” Stormsong pointed out. “The oni would only need one copy of the spell to scan in.”

  Tinker considered that. Some of the oni forces, especially the ones raised on Earth like the kitsune Chiyo, knew computers enough for it to work that way, but it still didn’t seem right. “The timing keeps being off, over and over again. The Stone Clan just got to Pittsburgh, and True Flame has had them running in tight circles ever since. There has to be someone else other than Sparrow and the Stone Clan. Could there be other domana in Pittsburgh?”

  Her Hand shook their heads.

  “We would know,” Pony said. “Domana do not travel without notice.”

  Was that true? Considering that of the several thousand elves in Pittsburgh, only five were domana, the sekasha might not have trouble keeping track of the entire caste. How many domana were there on Elfhome? A couple thousand? A few hundred? Less than a hundred? She needed more data.

  “Who else would know spell-working and computers?” Tinker asked. “The healers at the hospice?”

  They shook their heads.

  “The magic they do is not the same as spell-working,” Pony explained.

  “Nor are they any more versed in computers than, say”—Stormsong paused to find the perfect analogy—“Wraith Arrow.”

  Tinker winced, knowing that Windwolf’s First was a technophobe. “Who is taught spell-working? Only domana?”

  They nodded.

  She stared at the spell as the insidious suggested itself. Spell-working had been created by the Skin Clan. The oni’s greater bloods took spell-working to levels undreamed of on Elfhome. If this was a sample of the oni’s magic, and it was elfin, then perhaps the oni greater bloods weren’t oni at all. “Is it possible that the Skin Clan escaped to Onihida?”

  * * *

  All the dangerous links to spell-working locked away, they drove toward McDermott’s in dark, brooding silence. By now the dead children had been reduced to small piles of cold ash. Their betrayal, though, might have been the tip of a massive iceberg.

  “We have no proof,” Stormsong finally murmured.

  Pony was behind the steering wheel. The dash lights gleamed on his profile as he gave Stormsong a hard look.

  “The others will want proof,” Stormsong said. “We can’t take them wild guesses. We will look like babies afraid of the lightning.”

  Tinker gave her one shaky proof. “How did Sparrow expect to control the oni once the domana were overthrown? If the Skin Clan are the greater bloods, then the oni are already under their control.”

  Pony looked pained as he focused on the dark roads. “Domi, if you believe this, then I am sure you are right. Stormsong is also correct in saying that the others will need proof.”

  Tinker slunk down in her seat, wishing she felt as sure as Pony did. His trust in her was intimidating. “No, I could be wrong. It’s just a hunch.”

  “Your mother is a very strong intanyai seyosa.” Stormsong used the Elvish name for one who could see the future. “It passes through the female line. You have it to some degree.”

  Tinker snorted in disbelief.

  “I’ve seen you race, Beloved,” Stormsong said. “You were aggressive beyond reason because you let your ability guide you.”

  It went against Tinker’s grain to go without solid proof. Science was about facts, not hunches. This hunch, though, was eating away at her gut.

  Stormsong suddenly shouted “Out!” as she threw open the door, caught Tinker by the waist, and flung them both out into the night. They hit the highway hard, Stormsong taking the brunt of the fall, and tumbled on the rough asphal
t before Stormsong’s shields wrapped around them in brilliant blue. A second later, the Rolls erupted into flame. Tinker screamed in pain and horror as searing heat and deafening noise blasted over them. Pony!

  Stormsong held her close, muffling Tinker’s scream against her shoulder. “Shhh.” Stormsong tucked them behind a concrete Jersey barrier. The gas tank burst in a secondary explosion even as random car pieces rained down onto the roadway around them. Thick black smoke rolled up into the night, awash with the blaze of the roaring fire.

  Tinker locked her jaw tight against the pain and anguish. Someone had hit the Rolls with a rocket. Had the others reacted in time to Stormsong’s warning? Were they safe? There was something wrong with her right arm; it felt like it was on fire. She couldn’t make her fingers move. She couldn’t summon her shields. The ammo in the trunk started to go off in random cracks of gunfire.

  There was movement and Pony was beside them, shields up and face set to cold hardness. Tinker wanted to hug him tight and reassure herself that he was safe. She contented herself with leaning lightly against him. He kissed her on the temple.

  Stormsong signed “no shields” in blade talk. Pony glanced at Tinker’s arm and nodded. In the flickering light from the burning Rolls, he made a motion and Cloudwalker appeared beside him.

  “Attack?” Cloudwalker asked in blade talk.

  Pony shook his head, and signed back, “Retreat.”

  Cloudwalker frowned and signed a question that Tinker couldn’t follow.

  Pony shook his head again and repeated firmly, “Retreat.”

  Obviously if she weren’t there, helpless, they would have engaged the oni, but Pony was putting her safety first. She put out her left hand to Pony to get his attention, held up all her fingers, and folded over all but the last two and ended with a question. She wasn’t going to leave if the other two were hurt.

  He nodded first right and then left, indicating that Rainlily and Little Egret were flanking them.