by Spencer, Wen
Esme looked unhappy. “You and your cousin, the musician, have been playing hide-and-seek with your shadow at that beat-up old hotel where you two used to live. You’re just little kids, with your hands covered with blue paint, laughing and singing. Your shadow is this horrible thing—when your back is turned, it’s a massive beast with sharp teeth—but when you look at your shadow, it’s just a little girl, all pigtails and laughter.”
“I never had pigtails,” Tinker growled.
Esme frowned, eyes unfocused, as she munched on a cucumber sandwich. “Come to think of it, you have always looked like a little boy in my dreams: short hair, ragged clothes, and covered with mud. Your shadow, though, has pigtails and is wearing a dress.”
“So it’s not really me,” Tinker said.
“It’s a monster and it wants you dead and it’s very good at the game.”
29: SPOT ON
Tommy had raided the fridge for food that could travel and stuffed it into an insulated delivery bag. They sat on the hilltop as the sun set, eating egg rolls, cold pork buns, and fried rice. Afterward Spot curled up against Tommy and slept.
Tommy studied the camp through binoculars, grinding his teeth together. He couldn’t stop thinking of what Jin had said about the elves needing to win the war.
After watching the royal troops flood the city and Windwolf fight, Tommy had been assuming that the elves winning was a given. Now he wasn’t so sure. Yeah, for a while there the elves were pulling rats out of their holes and hacking them to pieces. The most recent score, however, had oni kicking elf butt. Earth Son was dead. Forest Moss had gone over the edge. Jewel Tear had been taken and all her people killed. Tinker was hurt. Windwolf was in protective overdrive. It left Prince True Flame to take on the entire oni army—if Tommy went back and drew a detailed map and the elves believed him.
Windwolf might listen, but he wasn’t calling the shots.
True Flame would believe Jewel Tear.
Of course there was the small matter of finding her and then freeing her—if she was still alive—and then running nearly twenty miles back to his hoverbike with the entire oni army chasing them. He’d have to be insane even to consider it.
Jin had said that you had to create peace to live in it.
Tommy should have grabbed a tengu to drag along. The elves were treating the tengu as trusted allies. If Riki took back reports of the camps, they’d believe him. The bastard had helped kidnap Tinker, but they still called him in on raids of oni whelping pens. Tommy took out his cell phone and checked to see if he had a signal. No surprise: he didn’t.
He sighed and scanned the torchlit camp once more. Most of the warriors were obviously right out of whelping pens, and the camp was pure chaos for it. He probably could walk right into camp, passing as one of them, except for the fact he was too well known. He spotted dozens of officers that had reported to his father. They knew his scent, knew his face, knew that he’d slipped free of the oni hold and joined the elves.
Spot turned in his sleep, and Tommy glanced down at the boy. Spot scrubbed his hand over the fur on his face, rubbed at his dog-like muzzle, and then stilled, his floppy ears covering his eyes.
Spot could move through camp unnoticed. He looked bred in a whelping pen. None of the officers knew the boy; Tommy had kept him well hidden. Spot could track Jewel Tear through the camp, find out where the oni were holding her and—
Tommy laughed. And what? Take on the entire oni army?
But then again, this wasn’t one of his aunts. This was elf domi. If Tommy could free her, then she could take on the oni army herself.
Still, it was dependent on Spot finding Jewel Tear without getting caught. Tommy hated the idea of sending him down into the camp. The oni wouldn’t just kill him if they caught him; the oni were too cruel for anything so merciful.
Tommy’s nose wasn’t keen enough to pick up Jewel Tear’s scent. If he didn’t send Spot, then Tommy would have to search all of the camp.
He shook Spot awake.
* * *
Spot thought Tommy was insane—it was clear in his gaze. His eyes would slowly slide off Tommy’s to the oni-choked camp, and one eyebrow would climb in confusion. And then he’d look back at Tommy, the other eyebrow cocked.
Tommy didn’t sugarcoat it, but he didn’t want to scare Spot either. “You can do this. You know how when I bring you home a chew toy? You know how you have to act so the big kids won’t steal it off you? I’ve seen you do it. You hide it in your pocket and just pretend you’re doing chores and walk around the warren, looking for someplace you can chew on it without anyone seeing?”
Spot thought and then nodded slowly.
“You’re going to go down and walk through the camp like you have a chore to do. No one will stop you.” Tommy hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t. “You just need to find out where they have her and come back to me. I know you can do this. You just have to be brave. Okay?”
“Okay,” Spot whispered.
* * *
The hardest thing Tommy had ever done was to sit and watch Spot slip out of the shadows and walk toward the oni camp. Fear was roaring through him—a small, cold certainty that the boy was heading for a painful death. Tommy blanked Spot from the guard’s vision so his cousin could walk in unchallenged.
Spot paused only slightly just inside the gate, nose working, and then set off in a determined walk.
Tommy lost sight of him among the taller, shifting bodies.
He frantically scanned the oni, looking for the small boy. There were other small oni moving through the camp, their size making Tommy think he’d found Spot only to realize he was wrong.
“Shit, shit, shit. Where is he?”
Time crawled. Half an hour. Then an hour. The small, cold certainty grew until it filled him. What was he thinking? Oni ate their own children if they found one that seemed too weak.
Then the mass shifted, and there was Spot, walking determinedly toward Tommy again.
“Yes!” Tommy blinded the guard, and when Spot reached him, hugged him hard. “Good boy. Good boy.”
Spot grinned up at him, nearly vibrating with nerves.
“Did you find her?” Tommy asked. “Is she still alive?”
Spot shook his head but continued to grin.
Tommy’s stomach roiled. “She’s dead?”
Spot shook his head, his grin slipping.
“You didn’t find her?”
Spot cringed from Tommy’s scowl. “They took elf to whelping pens.”
Tommy swore but rubbed behind Spot’s ears in apology. “Good boy.”
30: CODEX MOMENT
Tinker was still in healing mode, which meant she slept whether she wanted to or not, usually without warning. One minute she was talking with Esme in the courtyard, and the next she was asleep, dreaming about playing as a child on Neville Island as evil danced underfoot, pretending innocence.
She bolted out of her nightmare to find herself back in her own bed.
“You are safe.” Pony wrapped arms around her. “We are all safe.”
“This was almost as bad as the oni in the enclave.” Tinker clung to him tightly, using his warm, strong presence to force away the skittering fear. “We couldn’t see the danger. It was right there in front of us.”
“Stormsong will see through the shadows.” Pony’s voice was full of trust at her Second’s ability.
“I’ve got to stop this. I have to find a way to stop this.” Tinker disentangled herself from the sheets and stumbled out of bed. “I think what Providence really meant was that the Skin Clan are going to do something big to take over Elfhome again. Once they do, they could use it to attack Earth from two sides. Obviously the oni are another army of monsters they’re going to use. Oilcan’s kids work into this somehow—”
Pony winced at the mention of Oilcan.
“What? Is he okay?” Tinker cried, suddenly afraid.
“He is . . . unhurt.”
“What then?”
“Pri
nce True Flame has ruled that nagarou is to be considered Stone Clan since he can tap their Spell Stones.”
“He can?” It amazed her that they’d gone this long without knowing that. She realized that if Oilcan didn’t know the connection spell, the one that opened him up to the stored power of the Spell Stones, the rest of the spells would be inert.
That was all? But judging by Pony’s look, it was not as harmless as it sounded.
“This is bad how?”
“He is no longer automatically under Windwolf’s protection. It is unclear what will happen once the Stone Clan sends new domana to help fight the oni.”
“They wouldn’t try to hurt him, would they?”
Pony looked unhappy. “There are many ways to bring harm without drawing blood.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “How soon before they arrive?”
“The Wyverns do not like our situation here. We are spread dangerously thin. They have demanded that the sekasha of the Stone Clan act. There will be more domana here shortly, whether they want to come or not.”
“But any one of them could be the ones working with the Skin Clan.”
“We have no choice. We must accept them as trustworthy until they prove otherwise.”
* * *
Another raid on Stormsong’s wardrobe later and she headed down the street to find out what was so special about Oilcan’s kids. They seemed completely normal to her, but she was starting to think maybe she was clueless about constituted as “average.” It wasn’t as if she and Oilcan had ever lived a “normal” life before saving Windwolf’s life. Since then, both of their lives had gone off track into completely strange. All manner of inexplicable things had happened to them both. She had become an elf, accidentally stranded Pittsburgh on Elfhome, and fallen into space to save a spaceship that had been trapped in time for her entire life. Oilcan had befriended a dragon, derailed the Skin Clan’s collection of the children by adopting Merry, and now was considered head of Stone Clan in Westernlands.
All of that was made even odder because, by rights, neither of them should even be in Pittsburgh. Her father died childless long before the first Startup; her entire existence was an anomaly. Her grandfather once said that he’d brought Oilcan to Elfhome only because he couldn’t move Tinker to Earth. If Tinker hadn’t existed, then Oilcan wouldn’t have been in Pittsburgh. Given those two points, everything that followed was even more improbable. Someone of religious bent—say Riki—might even say everything was miraculous.
Tinker paused on wide stone front steps of Sacred Heart.
Why couldn’t her grandfather take her to Earth?
At the time, she had thought it was because she would have fought like a hellion to stay on Elfhome. She realized now that the temper tantrums of a six-year-old wouldn’t have swayed her grandfather from doing what was best for his grandchildren. They were his sun and his moon—he would have killed to protect them.
Had Leo warned her grandfather that Jin was tengu and there were oni on Earth? Then again, how did Leo know about the oni? The war had broken out after her ancestor left Elfhome.
“Hey.” Oilcan came down the steps to hug her, being overly careful and awkward because of her broken arm. “Been worried about you.”
“To quote Blue Sky, ‘I have the Great Wall of Kick Butt.’” Tinker was glad to see that Thorne Scratch had survived the oni attack on Ginger Wine’s. The female stood within shield range of Oilcan, her “on duty” light on. The story of Tinker’s life lately was how a few days of insanity altered how she saw someone without them changing. She had to remind herself that while she now saw Thorne Scratch as a solid ally, there was no way of knowing how the warrior felt about Tinker. She kept to English. “We’ve got lots and lots of trouble.”
Oilcan’s sudden grin warned her that he was going to say something stupid. “Right here in River City. Trouble with a capital ‘T’ that stands for Tinker.”
She smacked him with her good hand. “I’m serious. This is majorly bad.”
Oilcan listened to her explain the tengu visit, what Providence had told her, and Lain’s findings. “Coz, your life is strange.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking that. It makes me a bad judge on what is normal. What do you think—how normal are your kids?”
The laughter drained out of his face. “They’re good kids. I know it’s part of the way elves think—that your household is your family—but they really bonded to each other. I wouldn’t blame them for being hysterical messes after all they’ve been through, but it seems sometimes like they’ve pulled themselves together just so they can be strong for the others.”
She explained what Lain had discovered. “So, you haven’t noticed anything strange?”
“Rustle would lose his head if it wasn’t screwed on, but no, nothing else.”
“There’s some reason the Skin Clan wants these kids bad.”
Oilcan half turned to stare back at the school building. “Tink, how am I going to keep them safe?”
She understood the feeling completely. “Here.” She reached out and caught his hand. “I’ll show you how to set up a shield. Just hold it until help comes.”
She explained setting up the resonance and calling the shield into existence. He had no problem getting his fingers into position, but then he played several musical instruments, so he was used to twisting his fingers into pretzels. It reminded her of the song he’d written for her. “I really like the song. The one with the domi and her First. That was cool.”
“Thanks.”
“Where did you get those words and hand gestures for Briar’s part?” Tinker asked. “Did Briar teach them to you? I’ve been going nuts trying to learn more of the Wind Clan esva.”
“My mom taught them to me.” He danced out of reach of her angry swing, laughing. “I thought they were just a kid’s game. I’d forgotten most of them. That’s why I never taught you. I didn’t even know what they were until I helped Windwolf with Malice.”
“Looks like you remember a lot to me,” Tinker grumbled.
“I just copied what was in the codex.”
The Dufae codex was her personal bible while she was growing up; she had nearly every page memorized. “They’re not in the codex.”
“Yes, they are.” He let her smack him this time; he knew it only made her madder if he stayed out of reach indefinitely. “Some of the pages have little pictograms above a Elvish phoneme. Those are finger positions.”
She suddenly realized what “pictograms” he meant. Sprinkled through the codex was a set of diagrams that she had analyzed to death between the ages of eight and ten. They were two sets of five symbols. She felt stupid that she never realized they represented the right or left hands. “Damn! I asked both Grandpa and Tooloo about those and they lied. Grandpa said he didn’t know what they were—”
“He might not have,” Oilcan allowed.
“—And Tooloo said that they were footprints of fairies.”
Oilcan snickered. “And you believed that?”
“No. I asked her again, and she said—” Tinker stopped, mouth open, startled.
“What?”
“She said they were notations for a song.”
Oilcan laughed. “They are now.”
“Yes, they are.” Tinker frowned, shaking her head. “This was years ago. Could she have really known you were going to write that song?”
“Who can tell with Tooloo?” Oilcan said.
Esme had said that Tooloo had taught her how to control her dreams. The damn half-elf had woven all sorts of lies trying to discourage Tinker from interacting with Windwolf. Somehow Tooloo knew that one day Windwolf would use a Skin Clan spell to change Tinker.
And Tooloo had known Tinker dating Nathan would end with him dead.
All this time, Tooloo was an intanyai seyosa?
Tinker blew out her breath and tugged at her hair in frustration. “Sometimes, I just want to beat that female,” she said low and quiet so only he could hear. Tooloo m
ight not be on the Wind Clan side of this war, but she wasn’t on the Skin Clan’s side, either, or the oni would have known exactly where to find Tinker.
Most annoying was the knowledge that trying to get any kind of answer out of Tooloo was probably hopeless. It might even prove deadly for the old half-elf—as the sekasha might not take well to her evasion.
31: JEWEL TEAR ON STONE
Successful bookies did not gamble. They always set odds that benefited them and let other people take the risks. Tommy was no exception. Thus, he didn’t want to bet his life on the odds spread out before him. In the clearing below him were twelve oni warriors entrusted with dragging Jewel Tear through the wilderness to wherever Kajo’s new whelping pen lay. The warriors were the smart kind that needed face paint to make an impression on their more animalistic subordinates. They were so heavily armed it was a wonder that they could move; he had spotted everything from rocket launchers down to grenades hanging like unripe apples of pure evil. The sprawling encampment was miles behind them, but there could be patrols within earshot. Tommy had one pistol with a silencer, eight clips of ammo, his limited ability to cloud minds, and his eight-year-old cousin.
No, he didn’t like the odds.
He was starting to wish he’d brought Bingo instead of Spot.
As Tommy mulled over his problem, the oni started to fuss with their prisoner. He couldn’t tell what they were doing to her, but the female, who had silently taken their rough treatment, started to scream in terror. Spot cowered, pressing close to Tommy, and looked pleadingly up at him. Obviously the boy expected him to do something. Oh, hell. He really wished he’d brought Bingo.
“Stay.” Tommy checked his pistol. “If something happens to me, go home.”
He worked his way down to the clearing, trying to remain calm. The silencer made his pistol wildly inaccurate, but he had no hope of keeping his true position secret without it. He would need ice coolness to pull this off. His oni father could have clouded the mind of all the warriors, walked through the clearing unseen, and killed them at leisure. But he didn’t have his father’s ability to mask a moving object from multiple beings. And his father wouldn’t be moved by the whimpers of a child.