by Spencer, Wen
Cautiously, Oilcan explained his decision.
“Cousin will take us if something happens to you?” Cattail asked.
That was one thing he was sure of even though he hadn’t talked to Tinker yet. “Yes.”
“Fine.” She took hold of a hunk of fabric and ripped it.
That didn’t sound like fine.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I was dismayed when I learned that Earth Son was dead. I had been at court with a chance—slim as it may be—of catching the eye of the queen with my designs.” She grabbed another section of fabric and ripped it. “It had been my choice, though, to leave court and come to Pittsburgh, because I was chasing a dream that had nothing to do with the queen’s favor.
“I had been alarmed when no one could honor his offer.” She ripped another section. “But—but—but—” She clenched the fabric tight. “These new domana: Darkness, Sunder, and Cana Lily. They come straight from Diamond, the bitch who not only gave birth to that sniveling rat Earth Son but also sent him to Pittsburgh.”
Clearly in Cattail’s mind, Diamond was still in full command of the Stone Clan. After all that Oilcan and Tinker had learned in the last few days, it was possible, though, that Diamond was just an unknowing puppet for the Skin Clan.
“Not a single fucking one of these newly arrived Stone Clan domana carries an explanation—an offer of compensation—or even so much as an apology from Diamond. We—the children that her son lured out into the wilderness and gave to the oni to torture, rape, kill, and eat—are beneath her notice. Another clan has to rescue the living, give the dead up to the sky, and see to all our needs? Well, fuck the Stone Clan. I’m more than fine to be Wind Clan. I’m happy.”
She was right. No matter who had been behind the children’s betrayal—the Stone Clan had continued to fail them.
He reached out to hug her, but she flinched away angrily and tore another length of the broadcloth. “You’ll have your dream,” he promised. “With the extra money of sponsorship, we’ll turn the library into a boutique where you can sell clothes.”
He started to turn toward the door, and she lunged and caught hold of him in a fierce hug.
“I am happy,” she whispered. “I’m just too mad at them to show it.”
Letting him go, she stalked away, the strips of fabric still tight in her hand, fluttering in her storm wind.
* * *
Rustle of Leaves and Merry were in one of the little back rooms patiently crafting a hunk of ironwood into an olianuni for Rustle. Apparently a fifty-year apprenticeship included how to build instruments from scratch. Considering that an olianuni would wear out in a dozen years from constant use and that elves lived forever, it probably was a good thing. Luckily Merry still had all her tools that she had brought with her to Pittsburgh.
Halfway through his explanation, Merry reached out for Rustle, and he took her hand. Oilcan pushed on even though his stomach was doing sickening flip-flops.
The doubles glanced at each other.
“If Moser had taken me in, I would have been Wind Clan,” Rustle said to Merry.
“My home is Pittsburgh,” Merry said. “Where you are.”
Rustle grinned and wrapped his arms around her. “We are Pittsburgh.”
That left only one person, the one he was most afraid of losing. He was worried he might have already lost her by not speaking his heart.
* * *
Thorne Scratch hadn’t come to his room the night before. He had been painfully aware of her absence. And like an idiot, he’d done what he’d always done and not gone after the female he had come to love. Jewel Tear was just down the hall, battered and needy, and without a Hand. Had Thorne Scratch assumed he didn’t want her and offered to Jewel Tear instead?
He found her among the sheets in the backyard, practicing alone like the first time he’d seen her. Unlike that time, she was barefoot, wearing only glove-tight pants and a camisole, hair unbraided. Her ponytail formed a wonderful exclamation point over perfection in snug cotton.
He watched her move, serenely fierce, and ached with the possibility that she might never be his again.
She turned, sword in attack position, and saw Oilcan. Her lips turned upward into a Mona Lisa smile as she gazed over the blade at him. Behind her the brilliant white sheets rose to snap in the wind. He would paint that moment so he would always have her.
She blushed slightly and sheathed her ejae. In her wonderfully husky voice, she said, “You always look at me as if I’m the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”
“You are.”
Her blush deepened. “No, no, I’m not.”
Oilcan reached out and caught her callused hand.
She stared down at their joined hands in horror. “How awful I am,” Thorne whispered. “I looked at your face and was secretly glad that I would not lose you so soon, but this is not your hand.”
He brought her hand up to rest on his chest. “This is my heart; it has not changed.” She curled her fingers until she gripped his shirt tight. He forced himself to finish. “I am Wind Clan.”
She laughed in surprise and then leaned her forehead against his to look deep into his eyes. “Oh, yes, there you are. I see you now.”
“Be my First.”
Her eyes went wide, but then she looked away, shaking her head. “You should ask a Wind Clan sekasha to be your First. You will need a full Hand, and the Wind Clan sekasha will not accept a Stone Clan First.”
He took joy in that she had not said “No.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him. “If they will not accept you, I do not want them.”
Her emotions warred on her. He was afraid to press her, because she would take it wrongly, but also afraid that he wasn’t pushing because he was falling into the same old habit. So he put it out, cold and frank, all that he felt.
“I’m scared that I’m going to lose you. I love you. I want you to be with me. Always.”
She dropped her head to his shoulder, and they stood twined together, pressed close. “I love you, too, you idiot,” she finally whispered. “It makes me weak. I shouldn’t let you be so stupid as to bind yourself to one like me.”
“I won’t let you talk me out of it.”
She lifted her hand to smack him lightly on the chest but then kissed him as if he was the thing she needed most to live.
48: KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
Sacred Heart was a humming beehive of activity but in a happy, peaceful way. There were sekasha laughing in the gym as they taught Blue Sky some wicked looking moves. The young lovers were in the dining room, practicing music with Moser’s band. The smell of something rich and spicy wreathed the whole place with bounty.
Tommy had brought his younger cousins to help with the rebuilding on the stated theory that it was better for them to meet people outside his family instead of being hidden away like something shameful. And yeah, that was one reason. But it gave him a good excuse to be in the building.
Once he was sure his cousins were under Cattail Reeds’ artistic supervision, Tommy slipped unnoticed upstairs to the third floor and moved cautiously down the hall to the end room where he knew Jewel Tear was staying. The door stood open, seeming to welcome all comers, but he had heard that Jewel Tear had been quiet and withdrawn. The elves were giving her space to put her ordeal behind her.
He wasn’t sure of how she would react to him, but he wanted to see her again. He told himself that he was a fool—that she had made herself clear days ago—but want was eating at him.
She was at the window, looking down into the backyard. She wore a dress obviously by Cattail Reeds. It was a flirty splash of bright yellow that only came to midthigh in the front but trained down in the back nearly to her bare feet. Seeing her there in the light did all sorts of strange and painful things to his insides.
She put her hand to the glass and smiled radiantly at someone in the backyard. Tommy’s insides twisted hard with jealous anger. He ghosted forward, n
eeding to know whom she was waving at.
Spot was in the backyard with Baby Duck. The little elf female had crowned him with dandelions as brilliant yellow as Jewel Tear’s dress against his black fur. They had the chickens in their laps and were hand-feeding them while Baby Duck talked earnestly to Spot.
Tommy breathed out as surprise and relief punched him hard in the gut.
Jewel Tear turned and saw him. Her eyes went wide. She glanced to the door standing open.
“It was open.” He really hoped she wasn’t going to scream. Things could get messy if she did. He tried not to think of all the sekasha down on the first floor.
Jewel Tear ran to the door and shut it.
He had expected her to run out into the hall and stood there confused as she locked the door quietly.
“Stupid,” she hissed as she hurried back to him and pulled him away from the window. “We have to be careful not to be seen together.”
“Gods forbid we be seen,” Tommy sneered.
“They’ll kill us both if they catch us.” She caught his head and pulled him down to a hard desperate kiss.
For several minutes Tommy couldn’t think coherently as his hands discovered that the dress rode up when she wrapped her arms about his shoulders and his fingers had access to bare skin.
“Who—who will kill us?” he finally managed.
“The sekasha. The domana are forbidden to take lovers outside of their Hands.”
At the faire grounds they had been surrounded by nearly fifty Wyverns. She had acted so distant and dismissive that even he believed there was nothing between them. He breathed out a laugh at his own naïvety.
His fingertips brushed higher, and his brain stopped working again. “You’re not wearing any . . .”
“They said your cousins were coming to help. I knew you would be brave enough to seek me out.”
“Oh,” he said and then realized what that meant. “Oh! We’ll have to be quiet.”
She smothered her laughter against his mouth.
49: ELF PRINCESS
The meeting was Tinker’s first real official planned function as an elf princess. Everything else really didn’t count because she had charged ahead without a full thought of the political implications. This time she calculated out maximum strategic impact of every possible detail. She decided on a casual afternoon tea in the courtyard under the peach trees. She would wear the new yellow baby-doll shirt that Cattail Reeds had made her with the shorts she had permanently borrowed off Stormsong. She drilled all morning on the etiquette of pouring tea, not so much so she could do it exactly right but so she could humanize the activity without delivering any grave insult. She talked Lemonseed into creating finger sandwiches using human condiments such as mayonnaise, bread and butter pickles, and Dijon mustard. She wanted to deliver a strong message of “This is Pittsburgh, not the Easternlands.”
And then there was nothing to do but wait on the elfin vagueness of time for “afternoon” to roll around. She should have made it “morning” tea. Luckily, her guest was impossibly early by elf standards.
Apparently Forge’s Hand was taking their unintentional complicity with the Skin Clan hard. His First bowed slightly to Pony without the normal cold stare-down. Forge echoed the humility in his bow to Tinker. It made it a little easier to bow back.
Forge settled uneasily on the cushion. He had the invitation she had sent up the road to him. She had spent an entire hour crafting it. He turned it over and over, as if confused by it.
“You sent this?” He held it out reluctantly, as if he didn’t want her to take it from him. After great deliberation, she had written: Grandpa Forge, come see me this afternoon, your granddaughter, Beloved Tinker of Wind.
She clamped down on the first three snarky things that wanted to come out of her mouth. This was politics. Keeping your mouth shut was part of being smart. “Yes,” she said once she got the impulse for sarcasm under control. “I wanted to talk with you.”
“What do you want of me, Beloved?”
It was weird having someone other than Windwolf, Pony, and Stormsong use that part of her name. It was kind of creepy to have some old guy using it.
“Please, call me Granddaughter.” He looked so hopeful that she had to focus on pouring out the tea. “For most of my life, my cousin was all that I had. There are no words to describe how important he is to me, but I know you understand how I feel about him.”
He bowed his head over his teacup. “I am stunned that you can even speak civilly to me. I would not be able to forgive . . .”
She didn’t want to get into a discussion of forgive and forget. Not with the elves demanding truth. “Our family has the capability to love without reservation. The Skin Clan knew that—maybe even bred it into us—and reached out and tried to use it to control us. Both of us. You to take Oilcan, and me to launch a war against the Stone Clan to get him back.”
“You did not fall to them.” Forge’s voice was thick with shame. “I betrayed a child that trusted me.”
She controlled the urge to smack Forge for still thinking of Oilcan as a child. Be happy that he’s ashamed. “It was a close thing. Prince True Flame begged me on bended knee not to throw us into a war, and it made me realize how we were being used. That we’ve been manipulated again and again since the day that Unbounded Brilliance fled Elfhome. We face an ancient enemy who would have us ignore all that is good and reasonable to destroy each other.”
She reached out and took his hand. “We are family. Not Wind Clan and Stone Clan, but family. Do not let the Skin Clan destroy that.”
Forge’s eyes widened as he gazed at her small hand in his large one.
“I know your heart,” she said. “I know that you will be true to it. I want to be able to trust you.”
“I will never betray my grandchildren’s trust again,” Forge promised.
“Thank you, Grandfather.”
* * *
After Forge left, Tinker was warned by the sudden appearance of traditional teacakes and fresh tea that Windwolf was returning. The rest of the universe vanished as he swept into the courtyard, his joy at seeing her blazing on his face. They were sprawled on the blanket, her one good hand tangled in his hair, kissing, before she remembered that they had a fairly large audience.
Of course most of their audience was probably overjoyed that their lord and lady were going at it like teenagers. Domestic bliss and all that.
“Tea?” she managed, pushing at Windwolf’s chest.
He gave a warm chuckle but rolled off her to sprawl lazily beside her. Somehow most of the nearly eighty people in their joint household and the extra thirty-some of Poppymeadow’s staff were making themselves invisible. Only their Firsts and Seconds were nearby, standing guard as Shields.
Windwolf stole a teacake and nibbled on it as he watched her pour out tea. “You spoke with Forge?”
“I don’t want Pittsburgh swamped by old hatreds. If you look at who was sent—an old rival, a desperate ex-lover, and an insane mobile howitzer—it’s like someone loaded the dice for war. I’m not going to let them do that to my city. I want Forge as an ally, not an enemy. And I think we should do something with Forest Moss—like find him a sex therapist.”
Windwolf smiled so wide that she wondered if she had said something funny.
“What?” Perhaps it was the sex therapist part; it was kind of weird, but the elf desperately needed something.
“Elfhome dragons are spawned in the roots of mountains. They grow to adult with their wings folded back, out of the way in the tight spaces of their nursery caves. Then one day, they climb out and spread wide their wings and take flight to rule the sky.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve spread your wings, Beloved. I’m enjoying seeing you take flight to rule.”
* * *
“So that’s how it is?” Tinker asked when Oilcan came and settled beside her and Thorne Scratch did the sekasha cold-eyed stare-off with Pony. Odd how she hadn’t noticed that littl
e tradition had been missing—until today.
Oilcan grinned sheepishly and then admitted, “I figured she would hit me if I asked her to be my domi.”
“Smart man.” Tinker bumped shoulders with him lightly. “We still good?”
“Always,” Oilcan said.
She wanted to ask him how he felt about the change, but she knew how long it had taken her to just get over plain mad. She’d let him deal with it without having to drag how she felt into the mess. What was important was that no matter how he looked on the outside, he was still mentally the same. He tapped his thigh to some inner rhythm, obviously stringing words together to a song she may never hear.
“Loan me some money,” he said out of the blue.
“Okay.” Normally they swapped money back and forth like it was joint property, but things had changed. “Do you want it on the sly, no strings attached?”
“Nah, I want the strings. Make it all official.”
“Sponsorship?”
He nodded and grinned again. “I need so much to get my enclave up and running—again.”
“Thorne and the kids?” she asked.
“They seem to see it as ‘cousin’ and not ‘the Wind Clan,’ but they’re signed up for the whole shebang.”
She wasn’t sure how things worked between domana, but she didn’t care. Whatever he needed, she was going to see he got it. It turned out ridiculously easy to give it to him, too. It only took one phone call to the president of their bank and bludgeoning the man with her vicereine title, and the money was transferred from her account to Oilcan’s. All the while Oilcan silently laughed at her.“If you need more, let me know. I’ll put the squeeze on Windwolf.” She’d been ignoring how the whole money thing worked—enjoying the opportunity to get whatever she wanted without thinking where the funds were coming from—but she really should start paying attention to that whole mess.
They talked for a while, making plans, just like they always had. Giant plans sketched out with the barest details and a hell of a lot of trust that they both understood what had to be done and would do their part. She couldn’t have done half the things in her life without him beside her. This time, it was his dreams that they were making true.