Elfhome

10: PANTY RAID

No one was happy about the unopened oni mystery box being at the enclave. To make everyone happier, Tinker allowed herself to be bullied into a bath. She still reeked of the pens. It made her skin crawl thinking of the fleas, ticks, or whatever else she might have picked up wading through the filth. After everything she’d seen today, she could use a deep cleansing of the body and a couple of stiff drinks. She hated, though, to take the time.

“An hour will not change anything now.” Stormsong scrubbed Tinker’s back for her after checking her hair for bugs. Tinker still wasn’t comfortable with the elf mixed-gender communal bathing stuff, but there was no way she could feel totally clean without help. At least with Stormsong, there was no weird “I’m cheating on my husband” vibe that being washed by Pony would have triggered.

“If we’d gotten to the station just minutes later this morning — ow!”

Stormsong had smacked her lightly on the top of her head. “Don’t drive yourself crazy with ‘might have beens.’ We were there in time to save cousin.”

“But—”

“But nothing. We were there in time.” Stormsong wrapped her arms around Tinker and kissed her on the temple. “And an hour will not change anything now. You need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others.”

Tinker leaned back against Stormsong and made herself trust in her Beholden’s instincts. Stormsong had an annoying way of being right all the time. Now, if she could only ignore the feeling that Stormsong was right because they were days too late already.

Tinker suspected that Windwolf’s household staff had burned her dress. There was no sign of it. She was really starting to hate the way her clothes vanished behind her back. All her human clothes had gotten left behind when the Wyverns all but kidnapped her to Aum Renau. The missing dress had the sleeves removed, the skirt shortened, and pockets added. It was the second or third modified gown that she’d trashed to the point that the staff had made it disappear. They’d laid out two new unaltered dresses as possible replacements. Tinker really loathed trying to work in the long flowing gowns of fairy silk, especially in the nearly hundred-degree heat.

It was time to beg, borrow, or steal some better clothes.

All the sekasha had shuffled bedrooms the last few weeks as she picked out the rest of her Hand. As Tinker’s Second, Stormsong was now just two doors down. Tinker wasn’t sure exactly what the whole etiquette was for entering a sekasha’s bedroom. Everyone seemed to pop in and out of her and Windwolf’s bedroom unannounced. The warriors, though, were always armed; they even bathed with their ejae within reach. It seemed unwise to walk into Stormsong’s room unannounced.

“Come in, domi,” Stormsong called as Tinker raised her hand to knock.

“You’re scary sometimes,” Tinker grumbled as she entered.

“I know the sound of your footsteps.” Stormsong was still only dressed in her tattoos. For Tinker’s sake, she pulled on black silk boy shorts. “We learn everyone’s so we can tell who is moving around.”

The bedroom was very much Stormsong despite the recent move. Weapons dominated the room, from a stand that displayed her wyvern-scale armor and ejae to wall racks that held various bows, guns, and knives. Sprinkled in were human mementos: a bookcase crammed with paperbacks and manga, stacks of vintage CDs, a set of skateboards, and an amazing number of Goth Hello Kitty stuffed toys. Most startling was the hoverbike poster that featured Tinker coming around the turn just before the grandstands, head to toe in mud, just inches off the ground, trying to slide under the leader of the race, who was taking the curve high. It was a great shot. What it didn’t show was seconds later, the stupid jerk had dropped down to cut her off and hit her, destroying both their hoverbikes and nearly getting them both killed.

“I can’t believe you have that.” Tinker gestured to the poster. “Roach just started to sell those before — you know — everything.” Before Windwolf. Before the oni. Before her and Stormsong.

Stormsong grinned smugly. “Print number four.”

“You’re shitting me.” Tinker leaned close to check. Roach was part of her pit crew, but he functioned mostly as the business manager. The master of merchandising, he numbered the posters and sold them as “limited prints.” In the corner, in Roach’s careful printing, was “4/50.” She knew for a fact that Roach always kept number one, and she and Oilcan had two and three. “Okay, you’re now officially very scary.”

Stormsong laughed and pulled on a silk camisole top that matched the boy shorts. She looked like a lingerie model in the outfit: lush, leggy, and perfectly fit. “I saw him take the picture and asked for a copy. He told me he’d make posters of the shot.”

With Stormsong’s love of all things human, it made sense that she’d been at the races, but it still felt odd. Her entire life, Tinker had seen the sekasha moving through the city on unknown missions, but she had always given them a wide berth. Until the queen summoned her to Aum Renau, they’d remained faceless strangers. Now that their lives were explicitly tied together, it seemed impossible that they had always been so close, and yet never interacted. After the picture had been taken, the race ended in a brawl between pit crews. Stormsong had been standing close enough to reach out and touch — and Tinker never noticed her. How did she miss a blue-haired elf? Then again, Tinker had been busy trying to kick in the teeth of the other rider.

Stormsong put her hand on the glass covering the poster. “I’d seen you race dozens of times before, but that day, that moment, I suddenly knew.”

“Knew what?”

Stormsong gave a dry laugh. “That’s the shitty thing. My talent is good for knowing ‘duck now or die.’ Every now and then it hits me with a sledgehammer that’s simply labeled ‘this is important.’ I knew I would love you, but I had no idea how you would come into my life.”

Tinker eyed her and then the poster. “I was right there.”

“I was a sekasha bound to Windwolf, and you were human. I could not imagine how our lives would intertwine. Even if I had taken you as a lover, I was only in Pittsburgh when Sparrow came to the city.”

Not to mention Tinker would have been totally freaked out if a female sekasha had asked her out on a date. Scratch that. To be perfectly honest, Tinker would have been curious enough to agree. It probably wouldn’t have ended any worse than her date with Nathan.

That thought took her down a dark road to an intersection where Nathan lay headless.

Tinker distracted herself to safer things by randomly opening up drawers and rifling their contents. “What was that with Thorne Scratch? The peace and war thing? And why did we need to do that in the middle of fighting?”

“She was inside your shield. If we had engaged the oni, she could have easily killed you. That is why we needed to agree to a truce immediately. You have to remember — always — that the Stone Clan has tried to kill you twice.”

“Idiots. We’re at war with the oni. That’s what they should be focusing on, not killing me. Is Windwolf safe with them?”

“They would not dare do anything while Prince True Flame is there with the Wyverns in force.”

That made her feel only marginally better. How insane Forest Moss was was open to debate. Was he crazy enough to ignore the royal forces?

Stormsong apparently had a mild lingerie fetish for silk boy shorts and camisoles; two of the deep drawers were filled with every imaginable color and pattern. Stormsong pulled out cheetah-print done in Wind Clan blue and offered it to Tinker.

“Cheetah print?” Tinker asked.

“They’ll look cute on you.”

Tinker dropped her towel and pulled on the camisole first and then the boy shorts. As always, Stormsong was right; they were cute on her.

Stormsong comforted Tinker by adding, “His First Hand protected Wolf’s grandfather Howling for thousands of years while he fought against the Skin Clan and during the Clan Wars. And Wolf spent half a century at court. They know the dangers well.”

Better than Tinker did — it hadn’t even occurred to her that Thorne Scratch might attack her instead of the oni.

The rest of the dresser was T-shirts. In this heat, did she need a T-shirt? No.

“Do we have to do the truce thing every time we see her?” With Oilcan taking care of Merry, it seemed likely that they might be tripping over Thorne Scratch a lot in the future. It was odd, though; she was the only one from Earth Son’s Hand who had shown up at the train station.

“She has given her word. You are safe from her until we mutually agree on an end to our truce.”

“Really?”

“Thorne Scratch is of the perfection that all sekasha seek.” Stormsong had switched to High Elvish, as if nothing else could capture the truth of her words. Tinker wondered what subtle meaning she was totally missing. “Earth Son was a fool to play politics in a war zone with one such as her at his side.”

Tinker found the jeans. “Wow, an entire dresser of blue jeans? I never figured you for a clothes horse.”

“I was afraid Pittsburgh would go away one day.” Stormsong opened the second drawer and pulled out two pair of shorts. “Hmm. I think the low riders.”

Tinker tried them on and considered the mirror. “You can see my panties.”

“That’s the point.”

Tinker stuck out her tongue but left the shorts on. They were the most comfortable thing she’d put on since she was dragged to Aum Renau nearly three months earlier.

“We can trust Thorne Scratch completely? What if she became Beholden to Forest Moss or Jewel Tear, and they ordered her to kill me?”

“Even then.” Stormsong pulled on a pair of boot-cut jeans. “According to the Wyverns, Thorne Scratch refused Forest Moss already.”

“What about Jewel Tear?”

“They say that Jewel Tear has not asked.” Stormsong seemed slightly puzzled by the fact.

Frankly, as much as Tinker loved her Hand, it drove her slightly nuts to have them constantly underfoot. She could understand why Jewel Tear would skip taking on five more. “Windwolf says she’s nearly broke. You guys have to be expensive to keep. I’ve seen you eat.”

“If she had a second Hand, she would be well rewarded by her clan. It is a loop. The more sekasha a domana holds, the more they can protect, the greater their reputation, the more sekasha will offer to them. It behooves the clan to support their domana to keep the clan strong.”

“Like Prince True Flame and all his zillions of Wyvern?”

“Yes. The Fire Clan supports him so they can send him where he is needed to enforce the queen’s rule.”

Perhaps she needed to rethink taking a second Hand. How did she find more without stealing them off of Windwolf? “Okay, I understand why Jewel Tear should have offered to Thorne Scratch. Maybe she scares Jewel Tear silly. She did lop off Earth Son’s head.”

“Jewel Tear has many faults, but she is not a coward. I believe that Tiger Eye pressured Jewel Tear into not asking.”

“Why?”

“It would be difficult to put into words.”

“I’m patient.”

Stormsong laughed and pulled on her scale-armor vest. “You are anything but patient. Because I love you, I will try to explain.

“We are considered holy because we are perfect, but perfection has its degrees. While I have my differences with my father, even I have to acknowledge that he is one of the greatest warriors our caste has produced. There are only two or three others that are of his match. Tiger Eye is not of the caliber of Thorne Scratch. He loves his domi well, but he treats her like a child. At the tunnel, Jewel Tear should not have felt the need to whisper her order to him. He should not have then so loudly defied her. It is embarrassing that any First would act in that manner.”

Tinker had thought the two had been disgustingly cute.

“It would be impossible for Tiger Eye to be First to Thorne Scratch. It would only a matter of time before both Hands would look to her as if she were First, and such a division of power would be a catastrophe.”

“The importance of fit,” Tinker said.

“Yes.”

“So, how do we get sekasha to Pittsburgh that we know will fit? I think I should take a second Hand.”

Stormsong hugged her tight, laughing. “Tell me again how you’re patient!”