Elfhome

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 growing 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 asphalt 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.

She nodded her understanding. If her Hand was safe, then she was all for retreating. Cloudwalker sheathed his sword and scooped her up.

She was trying to remember the sign that meant she could walk when they took off running. Stormsong was in the lead, picking the path.

The ambush had hit them in the middle span of Mckees Rocks Bridge. A hundred feet over the Ohio River and no way down except toward one of the banks, over a half-mile away. The smoke masked their escape the first few minutes, and then they were out in the open, only the night to hide them. Gunfire cracked and bullets ricocheted off the pavement at their feet.

“Under!” Stormsong yelled and leaped off the bridge.

Pony followed without a pause, and a second later Cloudwalker leapt, still carrying Tinker. She gasped, trying not to scream as they fell down toward the river, hundreds of feet below, and then Stormsong and Pony yanked Cloudwalker into the underbracing of the bridge. Something hit hard overhead, exploding in a great thunder of noise, and the steel under them jumped and rattled.

“This way,” Stormsong whispered in the darkness.

And they were running again, weaving through the huge girders of the understructure. The others raced forward again and took turns acting as Cloudwalker’s hands so he didn’t have to shift his hold on Tinker. Years of working as a team let them move silently through the steelwork as if they were a circus act.

She tried to get her bearings in the darkness. They had left an entire Hand of Wyverns at the funeral home. She realized that they were on the wrong side of the bridge in more ways than one. To connect with any of the elf forces, they had to cross a river. They hit the far bank and scrambled up to the road, ironically just feet from where Nathan had died.

False dawn was graying the sky. The streets were empty and still as the sekasha ran fast and silent downhill toward the North Shore. Downtown Pittsburgh appeared around the hillside, pale towers in the mist, seeming impossibly far. She wasn’t the one running, but she couldn’t get her breath.

“She’s going into shock,” Cloudwalker said.

They stopped in the shelter of an overpass, and Pony pressed his hand to her forehead. It felt like a warm blanket against her skin.

“We need to get her to the hospice quickly,” Pony said.

Rainlily swore softly. “That’s nearly five miles and on the other side of the river.”

“Take me to Lain’s,” Tinker said. “It’s closer.”

Stormsong glanced back the way they had come. “No. We have to move, and we have to head into the city.”

Dawn was a blur light and motion, inexplicable starts and stops, and the sound of gunfire growing loud and more frequent.

There was a sudden crack of rifles, and silence fell.

“Tinker!” Riki’s voice came from up high. A moment later he came winging down. “Domi! Tinker!”

Pony blocked the tengu male short of Tinker.

“She’s hurt?” Riki cried.

“How did you know to come?” Pony growled.

“We have lookouts all over the city. The one in McKees Rocks saw the Rolls go up. How badly is she hurt?”

Pony didn’t move out of the way. “We need to get her to the hospice.”

“I have a van close by.” Riki pointed in the direction of the car.

Pony glared at Riki without answering.

“Pony, trust him,” Tinker said.

“Yes, domi.”

Despite being Wind Clan healers, the hospice staff had always fallen into the “outsiders” range of the sekasha trust. The night had just shoved everyone down a couple of notches. Unfortunately, the healers didn’t realize the change until they tried to use a pair of scissors on Tinker.

The poor scissor-wielder suddenly found himself facedown on the floor. The following discussion was conducted in loud, fast and ultra-polite High Elvish that Tinker had no hope of following.

“Oh gods, not High Elvish!” Tinker cried. Everything was confusing enough without adding a language she wasn’t fluent in. “What happened? Did someone hit him? Why?”

“They want to remove your shirt.” Riki seemed to be the only person paying attention to her, even though he was giving the sekasha plenty of space. He looked horribly out of place among the elves. He had dismissed his wings, but he was a head shorter than everyone else and the only scruffy-looking one.

It took her a minute to process, but when she realized that they intended to cut her Team Tinker T-shirt off, she objected. Loudly.

“It is just a shirt,” Stormsong said.

“It’s a very cool, limited-edition shirt.”

“No belonging lasts forever.” Stormsong took the scissors from the healers. “And technically it’s my shirt, so it goes.”

It was gone before Tinker could form an alternate plan of dealing with getting it off.

Tinker had gotten to know all the healers at the hospice through one painful misadventure after another. Soothing Breeze of Wind was head of their household. She always seemed amused by how often Tinker managed to hurt herself. As Tinker gained sekasha, however, the healer kept her amusement more and more to herself.

At least, Tinker hoped that was why there wasn’t even laughter in the female’s eyes as she examined Tinker’s arm.

“I am so sorry, but it is broken much worse than before.” Soothing Breeze used High Elvish but spoke slowly, so Tinker could follow it. “I’m afraid that it will be very painful to treat, ze domi.” And obviously afraid of the sekasha’s reaction to her pain. “It would be best if you let us give you saijin.”

“No,” Tinker growled. “Don’t you have something else for pain?”

Soothing Breeze glanced at Pony. Tinker couldn’t tell the healer was afraid that Pony would start lopping off heads or hoping that he’d just pin Tinker down and dose her himself. “Saijin is by far the safest we can give you. We need to set the bones, brace them straight, and then ink the healing spell into place. It will be long and painful. If you take the saijin, you’ll sleep through all of it.”

Tinker shook her head.

Soothing Breeze took hold of Tinker’s broken arm, and pain jolted through Tinker so hard that it seemed like thunder. Tinker whimpered, and all her sekasha shifted closer, as if yanked by a string. Cloudwalker put a hand on the healer’s shoulder.

“Forgiveness.” Soothing Breeze’s eyes went wide with sudden fear.

“I’m fine,” Tinker hissed. “Let her finish.”

“You should just take the saijin and sleep through this,” Stormsong said in English.

“No,” Tinker snapped. “Every time I’ve turned around this summer, someone has been drugging me with saijin. No way I’m going to take it by choice.” She made the mistake of glancing at Riki, who had been one of the people that had forcibly dosed her. Once to kidnap her, and another time to keep her from realizing how easily she could escape. Judging by his sorrowful look, he was regretting the experience as much as she did.

The glance also reminded Pony of everything Riki had done to Tinker. He shifted next to the tengu.

“I’m fine,” Tinker growled, mostly for Pony’s sake. “Besides, saijin gives me nightmares that have the nasty habit of coming true.”

Soothing Breeze gave an apologetic look to Cloudwalker. “The pain will get worse.”

Oh joy.

“Just do it.” Tinker tried to brace herself against the promised pain.

She didn’t succeed.

It was like getting hit by lightning. Everything flashed white, and she was only vaguely aware that she had screamed.

When her vision cleared, Cloudwalker had tightened his hold on Soothing Breeze, and Pony had Riki pinned to the far wall with a palm to Riki’s chest. At least none of her Hand had drawn their swords yet.

“Leave them alone!” Tinker growled between clenched teeth. Her arm had been a low pulse of pain since she broke it; now it was a hard, agonizing throb keeping time with her heart. A whimper slipped out, and a strongly felt “Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.” If she made the healers continue without drugs, she’d probably just get Riki killed. “Get me the freaking flower.”

Pony snapped an order, and one of the other healers fetched the glass jar holding a single large golden bloom of the saijin flower.

“Go home,” Tinker told Riki, and then, because it seemed abruptly rude after all his help, “Thank you. Oh, and I need to talk to you about greater bloods when I wake up.”

Riki nodded, but his eyes were on Pony, who still had him pinned.

“Pony, let him go.”

As Riki slipped out the door, Tinker held out her hand for the flower. If she had to take the drug, she was going to administer it herself. The sweet, powerful scent only held bad memories for her. She steeled herself, praying that she wouldn’t have nightmares, and breathed deep. Sweet whiteness claimed her.