"Domi, what is it?"
Embarrassment burned through her. "N-n-nothing. I'm just tired. I haven't been sleeping well."
"Have you found what you needed?" he asked.
"No." She shook her head and yawned again. She saved her notes on the datapad and handed Esme's file to him. "Put this in the Rolls. I'll get back to work."
Luckily the information she was looking for was in the F's, under "Flux Compression Generator". Huh? Normally compressing a magnetic field would generate more amperes of current than a lightning bolt and cause an electromagnetic pulse. What in hell was her grandfather thinking? But there was no mistaking the Reinhold floor layout, and the accompanying notes on the spell. With the folder, it should be fairly simple to recreate her grandfather's spell.
She heard the scrape of boots on the cement behind her. The sekasha were probably bored to tears.
"This is what I was looking for." She got to her feet and brushed the dust from her skirt. She looked up and was startled to find the sekasha forming a wall of muscle between her and Nathan Czernowski. The sight of him put a tingle of nervousness through her. "Nathan? What are you doing here?"
"I saw the Rolls and figured that it had to be you."
"Yeah, it's me." She busied herself with the boxes as an excuse not to look at him, wondering why she felt so weird until she remembered where they'd left off. Last time she'd seen him, he—he—she didn't even want to assign a word to it.
Nathan had been like an older brother to her and Oilcan. He'd hung around the garage and scrap yard on his off hours, drinking beer with them, and shooting the breeze. On racing days, he acted as security for her pit. She knew all his sprawling family members, had attended their weddings and funerals and birthday parties. There wasn't another man in Pittsburgh that she would have let into her loft while she was dressed only in a towel. Nobody else she would have thought herself utterly safe with.
Then he'd held her down, torn off her towel, and tried to push into her.
In one terrifying second, he'd become a large, frightening stranger. She had never considered before how tall he was, how strong he was, or how easily he could do anything he wanted with her.
He hadn't actually done—it. He'd stopped. He seemed to be listening to her. She would never know if he actually would have gotten off her, and let her up, and gone back to the Nathan she knew, because Pony had come to her rescue.
A day later she'd been snatched up by the queen's Wyverns, dragged away to attend the royal court, and then kidnapped by the oni, where she witnessed true evil. She hadn't thought of Nathan once in all that time. She wasn't sure what she felt now.
"I heard about the monster—" Nathan started.
"You and all of Pittsburgh. I'm fine!"
"I see." Nathan gazed her wistfully. "You look beautiful."
"Thanks." She knew it was mostly the jewel red silk dress. She also knew that it clung to her like paint where it wasn't exposing vast amounts of skin. Suddenly she felt weirdly under-dressed.
They stood a moment in nervous silence. Finally, Nathan wet his lips and said, "I'm sorry. I went way over the line, and I'm—so—sorry."
She burned with sudden embarrassment; it was like being naked under him again. "I don't want to talk about it."
"No, I'm ashamed of what I did, and I want to apologize— though I know that really doesn't cut it." His voice grew husky with self-loathing. "I would have killed another man for doing it. That I was drunk and jealous excuses nothing."
"Nathan, I don't know how to deal with this."
"I just loved you so much. I still do. It kills me that I lost you. I just don't want you to hate me."
"I don't hate you," she whispered. "I'm pissed to hell at you. And I'm a little scared of you now. But I don't hate you."
At least she didn't think she did. He had stopped—that counted for something, didn't it? More than anything, she felt stupid for letting it happen. Everyone had told her that things wouldn't work out between her and Nathan—and she had ignored them.
They stood in awkward silence. It dawned on her that the sekasha were still between her and Nathan, a quiet angry presence. She realized that Pony must have told Stormsong who Nathan was and what he'd done, and embarrassment burned through her. Once again she was having her nose ground into the fact that she was being constantly watched. She pushed past the sekasha and Nathan, wondering how much detail had Pony told Stormsong. She could trust Pony with her life, but not her privacy; she wasn't even sure he understood the concept.
When she reached the Rolls, she was tempted to climb in and drive away, but that would mean leaving the storage room half unpacked. She dropped the file in the back of the car, beside the other things she'd set aside to take home. Nathan and the sekasha had trailed her out to the Rolls. Somehow, out in the alley, she felt more claustrophobic, their presence made unavoidable by the fact that they had followed her en masse.
"I have what I need," she told Pony and then realized she had said that already. "Everything else needs to be put back."
"Yes, domi." Pony signaled to Stormsong to return to the storage room; he remained with Tinker.
Nathan stayed too. His police cruiser sat behind the Rolls. For some reason the Pittsburgh police had doubled up and Bue Pedersen waited patiently for Nathan to finish.
"Bowman." Tinker nodded to Bue.
"Hiya, Tinker." Bue nodded back.
"They tell me that you're his domi." Nathan meant Windwolf.
"Yeah." She fiddled with the bracelet. She had no wedding ring to flash as proof. Elves apparently didn't go for those kinds of things.
"You know, everyone's going on and on as if you got married to him and you're a princess now, but Tooloo says that you're not his wife."
Her heart flipped in her chest. "What?"
"Tooloo says that Windwolf didn't marry you."
She stared at him dumbfounded for a minute before she thought to say, "And you believed her? Tooloo lies. You ask her five times in a row when her birthday is and she'll tell you a different date each time!"
He looked down at her bare fingers. "Then why was there no wedding? Why no ring?"
She tried to ignore the weird cartwheeling in her chest. "Nathan, it's not—they—they don't do things like we do."
He gave a cold bitter laugh. "Yeah, like changing someone's species without asking them."
"He asked!" she snapped. She just hadn't understood.
"Come on, Tink. I was there. You had no idea what he had done to you. You still don't know. You think you're married. Hell, half the city thinks you're married. But you're not."
She shook her head and clung to the one thing she knew for sure. "Tooloo lies about everything. She hates Windwolf. She's lying to you."
"Tink—"
"I don't have time for this bullshit! Stormsong, we're leaving! Just lock the door and come."
"The humans farm—grass?" Bladebite prodded the green rectangle of sod laid down in the palace clearing.
"Convenient, isn't it?" Wolf pointed out, although he suspected that his First Hand wouldn't see it as such.
"It's unnatural," Bladebite grumbled. "Grass already grows quickly—why would they want it to instantly appear?"
Wolf rubbed at his temple where a headache was starting to form. "Quickly," of course, was all a matter of perspective. The palace clearing was still a raw wound of earth from cutting down the ironwoods and tearing up the massive stumps. Until the dead gossamer could be removed from the faire grounds, the clearing would have to double as an airfield. Wolf knew his First Hand reflected what most elves would think of the sod. It couldn't be helped. After last night's rainfall, the clearing was turning into a pit of mud.
Wolf had delegated cleaning up the gossamer body to Wraith Arrow, an imperfect match of abilities and task, but currently the best he could hope for as Tinker had apparently found some project on the North Side that was taking up her time. Reports were drifting back, along with a box of walkie-talkies.
&nb
sp; His First Hand viewed the devices with the same open suspicion as the sod. Luckily, while Wraith dealt with the gossamer, Cloudwalker filled the fifth position. The "baby" sekasha was cautiously prodding the buttons on the walkie-talkie.
While his Hands kept alert for trouble, Wolf focused on getting the clearing ready for the arrival of the queen's troops. The settlements on the East Coast reported that a dreadnaught had passed overhead, so it would be arriving soon.
"You're not going to take down the oaks—are you?" The human contractor pointed out the massive wind oaks. "That would be a crying shame."
Wolf hated the idea of cutting down the trees for a single day's use of the clearing. While the trees were spell-worked to be extremely long-lived, their acorns rarely sprouted hardy saplings, and thus the trees continued to be quite rare. Wolf had been sure that finding five so close to Pittsburgh was a sign of the gods' blessings. He had chosen the site because of the trees and planned to build the palace around them.
He paced the clearing, trying to remember the dreadnaught's size. Would there be room for it to land without taking down the trees? While he did, he wondered about the oni's attack. Why kill the gossamer? Thinking with a cold heart, he realized that it would have made more sense for the oni to attack Poppymeadow's in the middle of the night. The ley line through the enclaves wasn't strong enough to support aggressive defense spells. The rocket would have triggered the alarms, but Wolf wouldn't have been able to call his shields in time.
One would think that the oni would have realized by now that Wolf was their strongest adversary. But maybe he was overestimating their grasp on the situation. Taking himself out of the equation, he considered the question again. Why the gossamer? There had been a second gossamer in plain sight, waiting for mooring. True, that airship had fled the area and it would probably take hours for its navigator to coax the beast back to Pittsburgh. Perhaps the oni hoped to isolate Wolf by killing both his ships before he could react. Perhaps they didn't realize that he had already sent for support.
While the gossamer's death was a pity, he was glad that the oni attacked it and not the enclaves. He had lost two of his sekasha this century. He did not want to lose another.
Wolf became aware that the sekasha had stopped a human from approaching him while he was thinking. He focused on the man with pale eyes and a dark goatee. "What is it that you want?"
"I'm the city's coroner." The man took Wolf's question as permission to close the distance. Bladebite stopped the human with a straight arm and a cold look.
"I am not familiar with that word," Wolf said.
"I'm—I'm the one that deals with the dead."
"I see." Wolf signaled to his Hand to let the man advance. Sparrow had dealt with this man, since Wolf had been wounded the two times his people had been killed.
"Tim Covington." The coroner held out his hand to be shaken.
Wolf considered the offered hand. The other domana would not allow such contact—a broken finger would leave them helpless. Humans needed to be schooled in day-to-day manners—but was now the time to start? He decided that today, he would keep to human politeness and shook Covington's hand. At least the man introduced himself first, which would be correct for both races.
"Wolf Who Rules Wind."
"I was down the street, dealing with the oni bodies, and they said you were here."
"We only executed one oni."
Covington looked away, clearly disturbed. "They unearthed two more dead males when they brought in the backhoe."
"Why do you seek me out? I have no dead."
"I've been coroner for nearly ten years. I dealt with both Lightning Strike and Hawk Scream." Covington named the two fallen sekasha.
"They have been given up to the sky."
"Well, I prepared Sparrow but no one has come for her. The enclaves—they have no phones. I wasn't sure what to do."
Bladebite recognized Sparrow's English nickname. He spat on the ground in disgust.
"No one will come for Sparrow." Wolf turned back to pacing the clearing.
"What do you mean?" Covington fell in step with Wolf.
"Sparrow betrayed her clan. We will have nothing to do with her now. Deal with her body as if she was an oni."
Cloudwalker suddenly trotted up to them, looking concerned. "Domou! We have a problem."
"What is it?" Wolf cocked his fingers to call the winds.
Cloudwalker pointed to the oak trees. Humans had chained themselves to the massive trunks.
"How did they get there?" Wolf glanced around at the three Hands of sekasha scattered across the clearing.
Cloudwalker blushed with embarrassment. "We—we tested them and they were not oni. They had no weapons."
They did have a banner that read, "Save the oaks." Wolf had heard of this type of lunacy, but never seen it in action. How did they get organized so quickly?
"We did not realize that they were not part of the human work crew," Cloudwalker finished. "So we let them pass. What do you want us to do with them?"
Wolf didn't completely trust his sekasha to solve the problem without involving swords. He didn't want dead peaceful protesters. "Call Wraith Arrow—he has the EIA helping him. Have them send the police to arrest these humans."
Covington waited as if there was more he needed. Wolf turned to him.
"I'm not sure what to do with the oni," Covington continued their conversation. "Do you know their practices?"
"I am told that in times of plenty, they feed their dead to their hounds," Wolf said. "In times of famine, they eat both their dead and their dogs."
"I don't believe that's true. That's the kind of sick propaganda that always gets generated in a war."
"Elves do not lie." Wolf paused to consider the areas he had just paced off. He believed that the one section of the clearing was large enough for the dreadnaught to land easily, even in high winds. The other sections, however, were deceptively small—they should mark the areas in some manner.
"Everyone lies." Covington demonstrated in two words the humans' greatest strength and weakness. They were able to look at anything and see it as human. It gave them great ability to empathize but it also kept them from seeing others clearly.
"Our society is built on blind trust," Wolf said. "Lying is not an option for us."
But Covington couldn't see it. Perhaps it was too big for him to grasp. The need for truth came from everything from their immortality to their fragile memory, to the ancient roots of the clans, to the interdependency of their day to day lives. Tinker, though, seemed to understand it to her core.
"Treat Sparrow as you see fit." Wolf knew that Covington would be true to his human nature, and treat her with respect, but unknowingly consign the dead elf to the horrors of embalming fluid, a coffin, and a grave instead of open sky. "Ask the EIA what to do with the oni bodies. Be aware that there will be more. Many more."
Tinker's grandfather always said that you needed a plan for everything from baking a cake to total global domination. He taught her the minutia of project management along with experimental and mathematical procedure. Over the years, she had put the skill to good use, from starting a small salvage business at age fourteen, to thwarting the oni army with just her wits and one unarmed sekasha.
The truly wonderful thing about focusing on a complex project was there wasn't time to think of messy, extraneous details like elfin wedding customs. Just trying to drain the buildup of magic out of the cooler required creative scavenging for parts and guerilla raids across the city for workers. She designed four jury-rigged pumps that used electromagnets to siphon magic into steel drums of magnetized iron fillings. Unfortunately, the drums would slowly leak magic back out, so they would have to rotate them out, letting them sit someplace until inert. While the siphons were inside the cooler, she sat the drums outside, so whoever changed them didn't need to enter the locked room. The walls seemed solid enough—she would have to check the architectural drawings to be sure, but certainly reinforcing the do
or wouldn't hurt.
The more she considered safety procedures, the less sure she was this was a good idea. The project, however, was rampaging beyond her ability to stop it. The Reinholds employees were searching out drawings and adding bars to the door, the EIA was sending a tractor-trailer truck to Lain's, a dozen hastily drafted elves were gathering to help with the move, and she'd given out her promises like Halloween candy.
Why was she doing this again? Was her only reason some nonsense out of a dream? Or was she really focusing on the tree so she didn't have to consider that Tooloo was right?