It puzzled her that his mother was out with Longwind when he was fighting until she realized that both of Pony's parents would have been sekasha. Pony's mother must be beholden to Windwolf's father.
"What is your mother like?" she asked.
"Otter Dance? She is sekasha," Pony said as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did. "We of the Wind Clan sekasha are known to be playful and lucky where the Fire Clan sekasha are considered hot tempered and rude. When we come together in large cities, we of the Wind Clan like to gamble and win, and the Fire Clan tends to lose and start fights. Almost every night ends in a brawl, everyone black-and-blue."
He smelt wonderful. His braid was undone and his hair was a cascade of black in the moonlight. As if it had a mind of its own, her hand drifted down over his chest, feeling the hard muscles under the silk shift.
"Hmmm," was all she managed as exhaustion—thankfully—was beating out desire.
"I do not know which my mother loves more: to gamble or brawl." Pony went on to expand on his mother's adventures in both, but she slipped back to sleep.
Tinker woke twice more that night. The second time was another nightmare, this of being chased by Foo lions through the ironwoods. Pony was there again to soothe away her fear. The third time was Windwolf finally returning home, but by then she could barely stir.
"How is she?" Windwolf whispered in the darkness.
"She woke twice with nightmares of oni." Pony's voice came from near the door.
The bed shifted with the changing of the guard.
"Thank you, Little Horse, for keeping her well."
"I wish I could do more," Pony whispered. "But I could not keep the dreams from her. May you have more luck than I. Good night, Brother Wolf."
11: PAPER SCISSORS STONE
"I would be happier if one of the other heads took them." Ginger Wine eyed the trucks arriving with the Stone Clan luggage.
Wolf nodded, staying silent. In truth, none of the heads of households wanted the Stone Clan taking up occupancy at their enclave. Ginger Wine, however, lost the decision because not only was she was the juniormost head, but her enclave was also the smallest, meaning she would put the smallest number of Wind Clan folk out when the Stone Clan turned her enclave into a temporary private residence. The households of the three incoming domana were reported to be fewer than forty people combined. Ginger Wine's enclave had fifty guest beds, thus a loss of only ten beds.
"I've never hosted someone from the Stone Clan before," Ginger Wine said. "I hope they eat our food. We don't have spices or the pans to cook Stone dishes, but I will not have them in my kitchens."
Wolf could not understand the fanaticism with which the enclaves defended their kitchens. He had had to settle several disputes between his own household and Poppymeadow's. He had learned, though, that there was only one correct answer. "If they will not eat, they will not eat."
Ginger Wine chewed on one knuckle, watching as the luggage was unloaded onto the pavement. The first trunks off, logically for a war zone, were the sekasha's secondary armor. Sword and bow cases followed. As Ginger Wine's people struggled to lift the shipping containers holding spell arrows, she murmured around her finger, "I want double my normal remuneration."
"Done."
Wolf had arranged to have his Rolls Royces ferry the Stone Clan domana from the palace clearing. The first pulled up in front of Ginger Wine's and a single male got out. As there were no sekasha attending the male, this had to be Forest Moss. Wolf couldn't tell if the male was pure Stone Clan genome. Forest Moss had the clan's compact build and dusky skin tone. His hair, though, fell shocking white against his dark skin. The lids of his left eye were sewn shut and concave, following the bone line of his skull, showing that the eye had been fully removed. Scars radiated around the empty socket, as if something thin and heated had been dragged from the edge of his face to just short of the eye. The scar at the corner of the eye, however, continued into his eye. After a score of near misses, that last one had burned out the eye.
The right side of Moss' face was smooth and whole, including the brown eye that glared at Wolf.
"Forest Moss on Stone." Moss gave a coldly precise bow.
"Wolf Who Rules Wind."
Moss' one good eye flicked over him and scanned the sekasha. Without the matching eye, Wolf found it difficult to read the male. "Yes, you are. And these are your lovelies. Very, very nice."
Wolf took the comment as a compliment and acknowledged it with a nod. There seemed, however, something more to it—like oil mixed in water, invisible until they separated.
"Otter Dance's son," Forest Moss said. "He comes of age this year, does he not?"
What did this battered soul want of Little Horse? "Yes."
"Tempered Steel." Forest Moss named Little Horse's paternal grandfather as he held up his left hand. He lifted his right hand, saying, "And Perfection." Who was Otter Dance's mother. He put his hands together and kissed his fingertips. "What a creature the Wind Clan has crafted."
It had been a mistake to respond to Forest Moss' first comment; Wolf would not repeat his mistake. While the sekasha could be ruthlessly practical, it was insulting to suggest anything but chance had brought the two most famous sekasha bloodlines together in one child.
Wolf gave him a hard stare, warning him not to continue on the subject.
"What a look! But I am mad. Such looks are seen only by my left eye." Forest Moss touched his ruined cheek to indicate his empty eye socket. He cocked his head, as something occurred to him. "The last thing I saw from this eye was Blossom Spring from Stone being drowned in the pisshole by her First, Granite. The oni had raped all the females from the start. The sekasha had their naekuna but the domana—" Forest Moss sighed and whispered. "Those mad dogs are so fertile they can even spawn themselves on us. Of course, a half-breed child would have given the oni access to the domana genome—so the sekasha had to act. The oni had taken Granite's arms and right leg, one bone at a time. They thought they had made him helpless, but still he managed to pin Blossom facedown in the sewage. She thrashed beneath him for so long—I would have thought drowning was faster. It was quiet. So very quiet. None of us daring to say a word until it was over. Shhhhh. Quiet as mice, lest the oni hear and realize that their rabid seed had taken and carry her off to bear their puppies."
Wolf steeled himself to keep from stepping back a step from the elf. Was Forest Moss as mad as he seemed, or was this an act to let him be as rude as he wanted? Or was the male deluding only himself, thinking that he was "acting"?
"What of your domi?" Forest Moss leaned close to whisper, his one eye bright. "Did those rabid beasts fuck her? Fill her up with their seed? Will there be puppies to drown in the pisspot?"
Wolf would not validate this conversation by explaining that Tinker would be infertile from her transformation long after the danger of pregnancy was past—regardless of what the oni did to her. "You will not speak of my domi again."
"I am not the one to fear. All your lovelies standing around you are the ones to fear. They hold our lives in their holy hands, judging every breath we take. They have to be strong because we're so weak. I fully expect that someday one of them will decide I'm too damaged to live."
"Hopefully soon."
Forest Moss laughed bitterly. "Yes, yes, actually, soon would be nice. I'm too afraid to do it myself. I am a coward, you know. Everyone knows. That's why I have no sekasha."
Ginger Wine had heard the whole exchange. A gracious host, she bowed elegantly and offered to escort Forest Moss to his room, but a tightness around her eyes meant she was keeping fury in check. Wolf's people might not know Tinker, but she was his domi, and they wouldn't take criticism of her lightly.
While he suspected the humans might blame Tinker for Pittsburgh being stranded, the elves always knew it was only a matter of time before the odd cycle of Shutdown and Startup would end. Humans never continued anything for long. As long as the Ghostlands didn't present them with more problems, most elves would see Tinker'
s solution as a good one.
Alertness went through his Hand, and Wolf turned to find Jewel Tear standing there.
She wore the deep green that always looked so beautiful on her. Her dark hair was braided with flowers and ribbons, most likely taking an hour to create. She had two spell spheres orbiting her. One cooled the air about her. The other sphere triggered favorite scent memories in those around her. The spheres always had made him leery. He knew that it was impossible for the spheres to collide with anything, but he always flinched when they got too near his head. Nor did it help that the one always made Jewel Tear smell like his blade mother, Otter Dance.
Around them the sekasha acknowledged each other's presence and waged their still and silent dominance battle. Not that it was much of a contest—Jewel had only been able to recruit a vanity hand of recent doubles. Against his First Hand, they were just babies.
"Wolf Who Rules Wind." Jewel Tear smiled warmly at him, and bowed lower than necessary, almost spilling her breasts out of her bodice.
"Jewel Tear on Stone." He bowed to her, wondering what her flagrant display meant. Was this strictly a personal invitation, however improper, or was the Stone Clan making use of her?
She stepped forward, rising up on her toes as if she meant to kiss him. He stopped her with a look. The spell spheres orbited them as she stood frozen in place.
"Wolf," she whimpered.
"You are not my sekasha, nor are you my domi."
"I should be!" She jerked her chin up and glared at him. "You asked me! I told you that I needed time to consider it. I finally make my decision, pack my household to join you here in the Westernlands, and I get your letter saying that you were taking a human—a human—as your domi."
"I gave you a hundred years. When I was at court last, thirty years ago, we did not even speak to one another."
"I—I was busy, as were you. And a letter? You could not come and tell me yourself?"
"There was no time." He wondered what she hoped to gain with this tactic. He would not break his vow to Tinker, no matter how guilty Jewel tried to make him feel. Because Jewel never responded, she had no legal recourse.
She reached out to neaten his sleeve. "We courted for years—that slow exquisite dance of passion. The boat rides on Mist Lake with the whiting of swans. The picnics in the autumn woods. The winter masquerades. We took the time that is proper, to learn each other, to know that we were right for each other. What do you know of this—this—female? How can you know anything?"
He knew even if he tried to explain how a lifetime of understanding could be distilled out of twenty-four hours, she would not believe him. The elves never did—with the exception of Little Horse. "I knew enough. This is not court, where you have eternity to decide, because nothing changes. I was willing to risk whatever may come because if I did not put out my hand, and take her then, she would have been lost to me forever."
"What of your commitment to me?"
Wolf controlled a flash of anger. "I waited. You did not answer. I moved on."
"I needed time to think!" she cried and then looked annoyed that she had raised her voice. "I thought you knew me well enough to understand my position. I do not have your resources as the son of the clan leader—a favored cousin to the queen. You would have been forgiven for taking a domi outside your clan. Both Wind and Fire want you merely because of the other clan's interest; Wind would never turn you out for the Fire to take in. I do not have your luxury. I had to consider long and hard my responsibilities to my household before committing to you. I couldn't risk not being able to support them if neither Wind nor Stone sponsored me."
"If you had come to me, told me your concerns, I could have done something to guarantee that you would always have Wind Clan sponsorship." Even as he said it, though, he knew that it was better that she hadn't. He had made a mistake in asking her to be his domi. When he brought her to the Westernlands, dismay had spread across her face when she realized they would spend the rest of their lives in the wilderness, far from court. It had opened his eyes; he had fooled himself about how well they suited each another. He'd been willing to honor that commitment a hundred years ago, even after that realization. Even as recently as thirty years ago, he might have still taken her as his domi. In the last two decades, though, he had considered himself released of his pledge.
Jewel tried to make it all seem his fault. "I was supposed to trust you to take care of me when you couldn't be bothered to explain anything to me? You would go off and leave me with no idea what you had planned, what you were doing, when you were going to come back."
"I trusted you to do what you needed to do. I thought you trusted me."
A look flashed across her face before being hidden away, but he knew her too well not to recognize it and could guess her thoughts. One thing you learned well at court was to trust no one. Not only did she not trust him, she thought him weak for expecting it.
But this left one question. "What made you finally decide?" he asked.
Her nostrils flared and she glanced away from him. "Things have not gone well for me. Some of my ventures failed, I had miscalculated the risks involved on one, and in trying to cover my losses, things—cascaded. I was forced to give up my holdings." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "My household was losing faith in me."
So coming to him was not an act of love but of desperation. It would also explain what she was doing here now—without holdings, she would lose her household and then her clan sponsorship. Jewel Tear was too proud and ambitious to live under someone else's rule. If she was that destitute, though, she wouldn't have the funds to set up a holding at Pittsburgh; it could only mean that the Stone Clan chose her and advanced her stake money.
Did the Stone Clan think that if something happened to Tinker, he would turn to Jewel Tear? How far were they willing to go to put their theory to the test? He knew Jewel well enough to know that she would let nothing stand in the way of her ambitions. That had been one of the things he loved about her.
Tinker wished the machine room didn't feel so much like a trap. Whoever designed the room had never considered that there would be anything as dangerous as the black willow between the back room and the front door. Being around the black willow made everyone nervous. There were no signs, however, of it reviving despite a full day of summer heat. Oilcan rotated the steel drums of metal filings, taking the ones saturated with magic to some place to drain, and replaced them with fresh drums. Tinker could see no overflow of magic. Still, the sekasha all kept their shields activated just to use up local ambient magic.
She had the old spell jackhammered out of place. She was now carefully prepping the site to lay down the new spell and cement it into place.
Stormsong settled beside her, her sheathed ejae across her knees, her shields a blue aura around her. "Do you mind if we talk?"
"Isn't that what we're doing?"
Stormsong gave a slight laugh, and then continued with great seriousness. "It's not my place to advise you. It should be Pony, as your only beholden, or Wraith Arrow, who is Windwolf's First, but—" Stormsong sighed and shook her head. "Wraith Arrow won't cross that line, and Pony—that boy has a serious case of hero worship for you."
"Pony?"
"You can do no wrong in his eyes. You know all, see all, understand all—which leaves you up the shit creek because you really don't and he won't tell you squat, because he thinks you already know."
"So you're going to tell me?"
"You'd rather walk around with your head up your ass and not know it?"
Tinker groaned. "What am I doing wrong now?"
"You need to choose four more sekasha, at minimum."
Tinker sighed. "Why? Things are working fine this way."
"No, they're not, and you're the only one that doesn't see that. For instance, Pony is just a baby to the rest of us."
"He's at least a hundred." She knew he was an adult, although just barely, like she had been as an eighteen-year-old human. Unfortunately, now she fe
ll into a nebulous zone of being just barely adult for years and years.
"He just left the doubles this year." Meaning last year, he could use two numbers to indicate his age. "Only half of Windwolf's sekasha are in the triples—the rest are older."
"How old are you?" Tinker was fairly sure Stormsong was one of the younger sekasha. She was starting to be able to look at elves and see their age indicators. It was odd, to have her concept of Windwolf slowly change from "adult" to "her age" as her perception of all elves changed.
"I'm two hundred." Which made her Pony's age, because to the elves that hundred year difference barely counted.
"So we're all approximately the same age."
"You wish." Stormsong took out a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and offered her a stick. "Yeah, physically Pony and I are like human teenagers, but we've still had a hell of a lot longer than you to figure out people."