Pony made a small puzzled noise. "Why isn't everything sinking?"
"I think—because they're all in the same space—which isn't quite here but isn't really someplace else—or maybe they're everywhere at once. The trees are stable, because to them, the earth underneath them is as stable as they are."
"Like ice on water?"
"Hmm." The analogy would serve, since she wasn't sure if she was right. They worked their way around the edge, the hilly terrain making it difficult. At first they found sections of paved road or cut through abandoned buildings, which made the going easier. Eventually, though, they'd worked their way out of the transferred Pittsburgh area and into Elfhome proper.
On the bank of a creek, frozen solid where it overlapped the affected area, they found a dead black willow tree, lying on its side, and a wide track of churned dirt where another willow had stalked northward.
Pony scanned the dim elfin woods for the carnivorous tree. "We must take care. It is probably still nearby; they don't move fast."
"I wonder what killed it." Tinker poked at the splayed root legs still partly inside the Discontinuity. Frost like freezer burn dusted the wide, sturdy trunk. Otherwise it seemed undamaged; the soft mud and thick brush of the creek bank had cushioned its fall so none of its branches or tangle arms had been broken. "Lain would love an intact tree." The xenobiologist often complained that the only specimens she ever could examine were the nonambulatory seedlings or mature trees blown to pieces to render them harmless. "I wish I could get it to her somehow."
The tracks of both trees, Tinker noticed, started in the Ghostlands. Had the willow been clear of the Discontinuity at the time of the explosion—or had the tree died after reaching stable ground?
"Let me borrow one of your knives." Tinker used the knife Pony handed her to score an ironwood sapling. "I want to be able to track the rate of decay. Maybe there's a way I could accelerate it."
"A slash for every one of your feet the sapling stands from the Ghostlands?" Pony guessed her system.
"Yeah." She was going to move on to the next tree but he held out his hand for his knife. "What?"
"I would rather you stay back as much as possible from the edge." He waited with the grinding power of glaciers for her to hand back his knife. "How do you feel, domi?"
Ah, the source of his sudden protectiveness. It was going to be a while before she could live down overestimating herself the night of the fighting. Instead of going quietly to the hospice, she'd roamed about, made love, and did all sorts of silliness—and of course, fell flat on her face later. It probably occurred to him that if she nose-dived again, she would end up in the Ghostlands.
"I'm fine," she reassured him.
"You look tired." He slashed the next sapling, and she had to admit he actually made cleaner, easier-to-see marks than she did, robbing her of all chance to quibble with him.
She made a rude noise. Actually, she was exhausted—nightmares had disrupted her sleep for the last two days. But she didn't want to admit that; the sekasha might gang up on her and drag her back to the hospice. That was the problem with bringing five of them—it was much harder to bully them en masse—especially since they were all a foot taller than her. Sometimes she really hated being five foot nothing. Standing with them was like being surrounded by heavily armed trees. Even now Stormsong was eyeing her closely.
"I'm just—thinking." She mimed what she hoped looked like deep thought. "This is very perplexing."
Pony bought it, but he trusted her, perhaps more than he should. Stormsong seemed unconvinced, but said nothing. They moved on, marking saplings.
With an unknown number of oni scattered through the forest and hidden disguised among the human population of Pittsburgh, Wolf did not want to be dealing with the invasion of his domi's privacy, but it had to be stopped before the queen's representative arrived in Pittsburgh. Since all requests through human channels had failed, it was time to take the matter into his own hands.
Wolf stalked through the broken front door of the photographer's house, his annoyance growing into anger. Unfortunately, the photographer—paparazzi was the correct English word for his kind, but Wolf was not sure how to decline the word out—in question was determined to make things as difficult as possible.
Over the last two weeks, Wolf's people had worked through a series of false names and addresses to arrive at a narrow row house close to the Rim in Oakland. The houses to either side had been converted into businesses, due to their proximity to the enclaves. While the racial mix of the street was varied, the next door neighbors were Chinese. The owners had watched nervously as Windwolf broke down the photographer's door, but made no move to interfere. Judging by their remarks to each other in Mandarin, neither did they know that Wolf could speak Mandarin in addition to English, nor were they surprised by his presence—they seemed to think the photographer was receiving his due.
Inside the house, Wolf was starting to understand why.
One long narrow room took up most of the first floor beyond the shattered door. Filth dulled the wood floors and smudged the once white walls to an uneven gray. On the right wall, at odds with the grubby state of the house, was video wallpaper showing recorded images of Wolf's domi, Tinker. The film loop had been taken a month ago, showing a carefree Tinker laughing with the five female sekasha of Wolf's household. The image had been carefully doctored and scaled so that it gave the illusion that one gazed out a large window overlooking the private garden courtyard of Poppymeadow's enclave. Obviously feeling safe from prying eyes, Tinker lounged in her nightgown, revealing all her natural sexuality.
Wolf had seen the still pictures of Tinker in a digital magazine but hadn't realized that there was more. Judging by the stacks of cardboard boxes, there was much more. He flicked open the nearest box and found DVDs titled Princess Gone Wild, Uncensored.
"Where is he?" Wolf growled to his First, Wraith Arrow.
Wraith tilted his head slightly upward to indicate upstairs. "There's more."
At the top of the creaking wooden stairs, there was a large room empty of furniture. A camouflage screen covered the lone window, projecting a blank brick wall to the outside world. A camera on a tripod peered through a slit in the screen, trained down at the enclaves. This room's video wallpaper replayed images captured this morning, a somber Tinker sitting alone under the peach trees, dappled sunlight moving over her.
Wolf moved the camera, and the device's artificial intelligence shrank Tinker's image into one corner and went to live images as the zoom lens played over Poppymeadow's enclave where Wolf's household was living. Not only did the balcony provide a clear view over the high stone demesne wall but into the windows of all the buildings, from the main hall to the coach house. One of Poppymeadow's staff was changing linens in a guest wing bedroom; the camera automatically recognized the humanoid form and adjusted the focus until she filled the wall. The window was open, and a microphone picked up her humming.
"I haven't done anything illegal," a man was saying in the next room in English. "I know my rights! I'm protected by the treaty."
Wolf stalked into the last room. His sekasha had broken down the door to get in. The only piece of furniture was an unmade bed that reeked of old sweat and spent sex. His sekasha had a small rat of a man pinned against the far wall.
On the wall, images of Wolf's domi moved through their bedroom at Poppymeadow's, languidly stripping out of her clothes. "You want to do it?" she asked huskily. Wolf could remember the day, had replayed it in his mind again and again as his last memory of her when he thought he had lost her. "Come on, we have time."
She dropped the last piece of clothing on the floor, and the camera zoomed in tighter to play down over her body. Wolf snarled out the command for the winds and slammed its power into the wall. The wall boomed, the house shuddering at the impact, and the wallpaper went black. Tinker's voice, however, continued with a soft moan of delight.
"Hey! Hey!" the man cried in English. "Do you have any id
ea how expensive that is? You can't just smash in here and break my stuff. I have rights."
"You had rights. They've been revoked." Wolf returned to the balcony and knocked the camera from its tripod. The wallpaper showed a somersault of confusion as the camera flipped end over end. When it struck pavement, it shattered into small unrecognizable pieces, and the wallpaper flickered back to the previously recorded loop of Tinker sitting in the garden.
"Evacuate the area," Wolf ordered in low Elvish. "I'm razing these buildings."
Apparently the man understood Elvish, because he yelped out, "What? You can't do that! I've called the police! You can't do this! This is Pittsburgh! I have rights!"
As if summoned by his words, a commotion downstairs announced the arrival of the Pittsburgh police.
"Police, freeze," a male voice barked in English. "Put down the weapons."
Wolf felt the sekasha downstairs activate their shields, blooms of magic against his awareness. Bladebite was saying something low and fast in High Elvish.
"Naekanain," someone cried in badly accented Elvish—I do not understand—while the first speaker repeated in English, "Put down the weapons!"
Wolf cursed. Apparently the police officers didn't speak Elvish, and his sekasha didn't speak English. Wolf called the winds and wrapped them about him before going to the top of the stairs.
There were two dark-blue-uniformed policemen crouched in the front door, keeping pistols leveled at the sekasha who had their ejae drawn. The officers looked human but, with oni, appearances could be deceiving. Both were tall enough to be oni warriors. The disguised warriors favored red hair while one policeman was pale blond and the other dark brown. The blond motioned with his left hand, as if trying to keep both his partner and the elves from acting.
"Naekanain," the blond repeated, and then added. "Pavuyau Ruve. Czernowski, just chill. They're the viceroy's personal guard."
"I know who the fuck they are, Bowman."
"If you know that," Wolf said, "then you know that they have the right to go where I want them to go, and do what I want them to do."
Bowman flicked a look up at him and then returned his focus on the sekasha. "Viceroy, have them put down their weapons."
"They will only when you do," Wolf said. "If you have not forgotten, we are at war."
"But not with us," Bowman growled.
Czernowski scoffed, and it saddened Wolf that he was closer to the mark.
"The oni have been living in Pittsburgh as disguised humans for years," Wolf said. "Until we're sure you're not oni, we must treat you as if you were. Lower your weapons."
Bowman hesitated, eyeing the sekasha as if he was considering how likely it was that he and his partner could overwhelm Wolf's guard. Wolf wasn't sure if Bowman's hesitation was born from overestimating his own abilities, or total ignorance of the sekasha's.
Finally, Bowman made a show of cautiously holstering his pistol. "Come on, Czernowski. Put it away."
The other policeman seemed familiar, although Wolf wasn't sure how; he rarely interacted with the Pittsburgh police. Wolf studied the two men. Unlike elves, where one could normally guess a person's clan, humans needed badges and patches to tell themselves apart. The officers' dark blue uniforms had shoulder patches and gold badges identifying them as Pittsburgh police. Bowman's brass nameplate read B. Pedersen. Czernowski's nameplate was unhelpful, giving only a first initial of N.
"I know you," Wolf said to Czernowski.
"I would hope so," the officer said. "You took the woman who was going to be my wife away from me. You ripped her right out of her species. You might think you've won, but I'm getting her back."
Wolf recognized him then—this was Tinker's Nathan, who bristled at him when Wolf collected his domi from the Faire. The uniform had thrown Wolf; he hadn't realized the man was a police officer. At the Faire, Czernowski had acted like a dog guarding a bone. Even though Tinker had stated over and over again that she was leaving with Wolf, Czernowski had clung to her, refusing to let her leave.
"Tinker is not a thing to be stolen away," Wolf told the man. "I did not take her. She chose me, not you. She is my domi now."
"I've seen the videotape." Nathan indicated the open box of DVDs. "I know what she is, but I don't care. I still love her, and I'm going to get her back."
"Who gives a fuck?" the thrice-damned photographer shouted behind Wolf. "It doesn't give these pointed-ear royalist freaks the right to break down my door and trash my stuff. I'm a tax-paying American! They can't—"
There was a loud thud as he was slammed up against his broken wall to silence him.
"Sir, can you step aside?" Bowman started cautiously upstairs before Wolf answered.
Wolf stepped back to make way for the two policemen.
The policemen took in the open window, the recording of Tinker in the garden, the smashed-down door, the broken wallpaper now stained with blood, and the broken-nosed paparazzi in Dark Harvest's hold.
"It's about time," the photographer cried. "Get these goons off me!"
"Please step away from him," Bowman told Dark, his hand dropping down to rest on his pistol. He repeated the order in bad Elvish. "Naeba Kiyau."
"He's to be detained." Wolf wanted it clear what was to be done with the photographer before relinquishing control of him. "And these buildings evacuated so I can demolish them."
"You can't do that." Bowman pulled out a pair of handcuffs. "According to the treaty—"
"The treaty is now null and void. I am now the law in Pittsburgh, and I say that this man is to be detained indefinitely and these buildings will be demolished."
"The fuck you are." Czernowski spat the words. "In Pittsburgh we're the law and you're guilty of breaking and entering, assault and battery, and I'm sure I can think of a few more."
Czernowski reached for Wolf's arm and instantly had three swords at his throat.
"No," Wolf shouted to keep the policeman from being killed.
Into the silence that suddenly filled the house, Tinker's recorded voice groaned, "Oh gods, yes, right there, oh, that's so good."
Bowman caught Czernowski as the policeman started to surge forward with a growl. "Czernowski!" Bowman slammed him against the wall. "Just deal with it! He's rich and powerful and she's fucking him. What part of this does not make sense to you? He drives a Rolls Royce and all the elves in Pittsburgh grovel at his feet. You think any bitch would pick a stupid Pole like you when she could have him?"
"He could have had anyone. She was mine."
"The fuck she was," Bowman growled. "If you'd scored once with her, all the bookies in Pittsburgh would know. You were always a long shot in the betting pool, Nathan. You were too stupid for her—and too dumb to realize that."
Czernowski glared at his partner, face darkening, but he stopped struggling to stand panting with his anger.
Bowman watched his partner for a minute before asking, "Are we good now?"
Czernowski nodded and flinched as Tinker's recorded voice gave a soft wordless moan of delight.
Bowman crossed to a section of the broken wall and pressed something and the sound stopped. "Viceroy, none of us like this any more than you do, but under international law, as of five years ago, this scumbag is within his rights to make this video."
"He's under elfin law now, and what he has done is unforgivable."
"Your people don't have technology capable of this." Bowman waved a hand at the wallpaper. "So you don't have laws to govern capturing digital images."
Wolf scoffed at the typical human sidestepping. "Why do humans nitpick justice to pieces? Can't you see that you've frayed it apart until it doesn't hold anything? There is right and then there is wrong. This is wrong."
"This isn't my place to decide, Viceroy. I'm just a cop. I only know human law, and as far as I last heard, human law still applies."
"The treaty says that any human left on Elfhome during Shutdown falls under elfin rule. The gate in orbit has failed; it is currently and always will be,
Shutdown."
Bowman wiped the expression off his face. "Until my superiors confirm this, I have to continue to function with standard protocol and I can't arrest this man."
"Then I'll have him executed."
"I can put him in protective custody," Bowman said.
"As long as protective custody means a small cell without a window, I'll agree to that," Wolf said.
"We'll see what we can do." Bowman moved to handcuff the photographer.
Wolf felt a deep yet oddly distanced vibration, as if a bowstring had been drawn and released to thrum against his awareness. He recognized it—someone nearby was tapping the power of the Wind Clan Spell Stone. Wolf thought that he and Tinker were the only Wind Clan domana in Pittsburgh—and he hadn't taught Tinker even the most basic spells . . .