She had totally lost track of time since she landed on the spaceship. What day was it now?
Jin understood the result. "Thus the collision."
"Yeah. Old news. This is the important part—all the ships, when they passed through the gate, must have picked up the resonance signature." She drew a ship on the other side of the gate, labeled it Dahe Hao, and continued the wavy line to it. "As long as there are objects in orbit, the resonance will continue, which is why the Discontinuity hasn't collapsed. It's because of this link, that when I fell into the Ghostlands, I ended up onboard. For every action, though, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Basically the power spike originates here on Elfhome and travels in this direction—" She drew an arrow parallel to the wavy line through the planet. "—the multiuniverse is trying to drag the Dahe Hao back along this line." She drew a second arrow from the ship running beside the resonance path toward the planet. "Again, as long as the Discontinuity continues, the Dahe Hao will be affected by this force."
She turned and was startled to find her audience had grown from Jin to about twenty crew members. "Um, well, this isn't all bad. We can use this force to our advantage. The entire ship and everyone on it is keyed to this location." She underlined Turtle Creek. "Now, if you look at this section of the text . . ." She pointed to the screen. "This is a spell. It creates a sphere of hyperphase. All we need to do is cast this spell which will step the ship into hyperphase and follow the line of force back to Pittsburgh."
"That's all?" Esme said.
Tinker turned back and found her audience had grown again. Esme and another twenty crew members crowded the small area. "My biggest concern is power. If the amount of magic we feed into the spell is too small, it will just punch a hole in the middle of the ship. We need enough power that we can guarantee that the entire ship goes. Even if we think we have sufficient magic, we probably should gather everyone close to the spell, and close all the hatches between the sections of the ship."
"What we've collected isn't enough?" Esme asked.
"I don't think so, and access time on it is slow. The spell is set up to mimic how the dragons cast magic with their mane. With elf magic, there's a timing ring around the spell that controls the power coming in. It gives the magic a slow steady burn. This spell takes all the free magic and converts it in one burst." Tinker sketched the ship and put an "X" at roughly the center of the ship. "It's kind of like dropping a stone into a pool of water. Splash!" She drew in the initial impact in a large circle around the "X". "That's the rock hitting the surface. There seems to be some resulting ripples in the fabric of space." She added larger circles around the first, and then shaded in the space between the circles. "I'm not sure what the ripples will do, but I can't imagine the delay factor will be good for the structural integrity of the ship."
"In other words," Jin sought to clarify what she said, "part of the ship returns to Pittsburgh seconds before the next section goes?"
"Yes. Leo's gate, however flawed, did transfer all the ship to the same second. These ripples would have a different time coordinate, so probably we're looking at pieces of the ship arriving in Pittsburgh—unless we hit it with a damn big rock."
"So where do we get it?"
"I don't know. If we could tap the spring under Turtle Creek, that would work, but I don't see any evidence that power is seeping through."
There was no sign of Malice in Oakland when Wolf and the others returned to the enclaves. Maynard had set up a command center in the building across the street from Poppymeadow's. He and the NSA agents had set up lookout posts across the city, linked by radio.
"Unless it can go invisible, it hasn't appeared in the city yet." Maynard tapped three points on the map. "Between the Cathedral of Learning, the USX building, and Mount Washington, we can see for miles—and Stormsong said that this thing was huge."
Wolf nodded. "Unfortunately, it will be dark soon."
Someone was hammering upstairs. The hammering stopped, and something large moved overhead accompanied by an odd rhythmic clicking noise.
Wolf cocked his head, trying to place the sound. "What is that?"
Stormsong glanced toward Earth Son standing in the street, just outside the open door, and lowered her voice. "Domi's nagarou brought the little dragon, so the humans can see what we're fighting."
Interesting how one afternoon could change your perspective on size.
Maynard had caught Stormsong's caution and spoke quietly in English. "Briggs and Durrack are seeing what works against it."
Wolf couldn't decide if this was ingenious or unwise. He found the stairs leading up to the one large open room taking up the entire second story. The windows had been boarded shut and mattresses leaned against the walls. The dragon and others were in the far corner, standing around a computer set up on the floor. While Oilcan and Durrack were focused on the screen, Briggs and Little Horse and Cloudwalker were standing back and watching the dragon.
All beings—dragon, humans, and elves—looked up when he arrived with his Hand.
"Domou." Little Horse acknowledged his arrival.
"What are you doing here?" Wolf thought he had sent his blade brother back to the enclaves.
"There is nothing I can do for domi, but she would want her nagarou safe. Surely, the oni will try and take back the little dragon."
Wolf glanced at his domi's nagarou. There was so much of Tinker in Oilcan's appearance that it hurt—her mouth, her eyes, and her haphazard haircut. In the hectic last two months, Wolf had not spoken once to the young man. Wolf realized now that Tinker was Oilcan's only family; he was now quite alone. Wolf could not imagine it; an elf only found himself alone if he was exiled from his clan. Clans were so vast that natural disaster could lay low entire households and families and there would still be someone left to be responsible for the orphans.
Wolf had been lax toward Oilcan because he was an adult—if he had been an elf, Oilcan would have chosen a clan that superseded all family responsibilities. That had been wrong of Wolf. Even if he lifted Tinker out of her species, it did not completely free her of her culture's obligations—and as her domou, her responsibilities were his own. But beyond that, it been wrong of him to be a stranger to the one human that Tinker loved as much as life.
Oilcan cautiously separated himself from the dragon, as if he didn't fully trust either the dragon or the warriors from either race. "Wolf Who Rules." Oilcan gave a proper bow. "I heard about Malice on the scanner," he said in High Tongue. Sorrow filled his eyes as he spoke, and then was firmly put aside. "I thought we might learn something from Impatience."
"Thank you, nagarou. That was wise of you." Wolf dropped to Low Elvish, and put a hand to the young man's shoulder.
A smile flashed over Oilcan's face, then vanished as he sighed. "Unfortunately, most of what we've found out so far isn't good."
"I did not expect anything else. What have we found out?"
"Well, there was a question if Impatience and Malice are both really dragons, given their size and various other differences. From what we've pieced together, we think they are. In Chinese mythology, the four-claw dragons are considered common dragons but the imperial dragon has five claws. We think the variations are racial instead of species differences, and possibly represent political differences too."
"Tengu worship five-claws—they—compassionate guardians of tengu in past," Durrack spoke very rough low Elvish. "Four-claws—they have bad reputation—they work with the oni without being enslaved. Malice is not enslaved."
"Now, the dragon can't maintain its shields all the time." Oilcan patted Impatience on the head, showing that the little dragon's shields were currently down. "It takes them approximately thirty seconds to raise their shields."
Durrack abandoned Low Elvish, to add in English, "If we could catch Malice completely unaware, a sniper might be able to take him out with a well-placed bullet. But once his shield goes up, things get tricky."
Oilcan murmured a translation to Little Horse
and Cloudwalker, and then added in Elvish, "The shields, while they use ambient magic, are very efficient and translate all kinetic energy—including the motion of the dragon's body—somehow into magic. Bullets, rockets, baseballs—" Oilcan nudged a ball on the floor that they apparently had been using in their experiments. "—anything you can throw at them—will only make them stronger."
"And they can keep the shields up while they phase through walls." Durrack patted a wooden partition erected next to him. Impatience took this as a request to demonstrate his phasing abilities. His mane lifted up and he shimmered into a ghostly haze and leapt through the wall and returned.
"Good boy!" Oilcan produced a large gumball from his pocket and gave it to the dragon, who chewed it with obvious relish. "We believe your lightning will cross the barrier because it's composed of a different type of energy particle."
"Electricity works." Durrack lifted up half a cattle prod. "We established that."
Impatience snatched the cattle prod out of the NSA agent's hand and phased it into the wall. When the little dragon let go, the cattle prod remained as part of the wall. The other half, Wolf noticed, was already part of the wall. Apparently the little dragon didn't like that test.
"As a one shot deal, pepper spray will work." Durrack picked up an aerosol can. "Of course, it only annoys the hell out of them, and then the dragon changes its shields so that gas won't penetrate."
"I'm stunned you are all still alive." Wolf realized that Impatience had to be remarkably forgiving to put up with these experiments.
"We talked first," Oilcan said.
Briggs scoffed, "We drew pictures and did a lot of pantomime."
"He seems to understand what's going on," Oilcan said. "He seems to hate both Malice and the oni, but he's made it clear that he can't beat Malice in a fight."
"How do oni enslave the dragons in the first place? Do the tengu say?"
Durrack shook his head. "No."
Wolf wondered if this was the truth. While he trusted Oilcan to be as forthright as Tinker, the NSA clearly saw themselves as separate powers, with all that implied.
After the accident, and the various course corrections, the Dahe Hao's low orbit didn't put them within range of the Wind Clan spell stones at Aum Renau. After discussing their fuel situation and the reliability of their engines, they decided to look for stones elsewhere within a mei. The spell stones were large enough and distinctive enough that the pattern recognition software found several sets. It was impossible to distinguish which clan the stones belonged to, but they found four grouped together in the place the crew nicknamed Giza.
"There are four major clans—Wind, Fire, Water, Stone—so I think it's a safe bet that it's one set for each major clan." At least, Tinker hoped it was. She knew there were lesser clans, but she didn't know anything about them. "At this speed, though, we're already out of range, so I'll have to wait until next orbit to check."
"You've got about an hour and a half then." Esme murmured a curse as something flashed red on her monitor. "But we're drifting again. We're going to have to do another course correction."
"Try and keep us in this orbit," Tinker said. "A mei is only a thousand miles, give or take a couple hundred miles. If we drop much closer to the equator, we'll be out of range."
Tinker then retreated to work on printing out the spell. Jin tracked her down a short time later.
"Gracie wanted to be sure you got something to eat." Jin held out a container.
"Pft." Tinker waved away the offering. "If I eat, I'll have to figure out how you go to the bathroom up here, and I figure that's not going to be a pleasant activity."
Jin laughed, still holding out the cup-sized container. "You have to eat."
"What is it?"
"Cream of tomato soup."
"Oh! My favorite." She took the container and found that it was warm. As she snapped it open and sipped the rich creamy broth, Jin swung up to perch across from her.
"It was your father's favorite too." Jin sipped his own soup. "I can see Leo in you. Hear him in the way you talk. It makes me happy."
"Why?"
"Leo was my best friend for many years. I'm glad that in a way, he is living on through you."
"If he was such a good friend, why did you kill him?"
She expected him to deny it, but he only gazed at her, sorrow filling his eyes.
"I—I made a mistake. We never told Leo that we were tengu. And he never told us—at least, not until it was too late—that he was elfin. We kept our secrets from one another, and in the end, it killed Leo."
"I don't understand," Tinker said.
"Leo and I met at MIT. We both had radical ideas, ones that made us unpopular. We believed that magic existed—that there were other realms that could be visited via magical portals. Of course, we had the proof in our very blood, but we never told anyone that, not even each other." Jin sighed, shaking his head. "It seems so obvious now. Dufae. How did we miss it?"
"What really happened? My grandfather never told me the details."
"When Leo showed us his gate design, a possibility opened up to us. A paradise for the tengu. It became the flock dream, a bright promise at the end of a path through dark woods full of unseen danger. To be able to choose one's mate out of love, and not a carefully ordered breeding plan. To be able to fly. To walk under the sun in our true form, and not to be always hidden. I went to the kitsune, who are powerful in the Chinese government, and talked to them about funding. They involved other parties. It was dangerous, I know, but I thought I understood all the factors. What I didn't know was that Leo was an elf—that he knew exactly what the oni were—and that he wouldn't cooperate with them."
"Halfway through the meeting with the investors, Leo just freaked. He told them that he would never help the oni build a gate. And worse, he told them why. As much as the elves feared the oni, the oni of Earth feared the elves. He stormed out of the meeting. I went after him. We were arguing—" Jin fell silent for a minute. "It happened so fast. One moment he was standing beside me on the street corner, arguing with me, and the next he was dead in the middle of the road.
Jin sighed. "I wasn't driving the car. I didn't push him out into its path. But I brought death to him. And I can only say I'm sorry. And I truly am. I loved him like a brother."
All Tinker could imagine was Nathan out on the road, his blood on her. Oh gods, she didn't want to cry again. She squeezed her eyes tight on the sudden burn of tears. "How do you deal with knowing that you fucked up so bad? That you killed someone who loved you? Who trusted you?"
"Accept the truth of what happened, and then forgive yourself. They would if they could."
She laughed bitterly. "Why would they?"
"Because they loved you."
She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes, and struggled to get back in control of herself. The truth of what happened? The truth was that she had ignored all the warning signs with Nathan. She had to pay attention, think about the consequences of her actions. Like now—she was desperately trying to get back to Pittsburgh, but what if she was totally wrong? With sudden terror, she saw the implications of her actions. She was taking Dahe Hao to Pittsburgh. She might be saving the human crew, but she was dooming the tengu crew to genocide.
"I'm worried about what will happen to the tengu when we reach Pittsburgh. The elves are killing people that they just suspect are oni. And I know they will see tengu as oni."
"You still don't think of yourself as one of them?"
"No, not really. Wait—how do you know?"
"For the last week, all we've dreamed about is you—all the weird twists and turns your life has taken." Jin picked up the camera. Cloudwalker had had trouble tracking the hyperactive dragon through the trailer and caught her and Pony in the viewfinder instead. "We've seen what you've done to keep your sekasha safe."
"You know everything?" She wondered if this was why she had been having such horrible nightmares lately.
"Enough. Your fight w
ith the Foo dogs. Your transformation from a human. Your fight with the oni lord." Jin played a few seconds of recording as Pony acknowledged one of her requests with a slight bow. "This is just proof of what we already knew. You're the Wind Clan domi, guarded by a Hand of sekasha, one of which is another dreamer."
"Her name is Stormsong."
"You told me."
"I don't know what to do about this," Tinker admitted. "If we don't do the spell, I don't think anyone will survive. If we do the spell, then you end up in the mess in Pittsburgh."