“We should tell Oilcan about this,” Blue Sky said.
“What?” Tommy was surprised that Blue would be willing to share an advantage.
“It is only fair,” Blue said. “Oilcan could have stripped down his Delta to get an edge on me, but he’s been keeping the playing field even.”
Ah, yes, the honorable thing. “We need to keep it quiet, or the tengu will strip their model too.”
“Oilcan can be trusted,” Blue said.
It went against Tommy’s grain to trust anyone. Part of him, though, envied Blue’s easy faith in someone. Having another team on a more equal footing, though, would be to Tommy’s advantage.
“Fine, tell Oilcan,” Tommy said. “Let him know that we have to keep it secret.”
Blue nodded and dashed off.
John took out his drill and started to dismantle his Delta.
Blue Sky came back a few minutes later with a spell stencil. “Oilcan gave this to me. Tinker designed it. It goes on the handle bar. It gives a bike a more aero-dy-namic profile…whatever that means. He was going to use it this race to try and gain speed on me, since I’m lighter than him.”
#
A few minutes before race time, the tengu team arrived, bike intact. Tommy wasn’t sure how they slipped it past the various traps his cousins had laid outside of the racetrack, but it didn’t matter. It was here and he was out of time. Everything rode now on Team Big Sky and Team Tinker.
Blue pulled on his racing leathers and mounted the Delta.
John caught his brother’s chin and made the boy look at him. “You do not take unnecessary risks. This is just a race. It is only money. Your life is more important than either one of those. Do you understand?”
Blue glanced to Tommy.
“It’s only money.” Tommy forced himself to say.
Blue pulled on his helmet, started up the Delta and swung it out onto the race course.
Oilcan came out of the Team Tinker’s pit, his Delta as bare as John’s. While he was bigger than Blue Sky, Oilcan was a compact man. Both teams were in Wind Clan Blue, near twins as they slid up into their starting gates. Oilcan looked in Tommy’s direction, giving him a long, unreadable study. As Windwolf’s in-law, Tommy realized, Oilcan probably knew that Tommy was half-oni.
Team Providence brought their bike out last, trailing the pack. It was a standard street frame and enlarged power housing. The rider was a tall, lean male with a tengu nose in the team’s bright red color. He frowned at the stripped Deltas as he took his gate at the end.
There was a moment of near quiet with only the deep rumble of the engines as the clock counted down the last second. Then the horn blared, the gates dropped open and the hoverbikes leaped forward. The crowd roared. Blue Sky darted into the lead position with Oilcan on his flank, and a second later the tengu surged forward out of the pack to close the distance. The lead three flashed around the corner into the first series of jumps. The last bike cleared the gates. As the gate crew moved to swing the gates out of the way, Tommy crossed the track and swung over the retaining wall. He wanted to watch from the stands in order to see the full racecourse.
It was clear that his bike gave the tengu the advantage. In the straights he pulled ahead, only to lose the lead again and again to the more experienced Blue Sky and Oilcan on the smaller bikes. He was shifting too much power into his lift drive to make each jump, stealing too much from his spell chain that provided the speed. Blue Sky had the lead, shaving the clearance of his jumps down to fractions of an inch. Oilcan kissed down each time, seconds behind him, but with nearly a foot in on his landings.
“Yes!” Tommy hissed. His nails bit deep into his palm as he clenched his fist tight. If the two could hold out the entire race, they might win.
There was another straight after the jumps and the tengu pulled ahead, but slowed for the hairpin second turn. Blue Sky flashed past him, riding high up the wall to slip past him. Oilcan took back second, and then pushed into first as they went through the moguls, perfectly timing his liftoff to grab the most airspace.
Tommy pulled his eyes off the racers to check on the tengu pit. Their spotter was down off his perch, huddled with the rest of the crew. They knew they were in trouble. What would they do? Tommy watched them carefully. While the elves had accepted the tengu’s claims of being humans crossed with crows, it didn’t make them any less oni in Tommy’s eyes. And oni were capable of anything.
The crew captain broke away from the huddle, talking on his headset, shielding the earpiece from the unending roar of the crowd. Tommy tried to read his lips, but couldn’t tell which of the many languages in Pittsburgh the tengu was using. The captain was repeating the word. What was he telling his rider to do?
The captain turned and looked not out at the riders, but up at the grandstand. He was talking to someone in the stands. No, he was looking too high. On the grandstand roof!
The leaders flashed in front of the pits and the captain gestured at them, and repeated the word. Tommy guessed the word—shoot.
Fury filled him, like a cold dark storm. He shoved his way through the crowd to the stairs down to the concession level. The dim cement hallway was empty of people and echoed with the wild cheering.
“I’ve got a shooter on the roof!” Tommy shouted at Trixie as he ran past her in the concession stand. “Get someone to back me up!”
He had to jump to grab the bottom of the access ladder and scrambled up it. A tengu male was crouched at the far lip of the roof, a rifle at his shoulder, aiming at the leaders. Tommy clenched his ability tight around the tengu’s mind and willed him blind. The tengu lowered the gun, shaking his head as if trying to clear his vision. Tommy stalked forward, all need to hurry over, letting his fury carry him. The tengu got to his feet and cautiously backed away from the edge of the roof. Tommy grabbed the rifle and jerked it from the tengu’s hands. Changing his grip on the rifle, Tommy swung it like a club.
“This!” The stock hit with satisfying solidness. “Is!” His hit smashed the tengu to the ground. “My!” The tengu’s nose disintegrated in a spray of blood. “Track!”
The tengu writhed on the ground, trying to escape him. Tommy pinned him in place with his foot, reversed the rifle and placed the tip of the barrel at the center of the tengu’s forehead. He released his hold on the tengu’s mind, letting him see the rifle. “And no one fucks with what is mine.”
The roaring of the crowd grew, indicating that the race was nearly done. The tengu team would be free to look for their missing shooter, and the grandstand would be swarming with idle race goers, hanging out between races. If he killed the tengu, there could be hell to pay. He kicked the tengu in the temple, knocking him unconscious. Bingo scrambled up the ladder to join Tommy on the roof.
“Don’t kill him, but get him down off here.” Tommy turned to watch the end of the race.
The leaders were coming around the last turn. Blue was tight and low, leaned so close to the inside wall it seemed like it had to be peeling off his jacket. Oilcan was tucked close behind, his spell chain nearly touching Blue’s lift engine. The human flicked out as they hit the straight, moving to try and pass the half-elf. The tengu whipped around the curve and poured all his power into speed and surged forward. Oilcan continued to slide right, blocking him. The tengu tried to shift left and Blue darted into his path. They roared toward the finish line, the lead two weaving a dance to keep the tengu blocked.
Team Big Sky won. Team Tinker took second. Team Providence took third.
#
Oilcan stopped Tommy before he reached the tengu team. “Don’t hurt them, Tommy. This has been bad enough for the racing. Don’t take it any farther.”
“This is their gun. They were going to use it on you and Blue.”
Oilcan’s eyes widened at the blood splattered rifle, but still, he shook his head. “You beat them. If you take it farther, it’s only going to look bad on you.” He indicated the sekasha in the stands.
Tommy flung the rifle into th
e tengu’s pit. “Clear out and don’t come back. All tengu teams, from here on out, are banned from the race. All tengu are banned from the race track. They are banned from every place that I have influence over. I offered a fair race and fair odds and you tried to grind that into the mud, and I will not deal with you again.”
“Do you think we care?” the captain asked.
“Take your dishonor back to your flock. Tell your shame to Jin. Then tell me if you care.”
It took a minute, but then it dawned on the male that in Pittsburgh, with the elves holding a sword’s edge to the throat of all that was non-elf, he and his cohorts had just fucked themselves over royally.
#
Windwolf arrived while Tommy was working in the money room, totaling up the day’s take. His sekasha walked in like they owned the place and he swept in behind them. The large, normally very secure room suddenly felt like a broom closet.
“What are you doing here?” Tommy saved his work and closed the windows on his datapad.
“I heard there was trouble here today,” Windwolf said.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
The tengu team had slunk away, taking their unconscious shooter with them. The races continued without incident and no surprises in the betting. Between the attendance fees and concession receipts, they covered all their expenses and made a good profit. All in all, a good day.
Windwolf tilted his head, as if utterly confounded by Tommy. “Why do you fight the idea of forming a household beholden to me so much?”
“Why do you expect me to put my life into your hands? Because you were humane enough to recognize the truth—that we’re more human than we are oni? That we hate the oni as much as you do? Why should that be enough to make you our master?”
“As part of the new treaty, all of Pittsburgh must become part of the elfin culture. The half-oni must form a household.”
“We are a household.”
“And be part of a clan.”
“Because you refuse to trust us unless we’re your slaves? We’re good and honorable people.” He had realized today that he had always had, at his core, that human nobility that he recognized in John. For years he had run a fair race for no other reason that it seemed the right thing to do.
“It is the elfin way: those who serve are protected, those who protect are served.”
“The elfin way is wrong. You have no right to be my master. You’re no better a being than I am, and you don’t have my trust, and I don’t owe you anything. I will not enslave myself and my entire people just because you say I have to.”
“Yes, you owe me nothing,” Windwolf said patiently as if he was speaking to a child. “But I owe you my life. I do not seek to enslave you, but to protect you from my people and the others that would harm you.”
“I will protect my people. I always have. And I always will.”
20: Blackbird Sing
“Tommy, Keiko Shoji is at the gate. She says that Jin Wong wants to meet with you.”
The great and holy Jin Wong. The Buddha of the tengu. He was a secret legend of Pittsburgh the entire time Tommy was growing up. Somehow it was fitting that Tinker had produced Jin out of thin air. And the mighty Jin wanted to meet with the half-oni?
Tommy leaned forward to see the front gate. At a distance, Riki’s young female cousin looked like a little fierce bird. What was Jin thinking, sending her? Did he think Tommy would be less likely to hurt a female? If he did, that he was an idiot.
But Tommy was curious. This was the mountain coming to Mohammad. If he was going to make the ban on tengu stick, he couldn’t meet with Jin at the racetrack. He needed a neutral ground. Someplace where the tengu were at a disadvantage, which meant indoors. “Tell him that we’ll meet him at the aviary in an hour.”
“The what?”
“He’ll know what it is.”
#
The national aviary was on the North Side. His mother used to bring Tommy down to see the birds. When he was very small it was an ancient facility with a few hundred Earth birds and curious elves. Over the years, new buildings had been added and filled with birds from Elfhome and researchers from Earth.
It wasn’t until he was inside and watching the brightly colored songbirds flit through the mock woodland that he remembered why he’d loved the aviary as a child. In the American cartoon, the small and defenseless birds always outwitted the bigger cats and dogs. He could come and see the tiny yellow finches and the small roadrunners and have hope that one day he would be able to defeat his father.
Tommy avoided the new buildings, keeping to the birds of Earth in the old sections. He settled among the owls and waited for the common enemy. The tengu swept into the aviary, a flock of crow black. Jin wore nothing to single him out as the leader of the tengu, except the lack of weapons.
Jin was a surprisingly slight man. Tall. Lean. Quiet. He had a weird sense of presence, though, that made him impossible to miss. It was like every cell in his body was silently shouting, “I am.”
He came with a platoon of bodyguards that Tommy all knew by sight as the most kickass of the tengu. Males and females that even the best of his father’s warriors would be leery of tangling with. It was clear that they would all die to keep Jin safe. Warriors of the cause.
That Jin was bound to the whim of a little girl like Tinker would be nearly laughable if she didn’t have the habit of redefining the world.
“I’m here.” Tommy growled. “What do you want?”
Jin spoke quietly, without any anger in his voice. “I wish to apologize.” Jin bowed deeply to Tommy. “Those who have wronged you have been punished. I have made it clear to my people that I will not tolerate this type of activity.”
Tommy bit down on the distaining laugh that wanted out. A man like Jin Wong didn’t come in person and apologize, not to the likes of him. There was more to this. “And?”
“I ask that you reopen the racetrack to my people.”
Yeah, that’s what he thought. “No. Saying you’re sorry and slapping your people on the wrists will not make this better between us.”
“I put to death those that wronged you.”
Tommy went still in surprise. “You killed them?”
“What they did was inexcusable.” Jin’s eyes were hard and cold. The male was deadly serious.
“You killed all ten of Team Providence?” Tommy asked just to be clear.
“There were thirty tengu involved. The ten on the team and the twenty that laid the bets. I questioned them all closely to discover what they had done and why. They all knew what was planned and cooperated in it, so they were all treated equally. I executed all but one for their crimes. We’re still looking for the last one.”
They weren’t going to find him. Tommy made sure of that. Was this an elaborate scam to get Tommy to confess? Jin could wait for the end of time if that was the case. Oh wait, Jin had been to the end of the time and came back.
“You killed twenty-nine of your own people for trying to cheat me?”
“We were enslaved by the oni for thousands of years.” Jin tapped the cage holding a great horned owl. The large bird clicked its beak at the crow. “For the first time ever, we have the hope for lasting peace. At this moment, though, that is all it is: a hope. The elves must win this war with the oni and we must fight alongside the elves, the humans, and the half-oni.”
“No, no, don’t put us into that mix. We’re flying solo. Hell, half my people are under the age of ten, and a quarter of the other half are pregnant. We don’t want to fight anyone.”
Jin gave Tommy a sad smile. “You have broken your ties with the oni—that is all that is important to me. The tengu has one enemy, and only one enemy. I do not want my people to ever lose sight of that.”
Twenty-nine tengu. Dead. Tommy couldn’t quiet wrap his head around it. That was more than his three aunts and all his younger cousins combined. Lined up and killed in cold blood by the person they would die to protect. The one person that should have
been protecting them.
“I don’t get it,” Tommy said. “They lost. They didn’t win the race or get the money.”
“This is not about the race or the money.” Jin said. “This is about truth, trust and vigilance. Team Providence knew that I would have stopped them, so they kept their plans secret from me. They lied by omission.”
Kenji admitted that much before Tommy killed him.
Jin continued to list Team Providence’s crimes. “They knew that Team Big Sky and Team Tinker were favorites, so they took the rifle with them to assure a win. They knew too that Oilcan is our domi’s cousin, and that she has adopted Blue Sky. Yet still, they loaded the gun and sent their shooter to the grandstand roof.”
Tommy hadn’t considered the connections of the two targets. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Team Providence might have won the race if they had shot Blue or Oilcan, but their people would have been washed in blood immediately afterwards.
And how soon after the tengu’s apparent betrayal would the half-oni massacre follow?
Jin read the flow of realizations on Tommy’s face. “Yes, our fate is tied. Windwolf was willing to trust the tengu because the half-oni saved him from Malice. Because I could stand as Sama for all of the tengu, the elves were willing to believe that you would become Beholden to a domana.”
Tommy didn’t like that cause and effect.
“In this war, we are allies,” Jin said softly. “And we have only one enemy—the oni. Team Providence shut their eyes, and closed their ears and let our enemy take them by the hand.”
“The oni set this up?”
“There was a human in a bar, buying drinks and talking loudly. They don’t remember his name or what he looked like, but they let him fill their hearts with poison. He scattered all the little bits of the plan on the ground like bright jewels and walked away, leaving them to gather them up, piece them together, and then congratulate each other for being so clever to have figured it all out by themselves.”
“Kajo.” Tommy spat the name. The greater blood was famous for using spies to infiltrate groups and splintering them apart. Kenji mentioned something about getting the idea from a drunk human spouting off about how much money he’d won betting on long shots. Tommy been too focused on finding the hoverbike to delve deeper.