“Hal, what did you do?” Jane said.
“Sheer genius is what I’ve done!” Hal pulled out a flare gun, pointed it skyward, and pulled the trigger. “Light the signal fires!”
The flare shot up into the sky and flashed to orange against the gray storm clouds.
“Damn it, Hal, all you did was tell the enemy our position!”
“Wait for it,” he murmured.
There was a flare of color in the skies over Oakland as fireworks exploded against the clouds. A moment later another went up over Hill District. Even as the two sites fired their second rounds, a rocket lifted off from the Steel Building.
“See!” Hal shouted. “The beacons of Oakland are alight, calling for aid. War is kindled. See, there are the fireworks on the Cathedral and the Hill District, and flame on the Steel Building, and there they go speeding south: Mount Washington, Beechview, Dormont, and Castle Shannon on the borders of the Rim.”
Behind them, a string of fireworks went up, just a handful from each site but enough to mark a line heading deep into South Hills. Jane had no idea how he’d arranged it.
“It was glorious, wasn’t it?” Hal breathed out as the last firework faded away.
“Brilliant!” Nigel agreed.
Naturalists!
“Come on,” Jane said. “Let’s go.”
23: A SNAKE IN THE GRASS
The spaceship made Tristan’s older brother laugh and laugh. Lucien sat, laughing, on the roof of the two-story stone piers that once anchored the Washington Bridge over Turtle Creek. He’d perched on the stone’s edge, kicking his feet like a child.
“Oh, you should have seen it,” Lucien said. “Even Danni was blindsided. I tell you, Esme’s changeling daughter is a hoot. Before the spaceship, this entire valley was ice-cold blue soup. The weirdest freaking thing I’ve ever seen. I have no idea how she did it, but that stupid cat was toast. I’m glad Father made the decision to trust him with the changeling because I’d be totally screwed by now.”
While Tristan could pass as a very tall nine-year-old and be enrolled into fifth grade, his brother looked like he could be as old as thirteen or fourteen. Lucien was growing up faster than Tristan; it seemed like his brother had inherited more of their mother’s genes. The irony was that they hadn’t seen each other for over twenty years. It had been a joyful reunion in July. As the days stretched on, though, Tristan realized that Lucien was keeping him at arm’s length and isolated in his deep forest camp. He was starting to worry something was drastically wrong.
What did this mean? Bringing him to the site of a major failure for their side to laugh like the children that they were?
“They said she opened a gate to Onihida,” Tristan said, repeating the rumors around camp. “You could see our troops gathered on the other side — half a million strong — waiting for the chance to cross through it. It would have been an instant victory for us.”
“Danni said it would fail but she wasn’t sure how.” Lucien waved at the spaceship. “Not even the Eyes could see this coming! Danni said it would get that damn cat out of my hair, so I let it run its course.”
“Didn’t we need Lord Tomtom?”
“Father might think we did but Danni said he was getting to be a liability. Certainly it’s his mistakes that we’ve been tripping over all summer, starting with that stupid gunfight on Veterans Bridge. He was sloppy and ambitious. He had no sense of delicacy. It’s because of him we lost all advantage of surprise. It was best to let the stupid cat get burned on the fire that is Esme’s changeling daughter. Oh, she burns so hot.”
Tristan turned back to the spaceship standing tail down in the valley below. There were glyphs of draconic magic scrawled up its side. He guessed that the spell inscribed on the hull was what was keeping the mile-long ship from collapsing under the weight of gravity and wind shear. Written in giant Chinese letters was the name of the spaceship. Dahe Hao. He’d watched it jump out of Earth’s orbit eighteen years ago. He was sure that he’d never see it again. He was sure that his older half sister was dead. “It’s Esme’s ship.”
“Yeah,” Lucien laughed. “It’s so like her, coming out of nowhere to kick Father in the nuts as hard as she can.”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes. She’s at Lain’s. She looks the same as when she left. It’s like she’s half-elf too. Dufae had left a booby trap in his design. All the ships that went through the gate were trapped in time until his daughter ripped it out of the sky.”
“How did she…” Tristan paused, mind boggled to the point that he couldn’t even form a question.
“Make the valley blue soup? Rip the gate out of the sky? Find her mother? Teleport her here?” Lucien laughed and flung himself backward to lie staring up at the gray sky threatening to rain. He’d abandoned his oni robes for this exploration of the bridge and was wearing blue jeans and a dark gray hoodie. For the first time since Tristan arrived, Lucien seemed like the boy that he was. It almost seemed like they were back on Earth again, just normal kids, out exploring the woods around their father’s estate. “Only the gods know! I certainly don’t. I’ve given up trying to guess because even the Eyes can’t see her next weird wiggle. She’s like her mother that way. Who would have guessed that Esme would suddenly want to be a spaceship captain? She was all angst and steampunk when she lived at the mansion.”
Tristan thought of his two nine-year-old nieces now living in their mother’s bedroom. He felt guilty that he’d left them there — unknowing, unprotected. They were far too clever not to realize something was off about everyone at his father’s estate. Would they realize that all the servants were ancient elves, camping on the edge of a pinprick gateway between the worlds?
“They say that Esme made more than this changeling.” His brother said it as fact but it was a question, as if he guessed Tristan’s thoughts. They had some of their mother’s intuition, just not enough to please their father.
Tristan struggled to keep his tone factual. “After the first implantation was successful, Esme had the remaining genetic material frozen. An employee of the lab noticed that the material had been abandoned and stole it. He and his wife had twins.” Tristan felt another guilty twist. He couldn’t be sure if his father had a hand in the death of the girls’ parents but it felt too unlikely to be a coincidence. He knew what it was like to be torn away from your mother at a young age. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone — and yet, the twins were now orphans trapped at his father’s estate. “Father seems unsatisfied with them. I think it’s because they remind him of Esme and how hard she fought him. He has our people looking to see if there was more material in storage. Something he can mold into a more useful tool.”
“Twins?” Lucien sounded genuinely surprised. Had Father told Lucien nothing? “Oh, the horror! Two more like this changeling? I’m glad they’re on Earth and not here.”
“With the gate gone, there’s no way Father can have them brought to Elfhome now.” Tristan was glad that they were on Earth with his mother, but still he wasn’t completely sure that they were safe.
Yves had been left on Earth to oversee their efforts there. Their older brother had always made it clear that Lucien and Tristan were beneath his notice. They were half-elves and would only live a few hundred years. Maybe. Or they might live for thousands of years. No one was sure. Yves still saw his younger half brothers as disposable tools. What would Yves do to the twins? Would he see them as a valuable commodity or a dangerous nuisance?
“There’s always a way.” Lucien said that as if he knew something Tristan had never been told. “Yves is long overdue but Father expects big brother any time now.”