With the orbital gate gone, there should be no way for Yves to get to Elfhome. Lucien made it sound like it was only a matter of time.
Tristan wasn’t sure what their father planned for him. He hadn’t seen his father since he’d been sent away from the mansion in the middle of the night. They had crossed during the July Shutdown in separate vehicles. His father hadn’t summoned him during the last two months; it almost seemed like he’d forgotten about Tristan. It did not bode well.
“Don’t worry,” Lucien said. “I’ve made myself indispensable here. I’ll keep you safe until you can establish your own worth. You found the tengu Chosen bloodline. You figured out how to find the box that Unbounded Brilliance stole hundreds of years ago. Even if Father can’t see the value of that, don’t worry, little brother. You’re one of the two things I plan to claim for myself once Pittsburgh has fallen.”
“Two? What’s the other?”
Lucien blushed and sat up. “There’s a girl I want. I found her one day, down in the Strip District. She’s like an angel. I had to put her aside until the fighting was over. Danni said that she was too dangerous to keep. Danni was right, she has a very audacious family — but I want her. If I am the ying — the darkness — then she is my yang. My light. Once we bring the elves to their knees, I want you to help me recapture her.”
Tristan nodded even as he inwardly winced at the word “recapture.” It was not a word one should use regarding a beloved. It was weird to think of his brother even having a lover. Tristan was too young physically to consider taking one. His body wasn’t showing any of the signs of puberty. There was also the problem that as a half-elf, he aged much slower than any of the humans he’d ever known.
“Will you make her an elf?” Tristan said. “So she can stay young as you?”
His brother waved aside the concern. “I made her immortal when I made her a tengu. Transforming her was a way to keep Danni from fiddling with her. The Eyes are tricky to work with. They can see what you’re about to do unless you’re very…indirect. It makes them infuriatingly independent. Chloe would not be dead if she hadn’t been so sure she could dance rings around the changeling. I’d warned her to be careful but she was too confident of her own skills. Danni would have killed my Boo if I hadn’t made Boo irreplaceable as part of the Chosen bloodline.” His brother grinned. “Danni and the others always underestimate me. They forget I’m of Clarity’s bloodline too.”
Lucien had all the tengu in his camp killed shortly after Tristan arrived. He’d known that he was going to lose all leverage with the Flock even before Joey Shoji had been rescued.
“If you made her tengu,” Tristan said, “where is she now?”
Lucien waved lazily as if this wasn’t important. “I’m not sure. I dare not ask the Eyes to fetch her, lest they take it upon themselves to kill her. Joey Shoji is back with his people — he was spotted at Poppymeadows when the tengu summoned their dead guardian spirit. Boo wasn’t with the other Chosen. She might be at the tengu base, wherever they have that hidden. Or she might have gone back to her family. I don’t trust my normal spies. They’re too bloodthirsty to fetch someone you love. I need your skills and finesse.”
Someone you love. That must be nice. Tristan was glad but a little jealous that Lucien wasn’t alone like him. “I’ll find her for you.”
“Good lad!” His brother bounded to his feet.
Somewhere nearby, something exploded. Birds rose up from the forest like a startled cloud.
“So much for our distraction,” Lucien said. “The tengu got their hands on some explosives. The black willows will be sitting ducks for an aerial assault. We need to go before the ship’s guards return.”
“We’re not using this site, then?” Tristan asked.
“It doesn’t suit our needs anymore. There was a strong fiutana in this valley but it is gone. Either the changeling drained it dry when she turned this area into blue soup or the spell that Impatience put on the spaceship is redirecting the magic to the point that this area matches normal levels of magic. Either way, even if our casting circle survived everything that the changeling did to this valley, the spaceship is now sitting on top of it.”
They climbed down the ladder inside the stone pier to the bridge deck. There a host of true blood oni waited. Just before stepping outside, Lucien said “Masks.”
Lucien pulled his on — a scowling red black lacquer demon’s face with horns and fangs. It was a fierce façade that covered his child face. It was a grim reminder that his brother had been fighting on Elfhome for over two decades. Tristan’s mask was a hand-me-down with a deep scratch where some enemy had gotten too close to his brother.
“Lord Kajo.” The true bloods bowed in greeting to Lucien. “What is your will?”
“We’re shifting to the second camp. Bring the weapon. If the fiutana is intact, we’ll set it off there.”
Malice had raided the second camp after the spell-worked dragon temporarily slipped out of their control. The dragon had smashed open half of the cabins like piñatas, and feasted on the oni inside. There were scattered bones everywhere, cracking under foot like dried branches. The cloaking spell had been blasted from their crude spell stone, evidence that the elves had followed close behind Malice. It was depressing proof that they were backed into a corner, fighting for their lives.
Things had been so different before the first Startup, so many years ago. Elfhome was this impossibly distant fairyland and they were the exiled rightful rulers. Life is so much cheerier when you’re the long-lost prince of a mythical empire; when your “possibly fatal disease” was “a ruse designed to disguise your immortality.”
Just when Tristan started to doubt it — thinking it was like Santa Claus but something you told dying children — Pittsburgh vanished. In its place had been a forest of ironwoods just like his father’s stories. He was an elf. He was a prince.
He would live forever.
His euphoria lasted for three days until he realized that the people he loved most were pure human.
Those who would be with him for the rest of his life were his father and his brothers. He’d spent decades trying to win their love and trust. He’d done so many questionable things for his father — things he didn’t allow himself to ponder deeply. One more distasteful thing — this time to secure Lucien’s love — and then, hopefully, it would be the end of it. They would have won the war and there would be others better suited to be tools than himself.
“Here.” Lucien handed a leather messenger bag to Tristan. He was speaking in English, something his troops didn’t understand, so he wanted Tristan’s activities to be secret. “I’ll see if the casting circle is intact. I want you to focus on this.”
Tristan nodded. He took shelter in one of the undamaged cabins. The camp had housed a small unit of elite true blood warriors. They were the more civilized oni. Their buildings were vaguely Tudor-style in appearance, with thatched roofs, magic-hewed ironwood timbers, and walls of wattle and daub that had been whitewashed with lime. The floors were covered with mats of woven reeds, much like the Japanese tatami. Tristan had lived in rougher buildings while pursuing his father’s work on Earth. It was ironic that his father’s people who had lived in New York for decades now considered these houses too rough to live in. The troops who survived Malice’s attack had stripped the building of food, weapons, and bedding. They had left behind only a long plank table and a set of benches. Something smelled faintly like cat urine — perhaps the daub. In the privacy of the cabin, though, Tristan could remove the demon mask without Lucien’s troops seeing him.