“Oh! Oh my,” Tinker whispered at the set up inside the mobile office. She wanted it all. The huge monitors. The sleek computers. The printers. The digital whiteboards. The climate control. All of it must have come straight from Earth with the rest of Josephson’s command. “My cousin just sent me something that I need to print out.”
Josephson gave her the password for the network. She connected and sent the spell to the printer.
“Do you need anything else?” Josephson asked.
“We might get company if the oni managed to track me.” Tinker copied the list that she’d been making on her datapad. She emailed it to Josephson’s contact information. “Here’s a list of things and where your people can find them. Items at the top of the list are the most important. Anything you can collect will help.”
His eyebrow rose at the list. “I’ll get right on it.”
Oilcan had given no explanation as to where he’d gotten the spell that he’d sent her. He merely wrote, “Cast this spell as soon as possible, it will shield you from the magic bombs in Dufae’s box.”
Tinker had studied the photographs that Oilcan had sent her. They were disturbing on so many levels. The new spell that suggested a brilliance that matched hers. The crayon notes reminded Tinker that she’d been at her most dangerous when she thought she totally understood the world. The comprehension of what Tinker and Oilcan had accessible to them and what they didn’t, though, suggested that one or both of the twins could match Tooloo in knowing unknowable things. It was as if after making her, the gods twisted the dials to eleven and let loose a flood.
Tinker printed out the spell, cued up other spells that she thought might be useful in the upcoming fight and headed to the casting circle. Shortly after Oilcan signaled her with Morse code, the domana in the east began to fight in earnest. Tinker could feel the call for magic to all three Spell Stones as small pings on her awareness. Tooloo said that the other players in the deadly poker game were about to use the Dufaes’ bombs. Tinker hadn’t completely believed her. Tooloo twisted the truth into pretzels. The twins, however, seemed to be confirming what Tooloo had said. The timing was terrifyingly logicaclass="underline" strike while the domana were preoccupied on the eastern front.
Tooloo said that Tinker had everything she needed, that she didn’t need the unedited Codex, and that time was ticking down quickly. Tooloo must have known that the twins were going to crack the problem of the shield. Looking at the resulting spell, Tooloo had been right that Tinker wouldn’t have been able to quickly come to this answer. She wasn’t even sure how the twins had managed it.
What did Tooloo expect Tinker to do? Or more exactly, what did Tooloo want?
Pure Radiance had come personally to the Westernlands to find Tinker. The queen’s oracle had said that the pivot was the person who had been marked with a Wind Clan dau. They thought at first it would be Sparrow, but Pure Radiance had pointed directly at Tinker as the person on whom the fate of the world would spin. Pure Radiance had gone on and on about open doors and pivots and closing the door tight.
Tinker thought that when she’d stranded Pittsburgh on Elfhome, closing the two gates open between Elfhome, Earth, and Onihida, her work was done. She was wrong.
Tooloo hadn’t wanted Windwolf to mark Tinker. She didn’t want Tinker to become an elf. Tooloo had tried to keep her hidden. Tinker getting kidnapped by the oni hadn’t been in Tooloo’s game plan. Tooloo suggested that was her daughter’s plan all along: use Tinker as a “baited trap.” Tooloo might not even have wanted the gate destroyed. But she’d taught Tinker — and probably her father and grandfather — magic. Tooloo had made sure Tinker had a copy of the Codex. Tooloo wanted her to do something with magic. Something related to the magical bomb that been locked in Dufae’s chest. Tooloo obviously had waylaid the chest, followed Unbounded Brilliance from Elfhome, and then babysat all the little hidden wood sprites since the French Revolution.
Pure Radiance wanted the Skin Clad stopped. But what else? What did she want that required her to have her own mother bound hand and foot? Or perhaps the better question was what did Tooloo want that Pure Radiance was so against? Why were they fighting? Over what?
Tinker kept looping back to one basic fact: Tooloo lies. A lot.
Did it matter what Tooloo wanted? Did Tinker want to blindly buy into Tooloo’s plan? Granted, Nathan had been a horrific lesson showing that Tinker didn’t understand the world as well as Tooloo — but there was a difference between understanding the world and wishing it well.
Tooloo’s own daughter had turned against her. Whatever Tooloo wanted, it had been drastic enough that she had only allied herself with a wood sprite still in his doubles. If “allied” was the right term for their teamwork. Unbounded Brilliance might have been an unwitting tool — just like Tinker was. Or possibly would be — if she didn’t figure this out.
Assuming, of course, that Pure Radiance hadn’t turned the Skin Clan against her mother for selfish reasons. Pure Radiance’s own daughter, Stormsong, believed that the female was capable of infanticide to achieve her goals.
Maynard had told her once elves believed that the end justified the means. Pure Radiance could commit horrific acts and everyone would turn a blind eye because they were assuming that she was acting for the common good.
Who did Tinker help? The female who helped raise her but lied to her almost every day of her life? Or the queen’s most trusted advisor? Or neither?
The only thing Tinker was sure of was she didn’t want the Skin Clan to wipe out everyone that she loved. They had already tried to kill Windwolf. They’d enslaved her. They had kidnapped and threatened Pony. They’d killed a thousand royal marines as if they were nothing. They would kill Tinker’s entire Hand.
Tinker wouldn’t allow that. She had to stop them.
The Skin Clan had eleven nactka. Eleven chances to destroy what the elves had in Pittsburgh. Tinker could set the shield up to protect her and her Hand and whoever else was at the center — but what then? Whatever the spell did, Windwolf, Prince True Flame, Forest Moss, and the Harbingers were all going to fall under its influence, deep in the forest, surrounded by the enemy. Part of her wanted to rush out there and find Windwolf — but her gut was telling her that she didn’t have time. She had very little time.
Even if the twins’ spell protected her this time, the Skin Clan only needed to cast their spell a second time when she was least expecting it. If their plan worked — on their first or second or third try — then they could take the remaining nactka to the Easternlands and use them there.
Tinker was fairly sure that neither Pure Radiance nor Tooloo wanted that. Tooloo had protected the Dufaes for hundreds of years, so the twins’ spell probably was part of her plan. Tooloo hadn’t struggled for generations to create a temporary protection. Her plan required Tinker to do something clever. Something very wood-sprite-like.
Tooloo said that she had given Tinker everything she needed in her copy of the Dufae Codex. If Tinker didn’t need the Codex to create a shield against the Skin Clan’s spell, then what was she supposed to do what?
“Can you guys take over?” She handed the spell to Pony. “I need to figure something out.”
“Certainly, domi,” Pony said.
There was a moment as the warriors conferred as to who would stand guard while the rest worked at laying out the spell. Stormsong took charge of the tracing while Pony followed Tinker back to the mobile office.
Tinker thought better on whiteboards. She ported the spell onto the board and started to tease it apart. She tried not to hear Tooloo’s voice in the back of her brain, saying that she was wasting time. The twins had done the heavy lifting. What could she figure out from their work? If Tooloo hadn’t lied, then everything she did have in her copy of the Codex was all she needed. Her Codex had been heavily edited, supposedly to keep her safe from her own curiosity. While it had all the various shields written out, it didn’t have the initialization spell to link her to the Stone Clan Spell Stones…