Jane didn’t like it when she ended up on camera. She didn’t like being watched. It meant she lost control of the situation.
A flash of light made her glance at her monitor. Geoffrey was demonstrating how the pieces of wood could be bound together at a molecular level with magic, thus eliminating the need for glue or nails. Nigel looked utterly enchanted.
She hated that her family was now in the spotlight. It meant if she lost control of the situation, they’d be the ones in danger. Her little brothers were now men; they had the right to choose how they lived.
The camera panned to the right as Hal fell over into a pile of sawdust, still tied to the chair. He apparently had been trying to escape. Taggart lingered on Hal long enough to verify that he was unharmed and then focused back on Geoffrey.
They were going to have to edit that out.
“Why is Hal tied up?” Yumiko asked.
“Because this place is too dangerous for him to wander loose. He can’t keep his hands in his pockets when he’s bored. Did you find someone that can help us with the nests?”
“You can use these.” Yumiko held out a Mylar envelope. Inside was a ream of paper printed with identical copies of the same spell.
“Where did you get these?” Jane said.
“Don’t force me to lie to you. The truth is too dangerous.”
“Dangerous or damning? This is Elvish.” Jane tapped the runes. “But elves don’t use printers. You got this from Tinker somehow. You’re making it hard to trust you.”
Yumiko stared at her for a minute before looking away. “You tie up Hal to keep him safe. He still trusts you. It’s the same principle.”
“Hal has proved that he needs a babysitter time and time again. I’m not Hal.”
“If you do not know the truth, you can’t repeat it to the wrong person.”
“All you need to say is ‘this is secret’ and I won’t repeat it to anyone.”
“I’m to trust the man that you tie up with my secrets?”
“I won’t tell my team.” Jane partially lied. She would tell them if they needed to know.
Yumiko thought for a moment before sighing. “It is a long complicated story, the kind that comes into being when someone like Pure Radiance dabbles in the lives of others. Impossible convergences of fate lead to extraordinary events. The more I tease apart the cause and effect, the more I realize that there are multiple oracles warring with each other, moving others around like chess pieces. What we’re seeing today is the collision of their plans as they crash toward their end game.”
Yumiko continued. “Thousands of years ago, the greater bloods rose up to enslave all of the oni people. We did not count ourselves as tengu then; we were humans living on a foreign planet after escaping the cruel Emperors of China. We lived in a remote area, cut off from everything, and we were safe and happy in our ignorance. Then, one day, Wong Jin met Providence and everything changed.”
This sounded like a snow job, but Jane settled back to listen. Everything she knew about the oni and their world came from six-year-old Joey. Anything she learned would be useful.
“We believed that were only two worlds. Onihida and Earth. That day we learned that there were multiple worlds layered upon each other, like a stack of cards. Just as we could go from Onihida to Earth, there ways to go from Earth to Elfhome. Somewhere, beyond Elfhome, there were more worlds, and from those worlds, came the dragons.”
“Dragons?” Okay, that wasn’t good. The elves had always said that dragons were much larger than wyverns, which were freaking huge.
“These are not Elfhome dragons, any more than gorillas are humans. Distant cousins, perhaps, but no more. The dragons of Ryuu are like gods. Unimaginably powerful, they are also wise and noble. The rulers of the elves were envious. They wanted to steal the dragons’ strengths for themselves. They devised traps and ensnared the dragons one by one. They captured Brilliance who had been too curious for his own good. They captured Honor who loved him and came searching for him. They captured Clarity who should have known that she would be taken. They captured too Providence’s beloved daughter, Nirvana.
“To steal their powers, the elves shattered down the dragons and started to experiment with them. They were cowards, these monsters that called themselves elves. They were afraid of endangering themselves, so they made slave children to test their results. In their cowardice, they bred their own downfall. They gave their slaves gifts of the gods and then failed to understand how that would change everything.”
Jane glanced at the monitor. They were on a ticking clock with the eggs hatching and this had nothing to do with the digitally printed spells. She had never heard any of this, an entire world that she was ignorant of, and yet somehow figured into this war that was embroiling Pittsburgh. Yumiko had distracted her away from her original question of how the tengu ended up with the spell.
“What does this have to do with Tinker?”
“Everything. The elves gave their slaves godlike power and then couldn’t contain them. It threw their world into chaos. Everything you know about elves came after the fall of their masters.”
“Still not seeing the connection.”
“Tinker was not taken because she’s Windwolf’s bride, she was taken because she contains Brilliance’s genetics. Plans to kidnap her were put into motion even before she met the Viceroy.
“Tinker was born human.”
“No, she’s only appeared to be human. When Riki hacked into her datapad, he realized what she was and why Pure Radiance is using her as a weapon against the oni. Brilliance’s offspring are dangerously unpredictable when cornered. The oni do not know what they have captured. They believe they’ve caught a girl who had been human, clever but helpless. She will destroy them before she gives them what they want.”
Yumiko sounded very confident of that.
Jane connected the dots that Yumiko had laid out. “If the oni know this spell came from Tinker, they might guess what she is and how dangerous she can be?”
“Yes. If they knew she was actually a wood sprite, they’d change how they’re treating her.”
“Keep your cards close to your chest,” Tooloo said.
This might explain Tooloo’s odd rant. Pure Radiance was keeping her “cards” hidden as she played Tinker against the oni. Like in poker, the opponents’ ignorance was half the strategy. If the queen’s advisor flashed her hand, everything would be for nothing.
Lemon-Lime had foreseen Jane’s fight at the putt-putt golf course; they’d made a video of it months before Nigel even reached Elfhome. They’d given him the monster call and warned him about the oni. If they were the newest oracles pushing around chess pieces, what was Tooloo? Jane knew almost nothing about the intanyei seyosa beyond the fact that Pure Radiance was Queen Soulful Ember’s personal adviser.
It seemed that Tooloo was wondering if Lemon-Lime had the maturity to know not to expose the people the twins were using.
Or was Jane just overly paranoid, seeing connections where there were none? How would anyone know that Nigel was Lemon-Lime’s pawn? Even Taggart hadn’t known.
Jane ran back over both Yumiko and Tooloo’s conversations. Both of them were weirdly out of left field. Were they connected? Jane could understand what Yumiko was explaining but not why. The trip through history seemed the most inefficient way to explain the situation. Having to work on scripts for PB&G, Jane had become sensitive to how to lead people to information. How the listener could be diverted from one subject and made to focus on another. Why focus on dragons? Weren’t the button-pushing oracles the real game players? Boo had said that the oni had shifted camps merely because Pure Radiance had come to Westernlands. So far, Jane hadn’t heard even rumors of dragons being involved. After nearly thirty years, the creatures were still mythical in Pittsburgh.