"How do you know about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? These were the 'heroes' of the war and the leaders of our people afterward." Tooloo said it with such bitterness that both Tinker and the cow flinched. "It was, though, a simple trading of masters. Perhaps more benign than the Skin Clan, but iron-fisted all the same."
That Windwolf was one of «them» made Tinker uncomfortable with the conversation. Tooloo said whatever suited her with little regard to truth, and she hated the concept of being poisoned against Windwolf with lies. Still, it was fairly obvious from the caste system that the domana ruled and the others served.
"I don't understand," Tinker said. "If Quick Blade was Skin Clan, how did Howling get to be Wind clan?"
Tooloo sighed into the cow's flank. "The Skin Clan tried to wipe out the use of other magic, but they only drove it underground. And exactly what they were afraid of happened—the seeds of power became great trees. The ignorant but physically strong—like your strapping young sekasha there—pledged their services to those with arcane knowledge. Over time the castes linked together into the current clans, but they were slowly losing during the Years of Resistance."
"Until the domana joined the clans against their fathers."
"There's still hope for you, my bright wee one. Yes. The Skin Clan had added the ability to wield magic to their blood, and then fathered bastards among their rebel slaves." Tooloo stilled for a moment, considering the past. "There is, I suppose, an inevitability to it all."
Tooloo finished with the first cow and carried the milk to the scales to be weighed. "Thirty pounds. Nothing to piffle at, though Holsteins have been bred to output twice that amount. Here, take this back to the cooler."
Tinker reached for the bucket, but Pony stepped forward and took it.
"What are you doing?"
"It will be heavy for you, but nothing for me to carry."
Tinker snorted but let it go because, unfortunately, he was right. She found it disgusting that, while Oilcan wasn't much taller or more muscled, he was proportionally stronger than she was.
Pony eyed the bucket of milk as they walked to Tooloo's large walk-in cooler. "Ah, they are cows."
Tinker considered that the elves had a word for cows and chickens. "Yes. You seem… surprised."
"They don't look like our cows," he said. "And I have never seen any of ours milked before. Kuetaun caste handles livestock, not sekasha."
"Oh, I see." That would explain his reactions to the chickens too. "Not in a hundred years?"
"I devoted a great amount of time to training. Only the best are chosen to be bodyguards, and that is what I wanted."
"Why?"
"It is what I'm good at. I enjoy it."
"But, doesn't it mean you're setting yourself up as a sacrifice to someone else's life?"
"If I do my job right, no. But if I must, yes."
"I don't understand how you can make yourself anyone's disposable servant."
"I choose who I guard, that is the only way it can be. Windwolf values my life as much as I value his; he protects me as I protect him."
They had stopped in front of Tooloo's ten-foot-square walk-in cooler. Tinker unlatched the heavy door, frowning at what Pony had said; it seemed to defeat the whole concept of bodyguard.
"Windwolf protects you?"
Pony cocked his head. "Why do you find that so hard to believe? You put yourself between me and harm, do you think that Windwolf would do anything less than that?"
She what? When did she protect Pony? Oh, when Nathan was being a butthead. "That was nothing."
She yanked open the door and cool moist air misted out into the sunshine.
"You put yourself in harm's way to save Windwolf." Pony let her take back the bucket and watched with interest as she poured the warm milk into wide-mouth crocks. "Not only against the EIA imposters at the Rim, but against the wargs at the salvage yard."
"I don't plan to make a living out of it." From another crock that had already separated, she skimmed off the cream with a clean ladle, filling a pint bottle for Lain. "Grab me one of those quart jars."
"In all things, there must be those who are willing to guard and protect." Pony picked up the bottle of milk. "It is the way of nature. You humans have police and firefighters and EIA. It is not that I do not value my life, but if I risk it, it is for a worthy cause."
Tinker supposed that Pony's job was not much different from Nathan's. Stepping back out of the cooler, she latched the door and headed back into the store. Drat Tooloo, the half-elf had her seeing everything in a bad light already. And the comparison to Nathan dragged that whole mess up. Damn him, why had Nathan betrayed her that way? Beyond Lain and Oilcan, there wasn't another person in the city she would have opened the door for dressed only in a towel. The more she thought on it, the more she realized how much she misjudged Nathan. She had been looking at the cop, not the man. She expected him to stay the nice big brother type, only with kissing thrown in. In one giant step, they'd moved into new roles, and Nathan, the boyfriend, was a different person. That Nathan was possessive and overpowering. Perhaps her instinct to flee him at the Faire was for the best; perhaps no matter when or how they'd ended up on her couch, it would have led to Nathan trying to force her into something she didn't want.
And if that was the case, what did she do now? She'd opened the door and let the warg in; how did she get it back out?
Tinker tried, but she couldn't stretch the shopping out to the full two hours without alerting Tooloo or Pony that she was stalling. She and Pony returned to Observatory Hill a full forty minutes early, but Lain had already finished up and sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a stunned look on her face. The expression set off alarms in Tinker. She quickly stashed away the perishables from Tooloo's store and banished Pony to the foyer so she could safely discuss the results of the DNA tests with Lain.
"It's bad, isn't it?"
Lain raised an eyebrow. "What? Oh, no, I'm still stunned at the amount of change Windwolf accomplished in an adult seemingly without fear that it would kill you. You look so much like yourself that it didn't really click until I started working with your DNA. I–I-I'm in awe."
"Lain, please, you're freaking me out."
"You have no idea of the enormity of this. It changes everything we know about the elves' ability. We've considered the concept of elves being able to turn people into frogs with magic just folklore and urban legend."
"So you're saying I'm lucky not to be a frog?"
The stunned look vanished before annoyance. "Oh, Tinker!"
"Where did scientists think the gossamers and wyverns came from?"
"Humans have made amazing changes in animals over thousands of years of breeding. One only has to look at the extreme phenotypic variation of the canine genotype."
"What?"
"Dogs. From Chihuahuas to Irish Wolfhounds, they're thought to be all descendants from a species of small Northern European wolf."
"Lain, can we focus on me. What did you find out?"
"Don't you want to wait for Oilcan?"
"No. I think—if it's bad—he'll take it a lot worse than me. I want to deal with it so I can be strong for him."
"I wish I had thought to analyze your original DNA." Lain limped to her lab with Tinker following her. "This was a stunning chance to learn so much about the difference between our two races."
"Lain!"
"I'm sorry, but it's like watching someone destroy the Rosetta stone."
"The what?"
Lain sighed, picking up a thermometer. "You need a more rounded education."