“So the number of oni warriors in the area might be much greater than the sixty you counted?”
Little Horse nodded. “From what I observed, though, the warriors are like sea wargs.” His blade brother named a mammal that gathered in colonies on the coast; the male animals fought to gather harems of females, and any cub left unprotected was usually killed and eaten by its own kind. “Command goes to the largest of group and he rules by cruelty and fear. They fight among themselves, but I saw no weapon practice or drills. I believe that not one of their warriors would be match for a sekasha.”
“That is good to know.” It backed what Maynard had told him at one point. Warned by Tinker, Maynard had begun to secretly sift through his people two months earlier. Using Tinker’s description of “cruel and ruthless people with no sense of honor” he found the hidden oni fairly simple to find. So far intensive magical testing had proved his guesses correct.
Little Horse glanced toward the bed and a smile stole onto his face, making him seem younger still. “Despite their large size and savageness, she terrorized them.”
Wolf laughed. Little Horse yawned widely, so Wolf stood up and pulled his blade brother to his feet. “Go to bed. The others can keep watch.”
“Yes, Brother Wolf.” Little Horse hugged him. It was good, Wolf decided, that he paired Tinker with his blade brother. They would protect each other’s open and affection nature from the stoic older sekasha.
After steering Little Horse to his room, Wolf detoured to check on Singing Storm. He expected to find her sleeping when he cracked her door. She turned her head, though, and slit open her eyes. A smile took control of her face. Still she greeted him with a semi-formal, “Wolf Who Rules.”
He lowered the formality between them. It was her ability to see him as nothing more than a male that made him love her so. “How is my Discord?”
Her smile deepened. “Good and just got better.”
“I’m glad.” He leaned down and kissed her. She murmured her enjoyment, running her hands up his chest to tangle in his hair. She tasted candy sweet from her favorite gum.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered into his ear. She meant intimately like this, as she had guarded over him every day for the last two months. Taking Tinker to be his domi, however, meant an abrupt change in their relationship. They hadn’t even had a chance to discuss it afterwards.
“I’m sorry.”
She nipped him on the earlobe in rebuke. “No matter who, if they were the right one, you would have wanted this.”
“It was graceless.” He had given her only a few hours warning of his intention to offer marriage to Tinker. She knew him well enough to know that he would want a monogamous relationship as long as Tinker was willing to give him one.
“When did we start to care about grace? Wasn’t that the whole point of leaving court, all the false elegance? I like that we’re honest with one another — and I like her — which is not surprising since I like humans.”
“She’s an elf now.” Wolf gently reminded her.
“In the body, but not in the mind. She speaks low elfin as if she was born to it, yes, but she doesn’t know our ways, Wolf. If you don’t have time to teach her, then get her a tutor.”
Wolf found himself shaking his head. “No. I don’t want a stranger trying to force her into court elegance.”
“Are you afraid that she will lose all that makes her endearing to you?”
Only Discord would dare to say that to him — but then — that was another reasons he loved her. She would risk annoying him to make him face what needed to be faced. For her, he sighed and considered the possibility.
“No,” he said after thinking it through. “Yes, I love her humanity and I’ll mourn it if she loses it completely, but she is so much more than that.”
“Then have someone teach her. She nearly got us all killed today because she couldn’t bear to sacrifice me.”
He knew better than to argue with Discord on that but was pleased with Tinker’s decision. It was Tinker’s courage and ability to pull off the impossible that had initially attracted him to her, and he would have been deeply saddened to lose Singing Storm. “I’m trying to find a solution to this. I know she needs to be taught our customs, but I don’t want her to necessarily conform.”
“I never said anything about conforming,” Discord nuzzled into his neck. “Conforming is for chickens.”
He laughed into her short blue hair. “That’s my Discord.” He kissed her and drew away to consider her. From her hair to her boots, Discord challenged everything elfin. Yet of all his sekasha, she was the only one that had grown up at Court and had high etiquette literally beaten into her. There was no one more knowledgeable, yet least likely to force those skills onto Tinker.
“What is it that you want of me?” she asked.
“You know me too well.” He tugged on her rat tail braid. “I want you to keep close to my domi and be there when she needs guidance.”
“Pony is her First.” Discord switched English, a sign that she wanted to be bluntly truthful. “I’ll be stomping all over his toes. I don’t want to piss him off. He’s one of the few that never said shit to me about being a mutt.”
“Pony is not the type to put pride before duty. He loves Tinker, but he knows that he doesn’t fully understand her. He hasn’t spent enough time in Pittsburgh, away from our people…”
“Like me?” It was point of sadness between them. For a decades they ignored all the little signs that they could not be more than domou and beholden. The fact that she would chose Pittsburgh over being with him had made clear that while they were good together, they were not right.
“Like you.” Wolf took her hand, kissed it, and moved on. “Humans are still mysterious to him.”
She thought for a moment and then returned to Elvish. “As long as it does not anger Storm Horse, I will be there for her.”
Chapter 4: On Gossamer Death
The next morning, shortly after dawn, the oni made their first attack. Wolf heard a muffled roar and then the loud anguished wail of a wounded gossamer. Luckily, his people were already awake and ready. Only Tinker, having been drugged the night before, still slept.
“Have Poppymeadow lock down the enclave,” Wolf told Little Horse. “I’m leaving you just with her guards and Singing Storm. Everyone else with me.”
Wolf arrived at the airfield, though too late to scry the direction of the attack. All he could do was watch the gossamer die in the pale morning light. The great living airship wallowed on the ground, its translucent body undulating in pain. The remains of the gondola lay under it, crushed by the massive heaving body. The clear blood of the gossamer pooled on the ground, scenting the air with the ghost of ancient seas.
“We can’t get close enough to heal the wound.” The gossamer’s navigator was weeping openly. “Even if we could, I doubt we could save her. It’s a massive wound, and she’s lost too much fluid. My poor baby.”
The gossamer let out a long low breathy wail of pain.
“Did you see where it came from?” Wolf wasn’t sure what “it” was since none of the crew had seen the attack clearly.
The navigator shook his head. “I felt it hit before I heard anything. She shuddered, and then started to go down, and I jumped clear.”
“Here comes another one!” Wraith shouted as he pointed at some type of rocket flashing toward them.