Her heart flipped in chest. “What?”
“Tooloo says that Windwolf didn’t marry you.”
She stared at him dumbfounded for a minute before she thought to say, “And you believed her? Tooloo lies. You ask her five times in a row when her birthday is and she’ll tell you a different date each time!”
He looked down at her bare fingers. “Then why was there no wedding? Why no ring?”
She tried to ignore the weird cartwheeling in her chest. “Nathan, it’s not — they — they don’t do things like we do.”
He gave a cold bitter laugh. “Yeah, like changing someone’s species without asking them.”
“He asked!” she snapped. She just hadn’t understood.
“Come on, Tink. I was there. You had no idea what he had done to you. You still don’t know. You think you’re married. Hell, half the city thinks you’re married. But you’re not.”
She shook her head and clung to the one thing she knew for sure. “Tooloo lies about everything. She hates Windwolf. She’s lying to you.”
“Tink—”
“I don’t have time for this bullshit! Stormsong, we’re leaving! Just the lock the door and come.”
“The humans farm — grass?” Bladebite prodded the green rectangle of sod laid down in the palace clearing.
“Convenient, isn’t it?” Wolf pointed out, although he suspected that his First Hand wouldn’t see it as such.
“It’s unnatural.” Bladebite grumbled. “Grass already grows quickly — why would they want it to instantly appear?”
Wolf rubbed at his temple were a headache was starting to form. ‘Quickly,’ of course, was all a matter of perspective. The palace clearing was still raw wound of earth from the cutting down the ironwoods and tearing up the massive stubs. Until the dead gossamer could be cleared, the clearing would have to double as an airfield. Wolf knew his First Hand reflected what most elves would think of the sod. It couldn’t be helped. After last night’s rainfall, the clearing was turning into a pit of mud.
Wolf had delegated cleaning up the gossamer body to Wraith Arrow, an imperfect match of abilities and task, but currently the best he could hope for as Tinker had apparently found some project on the North Side that was taking up her time. Reports were drifting back, along with a box of walkie-talkies.
His First Hand viewed the devices with the same open suspicion as the sod. Luckily, while Wraith dealt with the gossamer, Cloudwalker filled the fifth position. The ‘baby’ sekasha was cautiously prodding the buttons on the walkie-talkie.
While his Hands kept alert for trouble, Wolf focused on getting the clearing ready for the arrival of the Queen’s Troops. The settlements on the East Coast reported that a dreadnaught had passed overhead, so it would be arriving soon.
“You’re not going to take down the oaks — are you?” The human contractor pointed out the massive wind oaks. “That would be a crying shame.”
Wolf hated the idea of cutting down the trees for a single day’s use of the clearing. While the trees were spellworked to be extremely long-lived, their acorns rarely sprouted hardy saplings, and thus the trees continued to be quite rare. Wolf had been sure that finding five so close to Pittsburgh was a sign of the gods’ blessings. He had chose the site because of the trees and planned to build the palace around them.
He paced the clearing, trying to remember the dreadnaught’s size. Would there be room for it to land without taking down the trees? While he did, he wondered about the oni’s attack. Why kill the gossamer? Thinking with a cold heart, he realized that it would have made more sense for the oni to attack Poppymeadow’s in the middle of the night. The ley line through the enclaves wasn’t strong enough to support aggressive defense spells. The rocket would have triggered the alarms, but Wolf wouldn’t have been able to call his shields in time.
One would think that the oni would have realized by now that Wolf was their strongest adversary. But maybe he was overestimating their grasp on the situation. Taking himself out of the equation, he considered the question again. Why the gossamer? There had been a second gossamer in plain sight, waiting for mooring. True that airship had fled the area and it would probably take hours for its navigator to coax the beast back to Pittsburgh. Perhaps the oni hoped to isolate Wolf by killing both his ships before he could react. Perhaps they didn’t realize that he had already sent for support.
While the gossamer’s death was a pity, he was glad that the oni attacked it and not the enclaves. He had lost two of his sekasha this century. He did not want to lose another.
Wolf became aware that the sekasha had stopped a human from approaching him while he was thinking. He focused on the man with pale eyes and a dark goatee. “What is it that you want?”
“I’m the city’s coroner.” The man took Wolf’s question as permission to close the distance. Bladebite stopped the human with a straight arm and a cold look.
“I am not familiar with that word.” Wolf said.
“I’m — I’m the one that deals with the dead.”
“I see.” Wolf signaled to his Hand to let the man advance. Sparrow had dealt with this man, since Wolf had always been wounded the two times his people had been killed.
“Tim Covington.” The coroner held out his hand to be shaken.
Wolf considered the offered hand. The other domana would not allow such contact — a broken finger would leave them helpless. Humans needed to be schooled in day to day manners — but was now the time to start? He decided that today, he would keep to human politeness and shook Covington’s hand. At least the man introduced himself first, which would be correct for both races.
“Wolf Who Rules Wind.”
“I was down the street, dealing with the oni bodies, and they said you were here.”
“We only executed one oni.”
Covington looked away, clearly disturbed. “They unburied two more dead males when they brought in the backhoe.”
“Why do you seek me out? I have no dead.”
“I’ve been coroner for nearly ten years. I dealt with both Lightning Strike and Hawk Scream.” Covington named the two fallen sekasha.
“They have been given up to the sky.”
“Well, I prepared Sparrow but no one has come for her. The enclaves — they have no phones. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Bladebite recognized Sparrow’s English nickname. He spat on the ground in disgust.
“No one will come for Sparrow.” Wolf turned back to pacing the clearing.
“What do you mean?” Covington fell in step with Wolf.
“Sparrow betrayed her clan. We will have nothing to do with her now. Deal with her body as if she was an oni.”
Cloudwalker suddenly trotted up to them, looking concerned. “Domou! We have a problem.”
“What is it?” Wolf cocked his fingers to call the winds.
Cloudwalker pointed to the oak trees. Humans had chained themselves to the massive trunks.
“How did they get there?” Wolf glanced around at the three Hands of sekasha scattered across the clearing.
Cloudwalker blushed with embarrassment. “We — we tested them and they were not oni. They had no weapons.”
They did have a banner that said, “Save the oaks.” Wolf had heard of this type of lunacy, but never seen it in action. How did they get organized so quickly?
“We did not realize that they were not part of the human work crew,” Cloudwalker finished. “So we let them pass. What do you want us to do with them?”
Wolf didn’t completely trust his sekasha to solve the problem without involving swords. He didn’t want dead peaceful protesters. “Call Wraith Arrow — he has the EIA helping him. Have them send the police to arrest these humans.”