Wolf nodded unhappily. “It will be like trying to keep wargs from the lambs at this point. I wish there was some way I could keep her safe until she has had time to heal from whatever the oni has done to her.”
True Flame shook his head. “They’ll arrive tomorrow with my troops. I can delay the aumani a day, on the pretense of giving them time to settle in.”
“Thank you.” In their current situation, a day was most he could have hoped for. “Who have they sent?”
“Earth Son, Jewel Tear, and Forest Moss.”
Wolf breathed out; the threesome was tailored for hostile opposition to him. He knew nothing of Forest Moss and thus could not foresee what danger lay there. Judging by the others, there was a good possibility, however, that this was an ancient member of the Stone Clan, to offset Wolf’s youth. Earth Son’s father was one of the three children of King Ashfall used to ally the strongest of the clans to the crown via marriage. Obviously Earth Son’s inclusion was to eliminate Wolf’s advantage with True Flame — at least in theory.
The Stone Clan had always misunderstood the nature of the alliance, and considered it a failure. The alliance had only produced Earth Son. While he showed his father’s gene type in his height, his eyes, and his temper, his gene expression did not include attunement to the spell stones. Earth Son could not use the fire esva. When Earth Son came to court, he treated his Fire Clan cousins as strangers, and was regarded as such by them.
In comparison, Wolf’s parents produced ten children, half of which inherited their mother’s genome and pledged to the Fire Clan. Wolf grew up seeing the royal family an extension of his own and when he went to court, he fell under his older brothers and sister’s protection. Earth Son seemed to fail to understand the slight differences in their position. He only saw the younger elf being rewarded with favor he thought he was due, and held it against Wolf.
The Stone Clan could barely find a delegate more ill-suited to deal with Wolf — but they had managed. Wolf spent a decade at summer court, thinking he and Jewel Tear were soulmates, the other half of each other, and all the other lyrical nonsense you thought while blindly in love. A hundred years and meeting Tinker had taught him that he’d been wrong about the entire nature of love. He and Jewel Tear had drifted apart soon after he came of age and his ambitions took him to the wilderness of the Westernlands. That the Stone Clan included her in the delegation probably meant he misjudged their relationship.
So these three were coming to his holdings and dealing with his people?
True Flame looked out at the sod covered clearing and the dense forest of tower ironwoods beyond. “What the god’s name were you thinking of, leaving everything behind for this wilderness?”
“I was thinking of leaving everything behind for this wilderness.”
“I’ve never understood why you’re wasting yourself here.”
“What would I be doing at court? Nothing has changed there since we last interacted with humans. We had completely stagnated. We had the same base of technology as the humans, and yet we didn’t develop the car, or the computer, the telephone or the camera.”
“We have no need of them.”
“It doesn’t bother you that we sat completely still for hundreds of years while they raced ahead?”
“Less than three hundred years, pup. It passed like a lazy summer afternoon in my life.”
Wolf clenched his jaw against this. He’d heard the like all his life from elves younger than True Flame’s two thousand years. “Every agricultural advance since the days of poking the holes in the ground with sharp sticks, we’ve stolen from the humans. The plow. Crop rotation. Fertilization. You’re old enough to remember the great famines.”
True Flame gave him a look that would have silenced him as a child.
Wolf refused to be rebuked. The events of the last three decades had proved him right. “It’s as if we get locked into one mindset — this is how the world is and can’t conceive or desire something more. I tracked back all our advances while I was at court—”
“I’ve heard this theory of yours, Wolf.”
“Have you? Have you really listened to my words and thought it through?”
“True there were times of famine, and yes, we went to Earth and saw how to increase crop production and put those techniques to use. But we have lived in peace for thousands of years with all that we could want — why should we clutter up our lives with gadgets?”
Wolf sighed. “You never listened. Not to anything I ever said, did you? I told you over a hundred years ago that sooner or later, the humans would come to us. And I’m telling you now, it’s only a matter of time before another race finds us.”
One instructional conversation with Stormsong, one stiff drink, one mystery meal of pan-fried wild game (what in gods’ name had drumsticks that size?), and one short nap, and Tinker was feeling much better.
According to Stormsong, her emotional swings were from exhaustion. It would be a year before Tinker would need to worry about a period. Nor, Stormsong said as she poured a generous round of ouzo, could Tinker be pregnant. “Drink, eat, sleep,” Stormsong repeated Pony’s advice, only more succinctly.
It was fairly clear that discussions had taken place while Tinker was asleep. There was an undercurrent running through the sekasha and they were metaphorically tiptoeing around her as if she would break. She wasn’t sure which was more annoying — that they felt that they needed to tiptoe — or that they were doing such a horribly obvious job at it. At least it kept Bladebite from hounding her, although he was clearly sulking.
Much to Tinker’s disgust, Stormsong coaxed her out to the enclave’s bathhouse. She went only because the enclave’s had no showers and the last time she done more than wallow in a sink was at the hospice. She was starting to stink even to herself. She thought she hated elfin bathing — the cold water pre-scrub gave new meaning to the word unpleasant — but when she discovered that the bathhouse was both communal and mixed sex, she decided to loathe elfin bathing. As far as she was concerned, if the gods wanted them naked, they wouldn’t have invented clothing.
The bath at least was stunning, done in jewel-toned mosaics with marble columns and a great skylight of beveled glass. The minerals had been added to the hot water, so it was hazy to the point that it gave a small level of privacy. And the sekasha seemed well-practiced with using the towels to keep themselves discreet until the water covered them. Thankfully Bladebite didn’t join them, though, surprisingly, Pony did. The eye-candy of Pony covered only by steaming water, however, didn’t outweigh the negative of being the shortest, darkest, smallest-breasted female present.
“Relax.” Stormsong had proved to be naturally a pale white blonde — a fact Tinker hadn’t really wanted to know. “We won’t eat you.”
“At least we won’t.” Rainlily smiled with a glance toward Pony.
Tinker stood up — realized that she was flashing them all — and sat back down to hide in the hazy water. “I am not amused.”
Stormsong splashed Rainlily, “Shush you.”
“If we don’t tease her,” Rainlily said, “she’ll think elves are just as prudish as humans. I’ve never understood how they can be so blatant with their sexual imagery, and yet in relationships with one another, they are so narrow minded. As if a heart can hold only one love at a time, and you have to empty out one before there’s room for another.”
“Let her cope with one thing at a time,” Pony watched Tinker with a worried gaze.