“It would help at a cost to Pony. There’s no way he could be First to one of Windwolf’s First Hand. Also, the First Hand are the ones that see you most as a child that needs firm guidance until you finish growing up. Lastly, they’re all technophobes.”
“Ick!” Tinker picked up her cordless soldering iron and started to tack together the pieces of the spell with careful, practiced solders.
“The younger sekasha won’t bring you as much honor as those from Windwolf’s First Hand but they’ll be the ones that ‘fit’ with you best. When Pittsburgh appeared, Windwolf realized that he needed sekasha willing to learn technology — and that recent doubles would be the most open-minded. That’s when he picked up his Fourth Hand.”
“You don’t think Pony will know that they’ll fit best?”
Stormsong sighed. “Pony’s mother, Otter Dance, is Windwolf’s blade mother.”
“His what?”
“Otter Dance is Longwind’s favorite lover among his sekasha.” Stormsong explained.
Tinker was missing the significance. “Pony is Windwolf’s brother?”
“Genetically — no — but emotionally — yes — in a way.”
“Oookay.” Tinker wondered what Windwolf’s mother felt about it. Did she see her husband having a lover as some kind of a betrayal? Or did the fact there was even a special name — blade mother — mean that it was somehow expected. Certainly Stormsong seemed to think this was nothing hugely remarkable.
“It has been assumed since Pony’s birth, that he’d look to Windwolf,” Stormsong continued. “In my opinion — that assumption did what all assumptions do.”
“Make an ass out of you and me?”
“Yes. Pony is fucking amazing, but neither Windwolf nor Pony seems to realize it. Windwolf still sees Pony as a child, and he’s not!”
Tinker thought about Pony doing exercises up in their oni cell, wearing only his pants — chiseled muscles moving under silken skin dripping with sweat. “My husband needs his eyes checked.”
Stormsong laughed. “I’m glad you snatched Pony up. As long as you don’t do something to fuck him up, maybe he’ll one day realize how special he is. Until then, he’s going to overcompensate for what he sees as his own weakness. Pony might point you toward someone from the First Hand and then try to bow out — all in the name of doing right by you.”
Tinker focused on the last of the solders, clenching her jaw in annoyance at Stormsong’s comments about Pony and Windwolf. It felt wrong to hear anything negative about either one of them, like she was being disloyal. Really, what did she know about Stormsong other than she was one of Windwolf’s trusted bodyguards? Besides the fact that she nearly died for Tinker?
Tinker sighed as she forced herself to consider that maybe Stormsong was right about all this — that it was vital she pick out four more guards immediately and that Pony needed a good slap up against the head. She found herself remembering that Pony had waited without comment for her to decide to accept Bladebite.
“Is Bladebite from Windwolf’s First Hand?” Tinker tried to sound causal about it.
Stormsong nodded.
And if Tinker hadn’t dodged the question, she would be stuck with Bladebite trying to control her. She sighed. “How do I tell Bladebite no?” Surely she didn’t have to tell him yes just before he offered. That would be a stupid system — but the elves never struck her as completely logical. “Can I tell him no?”
“You can say that you don’t think you fit with him. That’s copasetic.”
Copasetic. Tinker shook her head, remembering the days immediately after she became an elf — everything made more confused by the fact that Pony didn’t speak English or understand the differences between the two cultures.
“When the Queen called Windwolf to Aum Renau,” Tinker said, “why didn’t Windwolf leave you with me?”
“My mother is Pure Radiance and my father is the Queen’s First. They have not seen me for a hundred years and wanted me there. Windwolf thought it unwise to not bring me.”
Tinker stared at the elf in amazement. “The oracle and a Wyvern? What the hell are you doing with Wind Clan?”
“I had — issues — with court. Windwolf offered me a chance to escape all that and I jumped. Considering what my mother named me, she probably wasn’t totally surprised.”
Yes, Stormsong sounded more like a Wind Clan name than Fire Clan.
It occurred to Tinker then what ‘fit’ was about. She felt comfortable sitting and talking with Stormsong. Annoying as the truth was, Tinker trusted her judgment. And it would be good to have someone that understood what it felt like to be the outsider.
“So,” Tinker said to Stormsong. “Are you offering?”
Stormsong looked puzzled a moment, and then surprised. “To be yours?”
“Yeah. I–I think we work.”
Stormsong blinked at her a few moments before standing, the scrape of her boots on the cement loud in the silence that fell between them.
“I can understand if you don’t want to.” Tinker busied herself checking the solders. All that was needed was to cement the spell into place, wait for the cement to cure, and the black willow could be safely stored indefinitely. Or at least, until it she figured out what her dreams meant.
“I want to be honest with you.” Stormsong paced the perimeter of the room in her long legged stride. “But it’s like opening a vein. It’s a painful, messy thing to do.”
Tinker lifted her hand to wave that off. “I don’t think I can deal with painfully messy at the moment.”
“You should know stuff like this before you ask. That was the whole point of the conversation. You have to make informed choices.”
Tinker made a noise. “I’ve been doing fairly well lately blindly winging it through mass chaos.”
Stormsong scoffed and then sighed. “I’m probably the most misbegotten mutt puppy ever born to the elves. Most people think my mother made a horrible mistake having me. I don’t fit in anywhere.”
“At least you stayed an elf, instead of jumping species like I did.”
Stormsong laughed. “There are times I wished I could. Just be human. Lose myself among them. But a hundred years of sekasha brainwashing made that all impossible. I can’t walk away from it. I tried, but I can’t. I like being sekasha too much.”
“Not to belittle your difficulties, but I really don’t get the problem. You’re a sekasha. I need sekasha. We work together well — at least I think we do. Or is that you hate my guts?”
“I would die for you.”
Tinker wished that people would stop saying that to her. “I’ll take that as a ‘no, I don’t hate you’ and frankly, I’d rather you didn’t die. Now, that’s painful and messy, and not just for you.”
Stormsong laughed and then bowed low to Tinker. “Tinker domi, I would be honored to be yours. I will not disappoint you.”
Chapter 12: Tears On Stone
At first glance, Turtle Creek seemed the same to Tinker. Sunlight shafted through the discontinuity in rays of blue. Mist rising off the chill gathered into banks of blue haze and then drifted out of the valley, existing momentarily as white clouds, before burning away in the summer heat. True, royal troops showed up as splashes of Fire Clan red — thus the lifting of the ban on Turtle Creek — but otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. It remained one big hole in reality.
Tinker led her Hand down into the valley to where they’d marked the trees. The first sapling they found had nine slashes into its bark — which should have meant it would be nine feet from the edge of the discontinuity.