The crowd was avoiding a section of sidewalk. As Tinker drew even with it, she saw that is was covered with congealing blood, thick with black flies. As the sekasha brushed passed, some of the flies rose in fat, heavy buzzing. The rest continued to feed.
“I want this to stop,” Tinker whispered to Pony, dreading his answer.
“This is by order of the crown,” Pony said. “There is nothing you can do to stop it.”
Maynard saw Stormsong first and then scanned downwards to find Tinker. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to talk to you about this stuff.” Tinker waved the newspaper at Maynard.
“I’m busy at the moment. Why don’t you get your husband to explain it to you?”
“Because you’re here. I have the power to pin you down and make you explain it to me. And you’ll use words I can understand.”
Maynard glanced at the paper. “What don’t you understand? That article is fairly clear.”
“What can I do?”
He gave her a long unreadable look before saying, “I’m not sure. Windwolf bought us some time, but without proof that the gate is in orbit and possibly repairable, that time runs out Sunday.”
Figures, after everything she had gone through to destroy the gate, she now had to save it.
“So,” Tinker said. “If I can prove the damn thing is still up there, would that help?”
Maynard’s eyes widen in surprise. “You think you can do that?”
It was tempting to say yes, but she had to be honest. “I don’t know. I can try. It’s a fucking discontinuity in Turtle Creek, across at least two or three universes. If Earth is one of those universes, there might be a way to use the Ghostlands to communicate.”
“The elves are keeping everyone away from the Ghostlands,” Maynard said. “The scientists at the commune are ready to storm the place for chance to study it.”
“Keep them away from it,” Tinker said. “At least until we can make sure the Fire Clan and the Stone Clan don’t kill them on sight.”
Maynard looked away, as if to hide what he thought. When he turned back, his face was back to its carefully neutral — nearly elfin — facade.
“What do you fucking want from me?” Tinker cried. “I was raised in a junkyard!”
“You’re the only one in a position to understand fully what is to be human,” Maynard said, “and still be able to do anything about this situation.”
“But I don’t know what to do.”
“I know you don’t.” Maynard said but didn’t add anything more — which would have been a big help.
There was pulse from Forest Moss and this time the building wasn’t empty. She — and Forest Moss — picked up two people still inside on the second floor. A shout went up. Tinker turned to see the Wyverns swarmed in through the door of tiny second-hand shop. Like flashbulbs going off, she felt spells flaring the small rooms into brilliance, one after another. The Wyverns quickly worked to room with the hidden couple.
“Oh, no.” Tinker started for the store.
Stormsong pulled her short. “They are only killing oni.”
Was that supposed to make it better? Much as she hated the kitsune, she didn’t want to see Chiyo beheaded. She didn’t want Riki anymore dead than she wanted Nathan hurt.
“We can’t go in there — it would be asking for fight.” Stormsong kept hold of her. “One we can not win. Wait. Please.”
Much as she wanted to protect the strangers, she couldn’t bear the thought of sacrificing her sekasha.
Tinker nodded numbly and pulled out of Stormsong’s hold. “Let’s get closer.”
She lost sight of the storefront beyond the wall of backs. This time her sekasha had to clear a path, pushing people aside to make what they thought was a wide enough path for her. Maybe if she was an elephant.
The Wyverns muscled out only one person. They dragged him to a white-haired elf, announcing, “We killed one inside — it tried to run. This one is spell marked, but it was with an oni.”
It was Tommy Chang.
“Kill him.” The male domana said.
“No!” Tinker plunged forward, forced her way through the towering Wyverns to Tommy’s side. “Don’t hurt him!”
The white haired elf turned and Tinker gasped at the damage done to his face.
“Ah, what honest horror!” The half-blinded elf said. “You must be the child bride. Not much to you — how did you come out in one piece?”
“Because they underestimated me.” Tinker tugged Tommy’s arm out of the wyvern’s hold. “Look, he’s been tested. He’s not oni.”
“He might be mixed blood,” said the half-blinded elf.
“Who gives a flying fuck?” Tinker snarled in English.
“Domi,” Stormsong murmured behind her.
“He’s not one of them.” Tinker switched back to High Elvish.
“How do you know?” Forest Moss asked. “From what I hear, the tengu fooled you.”
She was not going to let them kill someone she knew. She stared at Tommy, trying to remember something that would prove he was what she thought he was — to herself as much as to them. Maddeningly, he said nothing in his own defense, just stood there, wrapped in his bulletproof cool. Didn’t he know that no one was swordproof?
True, she’d trusted Riki blindly, but she didn’t know oni existed, and had awarded him the trust she gave all strangers. Her world had been a different place not so long ago.
“I know because —” she started in order to stall them. Because she’d known Tommy half her life. His family had owned a restaurant in Oakland since before Startup. He’d been a driving force organizing the hoverbike racing, and most summers she saw him on a weekly basis. He wasn’t a stranger. She wouldn’t immediately say he was “good” people. He had a temper and a reputation of being ruthless when it came to business; that didn’t make him any more evil than her. She suspected the elves wouldn’t accept those facts as a good argument for his humanity. Riki had proved her judgment was flawed.
What could she say as proof that these elves would accept? They were growing impatient for her answer.
“Because—” and then unexpectedly, Riki provided the answer. “Because when the tengu came looking for me, he didn’t know where to find me.”
That puzzled them, which was fine, as she needed to cram a lot into this argument to make it sound.
“Two years ago, Tommy bought a custom delta hoverbike off me. He needed to write a check, and there were the pink slips — forms to show transfer of ownership for tax reasons. I told him my human name, which was Alexander Graham Bell.” Which of course triggered a round of teasing from Tommy, and occasionally afterwards, he’d call her ‘Tinker Bell.’ “I even told him why I was called that.” In truth, she had been trying to stem the teasing with a sympathy play since Tommy’s mother had also been murdered. “And that my father was the man who invented the orbital gate. I told him — he didn’t tell the oni.”
That seemed to buy it for the Wyverns. They released their hold on Tommy.
Magic suddenly flared across her senses, like a gasoline pool catching flame. Tinker spun around but there was nothing to see. Forest Moss made a motion, and she turned to watch him call on the Stone Clan Spell Stones and use the magic to trigger his shields. Around them, the Wyverns and her Hand went alert.
“What was that? Did you feel that?” She asked Forest Moss.
“It was a spell breaking.” Forest Moss cocked the fingers of his left hand and brought them to his mouth. “Ssssstada.”
The spell Forest Moss triggered was a variation of the ground radar. A long, narrow wedge of power formed from the male elf to the river’s edge. He shifted his right hand, and the wedge swept northward through Chinatown. At the heart of the Chinatown, he hit an intense writhing of power.