5: OLIVE BRANCH
CASTING SHADE
Olivia’s father—the man she considered her real dad, not her slime of a zealot stepfather—had always said when you didn’t want to do something, do it immediately to get it over with before you could talk yourself out of it. He also said that after doing something difficult, to remind yourself that you were strong and succeeded despite the hardship. At the time, he’d been talking about cleaning her room and combing out the tangles in her thick red hair, but the advice had served her well over the years.
So, despite not wanting to talk to the famous Wind Clan domi, Olivia marched down the hill, over the bridge, and across Oakland to Poppymeadows enclave, where the Viceroy was currently living. Yes, it was insanely early in the morning to be calling on neighbors. The sun was still on the horizon like a baneful eye. She was discovering, though, that elves kept farmer hours. Chances were good that Tinker domi would be planning to leave the enclave on some unlikely and earthshattering adventure. Olivia wanted to be sure to catch the girl—woman—female.
Her Wyvern escort was off with Forest Moss. All the domana that were fit to fight had gone off someplace far east of the city, beyond the Rim. It left her with an escort made up of twenty royal marines.
The marines followed Olivia like a pack of puppies. Some trotted ahead. Some lagged behind. Some stopped to pee on bushes. In ones and twos, they would pause to investigate anything that struck them as odd. Being that all of them were new to human civilization, there was something every few feet.
Why were there manhole covers in the middle of the streets? What were under them? They insisted in prying one up and peering down into the dark storm drains beneath. What were the fire hydrants for? She was glad that she could tell them that it was illegal to open one up. Why were there lines painted on the road? What did the bus stop sign say? What did the graffiti mean? Then they hit the museum with all its odd statues and the questions came nonstop.
She was already vexed with the marines, as they had let someone or something get into her precious supply of keva beans that she planned to plant. There was a hole in the side, suggesting a rat had gotten into the bag. If she wasn’t so versed on rodents chewing their way into feed sacks, she might have accepted the possibility at face value. But the fabric looked cut to her, not chewed.
The problem was she was on Elfhome, not Earth. There were sharks in the fresh water rivers. Giant electric catfishes that walked on land. Wolves that were the size of ponies and breathed cones of deadly cold. Trees that could stalk people down and eat them. Vines that would strangle you and then feast on your dead rotting body.
Maybe the rats carried switchblades. Who knew? She didn’t. Unfortunately, neither did the royal marines. They were as out of their element as she was. They were from a section of Elfhome that corresponded to Northern Italy on Earth. They didn’t know what kind of animals lived in the Westernlands.
Like puppies, they didn’t see the problem of vanishing seeds. They had come to fight oni, not rats. There was plenty of food for them at their field mess. They held a profound belief in their domana; Prince True Flame would provide. The Wyverns guaranteed that.
Olivia didn’t share that belief. The domana might be immortal but they weren’t gods. An army functioned only when it was fed; supply lines would be the oni’s first target. They had already derailed the train at Station Square in the middle of the Oktoberfest festival. She heard the massive thunder of destruction all the way in Oakland as the diesel engine and passengers cars crashed.
Food from the Easternlands was no longer a sure thing.
Yes, the Fire Clan Wyverns may be able to feed their marines but Forest Moss was Stone Clan. He was in Pittsburgh as a paid mercenary. He was also considered dangerously unbalanced. The Wyverns had considered executing him rather than trying to help him. Olivia’s presence was the only reason Forest Moss was still alive.
No, she could not count on the elves for food.
What little was being locally produced would need to be shared with all the humans in Pittsburgh, some sixty thousand people. The locals were already canning their harvest but there were college students, diplomats, and EIA employees, who had thought that they were only going to be on Elfhome for a few months. While they might not realize yet the danger they faced, they belonged to powerful organizations. The EIA. The University of Pittsburgh. Embassies of Earth’s nations. Those powers were probably already stockpiling food for their people and their people alone. It was the human way of dealing with such emergencies.
Olivia had to prepare for a winter with no supplies from the humans or the elves.
She was two months pregnant; starvation could lead to birth defects in her baby. For her unborn child’s entire future, she needed to be sure she had access to a healthy diet for the next seven months. She had picked the crystal palace of the Phipps Conservatory because its massive greenhouse could allow her to grow food through the winter. She had had the seeds that would allow her to do that. Thanks to the unknown vermin, she needed to replace what she had lost. Quickly.
While the war with the oni kept Forest Moss from her side, she had herded the royal marines all over the city, looking for seeds. Annoyingly every time she stopped to talk to any humans, the puppies would suddenly snap to attention and became fierce-looking warriors, scaring the fudge out of everyone. If she managed to beat the marines aside, everyone would then react with confusion. It was the beginning of September. Hard frost could come at any time, killing anything planted outdoors. Growing season was over.
She would nod. She wouldn’t volunteer that she was living in a massive greenhouse. She felt vulnerable enough with something quietly stealing her seed out from under the royal marines’ noses. She didn’t want the entire city to be reminded that the Phipps Conservatory stood abandoned until she squatted in it. She didn’t want to anyone showing up with a stronger claim on the property.
She’d planned on talking to Forest Moss about the seeds, but he didn’t come home. The marine who fetched the evening meal said that all the domana were gathering far to the east for an attack on the oni encampments deep in the forest. Only one Hand of Wyvern and a platoon of marines were still in Prince True Flame’s camp at the edge of Oakland.
“The holy ones asked about you.” The marine meant the Wyverns, as the caste members were thought to be divinely perfect. “I told them you were searching the city for seeds. They said that you should talk to the Viceroy’s domi.”
Tinker domi was the last person in Pittsburgh she wanted to talk to.
Olivia’s life was a series of deceptions stacked like a house of cards. She’d deliberately led the elves to believe she was older than her sixteen years. When she admitted to being old enough to be married, she left out that she been forced into a polygamous marriage at fifteen as the youngest of three wives to a man twice her age. She omitted the fact that she fled Kansas and illegally crossed into Pittsburgh during Shutdown so she would be an entire universe away from her husband and his religious cult family.
Her life wouldn’t stand up to close inspection. She could normally evade most questions with half-truths but Tinker domi was famous for her brilliance. The older girl would probably see through any dodge. Since the vicereine was now an elf with sekasha bodyguards, Olivia wouldn’t be able to lie.
If anyone in the city could get seeds, though, it would be Tinker.
There was also the possibility that “should talk to” was a command. Her Elvish wasn’t very good.
The street in front of the enclaves was an unsettling place. On one side were human buildings that could come from any city on Earth. They were two and three stories tall with storefronts at ground level and offices on the upper stories. Sidewalks. Curbs. Gutters. Street signs. All utterly normal.
Then—as if sliced by God’s sword—it ended.
There was a swatch of no-man’s-land of fine rubble where the Rim divided Earth city from Elfhome forest. A dozen yards beyond that were the tall walls of granite stone that enclosed the elfin communes. A single wide gate allowed access into the enclosure, painted Wind Clan Blue.
The puppies lined up behind her, transforming into seasoned war dogs, braced for attack.
Fear roiled in Olivia’s stomach, or maybe that was morning sickness. She clamped down on the urge to vomit; throwing up on the doorstep would make a very bad impression. She knocked.
The spyhole opened and blue eyes narrowed at her. Annoyance turned to confusion. They shifted to the line of red-uniformed royal marines. Flicked back to her. Glanced again at the marines with more confusion in them.
“Yes?” the male owner of the eyes said in Elvish.
“I wish to see Tinker domi,” Olivia replied in the same. “I need some seeds and the Wyverns said I should talk to her.”
“F-F-F-Forgiveness.” And the slot closed.
What did that mean? No? Tinker wasn’t home? Olivia should leave?
Olivia was still debating its meaning when the slot opened again. A new pair of eyes gazed out at her.
“I wish to see Tinker domi,” Olive repeated in Elvish. “I need some seeds and the Wyverns said I should talk to her.”
“Your Elvish sucks,” the female owner of the eyes said in a Pittsburgh accent. “Just speak English.”
“Oh. Okay,” Olivia said in English. “I-I-I was told by the Wyverns that I should get seeds off Tinker domi.”
“The Wyverns told you to get what?” the female said in confusion. “Seeds?”
“Yes. Seeds. To plant. Keva beans. Rats or something got into mine. I’ve been combing the city for—”
“Who are you?”
“Olivia—” She caught herself before she used her real last name. “Prince True Flame calls me Olive Branch over Stone. I’m Forest Moss’s domi.”
“When it rains, it pours.” The female sighed and undid the gate’s lock with a loud clank. “Today is not a good day for a visit, but if the Wyverns sent you, we must receive you.”
All the Wyverns that Olivia had met since becoming Forest Moss’s domi had been tall, red-haired males so alike that they seemed like identical twins. She had only seen the Wind Clan’s holy sekasha-caste warriors from a distance. Like the Wyverns, they seemed to be made with one mold—tall and dark-haired with deep blue eyes.
The female who opened the door was a sekasha, identified by the tattoos on her arms. Olivia wasn’t sure if she was one of the Wind Clan warriors; she wasn’t stamped out of the same mold as the others. She was fair in coloring with the nearly translucent white skin that pale blonds normally had. She’d dyed her hair the same dark blue as the door. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were darkened with makeup. She wore the same scale armor chest piece as the Wyverns, but hers was dyed blue to match the markings on her arms. Her blue jeans looked handmade.
“I give my word that she will not be harmed,” the sekasha told the puppies. She pointed firmly at the ground. “Stay.”
“Yes, holy one.” The puppies bowed as one, completely believing what the female said as the God-spoken truth.
Olivia hoped she could trust the female. The perfect holy warriors were considered above the law. They could kill anyone that they thought needed killing.
Beyond the gate was a small, enclosed garden acting as a second defense against anyone who breeched the front door. There was a foyer into the main building with murder holes hidden in the ceiling and another stout door. No wonder the elves looked at her greenhouse crystal palace and shook their heads.
They stepped through the front door and into sheer chaos. The area seemed as if it normally was a restaurant dining room with a scattering of tables and chairs. For some reason there were dozens of lamps scattered randomly through the room, sometimes as many as three on one table. Food was being laid out on a nearby table, buffet-style, while dirty dishes were being cleared away. The smell of it made Olivia’s stomach roil.
Oh, please God, not now. She pressed a hand to her mouth, wishing she had brought a pregnancy lollipop with her. She should have had a snack to hedge off morning sickness. She looked away from the food, trying to find something else to focus on.
In one corner, pictures were taped to a wall and multicolored string had been woven into a haphazard web. Several paper maps had been taped to a neighboring wall with its own collection of pins and string.
Elves of different ages and rank she expected, even the other blue-tattooed sekasha. Olivia had heard about the tengu but she hadn’t seen any of them before. It surprised her that there were a dozen or so coming and going. Some were taking off in the courtyard beyond the windows, leaping upward while unfurling their massive black wings. Some were arriving with more lamps in hand. Some were foraging for breakfast from the buffet, their wings blocking the rest of the room from her view.
Then the screen of black feathers shifted and she forgot all about her morning sickness.
On the other side of the buffet, there was a knot of people gathered around a large Oriental dragon. She’d heard about it on the radio. The deejays of WESA were telling people not to be alarmed if they spotted the creature; it was considered friendly but could be deadly if provoked. The radio hadn’t mentioned that the dragon could talk. It spoke with a deep, breathy voice that rumbled, hummed, and scraped like a cello. It had a mane that flowed in the air as if the dragon was standing in a high wind. Olivia couldn’t tell if it was saying one long word or just never inserted pauses between words. It was a constant stream of syllables interrupted only when it would snatch a tart off the buffet to swallow whole.
“What’s is he saying, Riki?” a woman hidden within the knot of tall males asked.
“I’m not sure,” one of the tengu men answered, presumably Riki. He wore a black tank top and blue jeans. If it weren’t for his wings, he’d look like a normal Japanese man. “I think he’s telling me his family tree. Dragon names are really long. It takes about five minutes to say all of Providence’s proper name.”
“Most my life, the oni were split between two camps,” another man said, drawing Olivia’s attention. “My father, Lord Tomtom, led the oni assault troops. He oversaw the grunt work of preparing for the upcoming invasion: training the troops, feeding them, housing them, and keeping them hidden. His men were considered fodder; the greater bloods expected them to be slaughtered by the elves during the initial attacks. Lord Tomtom was expected to win by sheer numbers. The other camp was controlled by Lord Yutakajodo, also known as Kajo, which means ‘snake.’ Something like this box would have gone to him.”
Olivia recognized Tommy Chang from her nights working as a whore on Liberty Avenue. He was king of the underworld in Pittsburgh, supposedly running everything from music raves to hoverbike races. She originally heard about him at the bakery, where he sounded harmless enough. She’d been surprised to discover that he also had a stable of prostitutes who worked the streets downtown. The girls that Olivia hung out with had nasty things to say about Tommy Chang, but they had nasty things to say about everyone, especially one another. It was hard not to believe the rumors because he radiated aloof menace, from the tank tops that showed off his muscular arms to the way he stalked down the street.
Olivia stopped believing all the rumors after the third time she’d been told to run to Tommy or his enforcer Babe if she seriously thought a man was going to hurt her. Tommy couldn’t be as evil as the streetwalkers painted him if he’d protect a total stranger.
Tommy Chang wasn’t wearing his normal bandana. It revealed the fact that he had catlike ears instead of human ones. They were covered with black fur, short and sleek on the outside but with tufts of hair on the inside, just like the one black barn cat at the Ranch. The ears rotated to catch different sounds in the room.
One of the most common complaints about Tommy that the Liberty Avenue whores had was that he was cold and aloof. Was Tommy unapproachable because he was half cat? Was Tommy always a cat or had someone made him a cat the way Tinker had been made an elf? Like Forest Moss wanted to make Olivia an elf?
Olivia realized that she was staring and looked away. Now was not the time for an existential crisis. This did explain why Tommy and his people had suddenly disappeared off Liberty Avenue when the Wyverns started to comb the city for hidden oni.
“The tengu were considered part of the assault troops under Lord Tomtom,” Riki said while the dragon inhaled several more pastries. “There was a handful of our people that Lord Kajo used as spies but he killed them all a few days prior to Jin Wong’s return. We don’t know why. They hadn’t reported anything about the box. It’s possible Kajo knew that they would have rebelled against him once they learned what was within it.”
“Kajo is always one step ahead of everyone.” Tommy’s cat ears laid back in anger. “My father would have otherwise killed him years ago. Lord Tomtom wanted to be sole commander of the Pittsburgh forces and thought he could achieve that by assassination. Kajo danced rings around him. I never knew if I should cheer or be embarrassed.”
The hidden woman spoke again. The room seemed to quiet as if everyone paused to hear what she had to say. “Chloe Polanski danced rings around me until I figured out what she was doing and how to get one step ahead of her. She was like Esme and Stormsong. She could see the future. Could Chloe be Kajo?”
Chloe Polanski? The television field reporter?
When Olivia had first arrived on Elfhome, she found work at a bakery. It didn’t ask for immigration papers; it couldn’t afford to since Pittsburgh had a severe labor shortage. Most of her coworkers had been women living on Elfhome illegally.
It was common knowledge at the bakery that Chloe Polanski was pure evil. Duff Kryskill had a score of horror stories about how badly Polanski had treated his family when his baby sister disappeared. All the bakers knew to avoid talking to her. The reporter would gleefully see them all deported.
It came as no surprise to Olivia that Polanski was part of the oni war force, but clearly she wasn’t the leader. She had to be part of the oni intelligence network, gathering information on the elves and humans, spreading misinformation to create tension.
“I don’t think so,” Tommy said. “Polanski was too young. Kajo was here from the start. I remember her showing up on the news when I was about ten. She aged well but she has gotten noticeably older. It means she’s not immortal and would have been born about a decade before the first Shutdown.”
“Domi!” Olivia’s female sekasha escort called out. “You have a visitor.”
The tall wall of men parted even as the center of the chaos turned its attention on Olivia.
“This is Olive Branch over Stone,” her escort introduced Olivia. “Forest Moss has taken her as his domi.”
“Wolf’s child bride,” Forest Moss had called Tinker many times and now Olivia understood why. Surrounded by tall elves and the large dragon, Tinker was stunningly tiny. For the minute of stunned silence that followed the introduction, Tinker seemed younger than Olivia.
And then Tinker started to move, and the impression was lost. “Oh fucking hell, no!”
“What is wrong, domi?” The sekasha started to move between Olivia and Tinker.
The girl smacked them out of her way and bore down on Olivia. The impression of “tiny” vanished.
“How old are you?” Tinker snapped in English.
“Nearly as old as you,” Olivia said.
“The hell you are!” Tinker cried. “I’m an adult.”
“You’re eighteen,” Olivia said as calmly as she could.
“This isn’t about me,” Tinker said. “That crazy old loon—”
“He is not a loon!” Olivia clenched her fist tight. “If you’re not going to be civil, I’ll talk with your husband.”
“I am being civil!” Tinker snorted. “‘Civil’? Who talks like that?”
“Obviously, I do.”
“And you’re what? Fourteen?”
“I’m not here to discuss my age,” Olivia stated firmly. If Tinker guessed the truth, Olivia wouldn’t be able to lie. She needed to put the brakes on the question. “You have no say in what I do with my life, so—” Telling Tinker to shut up would probably be a bad idea.
“Shut the hell up?” Tinker guessed what Olivia hadn’t said aloud.
“Something like that,” Olivia whispered.
“Did he force you?” Tinker asked.
“I tracked him down and asked him to take me as his domi,” Olivia said.
“Do you even know what you’ve signed up for?” Tinker said.
“I was turning tricks on Liberty Avenue,” Olivia said. “Trust me, I know exactly what I was proposing.”
Tinker turned to glare at Tommy Chang.
“She’s not one of mine.” He backed away, hands up, ears flattened to his head like a scared cat. “I only do that for my people. Most of them are my cousins.”
It was amazing to see the most feared underworld figure in Pittsburgh backing up in panic. Then again, there were six sekasha in the room. One female, Olivia noticed, had black tattoos and chest armor instead of blue. Why was she in different colors?
“Why are you here?” Tinker switched back to Elvish. Olivia wished they could continue in English. It was taxing to verbally spar with the domi while translating. It was probable, though, that none of the elves in the room knew English well enough to follow the conversation. Tinker wanted her people to know the reason for Olivia’s visit.
“The Wyverns said that I should talk to the Viceroy’s domi.” Olivia swung the phrase around like a sledgehammer. It was her only weapon; it had already gotten her in the door. “I’ve scoured the city for seeds. I haven’t been able to find any.”
“Seeds?” Tinker echoed in confusion.
“So I can grow food,” Olivia said.
“We’re in September already. We’ll get a hard frost…” Tinker domi started to repeat the lines that Olivia already heard over and over.
“I’ve taken over the Phipps Conservatory!” Olivia was surprised that Tinker domi didn’t know but then again, the girl had disappeared while Olivia was finding a place to live. Considering all the people coming and going from the enclave, it was only a matter of time before Tinker was up to speed. “It has a huge greenhouse that’s fully operational.”
“That glass palace?” Tinker said.
It frustrated Olivia that no one had been willing to help her find a place to live but everyone seemed quite willing to criticize her choice. She defended her pick. “There’s a fortifiable stone building that will function as our main living area. I have plans on building walls.” She needed materials and bricklayers but she could only tackle one thing at a time. Starting the plants growing seemed to be the most pressing need.
“The oni might attack at any time,” Tinker plowed on. “The Phipps is way over on the other side of Oakland. Maybe you can move to Sacred—”
“No,” the female sekasha in black stated coldly. “I will not allow it.”
Tinker squinted at a short male elf who looked much like her. He must be her cousin with the improbable name. What was it again? Oilslick? No. Oilstain? Oilpan? Oilcan? Wait—was he an elf now too?
“I took the kids in,” Tinker’s cousin whispered in English, “because Thorne didn’t want them to be in the same household as Forest Moss.”
Olivia glared at the female in black. What a bitch! Forest Moss had lost his eye and everyone he loved when he’d been captured by the oni. After he escaped, he couldn’t find anyone who would take him in. He’d spent centuries isolated. The sheer loneliness of it had driven him mad.
Tinker glanced to the shortest, darkest male sekasha to her immediate left for advice. “Pony?”
“If the Wyverns sent her here,” the male said, “then the Wyverns have seen her set up and approved of it. They would not allow Forest Moss to be exposed to danger.”
Olivia winced as that cut close to the bone. She had learned that the Wyverns had debated killing Forest Moss as he ran amok after Ginger Wine’s enclave had been leveled. The slaughter of Jewel Tear’s sekasha had been too close to his own horrific loss. The only value the Wyverns saw in Olivia was her ability to keep Forest Moss calm and rational. That was why she only had royal marines as guards instead of Wyverns. Not that she minded; she didn’t want any guards at all. In her own mind, they made her more of a target.
“Who might have some seeds?” Tinker bounced in place as if hopping up and down would jar loose ideas. “The stores only stock them at the end of spring because most people order online from places on Earth. Pittsburghers like the Burpee brand because they’re based in Pennsylvania, which is as close as you’re going to get to Pittsburgh’s growing season. People order seeds in January. They’re delivered during the February Shutdown. Most of the greenhouses are unheated, cobbled together from windows torn out of abandoned houses. Not a lot of people have the money to do a sophisticated automated system like what the Phipps has. Doing it all by hand takes a lot of time and knowledge and some way to keep the greenhouse warm all winter.”
“You know what kind of system the Phipps has?” Olivia asked in surprise. She had gotten the impression that the place had been abandoned for decades. It certainly looked it. Most of the plants were still alive, though, thanks to an automatic watering system.
“Lain took me there a couple of times to fix some of its automated systems. She’s been in Pittsburgh since the first Startup. She had wanted to set up her operation at the Phipps, but at the time the city wouldn’t allow her to take it over. By the time they closed down, she had her own greenhouses designed to deal with Elfhome’s ecosystem. She’s been trying to work through the EIA to set up an Earth-based trust to take over the building. It hasn’t been going well, probably because of all the oni moles within the EIA. Lain didn’t want the plants to die off, so she’s been keeping an eye on the buildings since they closed the Conservatory. It’s solar powered but I think she covers the water bills. She has it set up so the university heats it in the winter via the Oakland steam tunnel system.”
The Conservatory didn’t sound as abandoned as Olivia had been led to believe. It explained how so many of the plants were still alive. Olivia hoped that this “Lain” wouldn’t fight her for possession of the Phipps if the woman had her own greenhouses elsewhere.
“Does this Lain have seeds?” Olivia asked.
Tinker winced. “She planted all her keva beans and is guarding them with a big gun. A very big gun. She is a xenobiologist; she studies the ‘alien’ life of Elfhome. She collects things like strangle vines and black willows, not your run-of-the-mill garden plants. Her florae are the ‘it eats you’ type, not the ‘you eat it’ kind. She planted her beans earlier this summer.” Tinker cocked her head as if something new occurred to her. “Huh. It probably does not bode well that Lain thinks that she will need the crop to get through winter. We should probably do something about getting more food shipped in from the Easternlands.”
“Yes, domi.” Pony took the comment as a command. He lifted a hand to summon a female laedin warrior to him.
Tinker continued, seemingly unaware that she had triggered action. “The shelf life for most seeds is between two to five years, if they’re stored in a cool, dry place. It’s possible that people have seeds leftover from the spring planting. If anyone has seeds, though, they’re probably not going to give them up, especially after the train derailment. I had the keva shipment passed out early for free so that anyone with a greenhouse could start growing food immediately. Yes, we’ll have a hard frost in a month or so, but with an unheated greenhouse cobbled together from recycled windows, the plants should be safe into December. I thought it would go far to calm people.”
It had been the keva-bean handout that had made Olivia realize Tinker domi had catapulted from hoverbike racer to something more than just a trophy wife. Tinker’s position as Windwolf’s “consort” carried a great deal of influence. Olivia hadn’t realized all the implications when she tracked Forest Moss down in a bid for similar power. Obviously, she still had much to learn.
Tinker had paused to think. “Did I remember to do anything with those DIY greenhouse plans I drew up?”
The vicereine asked the room at large. All of the tengu in the room nodded and looked to Riki to be their voice.
“I had our people set up a website,” Riki said. Forest Moss had told Olivia that the entire tengu Flock was now beholden to Tinker. It hadn’t dawned on Olivia until this moment that it gave Tinker a work force of twenty thousand individuals. “Anyone that needs the information can download your plans. We also added some information on soil preparation, planting, watering, and the like. KDKA, WQED and WESA have been broadcasting public service announcements that give the URL. The website has had several thousand hits since the PSAs started.”
Tinker waved a hand to indicate that “yes” would have been enough. “Sorry, Riki. The last week or so has been sketchy. Spells healed my broken arm in a matter of days but I kept falling asleep mid-thought and then having the weirdest dreams.”
Riki gave a slight bow. “Understood.”
Olivia’s blue-haired escort shifted forward. “Domi, we can use the distant voices to order seeds from the Clan leader, Longwind. It could be counted as part of Forest Moss’s ‘room and board’ since he isn’t being housed in one of our enclaves.”
Tinker nodded. “Please, Stormsong, can you make that happen?”
The female bowed and left.
Tinker waved off an incoming tengu bearing another lamp. “Enough with the lamps, we’re going to start blowing fuses. Riki, can you keep pumping Impatience; see what he can tell you about Little Miss Pocket. I want everything about that box that he might know. It was plain stupid luck that the oni haven’t used it yet. We can’t count on them delaying even a day longer. The game of hide-and-seek that they’ve been playing is over now that the Harbingers are here. They need to strike soon or they’re going to lose their big advantage against us.”
The chaos made sense to Olivia now; Tinker was going to war. This was her command room. She was gathering information to decide on her next action. She was being a domi. Olivia felt like a pale shadow.
Tinker turned back to Olivia. “Look, I know you can’t have any idea what you’ve gotten into because I’m still learning and I’ve been at this for months.” Much to Olivia’s relief, Tinker had slipped back into English. Her relief was short-lived as Tinker pointed hard at Olivia. “I don’t know where you came from or how you got onto Elfhome or why you’re here. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that every elf in Pittsburgh now sees you as a general in the middle of a very ugly war. For better or worse, I’m considered an elf, because once upon a time, my family were elves. If I screw up, it’s on the Wind Clan’s shoulders. If you screw up, it could be marked against all the humans because, strictly speaking, you’re still human. You cannot think of just yourself. If you do anything that could be considered treason, you could accidently kill every human man, woman, and child in this city.”
“I find that unlikely,” Olivia said calmly despite the sudden urge to vomit. She sidled over to the breakfast bar to see if there was any toast to quell her stomach.
“Have you been paying attention to what is going on in this city for the last few months?” Tinker pointed westward. “I found out today that I totally missed fish monsters attacking Downtown! Do you know how messed up things have to be that no one thought to tell me about fifty-foot-long, walking catfish throwing around lightning bolts? I apparently also missed an attack on Oktoberfest and a train derailment. Why? Because I was busy falling off the planet, hijacking spaceships, fighting dragons, and all sorts of other bullshit! This is the life you just opted into! The bad guys grabbed elf kids younger than you off the streets, tortured them, raped them, beat them to death, and then cooked and ate their bodies. We don’t even know how many were killed because there’s nothing left of them but roasted cracked bones.”
Olivia was going to hurl. She grabbed a pastry that looked like a biscotti and shoved it into her mouth. It was fire berry. The unexpected spicy cinnamon sweetness helped distract Olivia from her roiling stomach.
Luckily Tinker had sidetracked herself. “Someone contact Brotherly Love. See if there are any more Stone Clan kids that got stuck there when the train derailed. We want to make sure those kids stay safe. Once all this has ended—if it ends well—they can continue here and we’ll figure something out.”
“Yes, domi.” A male elf bowed and left to carry out her orders.
“There are some whores missing too,” Tommy Chang added quietly. “The ones that work downtown on Liberty Avenue.”
Tinker turned her attention to king of the underworld. “Do the police know?”
“I doubt it,” Tommy admitted uneasily. “The missing kids are all off-worlders. They don’t have family to keep tabs on them.”
Like Olivia had been. No one would notice them falling through the cracks. Certainly no one probably had noticed that she had stopped showing up, except the few hookers she walked Liberty Avenue with.
“We can’t let anyone fall between the cracks just because they’re here alone,” Tinker said. “Human. Elf. Tengu. Half-oni. It doesn’t matter. We need to watch out for everyone. We need to stick together. Things are going to get ugly fast.”
Everyone nodded as if they’d been issued marching orders.
Tinker pointed at Olivia. “Look, there’s lots of ins and outs of elf society I know that you don’t have a clue about. The important one is that you gave your word to Forest Moss to be his domi. It’s like getting married but more so. You’ve agreed to be part of all the craziness. You’ve made yourself part of the elf society. You’ve given your word. You need to keep it.”
The royal marines played games when they were idle. The similarity to the games that Olivia played on the Ranch surprised her. They had lengths of string to play cat’s cradle, pieces of chalk for a game like hopscotch, knucklebone dice, and small bean-filled bags to kick around like a hacky sack. They’d gotten bored waiting for Olivia; all their toys were out. They had posted lookouts at the cardinal points, thus Ox spotted Olivia first as she came out of the enclave.
“Chi-chi-chi!” Ox called, trying to untie his hands from a cat’s cradle. It was a noise that the marines made when they were surprised. “Dagger!”
“She’s back!” Dagger kicked the hacky sack high in the air and caught it. The tall female acted as the group leader even though, as far as Olivia could tell, she had no higher rank than the others. “Fall in!”
Ox shoved his string into his pocket. Rage snatched up her dice. Dart found his cap that had fallen to the ground. Coal picked up the chalk that had marked out the hopscotch board. With a good deal of breathless laughing and shoving, the twenty marines fell into line.
The marines were all laedin-caste, a term Olivia hadn’t learned until she came to Pittsburgh. Her online homeschool Elvish class never mentioned the caste system that was so important to the elves. Laedin were the warhorses of the race, bred to be big and strong and enjoy competitive games. Olivia was tall for a human girl, the tallest girl on the Ranch, but the marines all towered over her another foot. They were from the Fire Clan, so they were uniformly red-haired and green-eyed. They tended to be more strawberry blond to copper red than her auburn color.
She had just spent the last few days trying to ignore them and failing as they had constantly asked her questions about everything new and strange to them. Against her will, she’d learned all twenty of their names and the personalities of the most outspoken ones. At first she thought they asked her questions because she was there—helpless to escape their demands. After meeting with Tinker domi, though, she realized that it was much more like them seeking answers from a commanding officer.
From offhand comments that Forest Moss and the Wyverns who guarded him said, Olivia had pieced together that the royal marines that made up her guard were all very young in elf terms. The average age of the elves guarding her was ninety-six years old; they were approximately teenagers. She hadn’t put any weight on this information because it seemed that no matter how you looked at it, they were still older than her human age of sixteen. They had decades of combat training, and seemed to have casual sex with one another right and left.
The marines might be older than her in every possible way but there was something oddly innocent about them. They dealt with her and all the humans in the city with open curiosity, without a shred of suspicion. They trusted that their leaders would provide. Would make the correct choices. Lead with wisdom.
Olivia had had all her innocence systematically ground out of her since she was eleven. Her mother had dragged her away from everyone she knew and loved in Boston and taken her to an isolated Kansas ranch run by selfish misogynists who twisted the word of God to suit their own bigoted views of the world. When Olivia ran away and called her father, she found out her “parents” weren’t who she thought they were. Her “god-fearing” mother had gotten pregnant by a passing stranger and then refused to marry the man that she moved in with. Her dad was her father only in Olivia’s eyes. He wasn’t willing to face both the heavily armed religious bigots and the United States legal system to rescue her. Nor was his family—Pap-pap, Grammy, and Aunty June. When the police caught Olivia shoplifting food, they returned her to the Ranch without even checking on her claims that underaged girls were being forced into polygamous marriages to older men.
The second time she ran away, she put an entire universe between her and the man that she’d been forced to marry at fifteen. Getting to Elfhome had been only slightly harder than escaping the Ranch with enough money to reach Pennsylvania safely.
“Where to now?” Dagger asked.
Where indeed?
Since arriving in Pittsburgh, she had focused on her baby. It was the only reason she had sought out Forest Moss. She was worried about his well-being but even the mission to find seeds had been about her baby’s future.
Before she used her position to take over the Phipps, she had forced her way into the Cathedral of Learning to squat in one of its opulent Nationality Rooms. The Dean had come and tried to talk her into leaving. The woman had warned Olivia that being Forest Moss’s domi didn’t make her the equal of Tinker. Windwolf was the Viceroy and head of the Wind Clan in Pittsburgh.
Olivia heeded the warning, perhaps too well. She fled the Cathedral, taking refuge at the Phipps only because it seemed abandoned.
“The bad guys grabbed elf kids younger than you off the streets,” Tinker had said. “We don’t even know how many were killed because there’s nothing left of them but roasted cracked bones.”
Since becoming Forest Moss’s domi, Olivia hadn’t given a thought to any of the women that she’d called “friends.” Not her young and naïve Irish anthropology student neighbor, Aiofe, who helped her move into the empty house on Mt. Washington. Aiofe had been stranded on Elfhome after the gate fell, cut off from her family. Not the prostitute Peanut Butter Pie, who had helped Olivia learn how to turn tricks on Liberty Avenue. Peanut could be one of the missing whores. Not the other illegal immigrant women who worked at the bakery and treated Olivia like a little sister. They probably had been let go the same time that Olivia was.
It was one thing to be selfishly focused on her own needs when it was just her, alone on a new world with only the clothes on her back. It was another when she had a hidden fortune of elf gold and a platoon of royal marines at her beck and call. She had been aware that being Forest Moss’s domi changed her status. Hadn’t she squatted in the Cathedral? Faced down the Dean of the University? Marched up to the enclave and demanded to see the Wind Clan domi as an equal?
She had sought out Forest Moss for the power that being domi would give her. Tinker was using her power to protect everyone in the city, even the prostitutes. Olivia had a responsibility to do the same.