Elfhome

1: TUNNEL TO NOWHERE

Life was so much simpler when Tinker didn’t have a horde of heavily armed elves following her everywhere, all ready to kill anyone that triggered their paranoia. It didn’t help that she was still recovering from hairline fractures to her right ulna and radius. Her shiny new status as a domana-caste elf princess meant she was expected to cast spells triggered by complex finger positions and vocal commands. So, yes, breaking her arm was a very bad thing. It didn’t mean she was helpless. With an IQ over one-eighty, and standing only five feet tall, she always considered her wits to be her greatest weapon.

Her Hand (the military unit of five sekasha-caste bodyguards, not the appendage attached to her arm) had spent the week acting like there were evil ninjas hiding in every shadow. With her Hand in protective overdrive, the last thing Tinker needed was a pushy stranger trying to talk to her. Not that Chloe Polanski technically was a stranger; the woman was one of Pittsburgh’s most popular television reporters. Elves, though, don’t watch TV. The tall sekasha towered between Tinker and Chloe like trees. Dangerous trees with magically sharp wooden swords that could cut through solid steel.

“Good morning, Vicereine.” Chloe greeted Tinker from the other side of the forest of warriors. “You’re looking — well-protected. How are you today?”

“Oh, just peachy.” Tinker sighed at the scale-armored back blocking her view of the reporter. Tinker loved her sekasha, especially her First, Pony, but in the last few days she just wanted to whack them all with a big stick. She suspected if she asked, they’d find her a suitable club. They might even stand still and let her smack them. She would feel guilty, however, since she had nearly gotten them killed the week before last. Cloudwalker and Little Egret still sported an impressive set of bruises, and Rainlily had a slight wheeze from smoke inhalation.

“Elves have these nifty spells that focuses magic into their — our natural regenerative abilities.” Tinker put a hand on the center of Pony’s armored back and pushed him out of the way. Or at least, she tried; it was like trying to move a tree. “It sends our healing into overdrive. Compressing eight weeks of healing into one, though, hurts like — shit!” She made the mistake of using both hands and pushing harder. She hissed as pain flashed through her right arm.

“Domi!” Pony’s hand went to his sword as Tinker curled into a ball around her arm. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” Tinker growled as she straightened up, forcing herself to ignore the pain. She’d learned the hard way that any sign of weakness on her part made her bodyguards extremely antsy. Nervous sekasha were deadly sekasha. She didn’t want them mowing down Chloe just because Tinker had been stupid.

“Are you sure, domi?” Pony looked down at her, his dark eyes full of concern.

“My arm is still bruised.” Tinker gave a few more futile pushes against his armor, careful to only use her left hand. “Can you give me space? I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

Pony gave her a worried look but shifted aside.

They were on the bridge that led into the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. It was the beginning of September, but heat blasted off the sun-baked concrete, scented with ancient gas fumes. They had been out of the air-conditioning of the gray Rolls-Royce for all of three minutes, but there was already sweat trickling down Tinker’s back. The only good thing about Tinker’s dress of jewel-green fairy silk was the breeze she could generate by flapping the skirt.

Despite the heat, Chloe Polanski wore her beauty like an impenetrable shield. Every hair of her pale blond bob was in place. Her makeup was so flawless that only the black eyeliner around her pale blue eyes and the glint of lipstick on her full lips betrayed the fact that she was wearing any. Her tortoise blouse and black slacks managed to be elf flamboyant and yet human formal at the same time. Chloe seemed completely at ease; only her perfectly manicured fingertips, nervously fidgeting with her amber necklace, betrayed her awareness of how dangerous the sekasha could be.

“What are you doing here?” Tinker really didn’t want to do an interview. It had been a weird summer, even by Tinker’s standards. So far she had accidentally changed from human to elf, unknowingly gotten married, ripped a hole in the fabric of reality, fallen off the planet, crashed a spaceship into Turtle Creek, and fought a dragon. If that wasn’t enough to set some kind of record for weirdness, there were twenty days left of summer to go. Trying to explain everything would take half the afternoon, a large whiteboard, and a great deal of advanced physics.

“I have a couple of questions that I wanted to ask you.” The corners of Chloe’s mouth tightened as she kept a predatory smile in check. Chloe didn’t cover the hoverbike circuit, so Tinker had been spared Chloe’s cat-and-mouse tactics. “You’re a bigger prize now that you’re vicereine.”

Tinker fought the temptation to stick her tongue out at Chloe. The reporter was wearing her signature face-to-face camera eyepiece, allowing her to film both herself and her interview subject without a cameraman. In a fabled remote and secure place, often sought out by those she interviewed but never found, everything Chloe saw was recorded. Only part of Chloe’s success was based on her eyepiece. None of the other Pittsburgh reporters had the eyepiece since much of Pittsburgh’s technology was stuck in the last century. The rest of her success was due to her vindictiveness: if someone tried to play hardball with her, she took a hatchet to their reputation. She had the “impossible to look away” quality of a train wreck.

It would behoove Tinker to play nice for her first official interview as the elf princess, even if the experience were akin to waterboarding. “So, what do you want to know?”

Chloe’s mouth curled up into her cat smile. “Everything,” she purred.

Tinker laughed. “Here? Now? You do realize we’re in a war zone?”

“As I stated before, you’re now very well-protected. You’re a very difficult woman — I mean female, since ‘woman’ doesn’t apply to you anymore — to nail.”

Judging by Stormsong’s soft growl, Tinker wasn’t the only one feeling like that statement had been loaded with subtle insults.

“This isn’t a safe place or time for an interview.” Tinker started to walk in hopes of scraping Chloe off somehow — perhaps against a wall or something. How had Chloe gotten to the stretch of abandoned highway in front of Squirrel Hill Tunnels? Had she walked? “Call Director Maynard of the Earth Interdimensional Agency and he’ll set up an interview for some other time. I’ve got tons of shit to do.” For her own subtle insult, she added. “Mind-boggling complex shit.”

Chloe began walking backward, keeping just a few feet in front of Tinker. “This is Chloe Polanski. I’m here with our own little Cinderella, Princess Tinker.”

“Do I need to use smaller words for you to understand me?” Tinker held up her fingers to indicate tiny words. “Call Maynard.”

Displaying what years of practice could achieve, Chloe sidestepped a pothole without glancing down. “Princess, please, the people of Pittsburgh could do with some reassurance in this time of uncertainty.”

Annoyingly, Chloe was right. Tinker stopped with a sigh. “Prince True Flame and Windwolf and Director Maynard are working closely together to protect everyone in the city from the oni.”

“You don’t add yourself to that triumvirate of power? Or is this a male-only club?”

“It isn’t male-only. Jewel Tear on Stone is currently the head of the Stone Clan. She and Forest Moss on Stone are also working with the prince and the viceroy. They’re all out right now looking for oni.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I’m still recovering from a broken arm.” Tinker pulled up her sleeve to show off the impressive bruising. It made for an easy excuse.

“Surely there were things you could have done while you were recovering.”

“No.” Because that felt too rude, Tinker added, “The healing spells forced me to sleep through most of last week. Today is the first day I’ve felt awake enough to leave the enclave. I’m certainly not up to running all over Pittsburgh to fight oni.”

Not that it had even occurred to her to join in the combat. It wasn’t the best use of her abilities.

Chloe changed tactics. “Each Stone Clan domana was given a hundred thousand sen of land as remuneration for their help in fighting the oni. Earth Son was killed by his own people within a week of arriving. What happens to his share? Will the Wind Clan still be giving up that land? Is it true that they will also receive part of the city?”

“I haven’t been paying strict attention to what’s going on” would be a truthful answer but would also made Tinker look stupid. She’d spent the last month or so either held captive or unconscious or busy trying to save the world or not even on the planet. She settled for “Jewel Tear has sent word of Earth Son’s death to the head of her clan in the Easternlands. Until the Stone Clan responds, all negotiations have been put on hold.”

“Are you really going to let your husband give away part of Pittsburgh for one week’s worth of work?”

It was tempting and terrifying at the same time to know that the sekasha could stop this interview cold. Tempting because Tinker really didn’t want to talk about all the mistakes she’d made that summer. Terrifying because one slip on her part, and all of Pittsburgh could experience a digital recording of Chloe’s beheading. It would be one more mistake that Tinker wouldn’t want to have to explain.

“My husband and I only care for the safety of our people,” Tinker said carefully. “We will do whatever it takes to guard them.”

“The hundred thousand sen of land is to be all virgin forest beyond the Rim.” Stormsong was the only one of Tinker’s Hand that was fluent in English. The female sekasha had spent decades living in Pittsburgh, reveling in the human culture. Stormsong probably recognized Chloe, but judging by the look on her face, she also knew of the reporter’s venomous reputation.

Chloe’s hand went nervously to her necklace. Her perfect white-tipped fingernails tapped the dark honey-colored stones. The pendant had an insect trapped within the fossilized resin. Did it represent her interview subjects, trapped for Chloe’s inspection?

“I see.” Chloe retreated on the subject and looked for a safer battlefield. She scanned the sekasha. Those working as Blades had spread out to secure the area while Pony and Stormsong continued to flank Tinker, working as Shields. “You’ve taken two full Hands now?”

Good, a subject Tinker didn’t mind talking about. “I only have five Beholden.” Tinker gave Pony and Stormsong’s Elvish names as her First and Second and then added Cloudwalker, Rainlily, and Little Egret as the rest of her Hand. She wasn’t sure if the warriors continued counting out their positions; if they did, that would be her Third, Fourth, and Fifth. They’d become officially hers after she nearly killed them the third or fourth time. “The other five with me actually belong to Windwolf.”

“And Blue Sky Montana?” Chloe had spotted the boy among the adult sekasha. Blue Sky was just one of the many bastard half-elves in Pittsburgh, most of whom were born to human women with a sexual obsession with elves. Blue, though, was the only one with a sekasha father: Lightning Strike. Blue Sky drifted among the adult sekasha, dressed in a miniature version of the wyvern-scale armor. The little half-elf lacked the spell tattoos that scrolled down the arms of the adults and the magically sharp wooden ejae sword but had a bow and quiver of spell arrows slung across his back. At a distance, the only noticeably human thing about him was his short hair, gelled into spikes.

Chloe’s predator smile flashed. “Whom does Blue Sky belong to?”

Stormsong’s hand went to her hilt. Tinker caught Stormsong’s wrist before she could draw her sword. The sekasha were a close-knit group, and they were all fiercely protective of the boy for his father’s sake.

“Leave Blue Sky out of this.” Tinker fought to keep her voice level. She’d never met Lightning Strike, but she had grown up with Blue Sky. He was one of her best friends.

“It was reported,” Chloe pressed on, “that the Wyverns forcibly removed Blue Sky from his brother’s home in McKees Rocks. Their neighbors are afraid that the Wyverns had executed Blue Sky.”

Chloe was obviously in full reporter mode. Tinker was surprised that she didn’t manage to work in the fact that Blue Sky rode for Team Big Sky, which was Team Tinker’s main competition in the hoverbike races. It reminded Tinker, though, that thousands of humans were going to witness the conversation. Things were rocky enough in Pittsburgh without Chloe stirring up resentment against the royal forces.

“Blue Sky was not forcibly removed.” Technically, he wasn’t, since that implied that he had been dragged physically out of his home. John Montana, though, had been given little choice in giving up his baby brother. “Blue Sky is half-elf; he inherited his father’s life span.”

Blue actually inherited the entire sekasha’s package down to temperament: he liked to fight. He was a good, sweet kid, but in a race he was pure steel. According to Tinker’s Hand, as Blue got older, his urge to fight would spill out into his day-to-day life. Despite being tiny for his age, he was also very good at fighting. Tinker didn’t want all of Pittsburgh thinking that Blue Sky was going to turn homicidal.

“Blue Sky will be a child for another eighty years,” Tinker said instead. “John Montana is already in his thirties, and they have no other family in Pittsburgh. John asked me as a close personal friend to take Blue Sky into my household and see that he learns everything he needs to know to live among elves for the next ten thousand years.”

All true and innocuous, although not the complete truth. It left out the fact that Blue Sky didn’t like elves very much and was still very resistant to Tinker “adopting” him. The fight training, though, was slowly winning him over.

Chloe considered the partial truth with narrowed eyes, obviously looking for holes in Tinker’s version of events. “It is my understanding that only sekasha-caste can wear the armor made of wyvern’s scales. Does this mean that Blue Sky’s father is one of your sekasha?”

“He was one of Windwolf’s Beholden.”

“Was?”

“He was killed by a saurus.” Tinker had witnessed his death. Since the Montana brothers had kept the identity of Blue Sky’s father secret even to Tinker, she had seen him die without realizing who he was.

“Oh, so his father was Lightning Strike?” Chloe said.

Tinker nodded, surprised that Chloe could put a name to a male that been dead for five years. Then again, elves were immortal; the traitorous Sparrow was the only other elf that Tinker had ever heard of being killed.

Blue Sky drifted across the pavement to stop beside Tinker. He didn’t bump shoulders with her as he normally did. Blue was seventeen to her eighteen; he considered himself as almost adult despite all physical proof that he wasn’t. Tinker had hit five foot tall — and then stopped growing — at thirteen. Blue Sky continued to be child-short; only recently had he’d caught up to her height-wise. Of course, one day he’d be as tall as the other Wind Clan sekasha and tower over her, but that was decades into the future. It was a point of pride with him that he was tall enough now to be shoulder to shoulder with her and he usually took every opportunity to prove it.

Tinker glanced at Blue to see why he’d restrained himself. Apparently there been some unspoken sekasha consensus that Chloe was dangerous. Blue Sky had picked up the adult’s hard look and was trying to edge himself between Tinker and the reporter. Tinker bumped shoulders with him to get his attention and then scowled hard at him. The last thing she wanted was Blue throwing himself between her and the type of danger that came looking for her. She’d promised John to keep his baby brother safe, not use him as a shield.

Blue Sky gave her a look that started as a seventeen-year-old’s rebellion but ended as a ten-year-old’s pouting hurt.

Chloe watched the interaction with interest. “Rumor has it that the hoverbike races will be starting back up now that martial law is being lifted. Will the two of you be riding against each other once that happens?”

“Yes,” Blue Sky said without thinking through the ramifications.

“No.” Tinker earned another hurt look from Blue Sky. “I’m going to be too busy. My cousin Oilcan will be riding for my team.”

“Will Blue Sky be allowed to race?” Chloe asked.

“Of course,” Tinker and Blue Sky said at the same time. “It’s not like Blue Sky is under house arrest.” Tinker put her arm around his shoulders and felt the tension in his small, wiry body. She gave him a little shake to try and get him to relax. “He’s always been like my little brother; now he’s officially family.”

Blue Sky gave her a shy smile and relaxed slightly.

“Now, if you don’t mind. .” Tinker started again for the tunnel openings. “I have a lot to do.”

“Mind-boggling complex stuff.” Chloe echoed back her earlier comment. “Like build a gate? Do you really think that’s wise, considering what happened with the last one?”

“I’m not building a gate,” Tinker said. “But in my defense, the gate I built for the oni did exactly what I designed it to do. It stopped the main oni army from invading Elfhome.”

“By destroying the gate in orbit?”

“Yes.”

“So how do you explain Pittsburgh still on Elfhome?” Chloe said. “Shouldn’t the city have returned to Earth after the orbital gate failed?”

Tinker really didn’t want to answer the question. In layman terms, Pittsburgh had been on a giant elastic band and held down on Elfhome by a simple on/off switch. Every Shutdown — with the flip of that switch — the city rebounded back to Earth. Chloe was right; Pittsburgh should have returned to Earth. It hadn’t because Tinker had managed to also mess up the fundamental nature of the cosmos — not a feat that she was proud of. “There were unexpected — complications — which is why I’m not building another gate.”

“What exactly are you going to be building?”

“Nothing.” Tinker held up her hands in an attempt to look innocent. Both Stormsong and Blue Sky gave her a look that spoke volumes — she was coming too close to lying for their comfort — so she added in, “I will be acting as project manager for work beyond the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.” Beyond as in another world beyond. “I probably will have no technical input on the undertaking. I’m just one of the few people that can easily supervise a large work force that includes human, elves and tengu.” And the dragon, Impatience, but Chloe didn’t need to know that. There, that was vague enough without lying. Tinker poured on more information in hopes to distract Chloe from important details. “I’m here today to inspect the tunnels for any defects. The tunnels are almost a hundred years old. They’ve been spottily maintained since Pittsburgh started to bounce between Earth and Elfhome. The discontinuity in Turtle Creek might have led to tremendous stress in all neighboring areas. The tunnels might not be safe to use.”

Chloe nodded through Tinker’s rambling and then launched a counterattack on her unprotected flank. “Tinker ze domi, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how nervous all of our viewers are about the current situation. There are sixty thousand humans in Pittsburgh. The city doesn’t have the infrastructure to adequately take care of our needs. During Shutdown, everything from warm clothing to medical supplies was shipped in from Earth. The last Shutdown was mid-July. What is going to be done to address the fact that we’re facing winter without supplies from Earth?”

“I’m fully aware of the facts.” And scared silly by them. The number was actually closer to a hundred thousand once you added in tengu and elves and half-oni that were allied to the humans. As the Wind Clan domi and vicereine of the Westernlands, Tinker was responsible for them all. “We won’t starve; the elves are shipping in keva beans from the Easternlands. The first shipments arrived by train yesterday. Martial law is being lifted later today so people can go to distribution centers that the EIA will be setting up for their share of the keva.”

Giving away the first shipment had been her idea since she knew that the big chain food stores with corporate offices on Earth only stocked a thirty-day supply that became ridiculously low just before Shutdown. By now, only the little stores with ties to local farmers would have food. Those stores were holding steady because most Pittsburghers had small gardens and currently were up to their armpits in zucchini and tomatoes. In a few days, the first frost could kill off the gardens and the little stores would have to support all of Pittsburgh. Hopefully, handing out a supply of keva beans would keep those stores from collapsing and panic setting in. “We expect a second shipment within a week. That will go to food stores for resale.”

“That’s really just sticking your finger in the dike.” Chloe smiled brightly as she refused to be distracted. “Shouldn’t you be focusing on reconnecting Pittsburgh with Earth?”

That’s exactly what Tinker was doing, but she didn’t want everyone in Pittsburgh knowing that. Tinker sighed at Chloe’s predatory smile. “You really like your job?”

“Love it.” Chloe’s smile broaden. “I get to corner people, ask them all sorts of embarrassing questions and watch them squirm.”

Tinker tried to keep her temper but it was fraying fast. “If you keep pushing people’s buttons, someone is bound to push back.”

Chloe laughed. “It wouldn’t be good for morale if Pittsburgh’s favorite field reporter was chopped into little bits while reporting live. So, be a dear, and smile and tell Aunty Chloe everything.”

Completely the wrong thing for Chloe to say. It triggered all sorts of other things that Tinker didn’t want to be thinking about. How her previously anonymous mother had nearly driven her insane. How her pseudo-mother had turned out to be her real aunt. How Tinker had totally lost it all on a dark road and gotten an old friend killed.

“You are not my aunt,” Tinker growled, suddenly too frustrated to be nice. “And this conversation is over.”

And all the sekasha kicked into overdrive, spearheaded by Stormsong. One moment the warriors were flanking Tinker, ignoring the conversation to give her the illusion of privacy. The next, they were between Tinker and Chloe with swords out.

“Don’t kill her!” Tinker ordered in Elvish, afraid that they would do just that.

Stormsong snatched the headset off Chloe. “I know how irreplaceable this is.” Stormsong held it out of Chloe’s reach. “Either you take yourself and it away from here, or I’ll grind it into pieces.”

“Fine. I’ll go.” Chloe tucked away the headset after Stormsong handed it back. “My boss has been texting me for the last five minutes to go cover the keva handouts.”

Chloe had a hoverbike tucked into the shadows of the inbound tunnel. The mystery of how Chloe reached the abandoned highway was solved. She raced the motor, making it roar defiantly before taking off.

“I have never liked that woman.” Stormsong watched Chloe speed off, her hand still on her hilt.

“Neither have I,” Tinker said.

The “us versus her” lasted mere minutes after the sound of Chloe’s engines died in the distances. Then everything clicked back to normal. Tinker’s right arm ached dully, her temper was frayed, the sekasha scattered out to find hidden evil ninjas, and Blue went back to pouting. When they were growing up together, Blue always looked like his brother John to Tinker. Now she could only see the Wind Clan sekasha stamp on him — the black hair, the blue eyes, and the tendency to glower.

“They won’t come out and say it.” Blue glared at her borrowed Hand as they checked the ironwood trees growing beside the bridge for strangle vines and steel spinners. “But they don’t want me to be a Blade. They’re all scared something will jump out and eat me.”

“It’s entirely possible something could,” Tinker said. “We’re at the Rim.”

Blue Sky huffed like he was going to argue the point. At one time, “the Rim” meant only the line of destruction where the transfer between worlds shattered everything at the edge down to elementary particles. On one side of the line was Pittsburgh urban sprawl and on the other was virgin Elfhome forest. Over time, though, Elfhome’s deadly flora and fauna had pushed inward, sometimes by several miles. Pittsburghers now considered the Rim to be where the dangerous Elfhome vegetation started.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Blue scuffed the pavement with his boot. “It’s not like I can be a Shield; I don’t have spells or a sword and my bow is useless at close range. Besides, you have the great wall of kick butt.”

Tinker understood completely. She could outthink just about anyone in Pittsburgh, but she was vulnerable to brute psychical force, especially when applied rapidly. It was always annoying to know that ninety percent of her enemies could simply pick her up and carry her off. The current record of being “carried off” stood at four if you counted the black willow tree, which hadn’t so much carried her off as flung her halfway across the city.

Dealing with Chloe had at least made it easy to think of something Blue Sky could do. “You know your way around tech though.” She led him back to the Roll Royce and dug through the backseat that had become the catchall for her toys. “You can help me take measurements and stuff.”

“Measuring what?” Blue took her camera and flicked it on and checked the battery power.

“The tunnels.” Tinker waved a hand toward the absolute black of the twin tunnel entrances. The black holes created eyes for a skull-like building abutting the foot of the steep hillside. Between the two tunnels, a tall garage door completed the skeleton grin; a steel grate broke the white door into rows of teeth.

“Okay.” Blue took three steps toward the inbound tunnel before she managed to catch him by the collar and haul him back.

“After we get the lights on,” Tinker said.

Once upon a time, “Skull Mountain” wouldn’t have fazed Tinker. She would have plunged into the tunnels without a second thought. Sure, she would have known that the solid darkness within the nearly mile-long tunnels could hide virtually anything: collapsed ceilings, rifts in time and space, man-eating trees, frost-breathing wargs, or even just machine gun wielding oni. She would have naively assumed that her intelligence would carry the day. After tearing a rift in the fabric of space and time as a side effect of single-handedly thwarting an army of oni, falling off the planet, and other odd and painful misadventures, Tinker was starting to be a little more cautious. Her life wasn’t the only one on the line; wherever she went, her Hand would be bound and determined to follow. Worse now Blue would be caught up in the danger.

Blue obviously knew he was part of the reason she was being cautious and he didn’t like it. “I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“I want to get the lights before I start anything.” Assuming they could get Impatience to cooperate. To be completely fair, it wasn’t clear if the little dragon knew that she needed his help. So far she hadn’t been able to pin him down with translator in tow. He’d spent the last week drifting unfettered about Pittsburgh, walking through walls and whatnot, scaring everyone from Ralph at Eide’s Entertainment to the counter help at Jenny’s bakery.

She got a headache every time she just thought about the upcoming work. “I need to get a hyperactive dragon — that only tengu can communicate with — to build a pathway to Earth using work crews of elves that don’t speak English and humans that barely speak Elvish. I’m not going to do that in the dark.”

Speaking of language barriers, they were still speaking English which only Stormsong understood, although Pony had been working hard to learn. Tinker switched to Elvish. “I thought the tunnels would be lit. There are lights in Fort Pitt and Liberty Tunnels.”

Blue sighed, obviously wishing they’d stayed in English, but spoke Elvish in reply. “Those tunnels go someplace.”

“Technically, Squirrel Hill does too.” When Pittsburgh used to return to Earth for one day each month — before she stranded the city permanently on Elfhome — I-376 was routinely reattached to its severed half so that it once again lead to Monroeville. There was only a sliver of actual city beyond the steep hill, though, and it had been largely abandoned over the years. Man-eating trees, frost-breathing wargs and machine gun wielding oni had that effect on suburban life.

The there-but-not-there status of the largely unused tunnel made it perfect for the project.

“Why don’t we use the cars to light them up?” Blue pointed the camera at the three big gray luxury sedans.

There seemed to be a rule that when her Hand was working, only her First was allowed to talk freely. “Domi wouldn’t be able to call her shields inside the Rolls,” Pony explained. “Cars are easy to disable. You must always consider them as a possible trap, especially in confined spaces like the tunnels.”

Blue Sky nodded his understanding, now eyeing the tunnel warily. “So, how do we get the lights on?”

“Trial and error,” Tinker said. Hopefully “error” didn’t involve death and mayhem.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Blue Sky asked while he filmed her picking the lock on the access door. Someone had been serious about keeping people out; there were two deadbolts on the heavy steel door. “Shouldn’t we call someone first?”

“I’m the Wind Clan domi. I can do whatever needs to be done.” At least, that was what being domi seemed to entail. She was still trying to figure out the limits of her power. So far, it was easier to plow on ahead instead of trying to track down someone that could verify if she had authority or not.

“But — but this belongs to the city, not the Wind Clan.” Blue tapped the faded words stenciled on the steel door that read AUTHORIZED PERSONAL ONLY in English. “We should call. . someone.”

Blue was always such a morally straight arrow. When they were kids together, he was the one that kept her out of trouble. She could talk her cousin Oilcan into anything, no matter how crazy dangerous, but Blue was an immovable rock, sticking firmly to the rules his older brother had laid down. The elves thought of the sekasha as holy because they had been created perfect in every way. The warriors were considered above flawed laws made by flawed elves. It was weird to think that Blue’s moral compass was genetically based.

“It was the city’s,” Tinker said. “According to the treaty, though, anything left on Elfhome after the gate failed would become the Wind Clan’s.”

Blue Sky made a face at the news. Raised by his human brother, Blue thought of himself as a Pittsburgher first and foremost. “Does that include people?”

“Humans are considered neutral at the moment,” Pony said. “Clan alliance cannot be assigned, it must be chosen. It is the only way you can pledge your loyalty and be true to it.”

The cylinders of the second lock clicked into place and the door unlocked.

Stormsong stepped past Tinker and pushed the door open. It swung open to reveal a cavernous garage. Tinker noticed for the first time that Stormsong was wearing button-fly blue jeans instead of black leather pants. The rivets and buttons were done with ironwood instead of steel that would have messed up the sekasha’s protective spells. They were very much the female warrior’s style, matching her blue dyed short hair.

“I could have gotten it,” Tinker grumbled.

“I’m just doing my job.” Stormsong tucked Tinker’s right arm into the sling that Tinker had been ignoring. “You’re going to have to be careful or you’ll break it again.”

“I’m not made of glass,” Tinker complained.

Stormsong laughed. “I think you’ve proven that but for the next few weeks, it would be better if you pretended that you were. The bone has healed but it’s still bruised and fragile.”

Pony put a hand on Tinker’s shoulder. “Domi, let the Blades go first.”

What did they think was going to be locked inside the garage? Then again, this was Elfhome. She stepped aside to let the sekasha search.

The tunnels had a surprisingly complex and extensive control room for two cement-lined holes nearly a century old. Beyond the switches for nearly a mile of lights, there were also controls for a massive ventilation system and a fairly new monitoring array. Tinker flicked on the lights, powered on the cameras and scanned the screens.

A 1953 Pennsylvania Department of Highways report stated that the tunnels were driven through “poor ground” as they were being dug and that extensive reinforcements were put into place to make them safe. Between what happened to Turtle Creek and the war with the invading oni, it was possible that the tunnels were no longer safe to navigate. Before they started fiddling with the fundamental nature of reality, Tinker wanted to test the tunnels’ support beams for stress fractures.

At first glance, the passages seemed undamaged. Then she noticed the small lumps on the pavement near the halfway point in both tunnels.

“What are those? Did part of the ceiling collapse?” Tinker played with the video controls. She found the zoom feature and panned over the objects. They were obviously not part of the tunnel. They were some kind of device, fairly simple in design — seemingly nothing more than a stack of bricks with wires sticking out of them — but she couldn’t recognize any of the individual pieces accept an obvious tripwire that stretched across both lanes of the tunnels. “What the hell are they?”

“Something bad,” Stormsong said.

Tinker turned to look at the female when nothing more was forthcoming.

Stormsong shook her head. “I don’t know what they are, but my talent says that they’re very dangerous.”

Elves described magic as the power to render things down to possibilities and reshape them. The intanyai seyosa was an entire caste who had been bioengineered to take “educated guess” to scary levels. Stormsong’s mother was the queen’s oracle and the female sekasha had inherited some of her mother’s talent. If Stormsong said the objects were dangerous, then they were.

Tinker studied the twin machines. The tripwires were connected to a cylindrical object about three inches long that was inserted into what looked like blocks of white molding clay. Tripwire. Clay. Tinker suddenly realized what she was looking at.

“Shit! They’re bombs.” Tinker pushed the elves toward the door. The tunnels would direct most of the force of the explosion laterally, but there was no telling what would happen once the tunnels collapsed. “Everyone out. Out!”

“Our shields are not strong enough to protect us from bombs.” Stormsong caught Tinker by the good arm and made sure Tinker followed them out.

“I figured that,” Tinker said. The spells tattooed onto the sekasha were meant to counteract other sekasha’s attacks; their protective shields could only deal with swords, normal arrows, and to a limited extent, bullets. Tinker’s domana shielding spell was nearly impenetrable, but penetrating was only the start of the forces at play.

“Your shield won’t keep you from being buried if the roof comes down,” Stormsong continued.

“I fully understand the physics involved,” Tinker snapped. “I’m not going to do something stupid.”

They did an odd mutual herding back to the cars, and then they milled about at the — possibly — safe distance.

“So what do we do?” Blue Sky asked.

Tinker took out her phone. “Find someone that knows about bombs.”

The director of the EIA answered his phone with a barked, “Maynard.”

“I have bombs in the Squirrel Hill Tunnels,” Tinker told him.

There was a long pause, and then Maynard asked in overly polite High Elvish. “Tinker ze domi, why are you going to blow up the tunnels?”

“What? Me? No! Someone else put them there; I’ve just found the stupid things.”

“Oh, okay,” and then Maynard leapt to the same conclusion as Stormsong. “Oh please God, tell me you’re not trying to disarm them.”

Tinker sighed. Why did everyone think she’d try? The only things she knew about bombs came from movies — which boiled down to cutting colored wire before a timer ran out — and a few childhood experiments with ANFO. Her experiments had been very educational on the destructive nature of explosives and how they could go wrong. “I’m not! I need someone to come get rid of them.”

“I’ll send my bomb squad,” Maynard said.

“You have a bomb squad?”

“Yes. So when we find bombs, someone knows how to disarm them. Give me your word that you’ll wait for the bomb squad to make the tunnels safe.”

Tinker sighed, recognizing the verbal snare that Maynard just put out. If she promised him, she’d have to keep her word, no matter how long it took to dispose of the bombs. On the other hand, there was no way she could attempt disarming the bomb without getting all the elves and Blue Sky involved. The bombs looked simple, but they could be booby trapped. “Yeah, sure. I promise.”

Apparently after living over a hundred years, standing idle for a few hours was no big deal. While her Hand were perfectly fine with doing nothing while they waited for the bomb squad, Tinker didn’t have that kind of patience. There were ironwoods growing beside the bridge into the tunnels, their trunks far below in the valley underneath the highway. After the sekasha triple checked the trees for strangle vines and steel spinners, Tinker settled in their shade to work on her datapad.

Inspecting the tunnels was just the start of the work needed to reconnect Pittsburgh to Earth. Next step would be pin down Impatience to work out the spell. Considering the fact that her Hand was in protective overdrive, it might be saner to put that conversation on hold. The dragon had the attention span of a five-year-old on a sugar rush. Having the small hyperactive dragon and the jumpy sekasha in one room together would be like doing cigarette tricks in a fireworks factory.

She leaned her head back against the concrete barrier. Life was so much simpler before she became an elf princess. The sekasha were just the tip of the iceberg. Almost everything on the continent was “hers” and she had no clue what the hell she was supposed to do with it all. She was a mad scientist. A hoverbike racer. A junkyard dog. What the hell did she know about being a princess? Did Cinderella have this problem once the prince tracked her down with the glass slipper? Was this the real reason she took off halfway through the ball? Did Cinderella see all the sekasha and laedin and nivasa and realize that all those people would expect her to be a princess?

What Tinker really needed were the technical specifications on “princess,” not fairytales.

An odd vibration suddenly thrummed against her awareness, like an invisible guitar string had been plucked. Windwolf was tapping the power of the Wind Clan Spell Stone. A moment later a flash of lightning tore down from the clear sky, a jagged dancing column of brilliance. It struck southwest of where they were standing. Thunder boomed out instantly, confirming the strike insanely close.

“Oh crap.” Tinker scrambled to her feet. She felt another thrum of power, slightly different, and flame blossomed above the trees.

“Wow!” Blue Sky pulled out the camera. “What the hell is that?”

“Windwolf and Prince True Flame. Okay people we have to move!”

The flame strike had been close to the nearest on-ramp, less than a quarter mile away. The road elevated after that point; it was close to fifty feet off the ground when the highway entered the tunnels. With the bombs in the tunnel, the only way to safety was toward the battlefront.

Tinker hurried toward the cars, the sekasha flanking her.

Blue Sky trotted backwards, still filming, as lightning struck again — closer. “Coolness!”

“Blue!” Tinker felt a third thrum of magic; the Stone Clan had casted a scrying spell. In a weird other sense, like an invisible eye opened, Tinker could suddenly “see” the tight knot of domana-caste elves with their sekasha-caste at the on-ramp, and an unruly swarm of something racing toward her on the highway.

“We’ve got incoming — lots of them. They’re big and they’re moving fast. I think they’re wargs.” At one time wargs had been Elfhome cousins to wolves, but then, in some ancient war, were turned into oversized bio-weapons. “They’re going to cut us off.”

“Away from the cars.” Pony ordered. “Domi, shields.”

Tinker cocked her fingers and brought her hand to her mouth. Her domana shields were generated by the Wind Clan Spell Stones which sat astride a massive spring of magic. In theory, her shields could protect them from anything but it depended on her getting them up and keeping them up.

She spoke the trigger word that set up the resonance between her and the Spell Stones. It was if a giant engine just as kicked to life; magic growled deep within her bones. The vibration rumbled through her bruised bones. She barely kept from whimpering in pain. Power was blooming around her in a rush of heat; the wrong sound could be deadly. She pressed her lips tight, changed her hand position, and triggered her shield. The power shifted and changed and the wind wrapped her and the sekasha.

“Shitshitshitshit.” She hissed now that it was safe to talk. The pain continued to burn bright as the power flowed across the resonance between her and the Spell Stones. “Feels like someone is arc welding my bones.”

“Wolf is coming.” Pony wrapped his arms around her, keeping her steady against the onslaught of pain.

She focused hard on keeping her fingers locked into position even though she could barely feel them beyond the searing. If she moved her fingers, the spell would collapse. “He’d better hurry.”

Lightning struck closer and closer.

“That is so cool!” Blue filmed the sudden wild storm of lightning. “Can you do that?”

“Not yet.” If she could sense Windwolf, then he must feel her and was trying to stop the beasts before they could reach her.

The pack of wargs raced toward them, too many to count. They made a ragged wall of fur, taller than she was. The first one slammed into her shield hard enough to rebound a dozen feet, tumbling off its feet.

The next warg learned from mistake of its pack mate. The beast stopped, braced itself, and roared out white frost. The wave of magical cold struck her shield and wrapped around them, instantly encasing them in thick ice.

“Shit!” Tinker’s breath came out in a plume of mist. She hated that she could only stand there, hoping her shields held. She hated that if she flinched even once, they instantly become vulnerable to attack. The highway was lost behind the ice wall, an opaque haze, marking the range of her shield. She couldn’t see the road, or how many more wargs were between her and Windwolf. “Oh, Windwolf, hurry.”

Fire blasted down on them, making her flinch.

“Nothing can breach your shield, domi.” Pony sounded so calm and confident.

The ice wall cracked under the heat of the flame strike and rained down in thick pieces to the pavement. One of the wargs was dead on the pavement, a smoldering corpse, and the rest were retreating into the tunnels.

At one time she had thought that the sekasha were the greatest weapons of the clans, but then she discovered the truth. The warriors were mere escort for the heavy artillery that the domana-caste represented. That fact was clear as the royal troops moved down the highway in a wash of Fire Clan red. Prince True Flame was walking in the lead, all regal elf splendor in white and gold, the hot shimmer of his protective shield running before him. His Wyverns were behind him and a horde of laedin-caste troops were bringing up the rearguard.

True Flame summoned another strike with a quick series of hand motions and hard utterances and the roar of fire was deafening as it flared past her shields. It struck one of the trailing wargs, igniting the beast instantly. The rest, however, made it to the safety of the tunnels.

True Flame moved forward until she was behind his protective shield. “Are you hurt?”

Tinker knew he meant hurt by the wargs, so she said, “No.”

She was about to release her shields when Pony tightened his hold on her and murmured, “Wait for Wolf, domi.” Stormsong had shifted between Tinker and the Prince and a heartbeat later, Cloudwalker followed suit. Why were they leery of True Flame? She thought she could trust Windwolf’s older cousin.

Then she realized that Forest Moss of the Stone Clan stood beside the prince. The one-eyed and quite mad domana had come to Pittsburgh without sekasha or a household. Wyverns guarded Forest Moss; Tinker had missed Forest Moss in the wash of Fire Clan red because he had no Stone Clan black to mark his movement. The male watched her intently with his one good eye. His pure white hair was unbound and flowing in the heat that True Flame’s shield gave off. The left side of his face was an unreadable mask of scars radiating around the sewn shut lids of his eye. The right side showed hard, cold anger. Last time she’d seen him, he’d tried to kill her; no wonder her Hand was jumpy. Forest Moss was insane, but surely even he wasn’t crazy enough to attack her in front of True Flame and the Wyverns.

Where was Windwolf? She wasn’t sure how much longer she could maintain her shield. She was getting all weirdly lightheaded which usually meant she was about to go facedown.

A small knot of Wind Clan blue pushed through the royal red as Windwolf made his way to her with his two Hands of sekasha. He stopped at the edge of Tinker’s shield. His face was full of concern for her, making him look impossibly young. There had been a time where she thought of him as “lots older” and was only lately realizing that he was much a teenager as she was. Tinker dropped her shield and he swept her up into his arms.

“All is well. You’re safe.” He murmured, and she realized it was to calm himself as much to soothe her.

It did weird scary things to her heart to see him so vulnerable. It reminded her that he was out all day, fighting oni forces, with the Stone Clan at his back.

“Wolf,” Prince True Flame started toward the tunnel. “Send her home where she’ll be safe and come.”

“Wait!” Tinker tightened her hold on Windwolf as he moved to set her on the ground. “There are bombs in the tunnels. A blast could collapse the whole hillside. I called Maynard; he’s sending someone to disarm them.”

True Flame laughed at her. “The wargs split up; they went through both tunnels. They would have set off any bombs.”

“Cousin, wait.” Windwolf put out his hand to stop True Flame. “The oni could be using the wargs to bait us into a trap. The beasts know this area. They could have scattered into the woods, but instead they chose to funnel us in this direction.”

“The wargs are smart enough to avoid a simple tripwire,” Tinker said even though she wasn’t totally sure that was true. It was as close to lying as she could get to keep Windwolf out of the tunnels. “Maynard’s people should be here soon.”

True Flame glanced to his First, who gave a slight nod in agreement with Tinker. The prince growled slightly in annoyance. “There’s no need for us to waste time waiting. Forest Moss,” True Flame waved the Stone Clan domana to him. “Jewel Tear.”

A Hand of sekasha with black chest armor and spell tattoos shifted forward. They belonged to Jewel Tear. Like Tinker, the short female was hidden behind a wall of tall warriors. Jewel’s First, Tiger Eye, stepped to the side to reveal his domana.

What was it about elves? They were out hunting oni and yet all of them looked ready for the red carpet. Jewel was wearing a forest green silk full length gown with a shimmering overdress of fairy silk patterned with leaves. Her hair was the same dark brown as Tinker’s, but instead of Tinker’s jagged spikes of a haircut, Jewel’s flowed down to her ankles. It was braided with a glorious complication of pearls, ribbons and flowers. Two small stone orbs whirled about her head like she was the sun. The elf female was radiant and Tinker felt rough and unkempt in comparison.

It didn’t help to know that once upon a time, over a hundred years ago, Windwolf had asked Jewel Tear to marry him. Apparently he had a type: short, dark haired and dusky skin. Tinker’s only consolation was that Windwolf married her and not Jewel Tear. It was small comfort, though, since technically Jewel Tear had ended the engagement.

True Flame explained the bombs in the tunnel. “Can you contain the blast so it doesn’t damage the tunnel?”

“Easily,” Forest Moss said.

Jewel Tear eyed the tunnel more warily. She cast a scrying spell but the magic hit upon the steel reinforcements in the tunnel and tangled into useless noise. “Forest Moss is correct. We could easily contain the blast, but if there are other traps. .”

“Pft, we are Stone Clan.” Forest Moss waved away her objections. “We have nothing to fear; we have the strongest protection shields of all the clans.”

Forest Moss activated his protection shield and marched fearlessly into the right-hand tunnel. There was a moment of hesitation among his borrowed Wyvern Hand; they were clearly not happy at having to follow the mad domana into danger. Jewel Tear was even more unhappy. She went up on tiptoe to whisper something into her First’s ear.

Tiger Eye shook his head, took Jewel’s hand and kissed her fingers. “I will not let you go into danger alone. My place is beside you.”

Jewel Tear sighed and smacked him lightly. “Sekasha fool.”

Tiger Eye grinned down at his domi. “Always.”

Her Hand gathered close to Jewel Tear as she activated her shield, and they went determinedly into the left tunnel.

True Flame waited until Jewel Tear was out of sight before turning again to Tinker. “Go home.”

It felt a lot like being sent to her room so the grownups could talk. Worse, it probably was how True Flame and his Wyverns saw it too. Even with her arm feeling like someone had beat on it with a baseball bat, Tinker opened her mouth to protest. Her mind was blank but she was positive she’d think up some intelligent point — eventually.

Windwolf kissed her. “Beloved, I’m proud you protected our people, but your arm is still weak. Anything could break it.”

“Damn it, I’m not a child,” she whispered to him in English.

“I’m fully aware of that.” Windwolf kissed her again. “There will be another day, after your arm is fully healed, when you’ll fight beside me. Today, though, you are hurt. If you break your arm again, the damage would probably be worse.”

There was a thrum of magic against her senses as one of the Stone Clan domana cast a spell. News that Forest Moss had cleared his tunnels was shouted from the entrance. She hugged Windwolf fiercely with her good arm, not wanting to let him go. She hated that she couldn’t do anything to protect him.

“I don’t need two Hands at the enclave.” Tinker offered up the only help she could give him. “I’ll take my Hand with me but the others can stay with you.”

Windwolf nodded to her logic. Despite their innocuous appearance, the enclaves were fortresses complete with guards and magical barriers.

“Wolf!” True Flame called from the tunnel entrance.

“Keep yourself safe,” she said and let him go.

Knowing he’d wait until she was in the cars and gone, she left as quickly as she could.

She needed to know how to do the scry spell so she could see danger coming. She needed attack spells so she could stop it instead of just stand there and hope that her shields didn’t fail. She had the genome keys needed to tap both the Wind Clan and Stone Clan Spell Stones, and possibly even the Fire Clan’s too. What she needed was to learn how to use them.

Ironically, it all came down to having time. It would be one thing if she could study them on her own, but someone had to sit down and teach her.

“That was so cool.” Blue Sky murmured beside her in the back of the Rolls.

She glanced over and saw that he was replaying the footage of the warg encasing her protection shield in ice. She grunted slightly; it was incredible that the beast could generate so much coldness, but she didn’t think it was “cool.”

“How does it work? You’re not drawing spells on paper with grease pencils! He just — just—” For lack of words, Blue waved his hands in mad parody of the domana casting. “Whoosh! And boom!” He held out the camera, giving her pleading eyes for an explanation. On the display, he’d paused on Prince True Flame cocking his hand up to his lips to trigger the flame strike.

“I’m not sure,” Tinker said slowly, taking the camera, and stepped through the frames showing True Flame casting. It looked so simple. “But I think I can figure it out.”