Harbinger

9: BRACE FOR IMPACT

Two Tinkers.

Two.

Oilcan barely survived a childhood riding herd on one little mad scientist. He couldn’t even count the number of times they’d narrowly escaped death and/or dismemberment. It started when he was ten and Tinker had been an insanely brilliant six-year-old. When most kids were learning how to read, she’d been making go-karts out of old lawn mowers. Making the go-karts led to racing them on a small island in the middle of a shark-infested river. Then there had been the “let’s see if it explodes” phase that led to the rocket sled experiment. The larger and larger trebuchets until they accidentally leveled one of the Roach Refuse outbuildings with a three-hundred-pound cracked engine block. The homemade fireworks. The magical wiffleball shooter. The hoverbikes. The hoverbike racing on the prototype racecourse. The hovertank experiments put on hold merely because she couldn’t gain legal access to a large enough printer.

What were two of Tinker going to be like?

Being older — and not fearless like her — Oilcan had been the voice of reason, reining in anything that was sure to be deadly, but that left a lot of wiggle room for Tinker to exploit. He had often wondered why he was so boringly sane compared to her. He and Tinker were both Dufaes. He thought it might be a case of nature vs. nurture, where his mother’s quiet control won out over his grandfather’s lax parenting. Having met Forge and Esme, Oilcan was having second thoughts on the whole subject. Forge, so far, had been quietly sane. Esme had been the one who crash-landed a spaceship and flew an attack helicopter against a dragon. Maybe it wasn’t the Dufae bloodline that made Tinker so dangerous. Unfortunately, the twins were also Esme’s daughters and all that implied.

“Auejae,” Pony called from behind Oilcan.

Oilcan had started the summer thinking that he was highly fluent in Elvish. Since Tinker’s transformation, though, he’d stumbled over one unfamiliar phrase after another. He wasn’t sure what auejae meant but Thorne Scratch turned with pleased surprise on her face.

“What is it, Little Horse?” Thorne Scratch used Pony’s nickname with the elves.

“This is for you, auejae.” Pony held out a square package the size of a backpack, elegantly wrapped in cloth.

She undid the cloth wrapping to reveal a wyvern-scale vest dyed to Wind Clan Blue. “I…I did not expect you to have one for me. Not so soon.”

The tone of her wonderfully rough, scratchy voice said that she was very pleased with the gift.

“Rainlily had a late growth spurt after she came to the Westernlands.” Pony patted his hands to his chest to indicate Rainlily’s ample breasts were the result. “She outgrew her armor. We brought both of her old sets with us from Aum Renau to alter for domi. I’m afraid we already cut the other one down to fit domi’s smaller frame. This is all we have at the moment. Forgiveness. You are one of us, now. We should provide—”

“It is fine.” Thorne Scratch tugged off her black-dyed armor. “We are in a war zone.”

It did odd things to Oilcan’s heart to see that she was wearing his Team Tinker T-shirt underneath. His kids had done his laundry and left it stacked on his bedroom chair for him to put away. The shirt had been on the top of the clean clothes pile. Had she borrowed it to keep him close or as a secret show of solidarity or just simply grabbed the first thing at hand when Tinker’s messenger showed up at Sacred Heart in the middle of the night?

Thorne Scratch shimmied into the new chest piece. She wasn’t as endowed as Rainlily but judging by the minute adjustments that she made, the younger female had started out smaller than Thorne Scratch in the chest. “It is tight but does not bind. It will work for now.”

“Darkness provided transportation for three Hands from Cold Mountain Temple.” Pony handed Thorne Scratch a piece of paper. “I recognize most of the names from visiting my grandfather when I was young. I do not know their true temperament.”

Thorne’s hastily tied braid had come undone while she had pulled the different-colored armor pieces off and on. Her dark brown hair spilled over her shoulders, making her growl in frustration.

“Let me.” Oilcan held out his hand for the blue ribbon. He hadn’t known how to braid hair at the start of summer. Elves, though, had a thing about long hair. It seemed to be a quiet status symbol to them. The oni had shorn Barley of his hair to humiliate him and it worked. The poor male wore a headscarf in a vain attempt to hide the fact he’d been shaved. The others hadn’t suffered that particular torture at the hands of their oni captors. Their scars were less visible.

Merry felt guilty asking for help from her battered housemates when she had been spared the abuse. Rustle with his shattered left hand needed help to tend to his waist-long hair. Cattail Reeds wanted the comfort of Oilcan’s protection. Baby Duck liked to try different styles as if she was trying to find her lost identity. What did the “true her” really love beyond baby animals? Thorne Scratch was hungry for intimate contact after the rest of her Hand had shunned her.

Thorne studied the list as Oilcan braided the Wind Clan color back into her hair. “I recognize all these names. I think I know them well enough to know their intent. Most are true warrior monks; they have no desire to be Beholden. There will be no moral gray in this war; the Skin Clan are cut off from their resources on Earth. They will do whatever it takes to seize and hold the Westernlands, no matter how barbaric it may be. It is how they have always been. The warrior monks from Cold Mountain Temple will see it as the chance of a lifetime for glorious battle without any stain on their honor. There are only one or two of the younger ones who might be considering leaving the narrow path of moral combat.”

“Warrior monks,” Oilcan repeated the phrase. He’d heard the term all his life but he thought it was just a fancy way of referring to the sekasha-caste. “How are they different from you?”

“Warrior monks are sekasha who have taken certain vows to limit when and where they enter into combat,” Thorne Scratch said. “They are considered the holiest of the holy.”

Pony nodded but added nothing. Oilcan was learning that now that he was domana, the rules of engagement had changed. Tinker’s Hand had taken a step back, letting Thorne Scratch stay center stage in conversations with him. It was an invisible filtering device that the sekasha employed, one Oilcan never noticed until it was applied to him. Had Tinker noticed yet? She usually ignored social constructs, maybe because she was so isolated while growing up.

Another odd change was that Thorne Scratch stopped wearing the cold, unemotional warrior mask while dealing with Tinker’s Hand.

She let uncertainty show as she considered the list. “I think the younger ones will vie to be Jewel Tear’s First Hand. They will reason that the attack came while she was asleep. It had been up to Tiger Eyes to see her Hand safe; it was not her failing that led to their deaths.”

Oh, they were having that conversation: Oilcan’s First Hand. Here, he was thinking Tinker oblivious.

“There are warrior monks coming from High Meadow Temple,” Pony said. “They are not familiar to me. I do not know their hearts’ desire but I suspect some hoped to be Beholden to Wolf. They might be tempted by the promise of First Hand.”

Oilcan cringed. He really didn’t want more entanglements than he already had. He’d been a loner most of his adult life. His tangled knots of responsibility — with six babies looming on the horizon — felt suddenly claustrophobic. He didn’t want to add to his household but Thorne Scratch had already changed her clan alliance for him. He didn’t have the right to deny her support — strategically or emotionally — from other sekasha. Yes, they were ears deep in the holy warriors at Sacred Heart but none would put his desires above others. The fact Oilcan was now an elf was proof that he couldn’t depend on Forge’s Hand to protect him.

Thorne Scratch made a rude noise. “They will not want to serve under a First that abandoned her clan.”

“If they are so blinded by clan loyalty from the obvious truth that we’re all one people, then they are not for you,” Pony said. “There were those that thought that Otter Dance should seek out her father’s clan since she was short and dark. They were not the ones that make up Longwind’s First Hand.”

“What a mongrel group are we at Sacred Heart.” Thorne Scratch tucked away the list. “Elf. Human. Stone Clan. Wind Clan. But verily, is that not what the sekasha are at their core? A mongrel of elf and dragon genetics.”

Pony nodded. “Proceed with caution. Those who will decide the fate of domi’s siblings will be swayed by the presence of a strong Hand — but a Hand can only be strong if they fit.”

There was a heavy transport gossamer delivering stones when Oilcan returned to his enclave. It was a stunning sight. The huge living airship shimmered in the sky over Sacred Heart, nearly transparent, its fins fanning the air has it hovered. The hull slung under its belly was painted black with accents of gold — Forge’s color. A cargo elevator loaded with large rectangular foundation stones was slowly descending.

Tinker’s experiments with trebuchets had been a lesson in what heavy stones could do if dropped from a great height. Oilcan slowed, torn between rushing forward to stop what was happening and the healthy desire to stay out from under any possible falling rock. He came to a halt as he realized that this wasn’t the first delivery; the walls around Sacred Heart were nearly done.

Had life been so insane that he never questioned the appearance of a hundred tons of rock?

So far this summer, he’d become the “pet” of a hyperactive dragon, adopted five elf kids by accident, was transformed into a different race against his will, killed his great-great-great-great-granduncle with magic, taken on the entire half-oni tribe as his Beholden, and — for all intents and purposes — gotten married to Thorne Scratch. (Their relationship came with sex, children, and a “till death do us part” clause that included the fact that she might kill him if he screwed up as badly as Earth Son.) Just this morning, he’d had a conversation with talking mice that might be unborn cousins.

Yup, totally insane. The question was: What else had slipped his attention?

All the races of Pittsburgh were represented in the workers. Black-winged tengu worked mooring ropes to help the gossamer stay in place. Team Tinker was installing a stout ironwood gate made by Gryffin Doors. Mixed in with the others were the half-humans; Blue Sky was a half-elf and Spot was a half-oni. The construction crew was made up of elves.

Up to yesterday, all of the elves had been Wind Clan from the nearby enclaves. Sprinkled among them now were unfamiliar Stone Clan elves, marked by their shorter stature, dusky skin, and black duck-cloth overalls.

Had the strangers arrived on the gossamer with the stones? Were they going to stay? Did Sacred Heart have room for so many more and still have a separate space for the twins? And how did the stones and elves get to Pittsburgh? There hadn’t been time for Forge’s gossamer to get to the Easternlands and send a loaded ship back. Had the elves been in the Westernlands already?

The massive cargo elevator touched down. Workers swarmed forward to shift the load. They slapped paper inked with spells onto the stones, said the trigger words, and the blocks floated upward to be guided away. In less than a minute, they’d cleared the elevator. Elves didn’t work fast; they were merely extremely efficient. Everyone knew exactly what they needed to do, as they had done similar work for hundreds of years.

Forge stood like a sun at the heart of the organized chaos; everything revolved around his center of gravity. He looked far too young to be a great-great-great-great-grandfather. His hair was still dark brown and the creases at the corners of his eyes were from smiling, not age. He’d changed his doeskin pants in favor of the same black overalls as the newcomers wore but with a crisp white cotton shirt.

“Where exactly are these coming from?” Oilcan called to Forge as he worked his way through the herd of floating stones. There was a silent squaring off between Thorne Scratch and Forge’s First that seemed to be a standard sekasha thing.

“Grandson!” Forge smiled in greeting, clapping a hand to Oilcan’s shoulder. “The stones came from my quarry near Aum Goutanat.”

“Aum Goutanat?” Oilcan echoed. He’d never heard of it before.

Forge motioned to the south. “After it became obvious that the Wind Clan was growing fat on its monopoly of Pittsburgh, the Stone Clan demanded a land grant of unexplored Westernlands equal to what Wolf Who Rules Wind had been given. They hoped to establish a presence in the city. Queen Soulful Ember gave our clan — my clan — an area known as Alabamageorgia.”

Forge smashed the names of the two states together like they were one word.

“I know of the area.” Oilcan had studied American geography in elementary school. “But I thought you lived in the Easternlands.”

Forge laugh. “Yes, I do. Queen Soulful Ember tasked me with building a set of dams on the Tennessee River. I think I’m saying that right. We kept the human names since all our maps are from them. I am to provide knowledge of dam building, skilled workers, and all construction materials. As part of my payment, the queen gave me a stone quarry and virgin forest within the land grant from which I could gather the needed materials for the dams. I had just started the preliminary work when I received the news that my son’s children had been found: orphaned and in danger.”

It explained how and why Forge appeared so quickly in Pittsburgh after the Wyverns discovered who Oilcan and Tinker were descended from. It also explained how Forge could quickly shift building materials and work crews to Oilcan’s enclave.

“Won’t the queen be angry that you…” Oilcan didn’t want to imply that his grandfather stole construction material for the royal dams. “…abandoned the project?”

Forge laughed. “I haven’t abandoned it. Water is a tricky element to work with; you can’t just put a stone in place and hope it stays until you get around to setting another block. Everything needs to be poised, ready to go, before you lay that first stone. We have worked all summer setting up an airfield, starting a limestone quarry, building a camp with a deep well and high walls, and cutting a road linking them all together. You can’t go at a large project slapdash. Patience is an engineer’s greatest tool. With it, you can do anything that you can imagine.”

Forge sounded like a true Dufae grandfather. Tim “Bell” Dufae had drilled project management into his grandchildren as the most important skill they could have.

“I have Beholden working the quarry.” Forge pointed to one of the sandstone blocks roughly a yard long, two feet wide, and eighteen inches high. The chisel lines looked too clean to be cut by hand; the elves must have used some kind of magic to carve out the stones. “These were quarried for a mill pond once I found a suitable perennial stream, but that project can’t begin until next summer. They’ll have plenty of time to quarry other stones.”

Oilcan nodded automatically, his mind racing. Should he tell Forge about the twins? The four babies? The talking mice? Tinker and he needed allies to keep control of the twins’ future, but Forge might decide that he knew best. He had the means to whisk the twins off to the Easternlands hovering overhead.

It was only a matter of time, though, before Forge learned of the children. Tinker had dispatched Rainlily to update Windwolf; if he told his cousin True Flame, the prince might decide to inform the Harbingers.

“We might be — getting more — kids.” Oilcan picked out his words carefully. “They came to Pittsburgh so that they can freely choose their future. Some, however, are quite young and might still fall within the Stone Clan’s purview.”

Thorne Scratch raised an eyebrow, which made Oilcan wonder if she objected to his walking the fine line between truth and fiction or if that last word didn’t mean “purview” like he’d been taught.

He decided to jump to the point. “Sunder is head of the Stone Clan here in Pittsburgh. Do you know Sunder? Will he object to the children being kept by me?”

“Hir,” Sunder said in the very same gentle but firm grandfatherly tone that Tim Bell used while teaching everything from physics to personal hygiene. “Sunder has no gender. The proper pronoun to use for Sunder is hir.”

“Okay,” Oilcan said slowly. He’d learned the pronoun as a child but never understood why it existed. All the elves in Pittsburgh seemed to be either male or female. Being that Skin Clan created everything from walking trees to giant electric catfish, what exactly did “no gender” entail? Oilcan shook his head, trying not to get derailed. “Do you know…hir?”

“Yes and no.” Forge made a seesaw motion with his hands. “The Harbingers have a long and sordid past with the wood sprites. They are why we are Stone Clan. When my mother and the rest of our kind were still children — dangerously clever children — they managed to stage a fiery escape. It was not a trick that they thought they would be able to do twice. Certainly not the thing with the methane again as the Skin Clan became much more careful of their sewage treatment after losing half of their largest city in the southeast.”

The more Oilcan heard about wood sprites, the more he had to consider that Tinker was typical of the breed. It did not bode well for him raising the twins. “How do the Harbingers work into this?”

“The wood sprites were smart enough to know that they needed a protector; they were still quite small and only had been able to take what they could carry. They decided to negotiate an alliance with the Stone Clan warlord, Death. Their choice was fueled by the fact that Death was the most successful warlord that they could easily reach out to. Howling of the Wind Clan was half a continent away and Ashfall of the Fire Clan was farther still and Scourge of the Water Clan could have been anywhere on the Western Ocean. They still write songs about the forming of the pact between the wood sprites and Death; it was a battle of wits that changed the fate of elfkind. Death demanded unquestioning loyalty of those he kept within his protection.”

Oilcan understood wanting loyalty but the word “unquestioning” made him uneasy. “The wood sprites wanted a choice?”

Forge laughed. “Exactly. It’s the nature of wood sprites to question everything. My mother and Death came to a settlement where Death hid us in the jungle and kept us a secret. Even our name — wood sprites — was to make it seem as if Death had some mystical connection with supernatural forces. Only his five lieutenants, the Harbingers, knew the truth, since they often had to act as his liaison as we developed weapons to use against the Skin Clan.”

The “we” seemed to be more personal than just the historical sense. “You fought in the Rebellion?”

“Yes. I was barely out of my doubles when we started the construction of the Spell Stones. I may have been the youngest but I was also the loudest when we debated who should be given access to the Spell Stones. Death wanted to carefully parcel them out, giving access to warlords only after they’d pledged loyalty to him. Not the Stone Clan but to him personally. It was a distinction that alarmed me. It seemed that he was using us to make himself the next emperor. We would have fought and died only to replace one absolute master with another.”

“Do the Harbingers know that you championed the cause?”

Forge laughed. “Oh, they know. While it was a group decision, I was the one who traveled the world in secret, setting up stones for the other clans. My wealth and standing as Queen’s Architect are a direct result of that work. It would be impossible for them not to know.”

“Verily,” Forge’s First said. “Death could not have forced allegiance out of the other warlords, especially from Scourge. We would not have won the Rebellion if all four clans had not been able to bring the power of their Spell Stones to bear against the Skin Clan. The Rebellion would have died when Death was captured on the Blood Plains.”

“How do the Harbingers feel about the wood sprites sharing the Spell Stones?” Oilcan said.

“One would have to ask them,” Forge said. “Something I’ve managed to avoid doing for nae hae. If you pore over the events that led up to Death’s capture, our decision played no part in his downfall. Emperor Heaven’s Blessing, though, had Death flayed alive, then stuffed and mounted as a footstool. Rational discourse cannot follow such a fate.”

“I suppose not,” Oilcan said.

“The salt in the wounds was the fact that the wood sprites also collectively decided to be neutral during the Clan Wars,” Forge said. “We retreated to our jungle sanctuary, pulled up the bridges, set out defenses, and told all comers to leave us alone. All who persisted learned that wood sprites are not to be cornered.”

Far to the east, there was a flare of power at the edge of Oilcan’s awareness. It flashed off and on in a weird pattern that reminded him of Morse code.

Forge had gone still as if listening intently. “Speaking of Sunder, that is hir communicating to Darkness via battle code. Not a very private way to communicate but still it’s better than trying to shout across a battlefield. I will have to teach it to you and your cousin. It is a handy tool.”

The stones unloaded, Iron Mace’s Hand shifted armor crates onto the cargo elevator. Traveling bags of clothing and equipment followed. There was something oddly final about their preparations.

“Are they leaving?” Oilcan asked.

“Aye,” Forge said. “The distant voices brought word that they’ve been recalled for questioning at Summer Court. Sword Strike wants a full account from their own mouths, most likely with the queen and Pure Radiance on hand. I suspect that the crown is attempting to find who else might have been involved in Iron Mace’s activities. I was sending my gossamer to my holdings at Summer Court, so I offered them passage.”

“Sama!” someone called.

Oilcan glanced around. Sama was another elf word that Oilcan wasn’t sure of its full meaning. He’d known that it meant “head of household” but he wasn’t sure why Tinker’s people called her domi instead. His kids hadn’t stopped using it for him despite the fact he was now an elf.

“Sama!” The voice seemed to be coming from above.

An elf in Stone Clan Black waved from the gondola. Oilcan didn’t recognize the person.

“Hoi! Digger!” Forge raised his hand in acknowledgment. “I’m needed. I left my personal household in disarray when I came here. I need to give my husepavua some instructions before he heads to the Easternlands.”

“What does sama mean? Exactly?”

Forge looked surprised and then pleased for being asked. “Ah, old habits die hard. Digger became my husepavua before I was given lands by the crown. Until a domana is given lands, normally they retain the title of sama as head of their households. I’m sure that Beloved Tinker will gift you lands and your household will need to learn a new title for you.”

Forge stepped onto the lift and rode it up, looking more like an action hero than a great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Oilcan watched him go, mulling over what he’d learned. The bad news was that the Harbingers most likely hated all wood sprites and Forge in particular. The good news was that Sunder was also well versed on what a bad idea it would be to try and force the twins into something that they didn’t want. The fact that they were children — historically — meant nothing in terms of their ability to act decisively.

It was possible that Sunder would decide to let the twins choose their own guardian, since that was the path of least resistance in the middle of a war. It would be the Wyverns that insisted on someone like Oilcan, who had sekasha in abundance at his enclave.

That led back to how would the twins feel about being given a guardian.

The twins had a plan. Oilcan was sure of that. Tinker would. The fact that the twins were on Elfhome, not Earth, was testament that they had planned something.

It was unlikely that the girls had planned on living with Oilcan in an old Catholic high school with a horde of elves. The twins left Earth before Oilcan had adopted a bunch of kids or moved out of his condo. Nor could the twins have known that Esme had returned from space or that Forge was in Pittsburgh, so their plan wouldn’t have included the other two possible guardians. That left Lain or Tinker but those two were currently off the table. If the twins were truly like Tinker, they might even have some crazy plan of trying to live alone.

Tinker would be reluctant to abandon her plan. On the other hand, Tinker could be reasoned with. She could be persuaded to change her plan if something better was suggested.

What did Oilcan have to offer?

Sacred Heart’s ground floor was mostly big public-space rooms. The gym. The dining room. The massive kitchen with walk-in coolers. There were a handful of offices and large closets but those were already in use. There were ten big classrooms converted into bedrooms on the second floor that he had dedicated for “guests” of the enclave. With Iron Mace’s Hand leaving and taking his belongings with them, it would free up two of the ten rooms, but it seemed as if Forge had just tripled his number of people. Oilcan wasn’t sure if there would be space to move Jewel Tear out of her room on the third floor. He never meant for anyone but family to be living in the space.

Tommy Chang, however, had returned Jewel Tear to Oakland during the latest round of chaos. Jewel Tear discovered that her people had abandoned her to her fate, taking all that she owned with them except for a few pieces of large furniture. The other Wind Clan enclaves were full, either with incoming Harbingers or displaced Wind Clan elves. Jewel Tear had ended up at Sacred Heart while no one was home. She had picked out an empty room on the third floor and had moved her furniture in.

Windwolf was paying for Jewel Tear’s room and board. Oilcan’s kids were ecstatic that they had an additional paying guest. Oilcan was glad the female had been rescued, he just wasn’t happy that she had picked out a bedroom on the family level. It wasn’t like he needed the space — until today. It left only three empty bedrooms on the third floor. Two if he gave one to Thorne Scratch. She had been sleeping in Oilcan’s room since Ginger Wine had been attacked and the rest of her Hand killed. He wanted her to have a space to call her own now that she had accepted to be his First.

It left two big bedrooms on the third floor. The twins could share one and the other could be prepped to be a nursery. It didn’t leave room for Esme or Gracie or any odd “other” that the twins might have in tow. They could get creative with room dividers, splitting the nursery into two spaces, but that wasn’t a good long-term answer.

There were five mystery rooms that had either been huge closets with windows or small offices with nice views. While they were much smaller than the classrooms, they could still be respectable-sized bedrooms. They could hold a double-sized bed and still have space for a dresser and a desk. They needed to be deep cleaned, the many bullet holes in the plaster patched, and then painted. Oilcan started a list of supplies to get the rooms ready just in case they needed to house Esme or some other not-yet-identified twin ally.

The big classrooms were painted in a cheerful buttery yellow called “Pure Joy” but were completely empty. Merry was the only one of his kids with a real bed; the others only had the mattresses that the hospice donated. His old condo had a big walk-in closet, so he only had one small dresser left over from his childhood. His clothes were overflowing onto all flat surfaces.

If he was going to win over the twins, he would need to do better than empty rooms. If the twins were like Tinker then they would want desks, computers, tools, and all the bells and whistles of modern technology. If he was buying them furniture, he should also get some for his kids.

He needed to go shopping.