Harbinger

7: WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT

“Up you go!”

Wolf Who Rules Wind hadn’t hit his grown spurt yet, so it was simple for his eldest brother, Whiskey Smoked With Peat Fire, to hoist him out of bed and toss him up into the air.

“Whiskey!” Wolf cried in surprise.

“Come on, it’s your big day!” Whiskey caught him and tossed him again.

This time he stayed up in the air, supported by the wind. Whiskey was Fire Clan, having inherited their mother’s red hair and ability to tap the Fire Spell Stones. It meant someone else was manipulating the wind.

Wolf guessed the culprit. “Jay Bird!”

With a snicker, Jay Bird Screaming in Wind swaggered out of his hiding place. He was dressed up to go to court in his namesake’s colors of creamy tan with brilliant blue highlights. “What? A great warrior such as you should be able to escape that hold.”

Whiskey smacked Jay Bird lightly. “Put our baby brother down. No magic in the living quarters. Besides it would not do for him to be presented to the queen with a broken nose.”

“Aunty Ember has seen him thousands of times! I don’t know why he needs to be presented,” Jay Bird sulked. He nevertheless lowered Wolf gently down to the floor. Whiskey was remarkably easy tempered for being Fire Clan, but he was fierce when riled.

Whiskey gave Jay Bird a worried look. “Are you seriously asking that question? You should know it’s all about protocol.”

“I know!” Jay Bird shouted. He turned and stomped out of the room in a huff.

“Looks like Father, acts like Mother,” Whiskey murmured of their brother.

“He’s jealous,” Wolf said sadly. “He wants to live at Court too.”

“Only because he doesn’t know what it’s really like.” Whiskey pushed Wolf toward the hallway. “Yes, our cousins are good and gracious to us, but everyone else looks down their nose because we’re mixed blood. If someone is kind to you, remember that they most likely have an ulterior motive.”

Wolf wanted to say “I know” but it would echo Jay Bird. Besides, he didn’t know. Not really. This day was decreed the day he was born. He’d spent his life knowing it would come. The future, though, was filled with uncertainty.

“I will only be able to be with you through Winter Court,” Whiskey said. “Once thaw starts, I will need to go to my new holding.”

Wolf nodded. He and his many siblings were spaced close together, yet another thing that set their family apart from the norm. There were only two hundred years between him and his eldest brother. It meant that most of his elder brothers and sisters had been busy gathering Hands of sekasha to them, recruiting young clan members to set up households, and building a house guard of laedin warriors. With the exception of Jay Bird and Cricket Chirping by the Hearth Fire, who were in their doubles, all his siblings planned to finish their tasks and set off to claim what they could as their own. Pickings were lean, as their parents had many children and very little could be passed on in the way of land. Whiskey had been given an island to the far north filled with volcanos. It sounded like icy hell to Wolf — and to most others, which was why it was free to claim — but Whiskey was fascinated by volcanos.

“Kiln, Charcoal, and Echo will go as soon as land can be found for them,” Whiskey said.

“Ibis and Dove too,” Wolf said.

Whiskey laughed, “Yes, but they won’t be at Court with us.”

Kiln Fired Vase, Charcoal Banked for the Night, and Sunrise Echo could only tap the Fire Clan Spell Stones. They’d been sent to Court to be trained by the teachers of the royal household. Ibis and Dove both were Wind Clan and had stayed at home.

They were nearly to the bathhouse when Starlight Singing in the Wind came sweeping down the hall.

“Wolf turns fifty today, let us see him off and away,” his sister sang. “Searching in the moldering heaps, I found something for Wolf to keep.”

Starlight had their father’s hair and eyes but their mother’s height. She was dressed for the day in her best gown, a shimmering black dress of fairy silk studded with hundreds of crystals that glimmered like stars in the night sky. She held out a map case to Wolf.

“A star map?” Wolf guessed since Starlight was as fascinated by stars as Whiskey was by volcanos.

Starlight laughed. “If it was a star map, I wouldn’t be giving it away, silly! I was wandering through the Stone Clan market, digging through the stall of an old quad who used to trade with Earth. He only had the most outlandish things left. Humans must be frivolous beings, judging by his stock. Without magic, all they have to guide them are the sun and moon and stars, so their maps of the night sky far exceed ours.”

If not a star map, then what did she have in the map case? Wolf opened it and found a map of unfamiliar coastline. The landmass seemed quite large but Wolf couldn’t match it to any place he’d seen before. The lettering wasn’t in Elvish; Wolf couldn’t recognize any of the symbols. The map looked new, still smelling of ink. “What is this? I don’t recognize any of this.”

“The merchant couldn’t remember how he came by it,” Starlight said. “I got it for a smile and a nod. He saw no value in a map of Earth since all the pathways are closed.”

“Earth?” Wolf eyed the alien symbols that must be human writing. “This isn’t old enough to be from before the war with the oni.”

“I had it copied for father’s collection,” Starlight said. “The land is not a secret, just little known. The merchant said that the ‘French’ and the ‘British’ had a war over it just before we closed the gates. The humans were just beginning to map it in earnest when we lost contact with Earth. The idiot merchant failed to understand the implications.”

Implications? Wolf gasped as he realized what the map revealed. “There will be a mirror continent here on Elfhome. We could parcel it up for holdings for those who have none.”

Starlight grinned. “Very good, Wolf. You see it immediately.”

“Why give it to me? Why not Ibis or Dove? They’re already in their triples.” While their mother was Fire Clan, many would criticize Starlight if she gave the valuable maps to any of her non-Wind-Clan siblings. Even Wolf was a dangerous choice since he hadn’t decided his clan yet.

“I knew you would ask.” She took out another map case and pulled from it a map of the Summer Court and the waters around it. She pointed to an island in the northeast corner. “This is Whiskey’s volcanic island. See this wedge of land, here, beyond it? That is the large island here on your map.”

Whiskey had wanted to claim the larger island but it was more than a mei from the Fire Stones of Summer Court. It would require Whiskey to build a set of Spell Stones. He hadn’t been able to gather enough Fire Clan households to warrant the Crown’s backing. His failure had been a combination of the lack of prestige in his name and the perceived quality of his sekasha. Like their father, Whiskey had taken a female he loved as his First. Whiskey had to settle for the closer, smaller island that was at the very edge of the stones’ range. If the scale was correct, Starlight’s map showed a full continent two or three mei from the nearest Spell Stones, Fire Clan or Wind Clan.

Wolf cocked his head. “If no one has been there, then there’s no Spell Stones. A domana would be powerless. They couldn’t protect their people.”

“Yes, it would take someone with bold ambition to venture into uncharted land and set up a holding,” Starlight said. “To gain the support that they will need, they would have to build an impressive personal household and a large number of Beholden. Ibis and Dove are living up to their names as peaceful, loyal followers. Ibis plans to settle in high country and breed gossamers. Dove is lost to silkworms. I don’t understand the fascination. Neither has the desire nor the ambition needed to take on such a task. I plan to head to the mountains, to be closer to the stars. I’m not even sure I want to have a traditional household. If I can talk my way into a monastery, I might go that direction.”

“A monastery?” He had never heard of anyone but sekasha living at the remote mountain temples.

“The sekasha will not allow me to wander the landscape alone. A female domana waltzing about, sleeping with who knows what? Everyone will be happier if I’m under their protective wing while I gaze at my stars.”

Wolf loved his sister’s clarity of vision. She knew what she wanted and went for it with all her passion. He had so many choices open to him. He knew that he could be anything — perhaps even the next king if he chose to be Fire Clan and something happened to his cousin, Queen Soulful Ember. When Halo Dust died, the Wyverns chose the late king’s youngest child, not his oldest.

Wolf was named for greatness. He was bewildered, though: what was he supposed to do? He was the first domana born that could tap two esva. There was no blueprint for him to follow. Everyone was standing back and letting him figure it out. A new land would have no limits or expectations. Perhaps it needed someone like him to settle it.

Starlight leaned close. “Know this: No matter what clan you choose, you will always be our beloved baby brother. Be bold and brave as your name, Wolf Who Rules Wind. If you need us, you will only need to call and we will answer.”

Whiskey nodded in agreement. “Wind or Fire. Blood binds us.”

The deep rumble of the locomotive’s diesel engine pulled Wolf out of his thoughts. The train squealed and hissed to a stop at their makeshift camp. They were twenty miles outside the Rim at an old railroad construction camp alongside the Youghiogheny River. It was nothing more than a large flat clearing, edged with towering ironwood trees, currently overflowing with Fire Clan red and Stone Clan black. It put them an uncomfortable forty miles from the enclaves in Oakland. The train’s arrival meant that the last of the royal marines had arrived and that they would be moving out soon. All around Wolf was orderly chaos as his people pulled down their tents and packed up to move.

In a matter of a few minutes, he would march his people away from this last bastion of civilization with no idea when he might be able to easily communicate with the enclaves again. Any message would either have to pass through human hands via the EIA or some of his laedin soldiers would need to fight their way back to Oakland, forty miles or more, on foot. Wolf wanted to ponder long on this question but he didn’t have time. Wolf looked down at the scrap of paper in his hand.

“What?” the distant-voice message read. “Am I not good enough for you? Jay Bird Screaming in Wind.”

Wolf had called on six of his nine siblings when Tinker vanished. Starlight and Charcoal were at Aum Renau. Whiskey and Ibis held down the eastern end of the railroad, putting his brothers at his seaport of Brotherly Love. Dove and Cricket were at New Haven. It gave each of his settlements one domana of Fire and another of Wind to protect it. As of yet, none had been attacked, which was good because his siblings were young and untried. Only through sheer desperation had he turned to them. Legally they could lay claim to anything they protected for a long period of time. His siblings were the only domana he could trust not to loot his Beholden.

He hadn’t contacted Kiln, Echo, and Jay. The first two were artists with a bare minimum of combat training, with only Vanity Hands to protect their artwork and vulnerable city holdings.

He hadn’t been sure if he could trust Jay Bird. His older brother had been the baby of the family until Wolf’s birth. If Wolf hadn’t been born able to tap the esva of both Wind Clan and Fire Clan, things might have been different between them. His older brother, though, could not stand being lost in the shadow of the new baby. The day that Wolf had left for Court had been the last time he’d seen Jay.

When the oni had taken Tinker, Wolf hadn’t reached out to Jay because of how they’d been as children. When he was little, he’d had to guard his favorite toys, lest Jay break them out of spite. Wolf had had childish spats with most of his older siblings. The difference was that his other brothers and sisters had occasionally shown him warm regards. They had also reached out to him, from time to time, since he had reached his majority to lend advice and aid. Starlight had even been to Pittsburgh, drawn by the human observatory. Every time Wolf traveled to visit his parents, Jay Bird would be traveling elsewhere. At first, Wolf had thought it was mere coincidence, but in later years, he wasn’t sure.

He knew that Jay was the best combat trained of his siblings by default of insisting that he got the same training as Wolf. He knew that Jay had taken two Hands of sekasha. He knew that of all his brothers and sisters, Jay was the one who could easily shift base since he had yet to set up a permanent home outside of the Wind Clan quarters of Court. Yet, with all the broken toys in mind, he hadn’t sent for Jay.

Now, with Forest Moss running mad, two Harbingers dismissing everything Wolf said as the rantings of a spoiled child, and Cana Lily ready to kill anything non-elvish — enemy or ally or innocent bystander — Wolf was fairly sure he’d chosen badly.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Earth Son and half of Jewel Tear’s household, one of Wolf’s sekasha, an unknown number of Stone Clan children, and an entire battalion of royal marines were dead. More than a thousand elves gone and they had not yet faced the enemy in open battle.

Did he want his brother here and risk losing him? Now that all sixty thousand of the humans and twenty thousand tengu in Pittsburgh were Wolf’s responsibility to protect, how could he not?

Rainlily stood waiting, trying to hide her impatience. She was one of the sekasha “babies”—she and the other of Tinker’s Hand were all just out of their doubles. Tinker’s influence on her showed in subtle ways. Rainlily wore a pair of Discord’s handmade blue jeans and was chewing gum. She had hand-delivered the distant-voice message from Blue Jay but obviously that wasn’t her main mission.

Wraith Arrow stood at Wolf’s side, listening quietly. His First, Second, and Third Hand stood guard, keeping away anyone who might overhear the conversation. Tinker had been kidnapped, held prisoner, escaped, fought Impatience, fell off the planet, killed Malice, and took on a Skin Clan mole. She had never sent Wolf a message through all that; considering the summer, though, Rainlily most likely did not carry a tender love note. It was almost guaranteed to be life changing.

The rest of his household was breaking down the camp, getting ready to move. Tents, cots, and field kitchens and rations were being loaded on his pack mules. Marines were spilling off the newly arrived train in a flood of red. Overhead, a Stone Clan gossamer waited for the signal to cast off.

“There is more?” Wolf asked.

“The tengu leader, Jin Wong, visited domi late last night,” Rainlily said quietly so only Wolf and Wraith Arrow could hear. “He had important news. Domi would like Wolf Who Rules Wind to return to the enclave to discuss it personally but if that is not possible, she instructed me to explain recent developments.” Then quietly she added, “If I can. I’m not sure I followed everything.”

What could be so horribly wrong now?

Wolf glanced about the encampment. The tengu scouts had confirmed four fortified oni camps an hour apart at a warg’s running pace, roughly in a diamond pattern. Each fort had three to four thousand oni warriors armed with human weapons and hundreds of wargs. Even with a full brigade of royal marines, the elves were outnumbered.

Much as Wolf doubted the wisdom of taking on the oni head on as the Harbingers planned, he didn’t want the fight to reach Pittsburgh. As soon as the last of the Fire Clan troops unloaded from the train, the assembled elf forces were to move east toward the nearest oni camp.

Even if he flew, could he get to Oakland and back without delaying the attack?

“You cannot leave,” Wraith Arrow whispered. “We could be stripped of everything if the Wind Clan pulls its only domana out of this.”

Tinker might not know that but her Hand would. Little Horse and Discord were wise in the ways of political maneuvering between clans. They would have counseled her. That one of them was not here to explain suggested the weight of whatever Tinker was wrestling with now.

Still, Wraith Arrow was correct. Wolf would keep hold of the eastern coast if he left but Pittsburgh — all the humans — would fall to the Stone Clan. After the last month of insanity, he wouldn’t trust a feral pig to the Stone Clan’s care.

“What is the problem?” Wolf temporized. “Why did she send for me?”

Rainlily’s eyes went wide at the prospect of explaining. She held up her hand to tick off points as her eyes tracked up and to the left in the effort to recall all that she been told. “Esme Shanske made many babies when she made domi. I do not understand this part but this is what I’ve been told. Two are females younger — biologically — than Baby Duck, which makes them very small considering how little domi and cousin are. The tengu say that they are like domi, only younger, which we take to mean that they are very much wood sprites and all that implies. The other four are infants. How or why they are so much younger, I do not understand either, but they do not seem like they are normal infants. Jin Wong was very nervous whenever domi’s questioning turned toward them; we’re not sure why. Domi did not push for answers. It could be just the idea of having to keep six baby wood sprites contained until guardianship is decided. First assured domi that we could stand as blade parents. Personally, I’m doubtful since we are not doing well at keeping up with domi.”

Wolf laughed as he thought of the trail of destruction that his beloved left behind her. Yes, the tengu had reason to be nervous.

Rainlily continued her briefing, shifting to the next finger. “The six baby wood sprites were captured on Earth by oni forces that they escaped from — after rescuing a goodly number of tengu children. I’m sure it’s a very long story but we were told very little of it. All the children fled Earth after the gate crashed, meaning that there is or was a pathway from Earth to Elfhome open. Huh. Saying all that does really make the little females sound just like domi.”

Rainlily shifted to her third finger. “The tengu believe that the pathway is blocked but are not sure if it can be reopened or not. Jin Wong gave us a map to the cave’s location. He says it’s thirty miles southwest of here.”

She paused to rummage through her bulky messenger pack. She had used the human word of “miles.” Wolf nodded as he translated the distance in his head.

“Here.” She found said map and handed it to him. It was one of the human-made topographical maps of the area. The tengu leader had circled “Laurel Caverns” to mark the pathway.

Rainlily considered her fingers to remember where she had left off. She squinted in effort to recall all the confusing details as she moved to her fourth finger. “The children are the ones that summoned the gossamer away from the airfield. It’s been safely returned by the tengu. Domi’s little sisters have a command whistle on them that they made themselves, which kind of confirms our suspicions that the wood sprite traits breed true. All of the children are at the tengu village. The tengu want to cooperate in any way but they are not sure if they can shift the children out of the village.”

“Why not?” Wraith Arrow grumbled. “The tengu are domi’s Beholden; they must obey her.”

Rainlily fluttered a hand at Wraith Arrow, indicating that she was getting to that. “Domi’s sisters may be able to tap the Stone Clan Spell Stone just as cousin could even before he was transformed; Tinker domi felt two calls on the stones from the direction of Haven shortly before dawn. We believe that the children would be as formable as domi or cousin in battle as neither of them have had formal instruction either.”

Wolf wondered if the “we” was solely Tinker’s Hand discussing things among themselves as their domi focused on other matters. The last part sounded a little too tactical to be from Tinker.

“It also means that the other Stone Clan domana might realize that there are new members of their clan nearby.” Rainlily paused, changed hands, and shifted her eyes to the right as if reading down a second list. “The children have a dragon — a new one — with them that has claimed all of them as ‘hers’ in the manner that Providence protects the tengu. Both Providence and Impatience are allied with Joy — which is the name of the baby dragon with the babies…”

“Good gods,” Wraith whispered. “What madness now?”

“It gets worse.” Wolf knew his beloved. She would not summon him for anything listed yet. A polite warning of incoming children and allied dragon, yes, but not a summons.

“Much worse,” Rainlily said and then paused, staring at her fingers. She had lost track of her points. She tapped the tip of her left thumb. “Ah, yes, Joy might not allow the children to be moved from Haven, especially if the children do not want to leave.”

Rainlily pulled a large egg covered with complex spell tracings out of her messenger bag. She explained how Joy had been trapped inside it, that all evidence pointed to there being eleven more objects containing baby dragons somewhere in Pittsburgh, and that the oni greater bloods had used Providence to transform the tengu from humans to part-crow. “We think that the oni greater blood, Kajo, might have the traps at one of the four encampments that you are heading for.”

Rainlily stressed the word “might” in a manner that indicated that Tinker’s Hand could not come to an agreement. It was possible that Discord had a strong feeling that ran counter to the evidence gathered. “First sent the empty trap with me so that you could scry it. He believes it’s imperative that if you spot the traps, you can target all of our power toward destroying them. They should be considered possible genocide devices with a range of one mei.”

Wolf’s East Coast holdings with all his brothers and sisters were in range, then.

“I understand,” Wolf said. Evacuation of the continent was not an option; it was his sworn duty to protect his world from invaders. Queen Soulful Ember had met him at the Wind Clan airfield thirty years ago. Pure Radiance foresaw Pittsburgh’s first appearance on Elfhome. The queen charged Wolf with meeting the new arrivals — whoever they were — and holding the line against them.

Wolf had been trained as a warrior. He was given this land to protect because of his name.

It was his duty to stand and use whatever he could to keep the world safe.

“Send word to my brother, Jay Bird Screaming in the Wind,” Wolf told Rainlily. “Tell him that I have need of him.”

Rainlily left the egglike trap with Wolf. She had come on Discord’s hoverbike. She fumbled with starting it up but roared away as confidently as Discord. More proof that Wolf’s domi had chosen sekasha that fit her well.

Jay Bird should get Wolf’s message at Summer Court as soon as Rainlily returned to Pittsburgh. The distant voices allowed for instantaneous communication between devices. His older brother didn’t have Wolf’s level of wealth to pull from; he would need to borrow a gossamer. He would then need to cross four mei to reach Pittsburgh. It would take days for the beast to fly across the ocean, fighting a headwind the entire way. Wolf normally took the northern route, stopping at Whiskey’s volcanic island as a way station. Depending on the weather and the beast, it could take up to a week to make the trip, although it could be made faster.

“What is your older brother like?” Wraith Arrow asked.

Wolf had recruited most of Howling’s household after he turned a hundred. The sekasha had all withdrawn from society after his grandfather had been assassinated — centuries before he or Jay Bird had been born. Wolf had to trek to High Meadow Temple to lay out his plans and ask for their backing. By the time Wolf brought the sekasha back to Summer Court, Jay Bird was half a century into avoiding Wolf. His people knew his older brother by name alone. Considering his name was Jay Bird Screaming in Wind — that was probably not a good thing.

The jays of the Easternlands were smaller and drab compared to the brightly colored blue jays of the Westernland but they had the same annoyingly harsh call. A flock of blue jays had made themselves pests at Aum Renau. The birds nested in areas made safe from predators by Wolf’s household — in fruit orchards, under the eaves of outbuildings, and even on laundry poles. Their numbers grew because of the elves’ protection. The birds, though, would scream at anything that came too close to their badly placed nests: elves, hounds, cats, and even indi. The birds liked no one and nothing.

Jay Bird might be unfairly judged by his name.

“I’m not sure,” Wolf admitted. “We were both young children when I last saw him. At the time, I thought him better than me in all things. After Little Horse was born, I saw what a difference two decades could make in a child. Jay Bird always had the advantage of me.”

“Competition is good for growth,” Wraith Arrow said.

Wolf nodded at the truth of this wisdom. “I pushed myself to be his equal. It makes it difficult, though, to judge him as the age difference made him larger than life. Nor can I be sure that he is now as he was then. I know I was just a seedling of what I am now. I have grown much since I left the Easternlands. Jay Bird most likely has changed since I’ve last seen him.”

Wolf certainly hoped that Jay was wiser and less prone to temper flares.

“I know that he has two Hands,” Wraith Arrow said. “You could not call them Vanity Hands but his sekasha are all just out of their doubles, like him. What of the rest of his people? How many laedin does he hold? Does he have Beholden?”

Most young domana had no clue how to build a successful household. Elfhome had been vastly changed from the world that their parents were born into, either by the Rebellion or the Clan Wars. They came to Court at their majority with ambitions but no useful guidance. Whatever plans they had made in their youth were drowned as they floundered in the unfamiliar waters of Court. Normally what ended up happening was that they would meet equally young and ambitious sekasha who had been raised in private households instead of temples.

Such warriors often had subpar training. The smaller the household, the more their parents were distracted by their day-to-day duties. There were no other sekasha children to team-build with or compete against. Interacting only with laedin-caste children, even those older than themselves, often gave young warriors a false sense of superiority. Sekasha born during the Rebellion had learned their skills in combat and knew nothing by rote to pass on. Parents born during the Clan War sometimes forgot how they were taught certain skills. If there had been only one Hand in the household, then there was no way for the young warriors to learn how multiple Hands should work together.

The biggest drawback of a young sekasha raised in a small household was that the warriors had no desire to be anything but First Hand. It’s why they left their homes. Some refused to be anything but First.

When a domana attracted young, inexperienced sekasha to their First Hand, it normally started a cascade of failures. They rarely could gather a Second Hand or a following of laedin. Without the large number of warriors, the domana couldn’t offer protection to the Beholden households necessary to feed, house, and maintain the warriors. Keeping everyone fed and housed became a difficult juggling act that many, like Jewel Tear, failed. His father’s court as head of the Wind Clan had been an education on how important revenue streams were to protecting a household.

Wolf had gotten around the problem by recruiting his grandfather Howling’s orphaned household. It gave him experienced, respected sekasha that attracted people who didn’t want to risk everything on “a child’s” unproven judgement. It had been a tactic open to any of his elder Wind Clan siblings like Ibis and Dove and Jay Bird but not one they pursued (though some would say that Wolf’s ambition made him a good fit with his grandfather’s household).

Jay attacked the problem in typical Jay-style: he’d traveled to the four Wind Clan temples and dueled with the warrior monks, using his sword skills to impress them. It was not as dangerous as it sounded as duels were carefully designed to avoid death. He risked only embarrassing himself, and even that was minimal as he and Wolf were both trained by Otter Dance, daughter of Perfection and Tempered Steel. She had spent her childhood bouncing between the two temples that her parents had founded, learning both of their polar-opposite fighting styles. The young warrior monks most likely had no idea how to counter the combination of the two.

“I don’t know if he built the rest of his household.” Wolf felt sad admitting this. When they were small, he and Jay shared a room and spent all of their time together. They had been friends, had they not? “He only started to gather his two Hands after I was made Viceroy. I’m not sure why he waited nearly a century.”

“Perhaps the one he wanted as his First had not won their sword yet,” Wraith Arrow said. “Your father waited for Otter Dance.”

Wolf considered. He had wanted Discord as his First, but she insisted that if their dreams would come true, he needed to take Wraith Arrow and the others as his First Hand and Second Hand. Knowing that she had her parents’ ruthless determination, he’d bowed to her wishes. He found comfort in the knowledge that it gave her time to consider what Pittsburgh could offer her personally. It also meant that she had been able to freely offer to Tinker.

Had Jay Bird found someone worth waiting for?

The rattle of drums reminded Wolf that he had a war to focus on. The royal marines had debarked from the train. With a deep rumble, the locomotive headed out, pushing its carriages back toward Pittsburgh. In a matter of minutes, everyone would start out for the nearest oni encampment.

“The others do not need to know of the children yet,” Wolf said. “It would only distract us from the upcoming fight.”

Wraith Arrow nodded in agreement. “The oni are our priority.”

Wolf casted a fire scry. The spell tracings on the egglike trap reflected back with the same intensity as the inactive shields traced on the sekasha’s arms and a handful of magic items scattered through the camp. The potential of some sort of magical field was there but not active. It was going to be difficult to detect the traps with the fire esva, especially in the heat of battle.

He dropped the fire scry and cast a wind scry. As he expected, the trap was invisible as it was neither moving through the air nor blocking the natural flow of the wind. He only sensed Darkness’s gossamer moored above the work camp, waiting for the rest of their force to move out.

“The Stone Clan might have an easier time spotting these.” Wolf held out the trap to Wraith Arrow. “The others should be warned.”

A wave of tension went through Wolf’s guard. They shifted to face an incoming threat, their posture going from camp idle to possible combat. In this sea of heavily armed elves, the only possible conflict was with Stone clan domana.

The Wyverns had been clear that they would brook no aggression between the clans during the war with the oni, but there were no guarantees that the Stone Clan would honor that decree.

A moment later, Forest Moss with his borrowed Wyverns came plowing through the royal marines. Because of the Wyverns’ presence alone, his people allowed the incoming domana to close. Everyone knew that the Stone Clan should have already marched out as they had the greatest distance to travel. They knew Forest Moss shouldn’t be bearing down on Wolf; they were afraid of a fight. It did not help that the male’s unnaturally white hair hung in disarray and his ruined eye was clearly visible.

“Should you not be with Sunder?” Wolf asked cautiously. Forest Moss had fought bravely enough since arriving in Pittsburgh, but he’d been unhinged by the destruction of Ginger Wine’s enclave. Wolf was uncertain how stable the male was. He’d seemed fine at Station Square, but they had only interacted for a few minutes.

“He just suddenly hared off this direction,” one of the Wyverns reported to Wolf while tapping his temple, indicating that he thought that the domana was hopelessly mad.

“Is there a problem?” Wolf asked Forest Moss. “Do you not understand the plan?”

The Harbingers had sketched out a simple — but in Wolf’s opinion dangerous — plan. They wanted to attack the enemy forts, one at a time, from all directions. They hoped to pin down the oni within each fortification and wipe them out before moving on to the next fort. Wolf had pointed out that reinforcements coming from the other encampments could surround anyone between the forts. Cana Lily took it as cowardice on Wolf’s part. Sunder acknowledged the danger but brushed it off, saying that the bulk of the oni force were young creatures out of the whelping pens. They wouldn’t have the intelligence or experience to counter the Harbingers.

In the end, it was decided that Darkness and Cana Lily would take the eastern flank. Sunder and Forest Moss would attack from the south. It meant only the Stone Clan risked being surrounded. They paired up so that the Harbingers would handle offense while the younger Stone Clan domana provided defense.

Forest Moss should be someplace else, protecting Sunder.

The male seemed much less sane than he was at Station Square. He rocked in place, his hands fluttering as if he didn’t know what to do them. The Wyverns with him watched their charge closely, as if Forest Moss was more dangerous than an army of hidden oni. To be fair to the Wyverns, he was.

“How do you stand it?” Forest Moss asked Wolf. “Knowing that she is so small and helpless? That the city could be overrun in your absence?”

For a moment Wolf thought this was a jibe at him, that the female in question was Tinker. Then he remembered that Forest Moss had taken a human female as his domi. The Wyverns allowed it because the woman was heavy with another male’s child and her presence seemed to calm the mad domana.

Wolf could understand the fear. “You need to trust her. You love her for her strength. Let her be her own person. If she needs your help, she will tell you.”

“How would she tell me?” Forest Moss’s voice quavered with fear. “We are deep within the forest; Pittsburgh could be overrun and we would never know.”

Tinker wouldn’t have survived the summer thus far without being domana. She had been kidnapped, shot, bitten, and nearly killed multiple times. Elves had magic-based regeneration abilities that far exceeded a human’s natural healing. Being domana allowed Tinker take on sekasha Beholden and tap the power of the Spell Stones. It gave her instant access to powerful shields, multiple scrying spells, and an array of attacks. What’s more, Wolf had the comfort that he could tell if Tinker tapped the Wind or Fire Clan’s Spell Stones.

Forest Moss had linked his domi to the Stone Clan’s Spell Stones via a dau mark. While it made it simple for Forest Moss to find the woman within the sea of humans, she wouldn’t be able to pull power from the Spell Stones until after she was transformed into a domana-caste elf. She lacked the genetic key that allowed the initiation spell to set up a resonance between the domana and the Spell Stones. Nor could she be remade as an elf until after her child was born.

“Your domi has royal marines with her,” Wolf said. “They would know how to get word to you.”

This only made Forest Moss flail his hands more. “They are but children themselves! All of them are young! Some are still in their doubles! The old guard thinks that watching over her is the safest assignment for their plebes.”

“Oh, be quiet, mad one.” Sunder came drifting through the royal marines. There was something oddly ethereal about this warlord who was neither female nor male. Hir wore white face paint with a narrow strip of black across hir eyes. Wraith Arrow said it was an ancient custom of Sunder’s tribe, which had been wiped out hundreds of years before even Wraith Arrow had been born. A spell orb orbited hir; Wolf wasn’t sure of its function but unlike the ones that Jewel Tear used, it did not seem to do anything as mundane as cool or perfume the air around its owner. Hir wore a cloak over hir wyvern-scale vest; it was woven out of something lighter than fairy silk. It floated in the faintest of breeze like it was a living entity separate from the elf.

Death had been the greatest Stone Clan warlord of the Rebellion. The Harbingers had been his five subcommanders that he sent ahead of him; heralds of the upcoming destruction. Together they would lay waste to entire regions, killing anyone they deemed loyal to the Skin Clan until the streets ran with blood. When they were done, they would burn the city to the ground and salt the fields beyond it.

Wolf did not want the Harbingers in Pittsburgh. He was glad that the battle had taken them far away from the city limits.

Sundar waved languidly at Forest Moss’s fears. “As your domi is now, she’s no different from all the other human females in Pittsburgh. The oni will have no special interest in her. The one you should fear is Darkness; given a chance, he will tear out your heart in recompense for what you did to his beloved Blossom Spring. Bad enough he lost his niece, but to learn that Blossom Spring was endlessly raped before being drowned in a piss pot — time has not dulled his hate of you.”

Forest Moss nodded his head. “I would deserve any pain that he chose to rain down on me but that. My domi is innocent of any crime. Her great-grandmother had yet to be born when I blindly led Blossom Spring to Onihida.”

“Which Darkness knows,” Sunder said. “So far in this present mess, you are blameless. If you stray one step off that narrow path, though, he will crucify your entire household, however pitiful it may be.”

Forest Moss nodded. “I will be worthy of my domi.”

The male seemed calmer despite the implied threat. Perhaps he thought that Sunder was promising to shield Forest Moss if he stayed close and obedient.

“I have news,” Wolf said without adding that it was from Tinker. He had learned young that the first rule in political discourse was to admit to as little as possible. “The oni have eleven more devices like this one.”

Wraith Arrow held out the trap that he was holding.

Wolf gave a carefully edited explanation of the trap. “It’s paramount that we find them before—”

Sunder interrupted to wave away Wolf’s concern. “One must always assume that the enemy has a great and powerful weapon that it holds in reserve. It is why you must grind out every last one of them. Time and time again, someone would be merciful to our masters only to have them unleash a flood of horrors or a hideous plague upon their vanquisher.”

“It looks like a wine cooler,” Forest Moss said.

“The smallest packages are often the most dangerous.” Sunder cocked hir fingers and brought hir hand to the mouth to cast a Stone Clan scry. It would search the land instead of the sky.

Wolf felt the gathering of power as Sunder made a connection between hir and the Stone Clan Spell Stones. The scry washed over Wolf as it scanned the entire clearing. Sunder had used a spell that allowed domana from other clans to perceive the signature readings, so everything laid clear to Wolf, from the Wyverns organizing the royal marines to the trap in Wraith Arrow’s hands. It was a small, dense knot of potential nearly lost against the confusion of the work camp.

“It’s not much to look at,” Sunder said. “It will be difficult to spot in the middle of battle.”

“If it is in one of their camps, I will find it,” Forest Moss said.

Sunder dropped hir scry and cast another spell. Wolf could tell that the spell focused tightly on the trap and flashed oddly, but it wasn’t until there was a flare of power from the gossamer overhead that he realized Sunder was using battle code. Hir was identifying the trap as an object of interest. Darkness had signaled his understanding.

“Good hunting.” Sunder turned and drifted away. “Come along, clans mate.”

Forest Moss followed Sunder like a lost child.

“See that all preparations to move out are finished,” Wolf ordered, trusting that his Hand would delegate as he scanned the area for Prince True Flame.

His cousin had changed out of his white ceremonial uniform to his combat gear. With five thousand royal marines milling about, all in Fire Clan Red, the prince was difficult to spot by design. Windwolf could feel, though, the steady low thrum of a fire shield that only a domana could cast.

Wolf spotted his cousin among the flood of crimson uniforms, the one golden head among the sea of redheads.

“True!” Wolf called out in greeting.

“Wolf, my young pup,” True Flame said fondly as he cancelled his shield. He stepped forward and recast it so that it now protected Wolf too. “All is ready. I’m moving out. Keep yourself safe. You were well trained for this.”

“I need a word with you first.” Wolf explained as quickly as he could of the new weapons.

“This Kajo had them for three months?” True Flame asked. “I wonder why he’s not used at least one. I suppose he hoped that Malice would be our undoing. I suppose they might still be betting on the supposed horrors that Jewel Tear reported.”

“You doubt her report?” Wolf said.

True grunted, sounding unimpressed. “She’s young and inexperienced. She could be wrong about what she scryed in those camps. To keep something like a horror hidden for long enough for it to reach its full growth…” True finished with a shake of his head to indicate that he didn’t think it was possible.

Wolf was less sure. The oni had had nearly thirty years to raise any type of creature that they wanted in the cover of the dense virgin forest. “My pilots always use the train line as a landmark; it’s nearly impossible to miss. We came from the north or the east, fighting the headwind. We never had cause to venture south of the tracks once we spotted them.”

True waved aside the comment. “We’re talking something the size of a wyvern or larger. Some horrors were nearly the size of dragons. How do you keep something like that caged and fed?”

“If the electric catfish are any indication, they could lose them in the wild and we would be none the wiser.”

“The catfish were not true horrors, no matter how large and scary as they might seem to the humans. They are on scale with the wargs and the black willows. Malice comes close in size but, more importantly, in power. Horrors were deadly even to domana.”

In Wolf’s peripheral vision, Wraith Arrow was nodding. His First was a veteran of the Rebellion. He’d fought alongside Windwolf’s grandfather, Howling. He would have dealt with horrors.

Malice had nearly killed Wolf.

“If you’re ambushed, put up your wind shield and do a fire scry. I’ll support you from my position,” True Flame said.

Wolf nodded. The two spells used different hands so that they could be cast jointly.

The narrow railway was a blessing and a curse in that it provided a level straight road in the direction they needed to travel but it was also a perfect site for an ambush. They had decided to split up and travel in smaller groups. True Flame would lead the way and turn off where Jewel Tear had left a trail marker.

Wolf would follow True Flame at a distance, turn off before the trail marker, and travel in a parallel path to a point just west of the first oni camp. Sunder and Forest Moss would head straight east, arriving south of the first camp. Darkness was to attack from the east. Both Harbingers would have a second camp at their back. Cana Lily would provide air support from Darkness’s gossamer, allowing him to move quickly to where he was needed.

All things considered, it was the best attack plan for Wolf and his people. Wolf didn’t have the sekasha or the laedin to lead the charge into a dense knot of oni backed by horrors. Sunder would deal with Forest Moss, who had had a mental breakdown after the attack on Ginger Wine. The Wyverns with him believed that he was stable enough to take part, but if they needed to put him down during the battle, his death could not be placed at Wolf’s feet. Cana Lily, who clung to old resentments spawned during the Clan Wars, was as far away as the battle allowed. In the war council, Sunder seemed focused on the oni and equally irritated by Cana Lily’s outbursts.

It was worrisome, though, that Wolf’s first concerns were over his “allies” and not the enemy.

Darkness planned to fly his gossamer troop carrier over the oni camp. The gondola would be hidden from casual view by a spell that bent light rays. Once over the target, he and his people would leap from the gossamer, protected by the Stone Clan’s most powerful shield. It was an attack that Darkness invented and he had warriors who trusted him enough to leap off a gossamer in midair.

It was an insanely dangerous maneuver that only someone with centuries of war experience would attempt…

Or Wolf’s domi.

Wolf had to be sure that Tinker didn’t learn of this attack.

True Flame laughed. “Ah, you must be thinking of your domi. I’ve learned the look. One part fondness. One part terror.”

Wolf smiled and nodded. “Keep yourself safe, cousin.”

True Flame gave him a rough hug and headed off with his troops falling in behind him.

“If the oni truly have multiple horrors hidden away,” Wraith Arrow murmured quietly as the Fire Clan surged ahead, “we will need all that we can muster to kill them. Hopefully, Blue Jay can come quickly.”