Tinker

15: Whipping Boy

The back door of the Rolls opened and an oni warrior, face painted for war, gazed down at her—bound hand and foot—as Sparrow murmured something in the Oni tongue. The warrior grunted, took out a whistle, and blew a single long note that jumped from shrill to inaudible. Somewhere close by, small dogs broke into excited barking.

Sparrow said something about Tomawaritomo, and the warrior pointed off into the darkness. She walked away without looking back.

The warrior reached into the Rolls with huge gnarled hands and lifted Tinker out, passing her like a hissing kitten to another guard. Oni warriors were emerging out of the night, faces painted and heavily armed. Apparently her escape had been noticed, and the oni had been on the hunt, now called back by the silent whistle.

Without the kitsune's deception, the airbrake plant was a collection of massive, old buildings, heavy with the sense of otherworldliness where men did the works of gods and sneered at the concept of magic. Yet rising up in the moonlight beyond the great buildings was the wild primal forest of Elfhome, and all around Tinker, smelling like wet dogs, were the brutish oni warriors.

Tinker was carried into one of the mile-long buildings. The first section was a garage, holding a host of hoverbikes and cars; Riki's motorcycle sat to one side, as singular as the tengu. The second section was a kennel, filled with steel cages. Many of the cages held yapping little pug dogs. In one cage was a muzzled warg, its glowing eyes lighting its corner with icy rage, its bulk filling the cage.

Beyond was empty warehouse. A shallow, narrow channel cut down the center of the vast room; oily water flowed in the cement drain. On one side was the bare skeleton of a freight elevator. There was something disturbingly familiar about the space. They passed a dark stain of old blood on the floor, and there, in the dust on the floor, were her bootprints and Riki's footprints, where he had held her still and made her watch the deboning that first morning. This was the true appearance of the courtyard garden with the gazebo.

At the far end, they caught up with Sparrow. The elf female was coming to a stop beside an oni male. Riki knelt on the ground in front of the male, head bowed until his forehead nearly touched the dusty floor. To one side, the wizened-dwarf torturer sharpened his boning knives.

"I caught her before she could do harm," Sparrow was saying to the oni. The guard dropped Tinker onto the ground, knocking the breath out of her. "Really, Lord Tomawaritomo, I had hoped you could contain her more than three days."

"The kitsune let her slip away." The oni male reached down to catch Tinker by a handful of shirt and bra and lifted her up to dangle in mid-air as he inspected her.

So this was Lord Tomawaritomo. Tall and lean, he towered over Tinker; even the long thin sword strapped to his side was taller than her. He was striking in appearance, but not beautiful; his cheekbones and chin were too sharp, and his nose too flat. The gold of his pupil filled his eyes, with an iris a dark vertical slit. He had a mane of white that spilled down over his back. His ears were more than just pointed: they were white-furred, and cupped forward, like a cat's. He wore a kimono of vivid purples and greens, and a fur of pristine white that matched his snow-white hair. The pelt was wrapped over one shoulder and pinned in place by his shoulder guard of ridged bone. The fur looked to be white wolf or warg, though larger than either species. The origin of the bone, however, Tinker couldn't guess, except that the body part involved was the jawbone, hinged midpoint at the oni's chest.

After inspecting Tinker closely, Tomtom grunted. "Such trouble in a little package."

"It seems to be a universal constant that keys to doorways are usually small." Sparrow smiled at her own wit.

Tomtom grunted again. "Perhaps I should put this one on a chain to keep it from being lost."

"Whatever it takes," Sparrow said.

Perhaps it was just as well that Tinker didn't have breath to talk; she had a feeling that she would be saying things that she'd regret later. She comforted herself by thinking choice insults.

Tomtom clicked his tongue and Riki looked up. "Take this." The oni lord held Tinker out to Riki. "See that it doesn't slip away again."

So Tinker found herself handed off again like a child's doll. Annoyingly, she couldn't help but feel somewhat safer with Riki, perhaps just because he was familiar. He, at least, balanced her upright and stooped to undo the ties around her ankles. "Stay still. Stay silent," he whispered to her without meeting her eyes. Yeah, right.

Tomtom's cat ears flickered from Riki to a distant wail. "Ah, my warriors have found the vixen."

"You'll have the kitsune killed." Sparrow said it as a disinterested statement, not a question.

"One normally has to be diplomatic with the kitsune," Tomtom said. "This presents possibilities…"

A moment later frantic cries became audible, growing louder. Chiyo was dragged into the vast room, struggling in the hold of two oni warriors. Her fox tail stuck out of a tear in her kimono, and her doglike ears were laid back in distress. At a signal from Lord Tomtom, the warriors released Chiyo and she flung herself at Tomtom's feet. As the kitsune begged in frantic Oni, the corners of the oni lord's mouth curled up into a grin.

"Her Oni is worse than mine," Sparrow said. "What is she saying?"

"She says she'll do anything to avoid the knives." Lord Tomtom motioned to one of the waiting oni. "This will interest you."

Sparrow gave an exasperated sigh. "My time is limited."

Tomtom gazed at Sparrow hard. "Stay and be instructed."

He put out his hand and one of the warriors gave him a leather lead and slipknot collar. Tomtom dangled out the lead, clucking as one would to a dog. Chiyo cringed but sat up, canting back her head to lay bare her throat.

"Many of the lesser bloods have the spells to manipulate them threaded through their genetic pattern," Tomtom explained to Sparrow as he slipped the collar over Chiyo's head. He pulled the slipknot tight, winding the lead around his fist. "I could reduce her back to fox if I wanted."

Chiyo whimpered in fear.

"What use would a fox be to me, little kitsune?" Tomtom purred, wiping away Chiyo's tears. "I've decided to breed you. No, no, no." He murmured as Chiyo glanced at the surrounding warriors. "Your mate will have to be fetched. Now hold still."

He growled out a word, and strange runes gleamed to life on Chiyo's skin. In a low dull drone, Tomtom chanted out a spell, and her very skin began to glow. After a minute, he fell silent and the light vanished, and Chiyo panted quietly.

"I've put her into season." He loosened the lead and handed it to one of his warriors, pointing back across the warehouse and saying something in Oni.

Chiyo cried out as if struck. "Warg?"

Sparrow made a face of distaste. "Oh, beat her and be done with it."

"The lesser bloods are socketed so they can breed with anything," Tomtom said. "I want to introduce the warg abilities into the kitsune line."

Sparrow scoffed at this. "You don't change the genome directly?"

"Breeding for pups is a simpler method," Tomtom said.

"This is a waste of my time," Sparrow said. "I must be gone before I'm missed."

"Speak then," Tomtom said absently, watching the kitsune be stripped of her kimono, bent over a bale of bedding, and tied into position.

Tinker turned away as warriors took advantage of Chiyo's helplessness; the males laughed as their manipulations made the kitsune in heat moan wantonly. Remember what she's done to me. I hate her. I should be glad she's being punished.

Sparrow took no notice of the events with the kitsune. "I told you at the start of this that Wolf Who Rules needs to be eliminated."

Riki caught Tinker before she could launch herself at Sparrow, muffling her stream of curses at the elf.

Tomtom glanced at Tinker struggling in Riki's arms and a smile quirked at his mouth. "I have done all I will do in that regard."

"You failed miserably," Sparrow said.

Damn right, bitch, Tinker thought fiercely, still muted by Riki's hand.

"Exactly," Tomtom said. "I will not endanger my position by fruitlessly striking at him. The dogs were expendable, but I will not risk my warriors."

"He suspects that his domi's disappearance is not an untimely accident," Sparrow said. "He plans to return to the citywide search."

"And you will take the river edge as before," Tomtom waved aside her concern. "Avoid this valley as planned. If you can not, call your contact first and we'll trigger the greater cloaking spells."

"Wolf Who Rules loves this little piece of trash!" Sparrow cried, making Tinker's heart do a strange little flip in her chest. "He's not being swayed from the truth. He knows we took her, he just doesn't know how or where we're hiding her."

Tomtom turned to look at Sparrow full on, wordlessly.

Sparrow visibly needed to steel herself against his cold look. "You are failing to see how dangerous he is."

"And you are overestimating him," Tomtom said flatly.

"Your people have never dealt with a domana lord on his own land," Sparrow said.

"A knife in the spine," Tomtom said. "An arrow through the eye, or a sword through the heart, and he will die like everything else in this universe."

"No!" Tinker cried into Riki's palm, and the tengu held her tighter still.

Tomtom turned away dismissively as the massive warg was brought in, muzzled, on a stout stick lead. The beast strained against the handler, heading for Chiyo.

"So arrange the knife!" Sparrow refused to be ignored. "Or the arrow or the sword! Kill him!"

Tinker wriggled in Riki's hold. Shut up, bitch! Shut up!

Tomtom's tone grew flatter, colder. "I will not stand here, repeating myself, or do you wish to go after the kitsune?"

Sparrow looked then, as did Tinker. The warg loomed over the kitsune, erect, proportionally wrong for the female, seeking an entrance in her slight body. Tinker looked away, desperately concentrating on anything but Chiyo and her sharpening whimpers. Sparrow watched, not even flinching as the kitsune gave a scream of agony. Tinker hunched against the sound of the big animal laboring, and Chiyo's now endless, shrill barks of terror and pain. She wanted to cover her ears, but Riki wasn't loosening his hold.

Sparrow tore her gaze away from the godless union. "So be it then. Let Wolf Who Rules be the domana you cut your teeth on. If you're to take this land, you'll need to face them eventually."

"Ah, good, he's tied with her." Tomtom ignored Sparrow in favor of the breeding. "If she brings a litter to term in two months, I'll breed her again next season." Tomtom glanced down at Tinker. "This one has the domana genome? Perhaps I'll get my own litter on her. She's tiny, but I suppose that gives her a certain childlike allure."

Tinker shrank away from his clinical gaze.

"You can breed her later," Sparrow said. "The queen's seer says she's the key to our plans regarding the gate."

"So it was reported to me." Tomtom knowing obviously threw Sparrow; Chiyo must have told him earlier, after reading Tinker's mind.

"The seer said," Sparrow continued, "that the only way to bind her was with ties of her own making."

"Which means?" Tomtom asked.

"You'll only be able to hold her with promises freely given," Sparrow explained. "How you'll manage that, I do not know, nor do I care. Torture her if you must, but bind her. Obviously she'll slip away if you do not."

Sparrow nodded then and swept away, leaving Tinker with her enemies without so much as a glance. Tinker had thought she hated Riki and Chiyo; she understood now what a shadow of hate that had been.

With a look from Lord Tomawaritomo, Riki released his hold on Tinker.

"You were human, the weakest of us." Tomtom studied her with his cat eyes. "If the elves had left the gate between our worlds open, we would have long since enslaved the humans. Weaklings, all."

"You don't need muscles when you have brains," Tinker snapped.

"The question is, how elfin are you now?" Lord Tomawaritomo said. "If I have you punished as you should be, will you survive it? The human didn't."

He meant Russell, whittled down by inches. Her arms tucked tight to her chest, and he laughed. She tried not to think of those bright sharp knives, the blood, and the white of bone.

"The risk would be great that she wouldn't survive," Riki murmured.

Lord Tomawaritomo glanced at Riki, eyes narrowing in speculation. "If you helped it escape, death would be preferable. You are being spared right now only because I myself called you away."

It took Tinker a moment to realize that Tomtom was referring to her as «it» as if she was a thing, not an intelligent being. Only a warning look from Riki kept her silent.

"Chiyo doesn't have the brain to keep her deluded," Riki explained.

"See that this is secure," Tomawaritomo growled softly, pointing at Tinker. "Then get me a whipping boy to use against it."

Riki bowed low, caught Tinker, and hurried her from the room, while Tomtom turned back to supervise the end of Chiyo's breeding.

They locked Tinker in a broom closet. It was only wide enough for her to sit down, knees tucked under her chin. No air ducts or even electrical outlets. After Riki untied her, four of the oni warriors, the shortest clearing seven feet, put her firmly into it, shut the door, and locked it, leaving her in darkness.

Hours crawled by.

A whipping boy. Who would they bring to torture in her place? Oilcan? No, no, please not him! Lain? That would be unbearable too. Windwolf? Unlikely—for all the reasons why Tomtom was refusing to kill him—Windwolf was too visible, too well guarded. Nathan? It would be the ultimate irony if he died for her.

Oilcan made the most sense, though, and the realization made her start crying. Damn it, she hated to cry. She rocked in place as tears burned in her eyes. Oh, please, please, anyone but Oilcan.

She heard footsteps approach the door and an exchange in Oni. One of the guards unlocked the door in a jangle of keys, and they opened it up, all poised to grab her if she tried to put up a fight. Ha! She was tempted to snarl at them, and make them flinch, but something about coming only to mid-stomach on them kept her from taunting them.

They took her to Tomtom's suite. Whereas most of the place was run-down offices and warehouses, the suite had been remodeled to opulence. The ceiling was a design of blocks within blocks, the walls a deep rich red, and the polished wood floor strewn with the pelts of large white animals.

Tomtom, Riki, and the torturer waited there with a host of armed, tense, and bloody warriors. Their focus had been on a body lying still on the floor in front of Tomtom. They shifted their feral interest to her as her guard checked her just inside the door. The body lay curled into a fetal position so that she could see only the curve of the spine.

Tinker trembled. Who was it? What had Tomtom's people done to the person to make him or her lie so still? Please, not Oilcan.

The body shifted, revealing the spill of long elfin hair, and she felt a wave of relief. Not Oilcan. Oh, thank God. And then she recognized the elf: Pony.

On the slight wave of Tomtom's hand, the guard let go of her, and she went to Pony without thinking. They had stripped him down to his loose black pants and beat him soundly. He flinched violently when she touched him.

"Easy. It's me, Pony."

He slit open his blackened eyes, and looked at her in first confusion and then in dismay. He groaned and tried to get up, to get her behind him, to protect her. He only managed to sit up, and she caught him before he collapsed.

Lord Tomawaritomo came and stood over them, gazing down at her with his cat eyes. "Good. You care for this whipping boy."

She realized then that she had made a mistake. She shouldn't have put her arms around Pony. She should have ignored his presence, refusing to acknowledge him. Lord Tomawaritomo knew now that he could affect her by hurting Pony.

"You didn't have to beat him," she snapped.

"One does not lightly take a warrior prisoner," Tomtom said. "They are made sturdily. One can cut them down to almost nothing before their life force gives out."

Tomtom lifted his hand and the squat torturer scurried forward wearing its bloodstained leather apron, boning knife glittering in his hand.

"You don't have to hurt him," Tinker cried, tightening her hold on Pony. "I'll make a gate."

"I am not afraid." Pony pulled out of her arms and managed to get to his feet. "Go ahead. Torture me. Kill me. She will not do what you ask of her."

Tomtom stepped back. "We will take only his sword arm first."

"No!" Tinker shouted, stepping between the oni and Pony, spreading wide her arms to shield him. "Don't hurt him! I'll do it! Just don't hurt him."

"Tinker domi!" Pony caught hold of her, pulled her back. "Do not do what they ask of you."

Tinker wriggled in his hold. "I can't watch them kill you little by little."

"I do not care what they do to me," Pony said.

"Pony, I can't." She swung around to focus on him. "I know myself too well. I can't sit and watch you scream your life away. I'll break. Maybe I can last until you've been tortured to death. But then they'll go find someone else to hold against me, and I won't be able to say no again, especially not after watching them cut you to pieces. I will break. I would rather break now, without having to take your screams to my grave, than after you're dead."

"I see," Pony said quietly. "Forgive me my selfishness."

"You do not understand." Tomtom's voice was a dangerous low rumble. "They will take his bones just so you know how serious I am. For any disobedience, the punishment will be worse."

Tinker could not imagine worse, but she was sure that Tomtom could. "No. No. Don't hurt him. I'll do what you want."

"Yes. You will." Tomtom gave an order. One of the warriors bent down and caught her by the waist, lifting her off the ground, while the other two caught hold of Pony.

"No! No!" Tinker cried. "If he's hurt, I will do nothing!"

"If torturing him does not work, we'll get another. One that works better."

Oilcan! She cried out as if struck, and then thought quickly. Did she have any leverage point beyond her ability? "Leave him alone, and I'll finish in a month!"

Tomtom whipped around and had her by the throat before she could react. "A month? That is twenty-eight days?"

He was going by the moon cycle, instead of Earth's calendar, but she wasn't going to argue schematics with him.

"Yes, twenty-eight days," she whispered. "Hurt him, and I'll do nothing! No matter who you get to replace him."

"You're lying," Tomtom said, making her stomach turn to lead and sink. "You cannot do it in a month."

"Yes, I can!" she cried. "The process is easier than I thought. I'll make a gate in a month, but only if you torture no one—I'd rather die than reward those who harmed ones I love."

Tomtom cocked his head, considering her. "Twenty-one days."

"What? Three weeks?"

"Twenty-one days or I'll have the bones removed."

She glanced at Pony, and wet her mouth. "Fine, I'll do it in twenty-one. But I'll need work crews: carpenters, electricians, and Riki."

"So be it." Tomtom gave an order, and the guards started to separate them again.

"Wait!" Tinker cried. "No! We had a deal!"

"He is spell-marked," Tomtom said. "The skin will have to be flayed."

"No!" Tinker said. "He's not to be hurt in any way."

"I'd be a fool to let him keep the spells," Tomtom said. "You could use them to escape."

"I promise I won't!" She beat on the massive arms holding her, trying to get to Pony. "On my honor, and the honor of my house, I will stay here without escaping and build your gate. Harm him, and I will do nothing."

Tomtom shook his head. "What is it with you domana and your sentimentalism for your underlings? It must be genetic. It makes you weak."

"Fine. I'm weak." She kicked her feet, dangling as she was in the guard's hold, emphasizing that she was small and scrawny. "I'll give my word and stay without trying to escape and build your gate within twenty-one days only if he's completely unharmed."

Tomtom came to grip her chin and gaze deep into her eyes. "Say it again."

So she repeated it. Carefully.

"Sparrow said that we'll only be able to hold her with promises freely given," Riki said. "If she can hold a warrior, then her word must be binding: she can't lie when giving her word."

"Very well." Tomtom released Tinker's chin and growled a command. She found herself on her feet, Pony supporting her. "Take them back to her room. She'll start working tomorrow at first light."

Riki helped her support Pony on the long walk to her bedroom, through dusty warehouses and barren offices. The sekasha concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, only flinches of pain on his face showing how badly he was hurt. Tinker wanted to scream accusations at Riki, but Chiyo's punishment was still stark in her mind. Even the kitsune thought that the breeding had been considered the kindest of the possible punishments.

"I'm sorry," Riki said as he delivered them to the bedroom that proved—without Chiyo's presence—to be windowless.

"Why?"

He took her to mean "why Pony," although she wasn't sure herself which of the many whys she meant. Why did he continue serving such a monster? Why had he kept her silent—thus, and in hindsight, safe from Tomtom's anger? Why hadn't he chosen one of the many humans she loved? "I find that I actually think of myself as human more than I thought," Riki said. "It was easier to pick an elf; I was taught to hate them."

"I'm an elf."

"You'll always be a human to me."

Only humans said things like that, so maybe he was telling the truth. Still, she couldn't find any room to forgive him.

"Go away," she said, and shut the door on his face.

She wanted to press Pony for details about what Windwolf was doing, how Oilcan was coping with her supposed death, if work had continued on her research center… but Pony looked like hell. She cleaned the blood from Pony's face, and nearly cried over the heel print bruised into the back of his right hand, his fingers swollen and broken.

"It is nothing," he mumbled. "I heal quickly. I will be better in no time."

Unfortunately, until he was functioning better, there would be no escaping.

She fingered where the power beads had been worked into his hair; the oni had cut his braids off, leaving little tufts of hair. Spell-marked or not, without the stored magical power, Pony's shields would quickly fail. The oni's ability to create «permanent» constructs—like Riki's wings and the Foo dogs—outclassed the elves' magic that normally required a ley line or it exhausted local ambient magic.

Pony took the lack of weapons and shields personally. "I'm sorry that I have failed you."

"Don't be an idiot. You haven't failed me." And then, because he didn't seem to believe her, she added truthfully, "I'm glad not to be all alone."

"Ah. I see. Then I'm glad to be here."

She couldn't bring herself to scorn him, despite it being silly for him to be happy to be stuck in such a situation. "What are you doing?"

Pony had started to stretch cautiously out on the floor. "I am going to sleep."

"Oh, get in the bed."

"You should sleep in the bed. I can sleep on the floor."

"Don't make me hit you." Tinker pushed him toward the bed. "The bed is huge, and I'm quite small, as everyone keeps pointing out. We can both share it without even noticing the other is in it."

"It wouldn't be proper."

"Get in the bed or I'll sleep on the floor too."

He actually agonized over it before giving in.

What the hell had she been thinking?

Fully awake in the darkened room, Tinker listened to the whisper of Pony's breathing. He lay so close she could feel the warmth from his body. His well-defined, muscled body. If she put out her hand, she could touch his hard stomach. Run her hand down his lean flank.

Why had she thought sharing a bed would be a good idea?

She had been scared and angry and frustrated when she went to bed. Now, for some inexplicable reason, she wanted to be held. No, more than held. All too easily, she could imagine being cradled naked in Pony's arms, his mouth on the nape of her neck, his strong hands cupping her breasts, their bodies thrusting together as his…

That was a truly dangerous line of thought. You're a married woman, idiot! She loved Windwolf, so why was she suddenly lusting for Pony?

Even pretending to be asleep became impossible. She opened her eyes and found that she could make out Pony's face: the shape of his mouth, the line of his nose, and the soft curve of his brow. Among the elves, she had taken his good looks for granted. After being surrounded by the oni and their alien ideals of beauty, she saw him with new eyes. Looking at him shot something akin to a low-voltage current down through her body to her groin. What would it be like to kiss him? Would he taste like Windwolf? She turned over to resist the temptation to find out.

Why was she feeling this way? She loved Windwolf. Didn't she? Certainly, if she could choose, she would want Windwolf beside her. Did she desire Pony only as a stand in for her husband? Did she only want someone bigger and stronger to make her feel safe and protected? Or did she love Windwolf only because of the sex? Would any sexy elf male do?

What a stupid time to be worrying about it. Pony's honor would never allow anything to happen, and besides, she'd probably never see Windwolf again. The oni were going to kill both of them as soon as the gate was done. There was no point pretending that Tomtom wouldn't dispose of them in some cruel yet offhandedly casual method. The white of exposed bone flashed into her mind. She curled against the flare of fear and misery.

I got away once, she reminded herself. I can do it again.

What was the point of being a genius, if she couldn't outthink her enemies?

Pony was doing exercises when Tinker woke the next morning. Stripped to the waist, he worked through a series of lightning-fast moves that would end suddenly in a perfect pose. Movement. Stillness. An attack. A block. A kick. A parry. Fluid. Precise. Soundless. Muscles upon muscles shifting under sleek skin, he was beautiful to watch. She felt the ache of desire flare up again. She moaned, rolling over to bury her head under pillows. Could this get any more embarrassing?

She realized then that she needed to pee.

She sat up and discovered that in that position, the need was greater.

"Good morning." Pony pressed his fist against his palm and bowed.

"Morning." She eyed the chamber pot in the corner. There was a real toilet off the workshop—could she reach that? No. She felt like she was about to burst. "Could you, um, turn around?"

She tried to pee quietly, but failed due to the acoustic properties of ceramic and the amplifying curvature of the bowl. Horses pissed quieter. Was it possible to die of humiliation? Mark up another difference between Pony and Windwolf—she hadn't been self-conscious the first time she used the toilet in front of Windwolf. She tried to act nonchalant, but she could feel the burn of embarrassment on her face as she washed her hands.

"Do you train every morning like that?" she asked to distract both of them.

"Yes. The sekasha were made to be living weapons. We hone our bodies to perfection."

"You embrace being a weapon?"

"I take joy in my strength." He high-kicked and locked into place, balanced on one foot. "And I like to fight."

He grinned, and suddenly he didn't seem like the mild Pony she knew, but someone wilder, and fiercer, more aptly named Stormhorse. She tried to study him clinically, taking note only of his injuries. His bruises looked days old, mottled purple and faded yellow.

"How do you feel?"

"Whole, except for my hand." He held it out for her inspection. The middle and ring fingers were still swollen and stiff. He flexed them carefully, wincing. "It will be another day or two before I'll be able to hold a sword, perhaps as much as four before I can strike with this hand without fear of causing more pain to myself than my opponent."

"Good. We have to get out of here."

"Out?"

"We need to escape."

Pony looked at her with utter surprise. "But you gave your word."

Tinker winced: She had suspected that this was how the conversation would go, but she hated to have her fears confirmed. "Pony, these are bad, nasty people with not a fleck of honor among them."

"In giving your word, it is only your honor that matters, not the receiver. If you think the person is not worth your honor, you don't extend it."

She checked the impulse to stick her tongue out at him. "Would you rather I break my word or let these monsters take over our world?"

"I would rather die than be the reason you broke your word."

Elves! "This is not about you, this is about them doing whatever they could to break me."

"That's because you are the pivot."

"Yeah, yeah, so everyone keeps reminding me." But, actually, she had kind of forgotten all that between Sparrow's betrayal, Chiyo's breeding, and Pony's capture. Tinker thought she understood the mess until Sparrow waltzed in and clued the oni. How did their knowledge and her promise change things? The seer had said that it was only a matter of time before the oni opened a gate—certainly if Tinker refused to cooperate, they could bide their time; they were immortal and humans made advances in technology daily. That equation had a zero sum—which was why she was cooperating until she could escape. But the seer also indicated that they could only defeat the oni by choosing when the gate was opened, and indicated that the pivot picked the time. If she was in the oni's control, did it mean that the oni controlled the choice?

She decided to bounce her questions off of Pony, who probably had more experience in these seer-type of things. "Sparrow told the oni that the only way to bind me was with ties of my own making…"

"Sparrow?"

Oops, she forgot Pony didn't know that little piece of nastiness. "She's working with them. They had me fooled into thinking I was on Onihida, but I figured it out and got away last night. Sparrow recaptured me and brought me back to them."

Pony darkened with anger, and he stalked about the room as if looking for something to vent his rage on. He growled out Elvish she didn't recognize, but they sounded like obscenities.

"Pony, I'm trying to figure out what the seer meant."

"Forgiveness." He fell silent, but he continued to stalk about the room.

"Do you know if the seer said anything more about me being the pivot?"

"She did not, although closely pressed by all. 'Bind the pivot, was all she said. 'If the pivot be true, then the battle can be won. If the pivot proves false, all will be lost. »

Tinker tried to wrap her mind around it, but Sparrow's translation was making it difficult. "Sparrow told the oni that they'll only be able to hold me with promises freely given. Has the oni won merely by making me promise? Is it just the words, or…"

"Sparrow often hears what she wants to hear," Pony interrupted her. "The seer isn't saying that getting you to make promises will win the battle. The seer said 'if the pivot be true which means you must keep all your promises, no matter to whom."

"Oh, you must be kidding."

"No."

"I can't make them a gate."

"You must. You promised."

"Th-that doesn't follow logic," Tinker protested.

"Seeing into the future is like having a gleaming thread appear in the darkness. You must walk that path, no matter how treacherous, to reach the foreseen outcome. If you step off it, you're lost from sight, and both you and your goal become unknown again."

"So, although it flies into the face of everything sensible, the only way to stop the oni… is to do… what they want."

"What they forced you to promise."

She shook her head. No. It didn't make any more sense out loud or stood on its head. "What if being 'true, is just 'loyal'? I can't be 'loyal' to the elves if I'm making a gate for the oni."

"No. You're confusing words. Those don't mean the same thing."

She winced. "They're synonyms, right? Close to the same meaning."

"True only means that one keeps their word of honor. It is a word applied to head of households and clan leaders as they interact with equals or enemies."

If she got out of this, she had to smack Tooloo a good one. Obviously when the half-elf taught her Elvish, any approximate English word would work, to hell with confusion that other meanings of the English word might cause.

"Domi, you swore not only on your honor but on the honor of your house. For an elf, there is no stronger oath."

Yeah, that was why she used it. She wanted to scream. What an irrational mess. "I'm not really an elf! I'm a human with funny ears. I didn't know what Windwolf intended with the spell. I'm not even sure why Windwolf made me this way. If you love someone, don't you take them as they are?"

"Domi, I am young for an elf, but I am over a hundred. I grew up in a large city in the Easternlands. Many elves live there, but in a hundred years, one meets most of them. And in all that time, I have never met anyone like you. Not a single person, having met you, has questioned Windwolf's desire to prolong your life. You blaze like a star. You don't seem to see that, but then you surround yourself with people nearly as bright as yourself. You raise people up to your heights. Even if Windwolf did not love you, he would not want to see your brilliance put out."

She burned in embarrassment. "Me? Blaze?"

"From your wit to your confidence to your compassion, you are an amazing person."

"Windwolf barely knew me when he proposed."

"After living so many years, if you're wise, you learn your own heart. You know when you meet someone that 'this person I can be friends with, or 'this person I can build a friendship with—it will be difficult work—but it may be very sound, or 'this person I will never be friends with. There are times, though, where it seems like magic; you look at a person and your soul opens up and recognizes a true love. Windwolf looked at you and believed you are one he could live forever with. And in some ways, I am the same."

She looked at him. "What?"

He dropped to one knee and took her hand. "Domi, do you think I would pledge my life to you, be willing to die for you, if I did not in some way, love you?"

"You love me?" she repeated, stunned.

"You are my domi. And in all ways, you have proved the worth of my decision. You have protected me, as I have protected you. A holding is like a marriage, where trust runs deep. And in only a few days, I knew that to be beholden to you would be a good thing."

That threw her into a whirlwind of emotions, but the door opened behind Pony, saving her from discovering what dangerous thing might arise from that chaos. A gale force of alarm blasted through her, scouring away everything else.

There was an entire squad of oni warriors with Riki to escort her and Pony back to the workshop. Ironwood timbers sat stacked just inside the side door, which was padlocked shut again. A crew of humans sat waiting. They were Asians in blue jeans, T-shirts, and work boots.

Tinker checked in confusion. "Who are they?"

"They're the carpenters to make the frame out of the ironwood," Riki explained. "I thought since you designed the framework yesterday, that you'd want to get started on building it. We've got a tight deadline."

"Wait, isn't this like your ultra-secret hideout? What the fuck are they doing here? Did you kidnap them all? Are you going to kill them when they're done?"

Riki blinked and glanced again at the carpenters. "Oh, no, they're not humans. They're oni permanently disguised as humans, sort of like how the yap dogs were those big monster things. We had to immigrate them into Pittsburgh under Chinese visas."

Tinker thought of the sprawling Chinatown on the Northside. "Oh shit, don't tell me all the Chinese are oni."

"Okay." Riki walked away.

She was growing sure that Riki had told her one truth—a gate had only recently opened from Earth to Onihida. Too many little things were pointing at it: the throwaway comments about Earth-born oni, the carpenter's obvious awkwardness with the most basic of power tools, the famine-obsessed cook, the brown rice which turned out to be a luxury item not served to the carpenters, to their dismay. The list grew the entire morning. When she believed she was on Onihida, she hadn't paid attention—that she was no longer on Elfhome had been proof enough for her. Now she couldn't stop wondering about it.

She had delegated building the framework to Riki so she could concentrate on limiting the veil effect and making it the primary function of the new gate. Her biggest fear was she'd only swap the dimensional side effect with the jump capabilities of the gate and accidentally send Pittsburgh to Alpha Centauri. An hour of running models reassured her that if she did, it would be a very small chunk, most likely only the oni compound itself. Small loss there.

Her mind, however, kept trotting back to the oni's door to Onihida. Riki had said it was in an inconvenient spot; obviously it was located outside of the U.S., or the Chinese visas wouldn't be needed. Certainly, if the two doors were on opposite sides of the planet, it could be called inconvenient.

She jerked to a halt. Luckily only Pony noticed.

"What is it?"

"I think I know where their stupid door is," she murmured, wheeling her chair away from the drafting table to her desktop screen and calling up a world map. "I just can't believe no one's noticed before now."

Like all the information on the gate, she had the location where the gate was in geosynchronous orbit over the Earth's equator. She found the point and zoomed in. "It's so simple. Pittsburgh is on Elfhome because the gate projects the veil effect down through the Earth, where the magnetic core bends it, kind of like a prism bends light, thus hitting Pittsburgh on the other side of the planet."

Only partially under the gate was a tiny island surrounded by ocean. She laughed. "Of all the dumb luck, a few more feet and their gate would have been totally in open water."

Pony peered at the island for several minutes before saying, "I don't understand. How can this open to Onihida, and this," he pointed to the other side of the world, "open to Elfhome?"

"That's the simple part. The Earth core is acting as a lens."

"Pardon?"

She closed the incriminating map and opened a scratch file. "Look, here's Earth with the core in the center. This side is the China Sea, and the other side, up here, is Pittsburgh. The gate orbits over the sea. The veil effect comes down a cylindrical shape, but the core acts like a lens. That means the veil is 'flipped. " Seeing Pony's blank look, "You see things because light comes down and reflects off it. So if you have a tree, the light comes from the sun, hits the trees, and reflects to your eye."

He nodded. "Yes, I know this."

"But if you hold a glass lens up between you and the tree, the light is bent by the lens. The top of the tree is bent to the bottom, and the bottom is bent to the top, so the image is flipped."

Pony pointed to the tree. "Onihida." And tapped the upside-down image. "Elfhome."

"Yes. That simple. For twenty years, every Shutdown and Startup, that tropical island has been going to Onihida and back, and no one has noticed."

"Or noticed and the oni killed them."

"Yes, that too."

Pony pointed then to the gate in orbit. "Whatever you do—build the oni a gate or not—means little while that exists. That is the true prison door hanging open."

The carpenters tried to quit after dinner, but she tracked Riki down in the ocean of sawdust with shoals of massive timbers and littered with the flotsam of cut ends.

"Tell them that they can't leave," she said.

"They've been working for like ten hours."

"They can work until they drop," Tinker growled. "Tell them to get back to work."

"They're tired."

"I don't care! If I'm going to meet Tomtom's deadline, then everyone is going to have to work until they drop."

"Be reasonable."

"Your people started this. I'm just going to finish it. Tell them to go back to work or I'll take a crowbar to them."

Riki winced. "Okay, okay, I'll get them back to work."

Only Tomtom's appearance at midnight kept the carpenters from revolting. The carpenters would jerk to a stop, bow low, and get waved back to work, which they did with stunning enthusiasm. No, no—no slackers here. Tinker shut files on her desktop as he closed in on her office.

"It looks nearly complete." Tomtom motioned to the massive circle of wood taking form.

"The frame work is getting there," Tinker said. "It's still a long way to go on this gate. Once we finish here, the carpenters can start work on the second gate. The frame itself will be identical, so the crew will need less guidance—I need Riki here with me."

"Hanno." Tomtom cocked his head. "Second gate?"

Tinker picked up evidence A. "Well, you've got enough material here for two gates, maybe three. I just assumed that you were building more than one—since the gate size is limited by the roof."

"A second gate," Tomtom said slowly.

"I haven't had a chance to look over the area." Tinker indicated the buildings around them. "I recommend you keep the two gates as far apart as possible; there might be possible interference between the two. Besides, it would prevent bottleneck."

"Bottleneck?"

"Traffic jams." Tinker turned to Riki as he arrived from the other side of the warehouse. "Riki, can you explain 'bottleneck' to him?"

Riki looked puzzled, but launched into Oni, pushing his hands together to illustrate two forces colliding together. Tomtom's reply made Riki jerk around to stare at her. "A second gate?"

"Doh!" she said.

Riki looked at her in blank confusion.

"The framework for a second gate might go faster." She ignored Riki to focus on Tomtom. "But the rest of it will take the same amount of time, and I won't be able to start it until after this one is done. The schematics will need to be tailored to the location and orientation and various other deciding factors."

"Riki can not do them?" Tomtom said.

Tinker shook her head. "No more than he can do this one."

Tomtom turned to Riki for verification.

Riki looked at her strangely. "No. I can't. I'm still not grasping how the gate works. I have no clue what the next step will even be."

Tomtom accepted the truth. "Fine, we will have a second gate, on the other side of the compound."

The carpenter foreman came up to grovel and beg.

Tomtom laughed, showing sharp cat teeth. "As eager as you are, I can not have you slave-driving my people. It would reflect poorly on me. Everyone quits for the night. Even you."

Twenty days left.

Just stay focused, Tinker told herself but found she eyed the clock often as the numbers jumped through the hours of the day at despairing speed.

Chiyo appeared at the workshop late in the morning, with head high and hard stares at anyone glancing at her. Of the mating, there was no outward sign. The kitsune, however, radiated hostility like a steel blast furnace. The looks she gave Tinker shifted Pony from nearly invisible behind Tinker to between the two females. Unfortunately, he could do nothing about Chiyo's illusions; since the kitsune no longer needed to keep her mental abilities secret, she began torturing Tinker with them.

"Does she have to be here?" Tinker asked Riki later after reacting to the third giant illusionary spider.

"She's the only one besides me and Tomtom that speaks English, Elvish, and Oni."

"Fine." Tinker resolved herself to factoring numbers, and occasional remembrances of a nasty brush with a steel spinner—anyone that could do spiders that creepy had to be scared of them. "I've done some research. Normally you'd lay down ceramic tiles onto a backer board, but we can't do this here. In space they used these brackets. We're going to have to modify the brackets, since they were designed to connect to the framing with these connectors." Tinker showed him the hooks, and then tossed them over her shoulder. "Can't use those."

There was a yelp behind her, which she ignored.

"I want a wooden mounting plate made, then holes drilled into the brackets here, here, and here." Tinker marked the points. "Then we got these cool plastic bolts here, which were actually part of the shielding. Fasten the brackets to the mounting plate, but first, have the carpenters figure out how to attach the plate to the framing. I'm thinking to cut grooves—" she did a quick sketch to illustrate " — and slide them in and attach a piece of molding to lock them in. We can't use nails, but they should be used to that. The end result needs to have the tiles separated by no more than an eighth of an inch, but not much less since we have to allow for heat expansion."

Riki took out a handheld and jotted down notes. "Okay."

"Once we get the mounting plate designed, we need to run the power cables, so have them moved into the workshop. Remind the carpenters that we're going to be running power to the tiles up through this point in the bracket."

Riki made a face and scribbled more notes.

"Also we need the station for the tiles set up eventually." Tinker picked up the specially made ceramic tile. "Once I get the circuits designed, we can start masking them. You know, if your goons had held off just five or six years, my father would have done all this work himself on a Home Chip Lab."

If she had more than twenty days she could translate the entire thing down to integrated circuit level, shrinking the whole process down to something the size of… a wedding ring. That thought put shivers down her spine.

"Things were right for us to make a move," Riki said simply.

"Keep riding herd on the carpenters," Tinker turned back to her computer, trying to ignore the end of the conversation. Twenty days. Focus. "I want the framework done today and the mounting plates ready to go by tomorrow."

Ten days.

Tinker was growing frightened that she wasn't going to make the deadline.

True, the carpentry finished the first week, and the carpenters moved to the second gate to leisurely work there. After a week of hammering, the silence had seemed a blessing, but now the quiet seemed only to make the approaching deadline more ominous.

She hadn't counted on the fact that the oni had no electricians, and that those oni working with her were so unfamiliar with electricity that they were clueless. What could be so hard about running cables? She thought monkeys could do it. She had been interrupted time and time again to check their work. Wiring out of phase. Miswiring the grounds. Hooking the grounds in sequence into the main 240 line. The oni didn't miss a single way to screw up something so simple. More than once she had them rip several hours of work out. At least the confusion allowed her to slip in modifications unnoticed by Riki or Chiyo.

Speaking of the kitsune, she was going to kill Chiyo soon.

After a battle of spiders—which she won with the steel spinner incident—snakes began to infest her thoughts. Unfortunately, all the bits of cable littering the warehouse lent themselves to Chiyo's illusions. The kitsune apparently couldn't find room in Tinker's head while she was locked on circuit design, but the moment she was called away, she'd find the nearest cable suddenly slithering around. Annoying as it was—Tinker was more frightened that Chiyo would report Tinker's concerns of missing the deadline.

Only ten days remained. She had carefully reshaped the original gate's specs so that her gate opened a dimensional door only within its limits. She was still struggling with compressing the design down to the hundred-to-one ratio. There was still the masking, dipping, fitting… the list went on and on. And that assumed everything worked the first time. In danger of losing track of details, she'd sacrificed an hour to creating a schedule, copied it to her datapad, and printed up a copy for the wall. She found herself, however, now glancing at the schedule instead of the clock. Ten heavily loaded days.

"Stay focused," she murmured, and jumped slightly as Pony set a bowl down in front of her.

"Forgiveness."

"Oh, it's just Chiyo with her damn snakes and prying thoughts keeping me on edge on top of everything else. Rice and fish again? Bleah."

Pony grunted slightly. She looked up, and noticed that he was focused across the warehouse. A patrolling oni warrior had come into the warehouse, strolling around the massive wooden ring.

"A new one?" she asked, returning to her food and diagrams. Non-workers wanting to see the imposing gate were an annoyance she suffered for Pony's sake; he used the opportunity to track the onis' numbers.

"Sixty-one," Pony whispered. "Small, rifle and sword, no pistol."

Tinker winced at the number, which climbed daily. Already the oni warriors outnumbered Windwolf's sekasha three to one. Pony was of the opinion, though, that oni weren't as skilled fighters. "The ones in charge are always the biggest and loudest, they run toward fat, and I haven't seen any sign of weapon practice."

Riki came up, checking things off his datapad. "I think we finally nailed down the wiring. How's the circuit coming?"

"I'm just finishing—I think. I want to run them through a simulator before committing them to tile."

Riki nodded to the wisdom of this.

Tinker sensed Pony tensing, which probably meant Chiyo was closing on them. She spared a glance to check. The kitsune had paused, standing in profile to them to talk to one of the oni doing the wiring. Already the kitsune looked like she had a small pumpkin under her kimono. Riki had mentioned that a kitsune gestation was only fifty days; at ten days she was nearly the equivalent of three months in human pregnancy.

I can't let the oni into my world, Tinker thought for the thousandth time, and then firmly locked away her thoughts. "What is your plan? Do you have an army sitting on the other side of this gate?"

"Yes," Riki said.

"It started to amass last year." Chiyo joined the conversation. "I'm told it numbers in the tens of thousands."

"This gate is only good while Pittsburgh is on Elfhome," Tinker pointed out. "Even if you wait until after Shutdown to start bringing over your army—to maximize your time before the humans can react—you only have twenty-eight days until the next Shutdown. Then Pittsburgh goes back to Earth, either fully loaded with oni, or a war-torn ghost town. What little I know of the United States, they usually don't take kindly to that kind of shit."

"We'll ride this Shutdown out," Riki said, unconsciously echoing Oilcan's phrase. "And after that, there won't be another Shutdown."

"What?" Tinker yelped. "How can you stop Shutdown?"

"Shutdown is just flipping a switch," Riki said.

Chiyo laughed. "Oh, stupid fake elf, if we had the station built, don't you think we can control when it turns on and off?"

"The oni are working with the Chinese?" Somehow Tinker thought the oni had merely been feeding the Chinese information. But even as she said it, she realized that the cooperation would have to go deeper than that.

"I told you that some of us were stranded on Earth for hundreds of years," Riki said quietly. "Many of the kitsune's mental powers, like the mind reading, do not need magic to work. They have infiltrated the Chinese government to the highest levels. They're the ones that pushed through the building of the gate."

Tinker frowned. "The gate was wholly an oni's project? What about the colony at Alpha Centauri?"

"There is no colony," Riki said. "It's an elaborate sham that the tengu and the kitsune dreamed up. The gate is nothing more than a huge magician's box that we pull rabbits out of."

The problem with liars was knowing when they were telling the truth. Tinker couldn't believe that the entire twenty-year colonization program had been a sham. "Where the hell are the colony ships going?"

"Don't know." Riki shrugged. "We were hoping that they would go to Elfhome, or, failing that, Onihida, but they didn't go to either. We don't know what star system your father calibrated the gate for, so we picked one for the media. As far as we know, the ships could be on the other side of the galaxy, or a fourth dimension of Earth. Wherever they are, they've got a lot of empty cargo pods—we had to keep pushing stuff through the gate to justify leaving it on."

"They've been without supplies for twenty years?" Tinker stared at him, stunned. Lain and the astronomers had filled her life with information on the colonists until they were intimate strangers. "How could you do that?"

"We don't even know if they've survived the jump. If they came out next to a black hole, or any exotic star system—like a red nova or white dwarf—all the supplies in the world couldn't keep them alive."

"But—but—but all the progress reports from the colony?"

"We didn't have to worry about reports immediately, as Alpha Centauri is light years away. Eventually we put up a satellite in an extreme orbit with correctors to fake a signal from the colony. Beijing beams the feed up to the satellite that bounces it back in a wide enough spread that you can pick it up anywhere on Earth."

She noticed Chiyo's gaze fixated on her, like a hunter seeing prey, and concentrated on factoring numbers. "Stay out of my mind, you little bitch."

Riki picked up the dirty dishes and handed them to the kitsune. "Make yourself useful." They watched Chiyo carry the plates away. "If it makes you feel any better, all the first colonists were tengu and kitsune. They knew the risks. And we did send supplies for the first few years—they were our family—but Tomtom decided it was a waste of food and goods. He diverted the cargo to Onihida, where starvation is common."

"There's been ships full of people every five years since then!"

Riki nodded, bleak. "Yes. There have."