Elfhome

“Oh, no, I did that, not him.” Tinker went back to the faded blue door to gaze up at the Elvish painted above it. She’d done a good job for only being six and balanced on a ladder. “He was angry with me for doing it and was going to paint it out until I told him it was because our family was too small. It was just before Oilcan came to live with us. We’d gotten the news that his mother had been killed. I started to have nightmares about something happening to my grandfather and being left alone. I wanted to be part of something bigger.”

Pony hugged her as Stormsong kissed her temple. “You are now.”

#

What was scary was that some little part of her always suspected she would retreat to the island for some desperate battle. She had left so much behind; telling everyone and herself that the grief was too fresh. On the third floor, behind a spell-locked door disguised as a bookcase, was her old server room. Oilcan had carefully mothballed it for her. Everything hummed to life as she flicked on her various computers and coaxed them to once again to talk to one another.

Her poor abandoned AI, Pixel, greeted her once she typed in all her passwords. “Hi Tinker Bell.”

Was there a time she actually thought that was cute? “Do a systems check on all perimeter monitors.”

“Okay Tinker Bell.”

She rooted through a box of headsets until she found one that she’d insulated for magic-work. It took her a while longer to get it to ride comfortably on her elf-pointed ears. She settled the headset in place just as Pixel reported back on various motion detectors and camera she had scattered across the island. Despite years of neglect, over half were working. Since she had gone nuts on monitors, the overlap was enough to cover the island.

“Show me all moving objects.”

Pixel displayed her, the sekasha, the laedin, the children, a feral cat, and the ragged remains of a checkered flag waving in the wind.

“Mark all current moving objects as nonthreatening and ignore.”

“Okay, Tinker Bell.”

She sighed out. She didn’t want to spend time changing user name.

“Go to code red.”

“Code Red initiated, Tinker Bell. No unidentified targets found.”

Good, it meant that Neville Island was as deserted as she hoped. If she blew the island off the face of the planet, only the guilty would get caught in the crossfire.

#

Tinker took it as a good sign that Stormsong had to ask, “What exactly are we doing?”

Tinker finished pouring the treacle into the 55 gallon plastic barrel filled with ammonium nitrate. She waited until Stormsong duct-taped the lid shut before asking, “Can’t you tell?”

“No,” Stormsong growled. “That’s why I asked.”

“Good.” Tinker adhered a spell printed out onto circuit paper onto the top of the sealed barrel. She was working with one broken arm, her clueless Hand, and a small army of laedin-caste warriors who were mostly technologically inept. Even with Blue Sky helping (and warned not to explain anything,) things were going hellishly slow. She had no idea how much time she had. A few minutes or forever? It depended if her plan worked or not. So far: maybe.

Her only barometer was annoyed but mystified. “So, what are we doing?”

“I’ll explain later.”

Tinker worked at ignoring the guilt at keeping her Hand clueless. Red Knife had told her that she was well armed and to apply the rules. Well, she was, perhaps more than he’d intended. If Prince True Flame said that she couldn’t track down the Stone Clan, then she would have to force them to come to her. Once she started to consider how to make them find her, she realized that was the answer to everything.

Providence had said she would have to fight her own shadow. The key, she hoped, was to keep her shadow in the dark.

41: Southern Rim

Tommy filled his hoverbike’s tank again and roared through the city flat out, as the crow flew. Down paved streets. Through backyards and parking lots. Up and down Pittsburgh countless steep hills. Across scores of creek beds. The sun was setting, throwing long shadows over the city.

His mind kept going back to Jewel Tear walking away. If he had played it different, would have it ended better? There was a niggling little voice that said he should have talked to her about beholding, but no, once he went over all reasons again, he’d been right not to. He would never completely trust anyone outside of family, but if he understood how they thought, he could at least work with them. Windwolf and Jewel Tear were about understandable as a space aliens. Tinker had always been impossible to guess — her brilliance took her careening all over the map.

Oilcan though…