Elfhome

Tommy’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t a decent meal for days. He jerked the basket out of Oilcan’s hand and stuffed one into his mouth. “Elves don’t use enough ginger.”

“I used to think that.” Oilcan waved his hand to take in his elf pointed ears and elf screwed up taste buds. “Royally ticked off that beer is going to taste like piss from now on.”

Tommy laughed and settled on the railing that encircled the tilt-n-whirl. Oilcan tucked himself into a rusting car of the carnival ride. They ate in companionable silence. When he was done with the dumplings, Oilcan licked clean his fingers and produced a flask from his back pocket.

Oilcan tasted the contents tentatively and raised eyebrows at the result. “It’s good, but it’s not beer.” Oilcan held out the flask to Tommy. “Ouzo?”

What Tommy needed was a cigarette but he settled for the sweet hard kick of the liquor.

“Thanks for everything.” Oilcan took the flask back, and winced through another taste test. “The elves are all impressed, but I couldn’t have done any of it without you. You did more than save my life — you — you helped me be strong enough to do what I had to do.” Oilcan studied the river from the shadows, sorrow filling his eyes.

The kid had never killed anyone before and everyone is acting like he’s a big hero for it.

Tommy laughed bitterly, shaking his head. “You do what you have to do because the other person is more than willing to rip your throat out if you don’t. Doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you survivor.”

“I went through this with beer.” Oilcan sipped again. “One beer doesn’t make you a drunk. One killing doesn’t make you a murderer — just doesn’t have the same truth.”

“He picked the game, not you.”

A half-dozen laedin soldiers spotted Tommy in the shadows and closed on him, hands on weapons. This “not one of the them” was really getting to be a pain.

“What are you doing here, oni spawn?” The tallest of them asked.

Oilcan leaned out of the tilt-n-whirl car, and chased the elves off with a look and a quiet, “He’s with me.”

Tommy knew true words when he heard them. “Yeah, I’m with you.”

Oilcan tilted his head, catching that there were more to the words. “You are?”

“It took me a while to figure out, but I need to make the world I want to live in. It’s going to be more than just stopping the oni. The elves are locked into this stupid mental straightjacket of us versus them.”

“Stone Clan versus Wind Clan.”

“Any of them. It’s one clan against all the rest. I know how that works — or I should say, how badly that works. ‘Them’ is always everyone else that isn’t us, when it really isn’t, and doesn’t need to be.” If he hadn’t turned to Team Big Sky when Kajo used the tengu against him, he would have lost everything. Up to that day, John Montana, Blue Sky and Oilcan had been “them” despite years of working with them.

“I’m really sick of all this us against them.” Oilcan growled. Tommy realized it was because the cousins never saw the world that way. It explained why they had gone to extraordinary lengths to save Windwolf when Lord Tomtom had tried to assassinate him. Why Oilcan had helped Tommy even though he knew Tommy was half-oni. And why Oilcan took in the young elf female and turned the city upside down looking for the others.

By concerning themselves with everyone, Tinker and Oilcan had managed to keep the city strong enough to defend itself against the likes of Kajo. They raised people up to their standards and made them part of that strength. It was their code of chivalry. Be compassionate. Be honorable. Be good.

“I realize I can’t hide in my little corner and hope that it all works out to my liking. I need to sit at the table where decisions are being made and make myself heard and fight for the world I want.”

Oilcan grinned. “Good. Pittsburgh needs you. It needs places where everyone can come together as a whole instead of sticking to their own little neighborhood, isolated by the rivers and hills and their culture. We need places where we can meet each other as just common everyday people.”

Tommy hadn’t even considered the racetrack to be anything more than a way to make money. Put that way, it made sense why Jin had asked him to drop his ban. The tengu wanted access to the common meeting grounds. It was important that they weren’t the monsters hiding in the woods. And he would drop the ban; he didn’t want Kajo controlling him. Besides, it gave him a better leverage on the tengu if he gave them access to his businesses.

“What I hate about this Beholden bullshit is the word. Beholden.” Tommy spat his disgust. “Too much like ‘owned.’”

And “I want to be your knight in shining armor” would sound like was hitting on Oilcan.

“Yeah,” Oilcan said. “It should be more like ‘team’ like at the racetrack. The guy on the hoverbike is worthless without a good crew in the pit. And a good pit crew doesn’t stand a chance without a good rider.”

Put that way, it was easy to say, “I want to be on your team.”

“Mine?”

“Team Oilcan.”