Elfhome

Oilcan closed his eyes as a feeling something akin to vertigo hit him. Nae hae was short for kaetat nae hae, which meant “count no years.” It meant the person didn’t want to sit and figure out how long ago an event actually happened. It could mean anywhere from a decade to a thousand years. The elves switched to nae hou, or “count no millennias.” The puppet shows of Tempered Steel saving the world from starvation always started “Nae hou, a great famine swept the world.” He always assumed that Tempered Steel was as dead as the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. Yet, here, this female had weeded gardens along side the famous warrior monk.

“Otter Dance had become First to Longwind, head of the Wind Clan,” Thorne continued, most likely unaware of the disorientation she’d caused. “She told me about her life at court; how she spent her day protecting her domou or training and had nothing to do with weeds. It sounded like heaven to me.”

He could see why the children had her thinking of her own youth. “So you left everything you knew behind to go to court.”

“The day after I earned my sword, I left Cold Mountain Temple and never went back.” She went to sip her drink and found her glass empty. She held it out to him. “May I have more?”

Surely someone as old and trained as Thorne Scratch knew how to handle her drinking. After long consideration of his own condition, he got a second beer. By the time he returned to the balcony, he remembered how she started the conversation: you are so certain you know all that is to be known. Was she implying that she had discovered the hard way that she didn’t?

“So life at court blindsided you?”

She considered the question with the cant of her head. “Blindsided implies a quick awareness that things have gone horribly wrong. Everyone at Cold Mountain was brutally honest; keeping true to the belief that lying is a sin. At court, everyone carefully wove lies out of truths and wore them as masks. It was years before I saw enough of the true Earth Son to know I had made mistake in offering to him. If I had left him, I would have destroyed what little credibility he had at court.”

“So you stayed.”

“It was a mistake.” She whispered. “We could tolerate him being a pompous ass at court, but he had been cowardly on the field of battle, had undermined the defense of Elfhome for his own personal gain, and nearly plunged us into a bigoted genocide of a useful ally.” By “we” she meant all five sekasha of Earth Son’s Hand. “I was his First; it was my duty to put him down.”

“I’m sorry.”

She reached out and caught him by the front of his shirt and pulled him to her and kissed him hard. She smelled of leather and anise. She kissed him like she was drowning and he was air.

“From the moment I struck him down, it’s been like I suddenly went invisible. No one will look at me. I–I know they don’t think I was wrong — they would have killed me right there if they did — but they’re scared of what will happen to us and they don’t want to look like they’re afraid — so — so…”

“I see you.” Oilcan murmured. “You’re right here with me and you’re beautiful.”

She tugged at his clothing, kissing him hard and desperate. Inhaling him.

Where was this going? He’d never been with a female elf, but if she was a human, it would certainly seem as if they were careening toward sex. She was a sekasha, a deadly holy warrior; surely they weren’t about to go at it like rabbits.

Then her hands were on his bare skin, just as needy as her kisses, suggesting that he was wrong to dismiss the possibility of sex.

She had grown up in monastery. Maybe she wasn’t used to drinking. Maybe she was drunk and he was taking advantage of her.

She pushed him up against the wall and pinned him there. Yeah, sure, who was taking advantage of whom? The angle of their bodies made it clear that she was inches taller than him.

“Naekanain?” Which was the politest way he could think of to say “what the hell?”

She pulled back, hurt on her face.

“Are you sure—” He fumbled for something safe to say. “Is this really a good place for this?” Whatever this was. “Maybe my bedroom?”

“Your bedroom.” Her husky voice was full of need and promise.

He led the way through his condo, emotions in a tumbling freefall. He wanted her — had always wanted her — had wanted to hear her raspy voice make needful sounds since the first time she spoke. The sane reasoning part of him was nearly lost under the want, but it was there, whispering ice cold points of logic. He had an apartment full of kids. She was a sekasha; she could kill him if he pissed her off, and things like this tended to end messily for him.