“Some of them look identical, to me.” Bare Snow pointed at the coeds’ Explorer at the gas pump, one parked half a block down Forbes Avenue, and a third driving past. The older SUVs were popular in Pittsburgh. Most cars on Earth were electric, self-driving, and needed extensive high tech support systems that Elfhome didn’t have. The Explorers were designed to be driven off-road. They were easy to adapt to the lower technology level of Elfhome.
“The only differences are these things.” Bare Snow pointed at the Dodge’s license plate. “What do they mean?”
“Every automobile has a unique code that is written on these.” Law simplified best she could. “They’re called license plates. None of them repeat. The city uses them to track who owns the automobile, if they’ve paid taxes, keep the vehicle safe to drive on the roads, and things like that. Why? Did someone take you to that house in an automobile like that one?”
Bare Snow gazed at her, nervously biting at her bottom lip. After a minute of fierce study, the elf took a deep breath. “I don’t understand why you took me away from there. You don’t even seem to know. You’ve gone place to place, asking ‘who is this’ and ‘where does she belong’ and being turned away. It annoys you not because you want to be rid of me, but because it makes you angry that my people act so coldly toward me.” And as if her hands had a will of their own, she reached out to catch Law’s shirt and nervously twist it between her fingers. “You’ve given me food, and clothing, and most importantly hope, and have demanded nothing back. And I don’t…I don’t understand. Why?”
Law had never been asked why. Most people assumed it was simply the way that she was; like the shape of her chin and the flatness of her chest. She looked more like a knight in shining armor than a princess that needed to be saved. Some assumed that she wanted to be a boy, but she didn’t. Certainly it would have made a few things easier; like going pee in the woods. Under all the dirt, though, she was as girly as the next woman. A few people thought she might have some secret past, fraught with injustices and horror. She had lived a fairly bland childhood.
“I like feeling strong.” She finally settled on something that felt right. “When you’re dealing with your own problems, they seem massive and set as stone.” Crazy parents. Being a star-shaped peg surrounded by round and square holes. Living on the fringe and liking it except for the fact that it made her feel like the little kid, hands always pressed against the candy store window, looking in but never able to go in and get what she wanted. Not even sure what she would pick if she could get in.
“When you wade into someone else’s mess, their problems seem so small and fluid. Do this and that. Hit this guy. Find a new place for her to live. Ask around and find work for her. It all seems so”—she didn’t know Elvish for easy-peasy—“so simple.”
Bare Snow nodded slowly. “Instead of being lost and alone and insignificant, it feels good when you’re finally able to do something. Be important.”
“Yeah.” The gas pump shut off as the main tank hit full. Law shifted the hose over to her reserve tank.
Bare Snow grinned. “Good! Let’s find the white automobile then!” She leaned against Law to draw in the dust on the Dodge’s side panel. “Its license plate looked like this.”
Most native Pittsburghers were fiercely proud if their plate number started with AAA, AAB or AAC. It meant they were in Pittsburgh immediately after the EIA took charge and the city became a district separate from Pennsylvania. Law had inherited the license plate along with the Dodge. When the wave of EIA workers and other newly arrived humans applied for plates, someone in the licensing department decided to jump the numbering system to BAA. This, of course, led to nicknames like B-plate and B-hole.
Bare Snow wrote “BAD-0001” in the dust. Either some B-hole had gotten lucky in the random assigning of numbers, or they’d bowed to the inevitable and gotten a vanity plate that looked like it could be random. It was a plate you’d remember, though, and Law knew she’d never seen it. She was going to have to pull in favors to find the car. How many depended on what the B-hole had done. Would she just need to kick the shit out of this guy or did she need to get the cops involved?
“Was this the person that took you to that house? Did he hurt you? Steal something from you? Tell me everything.”
Bare Snow’s eyes went wide. “Everything?”
“Yes, everything.”
Her name was Ground Bare in Winter as Killing Snow Falls in Wind. It was the root of all Bare Snow’s troubles. Named within days of her birth, it was so fraught with ill omens that the temple priestess apologized to her parents even as she bestowed it upon their baby. After that, anything that went wrong was assigned to her presence. A boat lost to a storm? Bare Snow’s fault. A red tide? A tsunami wave? All her fault.
Just as Law was starting to wonder if she’d accidently triggered a complete retelling of Bare Snow’s life, the female leapt ahead nearly a hundred years. By then Law had finished filling up her tanks, collected her change, and nosed her way into the heavy traffic.
Five years ago, Bare Snow’s mother had died while on a trip to Winter Court. At the time, the poor female had felt crushingly guilty. Had her cursed name killed her mother? Her father’s death in the spring nearly broke her. Worse, the household she’d grown up in, that of her father’s parents, wanted nothing more to do with her. They gave her a handful of coins and asked her to leave.
She had no other family within the Wind Clan. Unsure what else to do, she’d traveled to Summer Court. She arrived to discover that the town stood virtually empty until the Summer Solstice when the queen was scheduled to shift residence to the northern capital. Bare Snow drifted through the vacant city, seeking a household that would take her. The Water Clan enclaves would not take her because of her name. The Wind Clan household refused her for her blue-black hair and stormy eyes.
After weeks of being rejected, a nivasa-caste male wearing Wind Clan blue approached her in the street and quietly told her that she should go to Pittsburgh. She would find people that would accept her there.
At first it seemed as if the quest was blessed. The way to Pittsburgh was far quicker and simpler than she had imagined. She was able to board one of the cargo ships traveling the Western Ocean and then caught the train.
While she traveled she learned more about the Viceroy Windwolf and his household.
“He’s of two clans, just like me. His father is Wind Clan and his mother is Fire Clan. He had the support of both clans to set up his holdings in Westernlands. He’s asked a Stone Clan female to be his domi; although I’ve heard that has not gone well. She has yet to answer him. Despite his mixed blood, he gathers to him only the best to be his Beholden. Wraith Arrow. Dark Harvest. Killing Frost. His blade brother is the grandson of Tempered Steel and Perfection. And he holds Sword Strikes’ daughter, who is mixed caste! But those are sekasha; they are perfection despite the circumstance of their birth.”
She was sure that Windwolf’s people would look beyond her mixed blood and cursed name. Her hopes, though, were quickly crushed. It had only taken her a day to get from the train station to the Rim and be rejected by all the enclaves, save Caraway’s, which she’d been repeatedly warned not to approach.