Tommy breathed out as surprise and relief punched him hard in the gut.
Jewel Tear turned and saw him. Her eyes went wide. She glanced to the door standing open.
“It was open.” He really hoped she wasn’t going to scream. Things could get messy if she did. He tried not to think of all the sekasha down on the first floor.
Jewel Tear ran to the door and shut it.
He had expected her to run out into the hall and stood there confused as she locked the door quietly.
“Stupid,” she hissed as she hurried back to him and pulled him away from the window. “We have to be careful not to be seen together.”
“Gods forbid we be seen,” Tommy sneered.
“They’ll kill us both if they catch us.” She caught his head and pulled him down to a hard desperate kiss.
For several minutes Tommy couldn’t think coherently as his hands discovered that the dress rode up when she wrapped her arms about his shoulders and his fingers had access to bare skin.
“Who — who will kill us?” he finally managed.
“The sekasha. The domana are forbidden to take lovers outside of their Hands.”
At the faire grounds they had been surrounded by nearly fifty Wyverns. She had acted so distant and dismissive that even he believed there was nothing between them. He breathed out a laugh at his own naïvety.
His fingertips brushed higher, and his brain stopped working again. “You’re not wearing any. .”
“They said your cousins were coming to help. I knew you would be brave enough to seek me out.”
“Oh,” he said and then realized what that meant. “Oh! We’ll have to be quiet.”
She smothered her laughter against his mouth.
49: ELF PRINCESS
The meeting was Tinker’s first real official planned function as an elf princess. Everything else really didn’t count because she had charged ahead without a full thought of the political implications. This time she calculated out maximum strategic impact of every possible detail. She decided on a casual afternoon tea in the courtyard under the peach trees. She would wear the new yellow baby-doll shirt that Cattail Reeds had made her with the shorts she had permanently borrowed off Stormsong. She drilled all morning on the etiquette of pouring tea, not so much so she could do it exactly right but so she could humanize the activity without delivering any grave insult. She talked Lemonseed into creating finger sandwiches using human condiments such as mayonnaise, bread and butter pickles, and Dijon mustard. She wanted to deliver a strong message of “This is Pittsburgh, not the Easternlands.”
And then there was nothing to do but wait on the elfin vagueness of time for “afternoon” to roll around. She should have made it “morning” tea. Luckily, her guest was impossibly early by elf standards.
Apparently Forge’s Hand was taking their unintentional complicity with the Skin Clan hard. His First bowed slightly to Pony without the normal cold stare-down. Forge echoed the humility in his bow to Tinker. It made it a little easier to bow back.
Forge settled uneasily on the cushion. He had the invitation she had sent up the road to him. She had spent an entire hour crafting it. He turned it over and over, as if confused by it.
“You sent this?” He held it out reluctantly, as if he didn’t want her to take it from him. After great deliberation, she had written: Grandpa Forge, come see me this afternoon, your granddaughter, Beloved Tinker of Wind.
She clamped down on the first three snarky things that wanted to come out of her mouth. This was politics. Keeping your mouth shut was part of being smart. “Yes,” she said once she got the impulse for sarcasm under control. “I wanted to talk with you.”
“What do you want of me, Beloved?”
It was weird having someone other than Windwolf, Pony, and Stormsong use that part of her name. It was kind of creepy to have some old guy using it.
“Please, call me Granddaughter.” He looked so hopeful that she had to focus on pouring out the tea. “For most of my life, my cousin was all that I had. There are no words to describe how important he is to me, but I know you understand how I feel about him.”
He bowed his head over his teacup. “I am stunned that you can even speak civilly to me. I would not be able to forgive. .”
She didn’t want to get into a discussion of forgive and forget. Not with the elves demanding truth. “Our family has the capability to love without reservation. The Skin Clan knew that — maybe even bred it into us — and reached out and tried to use it to control us. Both of us. You to take Oilcan, and me to launch a war against the Stone Clan to get him back.”
“You did not fall to them.” Forge’s voice was thick with shame. “I betrayed a child that trusted me.”
She controlled the urge to smack Forge for still thinking of Oilcan as a child. Be happy that he’s ashamed. “It was a close thing. Prince True Flame begged me on bended knee not to throw us into a war, and it made me realize how we were being used. That we’ve been manipulated again and again since the day that Unbounded Brilliance fled Elfhome. We face an ancient enemy who would have us ignore all that is good and reasonable to destroy each other.”
She reached out and took his hand. “We are family. Not Wind Clan and Stone Clan, but family. Do not let the Skin Clan destroy that.”
Forge’s eyes widened as he gazed at her small hand in his large one.
“I know your heart,” she said. “I know that you will be true to it. I want to be able to trust you.”
“I will never betray my grandchildren’s trust again,” Forge promised.
“Thank you, Grandfather.”
After Forge left, Tinker was warned by the sudden appearance of traditional teacakes and fresh tea that Windwolf was returning. The rest of the universe vanished as he swept into the courtyard, his joy at seeing her blazing on his face. They were sprawled on the blanket, her one good hand tangled in his hair, kissing, before she remembered that they had a fairly large audience.
Of course most of their audience was probably overjoyed that their lord and lady were going at it like teenagers. Domestic bliss and all that.
“Tea?” she managed, pushing at Windwolf’s chest.
He gave a warm chuckle but rolled off her to sprawl lazily beside her. Somehow most of the nearly eighty people in their joint household and the extra thirty-some of Poppymeadow’s staff were making themselves invisible. Only their Firsts and Seconds were nearby, standing guard as Shields.
Windwolf stole a teacake and nibbled on it as he watched her pour out tea. “You spoke with Forge?”
“I don’t want Pittsburgh swamped by old hatreds. If you look at who was sent — an old rival, a desperate ex-lover, and an insane mobile howitzer — it’s like someone loaded the dice for war. I’m not going to let them do that to my city. I want Forge as an ally, not an enemy. And I think we should do something with Forest Moss — like find him a sex therapist.”
Windwolf smiled so wide that she wondered if she had said something funny.
“What?” Perhaps it was the sex therapist part; it was kind of weird, but the elf desperately needed something.
“Elfhome dragons are spawned in the roots of mountains. They grow to adult with their wings folded back, out of the way in the tight spaces of their nursery caves. Then one day, they climb out and spread wide their wings and take flight to rule the sky.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve spread your wings, Beloved. I’m enjoying seeing you take flight to rule.”