Jin asked the oni questions, but it was obvious that no more information was forthcoming — much to the oni’s distress. “He doesn’t know. I didn’t expect him to. Greater bloods rarely explain themselves to the lesser bloods. All they knew was they were to keep the elves alive until Yutakajodo dealt with them.”
“How did you get him to talk so much?” Stormsong asked.
“I promised that the first to speak would earn a clean death. I pointed out that you needed only one of them to talk. I told him once you had the information that you wanted, you’d turn your focus to the missing elves.”
Jin had implied that the remaining oni would be left to the tengu.
“I’m not giving you them to torture,” Tinker said.
Jin gave Tinker a smile that came straight from his heart. “I know, and I’m glad. I want my people to make your nobility theirs. We’ve learned too much cruelty from the oni. It’s time to learn a new way.”
Tinker didn’t want to go after the children with just her Hand, not with the oni armed with automatic assault rifles that could chew through the sekasha’s protective spells. Her people needed someone that could fling tanks around and reduce cars to molten lava — not someone that could barely maintain one shield spell. Judging by the very faint tingling against her magic sense, though, Windwolf was someplace very far away, fighting the oni. She couldn’t wait for him to finish his battle and return to Poppymeadow’s. The oni were so elusive because they scattered anytime one of their number was captured. As soon as it became apparent that the oni in the van weren’t returning, the oni with the children would abandon their hideout, either taking the children or killing them.
“You need more than six sekasha to take out a warren,” Jin said. “I’ll call some of my warriors.”
“Thank you.” Tinker felt uneasy at the idea of leading her Hand and the tengu into danger. “I hate risking lives to save lives.”
He smiled at the worry. “This is our war, too. If the elves lose, we’ll fall under the oni’s control again.”
She supposed no one understood the dangers facing Pittsburgh better than the tengu.
Jin turned to face northeast and let out a crow call that resonated across her magic-sense like a spell being cast.
“What the hell was that?” Tinker asked.
“It’s a power of the Chosen to be able to call the Flock,” Jin said.
“You called the entire Flock?” Tinker said. “All twenty thousand?”
Jin laughed and shook his head. “I have warriors I know I can trust and are fluent in Elvish. I’ve called them.”
“So, it’s like calling out for Chinese? An order of Sum Yung Gai with wings?”
Jin laughed again.
Who else could she highjack into the effort? Remembering that Oilcan had mentioned a troop of royal marines, she sent Rainlily to track them down and then called Maynard.
“Durrack and Briggs are still clearing out the steel spinners,” Maynard said when she identified herself. “There’s a huge nest up in the air ducts.”
She frowned at the phone for a moment. Which air ducts, and why did Maynard think she cared? Maynard made it clear when he finished with “Until we have the steel spinners cleared out, the highway engineers can’t do safety checks on the tunnels.”
“No, I’m not calling about that. I need backup on the North Side. The oni are holding some elf children prisoner. I’m going in to rescue them.”
“Just you?”
She laughed at the question. “Just five-foot-tall me with the badly bruised right arm? No!”
“I’m at Shippensport with Windwolf, Prince True Flame, and both Stone Clan domana.” In other words, all the heavy hitters were tied up protecting the nuclear power plant.
“I’ll have my Hand — plus one — and some tengu — and some royal marines if Rainlily can find them between now and then.”
There was a moment of silence, and then, “I’ll send you backup.”
The royal marines turned out to be a small regiment that specialized in warg hunting. Her Hand claimed that they were a crack commando team, but they were like an unruly group of teenage boys, laughing and joking about the upcoming fight. She had the commanding officer repeat the information that “the tengu were allies and not to be shot at when they showed up” many, many times and loudly.
Maynard’s assault team of thirty men seemed more like the steely-eye soldiers she would expect out of “crack commandos.” They too were warned of the incoming tengu.
The warnings turned out to be a good thing, as the tengu looked dangerously feral when they showed up. They landed on the roofs of the buildings around the parking lot. Unlike Jin, they wore fighting spurs and war paint and not much else — it was like they’d pared clothing down to offset the weight of knives and guns. The lack of shirts really showed off the fact that flying was great for upper body strength. Jin’s nephew Riki Shoji was the first to arrive.
Riki winged down and landed beside his uncle. “You called.”
“The oni have taken some elfin children,” Jin said. “Domi needs us to help rescue them.”
Dismay and anger flashed over Riki’s face. Tinker thought for a moment that he was upset at her for asking tengu to save elves, but then he said, “Oh, domi, nothing will give us more pleasure than to kill these monsters, but the children are most likely dead already.”
Jin put a hand to his nephew’s shoulder. “A greater blood wants them alive.”
“Then there’s a chance,” Riki admitted.
“The greater blood is named Yutakajodo,” Tinker said. “Do you know him?”
Riki shook his head. “I only dealt with Tomwaritomo. The oni don’t play nice even with each other. Yutakajodo is a true greater blood and automatically outranked Lord Tomtom, but Lord Tomtom had clawed his way up from the lesser bloods, and he didn’t see it that way. If Lord Tomtom could have gotten the upper hand, he would have killed Yutakajodo long ago. Yutakajodo, though, was always three steps ahead of Lord Tomtom. True to form, Kajo killed all his tengu a few hours before you returned Jin to the Flock.”
“Kajo?”
“It’s oni for snake. Yutakajodo is the name of the most poisonous snake on Onihida.”
Fear skittered through Tinker as they drove across the city toward the dog kennel. Thanks to her elf regeneration abilities, the pain had been more bearable when she cast her shield to save Oilcan, but this wasn’t going to be a short skirmish. She thought of Prince True Flame leading the royal forces, his shields protecting all his people. She was going to have to do that, but she wasn’t sure she could withstand the pain for hours.
They stopped a mile from the base, and the tengu scouted ahead. The Rolls proved to have a small arsenal in its trunk. Thorne Scratch geared herself along with Tinker’s Hand. With ninja-like stealth, Riki suddenly appeared overhead and dropped down with a quiet rustle of feathers. Since her protection of the tengu was through Jin alone, she had asked him to stay behind and give command to Riki.
“This is not going to be easy.” Riki spread a map out on the hood of the Rolls.
“The warren is tucked between the river and this cliff. The oni know that they can’t run, so they’ll dig in and fight. The only way in is down this street”—Riki slid his finger along a road through several blocks of empty lots, void of any cover—“and through this reinforced gate. There’s netting over this area here, so my people can’t drop in and eliminate any guards quickly.”
The netting and reinforced gate were new additions. The one time she’d been down this street, years ago, the compound had looked and sounded like just a dog kennel.