“Yeah, that could be a problem,” Riki said.
The backyard lacked any kind of a path to the tall iron back gate. He had to all but wade through the trash. Roach was waiting in the back alley, looking as soulful as the pair of elf hounds sitting beside him. Roach’s family handled most of the garbage collection in Pittsburgh. Their place was out by the airport in what was quickly becoming ironwood forest; they had to keep a pack of the massive dogs to safely operate their landfill business.
“Dude, you’ve got to be kidding,” Roach said in greeting. “You’re moving into this dump?”
“Probably.” He still had to check with Windwolf, since the building was supposed to be torn down. The indi made cleaning up the yard a necessity regardless of the end result on the building itself. “Once I get it cleaned up and jump through a few hoops.”
The lock was rusted open — something else to put on his list — but the gate would only swing inward a foot or two before grinding to a halt on the trash spilling into the back alley.
“There’s a shitload to do.” Roach picked up a mangled office chair and tossed it with a deep clang into the dumpster still on the truck bed.
“Yeah.” Oilcan had been assuming that the kids would help, but as he moved aside the surface layer of trash, he was uncovering hidden landmines of broken glass and sharp rusted metal. He didn’t want the kids near the trash now. “I’m not sure how I’m going to do this.”
“I’ll call the team.” Roach gave him a worried look. “We’re still going to race — right?”
“Yeah. It’s just going to be little crazy for a while.”
Roach laughed. “And this differs from most of this summer how?”
“Little crazy.” Oilcan measured with his fingers. “Instead of a lot crazy.”
“I can live with that. Tommy Chang called and asked if we were racing this weekend and if you’d be lead, and I told him yes. I’d really rather not have Tommy pissed at me.”
“I should have my shit together by the weekend.”
Roach worked the hydraulic controls on the truck and dropped the big steel container within a foot of the wall. “You sure you want two more?”
“Yeah, out front so I can build chutes down from the second and third story.” The kids could work at cleaning out one room to sleep in if things turned sour fast with his condo association. The stuff in the classrooms seemed fairly harmless compared to the trash in the backyard.
“Okay,” Roach said and whistled to his dogs. “Andy’s bringing the second one. I’ll tell him to drop it in front.”
There were ten tengu in the kitchen. Not a feather was showing, but they were unmistakable from the lean muscle builds, beak-like noses, and the flutter of nervousness that went through them as Oilcan walked back into the kitchen. The center island been cleared of clutter, and they were gathered around it like flocking crows.
“Where are the kids?” Oilcan asked.
“Upstairs.” Riki pointed above his head. “I told Blue Sky to have them pick out rooms on the third floor, write their names on the chalkboard and make out wish lists.”
It was fairly down Oilcan’s to-do list, but the tengu weren’t on his plan at all.
“And the indi?” Oilcan asked.
“My little cousins have them across the street,” Riki said. “Indi are kind of stupid — they’ll eat plastic and other stuff that will make them sick. I figured it would be better to keep them out of the building until it’s cleaned.”
“Why are you doing this?” Oilcan growled.
“Because you need help.”
“Maybe I don’t want your help.” There was no “maybe” about it, but the logical part of him, the part most like his mother and so different from his father’s unreasonable passion, knew that Riki was right. He needed a lot of help to clean out the building and make it livable. He just didn’t want to acknowledge that Riki was right.
“I didn’t think you would want my help,” Riki said.
A reasonable person would stay far away, knowing that they weren’t wanted, but then Oilcan wouldn’t use words like “reasonable” to describe Riki. “Is this some kind of plan to make me grateful enough to forgive you?”
“No.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”
Riki stood silently for a few minutes and then said, “Did you know there were oni children at the whelping pits yesterday?”
Oilcan recoiled as he realized that the elves wouldn’t have let a single oni live; the oni children wouldn’t have been spared. “What does that have to do with you screwing us over?”
“Tinker went into that warren to save your kids. She didn’t go there to kill the oni children. She didn’t want that. She hated that.”
“Leave Tinker out of this!” Oilcan shouted. “That’s — that’s totally different. You wormed your way into our lives. You lied to us. You made us trust you. I told you things that I have never told anyone in my life — not even Tinker. And the whole time you were standing there, going ‘I watched my mother die, too,’ you were planning on killing Tinker.”
Riki flinched as if Oilcan had struck him, but didn’t deny it. He hunched his shoulders and continued, “Tinker went into the warren because that’s what had to be done to rescue those kids.”
“That doesn’t make what you did right!”
Riki nodded. “What I did was wrong, but I had to do it. The worst of it is: if you ask me what I’d do differently, the honest answer is ‘nothing.’ I wouldn’t dare. I got my baby cousin back safely. I got my uncle out of orbit and on the right planet. I got my whole frigging race protected. I wouldn’t change anything, but it still doesn’t make it right.”
Oilcan’s hands clenched into fists against his will. He looked away from Riki and forced his hands to relax. “So this is some insane plan: to make it all right in your head, you’re going to force me to take your help?”
“This is trying to do the right thing so I can live with what I had to do.”
Apparently doing the right thing involved a small army of tengu. Oilcan saw not a feather and heard no rustle of wings; they simply appeared with ninja stealth. By the time Roach’s younger brother, Andy, showed up with the second dumpster, there were tengu in every room and the dumpster in the back alley was full.
“Already?” Andy said when Oilcan told him. The boy glanced at the big steel container he was about to drop under the largest second-story window. “You still want this one in the front, or should I take it around back?”
With the tengu “helping,” the dumpsters were going to be filled as fast as Roach and Andy could rotate them. At several hundred dollars a load, hauling away the trash was going to run Oilcan a lot of money, and he still didn’t know if Windwolf would allow him to move into the building. It was tempting just to stop all work and wait for permission. Yet if Windwolf said yes, then the work had to be done, and everything was already in motion and running smoothly.
“Here is good,” Oilcan told Andy.
“I’ll grab the full one after I drop this.” Andy worked the hydraulics to lower the container into place. “And bring another empty one back?”
“Yeah.” He wished he could be more confident that he was doing the right thing. Tinker sailed forward so sure and true — it was easy to follow in her wake. It made life a joyful ride. This was like being lost at sea.
If they were going to open an enclave, then they would need tables, chairs, dishes, silverware, food — the list went on and on. He had some money saved. Tinker always paid him well, and he lived rent free, but he had expensive hobbies. If things continued at this rate, he’d burn through his savings fast.