“Where is he?”
“I’ll find out,” Riki promised and hung up.
Thorne Scratch had snapped out of her dismay and had gone into fury. “That pig came to me as clan head. He pointed out that with three domana and three Hands of sekasha and the perimeter defenses nearly complete, Oilcan’s enclave was by far the safest place in Pittsburgh. He asked me to go to the other enclaves and find out how many of our people are still in the city. He said that I should go because I would know all of Earth Son’s household who stayed and some of Jewel Tear’s. He made it sound so reasonable. He even suggested that Oilcan would be receiving the funds that the Wind Clan enclaves were receiving for housing our clansmen. Gods, he wove such a web that I never once considered he had some other reason to see me gone.”
Iron Mace was the current Stone Clan head in Pittsburgh. Tinker had assumed Forge had taken Oilcan as a poor substitute for his lost son, but Iron Mace? There was only one reason why a domana would send a sekasha away — and that was because he was about to commit acts that would turn them against him.
Tinker clenched her fist against the fear racing through her. “They wouldn’t hurt Oilcan — would they?”
“This is a war zone,” Pony said. “Protocol would be for Forge’s people to take their field weapons for any extended stay. A transformation spell, such as the one that Windwolf cast on you, would take hours to prepare and then days for Oilcan to recover from.”
Forge had been in the city for days; he could have set the spell up already. Windwolf had cast the spell on her minutes after they arrived at his remote hunting lodge. Forge could transform Oilcan as soon as they reached the casting room. They had to find Oilcan quickly.
“Would Forge’s Hand even allow this — if Oilcan refused?”
Pony and Stormsong exchanged bleak looks and then turned to Thorne Scratch.
The Stone Clan sekasha shook her head slowly. “They see him as a child. They believe he has a child’s grasp of time and ignorance of death. That he can call the Spell Stones is proof that he was born Stone Clan, despite all his protests. To transform him back to full elf would be returning to him what should have been rightfully his — if they had not failed Amaranth.”
There was a flurry of wings, and Riki winged down beside her. He sketched a bow, panting heavily. He was bare chested and without war paint. One look at his face and she knew that he didn’t have good news.
“Someone took out all three spotters that we had watching this block.” Riki waved toward distant rooftops that had tight knots of tengu on them. “The shooters used high-powered rifles. One of our people is dead. The other two are still alive but badly hurt.”
She should have heard the shots. The shooters must have used silencers. “Did they see Oilcan leave with the Stone Clan?”
“He and Iron Mace were at Sacred Heart. Forge was with Prince True Flame.”
It couldn’t have been just a coincidence that the spotters were shot just before Oilcan was whisked away. It terrified her that it was Iron Mace that spearheaded taking Oilcan and not Forge. Her only comfort was that Forge’s Hands had taken their backup weapons. But what if Forge had gone someplace on Prince True Flame’s bidding?
She grabbed a royal marine by the front of his uniform. He went wide-eyed, as her act made him the collected focus of her entire Hand plus one. “Where’s Prince True Flame?”
“He and the viceroy are providing cover for the ground crews and the incoming gossamers in case the fighting spills over to the airfield.”
Yes, she could feel the twin pull on the Spell Stones. Was it a good thing that she couldn’t feel anything from the Stone Clan Stones?
“Is Forge with them?” She was afraid of the answer. “Yes” would be worse than “no,” because it would mean that Iron Mace had acted alone. Oilcan trusted Forge. Normally Oilcan was a much better judge of people than she was. She sucked at it.
“N-n-no,” the marine stammered. “He returned to his enclave prior to the fighting.”
Tinker let the marine go, and he nearly tripped backing quickly away.
Tinker moved through the crowd, grabbing Wind Clan laedin as she spotted them. The area was being flooded by royal troops, and her people were increasingly harder to single out. “Fan out,” she ordered each of them. “Find out if anyone saw the Stone Clan leaving my cousin’s enclave before the shooting started.” The last she told, “Have someone at Poppymeadow’s take you to the train station and see if the Stone Clan left on the train.”
As she turned to question Thorne Scratch in more detail, she realized that there was a sweep of movement that always preceded Prince True Flame. She didn’t want to talk to him; she wasn’t sure if she could do “polite” at this point. She wanted Windwolf there, making everything right, but today was determined to piss her off.
She remembered to bow in greeting. “The Stone Clan domana are working in collusion with the oni. The oni killed the tengu lookouts so the Stone Clan would take my cousin — most likely to spell-work him in secret — and in return, the Stone Clan left his children unprotected.”
Prince True Flame glanced back at the incoming gossamers. “You do not know if that is what happened.”
“What other possible answer could there be?” Tinker cried. “Elves would have used arrows to take out the lookouts. Even my people do not know how to use — use—” She ran into the lack of an Elvish word for the simple gun attachment. “Things that make rifles silent.”
“That is not proof that the Stone Clan colluded with the oni. The oni spawn and the tengu have been at war with each other.”
“That was resolved.” Riki’s High Elvish sounded perfect to Tinker, not that she was much of a judge, only spoken slowly enough that she could follow the conversation. “The tengu that acted against the half-oni were punished, and Jin apologized to the half-oni.”
Prince True Flame waved that aside. “Your sama has taken the proper action, but there’s no telling what the oni spawn might do. They have no sama to take responsibility for their actions, so they can run amok at will.”
The prince didn’t know Tommy Chang if he thought that they had no sama, but she wasn’t going to be distracted by fighting that battle. “My Beholden are dead and wounded, and my cousin is missing.”
“I understand.” True sighed and then, surprisingly, went down on bended knee in front of her. It made her painfully aware of how very tall the prince truly was. They were now eye to eye. Around them was the subtle shift of Wyverns and her Hand to give them the illusion of privacy. “Beloved Tinker, I beg of you to consider Wolf’s position in this.”
It felt like a trick question. “He — he wants to protect my cousin as much as I do.”
“Yes, he does. He will fling himself off cliffs for you. That is why I ask that you consider his safety first.”
It still felt like a trick question. “Are you saying that I have to choose between Wolf and my cousin?”
“You are so blatantly human that I do not blame Wolf for never considering that you may be Stone Clan. No sane being would, but war does not foster sanity. I love my cousin well. He came to court barely fifty, wise for his age and yet modest for all his abilities.” True Flame measured off a size that was just a hair over Tinker’s head. It was intimidating to know that it had been hundreds of years since Windwolf was young enough to look her in the eyes. “Much as I love him, there is little I can do to protect him without endangering our hard-won peace.
“The clan wars are fresh wounds for most of our people. We have lost mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, lovers and children. There are those who will never let the war end, and they are the ones who watch for any slight to excuse a new attack.”