Tinker growled in frustration. “The Dufae stopped being Stone Clan generations ago. I have always considered myself as Wind Clan.”
“It was your right as an adult to choose a clan, but children are not considered mature enough to decide this.”
That was the same line of bullshit that Iron Mace used to justify what was done to Oilcan, despite the fact that her cousin was twenty-two and, as a human, adult. Tinker hadn’t met Sunder yet; the three new Stone Clan domana had arrived while she was out playing hide-and-seek with Chloe Polanski. With a name like Sunder, though, he or she probably wasn’t a pushover. Forge had promised never to betray any of his grandchildren again. He would be the lesser of evils — if he could be trusted.
“The children are only the tip of the iceberg,” Jin said.
“Oh good gods!” Tinker shouted. “What else? You didn’t even talk with the twins!”
Jin nodded that this was true. “They have been in Haven since you disappeared. I was focused on finding you and supporting Wolf Who Rules. It is our policy to maintain no communication between Haven and Pittsburgh, lest it would give away Haven’s location. They arrived, however, with one of the yamabushi…”
“A what?”
“Forgiveness.” Jin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I forgot you do not know the term. There is so much that we should share with you about ourselves, but there never seems to be time.”
Tinker laughed tiredly. “Yes, I know. Story of my life lately.” She needed a crash course on everything from proper etiquette of “formal” meetings between clans to elf reproduction cycles. (The talk of babies reminded her that she wasn’t using birth control and earlier conversations on the subject boiled down to “don’t worry about that now.” She really should find out why she didn’t have to.)
“The yamabushi are what we call the blood guard of the Chosen One. They are descendants of Wong Jin’s loyal servants who—” He caught himself with a grimace. “It’s a very long story and most of it is not important right now. Your siblings arrived at Haven with a young male tengu by the name of Haruka Sessai. He’s been trained since birth to gather information. Haruka gave me a brief but concise report. I wanted to bring him with me so you could question him yourself. The girls, however, wake often from nightmares and find his presence comforting. They trust him and Joy tolerates him, so he is keeping guard over them.”
Tinker made a motion for Jin to move on. “What important details?”
“Your ancestor — Forge’s son, Unbounded Brilliance — died in France during the Revolution. Apparently when he fled Elfhome, he had with him a spell-locked box, which we believe he’d stolen from Iron Mace, hence the reason that the warlord came to Pittsburgh. Iron Mace wanted to know if your family knew what was in the box. When Unbounded Brilliance was beheaded in France, his infant son was taken to America, but the box was lost.”
It felt painfully wrong for something that happened over two hundred years ago to still be important, but Iron Mace had tried to kill Oilcan because of this box. “The only thing my family knows about it is some song.” Oilcan had sung it to her while telling her about his kidnapping. “Knock, knock, open the box…”
Jin nodded. “The box was recently found in France and flown to New York. It was at the American Museum of Natural History. It was part of a traveling exhibit that the humans put together using objects that the elves left on Earth before contact between the two worlds were lost.”
Stormsong gasped.
“What?” Tinker asked.
“I’ve seen this box!” Stormsong said. “I was — oh — oh — oh sweet light — I’ve seen one of your sisters.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Tinker shouted.
“You were still human and we had not yet met. Officially,” Stormsong added the qualifier. Tinker wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean; she would remember meeting a blue-haired sekasha. Officially or unofficially. “I didn’t recognize the girl as your sister at the time. She was just a little human child, one of millions in New York City.”
“How do you know it was my sister?”
“She was at the museum after it was closed to the public, inside an invisible paper box.”
Was this “confound domi” night? “A what?”
Stormsong spread her hands. “I’m not sure how she managed it, but she was using a spell to be invisible so she could move through the museum unseen.”
That did sound like something Tinker would try to do. “But how? There’s isn’t magic on Earth!”
Stormsong spread her hands wider and clicked her tongue in an elvish version of a shrug.
“Esme is a powerful dreamer,” Jin said. “She foresaw that your presence was needed to save Pittsburgh. She apparently also knew that her attempts to produce you might create multiple children. It seems that she set up fail-safes to protect your siblings on Earth before she left the planet. One of the things that she gave them was the Dufae Codex.”
“How did Esme get a copy of that?” Tinker asked. “My grandfather never let anyone outside the family even see it.”
Jin spread his hands to indicate helpless ignorance. “The girls had it when Haruki joined forces with them. From what he could gather, it was through the Codex that they learned of the box and the nactka.”
Tinker stared at Jin while her mind raced. Her copy of the Codex had an entire section on spell-locked boxes. She’d studied it closely before designing a custom lockpick spell to unlock the box she found in the oni whelping pens. Did the Codex mention Iron Mace’s box specifically? Far as she could remember, there hadn’t been any warning written in it about Dufae’s uncle. She was fairly sure that the Codex didn’t say anything about invisible cardboard — she would have been all over that. How would you make something invisible? In New York City? “But-but-but Earth doesn’t have magic!”
“The twins are very intelligent and resourceful,” Jin said slowly, as if every word out of his mouth was carefully chosen. “I would guess they are your equals in that regard.”
Why her siblings were running around invisible was fairly easy to guess. Tinker had seen enough movies to know that Earth’s museums were filled with security cameras to protect their valuable artwork. The most confounding tidbit of information, though, was that Stormsong had been in New York City.
“What were you doing there, Stormsong?” Tinker didn’t think the elves ever went to Earth.
“I was with Sparrow. It was a diplomatic mission. She had taken half of Wolf’s First Hand because they had been to Earth long ago, before the war with the oni. Since I speak English, I was included — or at least, that was the reason Sparrow gave for taking me. It’s obvious now that she took the people most likely able to counter the attack on Wolf. When we returned, Pony met us at the train station with news that Wolf was missing and Hawk Scream was dead. The bitch ran us in circles all day until you brought Wolf to the hospice.”
Sparrow hadn’t survived Pony finding out that she was a traitor. She had been killed little more than a month ago but it seemed like forever now.
“And the box?” Jin asked. “Where is it?”
Stormsong shook her head. “It didn’t come with us.”
“Sparrow claimed it,” Jin said. “The twins hacked the museum’s computer system and intercepted emails stating that it had been taken by her.”