Kajo wasn’t the target; the magical genetic bombs were. So far, she hadn’t seen the eleven bowling-ball-sized eggs but there were many pieces of luggage large enough to fit one. The oni seemed as if they planned to head west after leaving the clearing. That would take them in the direction of Oakland. If the real Kajo was playing a true shell game, it was possible he was hiding within the city, passing as human.
“If these two aren’t Kajo,” Law said, “then they might be going to meet up with him.”
“We should follow them!” Bare Snow bounced in a very distracting way.
“Put your shirt on,” Law said. “They look like they’re gearing up for a hike.”
Law considered the hunt before them. Staying ahead of the oni would be dangerous as they could walk into any hidden war camp that the two “Kajos” were heading to. Trailing behind, though, would mean they might lose the oni if Kajo had vehicles waiting someplace.
Should she call Alton?
No, not yet. It would get the tengu involved. Yumiko implied Kajo had some magical ability that let him dance around the elves, but it might be simply an old-fashioned, well-placed mole. Sparrow had been the second highest Wind Clan leader and a Skin Clan lackey. Any one of the tengu might be a turncoat. Kajo hadn’t been that hard to find. There were twenty thousand tengu in Pittsburgh; why hadn’t one of them spotted him?
Law had stolen a rail car from the Charleroi train depot to give chase after the oni-filled train. She’d crashed the vehicle at Station Square, leaving her with no way to get back to her Dodge Power Wagon, still parked at the depot. It seemed logical to ask Usagi to give her and Bare Snow a lift to Charleroi so they could get back the Dodge and her pet Elfhome porcupine, Brisbane.
Usagi had used the child-free drive to propose the merger of households. She’d been very compelling. Bare Snow was technically still a child at ninety-four years old; she would be approximately seventeen if she were human. The half-elf children were maturing slowly; they might not be adults for decades to come. Law and all the Bunnies were human, which meant that they could vanish out of the lives of the children before they were full grown, especially with the war raging around them. It forced Law to realize that if she got herself killed, Bare Snow would be totally alone. The children already called Bare Snow “Big Sister.” Law loved all the Bunnies dearly — but she wasn’t sure if she could stand living with them.
After Usagi drove away, Law scouted around for Brisbane. She found him tucked up in a big spruce tree near the river, happily eating bark.
He was “her pet” in that he normally cooperated in her ownership of him. There was no forcing something that was a third her size and came loaded with thirty thousand foot-long barbed spikes.
Law was trying to talk him out of a tree when she spotted a herd of elk on the opposite bank of the Monongahela River. The big animals rarely came that near to the jumpfish-infested waters. They would only venture that close to a bank if they were trying to avoid something even more dangerous. Law guessed that it meant that a large number of oni might be pushing the elk in front of them.
“Okay, just stay up there,” Law said to Brisbane, who seemed to be ignoring her. “I’ll be back later.” (Being that porcupines lived most of their life in trees, she was fairly sure he wouldn’t move until she produced apples or something to lure him down.)
Law drove across the river via the Rankin Bridge, hid her Dodge in an empty warehouse, and then on foot, backtracked the herd to this ridge. Three hours after her meeting with Alton, she had eyes on Kajo.
Why hadn’t anyone else found him?
Was it because Kajo guessed that none of the tengu would expect him so close to the city? Yumiko had refused to give Law any more guidance than the drawing. She seemed to think that any suggestion from her would unduly influence Law. Certainly, Law hadn’t even seriously considered where Kajo might be hiding; she was just trying to retrieve her Dodge.
Law decided that they’d follow the oni to see where they were going. If they reached the city, she would call for backup.
There was nothing to do but wait for the oni to move.
It left her time to think. All she could think about, though, was Usagi’s proposal.
“Why can’t you?” Law whispered to Bare Snow. “Why can’t you be part of Usagi Sensei’s household?”
Bare Snow looked at her with surprise in her eyes. “My family has a death sentence on it. After Howling’s assassination, the sekasha hunted down everyone in my grandfather’s household and killed all that they could find.”
“But they’re all dead now,” Law said.
“I’m still alive.”
“You weren’t even alive when Howling was killed. Your mother lived on a deserted island for years in hiding before she even met your father.”
“It does not matter. We were wrong. We were Beholden to Howling; we betrayed him and our clan when we believed the worse of him. We nearly destroyed all hope of peace. If the Clan War was still waging when the oni first attacked, we would have fallen to the Skin Clan. My family deserved the punishment that the sekasha dealt out.”
“You had nothing to do with it.”
“My mother trained me; she wanted me to seek revenge on those that wronged my family.”
“That’s the Skin Clan!”
“As far as the sekasha know, we acted alone. To them, the domana would be my natural target.”
Law sputtered in the face of Bare Snow’s calm acceptance. “No one knows who you are. You were born after your mother went into hiding. There are no Water Clan in Pittsburgh; they don’t have Spell Stones for their domana to tap. How would anyone even know?”
“If someone asked me the name of my mother, I would have to tell them the truth. It is much too dangerous for the Bunnies.”
Law wanted to argue the point but she wasn’t even sure that she could stand being a permanent part of the Bunny household. She enjoyed the controlled chaos of the commune but only because she could escape the moment she got overwhelmed.
“The oni are moving,” Bare Snow whispered, ending the discussion.
They followed the oni cross the Rim into Pittsburgh proper. All around them were abandoned houses and shops. The oni went slower, keeping to the cover of the trees rather than using the weed-choked city streets.
Law wondered if she was doing the right thing. This could quickly escalate out of her control. What if the oni planned to stage an attack on Oakland? The Pittsburghers were still recovering from the attack on Oktoberfest. Many of the royal marines were taking care of their dead, far to the north. Others were scattered all over the South Side, looking for any stray oni troops who survived the train derailment. Prince True Flame was deep in the forest to the east, looking for the oni camps that Tommy Chang had rescued Jewel Tears from. There was no large Elvish force in Oakland.
The oni hit the tangled knot of the Edgewood exit on I-376 and stopped.
Law crouched behind the brick rubble of a collapsed garage. She made sure that Bare Snow was safely beside her before taking out her binoculars.
The taller of the two Kajos seemed to be the ultimate head of the group. He split the oni into two groups. He sent a handful north along the Rim with all of their gear. He kept the rest of his heavily armed escort with him and the second Kajo and turned west.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Law whispered. If the two Kajo continued in the same direction, they would head into Frick Park. The area around Nine Mile Run was extremely marshy. Over the years, it had filled with black willows. Any sane person avoided it at all costs. Yet it put the oni just a few miles from the elf enclave’s back door. “Don’t go west. Don’t go west.”