Wen Spencer - Wolf Who Rules

Vice-what? Tinker felt a smile creeping onto her face in response to all the brightly smiling people gathering around her. The slickie was titled: Tinker, the new fairy princess. The cover photo was of Tinker, a crown of flowers disguising her haphazard haircut, looking fey and surprisingly pretty.

"What the hell?" Tinker snatched the slickie from woman. When in gods' name was this taken? And by who?

She thumbed the page key, flipping through the pictures and text. The first half-dozen photographs were of Windwolf, taken across seasons and at various locations, looking studly as usual. The text listed out Windwolf's titles-viceroy, clan head for Westernlands, cousin to the queen - and added Prince Charming.

"Oh, gag me." She flipped on and found herself. It was a copy of the front cover. When was it taken? She couldn't remember any time appearing in public with a crown of flowers. The only time she had flowers in her hair like this was…

Oh, no! Oh, please, no. She frantically flipped on, hoping that she was wrong. Two more head shots, and then there it was - her in her nightgown, the one that looked like cream poured over her naked body. Oh, someone was so dead meat.

The morning after returning from the Queen's court, she had breakfasted in the private garden courtyard of Poppymeadow's enclave. She had been alone with the female sekasha - and some pervert with telephoto lens. Thankfully, because of the distance involved, the photo was 2-D with limited pan and zoom feature.

"Can you sign it, vicereine?" The owner of the digital magazine asked.

"Sign?" Tinker slapped the slickie to her chest - she didn't even want to give it back.

The woman held out her marker. "Could you make it out to Jennifer Dunham?"

Tinker stared at the marker, wondering what to do. Certainly she couldn't ask her bodyguards - she suspected that they would not take the invasion of her privacy well. Not that the picture was all that indecent, but more that they failed to protect her. She fumbled with getting the slickie back to its cover picture without flashing it at her bodyguards, scribbled her name in the corner and thrust it back.

"I'm here about the broken freezer unit that Lain Shanske called about." Time to escape to something simple, understandable, and easily fixed. This freezer repair sounded like a good greasy project to let her forget all the big, unsolvable problems. "You said that if it was fixed, she could use it."

"That was me that she talked to." One man separated himself from the crowd. "Joseph Wojtowicz, you can call me Wojo, most people do. I'm the general manager here." Halfway through his handshake, he seemed to think he'd made a blunder in etiquette and bowed over her hand. "Yes, if you can get the unit working, she's more than welcome to it."

"Well, let's go see it." Tinker indicated that they should go out of the office, away from the crowd of people who were showing signs of producing cameras. "I want to see if it's actually big enough to hold the tree."

Thus they managed to escape, no picture taken, through the offices and to a back street. Stormsong lead the way, moving through the maze of turns as if she worked at the offices. Pony trailed behind, keeping back the curious office staff with dark looks.

"I heard about the monster attacking you yesterday," Wojo didn't seem to notice her sekasha, focusing only on Tinker as they rounded a corner and took a short flight of cement steps up onto a loading dock. "Are you okay? It sounds like you had a nasty fight on your hands."

Gods, first Lain and now him. How many people had heard about the fight at Turtle Creek? "I'm fine."

"That's good! That's good! I knew your grandfather, Tim Bell. He was-" Wojo paused to consider a polite way to describe her grandfather. "- quite a character."

"Yeah, he was."

"This is it, here." He stopped before a large door padlocked shut. He pulled out a keyring and started to sort through the keys. "It was our main building before Startup. After that, it was so unpredictable that we only used it for overflow. Four years ago, we stopped being able to use it at all."

By Startup, he meant the first time Pittsburgh went to Elfhome. In typical fashion, Pittsburghers used Startup to mean that first time, and each consecutive time, after Shutdown returned Pittsburgh to Earth. Shutdown itself was a misnomer because the gate never fully shutdown, only powered down sharply, a fact that she had counted on when she set out to destroy it. The oni could have stopped the resonance only by completely shutting off the orbital gate, something it wasn't designed to do easily. The poor crew that maintained the gate probably had no clue what was happening or how to stop it. Tinker tried not to think of the poor souls trying to save themselves before the gate shook itself to pieces. Had they abandoned the structure? Were there ships in orbit around Earth that could rescue them? Or had they too phased into space over Elfhome, doomed to rain down with the fiery pieces of the gate?

I've killed people, she thought with despair, and I don't even know how many, or what race they've belonged to.

"Well, I'll be damned." Wojo turned away from the door, frowning at his key ring as if it had failed him. "None of these keys fit the lock. I guess the key was taken off this ring when we stopped using the building. I'll be right back."

Pony and Stormsong were conferring in whispers. Tinker caught enough to realize that Stormsong was translating for Pony. Was having her sekasha understand everything worth the convenience of not having to repeat herself?

A slight chiming caught Tinker's attention. Across the street sat a small shrine to a local ley god, its prayer bells ringing in the slight breeze.

The gods of the ley were all faces of the god of magic, Auhoya, the god of chaos and plenty. Tinker was never sure how he could be many different gods and yet still be one individual, but she'd learn that with gods, one didn't try to understand like one would with science. They were. Auhoya was shown always with a horn and a two edged sword. She supposed in some ways, magic was a lot like science, used to make or destroy.

She clapped her hands to call the gods attention to her, bowed low, and added a silver dime to the horde already littering the shrine.

"Help me to make things right." Adding a second dime, she whispered. "Help me to never mess up this badly again."

"Tinker ze domi," Someone said behind her, using the formal form of her title.

She turned and found Derek Maynard, head of the EIA, standing behind her. If Windwolf was prince of the Westernlands, then Director Maynard was prince of Pittsburgh. Certainly, there was a similarity in their appearance, as Maynard was elf tall and elf stylish. He wore his hair in a long, blonde braid, a painted silk duster, and tall, polished boots. She noted that while he was primarily in white, his accents - earrings, waistcoat, and duster - were all Wind Clan blue.

"Maynard? You're about the last person I expected to run into here. Is the EIA out of ice cream?"

"I'm here to see you." Maynard bowed elegantly, weirding her out. For years she had been terrified of the EIA, and now its Director was treating her like a princess.

"Me?" To her annoyance, the word came out as a squeak. Obviously, someone wasn't completely over their fear.

"I heard of the attack on you yesterday…"

"Hell, does everyone in Pittsburgh know about that?"

"Possibly. It made the newspaper. How are you feeling?"

"I wish people would stop asking."

"Forgiveness." He swept a critical gaze down over her, taking in her silk dress, black leather gun belt, and polished riding boots. "I am glad to see you well."

"You chased me down just to see how I was?"

"Yes." He motioned toward the shrine. "Did you convert after Windwolf made you an elf?"