Wen Spencer - Tinker

The palace's staff took to her invasion well, their initial dismay and subservience thawing to open friendliness. At least she seemed to be meshing much better than Sparrow, especially among the sekasha , who seemed to treat Sparrow with quiet disdain.

"Sparrow is too self-centered," Pony explained. They were on the archery field, whiling away the long summer afternoon. "It is true that the domana rule the other castes, but it does not mean that it's more important. If the seyosa did not farm, and the sepeshyosa did not fish, and selinsafa did not do the laundry, or the sefada did not cook, where would we be?"

"Dirty and hungry." Tinker took aim at the warg target down field. (She refused to shoot at the disturbing humanoid targets.) The first arrow hit in the warg's hindquarters, but the next three grouped around the heart bull's-eye. The last actually landed in the red. " Kiyau! "

The sekasha laughed at her answer, and complimented her on her shots. One of the runners at the end of the field collected her arrows and ducked back to his shelter.

"Exactly. Pull!" Pony called, setting the warg whizzing around on its track in unpredictable starts and turns. "A body must have a brain, mouth, eyes, hands, bowels, and feet." He shot as he talked, loosing his five arrows nearly as fast as he could nock and pull, and yet they all grouped around the heart, three in the red.

"Oh, you flatter me so," Tinker said, meaning their compliments on her shots.

"You are doing well for someone who never handled a bow before," Pony said. "I've been practicing for nearly a century, the rest for millennia. Someday you'll be good as we are; your eye is good."

A century. That still put shivers through her. The sekasha seemed happy to spend an entire day on archery, but she was bored in an hour or two. Of course, they were honing their abilities while she saw it as a mere diversion, something to do while talking. She supposed that they didn't do math problems for fun. She wished she had been able to at least bring her datapad with her. Windwolf had given her several reams of fine paper and a score of pens, but it wasn't the same. He promised that he'd take her home soon, but needed the queen's permission. ("Is that elfin time or human?" she complained. "Elfin," he said sadly, "for I fear the human 'soon' has already passed.")

"Sparrow believes the brain to be all important." Pony drew her attention back to the conversation about Windwolf's assistant.

"Sparrow thinks nothing of making work for the rest of us," complained the female Stormsong—whose attitude toward clothes and boots delighted Tinker no end. "She demands fresh flowers in her quarters, special food from the sefada , and countless changes in her gowns. Pull!"

They fell silent the minute it took Stormsong to shoot. She carefully put all five arrows into the red, but Tinker had learned that the sekasha unofficially took points off for being too deliberate at aiming, and gave points for managing a discussion around one's shooting, as Pony had. It seemed a secret ego thing between them.

"Am I making extra work?" Tinker asked.

They laughed at Tinker's fear, belittling the idea that she was a nuisance.

"No, no, domi ," Stormsong hurried to reassure her. "Pony's job is to guard you, and most of the time we merely include you on activities we normally do."

"Sparrow never says please or thank you." Skybolt made a sound of disgust as he shot, sending out his arrows in a show of graceful speed. "The other castes are beneath her politeness."

He too put all five arrows into the red; even Stormsong acknowledged his skill with " Kiyau ."

Pony shook his head. "Sparrow does not see the clans' strength to be the cooperation of castes, but solely as the clan head in possession of spell stones. Since she can't access the stones, she grasps for other ways to show power: withholding politeness and petty demands."

The others nodded to this.

"We should call you Hawkeye," Skybolt said, "for your clear-sightedness."

The next day, it rained, trapping Tinker indoors. The grayness seemed to invade her soul, so after a Windwolf-less lunch she curled in the sunroom and watched the rainfall, fighting to keep in tears. It would be stupid to cry; everyone had been bending over backward to make her happy.

All the little seeds of fear, doubt, and unease, though, were growing into a wild, dark tangle. What was going to happen that made her the pivot? Beyond the cryptic warnings, there had been nothing more from the seer. At some point, all would depend on her, and she had an unspoken terror that the decision would have to be made when she was completely alone against a horde of oni, without so much as a datapad.

And what if the queen never let her go back to Pittsburgh? Certainly if the queen wanted to keep control of the pivot, she could insist that Tinker stay at Aum Renau, or take her back East. Windwolf told her that he asked permission daily, but for all Tinker knew, he could be lying to her. Surrounded by beauty and luxury, it seemed stupid to be so homesick for the squalid, half-abandoned steel town. She wanted her computers, tools, and hoverbike. She wished she could call Oilcan; just to know he was okay and not worrying about her. She desperately wanted to talk to Lain; since her grandfather died, Lain had been her guide through life's confusion. Lain could tell her what to do, make it all right.

" Domi. " Pony crouched down beside her. "The sefada know you are unhappy and say that you can come help them make falotiki . They are very simple to make, and the sefada promise to watch carefully so they will not catch fire, and afterward you decorate them with icing in bright colors."

"Um," her voice cracked, and his face blurred, so she scrubbed at her eyes. "Yeah, sure." And then to make them all stop worrying about her, "It sounds like fun."

And through sheer determination on her part, it actually was.

Windwolf came into the kitchen while she was icing. The little square falotiki cakes reminded her of the periodic table, so she had arranged them into the classic chart and was making each cake a different element. She was working on radium, and after telling the kitchen staff its radioactive properties, was reciting the "Litle Willie" poem that featured his grandmother's tea. "Now Grandpa thinks it quite a lark, To see her shining in the dark."

" Dama! " cried Lemonseed, the head cook.

Tinker looked up to find Windwolf leaning in the doorframe, watching her with a grin. "You look pleased about something."

"The queen says we can leave for Pittsburgh in the morning."

Tinker squealed and flung herself at Windwolf. He swept her up and she kissed him until she realized that she was covering him with flour and that tears were running down her face. "Oh gods, I screamed, didn't I? Oh, that's so stupid. I'm not the type to scream."

"No," he agreed, resting his forehead on hers. "You are not the type to scream."

"Is she really letting me go home?" She saw the hurt go through his eyes. "I mean, back to Pittsburgh?"

"Yes. With provisions."

"Provisions?" She didn't like the sound of that. "Here, let me down, so I can wash my hands."

"The queen is concerned." Windwolf paused, obviously picking out the most politic way of putting things. "She sees you as a child with a child's grasp of the universe. She's not saying you're immature," Windwolf hastened to explain as Tinker made a rude noise. "By the time an elf reaches adult, he has had a hundred years of being steeped in our culture—which isn't always a good thing—but it does teach him about living for millennia. You can barely speak the high tongue, and you're not going to learn it, or any of the skills you need, by living daily with humans."