Was the spider she felt every morning Chiyo stepping into her mind, reading it and planting illusions? When she considered it, she could find a dozen times Chiyo had reacted to her thoughts.

Chiyo could read her mind.

Tinker glanced over at Chiyo, who was still arguing with Riki. Her greatest weapon was her enemies' ignorance. As long as they didn't realize she had discovered the truth, they would continue to allow her the freedom of the workshop. And with the workshop, she could build tools to escape. But Chiyo mustn't discover that she knew...

The fight finished up when an oni guard came into the warehouse to fetch Riki away, leaving behind Chiyo to guard Tinker. To distract herself, Tinker started to factor out large numbers, looking for primes.

Chiyo winced at her. "What are you doing?"

"Factoring numbers," Tinker said truthfully.

Chiyo rubbed her forehead. "You're a hideously ugly little creation."

Tinker gathered together all the cordless screwdrivers and started to remove the battery packs. The joy of being a genius was that you could do complex math in your head while a.s.sembling simple but effective weapons almost thoughtlessly.

Trying not to grin, Tinker switched to determining escape velocities, which reduced Chiyo to quiet whimpers of pain.

Tinker would have liked to create more of a plan, but she didn't dare plan anything with Chiyo prying into her mind. She finished the simple stun baton and tested it by pressing it against Chiyo. The kitsune collapsed into a satisfying heap of silk. Tinker bound and gagged her quickly, surprised to discover Chiyo had very sharp canine teeth, small furry dog-ears, and a foxtail hidden under the kimono.

Tinker swapped fresh batteries into the stun baton, glancing around. The warehouse had changed little, but that would almost be expected. The low windows had been painted black so Chiyo wouldn't have to disguise anything outside.

She bypa.s.sed the alarm on the outside door, cut off the padlock with a welding torch, and opened the door.

She expected to be on Mount Washington-it was the view out her bedroom window, only from the Onihida perspective. Looking at the moonlit hills rising all around her, she realized that the view had been a complete sham. They were in a river valley someplace far from downtown. As she scurried down the alley, she decided that it was logical. The oni would want to be as far out of the public eye as possible. Mount Washington, being far above the floodplain and yet close to downtown and the Rim, was still heavily populated.

She paused at the mouth of the alley, trying to get her bearings. She was in an industrial park of some sort, the long tall warehouses standing dark all around her. Nothing looked like a stone castle, so her bedroom and the rest of the living s.p.a.ces were probably in one of the warehouses, hidden from prying eyes.

Fake, all of it.

She peered around the corner. Surely there would be guards-unless they were afraid of advertising their presence. She dashed across the street to the cover of the next alley. It took her to the water's edge.

Only twenty feet across with high cement retaining walls for banks, the waterway was too narrow to be a river. Most streams in the area, though, flowed into the Ohio River eventually. A silvery leaf tossed down to the dark water pointed out which direction the creek flowed. Following the creek would take longer than striking off across country, but heading in a random direction might only take her deep into Elfhome wilderness. Hopefully Riki wouldn't be back soon.

After five minutes of walking with the warehouse to her right, she realized how large the oni complex was. The long building was easily a quarter mile or more long. There was a wide break, and then another long warehouse running alongside the creek. At the end of the second warehouse, a thick column of white limestone lit by moonlight drew her eyes upwards. A ma.s.sive bridge spanned the valley in several graceful arches, totaling sixteen hundred feet long with a deck two hundred feet above the creek. Even in the city of bridges, it was quite singular, and she recognized it.

The bridge was the Westinghouse Bridge, which meant the oni base was the old Westinghouse Electric Airbrake plant. By blind luck she had gone in the right direction, because the Rim cut through just feet north of the plant. The erratic path of the Monongahela River and the Rim effectively isolated this small slice of Pittsburgh. The elfin forest deeply encroached on the area, slowly whittling it down. Last she'd heard, something had killed and eaten the last human inhabitants; now she wondered how much the oni had had to do with that.

No matter; now she knew where she was, she knew where to go for help. She sold sc.r.a.p to the converted USX steel mill just downriver. The mini mill operated twenty-four hours a day, melting down old steel to reforge it to slabs which were sent upriver via barge to the rolling mill at Dravosburg. It was less than three miles. Unfortunately, most of the steelworkers now lived across the river, where miles of transplanted Pittsburgh buffered them from Elfhome wilderness, but there were plenty of bars.

Sticking to the water's edge would be slow, and considering the black willows and jumpfishes, far from safe. She decided to take a risk and follow the street.

She heard the car engine and saw the headlights running on the power lines overhead moments before the car swept into view. She had ducked back into the shadows, and then recognized the car. It was one of Windwolf's Rolls-Royces.

"Hey!" she cried, stepping into the light. "Stop!"

The car squealed to a stop and the driver's door flung open. Surprisingly, it was Sparrow who got out. The female was in mourning black, with her pale hair simply braided. It was the most unadorned that Tinker had ever seen her. "Tinker? What are you doing here?"

"Escaping!" Tinker laughed, crossing to touch the marvelous, beautiful car. "Is Windwolf with you? Pony?"

"It's in the middle of night," Sparrow said. "They were searching the river for the last two days. I believe they're sleeping now. How did you get away?"

"With this!" Tinker proudly held out her homemade stun baton.

"That tiny thing?" Sparrow held out her hand. "What is it?"

Without thinking, Tinker handed the weapon to Sparrow. "It's a stun baton. You just press against someone, hit the trigger and the person is stunned."

"Like this?" Sparrow pointed the baton toward her, thumb on the trigger.

"Careful." Tinker reached to take it back.

Sparrow pressed the tip into Tinker's outreached hand.

The pain was instant and intense, and she started to fall as all her muscles spasmed.

Sparrow caught her. "Ah, yes, how clever of you. I must tell Tomtom to keep a closer eye on you."

By the time she recovered, Sparrow had her bound and inside the car.

"Are you mad? Why are you working with them?"

"Sometimes the best tool is a very big stick."

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

"I'm using the oni to fix what is wrong," Sparrow said. "I'm going to take things back to the way they should be."

"How should they be?"

"If you repeat a lie long enough it doesn't become a truth, but everyone will act like it has. I'm sure you've been told how evil the Skin Clan was and how the domana domana n.o.bly dispatched them. The truth is that the Skin Clan took our race from one step above apes and made them one step below G.o.ds. As we were when the Skin Clan toppled, we still are. Under the n.o.bly dispatched them. The truth is that the Skin Clan took our race from one step above apes and made them one step below G.o.ds. As we were when the Skin Clan toppled, we still are. Under the domana domana we're stagnating. It's time to go back to the old ways." we're stagnating. It's time to go back to the old ways."

"How could you do this to your honor?"

Sparrow gave a slight laugh. "Honor is nothing but convenient ropes that the domana domana use to bind the lower castes helpless. They are slave lords with invisible chains." use to bind the lower castes helpless. They are slave lords with invisible chains."

"How can you say that? They made you one of them."

"They've made a mockery of the dau dau. I should have undergone the same transformation as you, to be wholly domana domana, but that would have weakened their power base. So they call me domana domana, and expect the lower castes to bow to me, but everyone knows the truth. I'm no more domana domana than I was at birth." than I was at birth."

"You're going to destroy your people because the lower castes never groveled to you? The domana domana are evil because they wouldn't make you one of them?" are evil because they wouldn't make you one of them?"

Sparrow stopped the car to look down at her. "I can kill you. Doing this now is convenient, but if it proves too annoying, I can easily wait another hundred years for my chance. And so can the oni."

Tinker shrank away from the cold, impartial stare, barely able to breathe.

"Good." Sparrow started the car. "You really must start thinking like an elf. Look at the long-term future."

Like she had one.

Tinker found no comfort that Sparrow, after several minutes of silence, felt the need to justify her actions with, "My case only ill.u.s.trated the hypocrisy of the domana domana; even when they lift up one of the lower castes, they still suppress us."

15: Whipping Boy

The back door of the Rolls opened and an oni warrior, face painted for war, gazed down at her-bound hand and foot-as Sparrow murmured something in the Oni tongue. The warrior grunted, took out a whistle, and blew a single long note that jumped from shrill to inaudible. Somewhere close by, small dogs broke into excited barking.

Sparrow said something about Tomawaritomo, and the warrior pointed off into the darkness. She walked away without looking back.

The warrior reached into the Rolls with huge gnarled hands and lifted Tinker out, pa.s.sing her like a hissing kitten to another guard. Oni warriors were emerging out of the night, faces painted and heavily armed. Apparently her escape had been noticed, and the oni had been on the hunt, now called back by the silent whistle.

Without the kitsune's deception, the airbrake plant was a collection of ma.s.sive, old buildings, heavy with the sense of otherworldliness where men did the works of G.o.ds and sneered at the concept of magic. Yet rising up in the moonlight beyond the great buildings was the wild primal forest of Elfhome, and all around Tinker, smelling like wet dogs, were the brutish oni warriors.

Tinker was carried into one of the mile-long buildings. The first section was a garage, holding a host of hoverbikes and cars; Riki's motorcycle sat to one side, as singular as the tengu. The second section was a kennel, filled with steel cages. Many of the cages held yapping little pug dogs. In one cage was a muzzled warg, its glowing eyes lighting its corner with icy rage, its bulk filling the cage.

Beyond was empty warehouse. A shallow, narrow channel cut down the center of the vast room; oily water flowed in the cement drain. On one side was the bare skeleton of a freight elevator. There was something disturbingly familiar about the s.p.a.ce. They pa.s.sed a dark stain of old blood on the floor, and there, in the dust on the floor, were her bootprints and Riki's footprints, where he had held her still and made her watch the deboning that first morning. This was the true appearance of the courtyard garden with the gazebo.

At the far end, they caught up with Sparrow. The elf female was coming to a stop beside an oni male. Riki knelt on the ground in front of the male, head bowed until his forehead nearly touched the dusty floor. To one side, the wizened-dwarf torturer sharpened his boning knives.

"I caught her before she could do harm," Sparrow was saying to the oni. The guard dropped Tinker onto the ground, knocking the breath out of her. "Really, Lord Tomawaritomo, I had hoped you could contain her more than three days."

"The kitsune let her slip away." The oni male reached down to catch Tinker by a handful of shirt and bra and lifted her up to dangle in mid-air as he inspected her.

So this was Lord Tomawaritomo. Tall and lean, he towered over Tinker; even the long thin sword strapped to his side was taller than her. He was striking in appearance, but not beautiful; his cheekbones and chin were too sharp, and his nose too flat. The gold of his pupil filled his eyes, with an iris a dark vertical slit. He had a mane of white that spilled down over his back. His ears were more than just pointed: they were white-furred, and cupped forward, like a cat's. He wore a kimono of vivid purples and greens, and a fur of pristine white that matched his snow-white hair. The pelt was wrapped over one shoulder and pinned in place by his shoulder guard of ridged bone. The fur looked to be white wolf or warg, though larger than either species. The origin of the bone, however, Tinker couldn't guess, except that the body part involved was the jawbone, hinged midpoint at the oni's chest.

After inspecting Tinker closely, Tomtom grunted. "Such trouble in a little package."

"It seems to be a universal constant that keys to doorways are usually small." Sparrow smiled at her own wit.

Tomtom grunted again. "Perhaps I should put this one on a chain to keep it from being lost."

"Whatever it takes," Sparrow said.

Perhaps it was just as well that Tinker didn't have breath to talk; she had a feeling that she would be saying things that she'd regret later. She comforted herself by thinking choice insults.

Tomtom clicked his tongue and Riki looked up. "Take this." The oni lord held Tinker out to Riki. "See that it doesn't slip away again."

So Tinker found herself handed off again like a child's doll. Annoyingly, she couldn't help but feel somewhat safer with Riki, perhaps just because he was familiar. He, at least, balanced her upright and stooped to undo the ties around her ankles. "Stay still. Stay silent," he whispered to her without meeting her eyes. Yeah, right Yeah, right.

Tomtom's cat ears flickered from Riki to a distant wail. "Ah, my warriors have found the vixen."

"You'll have the kitsune killed." Sparrow said it as a disinterested statement, not a question.

"One normally has to be diplomatic with the kitsune," Tomtom said. "This presents possibilities..."

A moment later frantic cries became audible, growing louder. Chiyo was dragged into the vast room, struggling in the hold of two oni warriors. Her fox tail stuck out of a tear in her kimono, and her doglike ears were laid back in distress. At a signal from Lord Tomtom, the warriors released Chiyo and she flung herself at Tomtom's feet. As the kitsune begged in frantic Oni, the corners of the oni lord's mouth curled up into a grin.

"Her Oni is worse than mine," Sparrow said. "What is she saying?"

"She says she'll do anything to avoid the knives." Lord Tomtom motioned to one of the waiting oni. "This will interest you."

Sparrow gave an exasperated sigh. "My time is limited."

Tomtom gazed at Sparrow hard. "Stay and be instructed."

He put out his hand and one of the warriors gave him a leather lead and slipknot collar. Tomtom dangled out the lead, clucking as one would to a dog. Chiyo cringed but sat up, canting back her head to lay bare her throat.

"Many of the lesser bloods have the spells to manipulate them threaded through their genetic pattern," Tomtom explained to Sparrow as he slipped the collar over Chiyo's head. He pulled the slipknot tight, winding the lead around his fist. "I could reduce her back to fox if I wanted."

Chiyo whimpered in fear.

"What use would a fox be to me, little kitsune?" Tomtom purred, wiping away Chiyo's tears. "I've decided to breed you. No, no, no." He murmured as Chiyo glanced at the surrounding warriors. "Your mate will have to be fetched. Now hold still."

He growled out a word, and strange runes gleamed to life on Chiyo's skin. In a low dull drone, Tomtom chanted out a spell, and her very skin began to glow. After a minute, he fell silent and the light vanished, and Chiyo panted quietly.

"I've put her into season." He loosened the lead and handed it to one of his warriors, pointing back across the warehouse and saying something in Oni.

Chiyo cried out as if struck. "Warg?"

Sparrow made a face of distaste. "Oh, beat her and be done with it."

"The lesser bloods are socketed so they can breed with anything," Tomtom said. "I want to introduce the warg abilities into the kitsune line."

Sparrow scoffed at this. "You don't change the genome directly?"

"Breeding for pups is a simpler method," Tomtom said.

"This is a waste of my time," Sparrow said. "I must be gone before I'm missed."

"Speak then," Tomtom said absently, watching the kitsune be stripped of her kimono, bent over a bale of bedding, and tied into position.

Tinker turned away as warriors took advantage of Chiyo's helplessness; the males laughed as their manipulations made the kitsune in heat moan wantonly. Remember what she's done to me. I hate her. I should be glad she's being punished. Remember what she's done to me. I hate her. I should be glad she's being punished.

Sparrow took no notice of the events with the kitsune. "I told you at the start of this that Wolf Who Rules needs to be eliminated."

Riki caught Tinker before she could launch herself at Sparrow, m.u.f.fling her stream of curses at the elf.