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35: BIRD IN HAND


Olivia had never been to a hotel before. Were they all this nice? The William Penn felt rich and luxurious. The rooms looked like something out of a magazine. The bed was massive—bigger than anything she’d ever seen. It had a half dozen pillows stacked up like a snowy mountain range. A throw blanket lay across the foot of the bed, its dark chocolatey brown in sharp contrast to the creamy tan of the comforter. There was a big overstuffed armchair in the corner. The windows had heavy drapes that reached the floor. Art hung on the walls. It was the biggest, nicest bedroom she had ever seen.

Her childhood attic bedroom at her grandmother’s had only been big enough for a twin bed and a nightstand that doubled as a bookshelf. She shared her first bedroom at the Ranch with all her unmarried stepsisters. They slept in three sets of triple bunkbeds, stacked up like firewood. Even after she got married, as the third wife she only had a double bed with a sagging mattress and two threadbare pillows, one of which her husband claimed on the nights that he was with her. On Elfhome, she’d been sleeping in her kitchen on a futon until Forest Moss blew down her house. From there, they’d squatted in whatever place she could find. The Phipps Conservatory had showers in the employee locker room and an equal lack of privacy in the area that they set up cots in.

After the day that she had had, she needed the pampering that the room promised.

Forest Moss was soaked to the skin, dangerously cold, and bone weary after being struck down by the oni spell that stole his powers.

“Sit him in the armchair,” Olivia told the royal marines carrying him. “Aiofe, can you see that the troops are settled into their rooms? And make sure that they know that the half-oni are not to be hurt?”

She needed to strip the wet clothes from Forest Moss. Olivia really didn’t want Aiofe to be part of that. The elves saw nothing shameful about being naked—she knew from firsthand experience with the marines—and Aiofe was a good bit older than she. Still, the girl was sweet and naïve for her age. Seeing a male naked would be troubling to Aiofe. Probably. Maybe Olivia was wrong about that. What did she know about the Irish? The elders at the Ranch went on and on about how the rest of the world were immoral and sinful. Maybe the Irish danced naked in the streets. (Although she doubted it greatly.)

To be totally truthful with herself, Olivia wanted peace and quiet. Since early morning she’d been surrounded by people, forced into dangerous or uncomfortable situations again and again. She wanted a locked door between her and the outside world and all the responsibilities that came with being Forest Moss’s domi.

“Yes, I can do that.” Aiofe seemed more than willing to flee the room, suggesting that Olivia’s first guess was the correct one.

Olivia shooed everyone out of the room and locked the door. Immediately she felt a little lighter, as if a huge weight had been lifted.

“You look worn,” Forest Moss murmured as she stripped off his clothes. He seemed barely able to move.

“I’ll sleep soon enough.” She toweled him dry and wrapped him in the throw blanket.

There was a private bathroom attached to the bedroom. Another first in her life. Over the sink was a massive five-foot-by-five-foot mirror. In that wide reflection, she discovered that sometime during the day, she’d gotten blood splashed across the skirt of her gingham sundress. Blood itself wasn’t distressing—she’d ended up covered in worse during slaughtering days at the farm. There was the fact that the dress was the only thing she had to wear until they got back to the Phipps. But more distressing, the blood probably came from a human. She really shouldn’t have shot Jonnie Be Good or the EIA officer whose name she could no longer remember.

She started the tub to fill with warm water, and then stripped off her sundress.

“Our heavenly Father, forgive me for what I’ve done today.” She sluiced the dress skirt through cold water, hoping a quick rinse would get the bulk of the dried blood. “I shouldn’t have shot Jonnie Be Good—slimeball that he is, I am not fit to judge. Nor should have I shot…what’s his name? The oni mole. Lieutenant Something. I really should at least remember the names of the people I got killed. Shooting him was what was needed to be done—but I should have known that the elves would take no prisoners.”

The stacks of oni dead that had littered the sidewalks of Pittsburgh all summer should have been enough for her to learn that lesson.

Much of the blood had been rinsed away, but some remained soaked into the dress. There were tiny bars of soap and little bottles of shampoo next to the sink. She opted for the shampoo. She pulled the sink plug, poured in a little of the shampoo over the stains, and pressed the wet fabric into the water as the sink filled.

“It’s so hard, Father. I tried to do the right thing. Save the Undefended. Save Duff and Widget. I could only do that by stealing the truck. To save Forest Moss and the others, I had to steal the train. But…doing the right thing led to so much death. I know that I should feel awful right now but the truth of it is, I found slaughtering day more upsetting. Animals are such helpless things. The chickens will run right up to you, expecting corn, not to be grabbed and killed. It always felt like a betrayal of trust. Today didn’t feel like that. If anything, we were the chickens. We thought that everyone had agreed to play nicely with each other. I wouldn’t have brought my unborn child to Pittsburgh if I’d known that the oni were about to attack. Peace only works if both sides agree to play fair. If one side attacks, the other must defend itself.”

The tub finished filling. She checked to be sure it wasn’t scalding hot. Leaving the dress to soak in the sink, she went to get Forest Moss.

“Humans have such tiny tubs,” he complained as she led him into the bathroom. “I wish to bathe properly with you.”

“Someday,” she promised.

Once he was warmed up, she got him out and dried off and into the bed. She showered longer than she should have. It felt wonderful to clean the day off of her.

The soak in the soapy cold water had done the trick. The dress was innocent of blood. She wrung it out in a towel and hung it up to dry.

She turned off all the lights, said her prayers, and crawled into the massive bed. The sheets had been freshly washed and were a higher thread count than she’d ever experienced. It felt wonderful to climb in.

The wise part of her whispered like an old crone that she should be leery of the room and its luxury as she wouldn’t want to leave it when it came time. She hugged the softest pillow and whispered firmly, “I will enjoy this now. Leaving is a problem for the future me.”

* * *

A knock at the door woke her late the next morning. She sat up and glanced about the room in confusion. Where was she? Oh, yes, the William Penn Hotel. Alita Chang had offered her family’s place as a refuge for the night. Her stomach roiled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since the sandwich on the train. If she didn’t eat soon, morning sickness would wreak havoc on her.

Forest Moss lay beside her, still deep asleep.

There was another knock at the door.

“Coming!” she called in English without thinking as she climbed from the bed—and realized that she was naked. She hurried to the bathroom to check her dress. It was still very cold and damp to the touch. The idea of pulling it on made her skin crawl.

A third knock, a little louder.

“Who is it?” she called out in Elvish since it was most likely one of the marines.

“Dagger!” came the reply. “We have fetched breakfast!”

Olivia didn’t really want to answer the door wrapped in a towel or sheet but if she didn’t eat, she’d be throwing up shortly. Besides, she’d seen all of the marines buck naked more times than she could count. Dagger wouldn’t see anything wrong with Olivia answering the door wrapped in a towel.

“Hold on.” Olivia took the biggest towel and wrapped it around her torso. It covered everything a sundress would but she still felt ashamed. The Ranch had stamped its will on her no matter how hard she fought it. She unlocked the door and forced herself not to use it as a shield against the marines.

Luckily, only Dagger was in the immediate vicinity, carrying a stack of wooden lunch boxes. For days the marines had been showing up with the bento-like containers with meals from the main encampment of the Fire Clan.

“You’ve been to the camp?” Olivia stepped back and waved Dagger in. She wanted to shut the door quickly. The marine was female, although she was a full foot taller than Olivia. For some reason their difference in height made Olivia feel younger than when she was around the male elves.

“Ya!” Dagger brushed past Olivia to carry the boxes to the room’s minimalist desk. Her redcoat uniform looked spotless. She had her sword at her side but she’d left her rifle someplace else. Today she had her long, brassy red hair up in a ponytail that swayed side to side as she walked.

Olivia shut the door, puzzling over how the marines had gotten to Oakland and back. They had ridden on the bus yesterday but it seemed unlikely that the marines figured out Pittsburgh’s complex bus system with that one trip. She hadn’t made a point of explaining the street signs indicating what bus picked up where.

Oh God, what if they’d just flagged down a passing bus and demanded to be taken to Oakland—ignoring the fact that the predetermined route had been in the opposite direction?

“How did you get out to Oakland and back?” Olivia said.

“We asked the little one, Alita, what we should do about food. She said that they are too low on food to give it out free. We told her if we could get to the Fire Clan camp, we could pick up food there, so she got a pickup truck to drive us out there.”

“Pickup truck” had been in English and said as if Dagger had carefully practiced the words. Olivia guessed that Alita had used her Resistance contacts to arrange the ride. She wasn’t surprised that the Changs couldn’t feed twenty-three unexpected guests in a few hours’ notice. The supermarkets were picked bare. The only places with reasonable supplies were the ones that dealt with local farms.

Dagger also had her diaper-changing bag filled with baby clothes and a large travel pack. The female undid the ties of the canvas bag to hold out a bundle of clothes. “I thought that we should go to the glass palace and gather your things.”

“Bless you!” Olivia took the light blue maternity dress with white flowers off the top and ducked into the bathroom to strip off her towel and pull on the clean dress. Only when she was safely dressed did she realize that Dagger truly meant all her things. She owned very little since Forest Moss blew up her house. She had picked up some clothes while shopping at Kaufmann’s with Jewel Tear but not much more than underwear, socks, and three maternity dresses with expanding waistlines.

While she was glad for the change of clothes, why had Dagger brought every single thing? Even the baby clothes? Did the female think Olivia was staying at the hotel forever?

“Thank you for the clothes,” Olivia started cautiously, “but why did you bring everything?”

“Glaive Smites the Sun asked where we had spent the night. I told him it was a human enclave run by Wind Clan Beholden.” Dagger repeated what Aiofe must have told the marines, changing “hotel” into “enclave.” The two probably were quite similar—Olivia wasn’t sure. This was the first time she had stayed at either one. “The holy one said that we should stay where we were. Oakland is still quite dangerous. The crystal palace is not safe enough since its defenses have not been completed, especially with Forest Moss unable to call the Spell Stones. The enclaves out there are overcrowded already, even the new one. The Wyverns will instruct the Stone Clan that they have ordered the expense, so Alita’s household will be paid for our stay.”

Dagger was grinning, as if all this was good news. Olivia supposed it was. It felt like a defeat. The Ranch had been a hard lesson that there was little in the way of charity—everything had a price.

Yet Glaive was thinking of the safety of them all. If they were attacked at the Phipps, the royal marines would put themselves between Olivia and the oni. It would be selfish of her to risk their lives when there was a safer option.

“You like it here?” Olivia guessed.

“Oh, yes, we all like it greatly!” Dagger’s smile grew wider. “It is very much like the Cathedral. There are so many interesting things to find. There is the television, which is very fun. The others are watching it now! The beds are nicer than our cots. There are more latrines than we are used to and they do not smell. Everything washes away. Human latrines are wonderful. The soaps are pleasant.”

Dagger sniffed the back of her hand and then held it out to Olivia. “Smell how nice it is. It is like fruit. Ox thought it was some kind of candy and tried to eat it. Aoife stopped him.”

They were like toddlers. Tall. Deadly. Toddlers.

“Prince True Flame will be sending some of the marines back to the East Coast,” Dagger said. “We will be staying with you. We’re very glad at that. But it made us think. When this war is done, we will go back to the barracks, never to return to the human city and that makes us sad.”

“Never?” Olivia said.

“This is Wind Clan territory with two undeveloped Stone Clan holdings. It is doubtful that any Fire Clan households would set up here. Even if they did, they would not have laedin such as we. Royal marines are born in the barracks and will die in the barracks. We do not know the life of a normal household. One would think we are mad dogs, frothing at the mouth.

“Before we came to Pittsburgh, we were happy with our lot. The barracks was all that we knew. We never even interacted with the laedin who lived within an enclave. Coming here, though, has shown us what we are missing.

“And there is this.” Dagger pulled the tiny onesie from the diaper bag. “If we do happen to spawn children among us, they would be fated to the barracks too. It is a circular trap.”

Olivia heart went out to the female. “If you want to stay, can’t you?”

“We need to be part of a household. Our elders would not allow us to leave the royal marines to drift in a city held by Wind Clan. In Fire Clan lands, yes, but not here.”

Olivia sensed where the conversation might be going. She and Forest Moss were a household of domana level with the money and land to make a go of it in the city. The marines might own their weapons and the clothes on their backs. It was possible, though, that the weapons belonged to the crown. Certainly when an American soldier was honorably discharged from the army, he didn’t keep his rifle. Even if the royal marines were allowed to stay in Pittsburgh, they might not be able to survive with winter setting in. Yes, there were houses to squat in, but the marines had no idea how to get them heated and the water running. They would be limited to food they could hunt—perhaps without actual weapons.

A small selfish part of her couldn’t ignore the fact that she and Forest Moss would benefit greatly by teaming up with the royal marines. The last few days, however, had taught her that the relationship wouldn’t be equal. Elves expected underlings to be completely loyal and obedient. She hated the idea of escaping the Ranch only to become the head of another zealot commune.

“Will you be our domi?” Dagger asked.

But she hated more the idea of refusing to help another person who was trapped in a situation that enslaved them to a future that they didn’t want. “Okay, I will.”



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