Harbinger, p.1
Harbinger, page 1
Contents
1: Blackbird singing in the dead of night
2: Team Mischief
3: Rock-a-bye Baby, on the Treetops: Refrain
4: William Freaking Penn
5: Olive Branch Casting Shade
6: Monsters in Our Midst
7: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
8: Hopping Down the Bunny Trail
9: Brace for Impact
10: Are You My Mother?
11: Be Our Guest
12: The Redcoats
13: Team Mischief! Go!
14: Once More With Feeling
15: Snake Hunt
16: Black Willow Stomp
17: Toad Hall
18: Olly Olly Oxen Free!
19: Signed, Sealed, and Delivered
20: I am a being capable of doing terrible things. Run.
21: Knickknack Paddywhack Give a Dog a Bone
22: Grandview
23: A Snake in the Grass
24: Hide
25: Oh, the Horrors
26: Trigger the Trap
27: The Tinker Domi Computing and Research Center
Harbinger – eARC
Wen Spencer
Look for the final version on April 5, 2022
Advance Reader Copy
Unproofed
Baen
Harbinger
Wen Spencer
The Long-Awaited New Entry in Wen Spencer’s Popular Tinker Series
The war against the oni heats to a flashpoint even as Tinker learns that the enemy has a dangerous new weapon, the nactka. What’s more, the Stone Clan has sent its most famous warlords, the Harbingers, to take control of the allied war effort. Are these elves friends or foes? Tinker’s newfound baby siblings are up for grabs. The babies, though, are wood sprites and aren’t going to take things lying down. Team Mischief go!
BAEN BOOKS
by
WEN SPENCER
Wolf Who Rules
Endless Blue
Eight Million Gods
Wood Sprites
The Black Wolves of Boston
The Elfhome Series
Elfhome
Project Elfhome
Tinker
Harbinger
To purchase any of these titles in e-book form, please go to www.baen.com.
Harbinger
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Wen Spencer
All rights reserved.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2601-8
Cover art by Dominic Harman
First printing, April 2022
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: [TK]
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic Version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
This book is dedicated to my wonderful patrons.
It is through their support that I am able to do what I do.
Special thanks to
Marti Garner
Roger A. Josephson
Andrew Riley Prest
Torsten Steinert
And
Andrew Hart
Richard Jamison
Anders Ljungquist
Kathy Brann
Michael Carter
Robert Williamson
And an Extra-Special Thank-You to
Ellen McMicking
1: Blackbird singing in the dead of night
“What? Wait!” Tinker cried, cutting off the flow of Jin’s explanation. She’d been wakened up in the middle of the night to be told that the tengu’s spiritual leader needed to speak with her immediately. The household staff had set out a formal tea in the dining hall and made themselves scarce. They were probably lurking in the deep shadows nearby, just in case she would need more dainty sandwiches or little fruit tarts or another pot of strong tea.
Tinker suspected that the shadows also held Jin’s bodyguards. She knew from experience the tengu could come and go like ghosts despite their massive wings. It would explain why her entire Hand was present for the meeting. The five holy sekasha warriors were fully dressed, heavily armed, and standing guard at her back as if they hadn’t been asleep just minutes before.
Lightning flickered; it lit up the garden outside the dining hall’s windows. The thunder made Tinker jump a little. Was Windwolf fighting for his life someplace? Most of the domana elves in Pittsburgh were gathered at the far eastern edge of the Rim; they planned on fighting the oni in the morning. She hadn’t felt Windwolf call the Wind Clan Spell Stones to cast lightning. Nor could she sense anyone using Fire Clan or Stone Clan esva. None of the domana elves were fighting. The lightning was normal electrical discharge and nothing else. Rain started to drum on the dining hall’s roof. It was an oddly comforting sound.
“I have what?” Tinker was sure this conversation would make sense if it weren’t some ungodly hour in the middle of the night.
“Twin siblings.” Jin looked exhausted. Since she’d seen him late in the evening, he must have flown to his village and back. “Six of them.”
Tinker squinted at him. Maybe she was still asleep. This could be a weird dream. She had had a lot of those lately. “You’reyou’re kidding. Right?”
“No, I’m not.” His great black wings rustled with his nervousness. “I know that technically that they belong to Esme Shanske, but Gracie Wong would love to adopt Leo’s—”
“Back up. Back up,” Tinker said. “I have what?”
Jin sighed. “Twin siblings. Six of them.”
“How can I have six twin siblings? Wouldn’t they be six-something—sextuplets?” No, that sounded like a porn video. “No, wait, if I have six siblings then we would be seven. Seven…seven…seven…”
The conversation was in English, so only Stormsong was following her muttering. The tall warrior leaned over Tinker’s shoulder to pour her more tea. “Septuplets, domi.”
“Are you sure?” Tinker spooned several teaspoons of honey into the tea before gulping it. “September is the ninth month.”
“It was the seventh month, but it changed to the ninth when the Gregorian calendar added…” Jin sighed again and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “It’s a naming convention. I believe it’s because all of the eggs are fertilized at the same time. If all the resulting embryos were implanted immediately in one woman, the resulting children would be twins. The term ‘twin’ stays true to that concept even if the embryos are used at different times by different women.”
He was talking about how Tinker had been conceived in vitro ten years after her father died. She vaguely knew the mechanics; Lain had explained it to her when she was very young. She’d alarmed Lain by talking about having a brother who lived far away. (Only after Lain went through all the biology had Tinker confessed that she confused “brother” with “cousin.” She had meant Oilcan, who lived in Boston at the time.) Lain had kept referring to possible siblings as “theoretical” until Tinker thought that the word meant “imaginary” because Lain indicated that it was quite impossible for such siblings to exist.
But Jin wouldn’t wake Tinker up in the middle of the night for imaginary siblings. Since Stormsong was quietly translating the conversation to the others of her Hand, Tinker switched to Elvish.
“Wasn’t all that stuff—the genetic material—stored at some place in New York City?” She had found the paperwork recently while digging through her grandfather’s belongings.
“It was,” Jin said slowly and his wings rustled. “All of the stored fertilized eggs have been used. To make children. Many children.”
“Six of them?” Tinker said.
“As far as I know.”
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with the information. “Two more and we would have had a baseball team.”
“Domi.” Pony murmured. “Since cousin could tap the Stone Clan Spell Stones even prior to being spell-worked, we need to know where these children are located.”
Tinker wasn’t sure if he meant “we” as in her Hand or the entire sekasha-caste whose job was to keep tabs on the domana-caste. It made suddenly clear why Jin was there, in the middle of the night, to report the news. She’d been thinking that this could have been handled by a phone call in the morning. To the elves, her siblings were potential walking weapons.
Jin was waiting for her to ask. His people were safe only because he promised to be her loyal servant. She was learning that everyone else understood that they had to wait for her to realize what the hell was going on and give the appropriate order.
“Where exactly are these…” Tinker paused as she realized that Jin was implying that her siblings weren’t adults. “Did you say children?”
“Technically two are children, and the other four are about to be newborns. They are at Haven.”
The tengu village was someplace deep in the virgin forest, in a location secret even to her. The adults kept travel from Pittsburgh to where their children were hidden to the minimum, going so far as staying at safe houses within the city instead of going home. Jin apparently returned to Haven to discover he’d been invaded by an army of little Dufaes.
“T hat is not all,” Jin added.
“This gets worse?” Tinker cried.
“In a manner of speaking—possibly. There is a third dragon in Pittsburgh.”
Okay, a dragon was not a phone call in the morning.
“Malice-size?” She spread her hands wide as possible to indicate the massive dragon that Jin helped her kill a few weeks earlier. The monster had been the size of a house. “Or Impatience?”
The second dragon was “small” only in scale to Malice. They were still talking large as a pickup truck.
Jin put his hands together so that they nearly touched. “Her name is Joy. She has claimed all your siblings as her Chosen. We cannot do anything with the children without her approval. She is very protective.”
Tinker snorted. “How protective can a pocket-size dragon get?”
“Very. She can and will summon help. We would be facing Impatience and most likely Providence against any attempts to go against her wishes.”
Dragon tag-team fighting. Okay, that was a very scary thought. Impatience nearly killed Tinker and her Hand when they first met. He had a mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth and impenetrable magical shields all backed with a genius that intimidated even her. Providence was dead and not-dead in a way that made her brain hurt. He was the guardian spirit of the tengu and they worshipped him as a god. It meant that in addition to fighting something that couldn’t be “killed,” it could push the tengu’s loyally to her to a breaking point. The elves considered the tengu a valuable ally because of Jin’s alliance with Tinker. Otherwise, the elves would have wiped out the tengu—adults and children alike.
What Joy wants, Joy gets. Check. That’s assuming what Little Miss Pocket Dragon wanted was within reason.
Gracie Wong had been married to Tinker’s father and loved him deeply. There was little wonder that she would want to adopt Leo’s babies…
“Wait,” Tinker said again as she stumbled over another weird turn of phrase. “About to be newborn?”
“Yes, in a few months.” Jin’s wings rustled loudly. “Forgiveness, domi.” He murmured the command to dispel his wings and they vanished from his back. The dining room suddenly seemed a lot less crowded.
“So there’s really two kids and a very pregnant woman about to pop? Or are we talking four women about to have babies? What the hell? Is someone on Earth giving out Dufae kids like lottery tickets?”
“It’s—” Jin paused for a minute, obviously trying to find a safe, sane explanation. Considering Tinker’s summer to date, there might not be one. Single-handedly, she’d managed to accidently change her species, rip a hole in the fabric of realty, kidnap a major USA city, fall off the planet, crash a spaceship into Turtle Creek, kill a dragon…
Tinker was sure there was more but she was losing track of the weirdness. Not a good sign.
“It’s…it’s complicated,” Jin finally understated. “Maybe I should back up.” He paused again for several moments, mouth open, eyes flicking back and forth as he tried to find a safe place to start. “There are two girls, Louise and Jillian Mayer. They are twins, and very much like you.”
What did that mean? Short? Dark skin? Genius? Snarky? All of the above?
“Their father worked at the clinic where Leo’s sperm was stored,” Jin said. “Esme used Leo’s sperm to fertilize a dozen or so of her eggs. Some number of the fertilized eggs were used to create you and the rest were put into storage. Nine years ago, Mr. Mayer took some of the frozen embryos and implanted them into his wife. They raised your sisters as their natural-born children and I gather they were very good parents.”
“Were?” Tinker latched onto the word. Adoption usually happened after parents died. “Are they dead?”
“Yes. I’m not clear how they were killed but it was recent. After that, your grandmother gained custody of them.”
“My grandmother? I don’t have a grandmother. I had a grandfather. Two, if you count Forge, but he’s more like a great-great-great-something.” She’d made peace with her elf ancestor that afternoon, though he was still on probation with her for what he’d done to Oilcan. Forge was going to be ecstatic at the news that he had six more grandkids. If they were orphans, he’d probably want custody of them. She wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly, it would make the sekasha happy if the babies were with a domana, but her siblings were still human. She would prefer that they stay that way. No more of this changing species without warning.
“Esme’s mother,” Jin stated. When she looked at him confused, he expanded the statement with, “Esme’s mother is your grandmother. Anna Desmarais.”
“Desmarais? Shouldn’t it be Shanske?” Tinker tried to remember if Lain ever even talked about her family. Lain talked about Esme in terms of “my sister, the astronaut” but never anything else. Wait, there been something recently about Empire of Evil and Flying Monkeys. That didn’t sound good.
“Your grandmother remarried after Esme’s father was killed. I didn’t actually talk to the twins; they were asleep and apparently very emotionally fragile after everything they’ve been through. I thought you should be told immediately. I didn’t want to blindside you with any of this.”
“This didn’t count as being blindsided?” Tinker asked.
“This is still just between us—and Joy—and the other dragons. I believe that the Stone Clan might want to claim the children. And there is Esme to be considered. I owe your mother a great deal; without her intervention none of this could be possible. You would not have been born. Everyone on my ship would have been lost. My people would still be enslaved. Biologically, your siblings are her offspring. She did, however, abandon her genetic material when she left Earth. The children were carried by other women. Nor is Esme in a situation where she could take on the responsibility of raising six children, four of which are newborn.”
“Yyyeeeaaah.” Tinker wasn’t even sure where Esme was living since Tinker planted her mother’s spaceship into Turtle Creek. She knew Esme had spent several days in the hospital. Tinker had last seen Esme when they’d dropped her at Lain’s. No, wait, the sisters had come together to Poppymeadows—later—sometime. Tinker had totally lost track of time. It had been a super-condensed-weird summer and not yet officially over.
Esme and six kids in Lain’s house? With all those deadly plants? Tinker had spent the first two years of her life on a literal leash to keep her from toddling into the reach of the various man-eating plants. And there was a good reason why she hadn’t moved in with Lain when her grandfather died. Lain was the type of person who loved kids as long as she could send them home. Tinker had lived with Lain the month it took Tinker’s grandfather to fetch Oilcan from Boston after his mother was killed. Her stay degraded into a battle of wills that only stopped before open warfare because her grandfather had returned.
Esme had been distraught when she thought her “son” had been killed. She’d been overjoyed when she found out that Tinker was her daughter.
“Esme is capable of committing to crazy, impossible plans,” Tinker said. “She might want to try.”
“Domi,” Pony murmured. “By our laws, a child belongs foremost to its mother, but then to its clan. Who exactly qualifies as the children’s mother might be debated, since what your mother has done has never been tried among our people. It means that Stone Clan has the strongest claim, lacking a birth mother. Sunder is currently head of Stone Clan in the Westernlands.”
Tinker growled in frustration. “The Dufae stopped being Stone Clan generations ago. I have always considered myself as Wind Clan.”
“It was your right as an adult to choose a clan, but children are not considered mature enough to decide this.”
