"You embrace being a weapon?"

"I take joy in my strength." He high-kicked and locked into place, balanced on one foot. "And I like to fight."

He grinned, and suddenly he didn't seem like the mild Pony she knew, but someone wilder, and fiercer, more aptly named Stormhorse. She tried to study him clinically, taking note only of his injuries. His bruises looked days old, mottled purple and faded yellow.

"How do you feel?"

"Whole, except for my hand." He held it out for her inspection. The middle and ring fingers were still swollen and stiff. He flexed them carefully, wincing. "It will be another day or two before I'll be able to hold a sword, perhaps as much as four before I can strike with this hand without fear of causing more pain to myself than my opponent."

"Good. We have to get out of here."

"Out?"

"We need to escape."

Pony looked at her with utter surprise. "But you gave your word."

Tinker winced: She had suspected that this was how the conversation would go, but she hated to have her fears confirmed. "Pony, these are bad, nasty people with not a fleck of honor among them."

"In giving your word, it is only your honor that matters, not the receiver. If you think the person is not worth your honor, you don't extend it."

She checked the impulse to stick her tongue out at him. "Would you rather I break my word or let these monsters take over our world?"

"I would rather die than be the reason you broke your word."

Elves! "This is not about you, this is about them doing whatever they could to break me."

"That's because you are the pivot."

"Yeah, yeah, so everyone keeps reminding me." But, actually, she had kind of forgotten all that between Sparrow's betrayal, Chiyo's breeding, and Pony's capture. Tinker thought she understood the mess until Sparrow waltzed in and clued the oni. How did their knowledge and her promise change things? The seer had said that it was only a matter of time before the oni opened a gate—certainly if Tinker refused to cooperate, they could bide their time; they were immortal and humans made advances in technology daily. That equation had a zero sum—which was why she was cooperating until she could escape. But the seer also indicated that they could only defeat the oni by choosing when the gate was opened, and indicated that the pivot picked the time. If she was in the oni's control, did it mean that the oni controlled the choice?

She decided to bounce her questions off of Pony, who probably had more experience in these seer-type of things. "Sparrow told the oni that the only way to bind me was with ties of my own making…"

"Sparrow?"

Oops, she forgot Pony didn't know that little piece of nastiness. "She's working with them. They had me fooled into thinking I was on Onihida, but I figured it out and got away last night. Sparrow recaptured me and brought me back to them."

Pony darkened with anger, and he stalked about the room as if looking for something to vent his rage on. He growled out Elvish she didn't recognize, but they sounded like obscenities.

"Pony, I'm trying to figure out what the seer meant."

"Forgiveness." He fell silent, but he continued to stalk about the room.

"Do you know if the seer said anything more about me being the pivot?"

"She did not, although closely pressed by all. 'Bind the pivot, was all she said. 'If the pivot be true, then the battle can be won. If the pivot proves false, all will be lost. »

Tinker tried to wrap her mind around it, but Sparrow's translation was making it difficult. "Sparrow told the oni that they'll only be able to hold me with promises freely given. Has the oni won merely by making me promise? Is it just the words, or…"

"Sparrow often hears what she wants to hear," Pony interrupted her. "The seer isn't saying that getting you to make promises will win the battle. The seer said 'if the pivot be true which means you must keep all your promises, no matter to whom."

"Oh, you must be kidding."

"No."

"I can't make them a gate."

"You must. You promised."

"Th-that doesn't follow logic," Tinker protested.

"Seeing into the future is like having a gleaming thread appear in the darkness. You must walk that path, no matter how treacherous, to reach the foreseen outcome. If you step off it, you're lost from sight, and both you and your goal become unknown again."

"So, although it flies into the face of everything sensible, the only way to stop the oni… is to do… what they want."

"What they forced you to promise."

She shook her head. No. It didn't make any more sense out loud or stood on its head. "What if being 'true, is just 'loyal'? I can't be 'loyal' to the elves if I'm making a gate for the oni."

"No. You're confusing words. Those don't mean the same thing."

She winced. "They're synonyms, right? Close to the same meaning."

"True only means that one keeps their word of honor. It is a word applied to head of households and clan leaders as they interact with equals or enemies."

If she got out of this, she had to smack Tooloo a good one. Obviously when the half-elf taught her Elvish, any approximate English word would work, to hell with confusion that other meanings of the English word might cause.

"Domi, you swore not only on your honor but on the honor of your house. For an elf, there is no stronger oath."

Yeah, that was why she used it. She wanted to scream. What an irrational mess. "I'm not really an elf! I'm a human with funny ears. I didn't know what Windwolf intended with the spell. I'm not even sure why Windwolf made me this way. If you love someone, don't you take them as they are?"

"Domi, I am young for an elf, but I am over a hundred. I grew up in a large city in the Easternlands. Many elves live there, but in a hundred years, one meets most of them. And in all that time, I have never met anyone like you. Not a single person, having met you, has questioned Windwolf's desire to prolong your life. You blaze like a star. You don't seem to see that, but then you surround yourself with people nearly as bright as yourself. You raise people up to your heights. Even if Windwolf did not love you, he would not want to see your brilliance put out."

She burned in embarrassment. "Me? Blaze?"

"From your wit to your confidence to your compassion, you are an amazing person."

"Windwolf barely knew me when he proposed."

"After living so many years, if you're wise, you learn your own heart. You know when you meet someone that 'this person I can be friends with, or 'this person I can build a friendship with—it will be difficult work—but it may be very sound, or 'this person I will never be friends with. There are times, though, where it seems like magic; you look at a person and your soul opens up and recognizes a true love. Windwolf looked at you and believed you are one he could live forever with. And in some ways, I am the same."

She looked at him. "What?"

He dropped to one knee and took her hand. "Domi, do you think I would pledge my life to you, be willing to die for you, if I did not in some way, love you?"

"You love me?" she repeated, stunned.

"You are my domi. And in all ways, you have proved the worth of my decision. You have protected me, as I have protected you. A holding is like a marriage, where trust runs deep. And in only a few days, I knew that to be beholden to you would be a good thing."

That threw her into a whirlwind of emotions, but the door opened behind Pony, saving her from discovering what dangerous thing might arise from that chaos. A gale force of alarm blasted through her, scouring away everything else.

There was an entire squad of oni warriors with Riki to escort her and Pony back to the workshop. Ironwood timbers sat stacked just inside the side door, which was padlocked shut again. A crew of humans sat waiting. They were Asians in blue jeans, T-shirts, and work boots.