It takes a little while after the end of the party, but eventually the royal couple does leave the royal suite. Howard's first stop is the Skyvault; Marianne's first stop is the location of her daughter-in-law.

"Hello, Marianne," says Bella. She is in the new library with Carinna, alternating between reading and explaining to her eldest that if she's going to carry triangles around with her she will have to be responsible with them.

"Hello, Bella," says Marianne. "If you'd like to meet my husband, he's inspecting the Skyvault."

"Thank you," says Bella, and she closes her book, picks up Carinna, and goes out to the Skyvault.

Howard is wearing a shirt and trousers that look like they've been on the floor of someone's closet for approximately eleven years. Right now, his inspection of the skyvault seems to consist of tapping it lightly with his knuckles and listening to the sound.

"Hello," says Bella. "I'm your daughter-in-law, Bella."

She shakes hands with the one that isn't carrying his grandchild. "It's nice to meet you."

"Bella said you're my grandpa," says Carinna, regarding Howard suspiciously.

"Yep," says Howard. "That's me."

"Oh," says Carinna. She contemplates this information. "I already have one of those."

"You have two grandmas," Bella tells her, "and now you have two grandpas, too."

"Yeah," says Howard, "and I've got three grandchildren. Never thought I'd see the day," he laughs.

"It was somewhat magically challenging."

"I'll bet! Can't even imagine what kind of spell you used."

"I've got the notes around somewhere if you'd like a look! Kanim helped, too. It was mostly sorcery, and a touch of unicorn magic."

"Unicorn? Why unicorn?" says Howard, fascinated.

Glass laughs, makes a square, and calls her notebooks about the subject over; she sets Carinna down. She flips through the pages. "See, here, there was this gap, where the sorcery was perfectly happy to assemble the material and perfectly happy to make sure it went where it was going and grew there, but it wouldn't bridge the gap between the two, it couldn't cover it, without the unicorn part we spliced in this would basically amount to guaranteeing more traditional conception and obviously in our case that didn't help."

Howard snorts. "No kidding. Nice workaround. Who came up with it?"

"Me, but Kanim was the one who first noticed there was a gap, he was trying to fix it with elf magic but the unicorn idea turned out to be more elegant."

"Very nice," says Howard. "Now, did somebody say something about a flying suit of armour...?"

"Oh, yes, Tony made me one before I even married Sherlock, but she's still working on hers, she's trying to get it to fly without a cape attached and can't make it work."

He laughs. "That's my Tony. Never satisfied until she's done the impossible."

"She's made other things in the interim, too, and sometimes the girls go into the forge and poke hot scrap metal - they do the same thing with me and my workshop and hot glass, there are abstract little ornaments all over the place that they presented to us or to Marianne."

"Tony used to do the same thing," says Howard, laughing and shaking his head. "But she didn't start giving away the results until they did something."