"It's using the same format as a previous version, and once a book is in electronic format it's pretty easy to convert to other ones. I'm not sure how old e-readers in general are—I think there might've been prototypes twenty years ago, but this is the first one whose screen doesn't emit light, if I'm not mistaken."

"...is it hard to make things not emit light?"

"It is—or was—hard to make text appear on a screen in any way that didn't involve emitting letter-shaped lights, more-or-less."

"Huh."

"I'm not sure how the tech works on this thing but it's called 'electronic ink.' And anyway, I'm not sure how often the Queen is curious about mortals but given she's thousands of years old, if it's any less often than once every fifty years we're probably okay. ...although we had already invented the nuclear bomb fifty years ago."

"What's that do?"

"Basically eradicates all matter within a sphere with a diameter of a few—I think—kilometres around impact site, and makes the area inhospitable for a while."

"...I'm not sure we'd know if she had that. Doesn't seem like her style."

"It's very unlikely she'd be able to get her hands on that, it's incredibly difficult and expensive to make and to a first approximation only governments can."

"...you don't think she could get her hands on a government if she wanted it?"

"Oh she could, what I think is that she in fact has not."

"You think it'd be obvious from the Fairyland side or from the mortal world side?"

"I think it'd be obvious from some side, although that also depends on which government she took. Also I don't know enough about her disposition but it seems like she doesn't care about having this kind of power in the mortal world."

"Yeah, I suppose it would be uncharacteristically discreet of her to have a foothold and not leverage it."

"Yeah, and I mean, even if she didn't want to use nuclear weapons, there's a lot we've developed that's very useful to further secure her current position, like the things we used to take Thorn's court. If nothing else, the United States' government probably has newer, better versions of all of it."

"Well, she could have it and just not make it obvious she does, to keep the advantage of surprise if she ever needs it."

"Which would be quite terrible, and I'm not sure anyone at all stands a chance in that case."

"Yep."

"I still think that's kinda unlikely, though. Doesn't sound like what little I know of her style."

"Mine either, but she could have easily cultivated a misleading image."

"So either we plan assuming she doesn't have access to this tech, or we try to—somehow—suss this out first."

"Yeah."

"...so, should we do that? We've—I've—been putting it off, but I don't really have, like, a timeline. Well, vague feelings towards learning how to do healing sorcery..."

"It's useful. Especially if you might want to suddenly be deaf."

"Yeah I might want to learn how to do that as well, do I get it as a free bonus when I learn healing?"