"Well, I wouldn't stop obeying, just stop having to- or, if that'd be too conspicuous, we could wait until a time when it'd be less so for the orders to be rescinded."

"And you can't be positive you'd like everything she made you do, 'not Thorn' doesn't mean 'altogether lovely'."

"Yeah, I know, but in the worst case I could gate myself away from her, though that'd tip my hand. I'm pretty sure taking a vassal of hers would be even less likely to work, though."

"You can't just gate yourself away from her."

"Why not? Earbud in my ear, orders rescinded, pick a moment when I'm being moved, stack a lot of gates on top of each other right in front of me, walk into them to one of my safe rooms."

"You can't close the gates from the mortal world! She can just throw bodies at you until the room is full and haul you out again."

"The terrain advantage is mine on this side, and with a lot more time to prepare traps and whatnot and sorcery not working at all here, I'm not sure she could even in principle win this. But anyway, this would be a last resort, and I'm just sorta throwing ideas out there, I'm not committed to anything."

"Kind magic still works, and she unlike Thorn or most court masters doesn't have to make do with what's handy, she has all the kind magic she wants. If a fallingstar has you you can't go through the gate in the first place - a stonecrusher's probably too tough to be affected by half the stuff you have -"

"If a fallingstar has me I wouldn't try in the first place, and what's a stonecrusher's kind magic?"

"Tough skin."

"Could probably develop way stronger stuff than I did to deal with one of those, with more time to prepare."

"Which you'll know it's safe to be confident in because?"

"Because I somehow got a stonecrusher to do science with me or because mortals have stuff that can go through several inches of solid steel or I won't but by then I'll have exhausted everything I can control and slash or ascertain."

"...you want a stonecrusher willing to let you shoot at them."

"That's one of the ways to make sure, yes. I don't expect it to work."

"Their toughness is magic, I don't know if getting through steel tells you anything."

"True. Are they also very strong?"

"Not especially, I don't think, but I've never met one."

"Then maybe once one comes through I can flood the room or make it a vacuum—that would cost a lot of money but wouldn't be in principle impossible..."

"...and you plan to survive this yourself how?"

"By not actually trying it in the presence of a stonecrusher, in this scenario I'd only go through the gate when sufficiently unsupervised so I could have enough of a headstart."

"I'm not sure you should expect that little supervision. Or to keep your earbuds - she might not expect earbuds but she would expect selective deafness, might get caught that way."

"You see why we might need a while to come up with a Queenproof plan. How would selective deafness do it?"

"Might check your ears."

"Oh, right. Hmm, we really should figure out a better way to transmit orders remotely like that..."