"I have literally never berried anyone except Secret, so I don't know what the success rate is for me in particular, but from reading I think the understanding is that a relatively weak claim will be less likely to hold if there's a lot of competing ones. Which suggests that the Queen should be particularly vulnerable, especially since she has no reason to suspect that there's any fairy food in the whole realm that could touch her."

"Yes. And if you successfully berry the Queen, you really don't need to get anyone else. Given her starting assumptions it's also possible I could get your berries to her without suborning Hazelnut, but I would be worried that the mere fact that I was taking any interest in what the Queen ate would itself be suspicious."

"Probably very. Also, I expect it would be very hard to start giving the Queen orders without getting clobbered, turned into a slug, and stored in a spike-lined box made of salt for eternity."

"Hard, but not impossible."

"If everybody got the berries I could issue a mass monosyllabic order. Nobody goes around with their eardrums habitually destroyed, do they?"

"No."

"That's convenient then. So, Secreting and suborning Hazelnut for mass haw distribution: strong contender." Promise writes this down.

"I'm sure it's not the only approach, just the first one. I might also point out that while I did not design and implement all of the sorcerous traps in the Queenspalace, I had a hand in most of them and I expect there are few if any that I don't know about at all."

"We should have a list of those, especially if there any that you know about and can't disable."

"It'll take me longer to write than a chart of the court, but yes, certainly."

"We have awhile. Not that long, but awhile, and figuring out plans in any detail should probably wait until Secret's here to weigh in."

"Yes."

"Whereas Secret knows nothing about the sorcerous traps. So maybe listing those should be next. Those and any relevant fairy-kind magics. Mine isn't going to come into play, I'm just immune to name-learning sorcery, I don't think anyone knows me well enough to even try."

"You know mine. Shimmer, if we can get her and she seems useful, can control water as well as travel through it. How well-versed in the various kinds are you - if I said that, for example, Hazelnut is a nutbrown...?"

"They're telekinetic, right? I'm not a kinds scholar but I know the hundred or so most common breeders and spontaneous kinds."

"Spellwhip might be very inconvenient. Less so than he would be if you weren't Secreted..." She draws a little star next to his nickname on the chart. "But he'll be able to mobilize everybody fast if he cottons on. How quickly can Veracity teleport? Over medium distances how does this compare to fast-flight?"

"Not very fast, and she can't keep it up indefinitely. She might be a tenth as fast as fast-flight. Cirrus is a rainbowsprite - perfect memory; Flay is a fallingstar - it is impossible to get a solid object, people included, out of a fallingstar's hand until they give it up or it ceases to be a solid object."

Promise shudders. "I know what fallingstars do."

"Shimmer can escape them if she has access to enough water; I tested it once for curiosity's sake."

Promise makes a note of that.

"All four of the decoy queens are lithes. They can run very fast. It isn't tremendously useful, but I've caught them out that way once or twice; even prevented from running at more-than-royal speeds, they move differently sometimes."

"Oh, I was assuming they had harmonic tells."

"That too. But you have a chance of learning to notice how lithes move, and you don't have a chance of learning to distinguish the Queen's harmonic properties from her duplicates'."

Nod nod.