"Yes. Hi. How are you?"

"Oh, I'm very pleased with myself. I finally cracked the problem of forcing open a gate, and thereby incidentally found out why sorcery doesn't work in the mortal realm."

"Really? How do you do it? Why doesn't it work there?"

"Yes really, I have tried and failed to describe it to several of the Queen's second-best sorcerers already, and sorcery does not work in the mortal realm because the harmonics there seem to consist entirely of an excruciating cacophony that even I couldn't cast a spell in."

"Huh. I wonder why they're like that."

He shrugs. "That I cannot answer."

"How long are you going to be around? My tree has room for you if you want." She did not have a spare bedroom in her previous tree architecture. This one has that, fast-grown for size and then coaxed for shape.

"At least a few days, I think. If I wouldn't be crowding you."

"I've got space. The map really helped me grow everything."

"Oh, good."

"I peeked through long enough to glimpse a grassy field. All the grass was cut very short."

"...Do mortals eat hay?"

"I really couldn't tell you. Maybe they feed it to their animals."

"Oh, right, animals. Thorn made me turn someone into a frog once."

"Happily I have never been called upon to turn anyone into things, but I know the theory."

"It's tricky. Well, for me, anyway. And I wish he'd at least made it a sparrow. It seems less sad to be a sparrow than a frog."

"The frog is more humiliating, though, which I suspect is part of the point."

"I suppose so."

"Not my area."

Nod, nod.

Shrug.

"I think I've made progress on thinking about that... phase... less, but not as much as I'd like."

"I have no advice to offer."

"I wasn't expecting any."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

The tasty hanging moss is tasty! Arcane approves.

Eeeeeee.

"You've been to the libraries, have you? Which do you like better?"

"I actually like the one that's farther away a little more, but the nearer one is fine for most purposes. How did you know I'd visited them both?"

"I went by them to check that they were indeed both still there, and I noticed they had both gathered knowledge about your place of origin that matched your experience."

"The first one took a day's worth of stories for membership. The second one I had to not only do that but also figure out a harmonic map of a place they didn't have in the files - manually, with fairy lights and guessing, it took me most of a week - but that's because their sorcery collection is better."

"Their sorcery collection's all right," Arcane acknowledges. "I've made a few contributions myself. The one in the north, though, have you looked at their fiction? They have some amazingly fantastical stories imagining the mortal realm. I might want copies of some of those to take home."

"I looked. None of them seem consistent enough that it makes sense for them to be about the actual mortal realm rather than some completely imaginary third universe, but the writing is occasionally good."

"I did say 'imagining' rather than 'describing'. The main problem I noticed in the one I picked up was that the author didn't seem to have figured out how transportation and architecture would actually work in a world where no one has wings or sorcery. They just sort of wrote around the problem. I liked it for its other qualities, though. Good characters."

"I don't think I saw that one. Wouldn't people just have to walk, if they couldn't fly? At least over short distances."

"Yes. But for example, the buildings often have multiple levels but no one is ever described moving from one level to another, nor is it explained how they manage it."

He shrugs. "If I had the job of designing architecture for wingless people I'm sure I could come up with something. Doing it without sorcery would be harder, of course."

"I know there are fairies who build houses without any sorcery. There was a painted tailwing near my tree who built her own house and she can't do a speck of useful magic."

"More difficult to do complicated things to compensate for the lack of wings that way, though."

"I'm probably less qualified to figure this out than most fairies, because I'm legitimately terrible at walking."

"Mm?"

"I trip. I'm not clumsy in the air particularly - for a leaflet anyway, we're hardly aerobaticists - but I trip even walking over a perfectly smooth surface."

"Yes. Is there some reason for it or is it just a personal quirk?"

"No reason. I've been like that since I started. Practice didn't smooth it out."

"I wonder if this problem is solvable with sorcery. I wonder that about most problems," he says, smiling wryly.

"I've thought about it. I haven't gotten anywhere. Unless it took mental sorcery you'd be likelier to come up with something than me, of course."

"I wouldn't be inclined to guess mental sorcery would help."

"I don't think so either."

"I don't have a good guess about what would help, but now I'm going to think about it."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"You're so nice."

"It's been said."

Giggle.

"I don't see why more people aren't. But I think sometimes they can't afford to be."

"It's not as though thinking about how to solve interesting problems with sorcery is any kind of hardship for me. I don't lose anything by being nice. What I really don't understand is people who could be nice just as easily but deliberately pass up the opportunity."

"Like who?"

"I wasn't thinking of any specific examples. But, oh, any good sorcerer who isn't being actively prevented will eventually come across opportunities to do someone a favour, and, hmm... it seems the calculation is not 'will the benefit to this person be worth my time and effort' but 'what am I going to get out of it and is it enough for me to bother'. Observably it often isn't. I cannot fathom the mindset."

"That's a different problem entirely. And if there's a solution it is beyond my means."

"I think the gate's probably still there, standing open, not far from my first tree. I think the mortal may be dead but I didn't see much of her after we were caught."

"Perhaps I'll go by and see about closing it. Having open gates lying around to be stumbled through does no one any good."

"Yeah."

"And it'll be good practice. Gates can be interestingly tricky."

"It took me weeks to learn to make one when that was nearly the only thing I did with my time."

"Interestingly tricky, like I said."

"And then it took a long time to settle, which I'm guessing isn't usually a problem you'd have if you made them."

"I tried to put it at a spot that would work well with it, since I had my pick, but no."

"Not having a harmonic sense sounds so inconvenient."

"It really is! Although I wonder if it wouldn't get overwhelming at times?"

"The harmonic noise in the mortal world was certainly... something. I wouldn't want to step through a gate without an extremely good reason."

"How good's your range? You drew me a map all the way to the edges of the paper without having to get up and move, so I assume it's broader than that indicates."

"Oh - suppose that you could see sound as well as hear it," he says. "The spot where you're standing is obviously the clearest, but you can tell what's going on nearby without much trouble; then as you get farther away, the nearer sounds obscure the farther ones until it's all just a muddle. It's somewhat like that. If I'm somewhere harmonically quiet I can see a long way, but the more noise there is, the harder it is to see past it. It has gotten considerably easier with practice, though, which is how I managed to pick out this tangle while sitting down. When I was one or two centuries old, I would've had to fly in circles for an hour to get it all, especially with that cliff in the way."

Nod nod. "Is it directional?"

He shakes his head.

"Interfered with by harmonically neutral solid objects?"

"Only slightly. I have a hard time drawing maps of underground harmonics, but mostly because I can't visually see through rock, so I have less information available for estimating distances and picking landmarks."

"Oh, that makes sense. But you can sense them through, say, trees. And I guess harmonically complex objects like my tree are about the same as things like naturally-occurring tangles and cliffs?"

"About the same, yes. They're often more interesting, though. A leaflet's tree has a certain kind of pattern, and a floating island has an entirely different one, and the Sapphire and Emerald Seas each have a very subtle pattern of their own that tangle up at the border."

Promise strokes her tree's bark. "I'm so glad I have my tree back."

"It's a very nice tree."

"Do you want to see the spare room?"

"Sure."

Promise shows him in. There is a small collection of books, carefully curated, on a shelf; she has accumulated a water basin and dishes and window glass and cushions for the benches around her eating nook. There is room to fly up to the next level, which is split into two rooms, each containing a bed and a nightstand and a chair; hers is obviously the one on the left and she's been using the spare to store her sewing, which she nips in to retrieve and stash in her own room.

"Very cozy," says Arcane. "As houses go, it's a legitimately pleasant one."

"The original was smaller, I didn't know how to rapid-grow things back then."

"You did very nicely with the design."

"Thanks."

"A nice start, all in all. I wonder what it'll look like in another century."

"In a century I'll have enough books to justify a third story library."

"I'm getting better at transcribing things by sorcery. I have good handwriting but writing out entire books is exhausting."

"Is it just a matter of practice or do you think better tricks would help? I like transcription spells."

"I don't know that they wouldn't help, certainly."

Arcane notices these things! Arcane appreciates these things. Arcane tells her so.

She is so successful at concealing her urge to eeeeeeeee. Arcane has no idea. He can tell she's pleased, though! It's nice that she's pleased.

And Promise resumes her business as usual.

"I'm - here about the library ad. I'm called Promise."

"I guess." What kind of nickname is Maria? "Who's the Princess? Where did she get a mortal?"

"Oh - the Princess is a mortal," she says. "Did you not know? I guess it wasn't in the ad. Anyway I can tell the Princess you're here to see her."

"Huh. Anyway, yes, I don't know that the job and I are right for each other but I thought I'd look into it."

The fairy with the odd nickname watches this exchange. She's kind of curious about sorcery, and it seems like this Promise person is better at it than the local sorcerers, or the Princess would be making them do it instead of paying Promise with two whole vassals.

(Secret giggles.)

(Secret giggles again.)

"What are you? I'm a leaflet," Promise says to "Maria".

"Oh. I don't know," she says. "I'm the only me I've met."

"You didn't start knowing?"

"No-o. Should I have?"

So she goes and gets Promise a chair and brings it back and puts it down for her. It is a Maria-sized chair; Promise is not quite Maria-sized but she's certainly closer to that than to a sunshine tepal.

"Hi, Maria. That's a strange nickname."

"You didn't pick your own?"

"He was a mortal and he had all mortal friends so he called me a mortal name so they wouldn't know I was a fairy."

"This... sounds like a story."

"I guess it is one. Do you want me to tell it?"

"If you don't mind. We're a little too far from where I live for me to commute, so I have to pass the time, but I don't mean to pry."

"She's his niece. He gave me to her when he got sick and was going to die. She asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to go back to the fairy realm and be free. She decided that she wanted to be a fairy princess instead of letting me go. But she doesn't rape me and she doesn't make me smile when I'm not happy, so she's not as bad as Jeff."

"That's good," she says. "I'm glad. The Princess isn't ever going to give me away, though."

"Why not? Why the creekpearls and not you?"

"Mm. Why do you call yourself Promise?"

"When I started I made a promise to myself."

"I bet you wouldn't tell me what it is," she says. And she smiles. "If I got to call myself something, I'd call myself Secret."

"Should I have started knowing what kind I am? I started knowing some things, but not that."

"I did. I don't think breeders do but you said you were the only one of you you've met."

"Breeders don't start knowing their names, either. They get those from other people. But fairies like us, those all start with names, right?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Why the creekpearls and not you," murmurs Promise again. "Do you have any vassals? Technically, I mean."

She shakes her head, grinning. "Not a one."

"Was your first master really careful? I mean, mortals, I've heard, go by their real names, all the time..."

"But you probably heard some mortal names ever."

"It would be really hard to go all that time without hearing any mortal names ever," she agrees. "They even put their names on the books they write, and little pictures of themselves in the back sometimes."

"She fed him."

"I couldn't tell you," she says, somewhat ambiguously.

"I almost wish you hadn't. If she dies I don't have to listen to her anymore. I don't hate her, but I don't want to be her vassal."

"I haven't de-aged her yet. And I only said I'd do it once, for the creekpearls. But I'm not sure she'd give you up."

"She wouldn't ever give me up on purpose."

"How much does she know about how vassalization works? She hasn't been here very long."

"I told her about it. Feeding mortals fairy food and feeding fairies mortal food and knowing people's names."

"Does she make you tell her things often?"

"Not unless she makes me go find something out for her."

Promise smiles to herself. "I'm not sure," she says, "if I can think of a safe way to do anything. And I might want to wait until the creekpearls are wherever creekpearls care to go. But I have a tree. It is my tree. And sometimes it grows berries."

"The problem is that there are a lot of sunshine tepals and even without the creekpearls there's a lot of other - stuff. But this probably isn't going to get less so over time."

"The Princess likes being a princess. She likes it a lot."

"I get that impression."

"Yeah."

"I think eventually she'll run into something she can't handle, but not necessarily soon, unless," says Promise, "it's me."

"I hope it's you. If it's not you it'll probably be somebody nasty."

"I don't think the Princess could handle the Queen. But the Queen is only - middling, in nastiness, I think. Overall. And she's more than an ocean away."

"I don't know much about the Queen. But I bet there's plenty of nasty between here and wherever she is."

"Lots."

"Yeah."

"...If the Princess goes to that continent, and she's about to tangle with a court run by a fairy called Thorn, maybe warn her. Nobody deserves that."

"Okay, I will."

"...Is there anything else you can tell me before I go find someplace to sleep?"

She thinks about it, and then says, "Good luck?"

Promise laughs, and then finds someplace comfy to pass the night where she thinks she'd hear a sunshine tepal approaching to sneak mortal food between her lips. In the morning she gets breakfast for herself and then loiters around the Princess. She continues in this manner for a while.

Secret sometimes loiters around the Princess too, and sometimes hangs around other places doing nothing in particular. There isn't really anything she can do that she wants to.

Secret is hanging around, as usual.

Promise says hello to the creekpearls. She says hello to Secret. She checks in with the Princess and has dinner and sleeps and wakes up and loiters around the Princess, and when the Princess goes off to do private Princess things, she looks for Secret.

"Hi, Promise."

And meanwhile Secret rummages furiously in Promise's bag, and comes up with a handful of berries, and eats them.

Well. Secret has been told to stop, so now she is stopped.

"I rescind," pants Promise, "ow, your orders, ow ow ow get off me -" This last is directed at the tepal, not Secret.

Secret grabs the tepal and throws him away too. Entirely of her own will. It's so nice to want to do things and then be able to.

"I bet! She's too heavy for me to carry alone but not by much."

Promise seizes one of the Princess's arms. She has to kick a tepal.

The Princess is not cooperative with this endeavor, but they manage to haul her. "I heard her telling some tepals to make sure everyone knew the new court borders. I don't think we'll be followed if we go beyond them," she says.

"We'll see."

"Okay," says Secret. "Now what?"

"Do you know where her gate is?"

"Yeah."

"The secret is: if you would be my vassal you're no one's vassal, ever, even if you were before. And I don't have a name."

"They pretty much aren't. She never thought something like this would happen."

"Do any of them like her? Besides Nap."

"The tepals like her better than they like their patriarch. She's nicer. But nobody's a huge fan."

"She's inconvenient to transport, I don't really want to kill her, she's dangerous to leave anywhere. I wish my friend were around. It's pretty unlikely that he turned up in the past day though."

"I don't really want to kill her either. But I don't want to let her go. Could you, I dunno, keep her for a while? Until your friend shows up? When is your friend gonna show up?"

"I can't keep her under control if she can't be vassalized, so she might hurt me or my tree or something, and it could be years before he visits again."

"You could just kill her," Secret says contemplatively.

"I don't want to kill her if I don't have to." Promise taps her foot. "If I knew exactly where the gate was, I could put one directly in front of it that led somewhere else in the mortal world, someplace she wouldn't want to go, and then she couldn't get into Fairyland, it would just be in one gate and out the other. You were there a while, can you think of somewhere good?"

"I didn't really go out of the house... you could put it to an ocean or something. There's oceans. Or you could put it to right back where she started, for that matter."

"Yeah, that works. And when my friend comes by he can close them both. Will you show me?"

"Sure."

"How long's a while?"

"A few days at most."

Shrug.

"Do you mind staying and taking shifts watching her? I'll keep her stuck in the ground and inaudible, but if Nap or somebody comes for her..."

"It's not like I have anything better to do."

"...And after that would you mind if I commanded you not to lie to me so I can check your secret and then maybe told you my name?"

"Depends," she says. "Are you gonna keep me and take over Fairyland and make everybody call you Princess?"

"Then sure."

"But not in front of the Princess, because if there's anything wrong with your information, if you forgot something or don't know everything about how it interacts with mortals, it would be bad."

Shrug. "Yeah."

"Do you want to sleep first or should I?"

"You can."

Promise makes sure that the Princess is securely fastened, thoroughly inaudible, and not about to die of anything. And then she curls up on the ground and goes to sleep and mutters words. (None of them form enforceable, let alone enforced, commands.)

Secret sits and watches the Princess.

The princess sobs and picks at the earth gripping her feet and mouths words. Eventually she sleeps.

As ways to stop being a fairy princess go, Secret feels like the Princess is probably experiencing one of the better ones.

Promise wakes up eventually. "Your turn."

Secret does appear to sleep very peacefully! She does not utter any nouns.

"The gate's settled. Help me shove her in?"

Oh for fuck's sake. Unavoidably, she starts for the gate.

"Ignore her," says Promise hastily, "get away from the gate."

"Thank you." She gets the fuck away from the gate.

Secret went pretty much in a straight line. She is not hard to find.

"If you stay away from there until my friend closes the gates you should be fine now," Promise says.

"Good."

"May I command you to tell me the truth now to double-check your secret?"

"Okay."

"Answer my next question honestly. What is your magic?"

"I don't and can't have a name that works to vassal me with, and anytime someone would become my vassal if I was a normal fairy, instead they stop being able to be anyone's vassal ever, even if they already were they're not anymore and can't be again."

Secret grins at her. "That's a pretty name."

"Thanks. But I'd prefer it if you called me Promise anyway. Where are you going to go?"

"I dunno! Somewhere. Around. Turns out being able to do whatever I want doesn't mean I know what that is."

"I have room in my tree if you'd like to stay there to start out while you think of something. You're a little tall for the layout but if you duck it should work."

"That sounds nice."

Promise takes off and leads the way.

Secret follows. Whee!

Promise's tree is pretty far away. When they get there, Promise shows the various amenities to Secret and then writes a letter to the Princess's former court, and asks one of her neighbors if he wouldn't mind dropping it off in exchange for a little sorcerous climate control, and he agrees and takes the letter away. Hopefully it will clarify the situation for all those confused fairies. Promise comes back to her tree to have some dinner and go to bed.

Secret is indeed a little tall for the tree's interior, but she manages. It is a nice tree. The tree is cute. She likes the tree.

She is welcome to live in it. Promise is very nice to her and doesn't tell her to do anything except in unenforced suggestion format.

Promise is so nice! Secret likes Promise. Secret volunteers her help with household tasks. She's a really good cook.

Cool! Promise doesn't like cooking that much so that's nice.

Secret likes cooking.

Then this is convenient. Although Promise does ask if Secret has any plans to find her own place.

"I don't know," she says. "I don't really know how. I haven't ever done anything except be somebody's vassal and live with you."

"The thing is, at some point Arcane is going to visit," says Promise. "And he's really smart, and he works for the Queen, and I think he'll know something is up if you're living here then, possibly before I can give him berries and rescind his no doubt very thorough Queenscourt orders."

"Oh," says Secret. "And then what? The Queen tries to steal me I guess."

"The Queen tries to neutralize you. You are impossibly dangerous to the Queen and she is much smarter than the mortals who had you before."

"Yeah. So I guess I should go be somewhere else."

"Just until Arcane comes here. Once I've got him out from under the Queen's orders he'll probably want to tell you his name. You don't have to go far, but you should probably go north and not have a house that's very visible from the air or he's more likely to notice you coming in. Maybe a sort of cabin in the dense forest twenty minutes from here?"

"Maybe. I dunno. Do I need a house?"

"If you'd rather sleep in the open you can do that but I find it convenient to have a home base."

"Mm. I'll go be in the dense forest, I guess."

"We can pick a place for me to leave you a note if I can't find you when Arcane visits."

"Okay."

So they select such a place and then Promise goes home alone to wait for her friend.

(Secret just kind of flops on the forest floor. She doesn't know what she wants to do, so she doesn't do anything. She doesn't have to do anything. That part's nice.)

Promise sometimes comes by to leave little parcels of food at the note spot with a note saying not yet. She wouldn't want Secret to think that she has been forgotten about altogether and lose track of her.

She checks the note spot once in a while, so once in a while she eats little parcels of food.

And Promise goes back to her normal routine (she peeks in on the wrecked court of the Princess; the court of sunshine tepals seems to have basically reassembled with the breeder patriarch at the top and most of the non-conspecifics off by themselves in some sort of unstable but not overtly abusive tangle of mutual vassalizations). And she waits for Arcane.

"I wasn't sure what you'd like, so I assembled most of my favourites except for the rulebook of an extremely complicated game that went out of fashion several centuries ago," he says, spooning up a spoonful of nuts and grains and berries. "If I was wrong and you would like the rulebook of an extremely complicated game that went out of fashion several centuries ago, I can bring you a transcription next time. What produced all that colourful dust? I've never seen anything like it."

"Oh, I thought I'd swept that up. I had a messy houseguest." She tries not to stare intently at his spoon. "What kind of game is it?"

"I found," says Promise, "a one-of-a-kind."

"Do go on."

"Under any circumstances where you would normally be her vassal, you are instead no one's vassal, forever. I told her my name. So I'm not yours anymore, but you didn't know that, so you were allowed to eat the haws."

"Clever," says Arcane. "Of course, you realize I am now in a somewhat awkward position."

"Yes, but I couldn't ask you first, obviously, and I don't think I'm especially good at keeping secrets from you, and if you'd known she existed, even if I didn't try it..."

"Yes. Hmm. I harbour no particular ambition to overthrow the Queen, but between that and handing her you and your friend to be thoroughly neutralized, overthrowing the Queen does seem like the winning option."

"Thank you," says Promise dryly.

"You're welcome."

"She was living here for a while but she moved out so as not to give the game away, but I have a place to leave notes for her. I can go put one down now and she'll be here in at most a few days and you can tell her your name and you'll be rid of me and the Queen and anybody else you've picked up as a master along the way."

"That certainly sounds like the next step. And we have another hundred and forty days to decide on the step after that."

"Which might be almost enough time to come up with an exhaustive plan for three fairies to overthrow the Queen."

"And if it isn't, well, I have a decent chance of pretending to still be appropriately vassalized for another ten years if I go back. I wouldn't want that to be the first resort, though."

"I do apologize for putting you on the spot there."

"Under the circumstances, there wasn't really a better option."

"Yeah, even if I vacated my tree and moved you'd come looking for me, that was the deal."

"Yes. And I certainly would have found you eventually. And you would have had a harder time feeding me dinner."

"Yes. Do you have a gate you want closed?"

"Two, but one of them I made myself. Secret's last master was unvassalizable and mortal. I didn't want to kill her and couldn't expect to keep her under control for long enough for you to arrive and I can't close her gate, so I made a gate facing the one she used to get here so she couldn't come back that goes to the middle of a mortal world ocean."

"I can close those at some convenient time, then."

"They're a long flight. Tomorrow morning maybe."

"How long a flight at your speed?"

"Eight hours, maybe? But it's not very visible from the air, I'm not sure I could catch it fast-flying."

"It's a pair of open gates to the mortal realm. I don't think I'll have much trouble noticing it if I know more or less where to look."

"Oh, that's true. We could go now, then."

"Suits me."

Out the tree they go, and she takes his hand and points.

Zoom.

Nod, nod.

He studies the gates. It's easy enough to tell which is which. And closing gates isn't too difficult, although it's a little more time-consuming than he'd like. Lack of practice. Maybe he should keep a sharper eye out for stray gates in his travels.

When he indicates that he has closed the gate that was already there, Promise shuts hers, and then starts scattering the rocks she left.

"I'd want to know more about how the whole court is structured before formulating a plan. You probably have a lot of the major names yourself, right?"

"Yes. I don't tend to forget a name once I'm told it, even a useless one like Alianor. I've been around long enough to accumulate quite a few."

"But I assume there are some contingencies against attack that don't require active intervention, and while presumably the other sorcerers can't beat you on quality they have us very much outnumbered, and there might be some actual loyalty to the Queen in there that will persist even if they're freed via Secret - so insofar as that's done we might want to be careful - and I can command Secret but I'd soonest avoid it beyond rescinding orders she picks up from other people as needed."

"What is Secret's opinion on overthrowing the Queen?"

"She's... It's sort of hard to get a clear picture of what she wants. I think her development went a little strange because she was caught by her first master literally right after she started. So detailed plans will have to wait for sussing out her level of voluntary involvement."

"That sounds unfortunate."

"Yeah. We can introduce you to her after she finds the note and go from there."

"Yes. How does she originate all the colourful dust, by the way?"

"Her wings sort of constantly disintegrate and re-form. It looks really uncomfortable but she never seems bothered, she even leans on things."

"That's... odd. But, well, one-of-a-kinds."

"Yeah. Do you know of any besides Secret and the Queen?"

"Certainly. One of my first assignments with the Queenscourt was to catch one. This was a long time ago, and she'd been eluding capture for longer than that - she could step into an ocean, disappear, and step out of the other side an instant later. Or the same with a lake or a river or a bank of clouds. Finding her was legitimately difficult."

"How'd you do it?"

"I invented fast-flight. And traced every rumour I could find, and snuck up on her invisibly, and she still got away from me twice before I managed to come close enough to say 'Hold' before she vanished. Now she serves the Queen as a decorative fountain in one of the prettier courts. I'm sure she does not have any personal loyalty to speak of, although I'm not sure she doesn't still resent me for catching her. She went by 'Nuisance' for several centuries afterward; now it's 'Shimmer'."

"How many of the Queen's vassals did you personally catch? This might be an obstacle if some of them are unclear on the concept and resent you personally."

"...some," he admits. "Many, even. All the difficult cases since I joined the Queenscourt. Sometimes with help, but I'm somewhat uniquely qualified to find people who don't want to be found."

"Yeah. Well, presumably those are among the ones you have names for, we don't have to introduce them to Secret right away if they'd foul everything up blaming you for things you were under orders about."

"Yes. So. Time to chart the structure of the Queenscourt?"

"Okay. So Cirrus is not only a problem for the plan but expressly designed, in terms of what constraints he operates under and probably in his personal feelings about it too, to be a problem for plans of this nature. If we can't figure out how to crack that then it might be better to call the rest of your leave a good head start."