"...Harp. Harp. Do I know Harp... Oh, Harp. She's not a sorcerer herself. She could come check, but if she stayed behind to begin with that's probably going to be her plan for the next eight days. Just to be safe I'll open it up again, conceal myself, go through, and put a gate behind the waterfall to the - burnlands, is that what they're called - it'll look like I made it unstable or something unless they haul out Blossom personally, it'll take them an extra little while to figure out what's going on -" She goes on muttering to herself, and performs various sorcerous rituals, briefly leaving the world and then coming back.

"Good idea. So now they won't walk in on us and we still have the full eight days to save the world from the army of sorcerers some of whom can give magically enforced commands to us personally. Excellent."

"Yes. For at least that long can we figure out some way to - act in good faith? I am not Thorn, I don't like borrowing his tricks, you've gotten out from under me once, can we just - not? You've gone and attracted bigger problems than our power struggle."

"Good. We are in an asymmetrical position here in the long term because you fed me and when you're winning you can make me forget your name - I'm not even going to take it again right now because it would be a distraction - first question: did you indicate to anyone anything they could use to conclude about the forgetting or the deafness?"

"Second question: do they have any reason to believe that sorcery can be used in this world? I suspect not because they didn't send you with a sorcerer..."

"That... could go either way. But if you caught Verve she's probably not thinking through a lot of logical implications right now." (Shudder.) "So that will depend on how thoroughly she's been debriefed, but to the very best of my knowledge they'll have a strong initial assumption that I can't do any sorcery here and that gates have to be made from that end."

"Does the sorcerer have to be at the gate when they make it? Because they know the other end of that one is at one of Thorn's courts, and that you made it, so that could cause suspicion."

"Yes. At least, I think so; there might be some version where you can make gates between two locations neither of which you are at, but I don't know of one existing. Who was around when you came out on the far end?"

"Clock and Rosewood. They helped me get Verve, and she helped me get Blossom, but it turned out Thorn had gotten me as soon as I stepped into the garden. Darts."

"Darts. That's disturbingly clever. He must garden his own whatevers for that to work on anybody but the occasional improbable mortal. I don't know Rosewood; I loosely remember Clock; I don't think either could confidently say that I definitely didn't approach the cave behind the falls to make a gate for you."

"They'd have to assume you ordered me there. Did you imply that you'd been running the show between the two of us the entire time and that this was stable or do they know that I have had and could get the upper hand?"

"First thing. They do know how we escaped Yellow, but as far as anyone knows I took control right away."

"Good. While we're having this conversation anyway, rescind my orders - they left lots of wiggle room but not enough. Thank you for making Yellow forget my name, though."

"They might have thought to check his house, but the fact that I set it on fire might mean that he's been transient anyway," muses Promise. "Thorn is... missing a lot of information. It's sloppy of him; I'm not sure it's suspiciously sloppy... how did you avoid bringing it up?"

"He might think that I'd be better at explaining it comprehensibly to him than you would and didn't feel provoked enough to hurt you until you produced descriptions that he felt were sufficiently informative. That's psychologically realistic, anyway, even if it's not serving him tactically."

"Probably something like - Thorn distributes your name and probably mine too to his favorite non-sorcerers or sorcerers who are competent without magic and sends them looking for you."

"How are emotion bubbles going to help? These fairies will be under orders regardless of how they feel; Thorn prefers to bludgeon them into real loyalty but he doesn't let them use their own initiative that much."