"You don't have to be there if here is more important. It'll make people slightly more likely to trust you, but that's probably not going to be too much of an issue anyway."

"There might be other leaflets, who might match my description, in Thorn's court somewhere or the Queen's... it could be important to have people know my face. But if it doesn't settle soon put it off by a few hours, maybe."

"It's for tomorrow anyway. People who need sleep are doing that at the moment. For now, I've got a couple errands to run."

"Yes, I mean, if tomorrow we find that the gate has not settled, put it off in case I can have the gate closed for during the announcement."

And Promise keeps an eye on her gate. And makes fairylights. And practices, in small doses, pulling stored things out of her earrings.

Eventually Alendi returns with some obscure weaponry, a tray, and some less bloody clothes. "Hungry?" he asks, offering food.

"Yes. Thank you." Nom. "What's that?" she asks, pointing at the obscure weaponry.

"Blowgun, crossbow," he gestures toward each in turn. They're both very small for the kind of thing that they are, and boast more concealability than power. "Some people in the Khlenni empire used to use poisoned darts for assassination, and that's more or less what we're doing. Just replacing the poison with fruit juice."

"If you show me how they're put together I can try to enchant them for accuracy."

She peers at them. She puts them back together and takes them apart again and then puts them back together and then stares at them. And then she says, "There."

They look exactly the same as before, but do seem to work better. When combined with luck the enchanted projectiles can reliably land in bloodstream-sized target areas, at least here where no sorcery is stopping them.

"This dress has seen better days. But somehow I doubt noblewomen's clothes are designed to accommodate wings."

"There are probably emergency dressmakers somewhere in the city. But the benefits aren't essential and your time is at a premium right now."

"Yeah. I can spruce up the dress a little bit, anyway. Anything else before I stare at the court?"

Promise reopens her gate. And she peers through it. And she sharpens her vision a lot and speeds her thought a little to accommodate that.

Alendi notes the conspicuous lack of Promise being dragged through by a hostile sorcerer, and starts manufacturing more luck. Mainly because there's nothing immediately pressing he needs to be doing, and this has very few drawbacks after all.

After a few minutes, Promise says, "I think I've found a good place to put the gate you'll go through. It doesn't seem to be anywhere near the routes the Queen's vassals are using to fly around and if you drop straight down from it you'll land on a balcony that's usually unoccupied but leads to what I suspect are the Queen's sleeping chambers. I've spotted her; she had six vassals with her, which seems likely to be typical, but they may not be in the room with her when she sleeps because no one expects anyone to be able to make a gate like this. I should probably describe the Queen herself, I suppose you don't know what she looks like."

"I will definitely look through it more, but we shouldn't talk while it's open or leave it open and unattended. Some fairies are small enough to outright fit through this gate, some sorcerers are keen enough to notice it. The Queen is about a foot taller than me. Silver skin, long white hair that at least right now is worn curled and up and full of fresh red flowers that match her dress, solid blue eyes. Outrageously complicated clothes. Giant, glossy wings with scalloped edges and swallowtails and patterns that make me dizzy to look at, blue and white. She's thin, sharp features, very narrow hands, I don't know if she's consistent on a scale of days about her makeup but right now it's black and glitters, very dramatic. I'm being so detailed not because anyone naturally resembles her but because I spotted two decoys. Without the boosted vision I wouldn't have noticed the sorcerously reshaped wings on the one or the missed spot of skin recoloring on the other. They don't seem to dress alike, though, so unless she changes outfits every half hour or the disguise department gets abruptly perfect at their jobs I'll be able to identify her for you reliably."