Sigh. "Is he whitelisted from 'stop'? How did you phrase his permission to speak?"

"Yes. It was 'stop' followed by 'you may breathe' followed by 'you may, without attempting any deception or extraneous action and without enforcing any orders, speak'."

"Not bad. You could add... mmm... 'answer our questions completely and truthfully; you may warn us if this is about to intrude on personal information of no genuine interest to us'. Arcane, do you see any problems with that one?"

"No."

Tea repeats this instruction verbatim.

"What would you do if your Queenscourt orders - actually orders received outside this room in general - were rescinded, besides, 'at the moment, not much'?"

"Several possible courses of action are open to me," he says. "But the fact that gates can be made to Fairyland from an external location means that the Queenscourt's interests are best served by immediately conquering that external location, and since I can't plausibly escape the Queenscourt, I must end up conquering one or the other. The Queenscourt is tolerably comfortable but I have no desire to take over an entire planet full of presumably innocent mortals for its sake. On the other hand, conquering the Queenscourt is not exactly a trivial proposition even with the ability to gate in from outside and the names of several prominent court members."

"Ugh," sighs Promise. "...If you're the Queenscourt's best sorcerer how did Tea catch you?"

"The effect he has on nearby harmonics was more disorienting than I expected from perceiving it through the gate, and he was able to physically overpower me almost as soon as I emerged from the gate, before I could adjust well enough to do sorcery."

"Isn't that lucky," Promise mutters. "As it happens we were already contemplating how to conquer Fairyland. Now I suppose we have an asset and a deadline."

"I suppose you do," Arcane agrees. "I have some experience conquering courts; I lead the team the Queen sends to take the most difficult ones."

"I just bet you do." Promise nibbles her lip. "...If Tea didn't tell you, I'm Promise."

"He did not. He has been admirably security-conscious given his inexperience with holding hostile vassals, and has striven to avoid giving me any unnecessary information whatsoever, no matter how benign. I had no direct indication that you existed until you came through that second gate."

"He's seen me work a little, and I... learned from the best... but even given that I'm impressed too. But if you're going to stick around as opposed to being got rid of it's a little intractable for you not to have my nickname."

"I would like to be permitted to heal myself of injuries sustained when Tea captured me and I cannot immediately think of any way I could use this opportunity to escape or work against your interests if the order was competently given," he adds.

Promise looks slightly irritatedly at Tea, then says, "Phrase it, 'You may for the next thirty seconds and exclusively on yourself use healing sorcery'."

Tea shrugs and repeats the order.

"Are you a hostile vassal? Is it a stupid idea for me to even be thinking about letting you operate under relatively light orders?"

"I don't have enough information to know whether or not my long-term interests are aligned with yours, but evidence suggests they may be," he says. "If you are as generally benign as you appear, I would happily cooperate with you even given complete freedom. If my tentatively positive assessment of your motives is substantially flawed, you are best advised to turn me into a small animal and keep me in a box."

"I am planning to conquer the Queenscourt and run Fairyland better than the Queen does. Feel free to question me about what I mean by 'better' because I don't have a public relations version written up yet."

"I am indeed very interested in your definition of 'better'. What do you see as flaws in her governance?"

"She employs non-volunteer labor and even with this surplus of assistance does not police abusive courts even on her own continent."

"That is certainly a flaw. Is there an abusive court you would like policed?"

"I can think of one."