"Good morning," says the mortal. (It is night.)

Okay, she can also look up at the sky. Which is dark.

"Is there a particular reason you're in front of my crypt?"

Yeah, but she can't tell you because you're not a member of her master's court who fits the criteria for someone whose direct questions she has to answer, dude.

"Oh, so it's like that, is it?"

So it's like what?

Blink.

"Was that a yes?"

Blink.

"Good enough for me. Would you like to come into my crypt? It's not well furnished but it will prevent my neighbours from stumbling across you and deciding you'd make a nice snack."

"Come in, then. Unless I'm going to have to carry you...?"

Blink.

Blink!

He pours; the kettle was already hot. "Tea now, or tea in ninety seconds at a less painful temperature?"

Blink. (When he says 'now'. The water's not actually boiling, she's had worse it'll heal -)

The mortal shrugs. He brings over the mug and arranges it in a drinkable configuration relative to her face.

Promise opens her mouth.

Technically-non-boiling tea goes in.

It's hot. She swallows it anyway.

Blink.

"Wouldn't it be nice if you could tell me what it is."

She opens her mouth again, just a little, but nothing comes out.

"As much fun as this little interlude has been, do feel free to give the answer away."

"Well, that's annoying."

"And will it solve this irritating puzzle if I permit you to do whatever you like?"

"Yeah," she breathes, suddenly relaxing and starting to cry.

Promise does not intrude on his tea-ing. She just cries softly.

"I - I - had a bad master. Went through a tear. Now I can't do any sorcery I suppose and I don't know if I'll ever see my tree again but at least he doesn't have me anymore."

"Well. Welcome to Sunnydale. Is this orders business a property of you in particular, or of the entire place you came from?"

"Of fairies."

"Fairies, that's a new one."

"There's lots of kinds. I've met a mortal once before, but it was years ago."

"Do I qualify as mortal in this context?"

"Unless you're missing your wings, yes."

"That I am flightless is not in dispute."

"Then yes, you're a mortal. As far as I know it's just fairies and mortals. Are you an unusual kind of mortal?"

"I think we may have to throw out the term 'mortal' as hopelessly ambiguous. I am not human, though I once was. I am the most common kind of nonhuman on this planet. Relative to humans I am also significantly less mortal, a distinction that many other kinds of nonhuman cannot boast."

"Oh. I didn't know mortals came in nonhuman. But if you can die you're a mortal."

"That isn't how the categories are structured around here."

"Okay."

He shrugs. "But perhaps you're not interested in the local taxonomy."

"If I'm going to be stuck in the - what is usually called by fairies the mortal world - for the foreseeable future I might as well pick it up."

"Reasonable. So, I am a vampire, which is a type of demon. Most nonhumans are demons. Some are gods instead. I suspect you are not properly a demon and you certainly don't appear to be a god. Degree of mortality varies widely but I haven't heard of anything that cannot theoretically die, just things whose destruction would be difficult to accomplish in practice. This planet is called Earth and it is where most humans live, and nearly all vampires since vampires are all former humans; demons who don't live here live in any number of other places categorically known as 'hell dimensions', accessible by various means but most relevantly by the Hellmouth located in the school library of this very town."

"Earth is the round thing, right?"

"It fits that criterion, yes."

"What makes someone properly a demon?"

"It's... an aesthetic judgment as much as anything," he says. "But there are practical implications. Demons as a category have a reputation for being likely to try to eat people, which reputation you might want to dodge by introducing yourself as a fairy instead."

"I don't want to eat people."

"Neither do I; it's so tedious."

"...That wouldn't have made my top three objections."

"Oh?"

"The thing that made you able to alter my orders applies if I eat anything from anyone except, usually, other fairies; I prefer to eat plants; and I have moral objections to preying on sapient creatures."

"I was forcibly deprived of my capacity to morally object to things. Comes of turning into a vampire."

"I get by all right without it," he adds. "It's not in my top three objections to the incident."

"Mm?"

"The people who did it killed everyone I ever loved, that's objections one and two, and then turned me against my will, that's three. At the time I was very upset about the prospect of losing my soul, but then it turned out that mostly what I want to do without the constraint of ethics is wander the continent halfheartedly searching for something to do with my life that will be more interesting than ending it. No luck so far."

"Oh. I'm - I'm sorry. ...Following me around and feeding me so I don't wind up envassaled to more people than I have to be probably isn't interesting, is it."

"Depends."

"On?"

"Principally on how interesting you turn out to be."

"Well, I'd be very boring for at least a few weeks if I had all the things I'd need to be boring with, but I don't really have that luxury. I don't know your interests, though."

"My interests are not especially articulable."

"Then I don't know if I'll interest you or not. To begin with I should probably wrap up my hand, because sorcery doesn't work in the mortal world, and then I need a source of food because you don't seem to have one, and then - well, I met a mortal but it was so long ago and we mostly didn't talk about what sorts of lifestyles are available in the mortal world."

"What are the characteristics of sorcery besides not working in the mortal world?"

"Well, I can heal with it, for one thing. Lights. Growing plants."

"Those are all things local magic is able to accomplish."

"The fact that you have heard of a mortal world but haven't heard of any kind of demon leads me to suspect that the mortal world you have heard of isn't this one."

"I didn't have a lot of information to go on, but if they're that big of a facet of most people's lives I suppose it would probably have filtered to me. And I haven't heard of hell dimensions so I suppose there are already more worlds than I was expecting. And this one allows sorcery. Sort of." She frowns at her light. It firms up slightly, then goes out altogether, then reappears wan and small, then brightens suddenly and makes her eep and put it out.

"There are humans who haven't heard of demons, most of them in fact, but it took a not very well-understood series of historical accidents to get them that way. And if fairies had only had contact with the ignorant then they would be less ignorant, at least of fairies in particular."

"Well, I don't know how often humans go to Fairyland and then go home again."

"But then there's the part where sorcery allegedly doesn't work in the mortal world."

"Sometimes fairies go to the mortal world, but I doubt that they're especially public about the details of their personal traits while there without - typically - the benefit of sorcery." She makes more lights. She looks in absolute bewilderment at the pattern of dim and sun-bright they form in the grid she has made. "The harmonics here are drunk."

Giggle.

"These patterns don't make sense. There are some weird tangly ones, but these are... weirder than that. I'm not going to be able to heal myself until I map this whole room. Do you have a smaller room I could map instead?"

"This is the smallest room in this crypt, unless the coffins upstairs count."

"The what?"

"Approximately person-sized box for storing dead humans in. The actual dead humans are long gone from mine."

The vampire sits and drinks tea. He gets out of her way if she looks like she wants to map his tea-drinking spot; it's not like it has any material advantages over the next patch of floor.

She'll get to his tea-drinking spot eventually, but this is a tedious process and she doesn't need to start anywhere near it. "Do you have paper?"

"I could acquire paper."

"It'd be useful to write this down. I could usually memorize the map of a room this size, not in detail but enough to work, but not with the harmonics being so loopy."

"Suppose I'll go find some paper, then." He puts down the empty mug and gets up.

"Thanks."

"Thanks." She inspects the goods, seems absolutely delighted by the graph paper, and uses that to map the room.

Map map map map. "The roundness means there's a day cycle everywhere all the time, right? I don't intend to keep you up whenever you prefer to sleep."

"Yeah. I sleep during the day, usually; vampires catch fire in sunlight."

"That sounds... inconvenient. I wonder why. Do you think you would do that if you were invisible?"

"Good question. Might be fun to experiment," he says. "Well, not if I caught fire, but I could put it out afterward. Why, can you turn people invisible?"

"Yeah. These harmonics might mean it doesn't last until I undo it, so you'd want to stay near shade even if it works perfectly in case it shredded sooner than later, but once I have this room figured out that's one of the things I can do."

"That seems potentially convenient."

"Well, it might or might not help with the sun, but yeah." Map map map.

Shrug.

"How long until you usually go to bed?"

"About six hours."

"That's probably enough time to map this whole room." She gets back to work.

He keeps out of her way and is amused by the struggling lights.

"What do fairies eat?"

"Plants. I'm not picky and wouldn't recognize any individual plants here either. I can't chew solid wood."

"I can provide plants and things made from plants," he says. "Should I go shopping again before sunrise?"

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble yes please."

"This would be a good time to decide if you're going to be feeding me or if I have to get used to risking claims from every mortal who's ever interacted with that food, the land it's grown on, and the water it's grown with."

"I suppose I'll be feeding you, then. Unless there's some clever alternate solution available."

"If I vassalize someone first, I can take food from them without it being a problem, but I don't exactly have candidates lined up."

He shrugs. "So it seems like the most convenient option all round is me feeding you. Fine."

"Thanks."

He makes a noncommital sound and extracts a plant from the plant box to feed to Promise.

She relaxes a little bit but doesn't say anything immediately. Nom.

Plants and plant derivatives.

"Sorry about that. I just - I don't want to - I'm not going to hurt you but I'm paranoid right now. Um. It's your name, it was your real name, that counts even for someone who's already your vassal. You haven't exactly given me reason to be suspicious I just -" Headshake. "Never give me an order that I do not expressly request of my own uncommanded will, or that you do not sincerely without mental contortion believe to be in my best interest as you genuinely understand it, except for a copy of this order should you so desire."

"I suspected as much," he says. "I'm not going to copy your order; the design doesn't agree with me."

"Is there a different one you'd like better?"

"I might come up with one after I've had more than twenty seconds to think about it. But I don't think it hits the optimal balance. As stated I think it needlessly prohibits me from giving you permissions if I happen to be confused about how they relate to your best interest, which seems silly, but I haven't come up with an elegant way to change the wording."

"Permissions are in general beneficial to my interests."

"But are you relying on me to reliably know that? Whose assessment of my assessment of your best interest is operative here?"

"Yours, because I can't very well oblige you to read my mind - reading my mind is not in my best interest, if there was confusion on that - but you can incorporate things I tell you, like 'permissions are in general beneficial to my best interests'. I wasn't expecting this to seem very complicated, I confess."

"Weren't you? But you have clearly observed that the entire system is new to me."

"The system isn't especially complicated. New orders take precedence over old ones, independent of source. Imperatives and permissions can be enforced, or not. None of the details like that have to do with whether you can figure out that I would rather be allowed to do things than not."

"It could have been the case that the words are decoration and only the intent of the speaker matters, or that your own definition of your interests was to some degree silently encoded in the phrase, either of which would have addressed my objection. Instead, apparently the burden of interpretation falls to me. What guarantees do you have that my assessment of your interests is going to be anything like what you expect? I'm not necessarily thinking about myself in particular, here - my genius is decidedly not of the interpersonal variety, but I get by - but if you'd thrown that instruction set at someone who happened to have a conflicting cultural background, or a patronizing authoritarian streak, or who was just very very bad at guessing what other people want, it could've ended poorly for you."

"I probably would have left it at the simple version if you didn't seem to have at least a passable set of defaults based on the last several hours."

"Fair enough. But it still doesn't sit right with me aesthetically."

She shrugs. "How about, 'never give me a non-permission order except as requested by me of my own uncommanded will'?"

"Eh, I'll think about it."

"Well, you've gone and made me nervous, so consider my original phrasing replaced by the more recent."

Snort.

"There's just the one bed, isn't there. Will there be some sort of horrible danger if I just go sleep in a tree outside instead of on the floor?"

"Oh, many sorts of horrible danger. Individual risks are fairly low, but they loom in aggregate; this is the sort of town where any random passerby might think you a fine target for their particular hazard, whether that leads to you being eaten, kidnapped, dissected, set on fire, pelted with rocks, sacrificed to dark gods, something entirely different, or any combination of the above."

"If somebody tries to eat me they won't get very far, but I suppose if you don't object I'll sleep indoors."

"They won't?"

"Vassals can't harm their masters."

"If I were you, I wouldn't rely on that holding for any given variety of demon until you actually see it demonstrated," he says.

"I suppose that makes sense."

"Anyway, you can sleep in my crypt or you can take your chances outside, whichever you prefer. And if you prefer bed to floor, feel free."

"You don't prefer bed to floor? It's your crypt."

"It's my crypt, but you're my guest. If you continue being my guest I suppose I might have to get a better-furnished crypt."

Sherlock does not disturb her sleep. Nor is she interrupted by hungry demons of any kind.

Then she will sleep for ten and a half hours.

And at the end of ten and a half hours, Sherlock will be sitting on the floor, quietly drinking tea.

She yawns groggily awake, mumbling to herself.

"Good morning. Well, technically it's late afternoon."

"I started in a forest where it was almost always late afternoon," remarks Promise. "How much would you mind having a gate to Fairyland inside your crypt? I've already mapped the room and should be able to make one, and if I aim it inside my tree that should be safe even if the outside of the place is being staked out. I could get a branch and plant it here and stop crowding you."

"Oh, go right ahead," he says.

"It might take any amount of time to settle. Days possibly," she mentions. "Where should I make it so that if it settles while I'm not paying attention you won't stumble into it? I don't actually know if you can get into my tree that way but it's not impossible."

"Can it be put anywhere? Why not there?" he asks, pointing to the wall at the head of the bed. "I don't make a habit of climbing onto my bed and walking directly into the wall."

"That's fine," says Promise, and she consults her map for a few minutes before finally saying, "There. Not an instant settle though."

"Oh well."

"Oh well. Can I have breakfast?"

Nom.

"Vampires don't actually eat food," he mentions. "We drink blood. Not yours; you don't seem to qualify as an animal for this purpose."

"We don't have animals in Fairyland to speak of. Are they hard to catch?"

"Not especially."

"Had you already caught one when I came through the tear last night?"

"I don't actually catch my own animals, I steal containers full of animal blood. Less tedious that way."

"Oh, okay. I guess stealing food doesn't have the obvious problems for mor- for non-fairies."

"Indeed."

"What else do you do with your time?"

Shrug. "In what context?"

"I'm going to be here for possibly weeks. The gate into my tree will take a while, I'll probably just move to a different part of Fairyland after that but that gate could also take a while, I want to know what good ways might be to spend my time between now and then."

"Oh. Hm. I could show you a library or two. Hellmouth optional."

"A library could be interesting."

"Options include the school library with informative material about magic and nonhumans, and the public library with no such material."

"The... school library... sounds obviously better then."

"The school library is somewhat more dangerous, given that there is a Hellmouth there and every so often someone tries to use said Hellmouth to cause some manner of mischief. And the public library has a much wider selection, it's just that most of it is written and curated by people who have no idea that magic is real. So their relative merits depend on your interests and risk tolerance."

"Oh. What kind of mischief?"

"The destruction or conquest of this planet, generally speaking."

"...Are they ever any good at that?"

"Well, the planet remains intact and unconquered. Sometimes that's because the people trying are incompetent, sometimes the defenders of the status quo get ahead of them, and I suspect once or twice it's come down to sheer luck."

"How frequently are attempts made?"

"A few times a year, at a guess? Really serious ones are less frequent, and I'm sure a handful of demons getting together in a pub somewhere and making idle boasts about their capacity to bring about hell on earth is practically an hourly occurrence. But I would be surprised to find out it was less than once a year on average that someone actually put a plausibly workable plan into action and needed thwarting by some combination of luck, providence, active opposition, and their own stupidity."

"I think I can put up with that level of hazard to find out about local magic. Especially given that not everyone who wants to do mischief is necessarily an immediate hazard to me personally."

"Reasonable. Local magic itself also possesses a hazard or two but given your described characteristics I don't think you'll have too much trouble with those, and you're unlikely to run into anything nasty just reading about it."

"Hazards like what?" wonders Promise.

"Unwanted attention from hostile entities. The chance of getting addicted to the magic itself."

"Sounds inconvenient. I'll read up anyway. Lead the way?"

Promise peers curiously at all the things they see on their way.

Streetlights! Graveyards! Buildings! Roads! Cars! Graveyards! More, different buildings! Fire hydrants! Parks! Actually no that's another graveyard!

"What are all the stone arrangements for?"

"Marking the locations of buried dead humans."

"...Why?"

"Sentiment? Tradition? A desire to create lasting memorials, fueled by discomfort with the idea that in the long run most people will not only die but also be completely forgotten by history? Many humans also believe in an afterlife, although their hopes are largely unsubstantiated by any form of concrete evidence. There are assorted means by which particular individuals might persist after death, but I haven't heard anything that suggests something more comprehensive."

"Huh. How do those lights work?"

"Non-magical local technology. I can find you a book on it at the library if you want a serious practical explanation."

"It's not a high priority, especially if it's complicated. What are these buildings made of?" They are made of vinyl siding.

He glances at them. "The stuff on the outside is plastic, which is worth a book or two all its own."

"I don't think we have it in Fairyland."

"I am unsurprised."

"I'm guessing the things with wheels that contain chairs are for moving people around in somehow, because mortals can't fly."

"Got it in one. Most of those are cars; the variant over there is a van. I used to know someone who could tell you lots more about them but he's dead so it's down to the books again."

"I don't need to know a lot of details about cars. Wheels would have a lot of trouble most places at home and I can fly."

"Humans have flying vehicles too. Those might be more exciting."

"I'm sure it's very exciting for people who can't fly. I have no wish to be cooped up unable to feel the air when traveling from place to place."

"How fast would the prospective vehicle have to go before you'd put up with it?"

"Oh, I don't know, considering that sorcery's possible here it's probably more efficient to just make a gate to anywhere really far away I'd want to go."

Shrug.

"How fast are they? I can do about seventy miles an hour, more if I'm really trying."

"Upwards of fifty times that, for the fastest ones."

"Wow."

"Humans are a fairly well accomplished bunch."

"What else can they do?"

"Cure or alleviate a steadily increasing variety of ills, kill each other with impressive efficiency, sustain more or less stable nations of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and that's all mostly without magic coming into it."

"That's a lot of people."

"Yes."

"Fairies don't live in groups that large. Even the Queenscourt isn't that big."

"The planet is a finite size and the population is growing. It's not practical for humans to avoid forming large communities indefinitely."

"Well, the fairy population grows, but I think much more slowly. And occasionally we do move to get farther away from each other."

Promise is a little confused by the rigmarole associated with entering the building but doesn't comment on it.

So neither does Sherlock. And they proceed through the darkened halls to the library.

It has so many books! Promise flutters about, inspecting the books.

Promise goes and looks at what he's pulled. "The organization system is weird," she comments.

"Oh?"

"Some of it seems to be by topic, and it's grouped by author but the authors seem to be in random order."

"What?"

"The word you're looking for may be 'alphabetic'."

"Why not?"

"Well, I suppose you could tell me what order the symbols go in, and then I could memorize that, and then I could squint at all the titles, but... I'm not sure it wouldn't be faster just to read all the spines."

Shrug. "As you like."

"I'm not actually speaking your language, in case that wasn't clear, I'm just plain speaking."

"It was obvious that something more complex must be going on than you just happening to natively speak English; it wasn't obvious which of the many possibilities was operative."

"Oh. Well, now you know." And what books has he pulled out?

Here is a book about vampires. Here is a stack of books each about another common variety of demon. Here is a book about recognizing and thwarting dark rituals. Here is a book about potionmaking. And there are more where those came from.

Potionmaking sounds interesting! She picks it up to have a look.

It's kind of obscure. A lot of assumptions about the reader's knowledge level. Also about the reader's easy access to sources of animal parts. Sherlock reads along upside-down and seems amused.

Once Promise has a general idea of what the recipes look like she skims for the results of each without bothering about how many porcupines she would have to deprive of their quills or how much marrow she would have to scrape out of a live sheep.

Potion recipes make claims to such effects as: curse removal, securing the love of the drinker for the brewer (for a duration of one month), multiplying any nonmagical liquid to fill its container (size of container unspecified but from context they seem to be thinking flagons or barrels rather than lakes or ponds), and a dozen varieties of curse including warts, plague, petrification, loss of assorted facial features, and 'to Burn with an Unquenchable Flame'.

"Hmm?"

"Except for removing a curse if someone used one of the other recipes, I can't imagine wanting any of them. Maybe mortals have discovered extremely useful liquids of some kind that need multiplication."

"I can think of a few. If I were somewhere that animal blood was very scarce, I might like to have a flask of liquid-multiplier on hand. But yeah, a lot of old magic is primarily concerned with doing nasty things to one's enemies."

Promise puts that book down and opens the one about dark rituals.

"Rather. Goodness."

"It's good advice, if you ever plan to get on the wrong side of the sort of person who does dark rituals."

"And I guess for this purpose 'Promise' in fact counts as my name."

"Yeah. If there's any fairies you'd like to curse with unspeakable harms, and you know what they call themselves and can draw a reasonably accurate picture of them, I'm sure I can come up with a book on how to do dark rituals."

"That a yes?"

"I'm trying to figure out what would happen to the court structure if I incapacitated Thorn. I don't know if Blossom could hold it together, how it would fracture if she couldn't, or whether she'd be any better than him if she could."

He shrugs. "Can't help you there. ...Although if you want to spy on them, this is also doable with magic and the requisite books might even be in this library somewhere."

"...Might help. But only so much. I didn't have a privileged view of the social relationships but I saw plenty and I think Blossom's basically brainwashed and don't know how she'd jump without him. Maybe Rainfall - I don't know."

"So, books on scrying, yes or no?"

"Yes."

He searches for books on scrying.

Promise, meanwhile, investigates the other books he pulled.

Well, would she like to read about vampires? Incubi and succubi? Assorted other varieties of demon? Or perhaps this book on the history and nature of magic mirrors?

Her native guide is a vampire; she may as well skim that book.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I don't know what it is. I don't know what souls are either, that was going to be my next question."

"Holy water is water that has undergone certain rituals conducted by a properly authorized individual. A soul is a metaphysical property of humans and if you take it away, significant pieces of their personality go missing, usually the nice bits."

"Why are their - personalities detachable...?"

"The going theory is that the soul is somehow a prerequisite for having moral feelings, which seems stupid, but I don't have a strong competing hypothesis."

"I'm not a human and have moral feelings. Should I worry about my personality detaching?"

"I'd be surprised if there wasn't some way to tell if you have a soul, but I don't know it offhand and I'm not sure where I'd start looking. At a guess I suspect you're safe, at least from that particular hazard; the commonest way to detach a soul is turning someone into a vampire and that only works on humans and part-humans."

"Has it been tried on fairies?"

"I expect you'd have trouble with the middle bits even if for some insane reason you qualified as human for the purpose."

"Middle bits?"

"Dying. Drink some vampire blood, become drained of all one's own blood, die, wait: this is how one becomes a vampire."

"Oh. Yeah, I can't do that part."

"And if you're not human enough to eat you're definitely not human enough to turn."

"I'm not sure how that part follows, but if you say so."

"I don't know everything about being a vampire but I do know that."

"Are there less common ways to detach souls that I should maybe be on the lookout for?"

"I'm sure it's possible to do it. I can't think of a reason why someone would try that in particular on you as opposed to some more straightforward magical attack if they were interested in attacking you in the first place."

"If they found out how immortal I am," she suggests.

"Unquenchable flames. Petrification. Turning you into a rat. Turning you into an unquenchably burning stone rat. Locking you in a box and dropping you in the ocean, that wouldn't even require magic. Summoning an appropriate variety of demon or spirit to possess your body. No one's going to look at you and think you're especially likely to have a soul they might want to rip out, unless they miss the wings somehow."

"Ah. ...I have no idea what unquenchable flames would do to me. I've never actually been burned down to nothing before and don't know what would happen except that if killing a fairy were that easy we wouldn't consider ourselves immortal."

"If you ended up on fire for the rest of eternity this would probably still be very inconvenient even, perhaps especially, if it didn't kill you."

"Well, maybe I could figure out how to make the uncursing potion even if I was on fire at the time."

"But probably not if you were also a stone rat."

"That would admittedly present more of an obstacle."

He snickers and goes back to searching for scrying-related texts.

She puts down vampires book and picks up mirrors book.

What an interesting array of mirrors. Does it say how to make any of the non-scrying kinds?

"What a strange property."

Shrug. "It's supposed to be related to the soul thing but I think that's a fable."

"I assume rocks don't have souls and they have reflections."

"Yes."

Promise shuts the book and reaches for the scrying one.

Hooray! What do you need to do?

"Why do you think that?"

"Assorted demons can use magic just fine and unless a picky god gets involved or someone has an applicable type of innate magic they can cast all the same spells as humans."

"I don't think my kind magic ought to have anything to do with it... okay."

"Going to try spying on anyone?"

"I'm not sure where I'd get most of these things."

"I could acquire them for you."

"Then yes, I will try spying on Thorn at least once."

"Won't that be fun."

"No, not really."

Snort.

"But it'll give me an idea if during moments I never had a look at there are clues to how people other than Thorn in the command structure would run things if they wound up the ranking non-incapacitated member."

"Yeah."

"But maybe it won't help or nobody who could take over would be any better. I could probably cripple the entire court, but you saw the kind of orders I was under...."

"Yes. There might conceivably be a scrying spell that could get you someone's fairy-relevant name, and I suppose if we're considering incapacitating most of the court already I could flood the place with tea... at last, a practical use for the multiplying potion!"

"That involves getting close. Thorn is very smart. I don't want to try to hit him with anything he could conceivably see coming."

"Well, I wasn't thinking of pouring barrelsful of tea over anyone without first turning them into flaming stone rats or similar. I suppose a flaming stone rat probably can't drink tea. There is room to refine this concept."

"I don't have even nicknames for some of the lower levels and other satellites of the court."

"Very thorough spying might take care of that for you," he suggests.

"Yeah, it would."

"But if there's another plan you like better, it's all the same to me."

"There's probably no tidy way to bypass Thorn and get the Queen..."

"Mm?"

"Well, she's got a well-known nickname, but I know dramatically less about the structure of her court and it'll be several times larger and she'll have every contingency all the smartest fairies in the world can have thought up for her."

"Exciting."

"So I'd have to spy on her a lot. It's probably worth doing."

"Can I help? It sounds like fun."

"Why not. There's no reason to expect I'll be able to get the Queen's name and I only might be able to feed her myself."

"Whereas I can apply barrelsful of tea to anyone I like?"

"More or less."

"You can also amass local minions fairly trivially," he adds. "Very few people guard their birth names closely in this day and age. Up to you whether you have moral qualms about conscripting a demon army, I suppose."

"I'd want to make sure I was equipped to treat them decently even if I supplied myself exclusively from the ranks of the soulless and morally deficient, which currently I'm short on resources to do."

"Fair."

"Bit of bootstrapping to do."

"In what sense?"

"Well, right now I have - myself, and your help. And I am planning to conquer Fairyland, which I will need more than that to do."

"Mm. I think I have a different view of what it means to have my help."

"Oh?"

"Or a different view of the concept of bootstrapping. I just don't feel that it applies to a situation where so many of the strongest options for gathering more resources are so trivial to accomplish."

"If you like. Still, I will not rule Fairyland this week."

"True. Probably. Might depend how urgently you want to rule Fairyland."

"Not very. It's important, but it's been important for a long time."

"Then you might as well wait. I'm in no hurry, certainly."

"Well, I'd rather it get done before some sort of accident inevitably befalls you as the years pile up and you succumb to your slightly reduced mortality, but it's worth taking the time to get right."

"It's not going to be an accident."

"No?"

"Murder or suicide, I'm not sure which. But it would take a hell of an accident."

"One would happen eventually if nobody including yourself got you, but I'll take your word for it on the relative risks."

"'Eventually if nobody including myself got me' is precisely the thing that isn't going to happen, yes."

"...I will make sure to have backup mortals securing my control of the Queen, I guess."

"There's some distant chance that something will manage to catch my attention in a permanent enough fashion, but then I'm also pretty likely to seek out better forms of immortality."

"Like what?"

"There's a legendary artifact that makes a vampire impossible to kill while they are wearing it. As the first example I can think of."

"Why would someone make that and then permit it to fall into obscurity instead of wearing it?"

"The answer to that is also lost in obscurity, but as a plausible theory, consider that it is not reputed to stop anyone from stealing it or to remove the need for sleep. So presumably it was passed around from vampire to vampire until someone who didn't like vampires got their hands on it and threw it down a deep dark hole."

"Ah, I see."

"But if I dug it up I'd expect to keep it a while."

"Does it only make you immortal to the degree a fairy is or does it also protect you from the things that normally would kill you outright?"

"Not specified."

"Well, I'll probably want backup mortals anyway but that would be helpful."

Shrug. "I'll happily find and wear the Gem of Amara for convenience's sake while the conquest of Fairyland is ongoing, and if I decide to set myself on fire afterward I'll give you advance notice."

"Thank you."