It is good that Promise has things she can enjoy.

If he was - more okay - he thinks he might try to tell her about the history of the Godscrest Mountains, but he really can't spare the energy for anything unnecessary right now. Perhaps another time. They have forever.

Draw draw draw.

So. He should focus on the things that are not unnecessary, like figuring out how to prevent his father from accidentally or deliberately revealing his name to Promise.

It seems like the only viable means of preventing it is to ask Promise to use orders. Of course, the real danger of Promise learning his name is that she might try to use him for something, and if she has plans in that direction then asking her nicely not to learn his name won't actually help anything. But she seems both too ethical and too practical to try something like that, and Ruava evidently agrees. And he is not so carefree lately that he can afford an extra source of stress.

"If I give you my father's name, can you prevent him from telling you mine? Will you?"

"I can tell him not to, pretty comprehensively, and yeah, if that's important."

"It's moderately important."

"Then yeah. I won't even have to come up with my own wording for it."

He nods.

"His name is Siurek."

Nod.

"When Sunbeam calls me to fetch my father it's likely that I will have to go very abruptly," he mentions. "So if I vanish without explanation, that is almost certainly why."

"Okay. I assume if I follow that river I'll find my gate, if you don't come back?"

He looks around until he locates the distant gleam of gold. "Yes. There is only one source of golden water in the world."

Nod.

Unhappy waiting.

Got him, says Ruava, with a wonderfully precise image of her surroundings. They're in the Emperor's quarters, plenty of room for a suddenly appearing boat, and Siurek has not actually touched her yet but this could change at any moment—

Blink, and Korva and the boat are there - he grabs his father's arm and blinks back to the mountaintop and blinks away again to fetch Ruava, leaving Promise alone with the Emperor for a few seconds.

"Wait," she tells him.

And then he's back, with Ruava.

She's wearing her birthday dress. Ice-white and glittering, wrapping her in rainbows. It's stunningly beautiful and makes her look like some kind of ethereal spirit.

Pretty. "So far I've only told him 'wait', I thought you might want to hear the wording for the rest of it."

"Good thinking."

He nods.

"Do not cause me to learn your son's name, at any degree of remove or by any medium or proxy," Promise tells Power. "Assume for that purpose that I may be supervising if you do not have positive information about my whereabouts."

...neatly done.

"You may speak," she adds.

He tries to yell at his son by name, fails, and settles for just growling incoherently.

"Hello, Father," says Monument.

"What in the gods' name do you think you're doing, boy—"

"Saving the country. From you."

"Nirue will have your guts! I'll watch!"

"I very much doubt it."

...and now, belatedly, Power is afraid. "What - what did you do to her?"

"I killed her."

Power apparently needs a minute to process this information. Monument waits.