Ardent returned to a new room in the Underground. This one she’d set to look like a bedroom, with a massive canopied bed and extra privacy wards that were drawn with its curtains. She crawled into the bed and pulled open her chiton to look down into her cleavage.

The bright black eyes of a large mouse looked back at her. He’d been smaller when she was concealing him on the Promenade and outside of the Etherium, but the space here was more expanded, and that meant he couldn’t be shrunk as much.

“I should make you sleep like that,” she told the mouse. “Maybe that’d keep you out of trouble for a while.” The mouse turned a circle atop one breast, then made a show of snuggling down between them. She stifled a ticklish giggle and fished the rodent out. “Here.” She set him next to her on the bed and offered a homunculus to the animal.    

The mouse accepted it in both paws, and turned back to Miro’s normal strong, slender human form with long indigo hair, wearing a simple tunic over slacks. “Thank you, my lady,” he said, and kissed her. She returned the kiss, and let him push her back and down against lilac-scented sheets. He knelt over her, long hair hanging to one side of their faces. “Though I will feel terribly guilty if Wind Sought does get abducted in my place.”

“Eh, we warned him of the risks. And they’ll be pretty surprised if they manage to haul him back here, because the first thing he’ll do is teleport away from ’em.”

“I know.”

“It’s a good plan. I wouldn’t have gone along with it otherwise.” She caressed his cheek, brown hand dark against his golden skin.

“Does that mean you’ll channel from me again, too?” Miro asked. She moved her hand to his throat, and gave a little nod. He took a deep breath and sank down against her.

Ardent stroked his neck and shifted his loose, vivid hair to lie on the other side of his body. “But, first…could we talk a bit?”

“Of course, my lady.” He rolled to lie beside her, head propped in one hand, the length of his body still pressed close.

She curled into him, nervous, and tucked her head against his shoulder, mindful of her horns. “Should I just assume you’ll want to make love after channeling?”

She could hear the smile in Miro’s voice as he answered. “My body is unconvinced that channeling for you is not lovemaking, I’m afraid. And my mind is inclined to agree. But if you’re not interested…”

“Oh sugar.” A little laugh. “I am. Trust me, I am interested.”

He dipped his head down and kissed her shoulder. “Good.”

“So.” She traced a finger over his tunic, and laughed again. “I don’t want to act like this is…more than a fling, or necessity, or whatever you want to call it. I mean. I don’t know how seriously folks in the Sun Etherium treat intercourse, but here, especially among the younger generations, fey aren’t serious about it, I know. Especially if it’s just ‘I’ve known you two days, let’s have sex’. I don’t mean to conflate that with romance.”

“My lady is very wise,” Miro said, and she wasn’t sure how to take that, except that she didn’t think he was mocking her.

“Hah. I was just…curious. Do you have anyone waiting for you in Sun Etherium? Spouses? Betrothed?”

“No. I’ve had a few lovers over the years, but none that lasted. For one reason or another. My mother has tried to arrange matches for me on multiple occasions, never with anyone I could tolerate. Being ninth-to-eleventh favorite did not make her terribly invested in the process, so there was that mercy.”

Ardent shuddered. “What about, um, fidelity? I know the Sun fey aren’t monogamous, obviously, but…”

“It varies by relationship; there is no true standard any more. My mother is considered a traditionalist, in that she insists her husbands be faithful to her alone. Dad said she doesn’t even let them engage in bodyplay with each other.”

“That sounds…selfish.”

“The Sun Queen in a single word. Some of the High Court, especially my better-beloved siblings, follow that example. But most of the Sun Host does not have such a high opinion of themselves. Multiple marriages, group marriages, and open ones are all common. And many take lovers without marrying. As I have done.”

“So…what kind do you prefer? For yourself?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know. Well, I know I despise my mother’s model. But beyond that…I’ve always thought that marrying one fey and expecting that relationship to last for eternity, each committed to only the other, was absurdly optimistic. Two of my mother’s husbands detest her, and none of them admire her for herself, only for the position she affords them. On the one hand, I don’t feel a driving need to bed others for the sake of, I don’t know, variety? Proving my virility? My desirability? Wealth? Power? Whatever it is that my mother is trying to prove. On the other, I do not understand possessiveness very well. I have never been in an exclusive relationship.” He leaned in to kiss her fluffy hair. “What of you, my lady?”

“Oh, I…used to dream about that one marriage that lasts a lifetime. When I was a little girl, that was what everyone still did. Immortality wasn’t widespread until I was about forty. When you weren’t going to live forever, it seemed a lot more reasonable. Maybe wasn’t anyway, but still. Anyway, I got over it eventually. And then I met Whispers Rain, and she made it…fun. To have multiple lovers. Before I met her, it was more as if I thought ‘I guess I have to tolerate this so I will, but I hate sharing’. And then Rain threw herself into my arms and said ‘Sharing is the best! I’m going to prove it to you!’ And she did.”

He laughed. “That’s wonderful.”

“She is. Yeah.”

“How long were you married to her?” “Thirty-two years.”

Miro smiled. “She was very fortunate.”

“I was, anyway.” They were silent for a moment, then Ardent said, “You want to know why we got divorced but you’re not going to ask because it’s rude or something, right?”

“…perhaps.”

“It was because I left. She really doesn’t like the Broken Lands. Being out of aether. It suffocated her. Rain came to visit me, at first. And I’d visit her, whenever I came back. But there was always a lot to be done in Try Again, and there wasn’t always aether for boots, and boots were a lot slower back then even when there was aether, and…well. After two years, she visited me one last time, and she said she didn’t think it was fair to stay married. That it was unfair to me. ‘Because I know you. And you won’t ever look for a barbarian wife or husband while you’re married to me. And you deserve a spouse who can live with you. Or at least who’ll visit more than once a season. And I…can’t.’” Ardent sighed. “And I said all right, and that was it.”

“And you didn’t look for a barbarian spouse,” Miro said, softly.

Ardent shook her head. “No. Just…not who I am.”

“Is a fling with a pitiable eleventh-favorite Sun prince more your style?” he asked, lightly, teasing.

“Apparently.” Ardent mock-growled into his tunic, then toppled him onto his back and straddled him, one hand on his shoulder. She pressed her face against his neck and bit down, making him gasp with pleasure. “You ready to give me all your power, your highness?”

“Yes, please, my lady.” He turned his head to one side to expose more of his throat to her. She could feel him grow erect against the pressure of her hips. “Please, my lady. Yes.”

She slid an arm under his back and pulled him hard against her, and drank in his offering.

---

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The satyress and her Sun Host fey were walking on the Promenade. It was late evening, and the crystal bridge glowed like a jewel with the light of glamours. Ardent wore a chiton, as usual, while her servant wore a jacket and tights characteristic of the Sun Etherium. The white gold chain of his leash glittered between his collar and her wrist.

Ardent sighed as she brought up the topic again. “Miro, this ain’t working.”

Her companion turned to her, indigo eyebrows raised. “My lady? What isn’t working?”

“Your plan. It’s been three days, and your Host hasn’t sent anyone after you. Maybe that little act of yours in the Court was too convincing. Maybe your mom decided it’d be easier to kick you out than ransom you and your dad.”

He crossed jacket-clad arms, then uncrossed them and bowed his head, subserviently. “My lady, please, I beg of you to be patient. My mother the Sun Queen is not so heartless as that.”

“Then maybe she’s not so wealthy as that, either. I talked to Fallen. She ain’t giving Jinokimijin up lightly. If at all. And I’m not letting you trade yourself for Jino, so don’t even think about it.”

Long fey ears canted back. “My lady, I seek only to serve you—”    

“Uh huh. And so far, you’ve mostly gotten me in trouble. Everybody wants a piece of you, sugar. A servant I have to keep glued to my side wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Brown eyes flashed up to meet hers, then dropped again. “Sun Etherium power has gotten you out of trouble, too,” he murmured.    

“Yeah, and it’s still trouble I wouldn’t have except for you. Look, I like you, I feel bad about your parent, but sun aether or not, I can’t keep watch over you. You gotta go home.”

“Please, my lady, I cannot leave. If you won’t help me—”

Ardent stopped and grabbed his chain, right before his throat. Fey had already been watching the argument, but the use of force drew eyes: a rare sight except when it was staged. Whispering started as it sank in that the Sun fey could not evade. Ardent hauled him to the balls of his feet by the leash. “You swore an oath to me, Mirohirokon, before the High Court of the Moon Host. You will obey my orders. I am not asking. This is an order. Leave the Moon Etherium. Go home.” She put a hand over her chest, fingers curling around the cloth between her breasts, as if to seize the locket or something else beneath it.

His eyes pleaded. “My lady, please.”

“No. I’m done! I’ll stay around a few days, see if there’s anything I can do for Jinokimijin. But you will leave. Tonight. Now.” She ported them to the edge of the Etherium. In silence, she escorted him off the ridge, until the pressure of moon aether could no long be felt. Ardent took the collar off of his neck. “Here.” She handed him a pair of walking boots from her locket, and then offered her wrist. “Channel from me.”

“I don’t want—”

“That’s an order! Do it!”

He flinched, and took her wrist. They stood in the moonlit darkness for some moments, before the golden-tan fey released her.

She swayed, caught her balance, and waved him off. “Go, already! And Justice help you.” In silence, he bowed to her, then put on the boots and departed, on enchantment-lengthened strides that covered dozens of yards each.

Ardent climbed the ridge back into the Etherium, and sat on the ground after she reentered the aether. She put her head in one hand, over her eyes, and breathed for a while. “Justice help us all,” she said, softly.

Then she teleported away.

---

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They ate in public, at a popular restaurant specializing in cuisine from Danava. Danava was a mortal country the fey shard visited on a regular schedule: someone had worked it out to “every 6,859 days”, for stays of 198 days. It was one of the few worlds where the schedule had been reliable for the entire time since the Sundering. The food focused on a variety of meats, some real, barely cooked and flavored only with their own juices, others made from aether and steeped in sauces and spices. Side dishes were likewise mixed, from aether breads to authentic vegetables, rice and cheese. The assorted dishes floated about the cafe on huge platters, and guests plucked off whichever ones they wanted.    

“I almost want to sleep in public,” Ardent said. They’d gotten the books she wanted from the Archive, and were sitting at a booth that afforded verbal privacy, but not visual. “Fallen’s much bolder than I’d expected her to be about wrecking private places. She, or her cronies, might be more hesitant to attack when there’d be lots of witnesses. And if even that doesn’t give her pause, then maybe it really is too late.”

Miro rested his chin against his hand. “It would be…unorthodox, at any rate. You know, I’m disappointed we didn’t track anyone back to a location where the phoenix rose could be held. She must have someone tending to it. I suppose she could use golems, but…you’d think she’d want fey eyes on it. Golems and aether are more vulnerable to deception and assault.”

“Maybe she trusts her wards on it more than she trusts any person,” Ardent said. “I admit, I’d been hoping we might find something interesting. Time to take our data gathering to the next level.” She hooked the tracer out of her locket, and put a full privacy bubble around it to shield it from the view of any onlookers. Then she expanded the space it was in, gave it a fat new notebook, and fed it fifty-eight aether signatures.

Miro stared as the little golem wrote furiously. “It can trace that many people at once?”

“Can now.” Ardent grinned. “One of the things I used the power channeled from you to do. I’ll plot all the locations out on a map later. If any of ’em go to a place where the phoenix rose could thrive, we’ll check it out. Anyway, getting out of the Etherium does have some disadvantages. Like making Fallen wonder what I might be up to while she can’t watch me. I don’t want to draw her eye to Second Chance. Which brings us to another matter. I think maybe you should go to Second Chance.” ‘Second Chance’ was the code they were using for Verdant Generosity’s location.

“Ardent, how many times must we have this argument? You need a channel. Now more than ever. Without sun aether, you’d not have been able to overpower that ruffian, nor take his toy away. For that matter, you should channel from me again tonight.”

“Sugar, there’s no need. I don’t have another use in mind.”

“One will come to you, probably in the form of some cretin attempting the theft of that locket. Or me. You have ample reasons. I am quite well and recovered from earlier. There is no reason not to.”

Ardent made a face at him. “You’re changing the subject. You’ll be safe outside the Etherium, and I still need someone for Second Chance.”

“Then pull in a favor from someone else. What makes you think I’ll be safe outside of the Etherium? You’ve already proved that you can bypass fey evasion and render a fey unconscious. Send me away, and Fallen can track me down and capture me in the Broken Lands. And drag me back here for her channel. Her Sun High Court channel.”    

Ardent sat back, stricken. Miro let it sink in, rather than stressing the point further. She glanced around them. “We probably shouldn’t be having this argument in public.” Then she pursed her lips and cupped her chin in one hand, thoughtful. “Or we should be having it much more in public, maybe.”

Miro frowned. “How do you mean?”

She pointed at his plate. “Finish eating. We’ll talk about it elsewhere.”

---

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Miro tried to shift to the mortal world. “Ah, ‘the Underground’ is literal. If my lady would grant us earthswimming and flight, this will proceed more smoothly.”

Ardent laughed. “I suppose it would, sugar. Sorry.” She cast the spells, and they shifted to the mortal world. They earthswam upwards, dodging around wards that covered the mortal as well as the fey realm. The wards were invisible in the mortal realm, and the fey buildings did not exist there, so once they broke the surface, Miro’s line of sight was unobstructed. Soulsight showed a dizzying criss-cross of lines throughout the Etherium, ranging from attenuated and pure to knotted and corrupt. He could focus in on a single line, however, and the rest faded to background noise.

“Hold up a moment, sugar.” Ardent caught him up in one arm. The privacy bubble travelled with them, so they were still inside it. “One of Fallen’s people is still tracing me, so assuming anyone’s paying attention to it, she’s gonna know what we’re up to. Which is what I want, broadly speaking. But I don’t want her to know for sure that you’re the source of my strange new power. So if you’ll tell me which way to go, I’ll follow it. She hasn’t got a scryer on me, so I don’t think she’s listening in.”

He pointed, and Ardent flew across the Etherium. Miro gave her the occasional course correction as she went, when she had to detour around wards. Wards could not be placed closer together than half a yard, as a general rule, and could only be made so large, so they could not make the Etherium unnavigable even when they extended to the mortal realm. The mortal realm had none of the twistedness of Etherium space: no vastly stretched homes, no artificially shortened paths. On the whole, it was a far smaller place than its fey equivalent. In a couple of minutes, Miro told Ardent to stop as she started to go around a ward. “She’s inside this one.”

Ardent released Miro to shift to sparrow form and straddled the fey and mortal realms. They were beside one of the Palace walls. She tried ignoring the wall to see what lay through it – a fey straddling worlds could choose which parts to interact with – but the privacy ward blocked her. “And it’s definitely her?”

“Oh yes. Very distinctive.”

“Great. Wait – you can see souls through a privacy ward?” She shifted back to the mortal realm and her normal shape, and put her arm around him again.

“Yes. Soulsight isn’t the same as regular sight, and since almost no one has it, no one’s ever thought to ward against it.”

“Well. Isn’t that interesting? Let’s go look for some of her other minions. Pick – would you please select one of her stronger holds, and we’ll follow that?”

Miro parsed out one of the thick, knotted cords that led back to Fallen’s soul-hands, and pointed. “That way.” Still holding Miro, Ardent returned to the mortal world and flew off in the new direction. He asked, “So what exactly are we doing here? You do realize she’s got solid holds on dozens of souls, and perceptible strings on literally thousands?”

“Oh yeah. We’re never gonna find them all one at a time like this. No, we have several purposes here, and finding everyone isn’t one of them. First, we’re gonna find the people she’s most likely to trust and depend upon, because somebody like Fallen doesn’t trust anyone she can’t control. Second, we’re gonna drive her crazy trying to figure out what we’re doing. How long do you think it’s gonna take her to figure out that I’m flying to within a few feet of her physical location and then flying to within a few feet of some random mook’s physical location? Because I am betting on a long time. Everybody in the Moon Etherium teleports everywhere. No one remembers where things are in relation to one another. She probably won’t remember where she was when she’s looking at this log. Nevermind where her flunkies might be. Third, once she does figure it out, she’ll become paranoid about whether or not we’re watching her most trusted people. Which I will be, by the way. Tracing, at least. Fourth: she’s going to be desperate to know how we’re doing it, and she’ll waste time trying to figure out if it’s something she can duplicate. Fifth: it’s the distraction. While she’s busy figuring out what we’re doing here-and-now, the plan I’m hoping will work is coming to fruition two hundred miles away. Oh, and sixth: we might get lucky and follow a line that happens to lead to the phoenix rose. If she’s trusting anyone else with its location, you can bet it’ll be someone she has a hold over.”

Miro smiled, amused by the curious deviousness of it. “So you can not only control someone’s behavior by watching them, but you can control them by being watched?”

“Never doubt it, sugar.” She grinned at him. “Of course, Fallen’s been controlling me by watching me, too. That’s why I haven’t gone back to my apartment. And am wondering if I want to go back to the Underground. I should at least message them about the goon I left sleeping there.” She paused to summon her farspeaker surface. “I’ve got his aether signature now. I can always find him later with the tracer. If I figure out how that rod he used to break into my room works, I can even fish him out of a warded area. Am I drunk on power yet, sugar?”

He held up thumb and forefinger pinched close together. “Perhaps by a whisker,” he said, and she laughed to hear her colloquialism on his lips.

She flew on, and started to say something else when he told her, “Here, just a few feet ahead.” She backed up, and straddled the fey world. They were in a floating park located on the back of a huge turtle-shaped golem. A dozen or so fey were playing a shapeshifting racing game. They were currently all different kinds of centaurs, halfway across the park. “Which one is it?”

“That paint stallion centaur, in russet and white.”

Ardent caught his aether signature, and then ported back to where they’d found Fallen earlier. They repeated the process to find five more indebted individuals. On the sixth, Miro lost the thread partway to the target. “Either they teleported elsewhere, or Fallen did,” he explained. “Either one would move the path of the obligation.” Ardent ported them back to where Fallen had been, and Miro shook his head. “She’s not here now.”

“Heh. Well, she’s easy enough to find again.” Ardent hooked her bag out of the locket with one finger, then pulled the tracer golem from it. She gave it Fallen’s aether signature, and it dutifully wrote out her location. Ardent teleported to the closest unwarded space to it. She turned off the trace again, and then they were off to find another of Fallen’s potential flunkies. “And if she didn’t notice us already, I’m sure she’ll have noticed that. I don’t think she can block the tracer, however. I haven’t been able to shake hers on me. So I’ve just made her more paranoid about being traced back to the phoenix rose, but I’m sure she was already paranoid about that.”

After a couple of hours, they had fifty-three aether signatures, and Miro’s soulsight felt blurry. “Do you get souleyestrain?” Ardent asked, concerned.

“I don’t know. I’ve never spent so much time following obligation-lines before.” He closed his eyes and rubbed at them, which didn’t seem to help.

“Time for a break. We need food anyway. And I can pick up those books I wanted from White Rose. Also, figure out where we’re going to spend the night. I am leaning towards ‘outside of the Etherium’. Perhaps ‘far outside of the Etherium’. As in, far enough that we can’t be traced or scryed. But then there’s the matter of timing. I don’t know how much time we can afford to lose to paranoia.” Ardent crinkled her nose, and took them to the Archive.

---

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Miro’s breathing slowed and his body slumped against hers as he fell asleep. Ardent cursed inwardly as she realized she’d given another accidental order. I have to be more careful. Well, I’m not gonna wake him up just to apologize. Poor thing. She stroked his hair, shoulder, the velvety fur of his back. I am gonna miss him so much.

All right, focus, Ardent. Stop thinking about maudlin stuff and get to work. Even after that thought, she remained beneath him, not wanting to move, to lose the warm comforting weight of him. With a final reluctant sigh, she lifted him on a bed of aether designed to mimic her body’s position and temperature, so he wouldn’t be disturbed. Some part of him sensed the change anyway, and one of his long fey ears twitched. But he nestled down into the aether cushion and did not wake.

Ardent got to her hooves and cleaned herself and Miro off with a quick wash of aether. She fiddled with the locale-crystal in the corner until she found an office-styled room. She changed to that instead of the beach, in the hopes of putting herself in the right frame of mind. Ardent left the office dimly lit and maintained the susurration of waves to help Miro sleep.

It was a splendid office, with a long arc of empty desk and a big comfortable chair. Various supplies were already at hand in cubby holes above the desk. It even included a bookcase stuffed with basic reference volumes. That was the thing about life in the Etherium: everything was always so convenient. With a gesture, Ardent mounted the glass slate with all of its component pieces on one empty wall. She waved her bag, locket, Ocyale mirror, and the tracer golem onto the desk, then picked up the tracer. She put a bubble of silence around them, and asked it, “How many people can you trace at one time?”    

“One,” the golem answered.

“And you can only follow them in public places.”

“Yes.”

“Were you designed to only follow one person in public places, or did Play Until Collapsing Dreams add those limitations to you before she gave you to me?”

“Play Until Collapsing Dreams has instructed me not to answer questions about my manufacture.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s start breaking some rules.” Aethersense showed Play’s aether signature on the enchantment, still as clear and undamaged as when she lent it to Ardent. In case Play had felt generous when she handed it over, Ardent made the gesture to assume ownership of the golem. She raised her eyebrows and laughed when it took. “Oh, Play. You sweetheart.” Ardent used a reveal-spellwork on her new golem, searching it for any rules that prohibited behaviors. She skimmed past the standard rules against breaking other possessions, found one that she didn’t recognize, and excised it with a tendril of aether. “Can you follow people in private places now?”

“Yes,” the golem answered.

Ardent flicked the excised rule into her bag in case she needed it later, and continued through the spellwork. She didn’t find any other rules that looked out of place. “Guess you were built for just one trace at a time, though. I am sure Play would have an elegant solution for this. Or she’d just make more golems. But what I have is more power. So.” She focused her will on allowing this golem to trace multiple targets, and cast a spell fuelled with sun aether. “All right, how many at once now?”

“Eight.”

“Oh, we can do better than that.” Ardent poured more sun aether into the effort. “Now?”

“…one hundred twenty-six.” The golem shook its head, ears flopping in confusion. “I’ll need more paper for this.”

“You can have all the paper your li’l clay heart desires, kiddo.” She patted its canine head. “Are you able to trace Mirohirokon?” She showed it an image of his present sphynx form.

“That person is not within my range or not in that form,” the golem reported.

Ardent grinned. “Perfect. Ooh, let’s see about increasing your range. How far outside the Moon Etherium can you trace?”

“Fifty miles.”

“Pfft.” Ardent focused on its range and poured extra sun aether into it, and kept pouring until the dog-headed golem started writing. She stopped to look at its report: Verdant Generosity was one hundred eighty-five miles to the southeast of the Moon Etherium. That put them in the Old World, in one of the mortal cities. Iltima, if Ardent recalled correctly.

The satyress paused. I am using aether to locate someone not only outside of the Etherium, but in the mortal world. Outside of the fey shard entirely. That’s pretty impressive, fey girl. She smiled and licked her teeth. Let’s see what else we can do at this range. Ardent turned her attention to the Ocyale mirror. She checked its range, which was surprisingly small: it could barely make it two miles out of the Etherium. Right, I asked Play for her stealthiest scryer. It is probably stealthy by using aether with high efficiency. Let’s not wreck its stealth by applying brute force to the poor thing. She patted the Ocyale mirror’s side, and summoned the largest scrying mirror she already owned, the one from her apartment that doubled as the standing mirror in her bedroom.

It got a much better range: thirty miles. Ardent boosted it with sun aether until it was up to forty miles. At that point, she decided getting it all the way to Verdant’s current position was not worth Miro’s sacrifice. She regretted that she’d sent her crystal ball away with Sessile; its natural range was better. Still, seeing isn’t the important thing, here. Ideally, what I want to do is get something like a golem to Verdant’s position, then use that golem to put a Mark on Verdant’s cargo. While Verdant’s not looking. That last part is unlikely to be a challenge. I doubt Verdant is expecting either trouble or trackers. But getting a golem to a shifting position outside of the Etherium…ugh. Messengers don’t work outside of the Etherium, and I doubt even sun aether is going to fix that. I’d have to send my only tracer with it. Or send a smart golem, like Sessile. Whom I already sent out of the city. Justice. Well, I can wait for Verdant to get closer, or I can go myself to meet him. Which would have the advantage of getting Miro safely out of the city. And also make Fallen instantly suspicious again.

…or I could just send Miro by himself. He’ll be out of the Etherium so not in danger. And he’s untraceable, so Fallen won’t be able to see him leave. Hmm.

The other thing she wanted to do also required Miro to be conscious. Ardent took one of the reference books down and browsed through it instead. After a few pages, she decided she wanted a higher-quality library and considered her options. All right, this part I kinda want Fallen to know I’m researching, so I don’t care if she’s watching. She sent a message to White Rose.

They groused in their reply: “Those’re restricted books. I can’t let you see them without authorization from the Justiciar or the Queen.”    

“I’ve got authorization from the Queen. Would you pull them for me and let me know when it’s ready for pick up?”

“Really? The Queen?”

“Really! Promise. I’ll show you when I pick it up.”

It only took a few minutes – White Rose must have been curious to see her carte blanche. Ardent grabbed the tracer golem and popped over to the Archive. She showed the dragon the queen’s authorization.    

While White Rose was reviewing it, the Underground notified her that her privacy had been breached. “Justice!” Ardent ported back to Miro.

She appeared in a combat crouch on the aether cushion above Miro in the office. He’d stirred only enough to raise his head and blink. The wards on one side of the room were a wreckage of collapsed space and broken wood. Two unfamiliar fey were in the room with them. One, a three-headed chimera, noticed her, squawked a warning, and ported away. The other, a minotaur holding a rod similar to the one Cat had wielded, took a moment to grab the Ocyale mirror. That gave her enough time to pounce him. He tried to evade, but she used sun aether to catch him anyway, and wrapped him in both arms. “Hello, kid. What’re you doing in my room?”

Surprised and frightened, the fey teleported away. Since Ardent was wrapped around him and he couldn’t evade her, he brought her with him. They were in a round room, with a vaulted ceiling full of murals and ringed by tall white columns. A balcony beyond the columns overlooked a garden. “Nice place,” she told him. “I’ll remember it.” She took them back to the Underground room. “One more chance: why’d you come to my room and try to steal my stuff?”

He shifted the wardbreaker rod in his hand, and Ardent said. “Wrong answer.” She twisted it out of his grip, while he tried ineffectu- ally to squirm free of her arms. He ported them again, to the top of a tower. Ardent took them back to her room. She formed an intangible spike of aether from her knuckles and punched her fist into his face. His eyes rolled back in his head and he buckled, collapsing in her arms.    

Miro was standing on all fours, fur bristling, staring in shock. “You didn’t – did you kill him?”

“Nope.” Ardent dropped him unceremoniously to the floor. She put a privacy bubble around them to supplement the room’s damaged wards. “Just used a sleep-aid spell on him. With a lot of sun aether. Forcefully. Maybe too forcefully. I can probably wake him intentionally in an hour or so. Otherwise, I expect he’ll sleep for eight.” She turned the wardbreaker rod over in her hands, thoughtfully. It was a short wand, a foot and a half long, made of smooth dark wood, with a kind of fetish of long cream-and-purple feathers tied with thongs to the tip. She glanced from it to Miro. “So what’s this cretin’s soul like?”

Miro waggled the fingers of one handpaw. “Mediocre to unpleasant. He has more vices than most. And a major obligation to someone. I wonder who that could be,” he finished, with heavy sarcasm.

“Can’t imagine.” She eyed the sleeping minotaur, and made a gesture to record his aether signature. “You sleep all right? I’d meant to let you nap longer.”

“Oh, I’m awake now,” he assured her. “And alert. Have you need of me, my lady?”

“Always.” With a sweep of aether, Ardent dumped all her things from the office back into her bag, including the Ocyale mirror, wardbreaker wand, the full-length scrying mirror and the glass slate she’d organized her notes on. Then she jammed the bag into her locket. “I may be pushing the limits of how small I can crunch even nonliving items,” she commented, squeezing it shut. “You said you can follow the trail of his obligation?”

“Yes, my lady.”

She handed him the homunculus for his normal form, then put his collar about his neck again, complete with the chain to her wrist. “If you would be so kind, my prince?”

---

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Grain of the Lyre was skeptical at receiving a request from a complete stranger out of nowhere who claimed it was at Ardent’s behest. Lyre wanted to speak to Ardent directly. It took some cajoling to convince Lyre to port outside Verdant Generosity’s shop and get their aether signature.

Afterwards, Ardent did message Lyre, and they had a conversation staged for the benefit of anyone who might intercept it. In that one, Ardent asked it for a different favor: buying research data on firebuds from a local botanist. Lyre politely declined.

With the aether signature, the tracer verified again that Verdant Generosity was not in the Moon Etherium, nor within the tracer’s 50-mile range.

Ardent lay back in the sand of the beach, with the waves lapping against her furred legs. The false sun had finished setting on the horizon, and stars had come out. Miro wondered what time it was in the real Etherium. Still afternoon, or the Underground’s golem would have returned to collect more money or ask them to leave. “If I were Fallen, I wouldn’t be collecting this shipment from Verdant Generosity myself, any more than she got the cacao pods in person. And I wouldn’t tell him to deliver it, either. I’d send someone to get it for me.”

“Or something,” Miro circled the glass slate, enjoying the stability of walking on four legs. He lay down next to Ardent, high enough on the beach to stay out of the water, and pillowed his head on her stomach. “Natural ivory and alabaster can’t be aether-tainted the way food would be. There’s no reason a golem can’t transport it.”

Ardent put a hand on his shoulder, running her fingers over the transition from skin to velvety fuzz to fur as it went down his arm/leg. “True. And a golem would be a pretty safe way to transport it. For a simple task like carrying, Fallen can make a new golem at will. I can’t possibly watch them all.”

“But you don’t have to watch them. You just have to watch Verdant.”

“Mm-hmm. And she doesn’t have any reason to assume I know exactly what she needs. Unless Jino telling you about it was a deliberate ruse by Fallen.”

Miro ducked his head to kiss her hand. “I don’t think it was a feint on her part. My father is good at subverting the intent of a rule, when he wants to. If he’d been ordered to give me a misleading hint, he would have found a way to signal me not to trust it.”

Ardent considered this. “And telling Jino ‘you can’t talk about what I’m doing’, then feeding him a handful of false clues just in the hopes Jino would find a way to hint about it to you is overly convoluted even for Fallen. That’s the kind of plan that never goes right. So let’s assume we’re watching the right fey in Verdant. We want to start scrying Verdant as soon as they’re in range, and trace any entity that takes a delivery from them. Actually, what we really want to do is trace the package of ivory and alabaster itself. Because it will be going to the phoenix rose. And we want to trace it in a way that no one will notice.” Ardent pursed her lips. “And even Play didn’t know of a way to do that. Mm. Have you ever seen humans perform magic, Miro?”

“With aether?”

“No, without aether. Entertainers who make coins appear and disappear, that sort of thing.”

“Oh! Yes. With trickery. Some of them are very clever.”

“It’s all about misdirection. It’s not so much that they hide what they’re doing. It’s that they make a lot flash and dazzle where the action isn’t, so the whole audience is looking in the wrong place.”

Miro grinned. “So we make sure Fallen is looking anywhere but at Verdant and that package.”

“Yeah.” Ardent sat up, smiling back. She ran her hand down his armleg, circled her fingers about the foreankle. “Time to get flashy. You good for some channeling, hon?”

He rolled onto his back and tilted his head back to offer his throat. “Always,” he murmured.

“Love,” she whispered. She gathered him into her arms and rolled onto her side, burying her face against his neck. Miro looped his forelimbs around her neck and curled one of his wings over her, to enfold her like a blanket. The sphynx form had much more flexible wings than he was used to from the avian shapes he sometimes used to traverse the Broken Lands. The sensation of covering the satyress’s body with an extremity was strange and wonderful. Warm waves lapped at his pinions as he stroked them up her wet calf and over one thigh. The wet sand didn’t stick to either of them, a touch of inauthenticity he appreciated in their setting. She wriggled closer, curling both her legs around one of his. Ardent murmured against his skin, “How do you do that?”

Miro closed his eyes, melting against her, wishing she’d take off her chiton, not quite confident enough to ask her to. “Do what?”

“Be so irresistible.” Then she was channeling through him, and he was lost in the sweep of a warm tide of power: not overwhelming or blinding, but steady, firm, inexorable. He curled closer to her still, his pleasure at the feel of her body blending with the joy of channeling for her. It was both like and unlike lovemaking, a sensual experience neither better nor worse, but manifestly different. Except the sense of I never want this to end was even stronger. I will miss this so much, when all is resolved. One way or another. The thought that this, now, might be the last time was unbearable, and he let the tide of aether bear it away for him. His consciousness sank into Ardent with the sun aether, leaving behind only the sense of happiness, of deep contentment.

Miro couldn’t contain a whimper when she stopped. He felt feverish, still in need of more, still wanting to escape into her. Ardent was saying something that was obviously much less important than what they’d just been doing, what they should still be doing. He’d have told her that, if he could remember how to speak. She kissed him, and that was right. He responded with enthusiasm, and when she drew back he kissed her throat instead. She gasped with pleasure, and that emboldened him further. He pushed her onto her back in the sand and crouched over her, nipping at the soft bare skin of her neck. He pushed the lower hem of her chiton up with his knees, one pawhand caressing at her breast. Straddling her hips, he pulsed his own against her, stroking his cock against her vulva. The position was wrong for penetration, and he desperately wanted to be inside her. He shifted one paw between her legs and she spread them a little for him, then frustratingly did not spread further. She said something else, and one of the words was stop.

Stopping was the last thing he wanted to do, but he did, holding himself motionless over her. He raised his head enough to look into her face. She wasn’t pushing him away: one of her hands curled through his hair and the other rested on the curve of his thigh. But there was worry in her eyes. “What’s the matter?” Miro asked at last, his tongue thick in his mouth.

“I want you, Miro,” she said, softly. “But I need to know this’s what you want, not just…”

“You are everything that I want.” He kissed her lips, licked his tongue up her ear. “And if you would give me my normal shape back and allow me to, I will prove it again. And again. Drunk or sober. Bound or free. My answer will not change.” He bent his legs lower and rubbed his erection against her furred thigh. “Please, Ardent. Tell me to stop or wait for your own sake, if you want, but do not do it for mine.”

She pressed something against the back of his pawhand where it rested on her breast, and he took it by reflex. His body trueshifted into his normal shape. Ardent spread her legs in open invitation. “Bit awkward, making love in a new shape?” she asked, her smile impish.    

He mock-growled and kissed her again, moving to kneel between her legs. “Yes.” He thrust into her with a shudder of need, pleasure, relief, fierce possessive joy. She wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him to her chest, hips canted to take him deeper into her, a cushion of aether supporting and bracing them both. For a glorious interval, his world narrowed to only Ardent, the feel of her around him, her ecstatic expression, her pleased noises and incoherent exclamations. Then climax swept through them both. Their shared rhythm slowed, then stopped. Miro collapsed against her. “Ah, my lady, my lady, my wonderful, amazing Ardent.” He snuggled into her. “Curse it, where’s that purr capability now that I need it?”

Ardent laughed and gave him the sphynx form back. He curled up like a giant lapcat on her and purred, making her body vibrate with him. “You,” she said, kissing his nose, “are delightful. And distracting. And delightfully distracting. I should loose you on Fallen, she’d lose all ability to focus on her various schemes.”

He shuddered and shook his head. “I only have distractions for you, my lady.”

She cuddled him to her chest. “Sorry. Bad taste.” Miro closed his eyes and only answered with more purring. “How’re you feeling, sugar? I took too much. You’re still feverish.”

He purred more, caressing her side with one paw. “My lady, I feel very nearly as good as you do.” He cupped the underside of one breast in broad fingers, still marveling at the delicious softness of them. “Which is to say that superlatives fail entirely to encompass this sense of well-being. I am, granted, extremely tired. Albeit the best imaginable sort of tired. Would you mind if I fell asleep on you? It’s not actually night, is it?”

“It’s not actually night, no, and I don’t mind if you fall asleep. Although I expect I’ll move you once you do. Got some plans for all this aether I stole from you, and I don’t need a nap. But you do. So sleep.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, and dropped off to sleep.

---

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Ardent didn’t take them back to her apartment this time. Miro didn’t recognize the new space: it was a plain wooden cube, perhaps eight feet on a side. Ardent had trueshifted shapes, into a short fox-tailed man wearing a suit, trouser legs tucked into boots. Still a sparrow, Miro landed on his shoulder. A hummingbird-winged golem flitted up to Ardent and curtsied. “Greetings, my lord.”

“Hello. May I ask the price for an hour’s lease?” Ardent spoke in a baritone, neither his voice nor mannerisms familiar. Had he been unable to see Ardent’s familiar pure bonfire soul overflowing from this little stranger, Miro might have wondered if he’d somehow misplaced his friend.

“True hour or perceptual, m’lord?”

“True hour.”

“Two feyours.”

Ardent paid the golem four feyours. “Is privacy still warranteed?”    

“The Underground maintains the best publicly-available privacy wards in the Moon Etherium. If your privacy is breached, we will notify you at once and refund your fee. Would you like me to shift your scene before I go, or would m’lord prefer to do so himself?”

Ardent waved his hand. “I’ll take care of it. Good day.”

The golem curtsied again, and ported out.

Still a fox-tailed man, Ardent went to each wall of the cube and claimed it, then did a basic ward on it. Afterwards, he flipped through a few vistas on a crystal globe in one corner, and selected one.

The scene around them transformed. It looked like an empty stretch of ocean beach at sunset. Stars gleamed in the vault overhead, while waves broke and crashed against the shore. In the far distance, merfolk cavorted with seahorses and dolphins. With his newly-attuned senses, Miro could tell that much of the appearance of space was a glamour. But actual transformation magic was in play as well: the perceptual space had been greatly expanded. The water, waves, and the white sand under Ardent’s booted feet were all real, or at least, as real as anything made by aether ever was.

Ardent pulled off his boots and walked to the water’s edge, wriggling his toes in the sand. “Do you want your normal shape back? We’re not being watched.”

“Please.” He fluttered into the air and grabbed his homunculus token with both claws when Ardent proffered it. It trueshifted him back to his normal form, and Miro took in a deep breath. The air carried a tang of salt and dampness, but was otherwise clean and crisp. Much like the false sea scent at the previous night’s party, it lacked the other smells he associated with the ocean: no seaweed or decaying driftwood or sealife.

The waves washed about Ardent’s ankles, sinking his toes into the sand as he stared at them. “Toes are so weird,” Ardent pronounced.    

Miro laughed. “I’ve never been able to accustom myself to hooves. My father loves being a horse or a deer. We used to romp about the Broken Lands and even the mortal ones in those forms – we could trueshift into deer. But the hardness of those feet never felt normal to me. On others, certainly, I can appreciate the aesthetic. But I always prefered toes.”

“So you do shift in the Sun Etherium?” Ardent took his locket off and sat down in the sand. He pulled his bag out of the locket, and rooted past piles of messages.

“Oh, some of the time. Certain games require an animal shape, or shifting. It’s considered gauche to wear anything far from the base fey for ordinary daily purposes, but some will do so anyway. I like looking this way, so that did not trouble me. But it’s fun to borrow other shapes from time to time. Especially out of the aether. There is something about real space.” He lay back on the beach, pillowing his head on his hands and looking at the false sky. “I know expanded space is just as real to the senses, but it’s not the same.”

“Oh, I hear that, sugar. Aha!” Ardent produced the tracer golem at last. “Hey there, kiddo. You got anything for me yet?”

The small clay golem snuffled, scratching at one floppy ear with its hand. “Ocean Discourse was not in public when you left the Etherium last night. She was at the Promenade for a quarter of an hour after your return to the Etherium this morning. She was not in public for an hour, and is now at the High Ridge Flight Course.”

Ardent pulled a foot out of the sand, frowned at his toes, and trueshifted back to her normal satyress form. She gave a satisfied grunt and rummaged in the bag again, this time to pull out the Ocyale scrying mirror that Play had given her the day before. She summoned an overview of the Etherium on it, and had it show her the flight course. She zoomed in on the locale until Ocean Discourse was an ant-sized speck in the mirror, flying maneuvers with a handful of other specks. “Thanks, kiddo. Stop tracing her for now,” she told the golem.

“Why switch the tracer off if you’re going to be watching her anyway?” Miro asked, curiously.

“Mmm?” She glanced at him, then grinned impishly. “Ah, because of the limitations on the kind of enchantment Bull used to check you for tracers and scryers. It checks for spells that are watching you. Not spells that happen to be watching the area in your general vicinity. Also, this is Play’s stealthiest mirror, and it’s observing the scene from a high vantage. Even someone looking for spells in effect in the area probably won’t notice this one. Magic’s everywhere. And if she ports out, I can put the trace back on her.”

Miro nodded. “I see. What are you looking for?”

“That, I don’t know yet. But that last conversation with Play…y’know, Play could’ve thrown us out at any time. She didn’t have to talk to me. But she did.” Ardent rolled onto her stomach and put the Ocyale mirror on the beach in front of her. “I don’t think she was just talking to vent. She wanted me to know something.”

“What, then? ‘You’re not that stupid’?”

“Yeah, that. I was asking the wrong questions. Or rather, she was confirming that the obvious answers were right. And more than that. She thinks I can already figure this out. ‘I can’t give you any more help’. Not ‘I won’t’. Can’t. She means that she’s already helped enough. We’ve got what we need. We just need to…add it up.” Ardent pulled out the messages with the information on Miro’s attackers, and spread them out on the beach. Then she added the notes she’d taken while Miro was writing about the attack, and Jinokimijin’s notebook. She stared at the pile, then used aether to turn the sand underneath the items into a sheet of glass. She handed Miro the notebook. “Can you find the pages on the whatchamacallit, that specific wazzit, extractor thingie, that Fallen’s building?”

“The Harbinger. Yes.”

While he searched for the section, Ardent pushed other items around on her glass board. She pulled the information on each of the three assailants apart to regroup them together. She smoothed the messages flat and kept them in place with aether after positioning them. When Miro handed her the notebook back, she made a duplicate of each page on the Harbinger and added that to her board. She put a glamour over the whole thing to illuminate it. “So. What do you think the odds are that there was enough natural ivory and alabaster in the Moon Etherium already to make the Harbinger?”

“Slim. My father spent months gathering natural resources for his proof-of-concept versions. I cannot speak for your Etherium, but, edibles aside, few fey in Sun Etherium care about the distinction between natural and aetheric items. Consequently very little was available. And the materials need a certain purity to them; reusing carved pieces seldom suffices.”

“Mm-hmm.” She summoned her farspeaker surface, but paused without starting a message. Instead, she eyed Miro speculatively. “So if you weren’t going to look like a fey, what shape would you choose?”    

Miro considered this. “If I wanted to fit in with the Moon Etherium?”

“Yeah, let’s say that.”

“A sphynx, I think.”

“The four-legged feline kind? With hand-paws? Those’re cute. Male or female?”

“Yes. Male. And winged.”

Ardent made a homunculus of a sphynx and offered it to him. “Mind being one for a bit?”

“By all means.” He accepted the token, and transformed into a winged man-headed lion, with forepaws as flexible as hands. He flexed and folded his wings, then rolled onto his back and curled, catlike, blinking at her.

Ardent giggled at him. “Yup, still adorable. Great, thanks. Mirohirokon. Sun Etherium names have meaning too, don’t they? It’s like you have a whole language just for naming?”

He waggled a paw in the air. “It’s not a complete language one could speak, at least not any more. But yes, each syllable in a name corresponds to a word, and when you combine syllables they often take on new meanings. So every Sun Host name has several meanings.”    

She nodded. “So what’s Mirohirokon mean?”

“A few things. Some of them make more sense than others. ‘Dawn’s Light Unbroken’ is one interpretation. And there’s ‘The Sun Shines Forever.’ My favorite is ‘Sunlight Falls but Never Breaks’.”

“Oooh, I like that one too.” Ardent beamed. “It suits you. Though it’s a little long for a Moon Host name, especially for someone your age. How do you like ‘Never Breaks’?”

He smiled. “It will do.”

“All right. As your new owner, thus say I: your true name is Never Breaks.” She wrote it in Moon Host runes made of light over his body. “I’ll still call you Miro for short.” The runes faded into him slowly.

His fur prickled across his body at her invocation, a strange sensation to add to the oddness of his formal renaming. “May I ask the reason for my reinvention?”

“There’s three ways you can trace a fey. By their looks, their name, and their aether signature. You can’t change the last, and everyone knows my aether signature. I’ve cast a billion spells in Moon Etherium, just like every other Moon Host fey. But you, sugar—”

“…I’ve never cast one here.” He grinned, suddenly seeing her point. “No one in the Moon Host knows what it looks like.”

“Just so. And my messages will be intercepted soon, if they’re not being intercepted already. But no one will expect you to send messages, and if they did, they couldn’t find you now anyway. So, sugar, would you message White Rose for me? He should know who’d trade in natural materials.”

Miro dispatched the message, amused to have been promoted to secretary after all. While he waited for the reply, he came around to Ardent’s side and sat in the sand next to her. His new feline shape was very comfortable for lazing about without furniture. He watched as she made notes beside the descriptions of each attacker on what they’d done during the attempted abduction.

“So what I want to do,” she said out loud, “Is surveil all these pus-sacks to see what they’re doing and who they talk to. Last night, they had a detector on them. I don’t know if that means they still do now. Let’s assume this one—” she tapped the picture of the peacock-tailed woman, Broken Song, aka ‘Bull’ “—still has it. If I watch her, she’ll know I’m watching. That may be something we can use to our advantage.”    

“How so?”

“Oh, various ways. You manipulate people when they know you’re watching them. They do the things they want you to see them doing. Usually that’s not as good as seeing them do the things they don’t want you to see, but sometimes…” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m thinking out loud here, honey, don’t mind me too much. Also, if Fallen thinks I’m paying attention to one of her people, she may feel more comfortable that I can’t be watching the others. Of course, these blighted aphids aren’t the only tools she’s got.”

Miro nodded. He exchanged a few more messages with White Rose, and then said, “According to your Archivist friend, there are three Moon Host fey who engage in the natural-products trade with mortals. One of them hasn’t done any trading since we returned to the Old World. The other two are Truth Smiles and Verdant Generosity. They trade with fey only by appointment.”

“Mmm. Message all three of them. Some generic inquiry, like ‘do you trade in non-aether materials?’”

Obediently, Miro complied. As he finished the second message, Ardent sat up and shot him a stricken look. “I’m sorry, Miro, I forgot, I didn’t mean to order you—”

He glanced to her, perplexed, then rolled to all fours and leaned forward to kiss her. “It’s fine,” he told her, and then kissed her again because he could, because she would let him, because she was glorious.    

She touched his cheek as she drew back after the second kiss. “I just don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“Well, you should,” he told her, teasingly. “If there’s any advantage to be made of me. Ah! Fallen’s other tools. There’s a way I can help you with that, although it may not be practical.”

Her long fey ears canted up. “How’s that?”

“Hold that thought.” Miro sent the last requested message, and his wisp messenger returned at once with a reply. “Verdant Generosity is out of the Moon Etherium and has a golem taking messages for them.”    

“Oh, now that’s promising. Ask – would you please ask the golem why they left and when they’ll be back, sugar?”

Miro did so, and read off the golem’s reply. “They’re trading with mortals for natural materials at a customer’s special request. Expected back today or tomorrow.”

A slow, sensual smile spread on Ardent’s face. “There’s our fey.” She wakened her tracer golem with a gesture. “Did White Rose send a likeness for Verdant Generosity’s normal form?”

“Yes…” Miro sorted through the messages, and made the gesture to decrypt it for general view. Fortunately, decryption was a function of the existing farspeaker spell, not a separate spell he had to cast. The image was of a centaur. “Here.”

Ardent showed it to her tracer golem. “This’s Verdant Generosity. Trace them.”

The dog-headed statuette snuffled the picture. “They’re not within my range, not in that form.”

“That’s fine, keep waiting for them.” Ardent crinkled her nose. “Ugh, wait, that’s not a trueshift. They’d wear a different form to go trading with mortals. I need to know that shape. Or their aether signature. Can you see if White Rose has that?”

Miro checked. “Not directly. But they’ve got the coordinates of Verdant Generosity’s home.”

“And I can get their aether signature from the possession-mark on that. Except that Fallen’s still tracing me, and I don’t want her to know I’m looking for her suppliers. Mph.”

“Fallen’s tracing you?”

“Yes, she started when I showed up at Play’s. Sorry, did I forget to mention that? The Underground broke her scrying, but not the trace. I expect she can penetrate the Underground’s privacy wards if she wants. But she probably figures intercepting my messages will be just as good and less conspicuous. That reminds me, I should send some messages for her to intercept. I’ll send my condolences to Storm about the sculpture, and ask him to tell Play I’m sorry. If Storm’s not blocking me.” She started to write, saying absently, “I’ve got plenty of friends I could ask to check on Verdant Generosity for me. Just wish I knew who I could trust not to let Fallen know.”

Miro cast his mind back to the crowd of Ardent’s associates at the party. “That neuter made of water at the gathering last night, Grain of the Lyre? It had an honest soul, and no obligation to Fallen, and a good obligation to you. It would help.”

Ardent flopped onto her side. “Ooh right you can see souls! Wait, you can see obligations too?”

He dropped his eyes and nodded. “Yes. Like strings from the hands, leading to the nape of the neck on the obligated. That’s what I was about to tell you a few minutes ago. Fallen holds more strings than I’ve seen from anyone but the Sun Queen. Even more than your Moon Queen. For people in the same room or area with her, it’s pretty obvious who she does or doesn’t have a string on. Farther away than that and it’s muddier. But I can follow a single string to its source. So if I were close enough to see her, I could, say, follow back the thickest or most corrupted strings, to find the people most indebted to her. I remembered that merman because he was not only corrupt, but thoroughly in her debt.”

Ardent’s eyes widened, and she flopped onto her back in the sand. “Oh, Justice! That’s amazing. I wish I’d known sooner. I mean, no criticism, sugar. Just. Ooh. There’s gotta be some good stuff we can do with that. All right, let’s start with Never Breaks asking Lyre for a whisker of a favor.”

---

Don’t want to wait until the next post to read more? Buy The Moon Etherium now! Or check out the author’s other books: A Rational Arrangement and Further Arrangements.

Ardent spent an hour constructing protections over Miro, to defend him from not only physical harm, but also from sense-deception and the other mental delusions that glamour could wreak. The latter two she could have done without wards, but it was easier with them. “I wish I could consult with Play on how to make these more resilient in the face of that aether-siphoning enchantment. I am worried about that girl.”

“Play Until Collapsing Dreams? What’s the matter with her?”

“Oh, right, I didn’t tell you.” Ardent explained the final, confusing message she’d gotten from the catgirl. “I tried sending her a message, and she’s blocking me. With an automatic, ‘I said leave me alone, Ardent!’ reply. Maybe I should respect that, but…”

“No, I do not think you should. She sounds like she’s in trouble.”    

“Yeah, she does. Question is, is it the kind of trouble I can fix, or the kind I’ll only make worse by trying? ’cause Play sure seems to think the latter.”

“Or someone is impersonating and intercepting her messages. She did say that could happen.”

Ardent hesitated. “Yeah, but…to Play? She’s gotta be one of the top ten worst people in the Etherium to try impersonating.” She crinkled her nose. “Still. I think we’d better check on her. At least stop by her castle. Maybe in disguise, in case there’s any casual watchers.”

Standing next to him as Miro sat on the bench, Ardent finally finished with the last protection. “I wish I could give you back fey evasion, but I’m pretty sure there’s no possession-applicable version of that.”

“It will be well, my lady. Thank you.” Miro stood on the bench and hugged her fiercely. “I wish I could make this easier for you,” he murmured in her ear. “You don’t know how much your goodwill means to me.”

“Yeah, well, given your penchant for crazy oaths, I’m starting to get an idea. Let’s go be sneaky.” Ardent shifted both herself and Miro into the shapes of sparrows, and ported them into the sky over Play’s castle.

One glance, and she knew everything was worse than she’d feared. The glamour that made the castle look as if it were the only one for miles was tattered and rent, adjacent buildings visible through the rips. The privacy glamour that should have shielded the castle from prying eyes was likewise battered. The spell that expanded the property’s available space was a wreck. Space itself was left mangled, warping inwards in a wedge that cut through the crippled hedge maze that represented Play’s ward, and into one side of the castle.

“Divine shield us all.” Miro circled over the castle at her side, sparrow-wings spread. “This wasn’t just an intrusion.”

“Justice, no.” Ardent angled over the ruined wards and slipped into the castle through one of the many gaps the wedge of mangled space had left. “Oh no.” She circled in the air of Play’s spacious entrance hall. “Oh no.”

Thousands of fragments of aether, sharp as broken glass, covered the floor. Amidst the wreckage, half-shrouded by debris, rose the feet of Contemplation After the Storm’s aether sculpture. Just the feet and parts of an ankle, and a single intact chunk of skirt. It was horribly still now, the dancing couple and their shared world alike in ruins.

Miro followed her inside, and almost fell from the air with the shock of it. “How – how could she do this? How could anyone do this? Why would she do this? What did Storm ever do to deserve this?”

“Ardent Sojourner.” Play stood at the top of the stairs. She was utterly white: hair, skin, clothing, everything bleached of all color, white as bone, as death. She looked directly at Ardent’s sparrow-form. “I told you. You are not welcome here. Leave.”

Ardent swooped to her and landed on the bannister rail before her. Several scrying spells hung in the air; some of them were Play’s, but one had an unfamiliar aether signature. Ardent made note of it. “Play, sugar, what happened here? You can’t think I had anything to do with it. I haven’t even been in the Etherium since you saw me leave last night!”

The catgirl gave a hoarse croak of a laugh. “You’re not that stupid. You know what happened here. And why. I told you already: get out.”    

Ardent hopped backwards on tiny bird feet, head craned up to look at Play. “Sugar, we gotta stop her. We can’t just—”

“Do you think I didn’t try to stop her?!” Play roared. “Do you think I let this happen? Do you think there’s a place in the Moon Etherium that’s better defended? You are not this stupid! Get out!”

Ardent felt cold. They were being watched, and Play knew they were being watched. She needed to get Play away from the scrying spell to have a real conversation, but she couldn’t convince Play to leave without having a real conversation first. “It’s not too late…”

“Yes it is! Look around you, you Truth-lost fool! You are not in time! It is too late!”

Ardent shifted out of the sparrow form into her normal one, and took the queen’s token from her locket. “Look.” She pressed it into Play’s hand. The reveal-spellwork nudged at her awareness, and Ardent realized a tracer was tracking her movements now, too.

Play stared at Skein’s message with white, pupilless eyes. “No,” she said hoarsely, and threw it back in Ardent’s face. “No! I can’t help you any more than I already have, and I’m sorry for everything I did do! Go back to Try Again! Leave us in peace! This is still my home and I am telling you GET OUT!” Aether swirled around her arm and she hurled it at Ardent and Miro. Ardent evaded it, and found herself outside of the ruined hedge maze, blinking.

A moment later, Miro’s sparrow-shape landed next to her. He looked dazed but unharmed. “That was forceful.”

“Guess her ownership sigils for her home still work. They just…weren’t enough.” Ardent swallowed. “New plan time,” she said, and ported them away.

---

Don’t want to wait until the next post to read more? Buy The Moon Etherium now! Or check out the author’s other books: A Rational Arrangement and Further Arrangements.

As they walked back to the entrance hall, Ardent tried to puzzle out all the implications of that audience, and determine the true nature of Skein’s game. A tiny part of her whined, This is why I left the Moon Etherium! To get away from all these twisty contradictory motivations!    

She squared her shoulders and quashed it. When they reached the entrance hall, she still hadn’t sorted her own thoughts. “Ugh. I need some time to think.” Ardent rubbed her face with one hand. “And somewhere to think. You all right with going to a shrine?”

“I would be glad to,” Miro said.

Ardent sent messages to the golem attendants of a few different shrines, and selected the one that told her there were no visitors at the moment. She teleported them to it as soon as she and Miro reached the foyer of the Midnight Palace.

It was the Moon Etherium’s oldest shrine, and though it was the least impressive of them it was far grander and larger than the shrine at Try Again. It had a traditional Moon-Etherium look: rows of silver benches on a star-dusted midnight floor. The ceiling and walls had cartouches to represent the different major Ideals: Persistence, Duty, Truth, Justice, Loyalty, and Love. Between each, stained-glass scenes illustrated the major and minor Ideals. Each was exquisitely rendered, and from a time when mastery of aether was still primitive and such things required much more manual skill and labor. A rich mix of different incenses scented the air, the residue of many offerings.

The only attendant was the golem, which surprised Ardent. When she’d last lived in the Etherium, there’d always been a volunteer confidant at this shrine, to talk to anyone who came by if they needed advice. Now the golem said there were only confidants on schedule for a few hours a day. In case it wasn’t obvious enough that the Moon Host doesn’t care about the Ideals any more.

The shrine had several altars, so that multiple people could engage in private meditations at once. Since none were in use, Ardent went to the front one. She lengthened the leash for Miro to several yards, but did not unchain him. The Moon Etherium’s oldest shrine was a sacred place and should be safe, but she didn’t trust it. While she was being paranoid anyway, Ardent cast reveal-spellwork, and looked for signs of any watchers. There weren’t any. Either Fallen doesn’t think I’m a threat, or she doesn’t want me to think that she thinks I’m a threat. Ugh, my head hurts already.

Miro could have chosen another altar, but he took one of the seats instead and bowed his head.

Ardent set out the Ideals before her, though Truth knew it was there more as apology than observance. She knelt before the altar and lit a candle for Love first. Do I ask for your help? Apologize for the way I’ve abused you too? Tell you I don’t have time for you now, please come back later?

Love’s carved eyes watched her with a kindly, accepting expression. Ardent imagined her words: You’ve been telling me to wait for twelve years. How’s that been going for you?

I don’t love him, Ardent answered herself, and wasn’t sure she believed it. Pretty sure I’m still in love with Whispers Rain.

Do you still think the one is exclusive of the other?

Ardent sighed. Right, I’m not settling this one today, either. She lit a candle for Truth next.

Part of her wanted to tell Miro everything that had happened with Skein, but she couldn’t. Not because she didn’t trust him, but because it wasn’t her secret to share. And she didn’t know exactly what it meant.

I can’t tell a Sun Host fey that the Queen of the Moon Host has lost control of her own Etherium. I can’t tell him that Fallen may’ve tricked Skein, perhaps into thinking that when Fallen tore apart the Sun Etherium and built her own, Fallen’s new one would be subordinate to Moon. Or maybe Skein is just so scared of Fallen that she doesn’t dare oppose her. But I know now they’ve been discrediting the Sun Etherium to make what Fallen will do to it palatable. Forgivable. Acceptable. And maybe Skein’s just now figuring out how untrustworthy Fallen is, or maybe I’m just the only person she thinks might have a shot at stopping her. Hah. Maybe there’re other agents she’s putting into motion, but she wants to keep them all deniable so that Fallen won’t take it out on Skein if we lose. Skein’s hedging her bets: pretend to be on Fallen’s side so that Fallen won’t make her a target, and covertly oppose her in the hopes someone else can stop her. Clever enough. Cowardly. But clever.    

The satyress looked to Justice. Maybe it’s not justice to rescue Skein from her own terrible decisions, if that’s what’s happening. But it’s sure not justice to let Fallen succeed. Ardent lit a candle for Justice and stopped trying to solve her problems by conscious thought. She meditated on the Ideals instead, contemplating each one with familiar abstract litanies, centering herself upon them.

When she’d finished meditating, or at least decided more meditation wasn’t doing her any good, Ardent rose and walked back to Miro. He lifted his head and started to rise at the jingle of the leash, until she waved him to sit again. She sat on the bench beside him instead. The section resized itself and the space around it to accommodate her, without displacing Miro. She asked him, “How’re the Ideals observed in the Sun Etherium?”

“Much the same as here, I believe,” Miro said.

“So, badly?”

He smiled. “Perhaps.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to slight you, hon. Or Sun Host. Just kinda curious, since you look like you’re meditating but not to an Ideal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Everyone’s got their own way, doesn’t need to be same as mine.”

“Praying,” Miro said, quietly.

Ardent blinked at that. “What?”

“I wasn’t meditating. I was praying.”

“Uh…you mean like mortals to their gods?”

“Exactly like that, yes.”

“Huh. I didn’t know the Sun Etherium had gods any more. I mean, I know there’s some barbarian villages where fey have religions, but I thought both Etheriums were pretty secular now.”

“Sun Etherium is, yes, but there are still a few religious fey left. I practice Vya Aymthial, the Divine Way. It’s a mortal religion, from the world of Thial.”

“When were we last on Thial? I don’t even remember that one.”    

“Thirty-two years ago. We were synchronized with it for several months. My father and I travelled it for two months, gathering stories, books, and research materials. We ran into a Vya Aymthial missionary, and she converted me.”

Ardent smiled. “That must have been one persuasive mortal. Not like the lure of eternal life’s much of a promise to a fey.”

“Well. It was a persuasive religion.” Miro hesitated, then said, “The missionary had soulsight. Just like me. She said that Vya Aymthial’s first prophet also had soulsight. That the Divine had given it to him to help show other people the Path. Vya Aymthial has a tripart god: the Divine, the Guide, and the Path. The Divine is the power behind all things, the creator and the universe. The Guide is the force that shows the difference between right and wrong, the one that helps you know what to do. And the Path is the way you’re supposed to go, to accomplish the goals of your life.” He gave a little shrug, as if he’d said more than he’d intended to. “Anyway, their holy book taught me a lot about soulsight and the meaning of what I can see. And their message, that people should love one another and do what will create the most good in the world, resonated with me.”

Ardent nodded. “That’s what you meant when you were talking to Sessile. About your purpose.”

He blushed, his long ears pinkening. “Yes. And also…that the Path isn’t the same for everyone. Sometimes there’ll be things that need to be done that aren’t the right task for me, because of my skills and limitations. Sometimes they are. I just have to try to figure out what’s what.”

The satyress reached out to take his hand. “And saving your dad is your Path?”

“I think so. Part of it.” Miro laced his fingers between hers. “Yours too, I hope. Not that I expect you to believe in the Divine Way.”

“Yeah. Mine too.” Ardent offered him a smile.

Miro smiled back for a moment, then his expression sobered. “What did the Queen want, my lady? If I may ask?”

“It was complicated. But I got this.” She took the carte blanche from her locket and showed it to him.

Miro stared as it activated. “That’s genuine? It has her aether signature?”

“From the queen’s hand to mine.”

“But – how did you convince her to offer it? What did you give her?”

“An oath. Don’t worry, sugar, it was nothing I wasn’t already doing, and nothing as ridiculous as the one you swore to me during High Court.” Ardent put the token back in her locket. Miro still had the same worried look anyway. She twisted to face him, curling one leg atop the bench, and held out her arms in invitation. He entered her embrace with a gratifying eagerness and snuggled into her lap. She stroked his long indigo hair. At least this still makes sense. Wait, no, this never made sense. Nothing in my life makes sense any more, least of all this. But it does feel right. Which is more than I can say for anything else.

Ardent blew out a breath. First things first. She glanced around the empty shrine. Guess this is as good a place as any to try this. Not like my apartment’s safe any more. Maybe a shrine’ll be auspicious. “I’m gonna try to ward you now, sugar, all right?”

He chuckled. “Oh, no, don’t protect me, my lady. I am so looking forward to the next abduction attempt.” He grinned. “I mean, it did end very nicely for me.”

Ardent made a face at him. “Hush, you.” She kissed his nose, and then made the basic gestures for ownership and warding over him. Even before she was through, she knew it wasn’t working. She tried feeding what Sun aether she still had left into the spell, but it was as if the spell couldn’t even start. The magic wouldn’t go into it. She might as well have tried to soak up water with a rock instead of a sponge.    

“No luck?” Miro asked, watching her face.

“No. Not even with Sun aether. Aether knows you’re a fey, and you shouldn’t need this kind of protection anyway.” She compressed her full lips into a thin, unhappy line.

He made a thoughtful noise and withdrew from her arms. “Or perhaps aether knows I am not a possession.” Miro rose to his feet, then knelt at her hooves and said, “I give myself to you, Ardent Sojourner, in all ways and all things, to use as you see fit.”

“What – Miro, what are you doing, you can’t—” Ardent bolted upright, staring at him in horror as he repeated that insanity two more times. “I don’t want to own you!”

Miro flinched at her words; he looked pale and shaken, head down, still kneeling. “I know. Please don’t release me from it yet, my lady. If my lady would be so kind as to try the warding spell again?”

I don’t want this to work. She almost released him anyway. Instead, she leaned forward, breathing shallowly, and made the warding gesture again. Before she was partway through, she knew it was going to work, and hated it, and hated the Moon Etherium, and the Sun Etherium, and aether, and the entire justice-lost fey race.

“My lady?” Miro had turned his face up to watch her, his expression worried. “It didn’t work?”

Ardent realized she was crying. She wiped her eyes with the back of one brown hand. “No. It did.” I don’t want this. It’s too much. “Miro.” There has to be a way, some way to make it more bearable. She chose her next words carefully. “This is my command to you. You are to behave exactly as you would had you never given me this pledge. You will act in accordance with your own best judgment. You will give no more weight to anything I ask of you than you would have without that oath. Nothing I or anyone else says in the future can or will change this command. Do you understand?”

Miro relaxed visibly, and rose to his feet. “I do, my lady. Ardent. Thank you.”

“All right.” She let out a breath. The ward was still intact upon him. “C’mere, let me do a better version of the ward.”

He sat beside her obediently. “Yes, my lady.”

Too obediently. She started to gesture, stopped. “Back up, sugar.”

He did so. “My lady.”

“Stand on your head,” she told him, and he moved to comply. He didn’t even look confused. “No, stop, Miro, what are you doing?”

He stopped, frozen with one hand on the floor. “…obeying.” With a visible effort, he pulled himself together and sat, carefully, on the bench. “I don’t think contradicting your own future orders quite worked.”    

“Justice find it!” she swore. “I can’t do this. I’m going to release you.”

“Please don’t,” Miro said. He put a hand over hers. “It’s not as bad as that. See, I can even argue with you. Give me another silly command.”

“Turn a pirouette.”

Miro remained seated. “See? I don’t have to obey—”

“Do it now!” Ardent snapped.

Miro twisted sideways to face her on the bench, and clenched a hand against its back. He turned no further, meeting her eyes. “All right, yes, it feels wrong to disobey. But I am not forced to. It’ll be fine, Ardent. It doesn’t have to change anything. And we both know you are putting up with this for my benefit, not yours.” He touched her damp cheek, his index finger caressing beside the corner of her eye. “Everything you have done in the Etherium for the last three days has been for my benefit, and my father’s. I am the one taking advantage of you, Ardent.” He gave a little self-conscious laugh and looked at his hands. “Did I unintentionally put you deeper into my power by trying to put myself into yours? I am sorry, Ardent. Of course you should release me if you wish.”

Ardent smiled weakly, covering his delicate hand with her own larger one. She lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. “Is crazy contagious? Because you’re starting to make sense to me and now I’m really worried.” He laughed. “Fine, when you put it like that it doesn’t seem quite so awful. But Justice, Miro, I will be glad when this is all over. I’m going to finish warding you now.” And be very careful in how I phrase things, from here on.

---

Don’t want to wait until the next post to read more? Buy The Moon Etherium now! Or check out the author’s other books: A Rational Arrangement and Further Arrangements.

Skein’s private quarters were much less ostentatious than the Great Hall where she held court. The rooms were spacious but not vast, at least not by Etherium standards. Skein received them in a parlor large enough to accommodate a dragon of modest proportions. It was an old-fashioned chamber, with a mosaic floor and stuccoed walls. Large, arched windows and a balcony door looked out upon the Palace gardens, letting in fresh air and a subtle, pleasant mix of floral and earthy scents. Except for the furniture, the room was natural: unenhanced by shifting, expansion, or glamour. The furniture was the one modern touch visible: faintly glowing oblongs that floated in the air. Sophisticated use of aether meant that they supported the occupant in whatever position the individual chose. Skein was reclining on her side in hers, suspended at a thirty degree angle with the seat conforming to her. She wore her usual star-skinned, white-haired form, though today her hair was a mass of tight curls in a vaguely spherical shape, off-center from the top of her head as it drooped down against her rack of antlers. Curls strayed against her face. A simple silver toga, ankle-length and trimmed with ornamented ribbon, served as her only garb.

“My queen.” Ardent knelt to her, as did Miro.

“Ardent, beloved. Rise. Thank you for joining me. Your servant may wait without.” She made a shooing motion with the back of one black hand.

“If your majesty does not object, I prefer him where I can keep an eye on him.” Ardent caught the chain leading from her bracelet in her hand and jingled it meaningfully.

Skein raised a white eyebrow. “I am sure one of my people may be spared to watch him for you, if he’s proved troublesome.”

“He’s proved trouble-attracting, your majesty. He was assaulted, injured, and almost stolen from me last night. If you don’t want him to overhear us, then put him in some immersion. He has no more defense against them than a mortal; he’ll be unaware of everything without. But I want him with me.” Ardent tensed her fingers around the chain, then made herself relax her grip. Don’t press me on this, Skein, or neither one of us will be happy with the result.

Skein studied her for a moment. “Very well.” She dispatched a message with a flick of one hand. “There’s no need for formal attire today, Ardent. Diamond of Winter should have said. Feel free to change to something more comfortable.”

Being more formally dressed than her queen definitely wasn’t comfortable. Ardent bowed and exchanged her formal dress for the kind of thigh-length chiton she usually wore. She gave Miro a similar short toga.

“I am sorry to hear that your servant was attacked, Ardent. Have you identified the responsible party? Has the Justiciar been informed?”

“After the attack last night, I had to take Mirohirokon out of the city at once to heal his injuries. We only returned a few minutes before this appointment. I will look into the matter, of course, but I haven’t visited the Justiciar yet.”

A regal tilt of Skein’s head acknowledged this point. She gestured to the drifting oblong seat nearest herself. “Please, make yourself at home. Would you care for a refreshment? Have you yet a fondness for aether brandies, my Ardent? The Palace vintner composed a truly magnificent blend twelve years ago, of which we’ve only uncasked one barrel so far. If you would care to taste?”

“Your majesty knows me well. Thank you; I’d be delighted.” Ardent took the offered seat; Miro rose enough to follow her, then sank to his knees at her hooves. Just as Jinokimijin had done with Fallen. Ardent struggled to ignore the similarity. Invisible aether servants uncorked a decanter and filled a snifter for her, which floated to her hand. Ardent sipped it, and was startled into a direct exclamation. “Fantastic! You didn’t exaggerate on this one, Skein.”

Skein grinned at her, and for a moment it was as if they were both just people again. Blight, she’s got a whole court full of fey to treat her like a queen. If she wanted someone to treat her like royalty, she’d’ve summoned one of them and not me. Ardent was about to ask a question when a white centaur entered the chamber and knelt to the queen.    

“Reflections on Water. Would you kindly provide an immersion for Ardent’s servant? Did you have a preference for type, Ardent?” Skein asked.

Why don’t you just ask him? Would it kill us to acknowledge he’s a person? Screw this, I don’t care what she wants me to pretend. Deciding for him that he’s gonna be mind-fogged again is enough high-handedness for me. “Sugar, what kind of immersions do you like?” Ardent asked.

“If it pleases my lady, a racing or flying immersion would be enjoyable.” Miro kept his head bowed, his tone subservient.

Reflections glanced to Skein for confirmation, received a slight nod, and cast the immersion. Miro’s posture relaxed, eyes unfocusing as the sophisticated glamour filled his senses and took control of his mind. Skein waved the kneeling centaur away with her thanks, and he withdrew.

Once he was gone, Ardent asked, “How’ve you been, Skein? You look fantastic, but you always have. Do you do your hair like that a lot now?”

“For informal occasions, so far. It’s a little…messy, for Court.”

Ardent grinned. “Since when is the Court anything but messy? C’mon, our aesthetic’s never been about brutal perfection.”

“Brutal perfection!” Skein gave a real smile for that. “Oh, I like that one. It fits the Sun Etherium. There is something brutal about perfection, isn’t there? Regimentation is oppressive.”

“Yeah. So how’ve you been, sweetie? Because you seemed kinda regimented, y’know?”

The queen shifted to rest her cheek against one hand, her body-conforming seat reshaping itself to reflect her position. “Perhaps I am,” she admitted. “I don’t suppose you want your old job back?”

“Not really. Something wrong with your current Justiciar? Who is it, Captivate Interpretation?”

“No, they resigned two years ago. The Justiciar is Endless Steel, now.”

“Endless Steel? Isn’t it kinda…young for the job?”

“Yes. And I do not trust it,” Skein said, bluntly.

“Then why’d you appoint it?”

“It was Captivate Interpretation’s recommendation. And Shadow of Fallen Scent supported it.”

“Well, there’s your first sign that it was a mistake,” Ardent said. “Why is Shadow of Fallen Scent your Surety now? What happened to Leaping Stallion?”

Skein thinned her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Surely even you know what Leaping Stallion did, and if you don’t, you can find someone else to tell you. As for why Shadow of Fallen Scent…she is qualified for the position, as well as ambitious and…persistent.”

“Where by ‘qualified’ you mean ‘she bullied the right people’ and by ‘ambitious’, power-mad?”

The queen sighed and rubbed her temples. “Perhaps. She is a force to be reckoned with in the Moon Etherium, now more than ever.”

“Because you promoted her! Seriously, Skein, what were you thinking? You can’t appease a power-mad tyrant by giving her more power!”  

“You haven’t been here!” Skein shot back. “You’ve been off, playing your little game in your little barbarian village, and left this mess to us!”

“Playing my little game? You think what I do is a game? Nothing that happens in the Etheriums is real! You eat fake food and live in fake houses and sit on fake cushions and make up fake problems for each other so that you can whine about how awful it all is! We’re all immortal and invulnerable and uncontainable, and the Etherium dwellers have all the aether anyone could want to make anything they could need and somehow – somehow – the only thing anyone here really wants is to find a way to make other fey suffer. Can’t hurt ’em physically? Let’s stab each other socially. You want to talk about games? Let’s talk about that game. Let’s talk about the game where you want Fallen to display some poor dumb Sun Host fey like a Justice-deprived bed slave in High Court. High Court, Skein. Is Humiliation the new Ideal you’re gonna put alongside Justice, Love, Persistence, Truth, Duty and Loyalty? Are you putting it up beside Vanity and Social Standing? Did you just throw Truth and Justice away entirely?” Ardent was on her hooves without realizing at what point she’d stood, her chest heaving.    

The Queen of the Moon Host rose from her oblong and crossed the few paces between them, her height increasing with each stride. She stopped a bare inch from Ardent, tall enough now to look the satyress in the eye, the points on the forward side of her antlers almost touching Ardent’s little horns. Her expression was blank and calm, though her breathing had quickened. One star-dappled-hand reached for the chain that dangled from Ardent’s wrist, and lifted it. It jingled. She brought it higher, until it drew taut against Miro’s collar and pulled the Sun prince’s head upright with it, collar tight beneath his chin, eyes dreamlost, body limp and unaware. Skein stopped, holding him there. “And what game are you playing, Ardent Sojourner, that gives you the right to come lecture me about mine?”

…Well, everything I just said was a terrible tactical mistake. Ardent felt her face heat with embarrassment. She started to fall back, to kneel and start over.

Skein caught Ardent’s chin in her free hand instead, and the satyress did not evade. “You are about to call me your majesty and tell me some new evasion you think I want to hear. You are going to apologize for your heated words and say you did not mean them. Don’t. You meant what you just said. You have always been Loyal to Truth, Ardent. Don’t betray him now. Why did you say that to me?”

Because I’m an idiot. “Because you’re better than this, Skein. Truth knows, I’ve told you before that the Moon Etherium is full of petty dramas, as if torturing each other over nothing will make up for the fact that we’ve eliminated all the real ways we could suffer. But this, what Fallen’s doing to Jinokimijin, it’s not just petty. What happened to Mirohirokon – he could have died, sugar. And I can’t believe this is what you want. I know you. You are better than this.”

Skein lifted the chain an inch higher, pulling Miro’s upper body from his resting place against his heels. Ardent winced. “And what of you, Ardent? Did you stop being better than this? Tell me what your game is.”

“I’m trying to help him save his parent. The Sun Queen can’t just leave a Sun Etherium High Court channel here, not for long, and he won’t leave without Jinokimijin. So she’ll come up with an offer to entice me and Fallen to let them both go. And since I don’t care about ‘my share’ whatever she comes up with can all go to Fallen. If it doesn’t work, well, Jinokimijin’s no worse off. And as long as no random blightstricken fey cripples him while I’m trying to protect him, neither is Miro.” Ardent met Skein’s eyes as she spoke, the deception as earnest and level as she could make it. Pustulence, it’s true enough as far as it goes. If the Sun Queen makes an offer for them, I’ll gladly boot both of them out of here and take my chances on finding the phoenix rose on my own. At least Miro’d be safe.

The Moon Queen dropped the chain, and Miro slumped to the floor. “And what happened to ‘you can’t appease the power-mad by giving her more power’?”

Blight. “I didn’t realize how bad things were here when we hatched this plan,” Ardent admitted.

“And now that you have?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to screw Fallen out of Jinokimijin and any bargain she’d get for giving the Sun fey up.”

A bitter smile formed on Skein’s dark lips. “Come up with anything yet?”

“Still working on it. I’m pretty sure she’s the one who tried to abduct Miro. Once I can prove that—”

“You can’t take her down with that alone. Even if you can prove it.”

“It’s a wedge. I’ll find other ones. If nothing else, I’m giving her a target to distract her from all her other targets. Skein, are you with Fallen? Are you happy about the level of power she has here? Do you want to see her gain more? Because I don’t think she’s gonna use it to help you, or the Moon Etherium, or anyone except her own narrow interests.”

Skein turned her side to Ardent and walked a few paces, shrinking to her normal size as she did so. “No. No, I don’t think she will, either,” she said quietly. “I can’t stop her, Ardent.”

“What do you mean? You’re the Queen. You can kick her off the Court. You can blighted exile her, for that matter. You hold the Heart of the Etherium!”

But Skein was shaking her head. “You don’t understand. Too much of the Court supports her. It’d take weeks, months, to bypass all her supporters and push through an exile, and in weeks…it’ll be too late.”    

Yes, it will. You know she has the phoenix rose. You’ve always known. Ardent licked dry lips, tried to think. “There has to be something you can do.”

“Yes. I can ask you to stop her.” Skein turned back to Ardent. “You have a Sun High Court channel. Use him. Gather whatever evidence you can against her. But do not go to the Justiciar; you cannot trust it. If you will do this, if you will use all your talents to dismantle Fallen’s power base and not allow her to build upon it further, then I will give you my carte blanche, Ardent. With anyone whom the Queen of the Moon Etherium yet holds sway, that will suffice for their cooperation. Be aware that number is not as high as it once was. And that I cannot be seen as openly in opposition to my own Surety. I will say that I gave you carte blanche because I am appalled by the assault on your servant, and I know you would not abuse it. Do we have an agreement, Ardent Sojourner?”

Ardent regarded her queen for a moment, trying to parse the offer, to process ramifications that were both better and far worse than she had feared. After too long a pause, she fell to one knee and bowed her head. “I am at your service, my queen. I will use all my talents to put an end to Fallen’s influence. I will use all my talents to put an end to Fallen’s influence. I will use all my talents to put an end to Fallen’s influence.”

Skein summoned a crystal marble to her hand and set a spell upon it. “To all Loyal members of the Moon Host: Ardent Sojourner of the Moon Host acts with Our authorization and for the good of the Moon Etherium. Give her your full cooperation and do not impede her in her work. As Holder of the Heart of the Moon Etherium, We are your liege, Queen Skein of the Absolute.” She stepped to the still-kneeling satyress, and pressed the token into Ardent’s palm. “In a fortnight, this will expire. If it still matters then, come to me and I will renew it. Remember: play this with care, my friend. Do not trust anyone; Fallen has holds over everyone. Even your former wife, Whispers Rain.” Ardent’s head jerked up at that, and Skein continued, gently, “I am sorry, Ardent. But give no one more information than you absolutely must. Maintain for as long as you can the ruse that you hope for a trade from the Sun Etherium to rescue Jinokimijin.” She stepped back. “Rise. You may take your servant and leave now.”

Ardent felt shaky on her hooves as she stood. She opened the locket around her neck and tucked the queen’s authorization into it. A gesture over Miro caused the immersion glamour to dissipate. He blinked a few times as his vision cleared, then gazed up at her. “My lady?”

“We’re done here, sugar. C’mon.” She helped him to his feet, then bowed to the queen as they withdrew. “Your majesty.”

“Ardent Sojourner. Justice be with you.”

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