The Moon Etherium’s archive was a round tower, perhaps sixty feet in diameter, lined by bookshelves and cabinets that stretched out of eyesight far above. It had neither stairs nor ladders, although perches and platforms of varying sizes extended from the walls at regular intervals, forty or so feet apart. Ardent and Miro had arrived at the base, near a set of shelves that held a dozen statues of winged lemurs, each perhaps a foot and a half tall. The floor level had seating, including a cushioned ring wider than a bed that ran most of the wall. The lowest shelves that held books were ten feet above it.

“Hullo, White!” Ardent shouted, to no one visible. She wandered over to the lemur statues. “Huh. The index used to be here. Are you lot the new index?”

One of the lemurs animated, and nodded to her.

“Huh. I’m looking for something on channeling between opposite hosts. Moon Etherium affiliate channeling from Sun Etherium affiliate, or vice versa, I suppose. Where do I go?”

“You don’t,” a voice boomed from above. Miro looked up to see a vast red dragon with a thirty-foot wingspan descending upon them in a tight spiral. The rich aether of the Moon Etherium swirled around the dragon, tendrils pulled in to sustain an otherwise impossibly large shift. White rose tattoos bloomed along red flanks, long thorny stems intertwined down to the tail tip. The dragon was missing the lower half of their left foreleg, as if amputated from just below the knee. The amputation was an unusual affectation; the same shift which gave this individual dragon form could easily have restored a missing limb. They had no visible sex characteristics, but even Miro’s dulled senses could detect the mixture of male and female hormones in their scent. The mix was wholly unlike the genderless scent of a child or neuter shape, and not distinctly male or female. Unimpeded by the absent forefoot, White Rose landed neatly on a perch above the shelves of lemur statues. They craned their long neck down to just above Ardent’s head. “That’s what the golems are for. I’ve had enough of fey idiots tromping through my hoard, re-shelving my books in the wrong place, and making an enormous mess of everything. You want something, the lemurs can get it for you. Stay put.”

Ardent reached up to pat the dragon’s nose. “Hey, great to see you too, White.”

A serpentine tongue flicked out and licked her arm. “And you, Ardent.” Yellow eyes turned to Miro. “And you’re Prince Mirohirokon.” White Rose pronounced his name in proper Sun Etherium style: Mee-roh-hee-roh-cone. The dragon had an interesting soul, a mixture of clear, intense colors and dull patches, with a strong gangrenous tentacle of greed snaking through it, alongside spreading tendrils of arrogance and pride. They and Ardent shared strings upon one another: the bright, healthy connections of long friendship, untainted by unwanted obligation. The dragon had a collection of other strings, but owed few obligations.

Miro bowed. “Mirohirokon is fine. The ‘prince’ is rather out of place, under the circumstances. A pleasure to meet you, noble dragon.” 

White Rose answered with a little snort. Ardent was explaining her request in more detail to the lemurs, several of whom had clustered closer to her to listen. One gave a little squeak and flew up, while the rest still attended. “Do you know Sudesunene?” White asked Miro.

“Yes, she’s the Sun Etherium’s archivist.”

“Is she still? Good. How is her collection?”

“Pitifully small and woefully inadequate to the needs of a modern Etherium, due to the callous disregard of a decadent, indifferent Sun Host for the value of true learning,” Miro answered. “Without Lady Sudesunene, the culture and history of Sun Etherium would have been lost beyond hope of recall centuries ago. Or so she has informed me on many occasions.”

The dragon laughed. “Wonderful!”

“She’s working on a project to have golems translate the written Old World tongue to ours,” Miro added. “It is a source of endless frustration to her. She loves it.”

“Oh?” Draconic fan-ears widened, tilting towards him. Ardent had finished instructing the lemurs and a dozen or so were winging about the tower in search of materials. “Does she have any results yet?”

“Yes. The phrasing is awkward, but reasonably intelligible.”

“How delightful. Perhaps I will write her and see if we cannot arrange an exchange. When you see her again, be sure to tell her of the immense superiority of my hoard.” A negligent wave of their tail toward the stacks that yawned above them. “Through dedication, one may overcome even the indifference and ignorance of the masses.”    

“If I see her again, I shall, noble fey.” Miro bowed. “I am sure she will find it…inspiring.”

“Indeed.” The dragon snorted a puff of aether from their nostrils. The first lemur returned, a book almost as large as it was in its hands. Ardent accepted the volume with polite thanks. “I will leave you to your inquiries. Remember: no flying around my archive. And that includes you, Ardent.” They tapped their chin against the top of her head for emphasis.

Ardent flopped the book open in one hand, and scritched the underside of White Rose’s jaw with the other. “You got it, sugar. Thanks for letting us in.” The dragon chuckled, patted her back with their only forefoot, and then leaped into the air again, flying upwards with lazy wingbeats, on a current of aether.

Another lemur came back, this one with a box of correspondence instead of a book. “Ooooh, doesn’t that look intriguing?” Ardent passed Miro her book and took the box. “Let me know if you find anything insightful, sugar.” She strolled to the couch-ring that girded the wall and flopped on her stomach to leaf through the box’s contents. Miro took one of the chairs and skimmed.

§

Half an hour or so later, they had a score of books, boxes, and even two scroll cases littered around them. Ardent looked up from her current book. “Miro, sugar, you wouldn’t lie to me about enjoying channeling just to make me feel better about doing it to you?”

Miro wrestled unsuccessfully with a smile and looked to her. “No, I would not. I will admit, had it been unpleasant, I would have done my best to conceal that fact from you, because it would in no way change what needed to be done. But I would not invent taking pleasure in it. For one, it would not have occurred to me, and for another, I would not be able to make such a lie convincing. My – what was the phrase? – pretty Sun Host courtesies only extend so far.”

She wrinkled her nose at the pages before her. “It’s just – this guy hated it. A lot. A lot a lot. It’s weird your experience is so different.”    

“What account is that?”

“It’s from, um, the year 630ish? By Red Griffon. He was the only survivor of the Sun Etherium channeling experiments on their Moon Host prisoners, during the war for freedom.”

“If I may make a suggestion, my lady? You’re looking for someone who knows how to channel well. War criminal reprobates from six centuries ago would be the exact opposite,” Miro said, and she laughed. “I suppose you might learn what not to do from them.”

“Fair enough.” Ardent set the book to one side.

There were few first-hand accounts of channeling between fey members of opposite hosts. Channeling within the same host was fairly common. It was an easy way of getting a modest aether boost. Fey used it to infuse aether into a spell faster than one could draw it in from the air, or when one needed to cast more spells in the Broken Lands than one could personally store aether for. Host-to-barbarian channeling was much less common, but still well-documented. But since the Sundering, some four hundred and fifty-odd years ago, it was rare that Sun fey were willing to come to the Moon Etherium, or vice versa, without renouncing their affiliation first. Trust between the Etheriums had never recovered. Such cases as might have happened weren’t documented. The Sundering was the last known time that a member of the High Court of either Etherium had even visited the other Etherium.

Miro did find a detailed account of the channeling practices in use prior to the Sundering, written shortly before that disaster took place and full of unwarranted optimism. “Oh, now, this is counterintuitive.”    

“Mm? Wazzat?”

“So everyone says if you increase bodily contact, you can increase the speed of aether transferance.”

“Yes. ‘Too slow’ is not exactly the problem here.”

“True. But Venodeveve writes that it also increases control. You get a better understanding of the state of your channel, how much you’re drawing, what the impact is, and so forth. You can draw faster, but you can also draw slower. She has a whole set of techniques regarding it.”

“Oh! Lemme see?” She caught the book in a current of aether and floated it to her outstretched hand. Ardent read the section while Miro picked up a new volume. “Huh. Well, that’s not going to make things even more awkward at all.”

Miro gave her a chagrinned smile. “My apologies, my lady.”

She waved it off. “Not your fault.”

They continued to skim for a little while after that, but found nothing else promising. Finally, Ardent closed the last volume and sat up, stretching. “All right, looks like Venodeveve’s method it is. Let’s go home. I don’t want to keep you up all night with this.”

---

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.

After they had left the cacao orchard, Ardent teleported them back to her suite and made the gesture to accept messages again. She flopped onto her stomach on a couch and picked through the horde of messengers that swarmed in, looking for the ones she cared about most. She wrinkled her nose as she read the one from her Archivist friend, White Rose. “Hmph. Fallen is not the registered owner of any sky or tower-top properties. Which doesn’t mean she doesn’t own any from a private transaction.” She conjured her farspearker surface. “I’ll ask the Archivist if there’ve been any recent sky or tower transactions from anyone. You got any other angles to pursue, sugar?”

“I don’t know.” Miro walked to the dining table and leafed through his father’s notebook again. “She might have someone babysitting it, and apparently not my father, if today is any example to go by. She has strings on a lot of people, I imagine, but probably not many she’d trust with that secret.”

“I’d make that ‘not anyone’. Does it need a babysitter? She can watch it by scryer, and set farspeaker alerts for it, and port in herself to check on it if anything turned up.”

“True.” Miro took a seat at the table, still reading. “What story are you giving your Archivist to explain your new interest in real estate?”    

“Mm? Oh, them and I go way back. I don’t need to give them reasons – it’s all public records anyway, kinda the point – and I asked them not to tell anyone I was asking. They won’t talk.” Ardent checked through the rest of her messages. One was from the Queen’s adjunct. “Oh, Duty.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Skein is throwing a welcome-home party. Argh,” she said. At Miro’s blank look, she added, “Skein of the Absolute. Queen of the Moon Host.”

“You refer to your Queen by nickname?”

“Don’t you?”

“Ugh. No.” He made a face.

“But she’s your mother.”

“And I’m her eleventh-favorite child. And she’s my second-favorite parent. Or seventh, more accurately; I’d sooner count her other husbands as parents. When is the party?”

“Tomorrow night. And it’s utterly inescapable. I’ll have to go, and I’ll have to bring you, and there will be mobs of people who will all expect me to talk to them. Some of them in private. Persistence,” she cursed again. “I might want to leash you just so well-wishers can’t drag us apart.”

Miro smiled, touching his collar. “At least I can flee here if need be.”

“Yeah.” Ardent glanced to him. I need to make a farspeaker he can use. And for that, I need to channel. Her tongue flicked out, licking her teeth at the thought. She dug her fingers into the couch cushion as she wrestled down a surge of formerly-banked desire. Justice. What is wrong with me? …huh. Maybe I should find out. She dispatched another message to White Rose, then answered some of the myriad messages from friends. When White’s answer came back, she sat up. “I’m gonna go visit White Rose – that’s the Archivist – in person. You wanna come?”

“Certainly. You wish to review the property records yourself?” He rose to join her.

“No, I’m good on White doing that for me. This is kinda tangential research.” She stood and took Miro’s hand. “I thought I knew enough about channeling already, but it’s gotten real clear that no, I don’t. I’ve not one clue what I’m doing. Someone must’ve written about Sun-to-Moon channeling, before the Sundering if nothing else. White’s got the largest archive in the Moon Etherium, so if anyone has documentation on how this works, it’ll be them.”

He gave her another of those irresistible smiles of his. Oh boy do I ever need more information. “An excellent plan, my lady. Lead 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.

For Ardent’s sake, Miro concealed his disappointment at her decision not to channel more aether. He didn’t bother trying to pretend to himself. He couldn’t even convince himself that being stupidly, hopelessly in love with the satyress was a mistake, or making a miserable situation worse. Ardent was the one bright spot, the one thing that gave him hope and confidence in this desperate fool’s gambit. If the price he had to pay for that was unrequited love for her: so be it. He did have to remember not to harass her with his unreciprocated affections, though. Alienating her with unwanted attention would be self-sabotage.

Hence: pretend you are not disappointed. You have no right whatsoever to be disappointed.

Ardent brought them to the base of the northwest slope, but they had to hike up it on foot. The perimeters of the farms were warded against teleporting, because the use of magic around the crops would tamper with their flavor. It was a steep climb along a dirt track, but even without the direct use of aether, Miro did not find it arduous. His body was in peak physical condition – not from any particular use of it, but simply because “peak physical condition” was how he’d designed his homunculus and accordingly what Ardent had restored him to. Ardent was equally at ease; her cloven hooves were as sure as any mountain goat’s as they made the ascent. It struck him, suddenly, that since she had been a barbarian, she must have earned the thick muscles on display in her bare arms, the breadth of her shoulders, the flex of back muscles beneath her chiton, and her certain, effortless stride. She’d made no visible alterations that were more than skin-deep since their arrival, not even under Threnody Katsura’s criticisms. He wondered if Ardent’s ample, inviting breasts had been by her own intent, before she’d left Moon Etherium, or if they’d been shaped by her time in Try Again. There was something mesmerizing about the sway of them as she hiked up the slope. This entire line of thought falls under ‘unwanted attention’, he reminded himself. Even if you’re not saying it out loud. Stop. To distract himself, he asked, “Do they use golems to tend the orchard?”

“Sparingly. There’s a whole science behind measuring and managing the level of aether exposure.” The aethcacao trees grew tall to either side of them, towering over even Ardent. Large green oval leaves on slender branches partly concealed the ripening cacao pods budding along the trunks, big heavy fruits in yellows, oranges, and reds. Upslope, even taller trees cast shade over the whole of the orchard. The air smelled of rich earth but not of cocoa; the small white-and-purple flowers on the trunks had little scent.

Up the slope, a fey voice called out to them. “Ardent Sojourner, by the cycle continuing! Is it really you? What brings you to my farm?” Miro looked up, and then higher, to spot a fey clinging near the top of one tree. The farmer had a lower body like a spider’s, though with only six legs radiating from his cephalothorax. From the front of the cephalothorax rose a man’s torso, with four arms. The whole figure was flamboyantly colored, in deep iridescent blue with red and gold accents, reminiscent of a peacock spider. He had an attractive soul, pink with some corrupt striations from carelessness and indifference, but generally wholesome.

Ardent stopped and squinted at him, perhaps using a spell to identify him by his aether signature, which could not be changed. “Uhhh…Dragon Rampant?!” she said, incredulously.

The spider-centaur chuckled. “The same!” He scuttled limberly down the tree and threaded the orchard to join them. He was shorter than Miro, though more massive, given the extra limbs and counterbalancing abdomen. Presumably Dragon Rampant was trueshifted into his form so that it wouldn’t require active aether. There was a limit on the quantity and type of mass one could add or remove with a trueshift. Shifting could make one as small as a mouse or large as a dragon, but unlike a trueshift it used aether continuously. Ardent’s natural adult shape must have been over six feet, given her substantial trueshift size.

“That is some form!” Ardent craned to one side. “Let me have a look at you,” she said. Dragon Rampant did a neat rotation, all six legs moving to turn him in a circle in place. “How long have you worn it? You’ve got fantastic control!”

“Eight years now, and let’s not talk about how many times I almost gave up on it in the first year. Every now and then I still forget to just walk and try to think about how to do so instead, and this is always, always a mistake. Such a mistake. But I was so sick of always wishing I had more hands to hold tools, or more legs to hang on with, and do you know what?”

“Now you have enough?” Ardent guessed.

“No! I still want more hands.” Dragon Rampant laughed, waving all four in the air. “I’m stopping here for now, though. I’d have to trueshift smaller to get more material for the bones and such, and this is short enough.”

“Heh. Eight years, huh? Have you actually been male for eight whole years or do you still change that?”

“Oh, no, I switch genders half the time that I’m in town. Still don’t understand the appeal of monogender. What’ve you got against males?”

“Nothing! I like males fine. I just don’t particularly want to be one.”    

“But you make such an impressive one.” He gestured with his hands, indicating her height and breadth.

She makes an impressive female, too. Miro bridled at the implied criticism of Ardent, even as he recognized that her friend was teasing and she was unperturbed. “When did you have a male shape?” he asked her, by way of diversion.

“Oh, I don’t know. The occasional come-as-you-aren’t party?”

“‘Come as you aren’t’?” Miro asked.

“Yeah, where you take a very different body from your usual? Don’t they have those in Sun Etherium?”

“We do, but they’re called masquerades.”

“Oh, our masquerades are when everyone shows up as one of their friends and you try to guess who’s really who based on how they act,” Ardent said, and then glanced to Dragon Rampant. “Sorry, where’re my manners? This’s my servant, Mirohirokon of the Sun Host.” The two men exchanged civilities, then Ardent explained the reason for her visit. “So I’ve got a Sun Host channel now and figure I’ll hang around the Etherium for a while, but I’ve gotten to enjoy, y’know, actually doing things and not just ‘let me think about doing a thing but never mind aether will do it for me’. Figured I’d come talk to some of the aether-crop-farmers and see if I’d like doing some of that now and again.”

The cover story was not intended to fool Shadow of Fallen Scent. If Fallen heard about this visit, she was bound to know the reason they were nosing about cacao orchards. At best, Fallen might wonder if Ardent was being manipulated instead of assisting Miro outright. But mostly, the ruse was to distract anyone else who might be paying attention to their movements. If Ardent did not give some excuse for her investigation, rumormongers would invent one. It would complicate matters further if anyone else figured out there was a phoenix rose in the Moon Etherium.

Dragon Rampant was more than happy to talk. He led them up to his house and fed them processed samples of his crop while chatting. One such product was a fermented beverage made from aethcacao pulp. “Though I don’t like grinding or brewing or cooking enough to do a whole lot of it,” he said. “It’s just a hobby. Mostly I sell the raw beans.”

“Is business good? Do folks hike up here to buy or do you deliver?” Ardent asked.

“Duty yes, I make ’em come to me. It’s enough trouble growing and harvesting. Sometimes I make customers harvest their own. Who wants to work that hard?”

“Hah! You’re lucky you can get customers to come to you.”

“We’re not all fool enough to try the full barbarian life, girl. Semi-barbaric’s bad enough.”

“Seems like that’d make it harder to get new customers.”

“Oh, I’ve got a dozen regulars that’ve bought up my entire crop for years now.”

“Loyalty! All of it?”

“Yup. Last four years I haven’t even produced as much as all of them wanted. They make up the difference from the other farms.”    

Miro sipped at the cacao-pulp wine – it had a dry, fruity flavor that was almost entirely unlike cocoa – and listened as Ardent continued the conversation. She asked about the competition, what other crops were popular, the kind of work involved, potential for employment (“Ardent, if you’re offering to work for me, you’re hired now, let’s get started.” “Heh, thanks, think I’m gonna check my options and consider it a whisker more before I commit.”) and general gossip in the local produce industry. Before they were done, Miro himself was wondering if her interest in the Etherium farms was sincere.

After they left, they hiked to the adjacent orchard and spoke with two of the farmers working it. They also hadn’t had any new customers recently. Miro was impressed by the ease with which Ardent steered the next conversation as well, hitting on her desired answer naturally, without showing any sign that it was her goal. By the time they finished at that orchard, the sun was setting.

“Better wait ’til tomorrow to check the last farm,” Ardent said, as they made their way down the slope. “Sorry, sugar. Maybe there’ll be some news on the property front.”

---

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 had been back to the Moon Etherium many times since she’d joined the barbarians: trips to visit friends, engage in trade, and store aether to carry back to Try Again. She hadn’t forgotten the pleasure of soaking in the aether, the effortless joy of satisfying every whim with a thought. No drudgery of repetitive tasks, no trudging from place to place on foot, no need to scrape and stretch wisps of aether to make them last and only use it when it was most needed.

But she’d forgotten how much richer the aether felt to affiliates of the Etherium. She’d forgotten the fierce delight of ownership, of warding a place as hers: not just a building she’d made, but a place that could not be trespassed upon.

With so much power already at her command, Ardent thought she shouldn’t feel any need for more. Yes, it was practical to take some measures to protect Mirohirokon, but that was just common sense. There was no reason for it to be accompanied by power lust, by this intense craving, this hyperawareness of him. It felt as if the moon aether inside her could sense his connection to the Sun Etherium, and yearned for the union.

Which could, y’know. Kill him.

He awaited her on the couch, looking at ease, patient, and perfectly trusting that she wasn’t about to channel a lethal tornado of sun aether straight through his all-too-vulnerable corporeal form.

The man was utterly mad.

No fey trusted another fey like this. Her own mother didn’t trust her this much. And Miro didn’t even know her. Crazy.

Ardent sat sideways beside him, one furry leg curled beneath her and the other extended before the couch. She took his hand, swallowed. “I have no idea what this is gonna be like.”

He nodded, met her eyes, and smiled mischievously. “Should be fun.”

She laughed, half-afraid and half-certain that his words were literally true, at least for her. “Yeah. So. I’m gonna start, and then you tell me to stop. About that fast. I don’t want to take any chances. If it’s not enough, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be, we can do it again. Whereas I don’t know how to fix it if I take too much.”

“My lady is very wise,” Miro said. “I am ready when you are.”

Ardent caressed the underside of his wrist. He felt so different from the first time she’d done this, when aether brimmed through him. Now he felt weightless under her touch, empty, but behind that emptiness she could sense a floodgate, balanced and poised, awaiting only a nudge to open it. “All right,” she said, and nudged.

GLORY.

Warmth and light flooded into her, met the Moon Etherium aether inside, and twined through it with the caress of a hundred loving hands. It was—

She stopped, yanking her hands apart, panting from that exertion, from fighting down the yearning to continue. Ardent jammed her fists between the sofa cushions to make sure she didn’t grab him again. Miro had slumped against the backrest, strands of long indigo hair falling over his golden face. His eyes were open, looking at her. She took a deep breath. “You told me to stop.”

“Mm-hmm,” he agreed. “You said I should.”

“Right.” Power hummed through her veins, a sweet siren song, calling for more. “That was smart of me. Good call, me.” She scootched back on the couch, putting some distance between her and temptation. “I hope it isn’t always this overwhelming.”

“It’s a trifle distracting.”

She gave a shaky, nervous laugh at the understatement. “You think? You all right there, sugar?”

“Wonderful. You should do that again. I’m sure that wasn’t enough,” Miro said, straight-faced. He lay limp, completely relaxed against the sofa.

Ardent laughed again. “No, seriously, how are you feeling?”

“Incredible.” He finally shifted to raise his arms over his head, and stretched like a cat, back arched. “As if I’d just received the start of a truly magnificent massage. If channeling for the opposite host is always this good I don’t know why it’s not more popular.”

“I think that the ‘could kill you’ part serves as a significant deterrent for most fey,” Ardent said, dryly. He made a dismissive ‘pfft’ sound and leaned forward, eyes heavy-lidded, smile deeply contented. He did look well, much better than he had after the first time she’d channeled from him. No question, he was crazy, but sure as Love was an Ideal, he made madness look attractive. She reached out to tuck a lock of his hair behind his ear, and he gave her a bewitching sidelong smile. Ardent caressed his cheek, wondered what by all the Ideals she thought she was doing, and retreated again. She cleared her throat. “All right. Let’s see what I can do with this.”

She returned to the table to fetch the collar, and detached the chain from it with a flick of aether before pulling the collar straight. Then she turned it over in her hands, tracing her fingers across it to leave curling paths of aether. She’d never been a skilled enchanter, but over the course of two hundred-odd years of life in the Moon Etherium, she’d learned the essentials and completed a number of different enchantments. Infusing an item with its own supply of aether was the first step.

“You’re going to enchant the collar?” Miro lifted his head to watch her.

“Like you said. You gotta wear it anyway. Might as well make it useful.”

“I like it.” He gave her a slow, sensual smile.

Please stop being sexy at me, sugar. It’s distracting. Ardent didn’t say anything. She was pretty sure he wasn’t doing it on purpose and wasn’t entirely sure he was doing anything at all. It might just be her ancient libido waking up, stretching, and going whoa hi remember me? It’s been too long! It hasn’t been that long, she told herself.

Twelve years.

Yeah, and that’s not that long. In the grand scheme of my life. Go back to sleep, I’m busy. She concentrated on the collar and finished the infusion, nerves still humming with aether. She set the collar down to go over the pattern of a port in her mind. Without engaging one, she remembered each step of how it happened and analyzed the process. Ardent took the collar to the center of the suite, beside the spiral stairs, and traced a pair of runes in glamour in the air: one for herself, one for castle. She curled the collar around the runes and let it hang in the air, tracing the same runes at the compass points of it. “What triggers do you want, sugar? I was thinking a threefold one: either snap your fingers on both hands, or click your heels twice, or say ‘home home home’. Ones that you won’t set off by accident, but also where you’d be able to trigger it if someone was trying to grab you or stop you. Think that’d work?”

“I can remember those. Sounds good.” He was draped languidly over the sofa, turned to watch her.

“All right.” She swirled the teleport pattern over the air around the collar, then used a surge of channeled power to fuse the pattern to the collar and bind it to the suite. Ardent felt the pattern wavering on the collar, and clamped down on it with another surge, shaping a net of aether to secure the two together. Blue light flared in lines across the circle.

As the light faded, the white gold circlet dropped from the air. Ardent caught it. “Blight and aphids!”

Miro straightened. “Did it fail, my lady?”

“No, it worked.” Ardent felt aether whisper inside the metal, the lines of enchantment true and strong. “But I’m tapped out again.”

The Sun lord chuckled. “Oh, no. Whatever shall we do now?” She shot him a glower, and his expression sobered. “I shall have to stay close to you, my lady, as we investigate the farms, and take care not to be separated.” Miro rose to join her, his stride as graceful as ever, if not more so: easy and relaxed, not weary. As he stopped before her, he lifted his chin in silent invitation. “I’ve no one to message but you in any case. The other may wait, if you’d rather.”

Ardent secured the collar around his throat. Her fingers trembled. She didn’t feel in control of herself at all, and almost wished it was harder for him, that he would be less tempting. “I think…yeah, that’d be for the best.” Maybe with a little time I can pull myself together again.

Miro dropped his eyes, like the meek obedient servant he wasn’t. “As my lady wishes.”

The satyress crinkled her nose at him, then floated Jinokimijin’s notebook to her hand before they left. Safe as her Etherium apartment was, she still felt better keeping important things on her. She contemplated the notebook, wondering how much she ought to trust Jinokimijin’s notes. Miro might have faith in his father’s capabilities, but Miro was hardly unbiased.

Ardent had never met Jinokimijin in person before, but the man was infamous, even in the Moon Etherium. His grandfather had supposedly possessed the Gift of soulsight. Soulsight purportedly gave one the ability to judge a fey’s worth by sight alone, to read the history of failings and virtues in one’s soul. Jinokimijin’s father had claimed to have the same Gift. Jinokimijin had never said that he did, but the possibility that his line might carry it had drawn the attention of the Sun Queen. She had married him in the hopes of having a child with the same talent.

Then, a few years after the birth of the child – Mirohirokon, apparently, though Ardent didn’t know if she’d ever heard anyone mention the kid’s name – Jinokimijin’s grandfather was stranded in a mortal realm when the fey shard moved on unexpectedly. Then Jinokimijin’s father was proved to be a fraud, who’d gotten by on cleverness and imitation of the grandfather’s prognostications. Some doubted that even the grandfather had really had the talent he’d claimed. Jinokimijin’s child with the Sun Queen had shown no signs of any particular talent, and their relationship soon soured. Before their child was ten, the Sun Queen had divorced Jinokimijin. He became a laughingstock, desperate to regain his lost standing through a series of vain, self-aggrandizing schemes that only humiliated him further when they failed. Ardent felt sorry for Mirohirokon. Whatever his dad had done, it wasn’t his fault. Maybe Jinokimijin had learned something in the forty-some years since his fall from the High Court. The notes certainly looked thorough and methodical. But that didn’t mean they were.

She shook off the train of thought as she realized Miro was still waiting on her. After putting the book in her bag, she took his hand and teleported the two of 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.

The Moon Queen reaffiliated Ardent with her Etherium personally, and embraced her when the ritual was complete. Miro found that sign of personal affection interesting, especially given the tension between the two fey. Ardent had a string on her queen: thin, but real. Until the queen had offered a slender thread with the reaffiliation, she’d had none on Ardent.

Neither of those compared to the enormous cable Miro had handed Ardent during the court, of course. That was a tangled thing, threaded with contamination from his conflicted motives. Oddly, it looked uglier on her end than it did on his, and was still purer than he’d expected.

Miro felt strangely light, despite the collar on his neck and the new tether on his soul. He didn’t regret that extravagant oath to Ardent: he was confident she would never abuse it. And it had served to convince the entire court of his sincerity. No fey would make such a binding oath in bad faith. Even made in good faith it was all but unimaginable, to place unlimited power in the hands of another. But he’d already placed his life in her hands: what was an oath?

He should’ve been troubled by it: it would be all too easy for that oath to conflict disastrously with his other obligations. In some sense, it probably already did.

After their dismissal from the Moon Court, Ardent ported him to her old home, still intact after all these years.

The main chamber, where they entered, was a round room some hundred yards across, with a domed ceiling. The walls and ceiling looked transparent, providing a lofty view of the chaotic Moon Etherium that sprawled far below their perch in an improbable tower. Miro suspected that only one section of the wall was truly transparent and the rest were glamour. It was unsettling that he couldn’t tell for sure, but the foreign moon aether interfered even with that skill.

“Gimme a minute, sugar.” Ardent put him down and surveyed the room with a sigh. She began walking the perimeter, making gestures of ownership and warding as she went. In one half of the chamber was a network of five empty pools of differing sizes, from eight feet across to eighty. The other half was a living space, with a massive sunken pillow nest at its center, and chairs and sofas of various sizes. To one side of the pillow nest was a library, shelves still full of books, and on the other was a kitchen and dining area. A thick layer of dust coated everything. A spiral staircase came up from the level below the floor and led up to the ceiling and vanished – a strong hint that glamour covered the ceiling.

Miro unfastened his excessively formal jacket, pulling its collar out from under the snug white-gold one Ardent had given him. He placed the jacket across one chair back. Absently fingering the cool metal of the collar, he glanced about the main room. Ardent went through the entire room, then disappeared down the stairs. Miro walked to the wall that he thought was genuinely transparent – it had an oval door leading out to a balcony – and leaned against it, looking out at the strange city, waiting. At length, he heard her hoofsteps even through the plush carpet around them. He turned around to smile at her.

She didn’t smile back. “I’ve reclaimed the quarters and warded them. We should be safe now.” And then: “I release you.”

“What?” But he already knew, before the startled syllable was out: the rope connecting their souls was dissolving.

“From that insane oath you made. Justice!” she swore. “What was that about? Are you mad? Why would you – you don’t even know me! Why would you make a promise like that to anyone, ever?”

Miro watched her soul’s hands, and all the pure strings she held without conscious awareness. Is that why she is owed no warped debts? Does she refuse to retain anything that’s tainted? He closed his eyes. “I needed to convince the court I wasn’t a threat.”

“Well, you did that, at least assuming they’re not scared of crazy fanatics,” she said. He felt her fingers brush his neck, and opened his eyes as she pulled the seamless metal collar apart and removed it. She held the now-open circle in her hands for a moment, then hurled it across the room, sending it skittering over the tiles by the pool. “Those degenerates! Those smug, self-satisfied, degenerate maggots! ARGH!” She punched her fist into the transparent wall, and it trembled under the impact.

Miro tensed, unsure how to respond. “My lady?”

Ardent pivoted to put her back to the wall, then sagged, sliding down until she sat on the floor. “Katsura. She knew, curse her. She knew, and didn’t even tell me.”

“…knew what?”

“They wanted that performance. That whole sick game, just to humiliate you. Not that they care about you, just what you stand for. Sun Host. And I played right into it. Curse them! I should’ve told the whole truth.”

“And had your Queen take the phoenix rose? Do you trust her with it more, now?” Miro crossed the room to where the collar lay.    

Ardent scowled. “No. But I could have told them I was here to intercede on your father’s behalf.”

“With your vast influence over Shadow of Fallen Scent.”

Ardent growled.

Miro bent to pick up the collar. The alloy was almost too soft for jewelry: it bent in his hands. He put it back around his neck and pushed the ends to touch. Without aether, he couldn’t make it seal together the way Ardent had.

When he turned back, Ardent had restored her earlier appearance: a short chiton in place of the elaborate court gown, all the jewelry and dyes gone, her hair a fluffy curly mass held back only by a headband. She’d neglected to change her ears back; they were still fey instead of caprine. “Why are you putting that thing back on?” she asked him.

“Because it will be expected of me while I am here, and I don’t want to forget it.” Miro touched the metal again. “I am sorry to cause you distress, my lady. I’ll take it off.”

Ardent lifted her eyes to his, her look heartbroken. “Oh, sugar. Don’t – don’t apologize to me. None of this is your fault.” She climbed to her hooves.

“I am the proximate cause of your departure from Try Again and your presence here at all,” he pointed out.

“Hah. We could argue that your dad’s the cause of that. And I’m not mad at him, either. Much less you. I’m mad at the Justice-deprived Moon Court. And Fallen, aether desert her. You’re the last person I should be taking it out on.” She crossed the room to him, cupping her hands around his as he held the collar before him. Her hands were still soft: she hadn’t restored their callouses, either. “I’m sorry, Miro. Are you all right? You seem to be taking all this a lot better than I am, and I can’t tell if that’s because you are, or if it’s just your Sun Court manners.”

He laughed, because Sun Court manners did indeed demand equanimity in the face of provocation. Miro tilted his head back to meet her black eyes. “I am fine. I am not humiliated.” He laughed again. “On the contrary, I am vindicated.”

“Vindicated?” She raised full eyebrows at him.

“Indeed! I swore an absurd, overbroad oath to you, confident that you would not take advantage of it. And not only was I right in that, but the first thing you did, once it was safe, was release me from it. You may think me a fool to trust you, but I know: my trust is not misplaced.”

“I don’t think you’re a fool.” She took the collar from his hands, reached with one hand to brush his hair – still longer than he was tall and white-blond – back from his neck. “I think you’re a madman. There’s a difference.”

“I stand corrected.”

Ardent dropped her hand. “Did you want your original form back, or to stay like this?”

“Restored, if you please.” Miro walked back to where he’d left his jacket, and retrieved a homunculus of his original shape from its pocket. He could no longer use it on his own; it was not an enchantment itself, merely a token that stored all the information on what his body should be like. He gave it to Ardent. “Less ostentatious clothing would be appreciated, too.”

She empowered it for him and returned it, giving him back his everyday body. “There’s a spare bedroom downstairs. I reactivated its wardrobe for you, in case you need the fancy suit again. You hungry?” she asked. “I’m gonna make some food. You want aetherfood or real or both?”

“Both, please.” He started down the stairwell.

“Sure. Any preference?”

“I liked the curry and bread you fed me last night,” he called up. The lower floor was divided into a few rooms. He stepped into the one with an open door and a visible bed large enough to sleep a dragon. Its wardrobe had a mirror similar to Threnody Katsura’s, albeit with far fewer options. He stored his current outfit inside, then flipped through the mirror until he found an outfit with a long jacket, trousers, and simple shoes. The jacket was different from Sun Etherium’s – it sealed up the front with a seam, and had narrow sleeves – but it was close enough to look comfortable to his eyes. He opened the wardrobe’s mirrored door, and the outfit waited inside.

When Miro returned to the living space, Ardent had swept all the signs of disuse from it: the pools were filled with water, and the thick dust was gone. Sessile was half-curled in the massive sunken pillow nest, with her mouth open. Aether-carried bags of food floated out of her to stock the kitchen. A curry simmered on the stove. Platters of hors d’oeuvres were on the dining table. “Help yourself.” Ardent was by the stove, gesturing vaguely to the table. A handful of messengers hovered about her, and she had an aetheric surface open to one side. “That’s all aetherfood. Lemme know if you want anything different, sugar.”

He sat and popped one of the nearest confections into his mouth. It proved to be a puff of pastry wrapped around spiced meat. It crunched delicately between his teeth, and melted on his tongue with the characteristic smoothness of aetherfood. “Thank you! It’s delicious. Might I see my father’s notebook?”

Ardent tugged on a current of aether, and her bag floated out of the golem too. It set itself on the table, opened, and the notebook rose from within. “I think that’s everything from you that’s mine, Sessile,” she told the earth serpent golem.

“All right!” The golem brought her great jaws together again. “Do you want me to deliver the rest for you, or are you coming along?”

“I think I’ll let you deliver it.” Ardent took the scrying crystal from Sessile’s nose. “I’ll give you a list of prices to go with your destinations. If anyone doesn’t want to pay that price, don’t make the delivery and tell them I’ll come negotiate with them later. You got all that?”

Sessile nodded, squirming in the pillow nest as Ardent finished setting destinations and socketed the scrying ball back in place. “Uh huh. You can count on me!” She teleported out of the room.

While they spoke, Miro ate another pastry, and leafed through the notebook. Ardent had added some highlights and notes of her own in the margins. He laughed aloud as he read over one of them.

“What?” the satyress asked as she fetched the pot of curry from the stove and brought it to the table.

“Your outrage at the delicacy of the creature.”

“Well, it is absurd. All right, so they can only hatch under natural conditions at least fifty miles from an Etherium, and only in the fey world while it’s overlapped with our original mortal one. They need natural air, natural sunlight, and natural water. With you so far. But then they have to bathe in aether-created rain showers? They need to be fed on an aether-natural hybrid of the plant that hatched them? How does this thing ever survive in the wild?”

“It doesn’t,” Miro said.

“But your dad says it can’t be cultivated?”

“He was unsuccessful in cultivating it, yes. But the phoenix rose stage of the creature’s life cycle is naturally brief. They hatch, they ascend, they fruit, scatter seeds, all in one day. The seeds almost all blossom into firebuds, which will never be a phoenix rose. All these finicky requirements are how you entrap it at the phoenix rose stage, because that’s when they have all the interesting magical-aetheric properties.”

“Huh. So if you stop doing all this now it’ll – what – fruit and seed?”

“No, not after it’s been cultured for several days, not if Fallen is doing it properly. Right now, it would probably just die if it couldn’t get what it needs to remain a phoenix rose. In a week or two it’ll move out of needing most of the specifics.”

“Mm-hmm. So we’d better find it fast.” Ardent dished up curry for both of them, and offered a basket of flatbread. “Didn’t have the patience to bake real bread, I’m afraid, but the aether version’s still good.” The curry was chicken-and-tomato based this time, and the bread garlic and rosemary and fine-grained, but no less delectable. Miro ate with a will, while Ardent turned the notebook about to glance over it as she ate. “So it’d have to be in one of the towers or the floaters, to be far enough from the core of the Etherium not to overdose on aether, and still close enough to grow up big and strong. And still get natural air and sun, which it couldn’t underground. That…doesn’t narrow it down as much as you’d hope.” She glanced out her window at the crowded Moon Etherium sky.

“It has to be somewhere Fallen owns,” Miro added. “Or it wouldn’t be in her possession and my father’s bargain with her would be out of force.”

“Ah! Good point.” Ardent finished her meal, then conjured a new surface beside her, and dispatched a few messages. “I’ll ask around, see if I can find out what properties are known to be under her control. But she could’ve made a private deal for a deed, and not registered it. Which she might have, given that she wants to keep the creature and her ownership of it a secret.” She tapped a blunt-tipped finger against the notebook. “The food requirements are interesting. Do you know what plant type it hatched from?”

Miro nodded, swallowing curry-soaked bread. “Yes. Cacao tree.”    

“Mmm, now, that’s convenient.” Ardent twisted about in her chair, and summoned a glamour to show the entirety of the Moon Etherium.

“Convenient?”

“Because there’s already an aethcacao cultivar.”

Miro leaned back. “So Fallen wouldn’t have to splice together her own hybrid before the phoenix rose died.”

“Mm-hmm. And, even better, there’s only a few fey who grow it. Three farmers, if memory serves and they’re all still operating.” Ardent walked through her illusory three-dimensional map to examine the north slopes of the Etherium’s crater-valley. “Looks like the farms are still there. You can only grow it on the slopes, in real soil and sun, and the northwest slopes get the best exposure. Needs just the right amount of raw aether for that magic-chocolate flavor. The aethcacao farms are almost as manual as barbarian farms.”

Miro rose to join her by the map, watching as she pointed to miniature slopes dotted with green trees, fruit nearly invisible beneath their leaves. “You think Fallen will have bought from them.”

“Yup.” She turned to him with a grin. “Wanna go visit some chocolate farms and see if they’ve had any new customers lately?”

He offered his hand. “It would be my pleasure, my lady.”

Ardent took it, but she hesitated rather than leaving.

“My lady?” Miro asked. Her large fingers curled around his hand, thumb tracing over his wrist. It was a slight gesture, to feel so sensual, to make his pulse race. “Is there…something else?”

“Yeah. Kinda. Um.” She rubbed one brown hand over her face, still holding onto him. “Right. So this is a pretty safe place. It’s mine, it’s warded, nobody should be able to get through the door or port in without me letting them.”

“You’re not thinking to leave me here because it’s safe?”

“No…well, I hadn’t been…” She giggled as he narrowed his eyes at her. “No, I won’t leave you here. Although it is tempting. But I don’t want you running around the Moon Etherium completely vulnerable if we get separated. I want to at least forge a teleport connection for you to here, so you can port here on your own. And give you a farspeaker device, since you can’t summon one.”

“I am certainly amenable to this.”

“Right. But I’m not much at enchanting and while I know it’s possible to make stuff like that by using aether efficiently I only know a few people who know how and I don’t know what it would cost or how long it’d take but I’m pretty sure I could do it if I…” Ardent spoke in one long breathless rush until she trailed off abruptly.

“Channeled power from me?” In some way, her obvious uncertainty made it easier for Miro to feign equanimity. As if she were nervous enough for both of them. Although it wasn’t nervousness that he felt at all. It was excitement. Longing. Both of which were inappropriate to the situation, and less intelligible than Ardent’s nerves.    

“Yes. That.” Ardent covered her face with her hand.

“That sounds very rational and practical.” Which it did, Miro reminded himself. “Shall we begin? I had best sit for this.” She nodded, face still in her hand, looking adorably embarrassed. He withdrew his hand from hers and moved to a seat on one of the sofas, reasoning he’d be less likely to fall off of that than a dining chair.

---

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 was worried about Miro. He looked like he was taking things well, but this had to be rough for him. The sight of Jinokimijin all but naked and in blight-ridden chains, for the love of Justice, infuriated her. Not to mention that “adolescent girl” could not have been Jinokimijin’s choice of bodies. What was the Queen doing, permitting this vicious performance? It was one thing to acknowledge “I can’t save an individual from a bad deal they willingly entered” and another to showcase the most blatant and insulting trappings of slavery in the Moon Etherium’s most august institution. This was a travesty.

At the moment, the Court was hearing a storyteller’s request for an endorsement of a project that required more aether and more participants than a single fey could muster. The power of the Queen, Skein of the Absolute, was very different from that of a mortal government. The use of force did not work on fey individuals. An ordinary fey, even a barbarian, was immortal, nearly invulnerable, and all but impossible to imprison. Even fey possessions in an Etherium were generally much easier to safeguard than to harm. Crimes like assault and murder effectively didn’t exist. Theft in an Etherium did happen, but it was rare, in part because, except in the case of art, it was easier to make something new with aether than it was to take someone else’s creation.

The Queen did have power beyond the symbolic: she held the Heart of the Etherium, which replenished aether throughout the Etherium. The Heart did so automatically; it was not within the Queen’s power to withhold aether from the Etherium. But the structure and presence of the Queen and her High Court ensured that the Heart functioned smoothly and reliably. The most concrete power the Queen possessed was the ability to exile a Moon Host fey. Even that could not be used easily: it required the consent of a majority of the High Court. The Heart also empowered her to affiliate a willing subject with the Moon Host, but since a fey could do the affiliation ritual on their own, this ability was only ceremonial.

Its technical role aside, the High Court was more a social/cultural construct than a legal one. As a body, they wielded considerable influence, able to amplify or to ostracize, and the majority of the citizenry would follow suit. Members of the Moon Host did pay an annual tithe, but it was inconsequential by comparison with mortal taxes: a voucher for five hours of labor per year. The fey economy, such as it was, was backed by promises of labor. The crown issued generic feymin and feyour tokens as currency, secured by the crown’s supply of actual vouchers. Very few fey had minutes worth exactly a feymin, but the system worked no more badly than mortal standards based on precious metals.

The storyteller speaking now, a giant serpent with feathered wings and a fanned tail like a peacock’s, was fortunate to have received an audience. The time before the court alone would raise their importance in the eyes of the Moon Host. Their presentation was compelling, too. Ardent had missed the first half of their story and was distracted by her seething anger at Fallen’s treatment of her prisoner, and the High Court’s tacit acceptance thereof, but even so, she was drawn into the thread of the tale the coatl spun by glamour and voice. It was a retelling of the founding of the Moon Etherium, and how the Moon Etherium had wrested free of the Sun Etherium’s control almost six hundred years ago. Well-trodden ground, but Ardent liked the choice of protagonists: two families from the Sun Host who had come as colonists to the Moon Etherium, and the way their loyalties divided between their new home and the Sun King.

At the conclusion of the coatl’s presentation, the court hushed, all eyes on Queen Skein of the Absolute as they awaited her reaction. She was silent for a long time, and finally spoke. “Wisdom Draught, you have long been a favorite artist of Our realm. It is with no small regret that We inform you that We cannot endorse your current project. We look forward to your next proposal, and trust it will be more to Our…tastes.” Draught looked stricken as she waved them off. A tiny messenger fairy from Diamond of Winter swooped to the queen’s ear and whispered to her.

Ardent suppressed a scowl, wondering at the undertones of that rejection. She’d been unhappy with the Moon Etherium when she renounced it formally fourteen years ago, and her feelings about the Moon Host had long been mixed. She’d actually left the Etherium once before, for a couple of decades a century ago, and returned the first time at Skein’s request. She’d still respected Skein of the Absolute, even at her second departure. What happened to you, Skein?

The Queen nodded to her adjunct. Diamond of Winter drew itself up, a tall, heavyset glittering abstract of a humanoid figure, as if sculpted of cut glass. “The Crown welcomes Ardent Sojourner of the barbarian village Try Again to present her petition, and her companion, to the High Court of the Moon Etherium.” The courtiers assembled buzzed with sudden curiosity: those who hadn’t seen her enter recognized her name. And everyone could tell she hadn’t been kept waiting long, which surprised Ardent herself.

Ardent squared her shoulders and ascended the strange, barely existent stairs of the Great Hall, trusting Miro to follow in her footsteps. She stopped ten paces before and below the crescent throne. The queen turned her gaze upon them, and the moon illuminated them with the brilliance of stage floodlights. Ardent dropped to one knee and bowed her head; behind her, Miro did the same. “Your majesty, thank you for this audience. I come before the Court with my servant, Prince Mirohirokon of the Sun Host. If it pleases your majesty, I request my reinstatement in your majesty’s Etherium.”

The surprised murmuring around them intensified. Ardent waited with her head still down.

“It pleases Us to see you returned to Our Etherium, Ardent Sojourner,” the Queen said. “Please, rise.” Ardent stood. Miro remained kneeling, and Ardent nearly cued him to stand when she realized his grasp of etiquette was better: the queen hadn’t addressed him. “You are the second in recent days to come before us with a Sun Host member.” The queen didn’t turn her head, but the eyes of many went to Fallen and the enslaved fey at her feet. Fallen was watching Ardent with narrowed eyes. “You do not seek Moon affiliation for him?”

Ardent gave a mirthless smile. “If it pleases your majesty, he’s of more use to me in Sun Host.”

Skein of the Absolute watched her, appraising, for a long moment. Ardent cultivated a bland expression and awaited the next question. “We would know how you came by this prince, Ardent Sojourner.”    

“Well,” she drawled, “Happens one of his parents had gotten into a deal with Shadow of Fallen Scent. Prince Mirohirokon was not real happy with how it turned out. For some reason.” Ardent looked pointedly at Fallen and Jinokimijin. The latter had a worried look on her delicate girl’s face. “The prince came to me, pretty desperate for help. He wanted me to intercede for Disgraced Jinokimijin, and offered a gamble for it: if he beat me at Turns, I’d help him, and if I won, he’d serve me.”

“At Turns? You thought you could beat Ardent Sojourner at Turns, little prince?”

Mirohirokon flushed, still kneeling with head bowed. “It may be that poor choices run in my family line.”

“It may be that he thought he had an edge,” Ardent offered, kindly. Everything they’d said so far was true, including the game of Turns. Which Ardent had taken a massive handicap in, and lost, before they made the ‘deal’ which hinged upon its outcome. “But…well, here we are.” She smirked.

The Queen’s silver eyes were on her again. Ardent expected her to ask more questions: why did that bring you back? Why would the power of a Sun Host channel tempt you to return, when the power of a position in my High Court could not convince you to stay? Ardent had answers prepared for those, too. But instead, the Queen steepled her fingers. “We are pleased to welcome you back as affiliate of Our Moon Host, Ardent Sojourner. But We are concerned at the presence of two Sun Host affiliates in Our midst, and their potential as spies, or as a source of conflict in Our realm. Shadow of Fallen Scent has demonstrated that her servant is under her complete control.” A negligent gesture towards the pair on her left. “Are you able to do the same, Ardent Sojourner?” The Moon Queen circled a finger in the air, and a trace of glamour conjured a leashed collar in its wake. In a moment, it faded away in a sparkle of stars.

Ardent stared at her, disbelieving. You aren’t just tolerating that humiliation. You’re demanding it. Fury made blood roar in her ears; it was all she could do to keep it contained, to keep herself from lashing out. Servitude was one thing; she could understand the utility behind wanting servants, even if she disapproved. But degradation? In the name of Justice, what possible point could there to be to this?

The queen met her gaze, calm, unmoved, as if her suggestion was reasonable and not an unnecessary insult to not only Mirohirokon, but to his entire Etherium. “Is something amiss, Ardent Sojourner?” The queen’s eyes slid past her. “Surely you are in no position to object, Prince Mirohirokon?”

“Your majesty? Why would I object?” Miro’s voice tone was honestly perplexed, with no trace of dissembling, sarcasm, or resentment. “Your majesty honors me with this opportunity to prove my devotion to my new mistress and my willingness to fulfill my bargain. I thank you for your kindness.”

Ardent pivoted to him as he spoke. Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you? But he spoke with such conviction, as if he truly were honored. They were committed to this story already, and Ardent’s hesitance was only weakening their position. “Rise,” she told him, voice harsher than she intended, “and accept your chains.” Ardent shaped a plain collar of white gold between her hands as Miro stood. His brown eyes lifted to hers, for just a moment, and she could see nothing in them but a perfect trust, an inappropriate serenity. He bowed his head, meekly. Ardent closed the collar around his neck, a seamless metal circle he had no magic to remove. She drew her hand back, holding him leashed, feeling sick with helpless anger.

“Thank you, mistress,” Miro said, softly. “May I beg permission to speak?”

“Granted.” Ardent had no idea what else he had planned. Is this enough? she wanted to snarl at the Moon Queen.

“If I may beg your majesty’s indulgence?” Miro turned to the throne, but kept his head bowed.

“Go ahead,” the Moon Queen said, curious.

Miro knelt again. “By aether, by Justice, by Love, by Family, by Duty, by Truth, by Persistence: I give my oath and loyalty to you, Ardent Sojourner, without reservation. I swear to serve you in all ways, and in turn to act only in the best interests of the Moon Etherium and all her lawful inhabitants.” Ardent listened, shocked speechless, appalled by the thoroughness of the oath, the sweeping breadth of power he was granting her over him. He recited it two more times, giving it a binding weight the whole court could sense.

The satyress clenched her fingers around Miro’s chain to stop them from shaking. The entire court was stunned and silent, amazed. Ardent turned to the throne, and glimpsed Jinokimijin’s expression of unadulterated horror, terrified for her son in a way she had not been even for herself. Ardent met the Moon Queen’s gaze. “Is your majesty satisfied with the extent of my control?”

A smile formed on dark blue lips. “We are.”

---

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.

The pointlessly huge hall led to a slightly less pointless antechamber. This one had seats, and some fey awaiting permission to attend the court. Argent farspoke the queen’s adjunct again, then approached the doors to the court, bypassing those still waiting. The unicorn golem-guards opened a little door set into the house-sized double ones, and they passed into the Palace’s Great Hall.

Miro was used to the grand excesses of fey lords, but the Great Hall of the Moon Queen was something entirely other. It was like stepping into the night sky, if the sky were something one could walk in. He didn’t fall, but he couldn’t feel a floor holding him up, either. Ardent strode unfazed through the moonlit darkness, and he followed her as if she were the Path itself. Perhaps she was.

A throne in the shape of a crescent moon hung, unsupported, at the center of this sky-space. The Moon Queen rested at ease in its curve. She was a regal figure, her midnight-blue skin dusted with the swirls of nebulas and galaxies, crescent moons descending from the corners of her eyes. Her hair was a mane of glowing white, while dark antlers crowned her brow and a platinum circlet rested above them. She had dragonfly wings, translucent and gleaming with the stars beyond them.

Ranged about her were the fey of her High Court, Miro presumed, though he only recognized a few of them by sight. There was the great silver-and-blue dragon, Light Calls to Light, curled in empty space beneath the throne: they were one of the three High Lords of the Moon Etherium. To the queen’s right sat the crown prince Shell Inspire, a tall, slender human figure with pearlescent skin and a twisting unicorn’s horn rising from his forehead. He didn’t have a throne like his mother’s crescent moon, but there was a subtle pattern to the stars around him, that suggested he was seated on a throne made to match the backdrop. Now that Miro was looking for it, he could see similar seats among the other High Court figures. At the Queen’s left was the gray, fox-tailed figure of the Queen’s Surety, Shadow of Fallen Scent.

She had Miro’s parent kneeling in chains at her feet.

Miro knew Jinokimijin at once by soulsight, and by the tangled ropes of obligation that joined them, the goodness and corruption in the connection hopelessly intertwined. Jino had a good soul on the whole, or so Miro had always thought: clear, intense blues and greens that indicated durability, kindness, and determination. But it was not without flaws: flecks of bitterness, twisted knots of hatred, and long streaks of deceit and manipulation marred it with the gangrenous tint of corruption.

But Fallen had reshaped her fey slave’s physical form. The facial features were more delicately beautiful, skin paler, hair still rich gold but finer and straighter. Jino’s new body was short, slender and barely clothed, emphasizing a female figure too young to be so sexualized: rounded shoulders, small high breasts, narrow waist and hips, slim legs. She wore humiliatingly literal chains, as if the corrupted cable soulsight showed yoked to her neck might be insufficient. A loose silver chain linked ankle cuffs and a second the wrist cuffs, while a collar had its leashed end looped around Fallen’s wrist. Jewelry dangled from her ears, silvery hoop earrings, including one decorated with rubies. With Miro’s hair changed to white-blonde, the two Sun Host fey looked like the close relatives they were, though a mortal would think Jino the younger sister, not the father. Pale characters marred her inner arm like a tattoo, reading, “Property of Shadow of Fallen Scent”.

Jino met her son’s eyes across the empty space, with a startled expression she tried and failed to mask. A brief smile, perhaps meant to be reassuring, flickered and died on bow-shaped lips. Miro looked away, his face a mask. He didn’t even know how he felt, much less how he ought to feel, or what expression to show. There were another twelve or fifteen figures in the Moon High Court: princesses, another prince, high nobles, ministers. Miro should have tried to figure out who was who, but sick dread forming in his stomach made it impossible to focus. None of them had souls that inspired trust, though most of them weren’t monsters, not even the ogre-lord who wore a monster’s shape.

Except for Fallen, who had the second-foulest soul he’d ever seen. It was more corruption than not, a seething hideous mass of power lust, cruelty, and greed. He could smell the stench of her from here.    

And this was the woman that he’d let enslave his father.

Miro turned from the High Court to look around the rest of the space. There were a few hundred fey present, scattered in clusters about the starry space. Collectively, they drifted in a slow orbit around the High Court figures. Their souls were in better shape than the High Court’s, on the whole. The audience had less power lust and less cruelty, although streaks of sadism were still much more in evidence than they’d been in Try Again. Mostly, it was fear that weighed their souls down, fear and obligations – not to their Queen, but to Fallen. All of the High Court held an abundance of strings, but Fallen’s array was dizzying in number, and all miserable corrupted strings. The fey were all in different attitudes and positions. Some looked upside down or sideways relative to the throne, but their hair and clothes always hung as if the ground were under their feet. Sound did not echo here: it vanished into the unbounded space, so the murmuring of the assembly barely carried. Miro could sometimes glimpse outlines like stairs, bridges, balconies, underneath the fey, but when he blinked, there was only the void. And he still could feel nothing beneath his feet.

Ardent came to a stop alongside a cluster of a half-dozen fey. She laid her arm about his shoulders, as if to steer him to stand in the right place. He closed his eyes to breathe her in, and reminded himself, This place is better than you expected.

It was true.

---

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Ardent set Mirohirokon down in the vast entrance hall of the Moon Palace. It was ostentatiously large, irritatingly so since the Queen did not permit her subjects to teleport into any room closer to the court. It looked as if it had been carved from a single giant block of polished gray-black granite. Fanciful draconic columns supported silver crescent arches inset in a dark ceiling. The space was empty save for two impassive unicorn golems guarding the door to the antechamber.

Ardent covered her face with her hands and leaned against one of the draconic pillars. “Justice! I’d forgotten how annoying High Court is, and I remembered it being bad enough that I left to escape it. And we’re not even to it yet! Do I look as ridiculous as I feel?”

“You look magnificent, my lady,” Mirohirokon said, with a sincerity that made her peek between her fingers at him. “Just as you were magnificent holding court before three mortals in Try Again’s green,” he added, and she snorted back a laugh. “I am sorry that their manners brought you pain. But you remain a wonder to behold; nothing a clothier could do would lessen you.”

“What did I say about those pretty Sun Host courtesies?” She made a face at him. He smiled at her, unrepentant. He did look amazing. Especially with all that long straight hair flowing behind him like a cloak. She wondered if Katsura’s instinct – dress him as a Sun prince, and you’ll be even grander for having caught such a one – had been wrong. Would his polished Sun Host look and manners make the chaos of the Moon Court seem clumsy and childish by contrast? But she couldn’t have put him through any of Katsura’s other suggestions. Dress him like a slave? No. Ardent sighed. “C’mon, kid. Let’s get this over with.”

She started forward, but his touch on her hand made her pause. “My lady,” he said, gravely. “I am fifty-three years old. I realize that seems little to you, but my great-grandfather was only a few years older than I when he died of old age. I am not a child. Please, do not call me ‘kid’.”

She was on the point of protesting – I’m two centuries older than you! Everyone seems like a kid to me. I call Katsura ‘kid’ and she’s almost twice your age. It doesn’t mean anything.

But it meant something to him.

And he was here, surrendering his freedom and risking his life to save his father. He’d have little enough dignity in this part. What right did she have to take what remained away? “I’m sorry, sugar,” she said, contrite. “Of course you aren’t.” She gave a little laugh. “Guess I shouldn’t call you ‘sugar’ either, Mirohirokon.”

“‘Sugar’ is fine,” he said, mouth solemn but brown eyes mischievous. “I’ve no objections to ‘sweetie’, either. Or Miro, if you like. Or pet or slave, if need be. We do not always get to choose our roles.”

She grimaced. “No, we don’t.” She patted his back. “Miro.” Together, they walked the long hall towards the court.

---

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They arrived in a room with mirrored walls, ceiling, and floor, and extra freestanding mirrors in case those weren’t enough. There were also several dozen identical women with long fluffy white tails tipped in black, bat wings, and fox ears in a mane of white hair. Only one of them had a soul.

“Ardent!” the women cried, and charged in all directions, with the one who had a soul running straight at them. Ardent set Miro down and embraced the woman. After a moment’s disorientation, Miro resolved the situation into one woman and many, many reflections. “Beloved! You return home to us at last! Oh, we have missed you so, you have no idea. Look at you!” She leaned away from Ardent and flicked the short hemline of her chiton. “You look terrible, beloved, why do you do this to yourself? Look at your legs. No one has hairy legs any more. No one. Why are you still using those?”

“I’m not changing my legs for the High Court, kid,” Ardent told her. “I’ve had these legs for over two hundred years. I am very attached to them.”

“And your tail! Why do you even have a tail if you’re going to make it look like that? You might as well tie a dead rat to your butt. Now him, him, he is a classic!” She turned to Miro. “Such fine lines on this boy! I love that jacket, the asymmetrical fastening, novel yet traditional – is that the style in your High Court?”

“It is. Court dress has much more lace and the cut is tighter, but the lines through the torso are the same,” he said, in an effort to distract Threnody Katsura from denigrating Ardent’s appearance. It was better than giving in to the irrational urge to leap to her defense. His assistance there was surely neither necessary nor wanted. The diversion worked: Katsura pounced on the few details and demanded more. Soon, she was iterating designs upon him. A wave of her hand, and his existing clothing changed into a rough concept of his description. She then refined it, over and over again, as he clarified points and added details, and she toyed with her own embellishments.

While Miro had Katsura’s attention, Ardent stood before one of the wall mirrors and drew the High Court rune over it. Her reflection shifted to show a shorter version of her with human legs, wrapped in snug-fitted navy with silver trim, hair in elaborate winding braids. Ardent scowled at her reflection. She traced “clothing only” with her finger before the mirror, then waved her hand to replace the reflection with a new outfit on her current form. After a few dozen different outfits, Ardent yelled, “Katsura! Surely High Court fashion must still have some skirts? Dresses? Chitons? Robes? Caftans? Saris? Something?”

“What’s wrong with trousers?” Katsura asked, adjusting the lace visible through the slashed sleeves of Miro’s new jacket.

“I hate trousers. Can I go naked? Is naked still formal?”

“Beloved Ardent, naked hasn’t been formal since before I was born. There was, what, one summer in 1132 when it was formal?”

“One glorious summer.” Ardent gave a wistful sigh.

“Naked is not formal. Find something to wear or I’ll find it for you. You’re already wearing the right form for Sun High Court, I presume, Mirohirokon?”

He looked at his reflection, thoughtful. For most of his life, court dress had ranged between “entertaining nuisance” and “abhorred necessity”. For the last three decades, he’d kept much the same body regardless of what was in fashion. But here and now, he found that he wanted to do this properly. “No. I should be taller—” He gestured with his hand four inches over his head “— and broader, especially through the shoulders and chest. Muscular, like Ardent.” Reflexively, he tried to trueshift himself and could not. The uncomfortable sense of being hollow and parched in an aether sea intensified.

Katsura spun a homunculus out of aether, creating a tiny doll based on his current form, and then reshaped it in her hands according to his gestures. “I’m guessing you don’t mean you want Ardent’s bosom?”    

Not as a part of me, he thought, and blushed. “No, thank you. Oh, hair should be much longer, and light blond.”

“Longer?” Ardent glanced over her shoulder. “Kid, your hair is already hip-length!”

“Pay her no mind.” Katsura fiddled with the homunculus. “She has all the taste of month-old milk. How long?”

“It should trail behind me, like a train. Aether to keep it off the ground and in order, obviously.”

At his direction, Katsura lightened the doll’s hair to a white blond. She darkened the skin to a tan with a faint golden sheen, suggestive of buffed gold but not metallic. She handed the homunculus to him, and he took on its appearance. She accessorized him with a thin gold circlet sparkling with diamonds. Matched chains draped about his long, swept-back fey ears. His new jacket was waist-length in front, but fanned out in back to knee-height. It fastened with a lightning-strike pattern along the left breast, and came to a high collar, almost at his chin. The sleeves suggested wings, long and draping, with lightning-strike slashes along the top. Tights covered his legs, and the gold chains of formal sandals wound around his calves and fastened below the knee. The dominant colors were cream and gold, intricate lace mixed with bold matte satins.

“Truth,” Katsura breathed out, leaning back to admire her handiwork. “Now that is a prince.” She turned her attention to Ardent. “Now we must make you worthy of such a pet!”

“I’m wearing this.” Ardent had chosen one of the mirror designs and copied it onto herself. It was a high-collared sleeveless gown, close-fitted from chest to waist, with a circular cutout of transparent silk to showcase her ample cleavage. Its skirt flowed down from the waist, cut so high in front that it barely reached the tops of her thighs, but lengthening to almost sweep the floor in back. It was colored in variegated rich reds, and trimmed in platinum and rubies.

Katsura made a face. “Darling, you can’t wear that without tights.”

“Watch me. You ready to go, Mirohirokon?”

“You cannot leave here looking like that!” Katsura protested. “I forbid it! I shall never let you set foot – hoof – in here again if you sabotage one of my designs like this.”

This gave Ardent pause, and Katsura pounced on the opportunity. What followed was a long negotiation over every aspect of Ardent’s appearance. In the end, she held firm in refusing trousers, tights, different legs, or fur removal, but did consent to silver patterns dyed into her leg fur. She also let Katsura talk her into fey ears instead of her current goat-like ones. (“What’s wrong with my ears? You’ve got animal ears!” “Mine are lovely vulpine ears. Yours are goat. They go.”) Her horns were lengthened from short buds to long, curved spikes, and adorned with silver jewelry. Her hands were stripped of their callouses, the mere existence of which offended Katsura. (“You’re invulnerable! Why do you need callouses?” “Because I’m not automatically invulnerable to myself. And yes, if I’m paying attention, weeding and harvesting and whatnot won’t hurt my hands if I don’t want them to. But it’s annoying to always have to pay attention.”) Katsura tried and failed to convince her to exchange her (in Miro’s opinion) adorable short fluff of a tail for a long and plush one.

While they were still arguing over the tail, Threnody Katsura’s partner, Intend and Illuminate, popped in. Illuminate, who had feathered wings and rosette spots, promptly began to rhapsodize over the possibilities of Ardent’s hair. Ultimately, she transformed it into an elaborate network of hundreds of small braids, spiraling and looping upwards. Katsura extended the dress’s collar into a lace confection that framed her face. Both clothiers wound delicate silver jewelry about her bare arms and calves.

Finally, Ardent attempted to shake the two of them off. “All right, enough. Enough! Can we go now?”

“You look lovely,” Illuminate said, kindly, and put a few final touches on the silver design she was making above Ardent’s eyes.

Katsura sniffed. “Adequate.” Honesty mixed with cruelty and arrogance in her otherwise healthy soul. Miro struggled not to take a dislike to her, since Ardent didn’t seem to mind it.

Ardent arranged to pay them after she’d had a chance to unload Sessile’s cargo, then picked Miro up again and departed.

---

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Before they arrived, Ardent put the notebook down to discuss their story. Whatever they said, Shadow of Fallen Scent would know Mirohirokon had come to the Moon Etherium because of his father. “She’s not gonna be all ‘Oh, what a coincidence! You just got a Sun Host channel too! However could that have happened to both of us in the same week?’”

But Ardent’s motive for coming with him would be less clear. They could portray her as a willing confederate, or one he’d manipulated into assisting, or one who was taking advantage of his desperation. Or some tangled combination of all three.

After discussing the advantages and disadvantage of various options, they settled on one, not without some reservations. Ardent admonished Sessile not to speak to anyone of their conversation along the journey.

“Awww.” Sessile’s pout was audible even in her distorted voice. “Not even to Whistler? Not even the bit about more aether not being the answer?”

The satyress suppressed a smile. “Sorry, sweetie. Not even that, not even to him. This’s real important. You can keep quiet for us, right, Sessile? Don’t even act like there’s anything interesting that you can’t discuss.”

“Uh huh,” Sessile said, obedient if still disappointed. “I won’t tell, I promise.”

Miro felt the pressure of the Moon Etherium’s nearness long before they arrived. Aether enriched the air, but instead of soaking into him as the Sun Etherium’s would, it felt like a barrier against his skin. It leeched away at the aether he’d stored when he left the Sun Etherium, faster than the dryness of the Broken Lands, a dissipation that was nothing like channeling. It did not leave him tired, merely parched. He’d read about the effect but never experienced it before – nor had anyone he knew. In modern times, fey who wished to go to the opposite Etherium unaffiliated first, so that the aether of the other Etherium would welcome them instead of rendering them helpless. He fed the last of his aether into his various enchantments before it was gone, even though it scarcely mattered at this point. The enchanted items had no affiliation and would recharge soon enough from the Moon Etherium’s aether.

In the fey world, the Moon Etherium rested in a crater-like valley between hills. On the uphill slope was a fanciful town populated by a mixture of barbarians and Moon Host fey. They were near enough to the Etherium to enjoy a much higher supply of aether than Try Again. The difference showed in the many golems working in the streets, and the splendour of their architecture. It was a haphazard fusion of individual Fey aesthetics with the styles of dozens of different mortal worlds, with no regard for their original purpose. Mortals reserved their most interesting designs for their rulers and their gods. Here, ordinary fey of no particular consequence lived in palaces and temples, pagodas and parthenons, cathedrals and towers. One marble street was shaded by golden trees with jeweled leaves, for a particularly gaudy touch. The buildings were as large as their mortal equivalents, but not as well-ornamented. Most of them had simple, repeating designs, instead of a proliferation of unique cartouches.

Sessile slithered up the gaudy marble street, with evident delight as she made the sparkling trees chime. Ardent glanced up at the noise, and put the notebook down in her lap to turn to him. “We’re almost there, sweetie. You still sure about this?”

“I still don’t have any better ideas.” He half-smiled at her. “Yes. I’m sure.”

She reached out to offer her hand. He took it, finding comfort in the strong grip of her weathered fingers, the clean warmth of her soul. Perhaps this could work, after all.

They crested the rise, and the Moon Etherium sprawled beneath them.

Mirohirokon’s first impression of it was of a dizzying, chaotic mass of colors and styles, with no unifying theme and no underlying reason.    

In a true physical sense, he knew that the Moon Etherium proper was a sphere, a mile and a half in diameter. But with enough aether, space itself was a malleable thing. It was easy to learn how to make more space, or make distances disappear. To do both at the same time was tricky, but by no means impossible. At an Etherium, there was far, far more than enough aether.

Miro could see across the Moon Etherium valley to the not-too-distant hill on the far side. He was simultaneously aware that the valley was small, and also that it sprawled without end.

Within that sphere, less than two miles across, a vast metropolis spread before them.

Palaces drifted in the Etherium sky: one borne on the back of a pegasus, another resting on clouds, a third inverted, towers stretching towards the ground, foundation thrust into the sky, supported by nothing at all. A glass sailing ship with a dragon’s head prow and three masts hovered motionless in the air despite its rigged and billowing sails. A slender silver cable anchored it to a tower. On the ground, a vast flower garden formed a landscape painting more rational than the actual landscape around them. A stately mansion was at the center of the garden. Impossibly, its facade faced the sky, and at the same time faced forward at ground-level. Beside it was an incongruous collection of smooth, colorful, house-sized blobs against a matte-black surface. That surface should have been on the slope of the southwestern hill, but it looked flat and level. Beside that was a lake the size of a small sea, with water so clear one could see the underwater palaces made of air bubbles and coral reefs, fathoms beneath the surface. Hippocampi and sea serpents frolicked with merfolk. At the western edge, an ordinary-looking park of green grass and trees abutted a yawning abyss that oozed smoke, its bottom too deep to see, its sides fitfully lit by red flames.

Fey in a thousand shapes walked, flew, slithered, swam, and above all teleported as they moved through the scene: vanishing in an eyeblink, to reappear elsewhere in the Etherium. Many were humanoid, but few were as similar to a human as Miro. Some looked cast from metal, or stone, or sewn out of cloth: if he hadn’t had soulsight, Miro could have taken them for golems. Some were larger than Ardent, and most had some animal features. Feline ears, squirrel tails, scaled bodies, horns and wings abounded, as did skin, feathers, chitin, and more improbable substances. Others were not even humanoid. Some fey had shifted to the shape of dragons, unicorns, winged panthers, centaurs, and other impossible creatures.

At the center of this spectacle rose the Midnight Palace, a towering edifice that defied physical law. Among the absurdities were outer sections that swept out like a bird’s wings from the main body. Towers rose from absurdly narrow bases into house-sized protuberances. Upside-down staircases formed skybridges between peaks. Towers were at once behind and in front of walls. The whole was midnight blue in color, with galaxies and nebulas of stars that swirled slowly across its surface. The shape of a large glowing moon made a gradual orbit over the outer walls, changing from full to new to full as it progressed. It was currently gibbous, and rising to the left and above the doors into the east wing.

The riotous appearance of Moon Etherium – so unlike the more naturalistic and harmonious look of Sun Etherium – distracted Miro from the sudden thickness of the aether surrounding them. That sense of a barrier intensified: aether everywhere, rich and deep, all denied to him. Something inside him had opened in response, as if by the pressure of vacuum: the channel that would allow Ardent – or any fey who wasn’t Sun Host – to access the Sun Etherium’s aether. He felt uncomfortable and hideously vulnerable.

Next to him, Ardent had released his hand. The same moon aether that had deprived Miro of all magical ability had filled Ardent with potential. As an unaffiliated fey, she would not have the breadth or depth of connection that a Moon Host fey did, but it was still more than enough power to fulfill a mortal’s wildest dreams. She’d summoned a farspeaker surface into the air before her. Her hands flew over it, writing, drawing symbols and pictures, as she dispatched messages to her friends and contacts in the Moon Etherium. Return messages flowed in almost at once, in forms as varied as the Moon Etherium itself. A scroll appeared and unrolled itself at her elbow, a bird swooped in through the opening of one of Sessile’s carved nostrils and landed on her wrist, a glowing ball of light drifted through Sessile’s side and hovered to one side at eye level, and more. At least that flurry of activity had a familiarity to it, even if the shapes of the farspeakers were different.

“Where do you want to go here?” Sessile asked. “And do you want me to teleport?”

Ardent made a distracted motion, and Miro answered in her stead. “I believe we’re going to the Midnight Palace, Sessile.” Technically, Ardent didn’t need the Moon Queen’s permission to reaffiliate; it wasn’t as if anyone could stop her, especially with Miro to channel for her. But it would be polite, and there was no reason to antagonize the High Court. “And there’s no rush.”

“Yes!” Sessile said, triumphant. She slithered into the top of a steep switchback ramp with sloped sides, then slid down it by gravity alone. A muffled “wheeeee!” echoed through her interior, and Miro laughed despite his discomfort. He leaned back in his seat and enjoyed the ride down, watching the Etherium flash past. At the base of the ramp, Sessile slithered along a broad and all but empty road to the Palace.    

By the time they reached the door, Ardent had dismissed her farspeaker surface. She swept a few still-waiting messengers into her bag and drew a symbol in the air that would prevent new ones from arriving.

“How did it go?” Miro asked her.

Ardent massaged the base of her horns with one hand. “Ugh. So much noise. Let’s see. One of my friends, Threnody Katsura, has attempted to fill me in on a year’s worth of gossip. This included Fallen’s newest acquisition of a Sun Host channel. So if we had any doubts that she wouldn’t be showing your dad off, that’s settled. I spoke with the Queen’s adjunct, Diamond of Winter. It said that the Queen looks forward to seeing me and I should attend her ‘as soon as you have recovered from your journey’. Which translates to ‘clean up first, you uncivilized barbarian, and in the name of Duty wear something presentable’.” She looked down at her chiton and sighed. “I have no idea what’s in fashion these days. Let me amend that: I have never had any idea what’s in fashion. But I’m pretty sure ‘mortal peasant chic’ will not be it.”

His lips twitched. “I can tell you what’s current in the Sun Etherium High Court, if you wish to present yourself in high style for the wrong court.”

That won him a laugh. “Oh, now, that would make a statement. Let’s save that thought for when I’m not trying to be on my best behavior. I better ask Katsura for advice.” She made the gesture to allow messages again, and conjured the farspeaker. Miro watched her expression as she received Katsura’s replies by successive scrolls. Ardent stowed a few scrolls, dismissed most of them into the aether after reading, kept one, and violently incinerated four, with a ferocious scowl. “Argh, Katsura!”

Miro reclaimed his father’s notes to peruse while he waited, and kept his peace throughout, struggling not to smile.

After frowning at yet another scroll, Ardent turned to him with a sigh. “Sweetie, I think we’d better see Katsura in person. The latest High Court trends are things I haven’t even seen before, so I’d make a hash of replicating them myself. And we should probably dress you up, too. Katsura thinks you ought to wear the fashion of Sun High Court. I’m gonna guess it’s way more elaborate and ridiculous than that nice outfit you’re wearing?”

Miro laughed and nodded.

“And I’d make even more of a disaster out of that, insofar as that’s possible. Katsura loves fashion, she and her partner have a business doing it.” Ardent sounded glum. “So. Yeah. You all right with getting dressed up?”

“Of course.” For some reason, the prospect of dressing for the Sun High Court while in the Moon Etherium amused him. He rose and offered his hand. “Shall we?”

Ardent stood, stooped to avoid bumping her head, and scooped him up in one arm. “Go have fun, Sessile, I’ll farspeak you when we need you,” she told the golem, then ported herself and Miro away.

---

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