We entered a fairyland.

The vaults of Vigil had survived a ruinous war with demons and the undead—barely—by being sealed; perhaps some long-sighted elf or human had tumbled the rocks over the entrance themselves to keep the treasure beneath protected from the depredations of their attackers. But it had suffered in that attack, lost shelves, furniture, misplaced even itself: the air was thick with it, with dust and memories, and the books themselves were as frail as an elder on his deathbed. Passing the assistants at work on my way to the wall I’d seen how carefully the manuscripts were being handled, with gloves and often tongs. No doubt someone was taking the most fragile apart, page by page, and attempting to preserve the sheets.

The room I had opened looked as if the maidservants had just left it for the morning. Time had not touched it. Even the air in the room was good: smelled of beeswax and pine, as if the candles and fireplace had recently been lit. After the dull dun palette of the city, the vibrancy of the colors was like food for the eyes: the leather spines of hundreds of books in ruby and copper and emerald and tyrian purple. The warm, rich browns of the tables where people had once sat to study, inlaid with gold. Red carpets over pale stone floors: still lushly scarlet. Compared to the hall it was a more intimate setting, with lower ceilings, shorter shelves, fewer books, more places to sit and talk: there was even a collection of upholstered chairs near the hearth and cushioned seats built into the inglenooks.

No doubt in the kinder days of amity there had been no illusion obscuring this part of the library. But humanity had betrayed its friends, and some elf had hidden this place so it would no longer have the tools to effect a second betrayal. Had any of the strangers crowding the door behind us known they could wield the magical secrets that no doubt filled these books, I would have felt a pang of unease at having revealed it to them. I distrusted elves, but that didn’t prevent me from also distrusting humans.

Still, when I glanced back at them, my vision revealed the same story: there were almost no sparks among them to fuel any magical enchantment, and some were not just absent that spark, but smoldering in inverse, as if darkness could fester. If demons could be summoned with bloodletting alone, surely someone would have done it by now.

Setting my shoulders I passed into this evidence of a history I had once thought folktale.

“Just like that,” Carrington murmured. “You walk in here, John Eyre, and summon the most significant discovery in the history of Vigil’s athenaeum since it was unearthed.”

“Oh, Morgan,” Chester said to me. He had taken down one of the books and held it open, and the pages were supple, flexed at his touch, which trembled. I looked over his shoulder and couldn’t help a chuckle. The book was written in the Angel’s Gift, as were many of the volumes I could see at a glance. I had delivered my friend into a treasure trove more vast than any dragon’s hoard.

“Remember,” I said to him in the Gift, “we must seek the answer to our conundrum before we fall headlong into scholarship for the sake of scholarship.”

He quelled me with a reproving look before returning to his perusal.

“Well,” Guy drawled, “We’ve got work to do, eh? Hope you all brought plenty of lanterns....” He peered up the chimney, tapped the flue. “Or we could see if this thing still works.”

“You can’t light a fire in here!” Powlett exclaimed, scandalized.

“Why not? The people who once used the place did.”

I waved a hand. “These are trivialities. You will bring us lanterns, if you please, and we will light the fire if we need it. Guy is correct. We have little time to waste.”

“What’s so urgent?” Roland asked, and I considered him, framed by the hollow oval of my spectacles’ missing lens. I continued to find him repulsive for the hole in him where I expected light. Was that fair of me, I wondered? To hold against him a lack that I could have addressed had I been willing to spend some of my friends’ energies? Surely such an act would turn him into an ally.

And yet, I didn’t want to. I much preferred him where he was—standing as far from me as I could arrange without discourtesy—and the thought of giving anything that belonged to my companions to him was repulsive. It was unfair, and yet there it was.

Perhaps the way these newcomers treated me contributed to my distaste. They were among the first to meet me without any context to prepare them for the shock, and their reactions divorced me entirely from my life, my background, my sense of self. My friends had known me as Morgan first, and the Church had received me as the return of an ally they’d been expecting. These people... they saw me and beheld an elven prince out of legend.

I was not that person, and yet playing the role would keep them from interrupting our research. Perhaps that was what prompted the words, for I didn’t plan them. “Urgency? What gave you that impression? I am here to reclaim Vigil for my people.” I swept the room. “There is a great deal to be done.”

“Reclaim?” Powlett repeated carefully, enunciating each syllable separately.

“I am the prince of elves,” I said. “My people are coming home.”

“And on that note,” Eyre said, “Perhaps you might leave us to begin our inventory, and see to the bedding for our party, mm?”

“Madness,” Powlett whispered. “But glorious madness.”

Roland was regarding me in a way I could not describe but disliked anyway. “We’ll see to it at once.”

I tried for a regal nod and thought it a horrible caricature of the ones I’ve seen from a truly royal head. Amhric would have infused the gesture with dignity and compassion. I managed politeness. Barely. But at least the strangers withdrew, and when I found their assistants slowing near the door to glance inside I closed it on them.

Guy was already chortling. “God Almighty, Morgan. ‘My people are coming home.’ Brilliant! If what you wanted was to terrify them.”

“Is it true?” Ivy wondered.

“I can’t imagine us staying on the Archipelago if there are demons to be slain here, and if we manage to free us to do it effectively.” I paused, my pronouns reflecting my confusion. I was sick of all of this already. “We really do have work to do.”

“Right. So we’re looking for how one undoes major enchantments,” Radburn said, already prowling along the shelves.

“Or histories with accounts of how the original enchantment was enacted,” Eyre said. “Reading how it was done might give us some sense for the scope of ritual magic.”

“Have I mentioned yet how amazing this is?” Chester added, voice soft. “Centuries old and yet perfectly preserved. How?”

A pertinent question, and I hadn’t the first notion of the answer... only that I’d been unsurprised to find the chambers in this condition. “I don’t know. But perhaps we might find out from the same tomes that teach us what we need to know to break the enchantment.”

“We have our orders, then,” Guy said. “Off we go.” They scattered into the room.

“What shall we do, Master?” Almond asked, hesitant. All four of the genets had accompanied us, which suited me; I didn’t like the thought of them alone among humans who didn’t know what they were, or how to treat with them. My eyes snagged on Serendipity as I studied them. It would be too much to ask that she should simply find the right book; we might have been living a folktale out of my own dissertation, but even in a folktale not all was given, and what was rarely came without price.

“I would wish that Emily listen at the door,” I said, “as your kind have far superior hearing, and I’d like to know if anyone is approaching before they arrive. Serendipity, if you would explore the room, please? There is more to this place than its books. Kelu…” The taller genet cocked her head, ears flicking forward. “You can read. So if you will, please join the others in their search.”

Her hesitation was measurable, and rare for her. “I read slower than everyone here,” she said with obvious reluctance at the need to admit to weakness.

“You do, yes,” I said. “But you puzzle out words in both languages. Other than Chester, you’re the only one who can.”

Her chin lifted.

“If you’re willing,” I said. “Your help would be invaluable.”

“I can do it,” she said.

Almond turned a bright smile on me as Kelu took herself off into the depths of the room. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to; I felt her happiness on Kelu’s behalf, and her approval of my having found her valuable work, as clearly as I would have felt the sun on my face. I slipped my hand around her shoulders. “And you, stay near.”

“Gladly, Master.”

Eyre I found standing beside the fireplace, one hand resting on the floral relief carved into the mantel, the wood cunningly woven through with the ubiquitous elven glyphs. Even if he had recognized them, he wouldn’t have seen them, for I knew the look. I joined him and waited, patient.

“Ah, my student,” he said presently.

“Riches beyond mortal ken?”

His eyes traveled the breadth of the room, over Guy and Radburn perusing the stacks and Ivy and Chester already seated, thumbing through the first of their choices. “You have no idea.”

“Maybe a little, surely.” At my teasing tone, he glanced at me, lifted his brows, allowed himself a grin.

“Perhaps a little, then. Still, in my earlier years I would have given anything for this moment. To make my name, to add substantially to the sum of human knowledge in the world.”

“And now?”

“And now,” he said, “I care very little for my name, and I find myself pitying my colleagues. They invested everything in this endeavor, Morgan, solely for the chance at the discovery of a lifetime, something that would secure them a name in the annals of history as premiere scholars, adventurers, scientists. And they’re still here, digging through the ruins, without having had any significant forward motion since the day they arrived.”

“And then you ride up with everything they want,” Guy said, proving that we hadn’t been speaking as softly as we’d believed.

“Will they be as kind to you as you have been to them, now that they think you are the one who has everything?” Emily added.

“I think, very much, they will wish to do whatever is necessary to ingratiate themselves to us,” Eyre said. “They have no other choice if they hope to be part of what’s about to happen here. Which reminds me—” He eyed me. “Was it your plan to intimate that you consider the contents of the city your property?”

And prevent humanity from learning what resided in these books by claiming them as private possessions? There was enough of Morgan Locke the student scholar hiding under Morgan Locke the unexpected elven prince to find the idea appalling.

“Keep in mind whatever you do, you will be setting a legal precedent,” Eyre said.

“Can I own the contents of a city I wasn’t born in?” I said.

“You are royalty.” Ivy turned the page of her book, frowning at it. “Saints, but I would like to have my bags with me, and a proper folio and lead.”

“There are some on site,” Eyre said. “I’ll have them sent for.”

I looked at him. “What do you recommend?”

“I’d do it,” Radburn said unexpectedly. When we all looked at him, he said, “Look, you’ve got to have a place to put yourself and any elves that decide to stay with you—you are staying, right? As annoying as you’ve gotten, what with the perfect prettiness and the sleigh-bell voice and the great destiny, you’re still much better to have around than not.”

“There you have it,” Chester said. “You’re a handy thing when we have need of a thing to have at hand.”

“And that’s all you’re good for,” Ivy said, laughing.

“I think that’s all he’s good for where you’re concerned,” Guy said, and ducked when Ivy threatened to throw something at him.

“Not the book!” Chester said, plucking it from her lifted hand. “And Du Roi, really. That was coarse.”

“But true—”

“Hush, you’ll blister Locke’s ears.”

“But not his lover’s?”

“Morgan’s are longer and somewhat more delicate,” Ivy said, taking her book back. “As I now know.”

“Augh,” Radburn said, covering his face with a hand. “What I was trying to say is that if you’re staying on the continent, you probably don’t want to be in the capital of Troth without… I don’t know.” He waved a hand. “An embassy. The elves have history here, so their arrival won’t seem like usurpation, except possibly of an archeological effort, which can’t take precedence over the return of someone with a reasonable claim to the land.”

“God Almighty, the legal issues involved,” Chester said. “This land belongs to Troth!”

“This land belongs to Troth now,” Eyre said. “Mister Douglas is correct. Morgan could make a credible case for it being his, by virtue of the royal blood.”

“Even if the royal blood isn’t inherited directly,” I said, unconvinced.

“It doesn’t matter that elves arrange inheritance differently from humans,” Eyre said. “So long as the elves themselves acknowledge your right to rule them.”

“Which would be the sticking point, wouldn’t it,” Guy said. “But they don’t have to know that. They the humans, in this case.”

I rubbed my brow. “Can we worry about the particulars at a later date? Say, after we’ve freed Amhric?”

“No,” Ivy said. “No, we can’t, my dear. Because if you own Vigil, then everyone here has to do as you tell them to, and they need to know that immediately.”

Everyone was nodding, save the genets, who were watching me with their lambent eyes. Even Kelu was considering me, her head cocked.

“All right,” I said. “The rest of you, please continue. Professor, if you and Almond will attend me. We have work of a different kind to do, it appears.”

“Excellent,” Guy said. “Sensible. There’s hope for you yet.”

“One of these days, Guy….”

“Yes?”

My mouth quirked up. “I’ll do something meritorious without your having expected it, and you will be so surprised we will find you on the floor with an apoplexy.”

“Probably good for him,” Ivy quipped. “It’ll get the blood moving through his cold, dead heart.”

“And you’re surprised that it might be cold and dead given how often all of you are poking at it?” Guy snorted. “Back to your books, woman.”

I left them to it, knowing Ivy would hold her own and was probably eager to do so against such a comment. I schooled my countenance to a neutral expression as we exited the room. As I expected, few of the people who’d attended us had left though they’d had the grace to disperse to the corners of the hall where they were trying to look as interested in their existing research as they had been before my arrival.

Eyre’s colleagues were at the stairs, conferring with several other men. He named them as we approached. “Calvin, Strong, and Hayward. The first two are from Diligence, and the last hails from Candor.”

“Understood,” I murmured, and girded myself for the fray.

“Here he is,” Carrington said, smiling at me. “Lord Locke—”

“Prince Locke.”

The pulse of the conversation skipped several beats, and the strangers were not the only ones at a loss. Eyre and I looked down at Almond, who was trembling and hiding it well; I felt the quiver through the palm she had on the back of my leg, but she looked admirably composed to the casual eye.

“I… beg your pardon?” Carrington said weakly.

“It’s Prince Locke, please,” Almond repeated. “He is not just a lord. In all of Serala there is only one person who ranks higher than he, and that is King Amhric. You should use the right title.”

“I… of course,” Carrington said, flustered, and who could blame her given that she’d been corrected by a talking animal. “I hope I haven’t given offense?”

“They speak,” Powlett hissed to Roland.

“They speak and reason,” I said to them directly. “And you will treat them accordingly.”

“Her name is Miss Almond,” Eyre added with commendable diffidence.

The foreigners eyed their hosts; the one identified as Calvin said to me, “Your Royal Highness. We’re pleased, very pleased, to make your acquaintance.”

“Very good to meet you,” I said. “From Diligence, yes?”

“Yes,” he said, surprised. “I hadn’t expected you to have heard of it.”

I smiled. “I’m quite familiar with the human territories, you’ll find. I’m much obliged to you all for cleaning up some of the mess. Shall we discuss your continuing roles here?”

A heartbeat’s pause as they absorbed the implications of the word choice. The Candor scholar leaped into the hole in the conversation. “We’d be delighted to hear what you have planned, Prince Locke.”

“Of course, all of us would,” Roland hastened to agree.

“You’ll join us, won’t you, John?” Carrington said—pleaded, almost, and I wondered at it until I saw the foreigners moving subtly so that they were standing closer to one another.

Of course. I had changed the nature of the game. When the representative of a new foreign power arrives at a dig site once shared between several different countries and declares its sovereignty over the land, the stakes are no longer solely academic, but political. Who would the king of elves ally himself with, and therefore privilege? Troth had once had the advantage of the other countries: Vigil was within its northern border, and everyone else tarried here on her sufferance. But now, Candor’s and Diligence’s scholars-turned-envoys might negotiate a stronger position for themselves. Might even displace Troth entirely: nothing would make more sense than that I should consider the country that might fight me over my claim my enemy.

Naturally, I should be dragged into politics when I had not the first interest in them. I would have to appoint Chester my advisor and drag him into these meetings in the future. But today he was better placed where he was, as one of our only two readers of the elven glyphs… so I resigned myself to the inevitable. “Perhaps we might repair somewhere to discuss it. Oh, and if you would be so kind as to send some writing materials to my retainers in the library? They’re at work on an inventory for me.”

“An inventory,” Powlett said weakly.

“For me, yes,” I said. “My kin will be very glad to hear some of it has been left undisturbed since their departure.”

“Your retainers?” Carrington added, glancing now at Eyre.

What else should I call them? They were my friends, my beloved, my companions, my teacher, my helpmeets, my counselors. But among these folk, I could not afford to present myself as an individual traveling without retinue, or the very delicate charade of my being the advance representative of a much larger party would fall apart. So, “Yes. They include the genets, so please do accommodate them if they make any additional requests that you feel you can fulfill. We would be obliged.”

“Of course,” Roland said before one of the foreign scholars could volunteer. “I’ll dispatch someone at once.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Finding a place to have our discussion involved an impromptu tour of this part of what they called the catacombs; I thought it a dour name for what I suspected had once been a subterranean palace, given the elven proclivity for grand architecture. If the walls were no longer painted or gilt, and the ornament crumbled from the facades, still I could see what it would have been when Vigil was new. Certainly the size of the corridors discouraged any less grandiose terminology, for they were fully as tall as the great hall had been, and often wide enough for ten men abreast with room to spare. Scoured of its finery and choked with great mounds of stone where parts of the walls had been shattered, it did not look like much... but I found I very dearly wanted to see it restored. Indeed, I found myself contemplating living here one day. What would it be like?

The holes in the walls, though.... I stopped in front of one of them. I had seen undead birds, and I knew that demons used the animated corpses of the dead for armies. But I couldn’t imagine anything short of a cannon pulling down as much of the interior walls as I was seeing. What had flowed through here to wreak such destruction? What didn’t we know about what we were facing?

“Memories,” Eyre murmured to the others, who had been staring at me. Were they nodding their solemn agreement? Ridiculous!

“Come, Master,” Almond whispered, and I let her tug me back into motion.

We did eventually find a hollowed out room with enough space to confer; it adjoined another which had been converted into a common area for those at work. Sacks of grain had been draped across the wall: I could only imagine the monotony of the board here, with so little forage to be had around the city.

The afternoon that followed was one of the more tedious I’d survived, and I counted it thus despite over two decades of life spent fettered by magical enchantment to the life of an invalid. The rivalries Eyre had confessed to were as nothing before those nurtured by these warring factions of scholars. All of them wanted my favor, and access to the vault, and the resulting conversation was a tiresome exercise in verbal fencing and ever more ridiculous offers couched in language so convoluted I was tempted to tell them to write their monographs on the subject and let me read them later at my leisure.

They were all obviously accustomed to the respectful silences of an audience of eager students; had I not been engaged in puzzling out the evidence of my spectacles, I would have interrupted them more quickly. As it was, I spent a great deal of the time wondering if I was imagining the pulsing of the dark spots in Powlett and Roland and some of the others, and what to make of Carrington’s faint spark. If the spectacles showed me magical potential, then the visuals shouldn’t change. Should they?

The conversation labored on. I hoped—hoped—that I acquitted myself well: my goal was to make my claim clear without antagonizing any of them, or worse, uniting them in affront against me. I preferred to avoid the ignominy of being ushered from Vigil by the entire academic community, particularly since my errand did not permit me to fail. If we had to fight them to bide, we would, and I wanted to avoid the necessity.

When we broke for supper, I felt we had an understanding... a very delicate one crafted by suggestion and intimation. I would allow them to continue their work; they would not hinder us, nor ask too many questions. The latter condition would no doubt drive them to distraction, but if it did, so much the better for us all. I returned to the private library, thinking with longing of one of the chairs by the fireplace, and when I arrived it was to a disconcerting silence. Radburn was reading in a corner, scowling, shoulders hunched; Guy was hovering nearby. The thin line between Ivy’s brows spoke eloquently of irritation, a mood Emily was doing her best to assuage by leaning against her. Chester was ignoring them all by poring over his books, and Kelu was following his example. Serendipity I couldn’t spot at all.

“What?” I said. “I leave for all of three hours and you’re reduced to sulking?”

“It’s Ivy’s fault,” Guy said dryly.

“If Radburn wants to take anything I say personally, that’s his business,” Ivy replied. “Personally, I think it’s a ridiculous thing to take personally given the sort of talk you commonly engage in. Around me, a woman.”

God above, but I didn’t want to know. “Someone might as well tell me.”

Ivy said, “You remember in the chocolate house... that time you fainted.”

How could I not, when it was the first time I’d ever had a seizure in front of my friends? And in front of Ivy... I remembered her voice attenuating as I lost consciousness, and the desperation I’d felt at the realization that she’d seen me in my weakness. “Yes.”

“And how you’d mentioned fey folk with the horse ears.”

It had seemed so long ago... horse ears! I touched my own. They were pointed, yes, but likening them to horse ears seemed inaccurate now that I had them. For one thing, horses were often less offensive than elves. “I recall.”

“I said that in most cases, such fairies had harems,” Ivy continued. “And there was some teasing about horse-eared lasses for everyone.”

I could sense where this was going and looked with longing at the chair by the now-lit fire that I was probably not going to be able to occupy until I’d resolved this.

“Anyway, we were discussing how we should present ourselves, given that we’re not elves but obviously with you, and these people have no idea that we have a history with you that predates the revelation of your species,” Ivy said. “And I suggested—”

“That you were my harem?” The amusement in her eyes did not bode well. “Ivy! You did not!”

She snorted. “Any of you would have made the suggestion yourselves had most of us been women. But because I am a woman and you are a man and the rest of you are men—”

Radburn set his book down and stalked away, further into the room.

“There you are,” Guy said without looking up from his current volume of interest. “An excuse to continue exploring your new demesne.”

Meaning that I was to chase him, and that in all probability he was the only source of friction in this particular debate. What that said about the remainder of my friends I did not want to contemplate, did not want to grant myself so much as a fraction of a minute to picture the resulting scenarios. I imagined the spirit of Sedetnet chuckling at my prudishness. As I pushed myself from the chair and went in search of Radburn, I reflected on the irony that I had apparently been the only innocent when it came to alternatives to romantic norms, given that I was the one who’d had the most outré of experiences. Surely nothing Radburn had chased down in a bathhouse or alley could compare in exoticism to a shapechanging sorcerer.

My friend—my heartbroken, sensitive friend, whom Guy had failed to warn me to handle with more care—had retreated to a hitherto unseen part of the vault, which twisted in a circle around its fireplace and continued to wend around collections of furniture meant for contemplation or spirited debate. In some other time, we would have claimed this place for a second home the moment we’d seen it, so suited was it to the intellectual discourse we’d whiled most of our time away in when things had been simpler.

Now I had the welfare of a people crushing my shoulders and the unknown fate of a royal brother spurring my heart, and not one of us was free from the strain of our unexpected significance.

Radburn was in one of the upholstered chairs in the shadows. I sat across from him, marveling that the stuffing remained stiff enough for comfort and the fabric soft enough for luxury.

“Quite something,” he said, noticing my expression.

“Magical,” I replied, and he guffawed, but said nothing more. Tentatively, I continued. “You are hurt, I perceive.”

“You do, do you.” He lifted red brows. “Go on, then. Tell me what it is you discern with your perfect eyes and your fancy enchanted spectacles and your immortal heart.”

I winced. “Radburn, no matter the clothing around my spirit, I remain the Morgan Locke you once accused of being a lying weasel.”

This time he grimaced.

“And that person,” I said, “has been in love with Ivy for so long that every single one of you has been teasing me about it, with me none the wiser. Surely my feelings come as no surprise to you.”

He didn’t speak for so long I almost thought he wouldn’t.

“No,” he said finally. “I never thought I had any chance. But I suppose if I am to be fair, I never thought too deeply about my feelings at all until you returned.”

“Because I am prettier now?” I asked.

He eyed the crown of my head, no doubt following the line of my poncy hair. “No. Well, yes. A man would have to be dead not to admit to attraction in the face of supernatural temptation.” He grinned, but there was no humor in it, the way there would have been if Guy had been making the comment. “But no. I didn’t allow myself to consider it because of Ivy. You were my good friend Morgan Locke, and that was all.” He looked away. “But then you left. Chester told us you’d gone in search of a cure, but he didn’t have to make it plain. We knew that if you couldn’t find one, you wouldn’t be back. In your absence….” He shook his head. “A lot of us did some thinking.” His smile was decidedly crooked but at least he’d managed one. “We all had our place, you see. Chester’s our ideas and smarts. Guy’s our practicality. I’m our easily bruised sentimentality. Ivy is our woman—God help her, but she’d be the first to proclaim it and then complain that she is a woman first and then anything more distinct. And then there was you. You were….”

“Your cynicism?” I asked, thinking of how I’d been. In pain. Desperate. Stoic about my assured demise, too early and without dignity.

“Our quiet,” he said, surprising me. “That stillness you have in the Church half of us don’t believe in attending, but that we needed anyway, because without the stillness one can’t hear anything. You were our quiet, reminding us there was more to our lives than the busyness of our thoughts.” He sighed. “We did badly without that quiet. I did badly without it. And then you returned and—”

“You decided you were in love with me.”

He waved a hand. “No. Well, yes. Maybe. It’s not that simple.”

From behind my chair, Kelu said, “Then explain it better. And while you’re about it, stop being so pathetic. Any more drenched in pity and you’ll drown yourself.” She walked closer and leaned against the side of my chair, arms crossed.

“Kelu!” I said, repressive, but to my surprise Radburn chuckled.

“All right,” he said. “That’s fair.” He met my eyes. “I do love you, Morgan. We all do. My feelings are just complicated by the fact that I’m willing to manifest those feelings in a way Guy and Chester aren’t.”

I wondered if Chester was or wasn’t, given Guy’s warnings. This process of becoming less oblivious to people’s secret hearts—I was evidently failing at it.

“It’s taken me most of this ride to see that being capable of acting on those feelings doesn’t mean I want to,” he continued. “I could take you to my bed, Morgan, and enjoy it, but… sometimes sex isn’t the answer.”

Kelu snorted. “Now there’s a comment I never thought would ever come out of anyone’s mouth.”

“Particularly a man?” I asked her.

“Particularly a human. Or elf.” She padded around my chair and sat on the ottoman next to Radburn’s.

“What is the answer, then?” I said. “Why did Ivy’s comment bother you?”

“Understanding what’s going on in my head doesn’t make me comfortable confronting it,” Radburn said. “Much less having it joked about.” He chafed at the chair’s piped arm, watching his own fingers. “It was in poor taste.”

“Half our conversations are in poor taste.”

“Yes, well, now they’re in poorer taste.” He eyed me. “Just because I’ve concluded that my feelings for you are more those of a friend than a lover doesn’t mean I’ve stopped appreciating what I’m not pursuing.”

What a mess. I shook my head. “If it matters, Radburn… I am sorry. If I ever did or said anything to make you think—”

“You didn’t.” Radburn petted Kelu’s tail, which had appeared in his lap. He didn’t seem to understand that this might be strange. Kelu was watching him with her usual belligerence, so perhaps he wasn’t the only one fooling himself about his feelings. “Trust me on that one. It’s just… do you know how little happiness is available to a man—or woman, I suppose—like me? I haven’t found my soulmate, Morgan, and if I’m lucky, she’ll be a woman. But what if she’s not?”

“Then you can come to Vigil and live as part of my court, where the elves will care not a whit.”

He paused, then blurted a laugh. “I suppose I might, at that. But I’d have to convince the poor man to abandon everything to follow me.”

I thought of Amhric. And Ivy. Hell, I thought of everyone, including Radburn. “If you love someone enough, you’d be surprised what you’ll surrender to ensure their happiness.”

When I came back from that, it was to his scrutiny. “Some things can’t be given up,” he said, quieter. “You know that, don’t you? Not while remaining yourself.”

“I know,” I said. “But the heart is surprisingly elastic.” He was meeting my eyes now, at least. I detected none of the sullenness that had inflected his words and moods since we’d left Evertrue. “Radburn… are we friends again, now? We have been suffering for some time.”

“We have,” he agreed, and offered his hand. I took it, squeezed the fingers. “I promise to be less of a grouch. I can’t promise that I won’t occasionally regret not chasing you, though.”

“So long as that regret doesn’t poison what we have.”

“No,” he said. “Now go on, and I’ll join you once I’ve buttoned myself up again properly.”

Because he asked, I stood and left him to it… but I hadn’t missed the sorrow in his eyes. He was not as convinced of his course as he’d made himself out to be. Ordinarily I would have tried to make sense of it further—and most probably made it worse—but Kelu still had her tail in his lap, and I thought perhaps there was a chance for healing there for them both, if I would just leave it.

Kelu and Radburn—what a thought! Almond would be delighted. I would be too, if it happened… once I put aside my shock.

“All patched over?” Guy asked when I returned.

“As well as can be expected. Though perhaps fewer ribald remarks about my harem are in order.” I found a book in my hands and no recollection of how it had come to be there; staring at it in puzzlement prompted a comment from Chester.

“Start with that one.”

Hadn’t Kelu said something about the fate of the world resting on my ability to do scholarly research? I swept the room with my eyes: well, my ability to distribute the work of the research to many willing shoulders. I drew a chair back at Ivy’s table and sat beside her, and as I opened the book I wondered at that. The credit for great discoveries was often assigned to a single person, though the work was most probably done... like this. How many unnamed research assistants, students, and colleagues had failed to appear in the honor rolls? Did Eyre’s colleagues understand that my existence, and my opening the vault, was not to Eyre’s credit alone? They chased a fantasy... but then, all of society had abetted them in their delusions. History was content to ignore the contributions of those who made great discoveries possible in favor of venerating a singular personality.

Would they make trouble? I hoped they would see the futility of doing so. Arguing over academic credit in the face of the forces bearing down upon us was absurd. Even if they didn’t know the particulars of the peril, they should still see the re-formation of an elven nation as more significant than any quarrel they might have with Eyre.

The book Chester had given me was entitled The Countenance of Demons. I was debating whether to apply myself to it or leave the grimmer work to someone with the stomach for it when Serendipity shocked me nearly to fainting by saying, “Master?” at my elbow before I’d realized anyone was there.

“God! Serendipity. A little warning next time!”

“Of course, Master,” she said, ears flipping back. They flicked forward again. “Master? Is this a good time?”

“For what?” I said.

“For showing you things I have found.”

My chest tightened and trammeled my breath in it. “I’m always interested in things you’ve found. What in particular have you stumbled on this time?”

“I found a hole,” she said.