Long, slender fingers curled around her shoulders. Cool skin pressed against the curve of her shoulder joint. His voice came to her through a distance, above and behind her head. Everything blended one into the other until the room became an overabundance of information, all of it pressing through her eyes and into the back of her skull. She covered his hand with hers, silently begging for a rest.

"If you'll excuse us, please."

She didn't hear the reasons he gave, something to do with exhaustion and the pressure of so many people. Of course he had turned it into a little dig about his lands and his property, his estate still intact far away from the manor, while most of the nobles had nothing but their rooms in the King's palace. Lord Fergus of the Greenwood specialized in little digs, in consolidating his position wherever he could find a scrap of an advantage and caring very little for who he stepped on in the process. It was one of the several reasons why he did still have those lands and that property far away from the manor. Another being that he was, yet, still far more keen than the rest.

She leaned against the stone wall to one side of the balcony door and let the cool seep through her dress and into her bones, settling her. Pushing the flush from her cheeks. Too hot, too many bodies pressing in there. Fergus looked at her and then ducked back into the masses for something. A drink of water, which he pressed into her hands.

"Thank you," she murmured, head bowed, and drank.

He nodded, and watched her.

Her dress fluttered thin and threadbare around her body; outside she didn't bother with pulling the illusion around herself to make it look better than it was. She didn't feel the cold, either, she was a full-blooded Sidhe woman. "Who was that?" she asked, after a moment to collect herself.

Fergus turned an arched eyebrow and a near-disapproving gaze to her. "You don't know?"

She closed her eyes rather than roll them at him. It was a test, it was always a test, with him. Always pushing, although on the few occasions when she slipped out of his home and onto the grounds of the estate she did miss the chance to push back. "You didn't introduce us," she pointed out, eyes still closed. The details, the knowledge was in the details.

The lord's clothes had been beautiful and most of them were, she thought, not illusory. In a court where everything was either scrounged or repurposed from other things, that was rare enough and spoke to either a strong network of connections or a strong will and ability to get what he wanted, either through negotiation or force of personality. That would give her a more narrow list if she could pin down which of the races he was, and without distinctive markers that was more difficult. He wasn't a Sidhe lord, she knew all of them by sight. A Puca, most likely, or a Sluagh if there was ever one of those who had achieved respectability beyond their king. Or ...

Her eyes opened again. "Wist, the Leanan of the plains people who came up here when his fields were razed to make way for the mortals' crops and roads. He does well enough for himself now but he covets your power, my Lord, and your independence."

"So he does," Lord Fergus nodded, more pleased and leaning back against the rail with that half-lidded expression. "But since his power is dependent on the good will and adoration of others he will never achieve it."

Very pleased with himself. She had her own ideas but she kept silent, looking out into the sky instead. Above the landscape that faded too quickly into mist and desolation. Once upon a time there would have been fields, a forest, perhaps a river or two before the mists faded and the human realm began. Now the human realm had encroached on all but their most tightly held strongholds, and those fae nobles who hadn't yet succumbed and hadn't managed to keep their power had taken shelter under the auspices of the king.

A dig to their pride as well, for the King was of the Sluagh, the dark and twisted brethren to the Sidhe and the People. He put on a pretty face for the sake of the court and he faked his manners well, but no one forgot what he was. No one dared put him out of the way either, not until they could find someone suitable and powerful to take the throne.

"What did he want?" she asked abruptly, pieces falling into place. Fergus was always approached by power brokers and the power hungry at these sorts of events; they always wanted his support for whatever plans they had in motion. He rarely gave it, but that didn't mean he was always as adept at working his way out of the obligation as he should have been.

Lord Fergus shook his head in dismissal of the man's suit and her concern, and she didn't know if he was right to be dismissive or not. "He wanted my support for his petition to join the King's Guard. As though the King would ever admit him to his Guard in the first place, and he knows it." Then a small snort. "As though the King would trust my judgment on who he should select for his Guard or not."

Reasonable, at least given the players involved. She nodded, lips pressing into a thin line and adding that to the tally of the Leanan's aborted plans. The Leanan believed that things, power, adoration were the key to their own acquisition. Lord Fergus believed that if you weren't strong enough to hold your own you deserved to have it taken from you, although she had heard him allow for luck in being evenly matched as well. The King trusted very few people, although he was good at implying a kind of intimacy.

"What did you tell him?"

Her Lord's eyes opened wide and disingenuous. "The truth. I told him that his petition would have all the support that I could reasonably give, but I would not guarantee that the King would take my opinions under advisement."

And there was the crux of it, that both men had a likely differing idea of what was reasonable and that Fergus hadn't been so foolish as to make an agreement with the implied promise of results. She nodded, closing her eyes again and running through the scenario in her head.

Wist had a charming way about him and could flatter and please with the best of them, he was a Leanan Sidhe, after all. But if you allowed yourself to think too much about it he had a way of leaving one unfulfilled, with the nagging sense that something was missing, and her Lord certainly came under the listing of thinking too much. The conversation would begin with pleasantries, and in a few short exchanges he would realize that Wist wanted something from him, and start to direct the conversation around to what it was. Wist, not used to being resisted in a time when most of the nobles wanted nothing more than to escape their dismal predicament, would stumble. And Fergus would pounce and that would be the end of that, although the conversation would go on for several exchanges while they circled around each other and settled the matter. And that had been what she had interrupted, so no wonder Fergus felt inclined to rub his estates in the other Sidhe's face and then leave.

And after that, her Lord would not be inclined to stay much longer, either. Not when he was one of the few who had the luxury not just of retiring to his suites, but of departing the house entirely. She looked over at him again, eyes opening. "When would you like to take our leave?"

He smiled, full of teeth and shade. "As soon as you are ready."

The ride home was much less eventful. Nona, who had many titles to her name but preferred to simply be called Nona, accompanied them. Behind them, her old nurse trailed, more out of Fergus's sense of propriety than anything else. No need to maintain dignity and standards of place on the open road, not when so few of them traveled.

"What else did you learn tonight?"

Always the questions, always what she had seen and learned and what she thought might happen, what she had pulled out of the aether and the behavior of others and the placement of everything from the napkins to the lights in the carefully disguised battle maneuvers of the court. By the time they left in the evening her head was splitting more often than not, too full of details and information and the effort of processing them left her sleeping for days afterwards. And he would insist on quizzing her on the way home to find out what she knew.

She started at Wist, retelling what she had extrapolated of his encounter with her Lord to prove her senses were still sharp, and moved on to what she had seen immediately before that. "Something is happening in the Selkie community of the southern coast, though they're being very careful about concealing what it is. But they were clustered more than usual in their corners, guarding something."

"Something that was present?" he asked, throwing her a sharp look over his shoulder.

She shook her head, eyes half-closed to shut out all but the road ahead of her so she could concentrate. "Not something present. Something that made them all distracted, that made them less inclined to seek out people not of the Selkie."

Fergus hissed a breath out between his teeth, then nodded. The Selkie were an insular people at the best of times, though the ones who appeared at court were more often willing to go out and mingle. It was both no surprise at all and a worrying turn of events, that they were retreating into themselves. Mostly the fact that they were retreating yet staying at court, which implied that there was something at court to stay for.

She kept her head bowed in thought. "Titan from below the wall has a few new followers, though I wasn't able to get close enough to see if he was making the effort to exert his charm and control or if..." Small shrug, the rest of it was well enough known. Titan was a giant sort of a sprite from the very south and to the west of the Isles, not the usual kind of creature to be found in a Sidhe court but since the Sluagh had won the throne their court had become a sort of haven for outcasts, scraps of other courts. That included all manner of creatures from beyond their usual borders.

Titan was exotic enough to gain a few new followers every time they came to court, though he lost them in equal number when they realized he wasn't their route to greater power or sweeping change or whatever it was they were searching for.

Fergus shook his head, dismissing whatever they were up to. "Nothing else brings them to mind; in the absence of other evidence we will assume Titan and his followers are simply doing what they always do." Which was not the same as discounting them, she noted. That was something she had learned early on, that just because something could be dismissed for the moment did not mean it could be forgotten.

"What about Lord Winter?"

Both she and Lord Fergus looked over their shoulders at Nona, who had been trailing them a bit so as to remain secluded in her own thoughts. She frowned, trying to think what the older woman could mean by that. "Lord Winter?" Had she seen the pale Sidhe lord that evening? Yes, she had, at the beginning of the event, but not after. "He left early, after the first meal was served."

Nona frowned but didn't elaborate on what she thought, but in the younger Sidhe's mind she didn't have to. It was written all over her face, in the tension of her hands over the reins and the way her mouth twisted down and to one side. Sadness, as well as concern. Lord Winter had been the subject of many rumors concerning Nona's family, and while there was no more family left to destroy the shifting allegiances were about right for him to do the same to another. She thought back, tracing the patterns of the ballroom and trying to see who Winter had been interested in, who might be his target.

Fergus was still talking, too. "There's been no mention of him staying in anyone else's suites, or on someone's estate. He was one of the most recent to lose his power, he wouldn't have yet become accustomed to it."

No, there was that, too. And it was a subject of some discussion whether or not he truly had, or whether he'd just lost that pertaining to his lands. "He'd taken up with the Puca, last I heard," Nona offered, giving her a place to hang a theory or two on.

"Puca," Fergus scowled. "Not to be trusted even with his allegiance. I wonder what they're up to."

She felt his eyes boring into her back and nudged her horse on ahead. He was about to tell her to go back and spend the night, or something equally awkward and potentially dangerous. Another day, any other evening she might have agreed. A year ago she would have jumped at the chance to employ her skills for his wishes, but tonight she was too drained and too stirred up from the court at the same time to want to go back into the thick of it.

Behind her, his and Nona's voices dropped to a murmur, discussing what they had learned through her. Formulating plans, or he was, at least. She knew she would have a part in them. She didn't want to know what that was, just yet.

Her brownie nurse pulled alongside her as well and gave her a sympathetic look. "He works you too hard, and you should tell him so."

"You know what happens when I try, Agnes. He pats me on the head and gives me a short rest and then does it all over again."

Agnes wrinkled her nose. "And one of these days, someone's going to tell him off for it, you mark my words. One of these days he's going to wake up in the morning and see that his little girl's risen up with the sun and left him so far behind he can't see the dust from your heels."

She laughed. Agnes said those words all the time, and they had yet to come to anything. Still, she considered them marked, until the next time they did it all again.

Dinner was later than usual and much quieter, after the conversation on the road. Agnes was dispatched to the kitchens as soon as they arrived, bustling and still grumbling from the conversation. Fergus had kept only the one brownie as a companion before she arrived, and added housekeeper and caretaker to Agnes's duties once she was there. Fergus only told her to call the brownie nurse, and did the same himself whenever she was around to hear. After a very short while she stopped wondering why or even thinking that was unusual. It was only in the last few years that she had learned the brownie's name.

On a larger estate they would have sat at opposite ends of a long table in an even longer hall, but larger estates were for larger families, and there were very few of those left. Now most of the fae with their own estates ate as they did, in a smaller room just near enough to the kitchen to enjoy its warmth, around a round table where they could sit together or as far apart as they pleased.

In this household, they sat almost at opposite ends and ate in silence tonight. He was still thinking on whatever issues had troubled him after her report on the goings-on at the palace and she was waiting for her cue to speak. She wolfed down her food in small, quick bites, her eyes darting up to him every few minutes, but he didn't seem to see her and never did say anything. Nona poked at her food, consumed with her own thoughts and far away from the table and the Greenwood.

Dinner was a dismal affair, all in all, and only a different sort of headache from the court.

So she excused herself as quickly as she could manage, and then it was off to the study with her, to read up her history and her languages and her customs. One of the things Lord Fergus had insisted on, always, was that she be versed in all the languages and habits and customs of the fae, even the small fae, though he did not bother to teach her himself. The small fae he left to Agnes, and to anyone she thought knowledgeable enough to come in and teach his little ward. The greater fae, the Sidhe and the People, the Selkie and the Puca, those he did teach her, making her memorize passage after passage and read them in the dead of night or, worse, making her interpret a character and his or her mannerisms. Bringing her to court and asking her later what such and such a person had done or said, and what that meant. Making her take everything into account.

One of the unintended side effects was that she learned to fall asleep very quickly, and wake just as fast, and to pack as much sleep as she could into that time. It gave her a little extra time to relax, to ease her mind and pack away the ever more numerous worries and all the myriad ways Fergus's parenting chafed at her increasingly adult sensibilities. As the candles burned lower and lower she decided he wasn't going to send for her again that evening, and it was safe to pull out one of her own books that Nona had given her.

Agnes came to tuck her in before long anyway, with a tray of biscuits and a foaming glass of milk. "He still works you too hard," she said, making that face she did when he laid down rules that she didn't understand. Well, neither of them understood them, but the brownie was more apt to question while she only nodded and obeyed.

"He does what he thinks is best," she said, automatic but still with the heartfelt emphasis of belief. Even if she sometimes questioned whether or not his idea of best matched her own, she still believed he had her best interests at heart. It didn't occur to her that he might not be thinking of her at all, at the very least that he hadn't been putting her first when he had plucked her shivering out of some gray and damp place and raised her in his own household. She didn't remember where she had been before that except that it had been exceedingly gray, cold, and wet, and he had made her warm and dry again. "It's all right, Agnes, I don't mind."

"Well, please yourself," the brownie shrugged, unwilling to start trouble where all parties insisted there was none. "As long as you eat your biscuits."

She smiled. Agnes kept her from being too lean and whipcord small, with treats snuck to her here and there. Even if she suspected he knew about that she guessed that he didn't object, or he would have put a stop to it by now. Maybe this was his way of showing her that a little insubordination was good for the soul, beyond histories and the revolutions and the changes and improvements they had brought. Or maybe he thought it wasn't his place to show tenderness at all, but in small fae and servants it was permitted. Something like that.

"Agnes..." she asked, her mouth covered in crumbs and her glass held in both hands. "Do you know..."

But she didn't know how to ask the question, so it stayed stuck behind lips and a mouth full of biscuit until Agnes was done putting the warming pan under the covers. "Do I know what, child?"

She sipped on her milk while she thought of the words she wanted for this question. "Do you know if he's planning to do something ..." To the king. About the king. Neither seemed right. "In the court, soon?"

"Oh, dear, he doesn't tell me such things, you know that.'

She shook her head. "Yes, but have you seen anything, heard anything? Has he asked or requested anything that might tell you otherwise? It ..." She made a frustrated face. "Only, it seems as though we've been traveling to court more than usual of late."

It seemed as though he was planning something, or worried about something, but she couldn't read him well enough to tell what, and that bothered her more than any nebulous insurrection she could think of. She could accept the endless barrage of questions which seemed to be his chief method of communication with her. She could accept being dragged to court to fulfill some strange and ever changing plan of his. But that he was keeping things from her that she felt she needed to know, and that she couldn't read him the way she did everyone else, that bothered her. It never had before.

"Darling dear, he doesn't ask things of me like that, you know that. My one concern is to take care of you."

And Agnes did. Always had, with the attention to detail and to warmth that Fergus had lacked and even Nona had been too distracted to give, most of the time. Now she was old enough to know that it gave her some perspective, but she was still young enough to appreciate that someone was willing to hug her now and again. The brownie tucked her in and made sure she was full and sleepy, took away the glass of milk and tray of biscuits.

It didn't help. She pretended to sleep until she was sure Agnes was no longer bustling with things that didn't need to be tidied in order to keep an eye on her, and then for a full hundred-count of breaths before she threw the heaviest covers off and sat up again. Something was going on that she hadn't seen. That she had missed. For days, maybe for weeks on end something had been going on that she had missed, and tonight at court cemented it. And she didn't know how to begin to find it.

She raked her hair back with her fingertips, dug her hands into the remaining blankets. Something missing, something he had said or done. All the nobles he had spoken with in the last several trips to court, discounting the ones he hadn't repeated a conversation with and the ones he couldn't avoid without giving offense. And those nobles, what had he wanted from them. He had asked her afterwards, questions about them, things he had wanted to know. She sat up late into the night thinking on it, fingers waving patterns in the air, making threads out of the facts she knew and the behaviors and beliefs he had taught her and weaving those threads together until they fashioned something she could make sense from.

Nona slipped out after she did, and Fergus came out into the garden to accompany her on a turn around the grounds. His estate, although not far from the palace, was isolated enough that he could keep his animals without complaint from the other nobles. Everyone preferred it that way. She was the only one who visited him often and of her own will, and the only one he truly welcomed there. They were very much in the same category of outsider, her because of what had happened to her family and him because of his unusual wealth. Unlike the rest of the court he was more than happy to give her her privacy and assumed no plot or conspiracy. In return, Nona gave him the frank and honest truth about her opinions and her beliefs without the diplomatic double-talk and ingratiating truths that the rest of the fae practiced. Most of the fae, at least. There were some better than others, who did not come to court.

Now he lived alone but for his brownie caretaker and the girl, and Nona came less frequently. But still she came, bearing gossip and rumor and her usual opinions. "This is bad for the both of you."

Not all of which he agreed with, either. "You've said that before, and I've yet to see where any of it does her harm. She's well fed, healthy and happy, which is more than she would have been without my interference."

Nona shook her head. "That's not what I mean, and you know it. I'm sure you do well by her, as much as you know how. I'm sure she believes she is happy here, but she has no idea who she is without you, and she is old enough that she should be figuring this out on her own. She is long since of an age where she would be fostered into another household."

Fergus snorted, shaking his head with a mild and humorless smile. "Is there another household you would trust to foster her? Or another court, maybe."

"Another court, maybe," Nona shook her head and didn't answer the first question. There were no other courts that they could trust, after the last attempt at reconciliation and alliance with the Shining Court ended in disaster and shouting. The only reason it hadn't ended in bloodshed was because their king had called an end to it.

But the other courts might be less decayed, less faded. Sometimes Fergus thought he would do better to simply leave this land and go there. Very seldom. He would miss this land too much.

"I took her in, Nona, I found her and I took her in. Whosoever she was before abandoned her to the mortal world, and it would have killed her if I hadn't intervened."

Nona sighed. He had told her about finding the child in that plague-ridden village long before, and he still brought it up now and again as an act of virtue, but that didn't make her any easier with the whole thing. As she said often. This was a conversation that repeated itself in many forms and never found a resolution.

"She will look for her freedom eventually, you know," Nona sighed as they turned a corner and came around a hedge, facing his estate again. The skies were gray today, no clouds, no sunshine, just endless gray expanse thick with moisture. "She will wonder why she has nothing of her own, no habits, no tastes, no name, nothing that you haven't given her, and then she will go looking for something of hers."

"I'll manage that when it happens," he muttered, disliking the direction the conversation was taking. One of his dogs bounded up alongside them as they walked by the pen, tail wagging. Even Nona had to smile at that show of affection, and he stopped reached out and rubbed the dog's red ears. "It might not."

"It will. She's too clever to remain here much longer."

He didn't like to hear that either.

Fergus jerked his hand away and the dog whined, tail drooping, before it ran off rather than face its master's bad temper. Not the best way to handle them, but he would never strike at one of his dogs unduly or hard. Nor the girl, for that matter. "She won't have to remain here much longer. When the opportunity comes, she'll do her part and then she can go and make her own way."

"When the opportunity comes?" Nona sounded incredulous. "And when do you think that will be? When the King is past his prime and squatting on his throne like a toad? When the entire court is reduced to figures in glamour-coated rags swaying and shuffling in the main theatre and gossiping about whose dust is finer? You could sit here for the rest of all our lifetimes waiting for your opportunity..."

He glared at her. "You know what a long time that would be, why do you say such things?"

"To make you think." She moderated her tone, tucking her arm through his because the distance between them had remained the entire time they had been walking, and it made them stiff and awkward together. "To make you see that this idea of yours, as good as it might be, is only an idea. It's not a plan, nor yet a strategy. It's a foolish hope to grasp at because you are sick of the smell of death and decay at court and not stupid enough to go looking elsewhere."

Fergus closed his eyes, covering her hand with his and leaning a little into her, till he felt the strands of her hair on his cheek. It was true. It wasn't his best plan, nor yet much of a plan at all. "I think ..." he took a ragged breath and felt it stutter out of him. "I think a part of it is hoping that she can succeed me where I have withered in my wisdom. You're right. Of course you're right, but it's beyond my capabilities to see further than that."

Once upon a time, Fergus had been someone else. Back when the court was more a part of the mortal world or the mortal world closer to underhill, back when the mortals treated them all like mysterious and powerful spirits, like gods. Back before they had faded and become household spooks and superstitions, and before the court had retreated to a single palatial compound and a few estates, like his, surrounding it.

"I can hear the clank of their machines, you know," he added after a moment. "I can hear them building. We'll not last long the way things have been going, they'll drive us out completely, and when we can no longer touch the mortal world..."

"Fergus."

Her fingers laced through his and she stopped, pulling him around to face her and making him stop as well. When she saw that she had his attention she laid her other hand on his cheek, making him continue looking at her.

"Sometimes we cannot alter the course of our destinies. Sometimes we can only mitigate, or make it easier to endure. That is not the same thing," she added, watching his face twist and darken. "As hopelessness. We will not give in to hopelessness. We will find the things we can change, and we will endure the things we cannot. Because that is as much as we can do, and sometimes that is as much as we should do..." she added, but it was useless. He pulled away from her grip and stomped off into the woods, into the mist.

She found him later in the girl's room, sitting by her bedside and watching her like a true father. It hurt to see him there, shoulders slumped and one hand on the edge of the bedside table, very still. The covers rose and fell with her breaths, peaceful, as though nothing was wrong. As though two tired and concerned adults weren't watching her at this very moment for some sign of distress or a nightmare, anything.

"It is not in me to simply endure," he said, low, to keep her from hearing and waking. Nona appreciated that he did that; she appreciated that he did the best he knew how by her, but he wasn't a man who had made or kept many connections in his life. There were so few of his generation left, too. The years had ravaged most of them.

She extended a hand to him. If they were going to have a discussion it would probably be best to take it out of the room of the sleeping young woman. "Come. We'll sit in the evening garden."

He took her hand and followed where she led him to his own conservatory, covered above with glass bordered by bronze. Vines crawled along the walls and made a trellis of their own for flowers to grow, but there were few flowers that lined the beds inside. He preferred it to be a useful rather than ornamental garden, and so the air was thick with smells rather than pollen.

There were two benches, no cushions. She took one and tugged him down next to her, but instead of seating himself on the bench he stretched out on his side, legs draped over the arm and his cheek against her thigh. The corner of her mouth curled upward as she slid her fingers through his hair.

"It is not in you to endure? Then what have you been doing with yourself all these centuries?" she made a joke of it. "Have you been killing yourself off every hundred years and replacing yourself with a newer, better construct?"

The sound he made was less than amused. "You know what I mean. And it has not been as bad as it is now, with the machines, the stones and iron covering all the hills. It was never as different as it is now."

Nona sighed, abandoning levity. She did know what he meant. Industry had come to the Isles, bringing many things that were deadly to the fae, to the Sidhe in particular. Some of the Puca and the Hobs, even the Brownies had found use and purpose in the mortal world. Some of the Selkie had simply taken themselves off under the waves against the more remote islands, likely never to be seen or heard from again. The Sidhe were stuck. They lived and breathed the magic of mortal tales and mortal dreams, but when mortal dreams turned to finance and how much metal they could dig out of the ground, there was little left for the Sidhe to do.

"And then what would you do? Even at your most powerful you couldn't turn back the years, affect the flow of time. None of us could do that. And there has been too much progress made ..."

Fergus's face contorted in a snarl.

"Too much change has occurred," Nona amended. "For any reversion to stay. If we tried to turn back the years we would only find ourselves living the same lifetime over again, you know that. The minds of mortals stay along the paths they set for them. They would only make the same discoveries again, and it might take a little longer, but we would eventually arrive at the same place."

"I know." Fergus sighed, letting her comfort and soothe him and pick him up away from his little girl. Young woman. She had grown while he hadn't been looking, it felt like. "I do know that. But that doesn't mean I can't wish us back to the power that we used to be, or look for a way to return us to that."

"There is no..." She paused. "You're talking about something else. Not restoring us to what we used to be, but changing us into something to fit this new world."

Fergus nodded. It was the overall goal, at least, the restoration of their powers and learning how to adapt their natures to this new world. There were few things they couldn't cope with, the biggest of them being the amount of iron, but perhaps there was a way around that as well. "She is a part of that. Someone who is so malleable and adaptable..."

Nona's face darkened as he spoke, so quickly that he stopped speaking before he had outlined his ideas. "You are making that girl a part of your grand plans for the restoration of empire. And what happens when she decides she wants something else in life? What happens if she falls in love with a mortal goatherder?"

"Where would she meet a mortal goatherder?"

Her fingers tightened on his shoulder, dug in painfully tight. "Not the point. She is a living creature, and she is Sidhe, with her own desires and will, and her wishes may not travel along the same path as yours. And if that happens, what will you do then? Will you force her to your will, the way you were forced to abdicate your powers centuries ago? You remember how it was under the old rule?"

His face contorted. Angry at the reminder, grieving at the the loss, confused at the comparison. But he didn't have a ready argument for that, not one that didn't make him sound like a petulant brat. "She understands what this is all for. I've told her, I told her years ago. This is to restore our world, to help our people. She wants to help our people." Who wouldn't? Except, perhaps, Nona.

No, that was uncharitable of him, and untrue. But he still didn't understand why she wanted to fight him over this. "She isn't my only hope, you know. I made many plans for this... the restoration of power, the..." His words were sliding away in the face of her touches, strong fingers kneading his shoulders. He felt himself relax back against her leg again. "She is the best way to test this. if she can adapt to this, we can adapt to anything."

Nona leaned over, kissed his forehead. "She's a child, Fergus. Children are far more adaptable than we old ones are."

He didn't argue with her on that. He didn't feel like arguing. Not when she was touching him like that. He felt calm, at peace. It had been one of her gifts, long ago, to induce a sleep peaceful and lasting, so lasting it could have been a weapon if she had chosen. Now it was again, slightly. It was a weapon to stop the argument so they could enjoy each other's company.

Evening court had abated for the evening, leaving the last stragglers to conduct their negotiations in even more blatant corners, as much as they could. No one was under the illusion that these were serious negotiations, they were meant to be seen and overheard and then wondered about later behind closed doors. There were times when the Sluagh King doubted that his subjects ever slept for all the scheming.

"You should throw them all out to the wolves."

And then there were the subjects of his that he knew never slept. He straightened and turned after a moment to compose himself, rolling his eyes a little. "Your Majesty."

"Why thank you, although I don't believe..."

"I mean, you should address me as your Majesty."

The creature lounging in his chair arched his eyebrows, the leg that bounced over the arm of the chair stilling for a moment, but that was all the evidence of thought he gave. "Ah, no, I don't think so."

It was useless to try and argue with him. The old Sluagh shook his head and went over to the sideboard, cutting a bit of bread and spreading it liberally with honey. "Besides, the humans killed the wolves, years ago. Enough of them to make it difficult to use what few packs remain as a dissuading element against the futile plotting of my people." He dripped sarcasm much the way his bread dripped honey as he crammed it into his mouth. Old habits from childhood, from when he had been called something else and knocked into the mud far too often.

"Ah well. It was a reasonable thought." One hand twirled on his wrist. "Have you decided what you're going to do about the child yet?"

It shouldn't have come as a surprise to know that the old man knew about his bid to have a child and the rumor that one or two had survived, but it did. He hid it behind another bite of bread and honey, reached out for something to say that wouldn't give away anything more than the other man already knew or imply any weakness he might or might not have. "I have not. I haven't yet confirmed that there is a child, which you know if you've been waylaying my couriers and listening at keyholes as I suspect you've been doing. All I have are rumors, none substantial enough to warrant sending a hunter to track down a child who would now not only be an adult, but possibly an old and useless creature."

"Geoffrey," he was smiling when the King turned, one eyebrow raised for the use of his old name. The smile was full of teeth. "You know better. You know that if any child of yours survived this long they would have enough of your blood in their veins to be hale and healthy. You should try a different excuse, it might ring truer."

"If any child of mine survived this long it would be a miracle that they didn't grow up warped and twisted beyond all ability to mitigate," he muttered, licking honey from his fingertips. After all the magicians he had paid to try and find the child, after all the measures he had taken he had reluctantly conceded that the child was nowhere to be found. Which meant, most likely, that either the child was dead or concealed at another court by enemies of his as yet undetermined. "My spies have found nothing, you know," he told his old friend. Which was half a rebuke, in case the older man knew something he didn't.

"Nor have mine, but I feel certain there must be something, somewhere, to find. You bedded how many women in your search for even a mongrel heir?" He started to say something further, stopped when the royal manservant and runner and fetcher of all manner of things entered. The man also happened to be a mortal, and few members of the court who paid him any attention liked that very much. "Keep it in mind," the old lord added, rising to take his leave.

The King watched him go with mixed feelings and an exasperated sigh once the door was shut behind him. Roland watched, too, then turned back to his master, mouth disapproving. "Was there anything else before you retire for the night?"

"Have I mentioned, good master Roland, that you perform all your functions more than admirably? Including those which you might not have been aware of up to this point, such as the ability to rid me of troublesome lords." It was sarcasm, of course, but right now it was also heartfelt appreciation. And the suspicion that Roland had been listening at the door for the opportune moment to come in and drive the old fae lord out.

Roland's mouth twitched, all but confirming that suspicion, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. "I'm sure I have no idea what your Majesty is talking about," he said, his face returning to its usual blandness. "Was there anything?"

There wasn't, not that the Sluagh King wanted him to go anyway, so he remained silent. "Have you noticed that it's in the times of greatest turmoil that everyone brings up the line of succession? Or rather the considerably lengthy gap where a line of succession should be, as I have no relatives and do not look to have any in the future, despite my best efforts." And a great amount of effort and irritation had gone into securing an heir, too.

The human shrugged. "Every time there is any kind of uncertainty they go for the points of greatest weakness. That is yours."

He gave his manservant a look of mild incredulity for his impetuous comment, as was their habit. "Bold and blunt words, if not untrue. Do you believe a child of mine still exists somewhere in the mortal world?"

Roland shook his head, going to the sideboard to wipe it down and put away the food since the King did not seem inclined to take any more meals tonight. "I doubt it. If there were, your Majesty's spies would have found some trace by now, as many centuries have passed since then. There is always the possibility, unless you manage to discover what happened to all the women you bedded, but not the likelihood."

"Then I will have to find someone else who will do to secure the line of succession," he frowned, ignoring the human's mild and well-concealed startlement at his giving voice to an option he had never before been willing to consider. The last time it happened, a nobleman had offered it as a suggestion and been remanded to the kindnesses of the redcaps for a fortnight. Then again, the last time it happened it had been a noble who said it, who likely had his own intentions under consideration, few if any of which would have blended well with the King's wishes.

Still, it took the human a moment to recover. "Ah, if that is what your Majesty wishes to do," he nodded. "I'm sure there are a number of excellent candidates..."

"Who did you have in mind?" the old Sluagh interrupted. And then, off Roland's startled look. "Oh, don't be so disingenuous, you know I come to you for everything, you're there for it enough. I want your opinion on the court, tell me who you think would be most amenable and least... problematic," that was a good and delicate word. "As a successor to my court."

Roland sighed, settled into the chair Lord Winter had previously occupied, and gave it some thought before he began.