"The drawback is that someone could get the rings away from you," Promise says.

"If anyone knows to try, let alone manages to do it, the concealment's already blown, right?"

"Not necessarily. Wildcard magic from all the kinds, plus the fact that I can't make you insubstantial and somebody could touch your hand."

"If it might matter, then never mind about the rings."

"I could layer them. The inaudibility too. Then you'd be inaudible until you spoke and your ring was turned, invisible till you - did something, we'd have to pick something, and the other ring was turned, etcetera. You'd only get to break the conditional spells once, but if someone got the rings before then you wouldn't be hosed."

"Can't be too paranoid, when they really are out to get us. Turning the ring and snapping my fingers, then, since I'll be safely inaudible."

"Okay." Promise enchants a second ring. "And something for the scentlessness. Some fairies navigate by scent a lot."

"Not that I know of, and I would definitely remember that if I'd ever heard of it. Some might be able to sense your temperature. Can you stay air temperature while sneaking?"

"Yes. But it changes the temperature of my entire body, so depending on how precisely they sense the temperature I might still stand out. Wouldn't look like a person, though."

"Don't hide in a well-ventilated corner, I guess... I can't really fix that, I don't think, but uniform air temperature is better than nothing." She gives him a ring for scentlessness. "I'll hold off on the other spells until we're sure I don't need to be able to see or hear you anymore. Now. When you get the queen, or if you have to settle for a vassal first, what are you going to tell them to do?"

"There may be things set up that don't require anyone to deliberately activate them and will still be in operation even if everyone is stopped. I don't know if the queen is smart enough to have arranged not to know about them all herself; attack from this angle is almost always impossible on a couple of levels, but she might have done anyway. Certainly no one vassal will know about it all just because the palace has stood for thousands of years and there's been turnover. Having her shout may be a bad idea - if there's someone away on an errand and they come back to see everyone frozen in place they'll know something's gone wrong. And in case there is something like darts set up and you get caught again I definitely don't think you should have her advertise the order to all of her vassals in range, or you'll wind up caught by it too."

"I'm not sure what would happen if you darted each other at exactly the same time," says Promise. "And there's one fairy who knows names automatically; if there's one who works on mortals that would be an obvious sort of vassal for the queen to collect. It's worth having a contingency. And once you capture the queen the obvious next action for someone who finds that disagreeable is to kill you, possibly from out of earshot or while more traditionally deafened, and if they can't do that, turn you into a snail. It would certainly matter if word got to Thorn. Thorn getting the Queen through us is the worst case scenario."

"You may be right. I do still think you shouldn't shout. She doesn't interact with most of her vassals on a daily basis and I doubt she's sufficiently answerable to them, security aside, that they'll have any very coherent response to her going quietly missing. Which will buy us long enough to give her an exquisitely thorough set of instructions."

"I will be putting you right next to her," says Promise, "so hopefully it won't come up. It might be that the best you can do is get them to cover your tracks and give you directions to the Queen unless you happen to stumble on a really good sorcerer."

"Directions should be enough on my end. You'll be able to incapacitate anyone who spots the gate?"

"With the reaction time I can command now? Yes."

"Then all we need is a chance and a bigger gate."