"Lovely. Don't tell anyone else that. Follow me," giggles Extremely Yellow Haired Winged Person, and he flutters off through the forest.

Rashek follows without thinking twice. Or for that matter, once. When he figures out what's going on, this yellow coward is going to regret this.

It's a longish trip. The fairy doesn't start a conversation while they travel.

"Ooh, I caught an egotistical mortal. I can't even send you back," laughs the fairy. "Well, I could arrange it, but why?"

"Hmmm," laughs Yellow. "Mmm... never lie to me."

"You're probably slippery. Or deluded! If I had my other vassal make you a gate to the mortal world you'd find some loophole halfway through and never send me any mortals at all," says the fairy, waving a hand negligently.

"Leaning towards 'deluded'," sighs the fairy. "Maybe I'll sell you to somebody. In the meantime, don't leave the house, don't drink the lakewater, tell me if you get hungry, if you get thirsty you may take water from that basin over there, don't go swimming or break anything or make a racket..." He taps his chin. "Don't get creative with anything missing from that list," he finishes, and he goes into another room of the house.

The fairy leans out of the room. "Do try to get along with my other vassal when she gets home, by the way," and then he's behind closed doors again.

With the person who can make gates back to Scadrial? Rashek is very definitely going to try. The slaver, on the other hand, he has no desire to talk to.

"There is a sharp limit to how much revenge is available while he remembers our names," says Promise. "I want out. We can both get out - probably - and I think we are, in fact, that desperate. Yellow isn't very smart; I'd be long gone but I have lingering orders from a previous master and I can't help you until they're countermanded. Did Yellow already tell you not to give out your name? - Don't say it yet, if he hasn't. But what were his exact words?"

"I know how to make a gate. I know where one already is, too, but it might not open anywhere near where you want to be in the mortal world. I don't have to work out a complicated way to tell you not to not tell me your name, though, with that wording you can write it down or say it backwards or something - but my idea only works if I go first. There's nothing less disgusting than part of your finger available?"

"Cooked is not necessarily, formerly alive might be. All right. So, that, and then you will be able to rescind all my previous orders. Then you tell me your name and I can do the same thing for you and we can get out. I can't feed you because once I'm your vassal food from me will no longer have power to capture you."

She peers at it, then downs it in one gulp. "Right, try telling me to do something."

"Ask me to write my name."

"Write your name," Promise says at once. "...Okay, I don't have to eat part of your finger, that's good. I'll get you some paper." She gets him some paper, and an inkpen.

Promise doesn't notice that the rest of her instruction has fallen on deaf ears. "You're welcome. I know where I want to go long term -" She ducks into her room and fills a bag with fruit and books. "But I can't carry you flying, and Yellow's faster than I am and I don't know when he'll be back. I can draw you a map to the gate I've already made if you think you can get home from where it opens? I don't remember the name of the place, though."

"I don't remember where she was from. I think I can accommodate the weight of the metal and clothes at least for a shortish flight. We can stop somewhere long enough for me to start a new gate, but you'll have to wait for it to connect. Will you starve if it takes awhile?"

"Not literally. If I were to not eat for long it'd be uncomfortable, but I wouldn't suffer health problems or starve to death for...I don't know. Longer than I'm likely to need to."

"It won't take longer than a few days. I think I know a place I can put a gate where nobody will think to look for you for that long." She heads out the door. "And I think you know better than to eat fey food twice. Let me know when you're light enough for me to try picking you up."

"If you say so." She glares at the damaged house. It erupts in flames. And then she flutters into the air and attempts to pick Alendi up.

It's like trying to lift a human-sized balloon held down by clothes and jewelry. The weight isn't an issue, but the fact that he's bigger than she is might be inconvenient for flying with.

"The physical geography is more useful than the place names."

"It's at the northernmost part of the planet, east of the largest ashmount and surrounded by a large ring of the other six, the river flows through the city, and Kredik Shaw is at the center of a system of canals."

"I can do that."

"It's pretty common. Everyone can, and it's safer to have someone's name than not, since vassals can't harm their masters. I've never had a vassal unless you count yourself, but I think I'm in the minority."

"Well, there's a Queen, who knows every fairy's name without having to learn it, and I suppose she's quite safe. Everyone knows about that though."

"Literally everyone? That's intimidating. No special advantage relative to mortals, though, right?"

"She does not automatically know mortals' names, but you probably still don't want to bother her, because that's not the only way to get a name."

"Why would you want to import mortals here?"

"Because unless I prevent it, my world is going to stop existing in three hundred years. And this repeats every millennium. I can stop it, but I'd rather have a world that doesn't have the problem."

"Why does your world have that problem in the first place?"

"I... suppose that makes sense. This one also has drawbacks, but I suppose a large and thoroughly warned population of mortals with their own food supply - do also be sure not to grow the food on land anybody claims as territory or might remember having ever done if they knew there were mortals farming it - might just wind up working sort of like a breeder colony with more turnover, after long enough? It could end in disaster, but so could your world frequently trying to end."

"Is there land nobody has ever claimed? I didn't think of that as a thing that might matter."

"I don't know about nobody ever, but nobody remembering it being theirs so it doesn't occur to them to try ordering the mortals around, or the claim being weak enough that even a mortal won't be snared if they do try it despite having forgotten, that you might be able to find. Not close to the shelter where I'm putting your gate, though. I'm not sure how long it'd take walking to get to the noon steppes but they might be a good choice."

"I'm not sure enough that you won't get caught by Yellow or someone else who'd be interested in nabbing me too that I want to tell how to get ahold of me later. There are other sorcerers. Mortals can learn sorcery too, I believe. I mean, I could make the gate at some point in the next few decades but you wouldn't know exactly where to find it on your end."

"I've never seen your world so I can't get quite that exact. I suppose if you know a lot of other mortals I could try to put it right up against the base of one of those ashmounts you mentioned, maybe as specifically as 'on the north face'? And then you could just have people try to walk up the mountain and eventually one would go through the Steppes instead, presuming that I'd had a chance to make the gate in the intervening time."

"There's probably a way to do a gate from one part of Fairyland to another but I don't know how to make one yet and I don't think I'd better risk being seen in my usual library for a long time. I can close gates I make; I don't know how to do it for any others."

"Steppes to Luthadel it is then. Would it help if you got a look at my world yourself? You would also probably be safer there than here, at least in the short term."

"I'd rather not. It would mean having to hide with you while the gate fixed, and I'd rather be on my way to my new home."

"Very well. I'll find a place when I'm back, and leave a detailed description next to the Fairyland end of today's gate. If you get a chance to use it, great; if not, the only downside is telling parents to keep newborns' birth names secret for nothing."

"Sounds like a plan."

Alendi falls silent, thinking how he might actually beat Ruin instead of just delaying.

"It depends entirely on the harmonics of the other end. I honestly can't predict it. It could be immediate or take days." She peers around at the location, finds a stick and a pebble, and embeds them in the ground a few feet apart. "I'll make it between these, okay? Just try walking through, stick on your left, and when the gate is fixed it will take you where you're going, or as close as I turn out to be able to get from your description."

"OK. It might be a good idea to close it afterward, just for safety. Wouldn't want people stepping through in either direction."

"If it works right away I'll close it then. Otherwise I'll swing back this way in a few months or so."

And Promise smiles and shuts the gate and flies away.

She finds herself in the air above a city. It's hotter than she's used to, but there is no visible sun and the air is thick with ash. Below her are streets and canals, both filled with people. In one direction are several castles (eleven if she's counting) one of which appears to be made almost entirely of towers and spires. To the other side are smaller buildings and wide fields.

The ash is everywhere. There may be less of it if she either flies east away from the mountain or enters any building.

She descends to the city lowest roof-level, trying to find someplace she can park for a bit without being found or committing home invasion. If she doesn't find out where exactly Alendi is, then if her pursuers catch her she won't necessarily bring anybody else along with her, but she really wants to get out of the ash while she's lying low.

Further rumors about the hated Them suggest that some have superhuman powers, and that you never know which of them might be able to fly into the air or stab you from behind while standing six feet in front of you. Promise will have to decide how credible the rumors are, but most everyone else seems to believe them.

Well, she has superhuman powers and can fly into the air and could probably figure out how to pull off the stabbing trick if motivated; the interesting question is if these Them are supposed to be non-fairies.

Nobody suggests that the nobles aren't human, but if Luthadel is ruled by an upper class of fairies then the population might not have to know about it.

At the next conveniently open window, some better-dressed people are talking about news from outside the city. Apparently House Elarial lost another shipment of something-or-other from Fadrex City because of bandits; this is speculated to be the cover story for an act of a rival Great House. To the people who aren't up to date on party politics (which is most of them), the event matters only because the ongoing problem means more demand for local goods. Anyone who actually cares about which Great House scored against which is likely to be doing their talking nearer one of the castles.

Alendi didn't mention a Lord Ruler. Not even when the Queen came up in conversation.

After she backtracks a little bit, the effects abruptly disappear.

The thing has a fixed radius. It's perfectly circular—spherical if she changes height enough to check—and the center is somewhere inside the castle.

She can't shut it down. It's not so strong that she can't act against it, but without magic it wouldn't stop affecting her.

"If you are innocent in the bubble of emotional manipulation around this castle," she says, "then you have my sincerest apologies. You may, at a volume that will attract no attention from people besides us, answer my questions and comments exclusively with true, plainly worded, and complete information. Is anything delicate in danger if you cannot take new actions on a scale of minutes? Hours?"

"No. There are things depending on me personally right now, but I could keep doing them continuously for days before needing to recharge."

"If you didn't want me issuing you orders you should have taken the mirror option when I offered it or not emotion-bubbled a bunch of people. Can you prevent people from coming here to investigate without arousing suspicion?"

"What would be the consequences of going somewhere else and permitting the suspicion? And what's your method for ignoring orders?"

"Do not use this ability to wholly or in part ignore orders that I produce of my own uncommanded will. Do deploy it to prevent any other fairy from countermanding orders that I produce of my own uncommanded will, including at multiple steps of remove in a longer plan. Why are you offering?"

"You did recently become indispensable to one of my plans to save the world. It would be unfortunate if you got incapacitated in the next three centuries."

"Where would be a good place to have the rest of this conversation?"

"Easiest is just some tower not being used. Even if people see that it's occupied, they won't know who we are. I can find one easily enough."

"What, from my perspective, are the drawbacks to relocating to such a tower right now?"

"You'd have to relax the order about not doing anything and might conceivably give me more freedom than you meant to." This enforced completeness thing sucks. "As for actually being in some other tower, it's effectively the same from your perspective except with much lower risk of being seen by anyone who poses a threat to you."

"And if I turn you invisible and you lighten yourself and I carry you to another tower through the window?"

"How can I get there unseen, if being invisible won't cut it?"

"I am not sure there is metal in my body. Can you check?"

"Performing no extraneous actions, check for metal in me."

"I have blood. I don't see why that implies metal, but apparently it doesn't for fairies. So these people won't notice me if I'm invisible?"

"Performing no extraneous actions, deflect suspicion in a way that will not lead to follow-ups later insofar as you can while leading me somewhere we are less likely to be disturbed. You may pause during the walk if this helps with the suspicion part."

In goes Promise. "Why is my being immortal relevant?" she asks.

"I will save the world if I can," she says. "I am not out to get you, I'm still incapable of attacking you, I will not unnecessarily inconvenience or agitate or constrain you, I am very annoyed about the emotion bubble but have no reason to believe that apart from a severe values difference as concerns such things our goals are incompatible generally."

"If I didn't think saving my world was the first thing you'd do with the required omnipotence, I'd have picked a different secret room. I should warn you though that it is both difficult and dangerous and I've—barely—done it before, so there's a reason you're the backup plan."

"How does it work?"

"What would too much Preservation do?"

"Preserve things. Preserve everything. Put the world in permanent stasis. It's a force of stability, not a force of good."

"And it can put Ruin in stasis, but not permanently, at least not without side effects? I may need you to explain these things from something resembling the beginning."

"So now you rule the world. I approve of it not being destroyed but disapprove of it containing emotion bubbles. What is your best guess about what other things going on are likely to be similarly displeasing?"

"Not as bad, but yeah, I don't like that. Anything else?"

"The Terrismen still exist. I've been keeping them exiled from most of the Empire and forbidding interbreeding because one type of magic comes from Terris and another from the noble families hundreds of years ago here, and if anyone happens to be born with both then they'd be able to challenge me directly."

"Do they object?" she wonders. She is fuzzy on people caring about being able to breed and this doesn't seem like a very nice place to live anyway, but maybe they object.

"I can safely assume that they do."

"What, is it even ashier and more generally unpleasant in Terris?" she mutters, but she doesn't pause for an answer. "What else?"

"Insufficient oversight over subservient fiefdoms, probably. Most of them treat their serfs fairly, but I don't pay close enough attention to say they're all reasonable about it."

"Why do you rule the world? It seems like all you strictly need for world-saving is access to this room and to stay alive - or for anyone else to have that and behave halfway reasonably with Preservation power - and you don't seem to be interested enough in world-ruling to be thoughtful about it."

"Last time around, I had to rotate the entire planet so that the pool would end up in one of the habitable parts."

"The entire what?"

"The planet. Giant ball of mostly rock that circles around its star once a year. It also spins once a day and that's what causes days, but I know yours doesn't, so it might be different in other ways."

"Huh. I don't think Fairyland is or contains planets." She taps her chin, not that he can see this; she's still invisible. She doesn't want to have to redo the spell unexpectedly if something comes up. "At this time my motivations are to arrange for your world to continue to exist, for it to be run less awfully, and retain my personal safety in so doing. Annoying you is not a desideratum but neither is not annoying you a priority next to those three things. I am willing to expend considerable amounts of my own time and magic - which turns out to work here - to achieve these goals. Comments? Suggestions?"

"Mind that I do have to eat - not to live, but to function at reasonable capacity - and any mortal food I eat that doesn't come directly out of your hand is a problem." Pause. "Never induce or allow anyone else to feed me. Do you honestly have no other ideas for maintaining order than emotional manipulation? I would certainly need to know more to generate same but you've had plenty of time to think."

"I suspect I also disapprove of executions."

"What, all the time? It has never not been the assigned penalty for attempted assassination and suchlike. While it's probably theoretically possible to run a country without ever executing criminals, I've never heard of it being done successfully. And wouldn't you want to execute Yellow?"

"I can't, he's immortal. I want to make him and the master I had before him forget my name and prevent them from acquiring more vassals and free the ones they have. If they weren't immortal and the only way I could stop them were killing them? Maybe I'd do it. You seem to simply not be very creative. You wanted to move a bunch of colonists to Fairyland. What were you going to do if fairies you could not possibly execute tried to assassinate you?"

"Which part is evil? Publishing the name may be excessive but I wouldn't have to do it often as long as it's known to be a possible result of trying to assassinate me. In fact I think I'd only have to do it once."

"Fairies don't have a very efficient news system. Fairies don't always do things just because they want to. If you could reliably get names out of fairies, then some fairies would find out, others would remain in the dark, and some of them would cozy up to their rivals, suggest that those rivals go antagonize you, and use you to get the names. If they wanted you dead they'd send disposable vassals with no choice in the matter and stay safe and far away. Even in the paradigm case where some fairy decides to try to kill you of their own accord and turns up in person to do it, publishing their name opens them up to arbitrary abuse for as long as literally forever, especially if you write their name down - not that killing somebody isn't bad, not that a successful attempt wouldn't probably leave you dead forever, but throwing them to the whims of whoever catches them first when those whims could be anything at all is unnecessarily cruel. Fairy masters usually keep the option of retaining a written record of a name as an escalation option if they don't like how their vassals are behaving and aren't interested in fixing that with more refined orders."

"Okay, so appealing to any sense of empathy is probably totally pointless, noted."

"It's a particularized lack of empathy for people who have recently tried to kill me. It's not like I'm suggesting doing anything of the kind to innocent fairies."

"You suggested doing something of the kind to innocent fairies a moment ago before I pointed out that they could be under orders. You didn't spare a second to think about it, you leapt straight to murder and disproportionate retribution. How sure are you that's the only thing you're missing?"

"Your sense of proportion is about revenge and not about - anything else. It is not a good sense of proportion. Please be advised that if you demonstrate the ability to model a better sense of proportion, even if it is not natively familiar to you, I will be much more willing to leave you unsupervised, because I will be able to refer to it when telling you not to be so blatantly evil."

"I could also lock them up, or give only the orders necessary to keep them away, or even just ask you for a temporary gate to this world and leave them. Those are inferior options not because I'd want revenge but because they're insufficient incentive not to try to kill me. Or to vassalize a mortal, as I suspect would be more common. The point of a terrifying punishment is that you don't have to use it."

"I don't think you're going to get very far with this argument. I understand the concept of deterrence. That is not the gap we have here."

"I expect that I can figure out immortality without having to kill any fairies via sorcery alone. Yellow is not a good person, but he does other things with his time than unremitting evil and could be prevented from the evil via methods short of execution - or even turning him into a frog. You're not a particularly good person either, as far as I can tell, aren't you glad I don't want to kill you for it?"

"I am considering this tradeoff. It should not form the basis of a primary solution. It should not be the first idea. Not least because mishandling Yellow, in particular, in any way would be a disaster for both of us."

"It's possible part of the - misunderstanding we are having - is that I am not familiar with large centralized populations in which nobody can simply order anyone else to stop whatever obnoxious thing they are doing. What kinds of crimes are we talking about here, besides trying to assassinate you?"

"Trying to kill people who aren't me is the big one. Treason. Rape. Even theft, sometimes. Most crime comes with lower penalties, of course."

"What constitutes treason?"

"Trying to overthrow the government. It hasn't come up in a long time, mostly because of the perception of omnipotence. I was expecting it to be theft I'd have to explain."

"Do explain why you kill people for it, but you didn't have to tell me what it is."

"...Why does it matter if they use magic?"

"Part of it is because in a case that could otherwise go either way, executing someone with magic allows it to be given to someone else later. The rest of it is because if a Mistborn decides to commit a crime, the victim has about as much chance of stopping them as if they had an army at their back. Is that not true of sorcery?"

"It can be, but anybody can learn sorcery. Albeit at the cost of being a more appealing vassal."

"We could try. There are ways to guess, though, and of course if you do any magic where someone notices... Anyway. Why do people commit these crimes? I have no experience with motives for murder, although I guess I could analogize it to turning someone into a frog, which is a pretty long-term neutralization. Why do you have starving people who have to steal bread? What motivates burglars, what are they taking? There is - no need to explain motives for rape."

"That is a fantastic idea. Would it go faster if I nationalize all wheat fields and then officially sign the land over to you? That might actually be something I can't get away with, but it'd be simpler than dosing every water supply and be certain to get everyone."

"I admittedly am clearly underinformed about the mortal world, because I'm certain every book I've ever read says sorcery shouldn't work in it, but I don't think that would work unless the plant was also a fey species or I'm hand-feeding those involved. I would also want to think very carefully about the wording of the orders first, since amending them for all the recipients would probably be excruciating."

"Sorcery takes time," (she elects not to clarify that this is time to become familiar with the surroundings and target rather than time to cast the spell) "but yes, I can improve plants and it should at least help. I'm not sure if this legal signing thing will contribute, though. The concept is fairly irrelevant in Fairyland - one owns a place by keeping other fairies out of it or using it a lot while not subordinate to someone else in so doing or by idiosyncratic forms of magical claim."

"It depends on a lot of factors. Minutes to hours, generally; for particularly dramatic results I may need weeks of prep time, although I can multitask."

"Definitely worth doing the wheat, then. You don't need to worry about getting large results fast; there isn't a shortage on or anything."

"Noted. Speaking of which, I would prefer to stay continuously on this side of my gate for at least the next few days, which is long enough for me to get hungry. I would really rather not have to order you to feed me. Is that going to present a problem?"

"I can transmute things, if they're simple enough. I can't make it from nothing, and the source material has to be similar."

"I can supply similar. I don't have any bismuth on hand—it's not by itself useful in any way—but it does exist and makes up half of the target alloy."

"Is there some reason you can't just alloy these things yourself? And how does all this metal magic work anyway?"

"Will anything that I might want you to be attending to come up during the time it would take to give me the long explanation?"

"Mm - go on."

"Why is it almost always fatal? What's going on when it's not?"

"It's effectively ripping off a piece of their self. They wouldn't be the same person afterwards, except physically. The damage is variable but always large. To a first approximation, you can think of it as lifelong brain damage of unpredictable type. There's a reason this is only used on condemned criminals."

"Can feruchemists share stored things?"

"No, you can only tap your own metalminds. If someone's Feruchemy was obtained through Hemalurgy then they can use anything of that attribute that was stored by the previous Feruchemist, but that's the only exception."

"No. It'd usually be fatal even if it weren't being intentionally used as a way of executing criminals."

"Yes, but if you had any who were still alive, since it's not invariably fatal, I could see if I could fix them or something."

"I haven't decided yet. Relatedly - one thing that occurs to me is that there might be fairies who don't want to be immortal, who've gotten tired of being alive. I haven't met any who've expressed such an opinion to me but there could be some."

"Is that as uncomfortable as it sounds?"

"Why might it interact with sorcerous healing particularly? And where are these usually put?"

"Copper is the one that does memory?"

"That's right."

"You may use copper feruchemy."

"How big are these things? Will they be obvious to anyone besides, I imagine, Inquisitors?"

"They'll be visible when your shoulders are bare, otherwise they'd look like bumps under your clothes. If that's too obvious, there's theoretically nothing stopping the spikes from being pushed down until they're completely inside; if Hemalurgy works on you then your body will reshape itself around them."

"And you already have some of these spikes accessible, they transfer just fine, you don't have to kill anyone for them," she clarifies, "just take them from people who will be fine without."

"Correct. The spikes do gradually lose their power if left outside of a body, which means that you and some Inquisitors ought to be in the same place at the same time. Alerting them to your existence is the closest thing I can think of to a downside from your perspective."

"What would they be likely to do with this information?"

"Nothing I don't tell them to, unless they have some way of guessing that you're a danger to me. I can prevent this by burning copper so that they can't read my emotions. They will be curious about a person whose body contains no metal, but will not become hostile without reason."

"The wings, I assume, would also be noticeable. What happens if they do find out that you find me a threat?"

"Yes. But I doubt I can accurately impale myself in a specific spot on a chunk of copper without help and you're incapable, so if I'm going to take that, someone will have to know about me anyway."

"Do obligators have trustworthiness-related magic of some kind or is that just how you pick them?"

"Then they'd know I was a threat."

"I'm weighing various options," she says. "Letting someone know I am a threat is not a dealbreaker, it's a drawback I'm weighing against other possibilities. I will want time alone to think and I am not yet sure I want to leave you alone, considering that left to your own devices you kill people and instantiate emotion bubbles and so on."

"Hello again," Alendi says. "Have you decided what you want to do?"

"I'll take it," she says. She's pretty sure she can turn invisible again in here if she needs to unless someone does something to affect light sources or draftiness or temperature, and they don't know enough about how sorcery works to try it. She turns visible.

"Okay. I have someone who can do it on call, but I'd rather not show this place to anyone else. At least not the secret part of it."

"Is there anyone beyond the one person for the spikes out there?"

"No. And the outside of the secret door is behind an ordinary one, so it's not like we'll be in the open."

Promise nods. And goes out.

"Thank you," Promise says.

"Yes."

"Maybe. How much did you let yourself hear of my first order?"

"Only that I cannot give you any order you don't request."

"Sure."

"Is there anyone who'll see the spikes between here and wherever we'd be going?"

"Probably not. The Inquisitors' headquarters is nearby, but they usually have little reason to come inside the palace. And I can detect them with Allomancy."

"Then I will not ask you to fetch me food." Promise goes into the inner chamber, which she's more familiar with, and turns invisible, and comes out.

"How will that help?"

"You may ring the bell and sense Inquisitors."

"Good. Lead the way."

"It's very ashy out there," Promise remarks. "Is it like that everywhere?"

"Everywhere habitable. The planet is closer to its star than it's supposed to be, so the ashmounts are designed to block some of the light. They only cover the area around the North Pole, where we are, and there's another set at the South. Everywhere else is unprotected from the sun and is descriptively called the burnlands."

"Do people live underground?"

"Nobody lives there at all. It might be possible to survive underground, but there'd be no way of growing food or even safely replenishing air."

"Are you going to put the planet back where it belongs next time?"

Promise peers at it, then opens her mouth.

She takes the summerfruit and chews it. "It's not bad," she says.

After some time passes, the Lord Ruler interrupts her reading. "I don't suppose you have any fairy food on you for mass-dosing the population. If not, how hard is it to obtain?"

"Nothing on me. Anything will do, really, as long as it's from Fairyland and passes through my possession on the way to being eaten."

"Thorn's vassals are probably gone from the area by now and as long as you and I aren't personally along your people will be safe if they don't eat the food or tell any fairies their names... okay, I can go open the gate, but after that it's about time I got some sleep. What are you going to need to be able to do while I'm sleeping?"

"Send people through the gate, obviously, and I imagine you'll probably want me to enact some of the things you strongly implied you planned to order me to do, and oh. Act as normal as possible so nobody guesses at the hostile mind control."

"I am not controlling your mind," says Promise. "That would be very different and probably either much less or much more pleasant. Do you remember where the gate is exactly?"

"Not very precisely. It's in the air above the city several hundred yards to the south and east of here."

"Can you fly to it without being particularly remarked upon?"

"Yes. At worst I might be noticed, but not questioned."

"Then I'll show you where it is and I'll open it, and then you can show me someplace reasonable to sleep in." She goes to the window and investigates its mechanism.

"You rotate this thing that way," Alendi demonstrates, not volunteering the fact that it's designed to be easy for him to control without having to bother moving. He opens it by hand.

He jumps out after her, and follows southeast.

"Understandable. Okay. Where am I sleeping?"

"Usually down in the throne room, but that's full of people and you might want to avoid it. I could meet you back here or somewhere else if you had any reason for asking other than just keeping track of me."

"I might need to find you in a hurry, even if it's not likely. And I would like an idea of how progress on the fairy food project is coming, when I wake up - I'll need to pick up or sit on containers of or otherwise interact with it all for it to work."

"Mmf!" says Yellow.

"Release me at once!" exclaims Yellow.

"I rescind all your orders," squeaks Yellow immediately, "Vahriakre," and then he starts sobbing.

"I've taken the liberty of borrowing this." The Lord Ruler pulls a small brass spike from his left leg. "You, stick it into Vahriakre's leg, right there. And you with the atrocious fashion sense, once it's in store your memory of my name in this piece of copper. And Promise's too, but tell me what it is first."