"Oh, I asked to attempt the whole thing. But hopefully he doesn't decide to repeatedly blow himself up for fun."

"I don't think he'll have any fun, if he does make a mistake."

Nod.

"I'm not sure whether that's comforting or not."

"I like that the world mostly settles its own scores but sometimes it - hurts, that it does that."

Nod.

"And sometimes it seems like it's not quite right about counting things."

"I don't really understand your world's priorities. I guess because I'm not a fairy.

"...I wonder if I'd stop understanding good and evil, if I became one."

"Huh. I mean I don't see why someone couldn't be a fairy and still want to get along with your god and go home with them if they ever get killed?"

"Well I don't either, really, just... it's kind of weird, in the Tamlin story, that he's hanging out in the woods demanding sex from people who've stolen his flowers. At least if he remembers what it was like to be human."

"I mean, it's friendlier than beating them up? Flowers are expensive."

"I guess that makes sense. Given how long it takes you to grow them. 

"Not as though all humans want to be good anyway, I suppose."

"The human king doesn't seem super interested."

"He doesn't, no.

"You said you could kill him slow with a knife, right? Just the once?"

"Yeah. Then we'd be even."

"And then we wouldn't be sitting here worrying about him hurting us with his own bad decisions, so that'd be good, anyway.

"Humans don't incur debt hurting each other, do they."

"Pretty sure not. That's why it was fine for your niece to stop your son from attacking me."

"So fairies couldn't stop him if he slowed, since he's obviously never going to try speeding up again, and slow humans couldn't stop him because he has tens of thousands of soldiers. ...but I could. Because I'm not slow, and I'm also not a fairy. It would take a really, really long time, and it would take a lot of murder, but... I could do it."

"Oh. Huh. Yeah."

"I kind of hate having clever ideas.

"Well. He isn't slow right now anyway, and if he fixes that he probably won't be home for weeks. So we have time."

"We should get the kids to Greece for the night and take good care of them and worry about this in the morning."

Nod.

So they head south.

Yeah. 

There's really no way to keep it secret from the kids that they're going to be traveling with Dyre and his family, so Catherine decides that she had better just explain the nearly the whole thing, with the spirit and the possession and the fact that the person who looks like their father doesn't remember them anymore.

They are all, understandably, kind of upset about this. (Except for Ingolfr, who doesn't really remember his father, and Ragna, who is talking a little bit now but has only properly met her father once or twice.) 

And then, presumably, they have to pay for their food.

Well, not Ragna, who's still not a person, and he's been shooing the older children out on patrols which counts even though they're not objectively that helpful, but yes. 

"I thought you might have some insight into what arrangement to pay things off or plan to eventually pay things off will be good for them. I know what I'd do with fairy children but they aren't fairy children and the same things seem likely to go over very differently."

Aaaaa why did she ever ask these people for help with anything ever.

"Yes. It's - obviously hard to say what they can offer, on account of being children."