"I'm sure you've thought through reasons why upsetting that is a terrible idea," Matthew says, but Isadora picks up where he left off. "That tapestry predates Suleiman. If you manage to call the tradition behind mankind's current best protection into question, that by itself need not upset the balance."

"Could you elaborate, ma'am?"

"If you act outside a practitioner's role, knowingly and consistently, you probably die." Her paws are crossed while she casually talks about doom. "The existing Seal gets much of its strength from its inevitability. Any sufficiently old being is most likely Sealed, and there are no competing options. Regardless, any wrongs you cause by weakening that tradition are wrongs against your own kind. Not against reality itself. Guardians of the karmic balance such as myself will have little reason to kill you over it."

"I see. But I did say I think the Seal is not good enough, not that it's not good. I'm pretty sure any acceptable alternative would need to subsume it."

Since the Sphinx doesn't consider it her business, Matthew tries again. "Imagine you're arguing to a jury. You say 'my client didn't kill that man, and if he did it was justified.' Maybe you even have great evidence for both. But the jury doesn't hear it that way. You'd have shot yourself in the foot. You need to pick a narrative, because 'either of these but definitely at least one' just isn't convincing.

And here you're talking about convincing a world's worth of not especially astute jurors. You've probably thought this through, at least you better have, but Isadora's right. If it looked like you had a chance of getting anywhere, it wouldn't be her you need to worry about. It'd be the forward-thinking practitioners. I know we aren't fully protected. I'm the guy the Lord sends to deal with malicious Others; I know. But if we're clinging to a barely-adequate expectation, I'm not about to mess with the expectation."

"That's not what I meant by 'subsume.' I was thinking more along the lines of 'there is in fact footage of my client in that puppy shelter at the time of the crime.' I do not need to state out loud that my client did not kill that man, because that statement is implied by my other, stronger statement."

"No part of that is wrong. But if your video shows your client surrounded by kittens, and you're saying that he was either at the puppy shelter or in the puppy shelter's kitten room, then we have probably ruined the metaphor. Point is, it's a step down from it being assumed that he was definitely at the puppy shelter. Being a stronger statement doesn't necessarily make it more credible."

"Animal metaphors aside, does this have any near-term effects? It all seems very academic. No one's making global changes on short notice from here." The Elder Sister has the voice of a young woman, despite her title. Her face is still too masked to guess by looking.

"I'm confused about what you mean by adding these 'eithers' to the metaphor, but anyway, yeah, at this point it's mostly academic, and I'm just an extremely arrogant and idealistic teenager."

"So if it's a problem, it's not ours. No objection from me." No one contradicts her, though Matthew and the Queen's Man look hesitant.

The latter changes the subject. "You said you fought a Charybdis. I try to keep an eye on what important Others are in play, and have no idea what you're referring to. Is it better known by a different name?"

"It... might be, but I think it's just extremely rare—the Behaims thought they were mythical, and they're chronomancers. That's relevant because the Charybdis is apparently an Other that experiences time differently, its future being our past or maybe something more sideways than that."

"The Behaims here wouldn't know much either way, but if you mean the Jacob's Bell ones then that makes sense.

Time complications. And a mythological name, too. It's old?"

"I'm not totally sure it makes sense to call it old, or young, or anything like that. For all I know it was born tomorrow. But it will probably exist for a long time into the past still."

"Most things that have been around that much time," he nods toward the Sphinx, "have agreed to the Seal of Solomon. Nearly everything. It would be one thing if your quest were against goblins and bogeymen, but you shouldn't have been able to start a fight with that at all."

"It was not Sealed at the time," he explains, "and it started the fight. By trying to eat me. But I did manage to Seal it. I'm just not sure if that will only count for the past and it will remain unSealed for the rest of the future or what."

He looks at Sadde, half skeptically, but doesn't challenge him on Seal. "Then are you planning to chase down mostly goblins and bogeymen? You can't gain much traction if you're that limited, but not many Others like the one you found aren't Sealed."

"I don't really have many plans, I'm still mostly in the 'learn lots of things about lots of things' stage of things, I don't know yet where I'll have the leverage do the most, ah, good."

"No presently relevant objections, then." He looks at Matthew, then turns to the Lord. "I won't speak against him." Neither does anyone else, some looking more certain about it than others.

Is that what this was. He'd been wondering. He smiles pleasantly at them.

"And I would overrule you if you did." The pronoun doesn't specify whether Conquest is speaking only to the nonthreatening-looking Queen's Man or to everyone including, say, the Sphinx.

"You are welcome here, Sam, and may force whatever Others you can to accept a civilized place in the way of things, even with the other promises you plan to wrest from them."

"I thank you, my Lord," he says, inclining his head a bit.

He smiles at the "my Lord" part. Practitioners knowing the meaning of a civilized place: best thing. Second-best. Third. It's up there.

The Queen's Man asks, "May I talk with you privately?" "Not here," Conquest rumbles.

"Absolutely. Lead the way."

He does, taking care on the way down the stairs. Picks his way past the last splintered step and then what looks like a flame in a jar marks the floor becoming safe again. Once they're through the ghost-and-trophy room and out the door, he stops concentrating and they head to the nearest ordinary coffee shop.

"Your description of the Seal of Solomon sounded oddly familiar. Is the plan you mentioned original to you?"

"It's not." It was Johannes' idea, after all. "Familiar how?"

He reaches into his pocket and fiddles with a wallet. He takes out a small-denomination bill with the name and former likeness of the historical figure currently Lord of Montreal. The reverse side is even more familiar.

"It's not exactly well-known, but I try to stay broadly informed. Does the name 'Sadde' mean anything to you?" (Apparently not too broadly informed. He pronounces it with a short "a" and long "e.")