She gets a message from Malcolm. "I think I've got something that'll do it. Tested on animals, as far as possible. Ready when you are."

So she tells everyone in Montreal—they'd been warned it'd happen, of course, and they're as ready as she can make them—and returns to Jacob's Bell.

"Sadde! Welcome back.

You could go back to the future now, or if you'd like to join us for dinner I can explain how it works over garlic angelhair."

"Garlic angelhair sounds delightful, if it won't be too much of an imposition."

"Not at all."

Once the Behaims and Sadde are seated, he explains. "It took a while to find a promising method, since this isn't something people have been interested in. Eventually I tracked it down. Curses. There's a long tradition of people doing this kind of thing to their enemies. Then the trick was neutralizing it so you don't get driven insane."

"—driven insane?"

"The form I was able to replicate freezes people indefinitely, keeps them from aging, and keeps them conscious. It was meant for enemies, and not the polite kind.

There's a Behaim family trick for the other half. Subjectively you'd feel like the time skips past, so you wouldn't even notice anything until we break the curse. That'll be a couple days before April twenty-seventh, like you said."

"Ah, and being conscious would drive them insane. ...I'm half tempted to want it anyway, sixty years thinking sounds like it would be great for plotting."

"I'm sure it would, at first. But sixty years is a long time."

"Yeah that was mostly a joke."

"Good. You'll be Merlin sleeping in the cave, but it's much better than a lifetime's worth of imprisonment."

"How poetic. Where will I be?"

"If you mean physically, it barely matters. There's an empty bedroom in the basement; that seemed less weird than anything else. Unless you've got a preference?"

"Well, I'm not sure it's the best of ideas for future Behaims to know who it is they got in the basement in advance of thawing me?"

"Definitely. Could even keep you completely secret, but something would be extremely off if we involve coffins."

"Completely? You can make me wake up without one of you having to do it?"

"No, but a note saying "do not open until" means keeping it secret until then would be easy."

"Ah, fair enough. I don't have preferences, then."

Shrug. "I can see why you wouldn't. But I don't like the symbolism there, so may as well avoid it."

"Makes sense."

"To make sure you don't experience the sixty years, I can connect you to something we use pretty regularly.

You'll be able to more or less zone out at will, in the kind of way that leaves you wondering where all the time went. It's not the most useful ability ever, but you'd be surprised how much it comes up. Except I'll leave all the safeguards off. They're meant to make sure no one gets stuck with no attention to spare at all, and impose a time limit just in case. You actually will be getting yourself stuck, at least until my successor disconnects you."

She nods. "That sounds about reasonable, I can do all the thinking I want until I'm tired and then sleep the next sixty years."

"I was actually going to recommend you start skipping forward first, before I attach the stasis curse. It'd probably be uncomfortable otherwise."

"Oh? Why?"

"Inability to move or breathe, noticeable absence of pulse and so on. It's not as if you'd get driven mad by the classic inability to scratch your nose, but the rest could be worth avoiding.

It works either way if you're sure."

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"All right. Ready when you are."

And she is presently ready.

Malcolm removes a ring from his little finger and looks at her through it. Then he does something hard to follow. "You should test the time skip first, to make sure the safeguards are deactivated right. Wouldn't want you having to concentrate on skipping forward again every few hours for decades.

It's a purely mental action. Feels a bit like you're pouring your concentration through this ring, is the best I can describe it." He sets it on a nightstand.

If her glasses were off she'd see that it's an extremely magical ring, tied to the house and all the family members and especially him. Large and gold, featuring a family crest.

She does raise her glasses to squint at it. "If they're deactivated right won't that just make me slide the sixty years right away?"

"I'll stop it after a few hours. Once you confirm you didn't experience any time passing we can do the whole thing."

"Alright. I'd still rather not lose too much time before I'm ready, so don't let it go more than two hours?"

"All right. You should be sitting or lying down before you start, and then two hours can happen any moment."

She does that.

It's not the same sensation as falling asleep. More like spacing out until the end of a boring class, except more so. She can notice her train of thought losing focus as she pours it through the ring, and just before she's entirely stopped thinking Malcolm says "welcome back." He's standing closer to the door than he was a moment ago.

She blinks several times. "Wow. Yeah okay I see what you mean by getting stuck."

"It worked, then?"

"It did. I'm ready whenever you are."

"All right, then."

He offers a jade pendant, carefully maneuvering it with pliers in gloved hands. He's not even touching the chain on this one. "It shouldn't activate until it's worn; I'm just not taking any chances. I'll reconnect you to the time slide effect as soon as it's on."

"Okay."

She wears it.

A few seconds afterward she goes stiff. Not that it feels stiff; she's exactly as relaxed as she was before. Her muscles just aren't responding anymore. The voluntarily controlled ones aren't, and the others are just as paused. She is very extremely locked in.

Malcolm re-does whatever it was with the ring. It's harder to follow this time, on account of she's halfway through a blink. "If you can signal me, something went wrong and we should redo it to make sure you don't age sixty years."

He waits for her to try, and sees nothing. "You don't actually need to be able to see the ring to start skipping forward, but it won't hurt. I can leave it here for a bit."

Well she by definition does not respond!

"Good luck. We'll be here when you get back."

He leaves the ring behind, and then can't think of much of a reason to stick around. It's kind of unsettling, being around someone who's doing a perfect imitation of a vacant shell.

It must be, mustn't it.

Still can't really tell him anything.

Definitely not.

If she wants to spend the time plotting, she's got all the time in the world.

She does.

She thinks.

She doesn't get tired. Or hungry. Or thirsty. Or anything, really. It's... kinda claustrophobic, in a way. Not exactly, but almost. It's like she's a ghost, trapped. She needn't scream, but if she did, she'd have no mouth. She might... not hold on for as long as she thought she would. But she'll have long enough.

She thinks.

Enough time passes that she's a he. He's a he, trapped in her body. He's... dealt with dysphoria all his life, it's not that different, except getting used to the magic means he's unused to it, and coupled with the freezing effect... it is extremely unpleasant.

He thinks.

They didn't leave on a TV or anything, partly because Malcolm underestimated how long Sadde planned to stay like this and partly because it's 1943. It's probably boring in addition to unpleasant, but at least nothing is urgent.

No, nothing is.

After a very, very long time, or perhaps not that long at all, he doesn't keep track, but some time, he decides to slip some.

It's not obviously different, except that the clock on the wall advances further between times when he decides to pay attention. (It's the Behaim house. They have clocks everywhere.)

Eventually sixty years will have passed.

He gets briefly dizzy, as if the world spun around him several times in different directions instantaneously. Then he's in a different room, and Laird Behaim is holding the two largest fragments of the pendant. Laird resembles his great uncle, right down to the ring, except more 2003.

"Welcome back."

"—thank you. Am I gone yet? What date is it?"

"The version that got written down said you asked to be awoken a few days in advance but we were never very specific. You vanish the day after tomorrow."

"Ah, so you were told who I was."

"I knew when you came from, so I'd be able to undo it at the right time. I didn't know it was you until meeting you this decade."

"Mm, fair enough. So you've known about it since before I came?"

"About the time travel, yes. And of course I had to play the part of a stranger once I did recognize you; sorry about that."

"Hmm, that's fine, I suppose. I expect for all intents and purposes other than knowing I'd someday go back in time and be frozen in your basement we were strangers."

"That was probably my predecessors' reasoning in not passing down the whole story. Made it easier."

"Yeah. So, thank you and your family very much."

"You're very welcome.

Supposedly you were going to coerce sixty years from Others; that sounds— Well, it sounds like either Malcolm didn't expect you to manage it or he had a lot of faith in your capabilities."

"Do you have any idea of what's been going on in Montreal lately?" she asks, apparently suddenly changing the subject.

"Montreal? It gets mentioned in the normal papers, but I haven't heard of anything out of the ordinary on the magic side."

"Did the money thing not catch on, then?"

"Oh. Right, you predated it. That's normal. A bit of a niche interest outside Montreal, I've only really heard of it because there's a branch of the family there, but it makes sense for a former merchant spirit's city."

"Mmhm. It was actually my idea, so I'm a bit miffed that it didn't get to spread too far, but then again that could have conceivably been intentional on the Lord's part. Maybe."

"Congratulations. Building much of anything that's still around in sixty years is impressive for a solo practitioner, and as far as I know it's going strong."

"Thank you. And my point was that Malcolm was right to have faith in my capabilities."

He cracks a smile. "Fair point. Still, it's a tall order in a very different way from the money."

"I'll see what I can do," she says in a tone that says she's being modest.

"Good luck." He means it, but doesn't put too much effort into sounding like he thinks it's doable.

"Oh, now that there are two of you around, are you going to need a place to lie low? You're welcome here if you do."

"I think I've quite abused your family's hospitality. Thank you, but it won't be necessary."

"Not at all; it's freely offered. In any case, welcome to the present."

"Thank you very much. I should probably go, then."

"All right. See you around Jacob's Bell."

"See you."

Off she goes...

...and when she's far enough to be sure the Behaims aren't looking she makes her way to the Thorburn mansion.

Rose looks exactly the same as she did last 2003. Maybe scarier now that Sadde's better informed about the kind of thing she could call down constrained only by her own good judgment.

"Sadde. You exist again?"

"Indeed I do. Miss me?"

"I'm very glad to see you made it back safely. Untested magic is risky no matter who's doing it."

"Indeed I do. May I come in? I'd like to catch up. Or is this a bad time?"

"Of course. Anything to eat or drink while we catch up?" The mansion is well stocked, but Rose doesn't know where Sadde is on the scale from "just had dinner" to "it's been sixty years." She opens the door fully. Once they're in they'll be out of view, just in case.

"I'd welcome some tea or coffee, thank you," she says, walking in.

Rose acquires tea for the both of them, then makes her way to one of several luxurious-looking armchairs. She moves more slowly and carefully than she did sixty years ago, but doesn't seem too hampered by it.

"Remind me how much you were there for? You founded a cabal and we got them started, but I think the last time we met neither they nor I had managed to be a net positive yet."

"I was there 'til October, so yeah, no net positive yet. Has that changed?"

"It has. I should be discretionary with details, but am confident of having been on balance a setback for the demons. The cabal...they didn't fail. They're not, collectively, good enough that I would trust them to scale up very big, which means they aren't breaking new ground, but they didn't self-destruct either."

"—I see. I do believe I should fix that."

"I hope you don't mean the self-destruction."

"I mean the part where they're not good enough. Do you know why?"

"The unavoidable part is that they don't have any history or reputation. If I tell a demon my name, it might bargain or at least listen. They don't have that yet.

The other reason is that I've been withholding some information out of suspicion they might use it. They have enemies, and have become destructive enough to try to lawyer their way out of your oath. With demons, they don't need a complete success to be dangerous."

"—lawyer their way out—in hindsight it's obvious they would but ugh—yes I definitely need to clean that mess up."

"They moved from Montreal in the interim. A city with inquisitors was understandably not the best permanent site, so they're in Toronto now."

"Toronto doesn't have inquisitors? That's... odd. Why not?"

"Diabolists aren't so common that every city needs dedicated opponents. Sometimes Lords call in the nearest group if they need assistance.

My understanding is that they're trying to lie low to avoid provoking anything."

"Is that so."

"It's fairly common, for diabolists. And relatively unobjectionable, since it means no one else has to deal with the kind of thing they might do overtly."

"Mmhm."

"What do you have in mind?"

"That I'm going to make them become a decent faction with worthy goals and methods again."

"They haven't completely lost that. Unless they've been lying, there's been the kind of problem that needs diabolists to solve it. Not just out there and unsealed, but actually in our world."

"Oh good then I guess my work's cut out for me."

"I mean they solved it. A mote they captured before it could mature, and extending the time on a larger threat temporarily locked away. Not to say they've definitely been net positive, but there have been positives."

"By 'my work' I meant 'make sure they become a net positive.'"

"In that case, yes. It's probably not too impossible, even."

"How reassuring. How about yourself, you said you think you've managed to become a net positive?"

"Smaller activities were sometimes more urgent, but my peak accomplishment was getting a mid-tier ancient demon to agree to the Seal of Solomon. Since the high-tier demons do things like tear down stars out of the sky, that was as far as I thought I could escalate."

"Tear down stars—how does that even work they are several light-years away and they are flaming balls of gas—"

"It's likely that the saying is partly metaphorical. Not that any associated literal version wouldn't also be intimidating, of course. The particular entity it's about is far beyond my ability to interfere with even when limited to its better attested feats."

"I see. Still sounds like a problem that will need to be solved eventually, I need to find a non-horrifying means of immortality."

"That's probably not strictly impossible, but there is a reason few people with morals ever try."

"And what's the reason? It seems to me that at least when it comes to muggles it's just memetic acceptance."

"That's part of it, and not only on the practitioners' part. Something like straightforward immortality would involve dealing with powerful spirits, and Others are as used to human mortality as humans are. So your potential counterparties are limited to those who are willing to go against the way things are, which sounds fine but when you're dealing with nonhuman intelligences there are vastly more ways for it to go wrong than right. It is surprisingly easy for results to be horrifying by human standards.

And that's before even getting into what the cost might be."

"The non-horrifyingness requirement included the cost," she says. "But yes, this is a rather hostile magic system. And I still have that thing with the Behaims to deal with."

"Right, them. How did they manage it, did they tell you?"

"They used a thing that froze someone in place while keeping them aware, typically used as a curse for revenge or to drive people nuts, and another thing that let my mind skip over the intervening time more-or-less at will, so that worked out pretty well."

"I hadn't heard of the first thing. 

They let you skip time?"

"Yeah, or at least not notice it passing."

"That's not quite how I've heard it described, but supposedly losing focus and not being aware of where the time went is what it feels like when the Behaims pay into the family supply of time."

"—the family supply of time?"

"This is a bit of a secret. I know it because I used to be close with some of the Behaims, but I never did promise to keep it hidden and they don't rely on the secrecy much anyway.

They have a store of power, a well is what they call it. All family members give up some fraction of their time. Nearly all of it gets lost in the transition. The remainder gets spent on magical effects or hoarded for the future.

Old Malcolm was too much of a miser to make the offer without playing some game, but I confess this one never occurred to me."

"...so I already paid him rather a lot more than he could ever possibly have normally gotten and he didn't tell me. That's the catch."

"Probably. We don't know that's what he did. But yes, it would explain why he was willing to accept a promise of payment he claimed to be skeptical you could deliver."

"That is incredibly clever and manipulative and I hate and respect him a little for it."

"I'm more worried about the results. My plan if I ended up their opponent was always to try to bankrupt them, or at least be too expensive to be worth fighting. Now they're more powerful than anyone else in Jacob's Bell, but at least they don't know we know it."

"I wonder if I'd be able to leverage some of that by having unknowingly paid it."

"It would be surprising if there's no effect at all. I only have basic chronomancy texts, but I'll see what I can find."

"Thank you. But I still did promise... I'm not sure how much leeway I'd get... hm..."

She looks thoughtful.

"Was the promise for sixty years, or sixty years extorted from Others? You might be able to claim you paid the debt, if only because all practitioners are at least a little bit Other."

"It was the second one, and I'm not sure it counts if I wasn't the one doing the extortion, or at least that could be an avenue of argument."

"I think the argument favors them, but it's plausibly worth arguing. The drawback being that then they know you know about their windfall, and that if you move against them it won't be in ways they can counter by being rich."

"Or I could extort some time off a demon and bet on them not wanting to take that."

Rose stares briefly. "That is...technically an option. If you don't mind walking up to a powerful family and announcing that you're a diabolist, and also think you can successfully extort a demon."

"Maybe not a demon, but something they might not want to infect their pools with. I'm not sure the argument will work, but the argument plus something like that... It feels ungrateful but on the other hand they already got a lot of power that they got off me without even telling me about it so I'm at least somewhat inclined to ignore that feeling."

"Ungratefulness doesn't enter into it. They got the benefit you agreed to give them, and a contract certainly doesn't entitle them to your good will. You do have time before making a decision, since there's no deadline."

"Yeah, I think my best next move is going to Toronto. ...except for my father, I wonder what I'm gonna do about that mess."

"Magic-based solutions to personal messes are usually a bad idea. Now that you have a wider scale of problems and opportunities, can you just declare him irrelevant and leave him in the dust?"

"I'm... not sure he would accept that, is my main concern. I wasn't thinking of using magic for this, I was just wondering how I'm going to prevent him from deciding to just come after me. He's the Laird Behaim of this town's non-practitioners, if you pay attention to that."

"Some. Not as much as the people who can use politics. He'd likely be able to find out where you went from practitioners, but would have to know who to ask. Unless they volunteer the information."

"Might they? Volunteer it? And I'm pretty sure he'd go on a hunt to find me, missing posters and talking to the police and all that."

"Laird's day job is as a high-ranking officer; if your father talks to them it will be exactly as effective as Laird wants it to be. That is probably a good sign. Both families want you as an ally against the other and me, so they won't go out of their way to act against you unless they give up on recruitment."

She sighs. "So petty."

"Extremely.

It might be worth retaliating or defending yourself with magic if there's no other way out. It would be frowned upon, but that doesn't mean it would fail."

"Yeah," she sighs again. "I might just vanish, leave a note, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst."

"You can use the note to accuse him of wrongdoing, preferably varieties where the spirits would agree with you. That can give you an edge.

You could even say you talked to a well-informed lawyer if you don't mind risking the Behaims finding out you've been in contact with me."

She raises an eyebrow at 'well-informed lawyer' but elects not to comment. "What kinds of things would the spirits find wrong in the relevant sense?"

"There isn't really a line where they'd think he went too far. In an older time the head of the house had the power of life and death. You can get some of the same effect by emphasizing contemporary opinions, framing it as him going against his social role. Best of all—as in most effective, not as in better—is if he acts against you dishonestly, or punishes you for obeying the spirits' own rules."

"Dishonestly like how? And wouldn't his ignorance of the rules solve that?"

"The spirits haven't been paying attention to him, correct. They do listen to you. If you can accuse him of, say, claiming he wants to give you a safe home and instead driving you away from it, they'll go along with your version to at least some extent."

"Of course. Well, if I can get this stupid system to work in my favour that's probably what I'll do."

"I'll write ahead to the cabal and tell them to expect an ally. They'll be in a position to help you land on your feet when you arrive."

"'An ally'? Not their founder?"

"Depends if you want them to like you."

"They don't like their founder? Really?"

"I'm not saying they'd declare enmity, but they do associate your name with the reason they can't just smite people."

"Did they not mostly join the group voluntarily?"

"More so than most diabolists. Still, the group they joined is a bit different from the one you founded. It comes of dealing with the darker things sometimes."

"Right but I mean, why would they resent being part of a group they chose to join?"

"My guess is people who chafe under the rules invite others like them. Everyone accepted the tradeoff, but the name Sadde represents the part they see as the drawback. Maybe it would be otherwise if the cabal instead of the seal were named after you."

"Mm. Well, the seal is the important thing. So you think the best idea is infiltrating them from below?"

"Or just arriving as a friendly stranger. It doesn't have to be vertical at all."

"What's the angle there, then? I do actually want to aim them in such a way that sheer momentum will keep them good, do you believe that's easier from the outside?"

"I suspect it is. They have members, but are short on allies as diabolists often are. Your voice would almost stand out more as the one person willing to side with them. If you're independent they can't outvote you and should be smart enough not to ignore you."

"Ah. I suppose that makes sense." She sighs. "Well. I'll work with what I have."

"I think you can manage it. Straightening out diabolists is not an easy task, but their oath means the deck is as stacked in your favor as it can be."

"Is there anything you could equip me with, to help with that? Objectively speaking they probably know more diabolism than I do, by now."

"Are you planning to convince them by force? That will take a lot of equipping."

"No, but if I had resources they actually do not that would help me buy their trust."

"Something at least potentially transferrable, then. Information may be the best, so there is no need to spend it. The other obvious choice is to introduce you to an Other and suggest that it cooperate with you when summoned, but that carries significant risks.

Much of the more advanced diabolism is about cataloguing and dealing with specific demons, which is unlikely to be relevant here. Might I suggest illusions? It's not one of the fields I have sent them information on, and I suspect you would remain better than them at it even if you do."

"I do so love illusions. Why do you expect I'd be better?"

"Your use of glamour. If nothing else, it suggests that you are familiar enough with illusions not to accidentally emphasize the weak points or anything obvious like that, and that you have a power source with an affinity for illusion."

"Yeah, sounds about right."

She retrieves a book from a nearby shelf. Almost all the books near it have ordinary mundane titles. "The basic idea is convincing the world that what you want seen is what is there, and using some magic or other to shortcut it. There are volumes worth of how, of course."

"Oooh," she says, making grabby hands.

Rose frowns at the gesture while handing the book over. "Many practitioners frown on those without a single specialty. There are at least as many bad reasons for this as good, but should it come up you might wish to avoid giving a complete catalogue of what you can do."

She takes it. "That's fair. Illusion does fit my style more than diabolism, it just happens that diabolism looks like the highest-leverage avenue for large-scale good."

"It is the highest leverage for a lot of things. Good is not high on the list, but nor is it categorically off it."

"Well, forestalling or outright avoiding bad is good in my books."

"True enough. It will be an uphill battle, but demons conflate Good with Right as much as practitioners do. Using them for good is merely difficult."

"Yeah," she says, beaming. "We'll do good. Thank you very much for—all your help."

"You're very welcome. Good luck– is unreliable, so I'll simply say I'm sure you'll use it well."

"Now I should find a place to stay for the next two days until the other me disappears."

"It would probably be unwise to stay here. Did you have anything in mind when you planned to come back early?"

"Deal with the fossilised goblin in the woods."

"Fossilized goblin?"

"Didn't I mention it? When I was investigating the Charybdis—" And she explains the whole situation there.

"That oath was foolish. But yes, it definitely justifies returning early regardless of the inconvenience."

"It was foolish but I was facing the very real prospect that I'd die right there and then, I needed any boost I could get my hands on."

"If you make a habit of it, in only a few iterations the slight benefit will not be enough. If anyone inherits your karma the broken oath comes back to haunt them, and if not then being dead might not protect you."

Blink. "There's an afterlife, then?"

"I couldn't say; I've never been there. I have heard it stated directly by unrelated entities, usually as a threat."

"And would they be punished for stating it if it was untrue but they really confidently believed it, or if it was impossible to challenge them?"

"No to the first, yes to the second. Well spotted."

"But the possibility is still not minuscule as it was before I figured all of this out about magic, seems to be the basic conclusion I'd already reached. Anyway, I'm gonna go ensure my oath isn't broken and in the future endeavour to be powerful enough not to need such anymore."

"Good luck." (It's plausible for the first part, at least.)

"Thank you."

She takes her leave and, after finding a spot to change faces so no one will recognise her, makes her way back to that terrible spot.

That terrible spot is a mostly treeless clearing in the middle of nowhere. Her completely unjust adjective use unsurprisingly failed to hurt its lack of feelings.

The creature is there, its ring of teeth slightly smaller than she remembers it. Fossilized remains of some of its prey. No goblins, though; they haven't arrived yet.

"...so are you sealed yet? I don't know how time works for you."

It still doesn't talk, but it looks the same. Solomon's seal has the weight behind it to always be obvious; since the new version implies the old that probably suggests that it isn't.

Sigh. Whatever. She wants to set up a trap here... maybe... hmm...

She'll go find Johannes.

His demesne is as hidden as usual. But not more. She knows where the entrance is.

As long as she leaves the glasses on, the rare few occupants look like helpless humans being pursued by misshapen scary-looking and non-helpless humans. If she looks around the frames, it's mostly realistic vestiges with animal spirits filling in the cracks, being hunted by monsters. Hard to say which looks more unsettling.

Yeah she knows about that.

"It's Sadde," she says out loud.

Johannes doesn't find her instantaneously, but he does find her quickly. "Sadde! Welcome back." He squints briefly. "I would not have recognized you with that on."

"Hello! If I weren't a practitioner and unable to lie I think you would not believe where I spent the last six months or so."

"Considering that you didn't mention anything when you were here in the last definitely less than six months, sounds like a story. Why don't you come on in?"

His tower is visible if she looks toward the center of the demesne, but on the other hand, teleportation.

"I spent them in the forties," she explains when they get there.

"The forties as in the decade?"

"Those, yes."

"Impressive. How did you manage to spend six months in the wrong century?"

So she explains about the little monster that is, in fact, still eating critters and sent her to the past and got her sealed. And then she goes on to explain about how she invented money.

"Well. Impressive. Most of my clients aren't the type to use money, but I'll put the word out that I'm accepting it to see if they'll join in.

You said the Other was right where you left it?"

"Well, yes, I'm only dealing with it in two days."

"Right, it's just that if the Behaims said they'd keep an eye on it and make sure it didn't threaten anyone, I wouldn't expect it to be completely untouched. In their position I would have been trying to exploit it somehow."

"Well they got at least all my time out of it, but yes."

"That too. But it sounds like Malcolm Behaim hadn't hit upon that method of getting you back yet when he made the deal about the extortion, so it wouldn't surprise me if there was a second ulterior motive that had already occurred to him."

"Probably, but I know very little of chronomancy."

"There might be no way to know what they've done, short of asking."

"I might have enough goodwill to ask."

"If you want to let on that you suspect them. There probably isn't much that turns on it."

"Well, I don't expect them to have wanted to keep it a secret, it's an obvious leap to make."

"That might depend what they came up with. But it was already a good idea to assume everyone has unknown resources, so it's not as if it changes very much."

"Yeah. And by the way—" And she explains about the oath with the goblin she needs to fulfill.

"Well, that gamble paid off. Or will once you succeed, at least.

If you want you could even find the goblin early and challenge him directly. He fights your past self, your present self wins, and the others see you as the last one standing. Goblins respect that."

"Which would make his challenging me the day after tomorrow him looking for revenge? Or do you just mean challenge him and make him come fight me in two days?"

"The second. Saying "I will duel you tomorrow" is, well, traditional. And there's only the one fight where you know the outcome in advance."

"Heh. Yeah, makes sense. I was thinking of laying a trap, there, disguising a net with glamour so I could capture the other goblins after the fight was done, perhaps leave something the leader could trip on to fall into the Charybdis' mouth so I could say to have brought him down..."

He nods. "Beating the leader is mandatory, since you're forsworn otherwise. The trap is a good idea too. If you've just beaten their leader they'd probably be too cowed to attack, but you may as well have a backup plan."

"I wonder if I'll be able to seal them."

"If you're scary enough, maybe. You aren't up against very complex opponents."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Are you going to need to stay here in the meantime? You're welcome to, if you need to avoid anyone spotting two of you."

"Well I can remain in a different face for a bit but yeah I would still be thankful for a place to sleep."

"Oh, of course. 

It'll give you a chance to try to sell some powerful Others on the idea of money, too."

"'Some powerful Others'?"

"There are a lot of those here. Some might be more receptive to the idea than others."

She grins. "Alright. I think I'm gonna go lay down my trap and find that goblin first, though. Do you know where I could find a net?"

"Hardware store? It's not exactly what you're looking for, but some people use nets to keep out birds or deer.

I could conjure one but there's no guarantee it'd keep existing when you leave my demesne."

"Yeah, Hardware store sounds good enough, thank you. I'll go take care of that."

Nod. "Good luck. The pests aren't going to know what hit them, are they."

She smirks. "They're not."

Before anything, she goes to the hardware store and acquires a net. Then she returns to the spot with the Charybdis and scouts the area.

It looks like it's supposed to. No one watching, with the possible exception of her very distracted past self, and she can make out where the fight's audience was/will be watching from. (That location is most everywhere; she was pretty surrounded before. But at least it's identifiably most everywhere.)

Her past self isn't around right now. Good. She got a large enough net for "most everywhere" in the clearing and starts setting it up.

She won't be able to get a single contiguous net around the entire crowd; some of them will be opposite the monster from others. But she really only needs enough to convince the remainder not to swarm her.

Sure, that works. After it's all set up she starts covering it in a thin layer of blood to disguise it.

Glamour has a tendency to fade into mundanity if left alone. She'll have to keep the net in mind so she doesn't come back to find it turned into ordinary ground while she wasn't looking.

But the disguise certainly works.

Yup. She'll check it again later, before the showdown.

Now where the heck is she going to find a goblin? Perhaps there's open sewers somewhere, or a dumpster.

She doesn't know how much they tend to move around. But she does know the direction they came from two days from now, and that might get her close enough to follow her nose. Unfortunately.

Delightful.

She returns to her old face, confident no human will come here, and strides confidently forward.

Goblins are not very noticeable. The median goblin is smaller than knee-high on a human, plus they blend in. If there are any they aren't obvious. Until an improbable glob of mud splats down from above. That's probably one of them.

"I'm here to challenge your leader," she declares, dodging the glob.

High-pitched jeering.

But it's high-pitched jeering leading in a particular direction, if she can manage to follow while they move through tree branches.

Yeah she can her body got super cool after she made it her implement.

And it's not like it should be humanly impossible to follow anyway. (Though they were hoping she'd run headlong into a tree at least once.)

Eventually she comes upon a small crowd of goblins watching two large ones beat each other up. Apparently this is a thing that happens. The larger combatant is her prophesied opponent, so chances are he's going to win. From the shouts, he's also a relative newcomer.

Oh that's interesting. She folds her arms and watches, smirking.

Those two are concentrating on each other, but their audience thinks she's interesting. In several different senses, all of them unsavory.

Eventually the larger goblin gets the smaller in a stranglehold, and the loser struggles long enough to raise doubts about whether goblins need to breathe before conceding. It morphs into a familiar-looking club, which the winner brandishes. At Sadde.

She giggles. "That was marvelous! You must be quite powerful." Her smile turns wicked. "But I'm more."

The small goblin she followed spreads the word that it's a challenge. The leader grins wickedly, and when he does it his mouth cracks wide and reveals more teeth. "Sounds like what you're saying is I get to grind you into the dust. Or even tell my new minions to do it."

"Too chicken to face me yourself, huh?"

He charges, howling about what unappetizing things he's going to do to Sadde once he wins. Even the goblins who bet against him earlier are on his side this time.

The charge is slowed by the fact that he literally just came from a fight, and he's not used to this weapon yet. Still dangerous.

"Not now," she says, rolling her eyes and dodging. "Don't you know anything? In two days, at the clearing with the circle of rocks that way." She points. "Bring however many minions you want, but I fight you first."

He grabs at her. It's not a very solid grip, but unpleasantly slimy. "Why would I let you go?"

"You don't have a choice. I'm not getting captured now, and you're going to appear there in two days. Morning. You've just fought and won, you're weak and you want to secure your power." She slips away from his grasp and kicks him, simultaneously skipping away in a direction she can bolt from if needed. "I'll see you on the battlefield."

"I'm not weak. But I'll be stronger. Enjoy your last two days in one piece."

She salutes with the non-disgusting hand and leaves, at a jog.

They don't pursue.

When she's far enough away she changes her face again and then finds somewhere to wash off the slime and it's still not enough so she gets to Johannes' demesne and: "I need a shower please tell me you have one."

"Yes, of course. You visited the goblins, then?"

He starts walking toward his tower, then catches on about the urgency and the space shifts around them and deposits them in front of a bathroom door.

"I did," she tells the walls, and gratefully starts having a very thorough shower. "He'll be there in two days. I just need to make sure I have everything set up then."

"It is fairly stacked in your favor already. Much more so than beating the charybdis was."

"Yeah. And I got myself a book on glamour and illusions, too, I'll probably read some of that over the next couple of days," she says, rinsing her illusion off herself. "And compose a letter to my father to explain why I'm running away from home. By the way I'm running away from home, I'm quite over living under his roof after spending six months as a practitioner in the forties."

"Good choice. Are you running away to anywhere, or just anywhere that isn't here?"

"I was thinking Toronto."

"I'm not very familiar with what practitioner society looks like there. The Lord of the city is an Incarnation of conquest, so you might want to avoid getting on his bad side."

She nods. "Is there anything in particular I should do because he's an Incarnation of conquest specifically?"

"I couldn't say. Make sure not to give him any reason to think something of yours belongs to him, because he will take it, and try not to make anything sound like a competition. Even that is mostly guesswork."

"—I do have to give him some form of gift, when I get there. That sounds like it might be, ah, thorny. With an Incarnation of conquest."

"Oh, that's fine. Then you aren't expecting to get it back anyway. And it is normal etiquette, so he won't want to subvert it very much any more than you would."

"Might he not want me to somehow submit or something, as a gift? Or make a show of not wanting to give him the gift so he can take it anyway, or something like that."

"Maybe he'd prefer that? If so, safer to just act like normal and make sure not to use phrases like "at your service." Even if he prefers taking things, he can't expect you to play along unprompted."

"I suppose you're right."

"Keep in mind I'm speculating. If you get there and you think something else is a better idea, you'll probably be better informed by then."

"Mmhm. We'll see when I get there. Also can I say I have missed having signal on my phone it's so great—"

"Welcome back to civilization."

"Thank you!"

She finishes showering.

When she's done, Johannes is fairly easy to find and has come up with a list of clients currently in the park who might be willing to hear her out on the money thing. Relatively speaking. He notes that they usually stay for a while on the scale of days, so if she wants to try suggesting it there's no hurry.

Yeah she might try that.

Some of them sound potentially unsavory. A headless horseman. A faerie from one of the winter courts. A Djinn. It's not a very long list; this demesne caters primarily to Others who remember the old days, and the older Others rarely have use for money.

None of the occupants will harm a practitioner in here, but Johannes offers to accompany Sadde if she thinks it would help anything.

She doesn't think it'll help, actually; they'll probably respect her more if she goes alone.

Seems plausible. Preferences on what order?

The fae sounds like a good one to start.

Her area of Johannes' demesne is in a shopping mall, or at least the weird reflection of one. Inside, stores turn into caves and escalators into winding paths. It's just generally a lot harder to keep track of a destination than any competent building designer would want it to be.

Up what seems to be a non-integer number of floors, there's a cave marked by a tree bearing a single enormous fruit with one proportionately sized bite taken out of it. There. It's unoccupied at the moment, except by a handful of vestiges dancing and not looking very happy about it. Not all of them are still standing.

The person she's looking for arrives soon after Sadde steps on a twig. She's ugly, is the first and most obvious sight. Could not be any more wizened and warped if she had appearance-altering magic and centuries of experience. She declines to give her name, but says that Sadde may call her Gwyll.

"It is an honour to meet you, Gwyll. I am called Sadde."

"An honor? Perhaps. Meeting you is at the least a curiosity, Sadde. You came here looking for me, a rare trait among those who find me."

"Yes. I have... an offer, and it's one I don't expect many would take but I honestly believe it will better the lives of those who take it in the majority of the time."

"The same could be said of quite a few interesting gambles."

"That's true. Mine's... less of a gamble, more of a custom of sorts? Non-practitioners don't really barter anymore—I apologise if I give offence, but I don't know how much contact to expect you to have with non-practitioner society and history."

"More than some. I am a gatekeeper of sorts. If you imagine a lone traveler with little familiarity with any one place, I know around the amount that they did."

She nods. "Non-practitioners trade in money, so they don't get disadvantages by trade. I—some sixty years ago—invented a magical equivalent. I believe everyone, practitioner and Other alike, can benefit from its use."

"And you're here to offer me some in hopes that I join your society of merchants?"

"Well my hope is that the entirety of society adopts it. I think late history shows that everyone gets richer when this transition happens."

"When I make a transaction between equals, it is nearly always with other faerie. You suggest introducing currency, and you may well be correct about it being more efficient. But it is also more mundane, and more boring."

"Hmm, when's trading with other faerie the most interesting?"

"When it is part of a long game, or when both parties believe themselves to be getting the better end of the deal, or when it serves multiple ends simultaneously."

"And if you trade with other faerie, for being a gatekeeper, you will very, very often know much more than they do about exactly how much currency's actually worth, will you not?"

"It would be worth whatever others believe it worth, child, that is how faerie courts work. You're suggesting that it might be worth more in one place than another. But ferrying between them would be a profit, not a challenge or a game."

"You obviously know more about faerie courts than I do," she says, inclining their head, "but they do have value for themselves—namely, what the Lord of Montreal will redeem in power for them. And they're a complicating factor, a new resource for your competitions—gambling works a lot better when the losses are as tangible as this, instead of just a strike to what the spirits fancy as worth."

"But what if we prefer it that way? A strike does not need to be any lighter for being ill-defined, and anything becoming too predictable could defeat the purpose."

So even if she convinces her, she has no reason to announce that she has been convinced. Got it.

"I understand," she says, conceding defeat. "I shall stop wasting your time, then." She reaches inside her bag for a few coins and offers her them. "For your trouble. Regardless of whether you'll use them or not, they have some value, and are, anyway, pretty."

They are pretty. Probably not up to faerie standards or to whatever Gwyll's unorthodox aesthetic sense is, but very neatly designed. The faerie squints and frowns at the motto spiraling around the side showing the diagram that represents Sadde's seal.

"Thank you. I'll consider myself well compensated for the time and trouble.

And allow me to offer you a gift as well. It fits the theme, when the pretty young wanderer with the mysteriously long past meets a crone in the wilderness and treats her well." She reaches into her own purse—no wait, that is a pot—and removes a piece of a branch with no green and three pine cones. "If you find yourself needing it, break one off and throw it to the ground. The first will create dense woods, the second an impassable maze, and the third will call me. If I am nearby I will help if I can."

She accepts it. "Thank you very much." And with that, she leaves.

Now, who's next on her list?

The Dullahan, a headless horseman type who mostly just runs around hunting, and a djinn named Eblis who can be found in the reflected version of the market district. The first dislikes being seen while on his errands, if that applies in here, so she might have to be careful finding him if she wants him to listen.

She can probably walk around his usual hunting spots talking to herself about the advantages of money, then.

The screams give a pretty good indication of what direction he's in, but they also mean he's not paying much attention to economics.

Once they quiet down and a horse walks up to her and a low voice says it's fine; she can look. He's in a black cloak, his horse is black with sparks flashing from its nostrils, and he's carrying a whip made of a spine. Probably human. His head is twice the size of a normal person's, and it's currently secured in front of his left stirrup.

She... is not quite sure what her pitch should be, here. She'll try the basic and go from there, see what sticks.

He has no goods to sell and only the one service. But he'll consider selling it next time he's around Montreal.

That counts as a success, right?

Sure, why not.

Next?

While she's on her way, some vestiges furtively move away from where the horseman was last seen. They're talking to each other. No one's watching them, though, unless Sadde counts.

Talking to each other? How cute. She'll follow them discreetly for a bit.

It's very realistic. A pair of children, sneaking away from the monster, talking in low voices about which way they think will get them out of here.

...yeah. It is quite realistic, isn't it. Anyone else liable to spot her or them that she can notice?

They might spot her, but otherwise anyone present is being even stealthier.

Then she'll follow them around for a bit longer before moving on to her next, ah, customer.

They speculate a bit about who was the person who managed to stall the horseman and how she did it. No guesses good enough to be worth trying.

...

Okay she really doesn't want to think about it now, there's nothing she can immediately do, and she'll—go to her next customer.

The Djinn looks to have set up a dukedom of his own. He is a tall, brown-skinned man with glowing eyes, and has filled the area corresponding to the Jacob's Bell market district with some very incongruous architecture. It's populated by other humanoids of the same general description, with varying amounts of fire in their eyes and smoke around their edges, but not so heavily populated that she can't just walk in and ask to see Eblis.

He isn't interested in the money. Says he predates both this god and his city, and he has little use for a currency backed by the word of a newcomer. Others in his court do take notice.

And if she tries to explain fiat currency, making analogies with the way magic trading works and how the spirits' "beliefs" shape it all...?

He understands how it's supposed to work; he just also thinks it's not for him. If he wanted that he could have set up his own.

That's fair.

Anyone else?

A handful. Some of the ones who look the most human, and a few who look the least. They say they'd be willing to do some genie-ing for that form of payment if they ever happen to be around that Lord's territory, and maybe eventually they'll go out of their way to stop by.

Success, then.

Other Others?

Those were the only ones Johannes pegged as likely to listen to this. Unless she wants to ask around randomly.

Yeah nah, this should be enough for now.

Is... Johannes available?

He's off playing arbiter or possibly arranging a chain of deals for some clients, but he gets back soon after she does.

"Hello again. That was... more successful than I'd expected, but less than I'd hoped."

"Any unambiguous agreements? The faerie or the Djinn could potentially boost demand just by themselves."

"Not really. Some of the Djinn other than Eblis were interested enough to say they'd give it a try but not the man himself."

"I was toying with the idea of inviting the priests to set up a satellite temple here. Could increase their reach a lot and benefit me the obvious way. But it sounds like it wouldn't be worth sacrificing secrecy yet."

"That's fair. Do you have plans for when you want to do that? Sacrifice secrecy, that is."

"Once I'm confident I'd look unassailable. And in case the local players decide to try to oust me right away, I'd rather be actually unassailable. I was expecting to have to build my customer base and stockpile resources for another few years."

"That's fair. Say, I was curious, what are vestiges exactly, again? I ran into some, they're kinda unsettling."

"They're images or echoes. They're most similar to ghosts, except vestiges are duplicating more than a single experience and don't strictly have to be based on a real person. Very uncanny valley, but not dangerous."

"And they're not... people?"

"They're more like recordings of what that person would think or do."

That does not sound like it's that different from an actual person.

She is not powerful enough to take Johannes on.

"Oh, that makes sense," she says, not missing a beat. "Well, I think I'm gonna go study some glamour."

"Not a specialty of mine, unfortunately. Good luck."

"Thanks!"

And she does that for the next two days, with a couple of pauses to go check on her traps and make sure they haven't become soil.

And a few minutes before the fated hour he is nearby, waiting and watching.

It took a bit of extra glamour to disguise smell, since some goblins identify people that way, but now that he has a source of systematic information on illusions he's warned about that in advance.

The goblins arrive when they should and take his past self by surprise.

...wow even with all the disgusting his past self is pretty hot. That's quite something to watch.

He sees himself use the sympathetic trick with the rock, then the glamour with the Swiss Army Knife. The goblin breaks it and his past self tries to stab him—

—his present self pulls on a little hidden bit of rope, the goblin trips on it, that's the oath satisfied, right?—

While he's doing it he feels a rush of energy. It's less on the scale of superhuman powers than getting a second wind thanks to a really cool soundtrack, but evidently the oath thinks he was acting toward completing it. And he did in fact bring the goblin down in multiple senses. So probably.

Awesome! He gets some bottled water on his face to clean off the glamour and then replace it, then he waits for the moment when he's eaten—

The two combatants stumble into the circle. It contracts around them, one of the rocks making contact with the goblin. Both of them disappear in the eyeblink it takes for the circle to close.

And he pulls on the rope that will cause the net to capture the remaining goblins and steps out of hiding, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"Oh no whatever could have happened here."

He gets...most of them. Some are outside the coverage area, and some of the really small ones slip through.

Mostly they're just cursing at him and occasionally scrambling against each other trying to get out. That part's messy.

"It looks like I won, I think," he says casually, never minding the escapees. "Or does anyone else want to try their luck?"

He pulls some more on the rope, causing most of the goblins to get even more tangled up as they try to get out.

Also pressing them together. Some of the ones in the lower layers aren't happy about it.

One of the escapees yells from behind him, in a surprisingly audible voice, "Hey Shitcrumb! Easy—"