“I’ll never forgive her for this,” Orenda fumed as she followed Klin through the underbelly of a castle, “I’ve half a mind to slay her myself.”

“Really?” Klin asked as he reached up and turned one of the stones, so like all the others, to the side and listened for the click before he shoved against the wall and watched a portion of it give way.

“How dare she?” Orenda asked. “The audacity!”

The room they walked into was filled with all manner of oddities; strange, ancient books, a plethora of clothing in different styles, but the same shockingly small size, weapons and shields from nearly every corner of the planet.

Klin made a humming sound, but Orenda could not tell if it was in agreement or if he was only politely informing her that he had heard her. He walked to a chest, knelt, and tried to open it, found it would not budge, then reached into the bag at his side and produced a set of keys.

“Can you hear me!?” Orenda asked, “Your silence grates on my nerves!”

“Yes, your majesty,” Klin said as he unlocked the chest and pulled it open, then reached inside and began taking things out; small metal contraptions, a long tarp, something that seemed to be made of fur, stuffing them all into the bag on his hip.

“She can’t kick me out of my own kingdom,” Orenda yelled.

“I hate it here,” Klin said, “I… didn’t never stay here that much, really. I mean, even when I wouldn’t off fightin I just kinda… I dunno… I went huntin a lot.”

“I don’t care,” Orenda said.

“I didn’t think you did,” Klin said, “I just thought you wanted like… sound in the room… It’s like… the thing about all that is…”

He seemed to have finished with the chest and walked over to a rack of weapons, studying each in turn.

“If you really wanted to kill ‘er, she’d be dead,” Klin shrugged, “if you really didn’t wanna go, you wouldn’t go. It’s a kind’a… almost incomprehensible power… I probably ain’t the one to try and bullshit this particular emotional breakdown on… if you was as mad as you said you was ain’t no way in hell you wouldn’t be on fire. That’s… that’s all I’m sayin. I wouldn’t… bitch about my friends. You ain’t always gonna have ‘em.”

“Shut up, Klin,” Orenda snarled.

“Now usually, I would,” Klin said, “but I swore an allegiance to the crown and you ain’t prepared to go to the Frozen North. Listen at me, Your Majesty. I’ll support whatever you do, but make a decision because this ain’t no light undertakin either way. You think that snowstorm y’all blew in was somethin? You don’t know what cold is. We gonna get up there and you gotta send soldiers out into the freezin water to break up the ice just so you can get close. Then you gotta scale a giant wall ‘a ice. Once you finally get over that, you get up there an’ you realize you’re blind. It’s white; every bit of it is white, the sun hits that snow and you can’t see shit- it hurts to open your eyes- but ya think to yourself, ‘that’s fine, it’ll be alright once the sun sets’- but here’s the fucked up part: the sun don’t never set. From the time I got up there in the spring to the time we left, the sun set once. It’s a good… three months up there, three months back… we woulda left… right at the start a’ fall. I went two seasons never saw the stars come out. Not once. That whole place got a real… eerie feelin about it. Somethin ain’t right up there.”

He gazed at the pickaxe he was holding and shoved it, with some difficult maneuvering, into his bag. “I’m damn near positive that’s the place Magnus was cursed. That’s where he lives. I think that’s where the Crystal City is.”

“My friend Toli said something about that,” Orenda said, “but I honestly don’t remember what. It was a long time ago. But if you plan to lead Anilla to the demon Magnus, this entire trip shall be a waste. He’s dead. I threw him into the Sacred Flame at the Sacred Mountain temple.”

“He don’t stay dead,” Klin said as if it was self-explanatory and common, “I done killed him a good… three times. He’s got nine lives like a cat or somethin. Deader’n hell, too. I was lookin at a corpse. I carved that demon up in hand-to-hand combat. He bleeds black, which… takes some gettin’ used to. But he ain’t… I don’t think he’s a bad guy… I mean… not compared to me. Which I guess,” he shrugged, “ain’t sayin much. When’d you kill him?”

“When I retrieved the staff,” Orenda explained.

“I’m just tryin to figure out if that was before or after the last time I talked to him,” Klin said, “probably before. That’d explain his hair. I was wonderin why he cut his hair. I ain’t never seen somebody come back from bein so dead. I mean, I cut out whole organs. But, ya know… demon. You better get you some winter clothes. I mean it; you don’t know how cold it’s gonna be.”

“Don’t lecture me,” Orenda told him.

“I get that you hate me,” Klin said, “but I ain’t fuckin with you. I been up there and it killed people. I come back with… almost nobody. And the critters up there don’t fuck around. The sasquatches there can pick ours up and throw em around; the dragons are big as houses; there’s these elephants twice as tall as a man- like a grown man, not like me- covered in fur that stampede at the drop of a hat… good eatin though… and on the way up there there’s critters in the water bigger’n anything I ever seen in my life. That place is… weird.”

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“I’m immortal,” Orenda said, “I don’t need your advice.”

“Don’t take it then,” Klin said, “see where that gets ya.”

He was trying his best to shove one of many metal shields into the bag, and it absolutely did not want to fit. He had to take the bag off and hold it while he shoved with his feet.

“Will you be down here a while?” Orenda asked.

“Yeah, I gotta get all this packed,” Klin explained, “Gimme all your stuff, too. You ain’t gonna be able to walk around up there with all the stuff you’d have to carry.”

“Come and find me when you’ve finished,” Orenda told him.

“Yes, your majesty,” Klin said as the shield finally slid inside the bag with a satisfying shiiiiiiiifth sound.

“Mary Sue!” Orenda demanded as she burst into the library, “I’m quite cross with you!”

“I know,” Mary Sue said, “You wanna see the plans I got for the new tower? It’s got these kinda spring things under ‘em that shake durin an earthquake. I found this book on the architecture of the water continent and they use ‘em all the time. One of their islands, well, a bunch ‘a their islands, is on a fault line. We eventually need to put these under the whole castle.”

“You shouldn’t have made this announcement behind my back,” Orenda said.

“I probably ought not’a,” Mary Sue agreed, “but it’s done. I ain’t gonna spend all day fightin about it, ‘specially as giddy as you are. You walkin on air. You ain’t even asked why I’m up here instead’a in front of the nobles. You already checked out, already decided to go.”

“Why are you up here?” Orenda asked. “Instead of meeting with parliament?”

“Half of ‘em lost their absolute shit,” Mary Sue laughed, “straight up, no beatin around the bush lost their damn minds. Said they’d be goddamned if they was gonna sit before a human, that feller said he was gonna throw a punch at Lorry finally did, and good god whole damn thing turned into a bar fight. But, refusal to participate in the office you’re assigned due to any of our new protective statuses is a crime, so Sonny went in there and broke ‘em up and now half of ‘em are down in the dungeon and it is beautiful.”

“What?” Orenda asked, “You’ve imprisoned half of parliament?”

“I didn’t imprison nobody, Sonny did. Drunk off his ass pullin them little fuckers apart, was like watchin when the kids fight,” Mary Sue laughed.

“Was he… noticeably drunk?” Orenda asked.

“Nah, he sobers up pretty quick. We all do. We got hella metabolism, I think. Honey and Bunni’s tryin to come up with a way to test metabolic rates- they run into that same problem, by the way, I got a letter from Honey about it. Got rejected from peer review from the Academy of Sciences on account’a they got their citizenship in question. An’ I mean… hell, daddy found the three ‘a them on the water continent so… lord knows. I’ll get it all straightened out with the citizenship ID thing.”

“You… you really do seem to be doing rather well without me,” Orenda said.

“Rendy, I helped daddy run the Knights of Order for years,” Mary Sue said, “I know more about leadin than you do. Everything’s gonna be fine. You can trust me. We’ll all be right here and safe when you get back. And like I said, if somethin’ comes up, we’ll scry you.”

“Did Junior go home?” Orenda asked.

“Nah, he’s took over one of the rooms on that other tower in the west, the one he put the antenna up on. I told him where you was goin and he’s up there talkin ‘bout, ‘Don’t let her leave yet’ and ‘solar radiation filtration’ this and ‘electric heat’ that. And I said to him, ‘Darlin, she’s gotta wait on the ship to get here. She can’t teleport.’ Solo’s runnin the lab back at the house and she’s just about got as bad as he is. He knows his ass can’t stay here. We trying to open up a school. If I can put up with my siblin stupidity I can take anything these elves throw at me. He’s just… he’s more aggravatin than the others… we got that...” she paused, as if in thought and then shrugged, “I dunno. I can’t explain it. Twins are weird.”

“You’re both very intelligent,” Orenda observed, watching Mary Sue solving math equations in the margins of her drawing, “but in very different ways.”

“Daddy always said our mama must’a been smart,” Mary Sue said, “it’s weird to think about. How many other breeders coulda been geniuses but died in childbirth or just… wore out? That line a’ work kills your body early. Bunni says it eats up the calcium; says you lose a tooth for every baby.”

“Pregnancy is an unknowable hellscape,” Orenda said, “from what I’ve heard. I can’t imagine.”

“Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll have no kids,” Mary Sue agreed, “plus I’ve raised half my siblin’s and I think I’m ‘bout burnt out on it. We get these little’ins grown that’s probably enough Brigaddons for a little bit. So, you gonna go?”

“I suppose I have no choice,” Orenda answered, much more crossly than she felt.

“Don’t pull that bullshit, Rendy,” Mary Sue said, “make a decision and stick by it. Life’s easier that way. Besides, I think Ani’s stealin your man whether you go or not.”

“I don’t think she could,” Orenda said, “I’ve never seen her show any interest in men, honestly.”

“What? I meant like… stealin him as in takin him with her,” Mary Sue stopped writing to look up at her, “Aaaaaaw. That’s cute as hell.”

“Stop it,” Orenda dismissed.

“You got a type and it ain’t for me but I ain’t ‘bout to say nothin,” Mary Sue smiled as she went back to writing, “I don’t know what you see with them little bitty earth elves. Try not to set this’in on fire, though. Toli wouldn’t shut the hell up about it. ‘Wanna know how I got these scars?’ No, motherfucker.”

“I’ve not seen the crew of the Burned Roc in months,” Orenda said, “Not since they set sail.”

“Yeah, it’ll be nice to see Gary and Belle again,” Mary Sue agreed, “I mean, the little ones- well, both sets, I guess. I just wonder how them younguns that hadn’t never really stepped foot out the house is doin on the high seas. Wonder if it suits ‘em as much as they thought it would.”