When Josh had been abducted by Orlad, the latter had made it perfectly clear that he had hated Lady Paleyne. So what were they doing in a room together?

Josh didn’t even know which faction Orlad represented.

He made an excuse to Ramina about going to the bathroom and worked his way through the crowd to the side room. He took a quick glance around to make sure no-one was looking at him, and put his ear to it. There was no sound, but he did feel the telltale buzz of magic. He was getting better at detecting magic. It felt similar to the Silence spell that Lady Paleyne had cast. It was a very small spell that was easily breakable with Chi Siphon. Of course, if he did that, Lady Paleyne would immediately realise he was listening in.

He put his hand on the door and, very gently, tried to prise it open a crack. The door shifted a centimetre and then stopped, leaving a tiny gap. There was something blocking it. Josh squinted. There was a latch, fastened from the inside.

He looked around, but no-one in the crowd was paying him any attention.

He put his eye to the crack, but all he could see was a narrow strip of the room. And a vase lying on the floor. It wasn’t broken, but it looked like it had been knocked off a table.

So, not a secret assignation then. More like a secret ambush.

Lady Paleyne was immensely annoying, but she was technically a co-conspirator, albeit a reluctant one, whereas Orlad was definitely up to no good.

This called for the Paper Swiss Army Knife. Josh pulled it out, and looked around again to make sure there was no-one with a player core nearby, since they were the most likely people to have a magic sense. He cast Stone, opened out the knife tool, and then slid it between the door and the jamb. The latch flicked up.

He pushed open the door and slipped into the room.

Lady Paleyne was backed up against a wall, her expression white and pinched, while Orlad was standing over her, one hand flat against the wall by her head. At first glance they might have been taken for a couple flirting, but Lady Paleyne’s body language was defensive, and Orlad’s was threatening.

Josh was standing right inside the silence spell, so he couldn’t hear anything, not even the crowd. He took a couple of steps away from the door, and his hearing returned.

“You’ll tell me where it is,” Orlad was saying. “If you know what’s good for you.”

He must have caught sight of Josh in his peripheral vision, because he turned and said menacingly, “This doesn’t concern you—” and then his face changed, flushing brick red with anger. “You!” he snarled.

He strode towards Josh, clenching his fists. The last time they had met, Josh had been tied to a chair, and probably hadn’t seem like much of a threat. However, since then he’d been practicing hard with the staff and going to the weapons training for hours every day.

Orlad swung a punch at his head, and Josh evaded it easily. He felt confidence rushing through him. He could do this! He circled around, dodging another punch, and ended up near the wall opposite the door. He needed to stop being on the defensive, but he had no experience of boxing, and had a lighter, leaner build than Orlad. Josh was unlikely to win a fist fight, but neither would he be able to dodge for ever.

There was a pole leaning beside the window, with a metal attachment on the end of it for snuffing out the candles on a chandelier. Josh grabbed it, and held it out with the blunt end facing towards Orlad.

Orlad sneered and rushed him. Josh slapped Orlad’s raised fists down and away, and danced to the side. The second time Orlad came at him, Josh repeated the move, but followed up with a jab to Orlad’s head, which landed on his cheekbone and mostly served to send him to greater heights of fury. The third time, Orlad managed to get hold of the pole.

Josh had been waiting for this. He used the leverage that gave him to kick Orlad’s knee, then twisted the staff out of his hands. It was a new move he’d learned a few days ago, and he was delighted to find that it worked.

Orlad was limping now.

“Coward!” he yelled.

In the next exchange, Josh landed a solid blow on Orlad’s temple, which didn’t knock him out, but it did make him stagger and fall. Josh strode immediately to the door. He shook a Chi Siphon out of his sleeve and pressed it against the densest concentration of magic, which was on the latch, and cast it.

The noise of the crowd filtered back in as the silence spell dispersed. Josh wondered how it was shaped. It hadn’t been a bubble, more like a wall. But now wasn’t a good time to think about spell mechanics, because Orlad had lumbered to his feet and was shaking his head.

“Damn you for a poltroon,” he cursed.

He grabbed the table that had held the fallen vase and charged straight at Josh, who dodged and rolled out of the way at the last moment. Orlad ran straight into the door. The wall separating this room from the main hall was little more than a wooden screen. So when Orlad went crashing into it, the entire thing shook and rattled in a way that would be impossible for anyone in the main hall to miss.

“Well done,” Lady Paleyne said faintly.

Josh looked over and saw that she had dark circles under her eyes again, and she was using the wall to prop herself up. She must have come in here to recover after using up the rest of her magic on Northcrag, but that was a conversation that could be put off for later.

Right now, Josh had an influx of concerned party goers to deal with.

“What the hell is going on here?” There were now three men clustered in the doorway, all nobles of one sort or another.

Orlad had managed to regain his balance, but he was looking somewhat the worse for wear, with a bright red mark on his face where Josh had jabbed him with the pole, and reddened knuckles where Josh had hit the back of his hands.

“That coward fought me—an unarmed man—with that stick!” he cried pointing at Josh.

“Oh, I say!” The lead man in the doorway looked disapprovingly at Josh.

Josh opened his mouth to defend himself, but was beaten to it by Lady Paleyne.

“Only because you came at him with a table!” she said to Orlad, in a fainting sort of voice that nevertheless managed to project itself clearly.

She came away from the wall as she spoke, and swayed, as if unable to keep her balance. She looked like she was going to fall. Josh hastily put the candle snuffing pole back and hurried over to her, just in case. As soon as he reached her, she clutched his arm and leaned heavily against him. She really was as tired as she looked.

The three men looked down at the fallen vase, and the overturned table, which was now lying next to Orlad, corroborating Lady Paleyne's story.

“You lying little—” Orlad began, with gritted teeth.

By this point Josh had cottoned on to the part Lady Paleyne wanted him to play.

“How dare you speak to Lady Paleyne that way!” He made himself sound outraged, which wasn't hard.

Lady Paleyne gave a little sob that sounded so realistic Josh genuinely thought for a moment that she was about to cry.

“This is all my fault,” she said, in piteous tones. “I only slipped in here for a minute or so to recover. I was exhausted demonstrating my poor talent for the King.” She pointed at Orlad. “That man followed me, and—” She turned her head away, as if she couldn’t bear to complete the sentence.

“Oh, I say, the rotter!” one of the men in the doorway exclaimed.

“Your intervention was most timely, my dear sir,” Lady Paleyne said to Josh, in a voice that sounded low, but must have been audible to everyone in the room.

“It was my pleasure to assist.” Josh was, in fact, pleased that he had kept his head, and successfully defended himself against a bigger, more experienced opponent. Having to put up with Lady Paleyne's theatrics was minor by comparison, particularly because it was now her turn to defend him.

“How can you brazenly stand there and—I demand satisfaction!” Orlad said furiously.

Josh didn’t immediately understand what he meant, but Lady Paleyne gave a heartrending cry.

“Oh no! Do not, I beg you!” She was appealing to Josh now, who was thoroughly confused. “I could not bear it if you were hurt or killed on my account!”

Oh. Orlad had been calling Josh out in a duel.

“Not in front of the lady,” one of the men in the doorway said testily to Orlad. “Why don’t you take yourself off, man, and stop causing trouble? Call on the fellow in the morning, eh? Sort it out then.”

Orlad drew in a breath, perhaps to expostulate, but Lady Paleyne chose that moment to fall into a graceful faint in Josh’s arms. Perhaps realising that he had been outmanoeuvred by a master manipulator, Orlad set his jaw and pushed roughly through the knot of men at the door.

“Er,” Josh said helplessly. There was a couch against the far wall, a spindly thing with gold brocade upholstery. He clasped Lady Paleyne to him with one hand, and managed to get his other hand under her knees, lifting her up in his arms as if she was a fainting heroine in a melodrama.

He carried her over to the couch, and laid her on it carefully, at which point she came awake, fluttering her eyes dramatically, and clasping a hand to her breast.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

A great deal of fuss followed. Some ladies turned up—Josh had no idea who they were, but one of them immediately sat beside Lady Paleyne and began patting her hands in a comforting manner, while another impatiently shooed all the men out of the room.

Josh let himself be shooed. He decided his side quest had taken long enough, and he should find Ramina again. Despite her eye-catching attire, however, he couldn’t see her anywhere.

Instead, making her way through the crowd, looking quite at home, was the Queen of the Fey

She wore a dress of shimmering blues and greens, embroidered in silver thread, with her golden hair piled up high on her head, revealing delicate pointed ears, and ringlets cascading onto one white shoulder. She had no veil across her face this time, but Josh immediately knew it was her.

He eyebrows rose when she saw him.

“Josh Armstrong!” she said.

He bowed in the local manner, and she curtseyed politely in response. What was she doing here? Had she come to unmask him as an outlander? The last time he had seen her was when he had been kneeling near the standing stones, less than an hour after he had arrived in Six Spires, while one of her huntsmen had held his hair, and the one called Charral had acted very much as if she wanted to cut his throat.

“It’s Josh de Haven, actually, Your Majesty.”

His etiquette tutor hadn’t covered this encounter. All the stupid local customs were still swirling around in his brain, and perhaps he hadn’t quite fallen out of character after participating in Lady Paleyne’s little play, because he held his arm out to her as if offering her an escort.

“De Haven?” She said musingly. “Very well. I am also incognito.”

To his surprise, she took his arm. She still had the feather bracelet he had made her around her wrist. Or had she put it on specially before coming here?

“You’re wearing the bracelet,” Josh said stupidly, and immediately felt his ears and neck start to flush. He didn’t know why he was so embarrassed.

“Of course,” she said.

Josh cast another glance down at it. He was much better at making things with feathers now. He noticed several things about it he would do differently if he had the chance.

“I can make a better one if you want,” he offered.

She gave him a thoughtful glance.

“This one is fine.”

“Would you like me to make it glow?”

She looked amused.

“Very well.”

He covered her arm with his hand, gave a quick look around to make sure no-one was looking, and quietly cast the Glow spell. When he removed his hand, the bracelet was covered with tiny blue-green sparkles.

“Pretty,” she commented.

By mutual consent they moved towards a table that had been set up with glasses of wine and canapés. Last time she had seemed to know about Earth, and she had asked Josh if he knew who she was, despite the fact that he was a newly arrived outlander. Did she know about Spiralia Online?

"So..." he said. "You know about the game." He was careful to phrase it as a statement, because you didn't just go asking questions of the fey.

"I know lots of games."

"The game," he said. "The one that brought me here."

She slid a glance up at him, and the weight of her presence increased. Even the crowd around them felt it, because several people shifted further away, without quite realising why.

That was a really cool trick. Could she do that because she was the Queen of the Fey?

"Yes, I have heard of the game. Before that it was books. And before that..." Her voice trailed away, then resumed with a warning note. "You may not presume on your apparent feelings of familiarity with me."

Did that mean players had tried to flirt with her after completing the questline in Spiralia Online, or reading books set in the world in which she featured? Was that how she knew about it?

“That wasn't my intention," Josh said quickly. He cleared his throat. "It seems like the game is based on this world, not the other way around."

"If that is what you see, that it must be so."

Her answer implied it was more complicated than that.

"But..." Josh said slowly, "Also many of the people, the local people, seem as if they came from my world. At some point."

He selected a glass of wine and presented it to her while she considered his words.

"I wanted to be an actress," she said unexpectedly. "My mother died when I was young, my father was strongly religious, and strict with it. I ran away from home after I saw a play for the first time in my life, and thought it the most beautiful and thrilling thing I had ever encountered. Suffice it to say, life in the big city did not match my expectations."

That wasn't the origin story for the Queen of the Fey at all. She was supposed to be centuries old, and part of a hereditary bloodline, descended from the first dryad of a special tree or something. Spiralia Online liked hereditary nobility with unique magic that allowed them to prove it—like Queen Halina's connection to Celespire, or the little huldra Queen and her crystal array.

"How did you ... get to where you are now?" Josh asked, before he remembered it was a bad idea to ask questions.

"I was offered a part in a play, in which many performers had mysteriously dropped out. I didn't stop to consider what might have befallen them, and found myself sharing their fate." The Queen paused, then smiled. "I found myself in fairyland.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, but she held up her hand to stop him.

"But those times are past. It is the future which concerns me now. I came to pass on a warning that a great threat is now loose once again, but I find that my words are not needed, and that Mayad’s Chosen is the fulcrum upon which the fate of the world turns.” She paused, and added in an undertone, “Interfering old besom.”

Mayad again, the goddess of the ruins of Aileth-Mair, to whom Josh had prayed for guidance. It was shortly after that he decided to seek out the Dreamer. The change in the Queen’s tone gave Josh the courage to ask another question.

“What is the world-shattering threat everyone keeps talking about? Is it the power of the Dreamer?”

The Queen looked at him thoughtfully over the rim of her wine glass. Her eyes were like deep, dark forest pools.

“They didn’t tell you, did they? Well, no reason that they would. You should read Tomas Welverly’s account of it.”

More riddles and obfuscation, Josh thought irritably.

She tipped back her head and drained her wine glass, her throat swelling as she swallowed. She cast the glass aside onto the table, and delicately touched the tip of a finger to her mouth to catch a bead of wine, then licked it with her tongue.

“That’s two of your three questions,” she said.

What?

“I didn’t know we were playing the three questions game!”

She laughed.

“That’s what makes it so fun. Choose your last question wisely.”

He returned to the subject of his first question, the thing he most wanted to know.

“Who, or what, brought me here?”

Some of the humour drained from her face.

“So many of your kind simply don’t want to know. They want to believe it’s fate, that they are the hero of their own story. So many stories. And yet so few heroes.” She paused. “Alas, you ask one of the few questions I am bound not to answer. You may ask another.”

“How can I find out who, or what, brought me here?”

She smiled approvingly.

“Speak to the first one. There’s always a first. The seed of the world, as it were.”

What did she mean by the first? The first person taken from Earth? The first outlander? One of the Seven Heroes, Josh thought. Sir Owain. Gwynifer the Dreamer. Gwynifer’s sister, Tigerlily. Doug and Lady Selene. Wayland. Lord Shadow. And then the eighth one, the one no-one ever mentioned.

“Anthony Harrison.” It was pure guesswork, but he saw the answer in her eyes.

“An insolent toad!” she said. “Let us not speak of him any further.”

A voice behind him said, “Hey!” and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find Ramina standing behind him.

“Bin lookin’ all over for ya,” she said. “Come on. Need your expertise.”

“Oh—” he glanced back at the Queen of the Fey, but found to his shock that she was no longer by his side. He looked round. There was no sign of her, only the empty glass abandoned on the table. The hair on the back of his neck lifted.

“Come on,” Ramina repeated impatiently.

What did she want? Josh set down his own glass, half-drunk, trying to shake off the shivery feeling, and followed her.

“If," he said over her shoulder, "you’ve found somewhere you can eavesdrop and you want me to remove some kind of magical barrier that’s in your way, I’m not interested.”

“What? But you’re me partner in crime!”

“It’s one thing to listen in on Silbury who knows what you’re up to,” Josh hissed, checking around them to make sure no-one was close enough to overhear. “This is the Palace! It’s got a King! And guards!”

“My Uncle Harvey,” she announced, “always gave me a sweetie when he found me listenin’ in.”

“He should have given you a smack.”

“He did that too,” Ramina disclosed. “But that was only on account of me being caught.”

“You get caught because you’re really bad at it!”

“Don’t matter!” she said confidently. “If ya do it enough times people just give up tryin’ to stop ya.”

“That’s not how espionage is supposed to work!”

Ramina ignored this.

“Some drunken floozie at Crosskeys sold me these,” she said, fishing a couple of small seashells out of a small black velvet purse that dangled from her wrist.

“You’ve been hanging out with Doug?”

“Mighta’ visited the place a coupla’ times.”

She tipped one of the shells into Josh’s palm. It gave off a very, very faint sense of magic. He stared at it curiously.

“Don’t tell me this is some kind of listening device.”

“You catch on quick.”

“And where are you planning to plant this?”

“Me? I’m not going to plant it anywhere.” She looked at him expectantly.

Josh closed his hand over the shell and hid it behind his back.

“Great, because neither am I.”

“Hey!” She reached for it, but he twisted away. “Give that back!”

“Too late.”

“You don’t know what you’re missin’ out on!” Ramina cast hasty glances to either side, then stepped closer, dropping her voice. “Word is, the King's going to give Sir Owain a Quest.”

She seemed to expect him to know what that meant. Josh could guess. The King wanted something done and was going to send Sir Owain to sort it out, but would dress it up in fancy language. It was a Quest with a capital Q.

“You want to plant this on Sir Owain?”

“Yeah!”

Josh wanted to find a wooden panel just so he could thunk his head against it.

“Let me get this straight—you want to plant a dodgy magic device which you bought of a drunk person in a pub, and plant it on an immortal knight, who probably has an extremely well-developed magic sense, right before he has a secret conference with the King?”

“Yeah…?” Ramina said.

“How have you survived this long?”

Ramina grinned.

“Treasure and treachery!”

Josh sighed.

“Don’t plant it on Sir Owain. Put it on the underling he brought with him.”

Deathless’s character sheet had said Oathbound Knight. If he was a Knight class, he might not have a very high magic sense.

Ramina scowled. “You do it.”

He took her hand and pressed the shell into it.

“Trust me, it will go much better if you do it. He’s more likely to want to talk to you than to me.”

In fact, in the end, it was very easy, once Josh had coached her through it, and was helped considerably by the fact that Deathless had barely lifted his gaze from Ramina’s cleavage the entire time she spoke to him.

“What’s the range on it?” Josh asked, once Ramina had woven her way back through the crowd.

“Not far. I reckon we’ll have to stay inside the Palace.”

“Let’s go and see if one of the side rooms is free.” Josh wondered how much espionage had already been carried out in those rooms tonight. Probably a great deal.

They found one that was empty. Josh flicked the latch, then Ramina held the companion shell in her cupped hands. They both bent their heads to listen.

Disappointingly, Deathless wasn’t invited into Sir Owain’s audience with the King. They were treated to about fifteen minutes of him standing in a corridor, and occasionally walking up and down it while he waited. Sir Owain came out again, luckily before Ramina exploded with impatience.

“Shoulda’ put it on Sir Owain,” she said, for what felt like the fiftieth time.

“Shush!”

They heard Deathless’s voice, small and tinny, but noticeably eager.

“Did we get it, sir?”

A pause.

“I,” Sir Owain said, stressing the pronoun pointedly, “got a Quest from the King to find the missing fragments. Which means the fates will align to light the way for me, and make my job a whole lot easier.”

What did that mean? If you got a quest did it make the odds of you succeeding slightly better? Did that happen only if the King offered the quest, or would it work with system quests too? Or was it just when Heroes got them?

“Your role will be quite different,” Sir Owain said.

“Yes, sir?”

“You recall the message I received this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir!”

“It was from … an old acquaintance.” Another pause, then a sigh. “The timing is inconvenient. But I am told there is a member of the scourge recently arrived in the city. It will be your job to hunt them down.”

Josh stopped breathing.

“Yes, sir!” Deathless sounded fervent.

There was little of interest after that, and they were interrupted when someone knocked on the door of their side room. Ramina hastily hid the seashell, and smiled brightly at the people on the other side of the door when she opened it.

Josh realised his hands were shaking. He clenched them to his sides, and tried to breath normally.

Who had the letter referred to? Was it Ramina?

Or had someone been warning Sir Owain about Josh?