September 1069

"Why?" Eadric asked.

"Well, Eadric, I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't have breasts," I said dryly.

Elfleda suppressed a snort, and Eva seemed caught between acting mortified and giggling.

"More seriously, you asked me to look after your children at court. This is me, doing that, enlisting someone that can help," I said. "I can guarantee you, if Eva tried to emulate me at court, that wouldn't end well. For anyone. In any way."

Eadric eadriced, first at me, then at Elfleda. "And why are you doing this?" he asked Elfleda.

"Because Harry asked," she said in surprisingly good, if clearly accented, English. "And it's a simple enough thing, what he's asking."

"I can't look after her all the time, Eadric," I said. "And I definitely can't teach her everything she needs to know to thrive in this environment, assuming you still want her to be a lady and not go into a nunnery or run off into the woods to become a woods-witch hermit."

Eadric grunted eadricly, not looking away from Elfleda. After looking her up and down in a decidedly eadricy fashion, he finally sighed and looked up at me. "Fine. Fine."

"Excellent," Elfleda said. "Now the first order of business: Eva's new clothes."

Eva blinked. "What?"

"Court has certain expectations. You can likely ignore most of them if you're content with not grasping power and influence, but there are some you simply have to follow if you don't wish to be ostracized. Fashion is one of those," Elfleda said. "And first impressions are nigh-impossible to do over. So, let's go, before the court as a whole meets you."

Eva looked around a little uncertainly, at me, her father, her brother, Elfleda. I shrugged and nodded, Eadric grunted, and Cuthbert seemed caught between less-than-subtly checking out Elfleda and warily eyeing me. After that rousing show of support, Eva slowly got up and went to follow Elfleda, while I left the room.

Once I was a bit down the hall I slowed, and waited for two things: Eva and Elfleda to catch up, and for Eadric to close the door to his room. Then I asked, "Is there a private room around here?"

Elfleda hummed and looked around, then pointed at a door. "I believe that room is unoccupied. And unlocked."

"Hmm." I went over, tried the handle, then peeked in once I found it was open. It looked like the normal, noble-standard guest room that was common throughout the castle; clearly, it had been built with an eye towards having a much higher capacity at times. Probably a safe assumption for something intended to be an eventual royal retreat. I went in, waved for Eva and Elfleda to follow, then closed the door and threw up a veil around us. It wasn't the best, but since I didn't need to care about visuals I could instead focus on muffling and distorting sound, making it so that any conversation was warped into an indistinct buzz past its boundary.

"Alright, let's make more formal introductions. Eva, Elfleda. Elfleda, Eva. If you two could shake hands?" I asked.

Eva hesitantly looked at Elfleda and stretched out her hand, while Elfleda did the same much more confidently. When they touched, Eva jumped, while Elfleda just arched an eyebrow.

"Great, that's out of the way," I said. "Now, what I said to your father still applies, Eva. When it comes to how the court operates, she's going to be teaching and looking after you. Beyond that, she's going to be helping and covering with your… clothing problem."

"Which I will need to know the details of, to present the best solution," Elfleda said.

Eva was still in the process of blinking and looking back and forth between me and Elfleda, before finally settling on the latter. "Are you a witch too?" she asked.

Elfleda looked my way. "Am I?"

"Uhm… I mean, in the sense of being a female practitioner of magic, yes, but… I think it's also a technical term for someone with a particular set of abilities. In which case, no." I looked at Eva. "Elfleda is, well, the technical term's somewhat pejorative, but she's what's known as a minor talent. She's capable at one particular aspect of magic, and doesn't have a natural talent or gift for others. But she is clued in, so to speak."

"Alright," Eva said, obviously still processing. "Then, what can you do?"

"I can see emotions," Elfleda said.

"Oh. That's… interesting."

"Sometimes," Elfleda said. "Now, your 'clothing problem'?"

Eva blushed slightly. "Yes. That. Well, parts of the clothes I wear… transform. Changing colors, materials, shape. The longer I wear something and… the closer, I think, the more the change. Though it tends to go back after I take it off."

"Layers, then," Elfleda said. "And no headdresses. Would jewelry be affected?"

I gave a halfhearted shrug. "I don't know, but I don't see why it wouldn't. Might take longer."

"A question for later, then," Elfleda said, stalking around Eva with a critical eye.

"What could I expect to be doing for you?" Eva asked, a little unnerved by the way Elfleda was asking.

"Helping me dress, waiting on me, accompanying me around the court, and to your lessons," Elfleda said distractedly.

Eva looked at me in confusion.

"We need some kind of excuse for you to spend long periods of time around me. So Elfleda's that excuse. Think of her like… a magical beard."

Both Eva and Elfleda stopped at that, and Elfleda shot me a look that was somewhere between incomprehension, bemusement, and maybe a little insult. Eva just looked confused.

"A beard?" Elfleda asked slowly.

"It's… how to put it… it's a woman a man pretends to be in a relationship with so as to disguise the fact that he's interested in other men," I explained.

Elfleda slowly blinked. "…why is that arrangement called a beard?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Hell if I know."

Eva just looked confused. "…what?"

"Don't worry about it," I said. "She's your cover. And will be sitting in your lessons, since she's interested in magic as well. Just leave it at that."

"…alright," Eva said slowly.

A few moments later, Elfleda finished her circuit and nodded before looking up at me. "Is that all? Because I was quite serious about the new clothing."

"Yeah, that's it," I said, lowering the veil before waving at Eva. "Go, have fun, enjoy shopping."

"I… alright," Eva said, looking to Elfleda, who moved to leave the room. I lingered for a few moments longer, then left as well.

There wasn't really anything left to do, really. I mean, later in the evening there might be a formal introduction for Cuthbert and Eva, but that didn't really have anything to do with me, and certainly wasn't something I needed to prepare for. I didn't feel like starting any projects while I was still between places, there wasn't anything I needed to attend to right then. I guess I could have gone and started the process of copying John's books, but as interested as I was in getting copies, I wasn't that interested in the process.

After some thought, I decided to go visit the kitchens for a bribe. Lucille had had time to process things, calm down some, but I was fairly certain that seeing me again would just exacerbate the problem, particularly if she wasn't sure what I'd do or was afraid I'd attack her. I mean, I had a vague sense of what she might have seen and-or talked to; I knew my subconscious was somehow manifest and could be interacted with, and he wasn't the nicest guy. Some of Lash's memories were also clearly swirling around in there. And even if Evil Goatee Me hadn't spoken to her directly and she hadn't run into Vestigial Remnants of a Fallen Angel, she'd clearly seen something existentially terrifying.

I needed an indirect way of getting a message to her and telling her I wasn't about to come down like a burning sack of bricks on her, and that I was interested in talking further. Which meant culinary bribes. Or… is culinary the right word there?

Whatever.

Getting a bribe from the kitchens ended up being a… somewhat involved process. Apparently, the way the temperature in the kitchen had suddenly and inexplicably plummeted before I got there sent some people into a panic, and they'd had less than no patience for a random, tall, strangely-dressed stranger demanding sweets. Reigning my aura in, sorting everything out, providing some assistance and taking up some simple tasks to both earn goodwill and free up labor, it all took the better part of an hour and a half.

I really needed to figure out how to make a watch. Couldn't be that hard, all things considered, could it? Maybe not a mundane one with gears and hands, but some kind of sympathetically linked wrist-worn sundial?

In any case, with my Quest for the Cookie succeeding after some unexpected delays, I returned to my room, peering carefully around corners and looking over my shoulder at a semi-frequent rate. Eventually I reached the safety of my own room, whereupon I hunkered down and went through the process of calling Larissa.

The tiny faerie ball of flight flew in through the window a minute later and stopped at the sight of the cookie in my hands. "Wizard," she said, a little impatient.

"Larissa," I replied. "I have a small task for you. I want you to carry a message to someone else who should be in this castle."

"And the cookie?" she demanded.

"On completion."

"Hmph. Very well," she said haughtily. "Relay your message."

"You remember the woman who looked like the vampire I had you follow?" I asked, waiting for her to hesitantly bob. "That's his sister. I want you to deliver a message to her."

The ball of light slightly warped, and I got the sense Larissa was fearfully leaning forward to inspect the cookie as if to see if it was really worth it. "That's dangerous," she said.

"Perhaps, but I don't believe so. She seems to have developed a good appreciation regarding the risks of angering me. Just identify who you're relaying a message from first, and you'll be fine."

There was a very slight buzz that I took as her humming. "I want half the cookie now, as a down payment."

I suppressed a chuckle at her copying of my terminology. "Sure." I dug out a napkin, laid it out on an open stretch of table, put the cookie down there, and cracked it in half. "But first, you hear my message. You tell her the following: 'I'm still interested in talking, and I give you my word to not harm you if you reciprocate.' Then ask her if she has a message in return, hear it out if she does, then come back to me and relay it. Or relay that she didn't have one, if that's what happened."

"That's not the deal," she said suspiciously.

"Do you want the cookie or not?" I asked. Then, after the buzzing resumed and went on for a good ten seconds, I slowly reached out and started to pick up one of the cookie halves.

"Fine!" she cried, then flew forth to devour one of the halves. She even went so far as to pick through a number of the crumbs. Then, once she was done, she turned around and flew out the window.