Chapter 28
Rules of EngagementHarry had trouble believing that it had already been a week since Wolfe's death. Time had flown by in the last four days. It had mostly been spent in preparation for the final assault on Astirian, in which Harry's ability to create 'dimension doors' would play a key role. That was why he had been to all the locations that were going to play a role in the assault, namely, to familiarise himself with them well enough to create doorways.
Accompanied by Princess Patrinia, he had been to all the other rebel leaders' hideouts, where only the leaders had been informed of the plans, since the need for secrecy had been paramount. They had been instructed to tell their troops about an upcoming raid where all the camps attacked Astirian's forces simultaneously, in an effort to overburden the ducal forces' response capabilities. The smarter ones among the rebel leaders had pointed out that there was no way to be sure that their cell was free of spies—something that had plagued them since the resistance started, costing them many lives—and that word could leak. Patrinia had assured them that the target was so unpredictable that it didn't matter, and to keep that tidbit to themselves if any of their soldiers pointed out the same thing.
Aside from the planning, Harry had also been pushing himself to improve his new power, much like Wolfe had forced himself to improve his self-duplication and Animagus abilities. In four days, he had learned to extend the boundaries of his doors to cover an area of four hundred square feet.
"Have the reinforcements been sent to the likely targets for the rebel raids?" the Duchess of Astirian asked what had to be a vizier of sorts, confirming the suspicions of the smart resistance leaders. She was a tall and thin Etti woman with closely cropped salt and pepper hair, a beak-like nose, eyes with raptor-like pupils, and a neck even longer than his Aunt Petunia's. She strongly reminded Harry of a vulture.
Harry intangibly and invisibly smiled for various reasons. He smiled about the benefits of being a Lingomagus, having picked up the Etti language used on the continent in less than two days of being immersed in it. He also smiled about the enemy playing straight into Nicolai's hands. The young genius had counted on some of the resistance camps having spies that would report back to Astirian, prompting the decision to send reinforcements and leaving the city with fewer defenders to oppose them at the time of the assault.
"Reinforcements have been sent onboard the inventor's invisible ships," the rat-like man answered. "After the rebel attacks are repulsed, the ships will follow the fleeing insects back to their hidden nests and crush them."
"A pity the inventor's mind worms don't make for clever spies. Had that been so, we would have already known where their camps are," the duchess sneered.
"On the contrary," a calm voice came from behind Harry, and moments later the speaker strolled into the room. "My mind worms can't change the way the rebels operate. They operate in cells that seldom gather, and when they do gather it is only for a few hours and always at a different location. The rebel camp in the enchanted swamp is the only exception to this. Moreover, the cells are small enough that everyone can watch anyone, so a spy can't afford to drop out of sight for too long without raising suspicion. Infiltrating the rebel fighters isn't like infiltrating villages. Had that been the case, as you said, the rebels would have been crushed a long time ago.
"As for your criticism of my mind worms, it is unfounded. It is much easier to trust a familiar face over a new one, and even easier to trust a familiar personality. That is something that even Doppelgangers can not mimic. I am the only one standing between you and defeat. Had it not been for me, the nobles would have overthrown you and given you to the rebels in the hopes of receiving amnesty for their choice to condone and benefit from your slavery scheme. Everyone that matters knows this, so you had better show me the respect I deserve."
Harry had to use every ounce of his willpower not to kill Yamato on the spot. Certainly, he could kill the duchess and the vizier as well, but there was no telling how quickly someone would miss them. As much as he wanted to end Yamato's miserable existence and avenge Wolfe, he knew Wolfe wouldn't have wanted him to endanger the freedom of Astirian's downtrodden. The mind worm spies and the flying ships also posed a problem, even though the latter wouldn't follow the resistance fighters back to their camps because the ducal outposts weren't going to be attacked.
He had a hunch that his magical vision was powerful enough to see the ships in spite of their invisibility magic, and he would deal with them The spies, however, posed a more difficult dilemma, since it was possible that they might turn on the other resistance fighters and slow the attack on Astirian down when speed was of the essence. He had to pluck them out of the soldiers' ranks as they passed through his door, but he knew he couldn't scan people's mind and hold the door open at the same time. He needed help, and there was only one other known Mind Reader in the Mirror Realm at the moment.
"Also, without me you would eventually lose this war, since the Shamballah pacifists have decided to take up arms," Yamato continued, interrupting Harry's train of thought.
"That is your fault!" the duchess hissed. "If you hadn't martyred that Wolfe character, there wouldn't—"
"Wolfe martyred himself. I had nothing to do with that. The plan was to wipe out Shamballah, which will still happen, by the way. Wolfe merely delayed the inevitable with his silly sacrifice."
"How soon will your weapons be ready?"
"In a month or so," Yamato said, though thanks to his earlier scouting activities, Harry knew that he was lying. He had seen several devices stored away in a vault and surrounded by enough security measures to suggest that they were quite operational.
"Do you always store your incomplete artefacts in a vault?" the duchess asked acidly, voicing Harry's own suspicion and proving why the woman had risen to her current position.
"I do when they still need the components to activate them properly and unlock the full potential of the death wave. They can be activated, but at this point only the primary explosion would occur. You wouldn't want the palace and surrounding mile of cityscape to turn into a crater, would you?"
Yamato's poker face and calm tones were impressive, but they couldn't hide his thoughts from Harry. Most of the devices were indeed only partially finished, but three were all done. However, Yamato knew that those three were enough to accomplish the duchess's goals with, and that she would decide that he had outlived his usefulness if she found out about them. He was planning to hide one of them under Astirian, equipped with magic keyed to perceive its maker's heartbeat. Then he'd blackmail the duchess with that information.
The duchess scowled. "Point taken. So why are you here? I have not summoned you."
"I need more subjects to test the new mind worms on. The current batch of worms turned out to be too aggressive. I've made this request several times, but I have the feeling that the bureaucratic process might have prevented it from reaching you."
"Mistress, there are no more subjects," the vizier morosely. "Rebel activity has made the slavers' work exceedingly difficult, and with the Yoogh tribe's extermination last week, the Woroghs have been too busy fighting each other and trying to fill the vacuum to raid unaligned villages for slaves. The slave markets are empty."
"What about the prisoners in your dungeons?" Yamato asked.
"Off limits," the duchess said resolutely. "They are hostages. I need them alive to keep certain dissident nobles in line. However, if you are patient, you will have plenty of subjects after the rebels walk into our trap."
"I wasn't aware of any dissidents," Yamato said shrewdly. "Perhaps there is something I can do to help?"
"Your help isn't needed. It's just some fools who have been entertaining thoughts about replacing me when word of the imperial whelp's in-laws showing up with the Red Diamond Sceptre of Astirian reached them."
"And mind worms could be an excellent solution to your problem. How can you be certain that these dissident thoughts aren't shared by others?"
The duchess rolled her eyes. "I already know that. It's the reason I took the hostages."
"But with my help, you can turn the whole lot into puppets instead of keeping them in line with these hostages. It would help create the illusion of a unified front to the people."
"Perhaps I'll take you up on that offer, after you've insured that your mind worms don't kill them," the duchess replied. Yet her thoughts told Harry she knew that taking Yamato up on his offer would put the dissident nobles in his hands, and not hers.
And Yamato knew that she knew this, so he didn't press the issue. "I suppose I can wait for subjects a little longer," he said silkily, voicing his intention to eventually take over but disguising it behind the topic that he been discussing. Then he turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber.
Harry hung around a little longer to see whether the duchess and her aide would discuss more things worth knowing, but after listening to reports from the secret police he decided to find a nice and secluded spot to create his doorway and return to Floriath.
He decided against flying out of the city, thinking that he could do some additional exploring while inside the palace. He descended through various floors until he had reached the bowels of the palace. Most castles and palaces had boltholes their masters could use in an emergency, and Harry wanted to know about the ones leading out of this one, if possible. He used his magic eyesight to look through walls and beneath the floor, searching for passages. He found some tunnels quickly enough and descended into them, looking them over carefully so Nicolai would have plenty of material to work with when it was time to examine Harry's memories in a Pensieve.
The tunnels converged somewhere near the midpoint of the palace, and underneath a floor that was nearly thick enough to block out even his vision, Harry saw pitch blackness instead of soil. He descended through the floor. There was absolutely no light down there, making the night vision bestowed upon him by the pendants useless. Harry used another of his special abilities instead, and moments later twin beams of light shot out of his eyes, illuminating the space in front of him.
Harry saw that he was in a cylindrical shaft that had a stone staircase running along a wall covered with glyphs that strongly reminded him of the Draconian alphabet. He hadn't studied Draconian yet, so they didn't make a lot of sense to him, but he was certain that Nicolai could work it out.
He followed the stairs up and saw that they ended at a metal arch that looked like a miniature version of the Umbral Gate, and Harry had seen an identical one buried in a wall in the duchess's private chambers. Even though Harry wasn't an expert mason, he was able to tell that the masonry had been quite old, suggesting that the arch had been covered up well before the duchess grabbed power. He had seen something like a keyhole in the side of that arch, and as he floated up to check, found another hole in this one. That explained why the palace's current mistress didn't know about this space. It wasn't physically connected to any secret passage way, working much like the Concordian portals and the Umbral Gate, and the entryway and key had been hidden a long time ago.
Harry rendered himself tangible to test the air, since he breathed his own magic instead of air when he was intangible. The air was like that of any enclosed space that had been sealed off for ages, so he quickly reverted to intangibility and continued his descent, until the light coming out of his eyes flitted across a glittering surface. He turned and headed in that direction, his light exposing more and more of his discovery, until two mechanical constructs roughly twenty five feet tall were illuminated.
One was red, and the other was gold. The red one's head resembled a dragon's and the gold one looked very much like a sphinx. They had large gemstones mounted in either shoulder, and another one on the left part of their enormous metal chests, just like Matt's Anzu. The delicate features and curved bodywork told Harry that the gold one was supposed to be female. Looking down, he noticed that each construct stood in a square of matching colour, and that there was a third square, this one painted in black. It had to be Anzu's spot, and as he realised that, another bit of information crawled into the back of his mind. The guardians on the shield of Astirian had been a black griffin, a red dragon, and a golden winged sphinx.
Knowing that he'd lingered long enough, Harry created a doorway to Ironheart's office in Shamballah and stepped through, getting an eyeful of something that he wasn't meant to see. Covering her exposed torso as best she could, Galatea's sister Thetis rolled off Ironheart's desk with unlikely finesse in light of her plump physique and quickly scurried behind a long curtain. They hadn't actually been doing anything yet, but Ironheart's unbuttoned shirt and trousers around his ankles made it abundantly clear that they had been about to.
"I'm sorry for dropping in like this," Harry began as he tried to will his embarrassed blush away. "I wanted to keep this new ability a secret for as long as possible, so I didn't want to appear in the antechamber and tip off your secretary."
"I would have done the same if I had been in your shoes," Ironheart replied, seemingly unfazed by the situation. Harry guessed that it probably wasn't the first time the former Ranger commander had been caught with his pants down. "I gave my secretary the day off for obvious reasons, so could you please wait in the antechamber while we get dressed?"
Harry hurried out of the office and took a seat behind the secretary's desk, silently berating himself for his stupidity until Thetis came through the door and walked out of the antechamber, not meeting Harry's eyes.
"You can come in now, Harry," Ironheart called.
Harry rose from his seat, walked into the office and plopped down in a high-backed chair in front of Ironheart's desk. "I hope I didn't embarrass Thetis too badly. Is she mad at me?"
"No, she's mad at me for insisting that no one could possibly walk in on us. I know it's a bit of a weak excuse, but I can't help myself. There is something in the Mirror Realm that brings out the incubus in me, and my age hardly slows it down like it does in the Earth Realm. My wife was delighted with the extra attention at first, but she's not exactly young anymore, though she has aged very gracefully even for a witch—" Ironheart stopped abruptly, finally having noticed Harry's mortified expression. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable, but the situation is really becoming a problem. Without regular attention from he opposite sex, I hardly get any work done anymore. I wonder how Nicolai is doing, having been cut off from Mary for nearly a week."
Thinking about it, Harry realised that Nicolai had seemed a bit flushed around some of the females in the resistance, and some of the looks they had given him suggested that he might have lost control of his pheromone emissions a few times. "I think they need to be reunited as soon as possible."
Ironheart smiled sympathetically. "Poor boy. So what can I do for you, Harry?"
"I was just eavesdropping on Yamato, and I heard about some new and improved mind maggots."
"The creatures he used to control the Muggles in Brazil?" Ironheart asked.
Harry nodded.
"And how exactly can I help?"
"Yamato has managed to infect some resistance cell members and turn them into spies, and I need you to sniff them out."
"Why can't you do it yourself?"
"In a nutshell, Nicolai and the resistance fighters are going to use my ability to attack Astirian from within, but maintaining one of these doorways takes a certain amount of concentration, so I can't be scanning the minds of those lining up to pass through at the same time. I'd rather not have those spies at the backs of the other resistance fighters and slow them down with an attack from behind, which is where you come in."
Ironheart sighed. "I see. Then I had better tell Vassily that I'm leaving."
Harry smirked as his thoughts strayed to the Russian ex-Ranger with the rugged exterior and even more rugged manners, who was now one of Ironheart's aides. He had always thought that Vassily Poliakoff would remain single on account of there being no woman in the world crazy enough to hook up with the aging wizard. Of course, he hadn't known about the Mirror Realm, which was where the bride was from. "He's back from his honeymoon, then?"
"It would appear that Vassily's in-laws are more …err, unrefined, than he is."
Someone knocking on the door prevented any further deliberation on the level of refinement possessed by Vassily's in-laws.
"Donavan, it's Matt!"
Matt's arrival made Harry feel slightly better about showing up unnannounced earlier. If he hadn't interrupted Ironheart and Thetis, Matt probably would have interrupted things in a far more advanced state.
"Come in."
The door swung open and the tall Australian swaggered through. Harry immediately noticed something different about him. He'd had a haircut, and looked surprisingly boyish with his hair just long enough to stay flat when brushed back. Part of the front fringe also seemed magnetised, sticking up rebelliously while the rest stayed perfectly in place. He looked like a kid who had just left school, and the resemblance his son Alexander bore to him was suddenly even more striking.
"No comments on the hairdo. It's bad enough that a shopkeeper thought I was Mary's twin brother instead of her father. And there was also someone who thought I was her boyfriend."
"After all the publicity around Nicolai and Mary's marriage? You'd think that everyone in Concordia knew their faces by now."
Matt shrugged. "She was dressed in Muggle clothes, so she might have been a tourist."
"I'm not really surprised," Ironheart said. "You've barely aged since I met you, and if my memory serves me well, I believe your Archidiaconus great-great grandfather died of old age at two hundred and one."
Harry was confused. "I thought most of your relatives were killed during Voldemort's first rise."
"Old William didn't have my great-grandfather until he was ninety, who in turn didn't have his eldest until he was seventy-two, and my grandfather when he was eighty-five. So he was already one hundred and seventy-five when my grandfather was born. He was dead before my mum was born."
Harry grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. I was under the assumption that the gaps between the generations were more normal."
"My ancestors' breeding cycles are a bit hard to imagine by people who have been raised by Muggles. But you know, Harry, you haven't aged either. I mean, you're a wizard, but there still ought to be some difference after a decade."
"I've noticed, and I've asked Nicolai about it. He thinks that I might be sharing the longevity Ginny got from Holly through our Twin Flame bond."
"So what brings you here?" Ironheart asked Matt. "I thought things were rather busy with the vampires."
"Four days ago, The Confessor and his eldest offspring showed up and decimated nineteen of the vampires in a few seconds. They've been working with us to track the remaining vampires ever since, and that really took quite a bit of the pressure off. Ron's team is still heading the operation, but one of the other Cruisers that was due back earlier has come home. Its team is taking some R&R. But I'm not an official news carrier. I was actually hoping to ask you where to find master tree-house builders, because Pecos Bill talked about a tree-house village in his book, and Xander wants a large tree-house for Christmas. I know I shouldn't spoil him like this, but its hard not to indulge him right now. I assume you've heard about Rosie?"
"What about her?" Harry asked, not having heard. "And did you mean The Confessor as in the oldest vampire currently in existence?"
"That's him," Matt nodded. "His name is Judas, by the way."
Being the son of a creature reviled by the Muggle churches, Ironheart had never struck Harry as one to be religious, so he was quite surprised when Ironheart made the sign of the cross.
Matt laughed. "Not that Judas, Donovan. He is a contemporary, but The Confessor is from Beersheba. The apostle was from Kerioth."
And what happened to Rosie?" Harry asked.
"A Doppelganger slipped through security at the Umbral Gate and shot her with a virus-carrying dart. A transfusion from Xander saved her."
Harry frowned. "Why attack Rosie?"
"Jasmine and Charlie Jr were the intended targets because they were Mind Readers," Ironheart explained. "The Doppelganger followed Charlie Sr in the hopes that he'd be led to his targets. He was in league with the current Astirian regime."
"With a little luck that won't be a problem much … hold on! Matt, could the Order loan you to the war effort here if we gave them a really good reason?"
"Why?" Matt asked.
Harry gestured to a vacant chair. "Have a seat. I'll tell you all about it."
Back in Shamballah, Harry had told Matt about the political situation in Astirian, convincing him that his presence in Astirian might cause some reluctant ducal followers to decide not to resist the transition of power. And on the quick trip to the Earth Realm to collect Anzu, Harry decided that Mary's presence could also benefit the war effort, if only to give Nicolai a chance to vent his demon hormones without feeling guilty about it afterwards and allow him to concentrate better. And from the looks on their faces, it appeared to have worked.
"Thank you, Harry," Nicolai said, looking refreshed and relaxed as he exited the Captain's cabin with Mary in tow. "I really needed to get that out of my system. I find it much easier to think straight now."
"How could you possibly?" Mary gave her husband an incredulous look. "I guess my capacity for reason was transferred to you, then, because I can't think straight. You've sha—" She remembered that she was in company, and caught herself. "I'm completely senseless! What has got into you?"
"It appears the magically charged atmosphere in the Mirror Realm stimulates my demon genes to a point where they are much harder to control," Nicolai said seriously. "Had it not been for the alterations brought upon me by Ivan, I might not have resisted certain temptations, so I suppose Grandpa really can't be blamed."
Harry turned to look at Ironheart flirting with the pretty blue-skinned Jann girl named Faísha on the front deck. She seemed to love the attention she was getting from the emperor's suave half-demon grandfather.
Mary's blissful expression darkened and she wrapped her arms around Nicolai possessively. "I'd better stick around to protect my interests, then."
"What about Oprah?" Nicolai asked.
"Oopsie and my kids are spending time at Caer Sidi with Gudrun's mum and dad," Matt said.
"They'll get bored pretty quickly, Dad," Mary said. "Spending time with Grandma and Grandpa will only keep those kids entertained for a few more days at most."
"That's why I offered Charlie and Jasmine to spend part of their holiday there, and to take the Wolfe kids with them. They could use the break after the scare with Rosie, and their kids will keep our kids occupied. I told them they could invite the rest of the Weasleys over as well."
Harry wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to have Susie and Millie roaming Caer Sidi, but refrained from commenting. It was time to direct everyone's attention to the task at hand. "The troops are ready, and I've brought all the resistance cell leaders here. They're not carrying the mind worms, and I've made sure that none of their people saw how I'd got there and how we left, so my dimension door secret is still safe. We can start whenever you're ready."
Nicolai went to a cabinet, and took out a modified version of the projectors used by the Order of Illumination. "I'm ready."
After a moment's concentration, Harry pressed his fingers forward and opened a doorway to the briefing room in a tent that had been erected in one of the dry patches in the marsh outside of Floriath.
"Hey Donovan! Stop chasing skirts and harem pants. Time to go to work," Matt called to Ironheart, who reluctantly broke off his animated conversation with Faísha and returned to his grandson's side. Then they all crossed into the tent where the resistance leaders were waiting for them and took their seats behind the head table. They hadn't counted on Ironheart and Mary, so Harry and Nicolai remained standing and allowed the other two to have their seats.
Nicolai placed the projector on the head table and clicked his gemstone onto his wand. With a flick of his adapted wand, he activated the projector and a map of the Astirian City shimmered into existence. "This will be our target today," he began in Etti. "The means that was used to get you here is the means we are going to use to take the city in a battle with very little bloodshed. Harry?"
Harry stepped forward. "Our first step will be to take the armouries, both the ones in the palace as well as the ones in the city." From the corner of his eye, Harry saw the armouries light up on the projection. "With my help, we will place squads of resistance fighters inside each of them. Their task will be to prevent the inevitable rush to access to the weapons once the attack begins. The doors swing outwards, so there isn't any way to barricade them, which is why I'll place powerful locking charms on them. I see some inquisitive faces among you, so I'll elaborate. If everything goes as planned, the ones doing armoury duty won't have to fight.
"After the armoury teams are in position, the palace assault force will seize control of the palace. Again, insertion will happen in stages, with squads coming though the dimension doors and securing key areas like the gatehouse and other exits, including the secret ones I've discovered. These squads will be larger than the ones in the armoury, since they are likely to be engaged by the palace guard. In order to better defend the exits, I recommend that the teams set up their defence in the antechambers, where there is plenty of cover. Locking charms will be placed on the exits to prevent or delay the escape of any palace dwellers in case the teams guarding them have been forced to retreat. That's right, retreat. I'm not asking anyone to die if they don't have to.
"There are some powerful and destructive devices in the castle, so I'll be momentarily unavailable while I deal with those. After they've been dealt with, I'll open several larger doorways and the main body of the palace invasion force will sweep through the castle. To those of you who aren't happy about the suddenness of this assault, I can only say that waiting longer could have made matters much more difficult." He nodded to Nicolai. "Emperor Savin predicted that Yamato—the duchess' new ally—would turn the palace into an automated death-trap given a few more months, and I've discovered that this is indeed the case. Any questions?"
There were none, so Harry proceeded.
"The assault on the city will begin once the palace has fallen and our people control the battlements. Tall buildings throughout the city will be taken and archers put on their rooftops to suppress anyone who might have gained weapons through unforeseen means. The city blocks where the armouries are located will also be secured. Aside from them, there will be no ground force yet. The rightful heir to the throne of Astirian"—Harry gestured to Matt—"and myself will fly over the city, calling out that the city has already fallen. The sight of the black griffin might drive them to submit peacefully. Like the emperor said, we don't want any bloodshed. The regime change has to occur as quietly as possible. If the citizens think that they won't survive the day, they will resist with what little weapons they have left."
"Surely you won't allow those people to go unpunished?" a female Dait cat-woman asked hotly. "They have profited from our suffering."
"Those who have actively captured and traded slaves will be executed," Nicolai cut in. "It will be a long and slow process to sort out those who actually did participate in the slave trade, since plenty of people will deny it, but my grandfather is a Mind Reader. I've also invented a potion that will bestow that gift on someone else for a limited time. I'll give it to trustworthy individuals of whom I can be certain that they can control their animosity towards the citizens of Astirian. They will aid in speeding up the process a little.
"Adults who have approved of slavery will endure forced labour to place them in the shoes of those whose sweat and blood made their luxurious lives possible. Children will be re-educated both in special schools and by the sight of their parents tired from a hard-day's work, and teenagers will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
"Then there are bound to be people who didn't approve of their way of life but were forced to accept it in order to survive. These could either be people who refused to buy slaves or bought them to protect them from a cruel fate at the hands of a cruel master. There won't be many in that situation, but there will be some, and it's imperative that they're identified quickly. I know you members of the resistance will be sceptical about such claims, but I beg you to keep an open mind. Their lack of slaves or their former slaves vouching for them will be an identification marker which validates an appointment with a temporary Mind Reader to confirm their character.
"Taking the city will be the easy part. Pacifying the area will be much more difficult. The duchess has thoroughly poisoned your society, and healing it is going to take a long time. Plenty of folks who will want a return to the current status quo will resort to guerrilla warfare to try and accomplish just that. They'll have to be dealt with before the re-education can commence."
"Why not kill them all and be done with it?" the angry resistance fighter spoke up again.
"I won't condone genocide!" Nicolai replied sharply. "Killing all those people who didn't get on the wrong side of this regime—especially the children who didn't know any better—isn't the way to solve this. I already have a contingency plan to deal with them. Past scenarios have shown us that the best protection insurgents have is to hide among the civilians. But thoughts can't be hidden, so we can easily remove the rotten fruit without tossing out the whole barrel. Make no mistake, if we stoop to that level, we'll be no better than they are! Do I make myself clear?"
Nicolai's fierce glare gave Harry goose bumps. He had never seen the normally mild-mannered young man project such presence. It was the glare of a true emperor, and the subdued reactions among the resistance leaders reflected this.
A/N: Special thanks to the reviewers. I really don't have a lot of time on my hands, so I can't answer them. :-(