A knock roused me from a half-doze. My watch indicated barely thirty minutes had passed, and I rolled over, debating whether I should answer. Could I pretend to still be asleep?

"You know I heard that, John," Nicolas' voice announced.

I huffed something vaguely resembling a laugh. Yes, I knew he could read my thoughts from the hall. He could probably hear me anywhere in the house, but that did not mean I wanted to get up.

Mary appeared from the office, trying to frown at me as she crossed the room. She would answer if she were here, but she could not grab the doorknob any more than she could take my hand. She settled for pointedly looking between me and the door.

A loud sigh carried into the room. "I have an hour, John, and I thought you might like to wander the city. Are you going to come out?"

A slightly truer amusement bloomed at the familiar phrasing. I had used that question many times on rabbits hiding beneath my bed. How often did he watch me?

"Often enough," was the grinning reply. "I can run faster than you."

Undoubtedly, but I was not a rabbit.

"Humans are more stubborn. Come with me, John. We can explore the city for an hour before I must attend my meeting."

I heaved a sigh of my own. Fine. It was only for an hour, then maybe I could go hide in the library.

Well, whatever counted as "hiding" when Nicolas could read my thoughts.

My friend released a faint laugh, but silence reigned as I pulled myself off the mattress. I changed my wrinkled shirt and opened the door a couple of minutes later, expecting to find my merry friend waiting in the hall.

Grey eyes stared back at me from barely a foot away. I startled, nearly slamming the door on Holmes before I spotted Nicolas behind the hallucination. He frowned at my reaction.

"John?"

I waved him off, breathing heavily though I fought to cover it. He could not see the detective watching me close my door, but I had not anticipated Holmes appearing in the hallway. He had been in the washroom a moment before. Even after three years, I continually forgot that hallucinations were not confined to time and space.

As evidenced by Mary perched atop the hall tapestry. I tried to ignore the swinging boots.

"Where are we going?"

"I thought we would start in the gardens and work our way out," he answered, still studying me on our slow path down the hall. "I know you toured much of it the last time, but some has changed." He paused. "What was that?"

No. If he had not caught it when it happened, he did not need to know now. I pointedly blocked the thought.

"What can you possibly grow in an icy garden?" I asked instead, infusing the words with a feigned skepticism. Mary and Holmes both disappeared as we reached a more populated section of the house.

"Food." He grinned at my tone, though blue eyes continued glancing at me. "We have a wide variety of native plants that thrive in the snow and ice. Many of them produce edible fruit or roots, and a few have color."

These plants must be magical, to not only grow but produce color here, without any soil. He laughed when I tried to voice as much.

"They are not magical," he insisted, "merely native, and we do have soil. 'Tis only the human explorers who cannot find the continent beneath the ice, but you will see soon enough. Come."

He turned left at the end of the hall, leading me past the kitchens and out a back door, and I swallowed a cold-induced cough as we reached the gardens.

More plants than I could ever have expected dotted the ice. Frost-covered blooms glinted in a light source more magical than sunlight, and even the magically aided human plants grew with white leaves, though some had more green than others. One finger traced a leaf's central vein. The ice melted under the heat of my hand, revealing light purple streaks similar to a beet, and I glanced up in silent question. Beets did not have red fruit.

"The fruit is similar to a pomegranate," he told me, "but the roots are more like potatoes. The lutins like the leaves in a salad."

"A salad?" I repeated. "I thought lutins preferred hot food?"

"Do you like eating the same thing every day?"

I shrugged, conceding the point. The tales circulating the human world rarely incorporated more than a shallow understanding of any magical creature, but conversation changed as we wandered further.

"You recognize onions, spinach, and carrots, of course," he pointed out. "Those grow with very little help, but we also have several different cabbages, and here—" He referenced a separate garden patch equally covered in ice but almost buried in many kinds of leaves. "These are all native plants. We cannot put them with the imports because they will strangle each other, so they get their own plot."

I moved closer. A single leaf nearly covered my palm, intricately meaningless designs in the veins only until I looked again. More than random patterns, the veins formed a picture. This one had a tree on its leaf, the next displayed a fox-like animal, and a third held an ever-decreasing outline of its own leaf. I looked up in surprise.

"The plants do that naturally," he answered before I could put the question into words, "but the gardeners make use of it. Each one is categorized by the pattern on its leaf."

"What is this one?" One finger referenced the third I had found, and he shook his head.

"None of these have an English name."

Oh. I looked back at the plants as he paused, waiting for me to resume the discussion we had started shortly after meeting. I had lobbied for years to convince him to teach me even a handful of words in his native tongue, but he refused every time. According to him, humans could not learn the First Language until after we reached our Age.

I begged to differ, but I let the opportunity pass. The inevitable argument required too much effort.

"How do you keep the rabbits out of the carrots?"

"Rabbit repellent." His disappointment faded slightly when I attempted a scowl. "Elanor gardens when she is not in the workshop, and her magic leans more toward the earthy than most other elves. She has perfected a spell that drives the creatures away. Neither they nor the other more creative animals will come within fifty feet of the gardens, but the spells do nothing to the plants."

"How often do you have to renew the spells?"

"About once a week."

I fingered another leaf, admiring the brilliant white beneath the ice. I would never have thought that plants could grow with frost on them, but perhaps the Pole operated on slightly different rules than the human world. I had seen stranger things in this northern country.

A lilting laugh whispered past my ear. Of course the Pole would have different rules. How many times did you try to explain the magic you barely understood yourself?

I reflexively looked behind me, half expecting her to be leaning over my shoulder. She and Holmes were nowhere in sight, unsurprisingly, but that did not change the truth of her words. The magical sunlight said more than enough about the difference between the Pole and the human world. We were close enough to true north that walking a circle around the city covered multiple time zones, yet a bright, yellow sun apparently traveled an equatorial path through the sky. A distracted thought wondered if Nicolas had created the light source when he founded the city or if the area had always been so.

"A bit of both."

"Both," I said easily. "A vegetable garden will not interfere with your flowers."

She glared at me, pretending irritation that I had skirted her question, but I grinned.

"Why do you have to choose? Your flowers have the plot near the house, and we can put a vegetable garden in the back corner near the fence."

"John, you are not there anymore."

The glare turned into more of a frown. "Why would we put our vegetable garden so far away from the door? We could move some of my flowers to the other window and start the garden just outside the kitchen. That would make it easier to retrieve something quickly while cooking."

"Do you intend to use fertilizer?"

The needle paused, my meaning striking home.

"Fine," she said with a faint laugh. "You win. We can put it in the back corner. What do you want to grow?"

"Potatoes, onions, and carrots. The rest are up to you."

"I thought you said you would be helpful." She tried to pout, and I chuckled.

"You have never seen me in a garden, Mary. Staying out of it is being helpful."

She gave me a true laugh that time, and my smile widened in response. We would—

A hand carefully took my wrist, nudging the memory aside as movement registered. Slowly, a white garden replaced the vision of our sitting room, and I focused to find my friend in front of me.

"How often do those happen?"

I made no answer, my gaze on my surroundings. We stood in a semi-hidden corner of the three-quarter courtyard, the gardens in front of me and the entrance to my left. Cooks and gardeners moved past without notice, but Nicolas' hand squeezed mine before I could look further.

"John?"

My eyes met his, confirming I was here though I did not yet have the words to say as much. The worry lining his face deepened at my silence.

"How long have you been having regressions?"

I tried to smother my surprise. I should have expected him to know what they were. Several of the humans that had moved to the Pole over the years—including Meredith—had done so to escape the horrors of war.

"That had nothing to do with war."

Perhaps not, but the pull was the same. Regressions always chose the most powerful events, and my love for Mary was stronger than many of my war-related memories.

"How often do they happen?"

No. He did not need to know that. I readjusted my coat as I finally found my words.

"Don't worry about it. Where next?"

Silence provided my only reply, and I glanced up to find him studying me. My cheeks flushed as my thoughts registered. War-related memories. I had all but admitted that only some of the regressions were of Mary, and if he knew about regressions, he knew of the inherent danger. A memory could make me do something I never otherwise would. I should have realized my presence would put others in danger even here.

The hand still on my arm prevented me from leaving.

"You are welcome here, John. That will not change." He nearly repeated his question but changed his mind. "Shall we wander the market shops? You saw the rest of the Great House when you were last here, and the glassblower should have a demonstration soon."

I hesitated, eyeing him. Why should he want my company? My own mind made me a danger to those around me, and for all that my friend was not "king," this was still his city and his people. It was his job to protect them.

"You are wrong." His hand moved from my wrist to my shoulder. "You are not a danger, and you never will be. The regressions do not change that. I want you here, John, and I want to spend the time with you. After your last visit, do you really believe I simply sought you out as host?" He watched, easily reading my recollection of our playful argument. After a week of neglecting his duties to spend the days with me, I had told him to get back to work and let me explore. He had resisted at first, naturally, but once he realized I was in earnest, we had spent the days apart and shared everything at and after supper. Those evenings had made the long, quiet days worth it.

Lines reappeared around his eyes. "I will leave you alone if you truly wish it," he promised, "but not because you think I wish it. I have nothing pressing until my meeting in—" He checked a pocket watch that appeared from his sleeve, "forty minutes. Come with me to the market? Or somewhere else? We might have enough time to visit the reindeer."

I hesitated for only a moment before I nodded. I would not force my presence, but even my limited deducing skills could tell he meant his words. We could wander the market for a while.

Tension drained from his shoulders. "If you become a nuisance, John," he said in a tone declaring that such a thing would never happen, "be sure that I will tell you."

I merely followed him across the courtyard. I hoped he would, but my friend worked with elves and children, both notorious mischief-makers that occasionally wore out their welcome without realizing as much. Just as he would never tell a child to go away, so I doubted he would say the same to me. I would watch to ensure I did not take too much of his time.

A slick patch nearly stole my cane, and he moved closer, though he thankfully refrained from taking my arm as Holmes so often had. His frequent glances suggested something bothered him, however, so when he silently matched my slow pace instead of voicing his thoughts, I called him on it.

"Why are you staring at me?"

"Why will you not believe me?"

Immortal telepathy. Right. I needed to raise a mental barrier of some sort. My thoughts were far too easy to read.

"We both know I am not the greatest company."

"No, but I can see you think that. Why?"

I aimed a glance of my own at him. Why would I not? It was obvious.

"That is not true, either. Mary would light into you for such thoughts if she were here."

She was not, though, which just demonstrated my point. Unlike with Holmes, I had refused to leave Mary, and she had still died. My company brought death eventually.

"I can prove that wrong simply by keeping you here."

Only if I avoided everyone except the true immortals, which was difficult to do when I did not yet know which species and beings were immortal and which simply magical. I huffed a disagreement but said nothing, and he took the hint. Silence reigned between us until a dull roar carried around the corner.

"There will be more of a crowd here than in the gardens," he warned. "It is alright if you want to go somewhere else instead."

I halted as soon as we rounded the building. Crowd was an understatement. Far too many beings wandered here and there between the shops. Elven hawkers called their wares. A dwarf blacksmith pounded a piece of metal near a roaring heat source. Human leatherworkers soaked oddly shaped skins in preservatives. Further down the street, brightly colored glass decorated a window, but something at the smith shop caught my eye. I took a deep breath and directed us closer. I could handle the press for a few minutes to get a better look at that contraption.

His forge was like none I had ever seen before. Closer to a long, rectangular oven than a typical coal forge, I saw no evidence of coal or wood, yet flames licked the blocked opening. Tubes ran out the top to a tank in the corner, and when the smith opened the door, I saw blue jets beneath those tubes. I glanced at Nicolas in silent question.

"It is not magic," he said with a chuckle, "but I cannot tell you what it burns, except that it is a gas. The French discovered it in the fifties, but you are a few years away from using it for this purpose."

I looked back at the smith. Taking a pair of long-handled tongs, he retrieved the metal he had placed inside as we arrived. Unlike a coal fire, his flame had already heated the metal to an evenly brilliant orange. He hammered several strokes on one side, then the other, before the cold sent the metal back into the forge.

"How long does it last?" I asked quietly.

"That tank provides enough fuel for about a fortnight."

So long. Coal was a short-term fuel. A forge this size would need several shovelfuls an hour to produce half the heat of this mystery gas, and the gas burned cleaner. Coal would be billowing black smoke, but I saw no sign of combustion products. Based on the perfectly clean air, the city might use the gas for regular heat as well. I distantly wondered how long it would be until London did the same.

Not that it mattered. I would not be there for it. I tore my attention from the unusual forge to direct us toward the glassblower.

Hope you enjoyed, and don't forget to review :)

Thanks to Reflekshun and MHC1987 for your reviews on the last chapter