Night fell.

Ms. Robin seethed.

Prime Minister Asibridel reversed Lord Walter's and Lady Elin's request for no maids, without their knowledge, and ordered Ms. Robin to handle the chore personally. "It's natural that a slave cares for her master," Asi said, with her infuriating sobriety, "I am too busy, so you are assigned the task." As the second-highest-ranking cabinet member, Ms. Robin would be within her rights to deny the command or to send a lower-ranking elf to do the job. She did not. She scolded herself for her agreeability and carried fresh linens.

Asi's dry humor aside, Mr. Robin grumbled for additional reasons. The humans and the wayfarer rested in a room with a view, and they displaced an influential woman they took the home from. Again, without their knowledge. Complaints ignored; recompense denied.

The heavy-handed approach accelerated the issues. Rumors of a power grab filled the platforms. Many whispered that Asi prostituted herself for Lord Walter's assistance, to undermine the government and establish a tyranny. While Lord Walter visited, none dared challenge her. Everyone worried Lord Walter would reveal a secret plan to enslave and rape them, or at least they slandered Asi's master with such words.

I hate thinking of him as Asi's master. Ms. Robin's skin crawled. He's not worthy to touch a single strand of her hair.

The prime minister's goal was not tyranny but revolution. The meager resources gifted to the men during courtship, pageants, duels, and hunts were often received by a man's first wife, the head of the household. After pampering her husband, the rest could be distributed as she designed. This was the current structure of power in the Sanctuary. While elf genetics would not change with Lord Walter's presence, his magic could secure a flow of resources Asi, to counter the first wives.

To do that required exposing elf society to the public.

Ms. Robin hopped to their platform, smoothed out her skirt, and knocked. "Lord Walter, Lady Elin? I bring comfort." To cool her simmering anger, Ms. Robin mentally framed the visit as an attempt to forge diplomatic ties.

"Thank you," Lady Elin greeted her at the door. "One moment, please."

Lady Elin's beauty rivaled Asi's. She looked graceful and stylish in her armor, and many elves were assumably jealous of her looks. Lord Walter looked average. He shrugged into his cloak, and the clothes seemed to wear the man.

"What are you doing?" Ms. Robin asked.

"Earning our keep. Seems fair, right?" Lord Walter said.

"Prime Minister Asibridel put you up to this?"

"Well, yeah."

˙Λ ǝlᴉssᴉW ɔᴉƃɐW

He incanted his spell dozens of times.

The glowing orbs drifted like soap bubbles. Hugging close to the tree's surface, they floated down to the forest floor, and they projected a pale glow on elves and homes as they passed. When they reached the tree's trunk, the orbs uniformly spread like ripples on a lake. Ms. Robin could see the monsters shambling about, searching for something to attack.

"How are you controlling them all? Sheer concentration?"

Lord Walter gathered his spare focus, "Partly." Lady Elin held a finger to her lips, and Ms. Robin contented herself with observation.

"Let's begin."

The hovering orbs, like driftwood, accelerated as if sucked in by a whirlpool, to the unseen monsters stalking the forest floor. Ms. Robin flinched, repeatedly, at the rapid-fire pops and flashes. Flocks of birds took flight. Lord Walter's entire attack lasted five seconds, at most, and the death screams and rattles of the inhuman stalkers filled the air for only several more.

Concerned elves called out and rushed outside. Others, who watched the spell since the beginning, looked up to Lord Walter, illuminated by a stray moonbeam, and gawked.

"It should be safer tonight," Lord Walter yawned. "Wake me in the morning. I'd like to see the monstraculture the Santurary has to offer."

Walter thought politics was a headache worse than a concussion.

Morning parliament turned chaotic from the first official minute. The membership of first wives, dozens of women, piled on questions like falling rubble. What does Lord Walter intend, are we safe, how can we fight back, should we remove him, is it possible now? A splinter faction emerged, and they demanded his immediate citizenship into the Sanctuary. Bickering intensified, while Prime Minister Asibridel remained still and ignored it.

"You really did it now, eh?" Prince Wilhelm chuckled under his breath.

"Shut it," Walter mumbled.

"Well, with us right here," Prince Wilhelm whispered, "You'd think some of them would think to ask us, instead of guess, huh?" The prince's face reddened with restrained amusement.

"You really do like making a mess of things."

"Of course, that's where you find change."

Someone asked about the monstraculture collection.

Throughout the night and into the morning, elves climbed. Before anyone could collect part of the harvest for themselves, Prime Minister Asibridel enforced the law. 'A hunter kept what she killed.' Some argued, as a man, he wasn't entitled to keep it, and the prime minister retorted that the property would be Lady Elin's, at any rate, or default to herself. Rather than let the decision fall to the two women the parliament envied, they waited for Lord Walter's decision.

"Nix, you're familiar with butchering the monsters of the northern peninsula, right? Why don't you give Lord Walter a hand?" Prince Wilhelm asked.

"Sure, sweetheart."

Nix flipped a giant spider on its back. With permission from Prime Minister Asibridel, Nix started a demonstration. Elin closed her eyes and grimaced. When Nix crushed the legs at the highest joint and wrenched them off, with a cringe-inducing squelch, Elin stepped back involuntarily.

"Arachnophobia?" Walter asked.

"Is that what your kind calls it? I hate spiders." She gripped the sleeve of his shoulder. "Cutting them up is worse."

"But you like spider silk?"

"Spider silk doesn't have eight legs that skitter."

Nix flicked her dagger, and she expertly divided the spider up. The meat was not fit for consumption, like most monster meat, and elves collected it to be cremated and discarded. The black chitin peeled off in large plates, and she stacked them aside. "They're useful if grinded up and mixed into clay. Some pieces can be filed into armor or tools." She cut out the eyes, heart, and venom glands. Finally, the soft abdomen divided, and Nix removed the spinnerets and egg sack.

"What do you want to do with the eggs, Lord Walter?" Prime Minister Asibridel asked, "There's quite a lot of them."

"Not sure. I mean, pretty sure most spawned monsters can't reproduce, but better not to chance it. Crush them, I guess. Don't want any baby spiders--"

The sudden and violent uproar from the first wives, staring intently at the eggs, worried Lady Elin enough she placed a hand on her sword. No one dared approach, but they continued to scream.

A faint smile crossed Prime Minister Asibridel's face. "May your lowly slave make a suggestion?"

"Out with it," Walter sighed.

"Instead of destroying the eggs, may we elves use them? It is true the spiders are infertile, but the eggs are vital in the secret process of making spider's silk. It is our primary export, among one other."

Lady Elin groaned. Well, serves you right for telling me what you feed the pigs in this world. Walter tried not to smirk at her newfound disgust.

"Sure, you can have them, prime minister."

A second uproar erupted. The objections ranged from sudden inequality of wealth, the public need for the eggs, and the prime minister's status as a property-barred slave. It grew more evident to Walter these women, despite their long lives and natural advantages, grew lazy and dependent on the system. Elin, short on patience after the spider butchering, pushed her thumb against the guard of her sword and exposed several inches of well-polished blade. Silence quickly descended.

"Prince," Walter asked, "Please tell me there are exceptions to slaves owning property in the Wilmand Kingdom?"

"Sorry, Lord Walter," Prince Wilhelm tapped him on the back, "You're not getting out of this one that easily."

This is starting to feel like the legend of King Arthur and Merlin, except in reverse. He's the one pushing me into fixing things. C'mon, man, I know I'm supposed to be a hero, or whatever, but I'm just trying to do my part and go home. Please keep your thing for elves out of this.

Wait, would this make Nix 'Guinevere?' Who would Elin be? I can't remember if Merlin had a girlfriend or something.

Guinevere, huh?

Walter turned his attention to Nix, who stood to the side and cleaned her butchering knife. When she noticed Walter staring, she looked back and raised her arms defensively, as if to ask, "What?" Threads of information strung together like a web. Once the idea trapped him, he couldn't break out of the realization.

"Can I scan you?"

"What? No, you can't cast magic upon me! What kind of question is that?"

˙III uɐɔS

"Hey!"

˙III uɐɔS

Prince Wilhelm dumbly blinked at the violation of his privacy. "Explain yourself."

"Nah. I'm exhausted with everyone else's games, so I'm playing my own."

As he flipped through the holograms depicting Nix's and Prince Wilhelm's information, Walter spun on his heel and left the stunned parliament behind.

"Walter? Where are you going?" Elin demanded.

"They don't listen to men anyway. Order Asibridel handle the eggs, if she won't freaking take them. Don't let her say no."

Prime Minister Asibridel's mouth opened into an 'o' the second time since she met Walter and Lady Elin. First Lady Elin shocked her by undermining her attempt to sway Walter at the congress. Now, Walter acted so unpredictably that she scarcely believed him human.

Prince Wilhelm shot her an expected angry look before he moved to comfort Nix. Nix valued her personal liberty and saliency above everything else, even her elf homeland, and Walter, petulantly, put his foot on it. Furthermore, using magic on another in the Wilmand Kingdom was illegal, though he doubted Prince Wilhelm would push that angle. They left together to whisper encouraging words to each other.

His impatience, randomly turning on Nix and Prince Wilhelm, and storming out outstripped her understanding. Yes, the truth was, she admitted to herself, he needed to be wound up. His kind, lazy on power, required a certain degree of irritation to stay motivated. But, his disproportionate reaction did not equal his situation. He turned on friends rather than her, the expected target. Or did he? She couldn't be sure of that much.

Is he secretly a polymorphed elf? No, no, I misjudged him. Again.

He's a hero. It was unwise to assume I could manipulate him.

The concrete belief in her mental superiority led her to this disaster. Walter's magic seemed perfect, but it failed in the forest. When it did so, he didn't seem to care or think deeply about it. He shrugged and changed, without warning, to the personality of a fool. The Alune Theocracy represented a deep-seated threat to the Sanctuary. Their craving for elf slaves would engulf the northern peninsula. If Walter continued to overlook the flaw they exploited, they could defeat him in the future. In this capacity, Walter shared the elf's concerns, or should, but he didn't.

Now, he instituted a stricter approach regarding her slavery, out of the blue. Asibridel was sure she read him correctly, as a man with a refreshing reluctance and disdain for owning people, yet--

"Draw up a proposal for the eggs," Lady Elin commanded.

I need to take my time with the eggs and buy favors with the first wives. This is too hasty, and they'll be able to strip them away and increase their own power.

"Lady Elin, I must protest--"

"This is what you wanted, remember?" Lady Elin snapped, "You do not have an opinion. Draw up the proposal, slave."

"At your pleasure," Prime Minister Asibridel dipped her head.

I stepped on their relationship again, the same as Walter did Nix. Seems I taught him something terrible, and Lady Elin is rightfully punishing me for it.

The first wives, with concealed glee, gulped in the sight of a cornered and ally-less Prime Minister Asibridel.

My gambit failed, and the Sanctuary is worse off. I will be ousted and without freedom.

A guard entered the conference room, "Prime minister, emissaries from both Bartgoria and the Alune Theocracy have arrived."

It seems it can get worse.