He found Camellia there, as he had thought he might. In the warm, sunny kitchen, her vaguely hanbok style dress in loosely flowing orange silk fairly glowed as she moved around the kitchen, rippling through the warmth, or perhaps creating it. Athelas found himself instinctively looking to see what earrings she was wearing today, and caught sight of the edge of a chlorophyll green star peeking out from the waves of her hair that tumbled over her shoulders.

  Camellia took the dishes from him, but said, “You can leave them in there, you know.”

  “I know,” he said. And then, because he wanted to be disarming, he added, “It wasn’t unalloyed selflessness, I believe. Our young gumiho friend is in fine form this morning.”

  There was amusement in her eyes, but Athelas wouldn’t have been prepared to swear that it had been produced by his words in and of themselves. She didn’t speak, which gave him very little to go on; she merely put the dishes in the sink and washed them, then left them glistening and steaming slightly in the draining tray.

  His interest piqued, Athelas picked up a tea-towel and added, “A very enlivening personality, I believe. I wonder why I find it so irritating.”

  “YeoWoo is…a breath of fresh air,” Camellia said. He saw the corners of a small, private smile, and then it was gone. “But if we’re going to follow the metaphor to the death, it is a fresh air that can cause the lungs a bit of trouble from time to time if you aren’t careful.”

  “And yourself?” asked Athelas. “Am I to liken you to a zephyr by contrast?”

  “You can if you’d like to,” Camellia said, and there again was that amusement he couldn’t quite tell the direction of. “I’m not sure it’s accurate, but it isn’t for me to say.”

  “In that case,” said Athelas, with the sting of rejection of his my dear still fresh in his mind, “perhaps I shall say that you’re a perfume-laden zephyr, tempting unwary passers-by into your domain with the scent of tea.”

  Camellia, who was gazing down at the swiftly disappearing bubbles in her now dish-free sink, made another tiny riot of the steam from the sink by breathing out.

  “I won’t argue with that,” she said. “Not when I was hoping to speak with you before you leave the house. You can consider yourself led astray, if that helps.”

  “If it’s so, it will be the first time I’ve been led astray rather than being the one leading astray,” Athelas remarked. “If you wished to speak to me, you might have done so freely. I don’t in general, I believe, hold grudges.”

  That produced a definite smile, though Athelas didn’t for a moment imagine that it was a good sign; there was very little humour in it.

  Before Camellia could say it—or some variation of it—Athelas said affably, “Yes, the reason is exactly what you’d suppose; I tend to rid myself of annoyances and wrong-doers very swiftly. I find it prevents grudges from forming. What might I assist you with?”

  He had to bite off the “my dear” at the end of the sentence but flattered himself that he had done it sufficiently quickly to avoid notice. At any rate, Camellia didn’t seem to notice. She had gone back to gazing down at the remaining bubbles in the sink, a very slight line between her brows.

  “There’s something I want you to do,” she said.

  Athelas bit down hard on his first instinct—which was, as ever, to ask what the doing of such would benefit him—but recalled that he would hardly be expected to change in a single night.

  By way of compromise, he said lightly, “I very rarely do things for other people. Perhaps you could tell me why I should do so in this case?”

  “Fae see things in terms of bargains, I’ve been told,” Camellia said, removing the plugs from the sinks and wringing out the dish cloth.

  A deep sense of satisfaction welled up within Athelas’ chest. Perhaps this would be easier than he had suspected—and it would hardly be less entertaining to get what he wanted this way, after all.

  He took another plate from the draining tray and applied himself to wiping it. “You wish to bargain with me?”

  There was a very faint exhale from Camellia: he saw it in the disturbance of the steam rather than hearing it, and Athelas would have liked to have known whether it was amusement, irritation, or something else.

  “I’m not interested in making new bargains with you,” she said. She laid the dishcloth over the tap, and turned to look directly at him, leaning her hip against the sink. “And what I want you to do isn’t for me. I’m talking about an already extant bargain.”

  “I don’t have any unsatisfied bargains,” Athelas said. That, by the plain words of it, was entirely true. He had no verbal bargains that he had made that had not been satisfied. There was a thread of discomfort running through his mind that had a connection to Harrow, and that would no doubt be satisfied by the completion of the nearly-bargain he had made with the boy when he told him that he would do him good for his own reasons rather than killing him outright.

  He would, of course, much rather Camellia not know about that nearly-bargain: he wasn’t prepared to think that she knew about it and was prodding at him just yet. It was possible, but he would tread carefully until he knew for sure.

  “You used Harrow to get what you wanted on the night of the engagement party,” Camellia said. “You didn’t give him what he wanted, though, did you?”

  “That,” said Athelas, after a moment of entirely fascinated wonder, “is correct. I don’t believe we would be having this conversation if I had, after all! The child wished to die.”

  Camellia laughed, a rich chuckle that curled through the air like the steam from the dishes. “Perhaps not. But you’d have to agree that there’s still an unsatisfied part of that bargain.”

  “Are you repining?” asked Athelas, leaning forward almost unconsciously with his nearer hand resting on the lip of the sink. “Should I, perhaps, have tried harder?”

  “You got exactly what you wanted from him,” Camellia said. “And you gave him nothing he wanted. I’ve heard that fae bargains are reliant on satisfaction.”

  “No words passed between us,” he pointed out. He should have been giving in much more easily than this, but it was too enjoyable seeing where Camellia was going to go with her arguments to do so.

  “If you think I don’t know that the passing of words isn’t always required for a bargain—”

  Athelas held up his hands placatingly. “I am rebuked. To summarise: this favour isn’t something for you, but for Harrow; and you consider it in the light of satisfying a bargain rather than a favour.”

  “See if you can sleep comfortably at night now that I’ve pointed it out,” she said. “I know how much unsatisfied bargains weary the minds of the fae, whether there was an outright bargain of words, or merely an understanding of exchange. I’ve seen fae go mad with it before.”

  “Have you?” Athelas said, his interest kindling once again. He had thought that Camellia was human—and perhaps she was—but she had a great deal more knowledge than he would have expected from a human. Humans sometimes did gain experience of behindkind and the world Behind, but since that sort of knowledge was almost invariably followed by a swift death at the hands of someone from that world, they didn’t usually remain in the world for long.

  “I’m older than I appear to be,” Camellia told him placidly. “That isn’t a trait that’s peculiar to fae. And running this guest house has led to some very interesting experiences. Enough to know that you’ll find it very difficult to forget this conversation, or to be completely comfortable until you resolve it.”

  Athelas fell back on his smooth, pleasant face to conceal the twitch of discomfort that might otherwise have pulled his lips to the side in a grimace. “What exactly is it that you imagine I should be doing for the boy?”

  “Harrow hasn’t texted me since he left yesterday.”

  “Should he have done so? He does not appear to be the garrulous sort, and I should have thought that the matter of one night and one morning would not be a matter of concern. If you apprehend from my remarks earlier that he’s in more danger than he encounters most days, I would venture to suggest otherwise. He is no doubt very well aware of what to expect over the next few days.”

  Camellia turned slightly again until her hips were both leaning against the sink lip instead of just one, her eyes gazing across the room almost without focus. She could perhaps have been looking at the blue teapot that presently decorated the shelves across the room after being washed and dried, but he didn’t think she really saw it.

  “What will he be expecting over the next few days?”

  “Nothing but words on the first night, I daresay,” Athelas said. “The slow buildup of anger and resentment at everything he does—everything will be wrong; everything will be a source of irritation. Perhaps he’ll be jostled and told to stop getting in the way—someone might even pinch and twist, but it will no doubt be largely a war of words. Someone will have had him up early this morning—perhaps in the wee hours before light. They won’t have been able to sleep with the gall of disrespect and anger eating at them; they’ll need to rid themselves of the frustration as soon as they can. On the second day there will be fists—or plates, or utensils, or feet; whatever it is that is generally used. On the third day—”

  “That’s enough,” Camellia said. There was no emotion in her voice, but it was deeper and softer than it had been. “Is this something you learned from your original family, or the one they sold you into?”

  “At any rate,” Athelas said, with rather more shortness than he had meant to, “I shouldn’t think it strange if you didn’t have your usual messages from the child over the next few days. No doubt he will be conserving energy and moving as little as possible.”

  Camellia didn’t complain that he hadn’t answered the question. Instead, she said, “I mention the messages because Harrow contacts me every night before he sleeps, and again when he wakes up. Sometimes he’ll call, even if he doesn’t speak. Sometimes I’ll sing to him. It’s good for both of us to know that he…woke up safely. He does it no matter what.”

  “I see,” said Athelas, after a very slight pause. Between the particularly irksome task of finding and rescuing a boy from his no doubt damaging family, and the soul-crushing uselessness of attempting to catch the mist that was the slavery contract trade in one’s hands, Athelas would certainly pick the part of the boy. That reflection didn’t change the fact that Athelas absolutely didn’t want to be involved in either case, but there was one slight amelioration to the situation as a whole: very little but a slew of unpleasant memories were to be had from probing into the slavery contract trade, but there was a great deal of potential good to be gained from ascertaining what had happened to Harrow.

  It would rid him of the very tiny irritation that Camellia had so accurately predicted, and that he hadn’t yet been able to rid himself of by doing Harrow the good he had indirectly promised. There was, of course, the question of whether Harrow would consider himself satisfied by Athelas’ help in this situation when he had declared his wish to die. Unconsciously, he remembered YeoWoo’s voice from the night that he had very nearly brought about Harrow’s death in the pursuance of his ends: “Excuses.”

  However, if one considered the matter in the light of true satisfaction, one might even say that Athelas was, in truth, doing Harrow a great deal of good; he would be satisfying the underpinning motive Harrow had had to ask for death, after all. He would also be doing himself a great deal of good when it came to Camellia.

  “You’re afraid he might have succumbed to the desire to die,” Athelas said. What a very useful line of thought for him! He could reassure Camellia and settle himself in the best possible light with her all at once. He fancied she didn’t know what the boy had asked of him yesterday morning. “Allow me to reassure you: the boy was yesterday in receipt of my pledge to…take care of him. Not in the way he wished from the first, but he was satisfied with the outcome regardless. He had agreed to trust me—and, I think, there was some hope in his eyes.”

  “I see,” said Camellia thoughtfully.

  “I would at this point tell you how much you’ve misjudged me, but since I have the feeling that you haven’t done so in the slightest, I’ll refrain. It is regrettable that a necessary corollary to my certainty that the boy hasn’t done away with himself, is that something else must have occurred to break his cycle of messaging.”

  “I appreciate your trust in my opinion,” Camellia said. There was a dryness to her tone, but Athelas didn’t think she was unaffected by his frankness. “And without suggesting that it would put me in any way in your debt, I’ll appreciate you looking into it.”

  “For Harrow,” agreed Athelas smoothly. “I do have a question, but I fancy I’ll leave it for later. There are other considerations at present that are more needful to attend to.”

  If he had said that there were other considerations more pressing upon his mind, it would have been a lie: Athelas was curious to know exactly why Camellia didn’t go to look for Harrow herself, if she was so significantly worried. And that question was one that exercised his mind like no other. He fancied there would be a better time to ask that particular question, however: he had pushed too hard with YeoWoo and although he wasn’t against producing such a strong emotional response from Camellia, he preferred to be better prepared for it if it came.

  He had no doubt that Camellia would go if she could—he likewise doubted that her lack of training as a fighter was the thing stopping her. Did Camellia, like Harrow, think of herself as cursed?

  But those questions would be asked later, when Athelas was prepared for the potential fallout. For today, he was prepared merely to go back to the gate in the wall through which Harrow had disappeared yesterday, and make some rather pointed remarks at anyone who came to open it when he knocked. Perhaps he wouldn’t knock at all—perhaps he would simply walk through the walls and make an entrance that would remain in the dreams of any of the family who experienced it for the rest of their lives.

  “That,” said Camellia thoughtfully, “is a peculiarly unpleasant smile.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Athelas. “From time to time I am visited with the urge to play the hero. Never fear: the urge does not typically last a great deal of time. My expression will readjust itself accordingly.”

  “A hero will be suitable for today,” Camellia said. “Do let me know how you get along, won’t you? I’d like to be kept very up to date when it comes to Harrow.”

  Athelas bowed very slightly—a simple inclination of the head. “I could,” he murmured, “carry you with me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Camellia said, her face stiffening with shock.

  “Should you wish to come with me, I’ll engage to see that you come back alive,” he explained. “You need not concern yourself with the question of fighting anything unpleasant, since I will take care of that side of things.”

  She seemed less stiff, but still surprised, and Athelas very greatly wished he knew what it was that had startled her so badly. It could be that she hadn’t expected him to make any engagements so freely; it could be that she hadn’t considered that he might think of her as someone who needed protecting. Perhaps she was simply not used to having someone to protect her.

  “I see,” she said. “I’m afraid, however, that I’m not free to leave the house. If that changes, I’ll certainly let you know.”

  She didn’t sound afraid, though she did sound thoughtful. Athelas ran the entire conversation over again in his mind, and that particular part of it several times in succession afterward, when he returned to his room to dress and equip himself before going out. He could arrive at no suitable conclusion as to why Camellia had been so taken aback, nor could he pinpoint exactly what it was he had been saying when the reaction had started. He was still wondering about it when he left the house.

  FINGER IN THE PIE

  The most irritating thing about Athelas, thought YeoWoo as she strode down the street with her chima flowing behind her, was that by the time she realised he had gotten the better of her, she always knew how he had done it and how she could have avoided it if she’d been just a bit quicker or cleverer. YeoWoo hated being outwitted by a morally dubious fae, but she hated even more being taught by a morally dubious fae.

  If there was anyone who needed to be taught in this situation, it was Athelas. YeoWoo didn’t claim to be perfect—or even particularly moral in a lot of ways that counted—but she liked to think she wasn’t as far gone morally as behindkind in general and this twisty fae in particular.

  It was, therefore, particularly irritating that Athelas was trying to teach her the ways of his villainy—or worse, trying to teach her how not to be taken in by his villainy. It was bitter to consider that she was the one who had limited their current bargain by introducing terms concerning time. Athelas had seized on those and, as usual, had taken everything he wanted and given very little in return.

  She was aware that there wouldn’t be a next time—and that if there was, she was unlikely to do any better than she had this time—but YeoWoo was conscious of a desire to have the chance to come to grips with Athelas on her own terms and in her own way. She was quite sure that she would be the one who emerged victorious in those circumstances; Athelas would be the one licking his wounds afterward.

  In the meantime, she would need to take care of all the work that needed doing, by herself. Peregrine, she thought grimly, as she strode along the upper footpath of the Cheonggyechon stream toward Dongdaemun, had also earned for himself a place on her mental list of people who could do with a thorough thrashing. YeoWoo was less sure of her ability to take care of Peregrine as comprehensively as she might Athelas, but she would certainly give him cause to remember that she wasn’t a person to be played with.