Charity was practically vibrating in place when the pair of them entered through the outer doors. Dalliance, who was feeling decidedly odd, nevertheless broke into a smile at the sight.

  "So, what did you talk about?" she asked.

  "You, mostly," Dalliance said. Her father was still too out of sorts to call him on it.

  The best kind of lie, Earnest had once told Dalliance, is one that you make at the perfect time to not be worth arguing with. Of course, Earnest also said a lot of lies were the best kind of lies. Earnest was like that. Mister Best, when doing their brief coverage of rhetoric—Dalliance's most hated subject—had told them that lies are the privilege of the powerful. That was what he had said on the subject.

  "So, how did the hunt go?" Charity tried again, prodding to get the conversation restarted.

  "We got sidetracked," her father admitted. "No matter. We'll have to make do with something from the icehouse."

  "Daddy, you're stuttering," she said.

  "I would like a little bit of time to consider our next steps, and the cooks are going to need a little bit of warning to change the plans for dinner. Why don’t you run along and tell the cooks? I will leave Dalliance in the viewing room, and you two can have a nice chat while I have a brandy."

  "Daddy, you’re scaring me," she said.

  "Pish posh," he told her fondly. "Do as you're told." With a backwards glance, she scampered off to tell the kitchen what her dad had said.

  "I'm sorry," Dalliance said lamely. Potency sighed, long and heavy.

  "It isn’t anything you meant to do," he said. "One doesn’t get adopted by a goddess, even the least among them, on purpose."

  "So," Dalliance said, "I suppose you don’t think she is . . . evil?"

  "I didn’t say that," Potency told Dalliance quietly. "In fact, as a rule I would call the Fae evil. I would say that to be a Fae is to have been a god who, when we went through that gateway into this new world they created, left their worshippers behind when they closed the door."

  "However, a pixie is just a daughter or son of a goddess. She is likely innocent of that great transgression. Do you understand?"

  "No, I don’t," Dalliance said. "Why would she let me go through what I’ve gone through?" He stumbled on that but recovered. "If she were a goddess . . . and my godmother?"

  "Well, it’s complicated," he said. "Think of it this way: she is the goddess of you, and only you are within her purview. She must stand aside, or bend the knee, if her desires for you come into conflict with those of any other god. So, your father . . . Charity told me that he nearly hit her. I’m sure that he hit you. If she allowed it to happen, it is because Pater of hearths and homes says that children are the property of their parents. But then you were disinherited. Now she can do what she wishes with regards to you, without the interference of Pater."

  "Lest you misunderstand: there are a great many divines with a great many domains, all of which will intersect your life at some point. One hundred-thirty-seven who made it through the portal with followers and were capable of making a heaven . . . one hundred-thirty-seven divine, with associated spheres. I’m a heretic, remember?"

  Dalliance paled.

  "I knew you knew," Potency said. "I know what they call me. We have bigger things to concern ourselves, however.”

  He walked to a set of heavy double doors and unlocked them with a key. “As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Thus, a model, which has depth, must be even more valuable." And he threw open the doors.

  Hundreds—no, one hundred thirty seven exactly—of shards, sculpted in exquisite detail, rotated around a chandelier suspended in the middle of what would have been a ballroom but for its contents. Clockwork arms spun, clicking, pinging, and chiming as they scurried about their prepared paths.

  "It’s . . . wow. Just. It’s amazing?" Dalliance realized he was having trouble getting a meaningful sentence out, this was so spectacular. He walked around it, marveling.

  "My wife died," Potency Troubles admitted. "Charting this was my passion, you see. And she was a pilot, confident enough to brave the turbulence between the shards. But there was a storm."

  He fell silent. The only sound was the clicking of the clockwork

  "So no, I will not be telling anyone about Dalliance and his faerie godmother, or of the things I suspect about your first tier . . . but you will have to forgive me if I must go meditate on your relationship with my daughter." And he left.

  Charity arrived not too long after, still wringing her hands. "What did you say to Daddy?" she demanded.

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  "This is one of those things," he said, "that you can’t talk about."

  "Oh, so I’m an open secret now?" Topaz chimed in.

  Charity whirled, her hands flying to her mouth.

  "It's not like she can tell anyone," Dalliance protested.

  "She could tell Effluvia or Earnest!"

  "I'm sorry," he said humbly. "I will ask you next time."

  "What, out loud in front of everyone? Don't bother," Topaz said. "If someone knows of me already, or lacks a meaningful ability to tell people about me, then what’s the harm? I’d hate for you to be ashamed of me after all.”.

  "Who are you?" Charity asked.

  "Isn't it obvious, child? And you're meant to be a future [Theologian]."

  "You’re his fairy godmother."

  "Quite right," Topaz said. "And do you understand what that means?"

  Charity narrowed her eyes. "It means that you were one of the Lares, one of the idle goddesses, your Numen held in reserve because you had no dominion, having no worshippers . . . until him?"

  "Yes, yes, yes," Topaz said impatiently. "What it means is that I will be cross with you if you allow him to treat you in any way disrespectfully."

  Dalliance blinked at Charity.

  "She wants me to be a good man," Dalliance tried to explain. "She’s my friend. Godmother. And her name is Topaz.” Anything else? Was he going to overlook anything else?

  He was parading his mother-figure in front of her right after she’d talked about losing hers.

  "I’m sorry about your mom," he said. Charity’s eyes widened in confusion.

  "Dalliance, no," Topaz said sternly. "That was neither relevant nor tactful."

  Dalliance stood there uncertainly as the silence lengthened. Topaz chimed in exasperation.

  "Young lady," she said pointedly to Charity, who turned to him with the same bewilderment he felt writ on her features. She glanced at the faerie briefly before speaking.

  "I’m sure you didn’t mean it," she said, "but you have to apologize."

  "I'm sorry," he said, baffled by the sudden unified front between his friend and his godmother.

  The pixie huffed. "I think I approve," she said, and she was gone before Dalliance could ask her what she meant.

  The two were silent for a while, amidst the oiled-metal clicking of the clockwork.

  "So," Dalliance said, "that’s why your father was . . . all whatever he was."

  She nodded. "It must’ve been quite a shock," she said. "To put him off of hunting."

  "Maybe we can still do that later," Dalliance tried. She gave him a peering look but didn’t comment.

  "So," he said, "I guess this changes everything, doesn’t it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don’t know." He was looking at the spinning orbs of the orrery, the perambulations so intricate and familiar, but it looked wrong without the shroud of cloud cover and the blue haze of the atmosphere. "I just . . . I don’t know what this changes for me."

  Charity looked at him and then smiled sadly. "Do you think this means that you’re not going to have to struggle for a home, or food, or pay taxes and serve on the Wall?" she asked. "Because the systems that we have in place are, in some ways, the will of the gods, to the extent that the rulers over us are empowered and invested with Numen, or they wouldn’t be rulers."

  That was, in fact, what he’d hoped.

  "Topaz will never ask you to break the law," she continued, "because Topaz would be coming into conflict with a higher-order commandment. She may suffer through it if you, of your own accord, break the law."

  He nodded. That was what she had been doing when he lied to Mister Best the first time, he suspected.

  "What do you mean 'invested with Numen'?" he said instead. "What is Numen?"

  "The god who made the Gates was named Janus," she said. "You think he’s dead, shrines don’t take offerings, but Janus's gate is the one we all came through. He was the god of doorways. Since doorways were within his dominion, if he were to nod his head, a stuck door might unstick and open for you. Or unlock. Or just open to somewhere else, because he had that authority over doors."

  "Numen is that nod. It means you have the authority to say that something will be done, and it will be done. Like the Chancellor."

  "That doesn’t sound like any chancellor I’ve ever heard of," said Dalliance.

  She smiled at him. "Doesn't it? If he gives the nod and says, 'Take that man’s home and all of his possessions. Take his children to the convent, his wife to the gallows, and him to the Wall' . . . would they do it?

  “It would be done."

  He knew it.

  "That is Numen," she said. "When he no longer has that authority, when he gives that last command that won’t be answered, or when Firth reaches out to call his soul through the Watergate, that’s nothing but proof that he has spent that which was invested in him already."

  "Wow," he said. "So rulers are like little gods?"

  "Rulers are blessed by the gods," she said. "Trusted with a little authority . . . or maybe just a lot of rope."

  She smiled. "And daddy? 'He tells me to come and I come, to go and I go'," she said sardonically. "Call him a very small god."