their absurdity. Nothing could ever truly upset them because they had no real feelings to begin with.
The sprite flew up and wrapped its arms around his finger. 'I want to have your big fat Elvish babies!' it cried theatrically.
'Tell Everess I'll come and see him tomorrow,' he said.
'Okay! This is the best day ever!' shouted the sprite, and it zipped out of the window.
The city is old, older than anyone knows or suspects, save its ruler. There are myriad tales of the founding of the Seelie Kingdom and the birth of the City Emerald. Some are religious explanations; some are histories cobbled together by scholars based on the evidence of stones and documents so ancient that to expose them to light is to destroy them. Still others are the writings of retrocognitives, though even they will admit that theirs is an art rather than a science.
There is the official history, of course, taught to schoolchildren, that Regina Titania caused the ground to be leveled and the stones of the Great Seelie Keep to rise into place during the Rauane Envedun-e, the Age of Purest Silver. Like most legends of the Rauane, however, the story is often told with a wink, and the queen's official biographers parrot it with a telling blandness.
The city's original name was Car-na-una, which in Thule Fae meant 'the first true thing,' or perhaps 'the basis of reality,' and whatever the origin of the name, it is evocative of the feeling that the city often arouses in visitors; there is a weight, a feeling of solidity and eternity that resonates in the stones and in the art of their arrangement.
The poet Wa'on remarked in his journals that 'it is not the city itself that provokes this emotion, this unconscious awe. Rather, it appears as if it is something beneath the city, a deeper truth upon which it was built.The City Emerald is ancient, yes, but what lies beneath it is older still. Something older than Fae, older than words or memories. A giant that slumbers, while the city and its inhabitants crawl across its massive frame like fleas on a dog, each unaware of the others' presence. As I passed through the gates I had a sudden fear that the leviathan might awake and stretch its limbs and I would be crushed. By the morning, however, the feeling was gone, and I would not have remembered it save that I had noted it in the margin of a book.'
The City Emerald has a reputation as the most beautiful city in the Seelie Kingdom and perhaps in the entire world of Faerie. Even its most ardent admirers, however, have sometimes felt a momentary chill within its walls, sensing the presence of something just outside the edge of perception; something too large to be real; something that has already swallowed them whole.
-Stil-Eret,''Unpopular Reflections on the Capital,' from Travels at Home and Abroad
he Evergreen Club was the most exclusive in the City Emerald. As a Seelie lord, Silverdun was granted a lifetime membership, and had spent a considerable amount of time here during his all-too-brief years as a carefree young noble.
A quiet servant met him at the entrance and guided him down a hallway of polished mahogany paneling that glinted in the light of perfectly tuned witchlamps in silver sconces. They passed through the main dining room, a sea of white tablecloths and expensive clothing and aristocratic half-smiles. Heads rose as he passed, but few of the diners recognized him, and even these looked away, uninterested. Before his imprisonment at Crere Sulace, before his long journey with Mauritane, before his disfigurement at the hand of Faella, they would all have known him, the ladies especially. But those days were gone.
As always, thoughts of Faella haunted him. Despite what she'd done to his face, he could not blame her, or be angry with her. He'd deserved it. And if not for breaking off their brief affair, then for any number of similar insensitivities in his checkered past.
The servant stopped at the entrance to a private dining room, where Lord Everess sat with a man Silverdun recognized as Baron Glennet, who held one of the highest posts in the House of Lords, and an elderly woman he didn't recognize. They were sipping on a floral broth that smelled wonderful.
Everess and Glennet rose when Silverdun entered, and the woman nodded. Her sash identified her as a guildmistress.
'Am I late?' asked Silverdun.
'Not at all,' said Everess, pumping his hand. 'Right on time!'
Silverdun bowed. 'Baron Glennet I know by reputation, but I'm afraid the guildmistress and I haven't had the pleasure.'
'Of course,' said Everess. 'Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, may I introduce Guildmistress Heron, our illustrious secretary of states.'
'I hardly think myself illustrious,' said Heron. 'The foreign minister exaggerates, as is his wont.' She was elderly, just this side of ancient, but her
