The Queen of Faery smiled. Her eyes sparkled. “It is, as you say, a long chance,” she said. “But I have played fairly for long enough. Now I will play unfairly.”

Tamsin appeared in the aethereal as a female irk, but clothed in smoke and fire; and the smoke was incense, and the fire was a very different kind of heat.

“Ash,” she said.

Ash was with her immediately.

“What prize do you offer me, Ash?” she asked.

Ash regarded her. And despite layers of minds and protections, he saw what he saw, in glimpses, and he was more than satisfied. “What do you want?”

“Freedom for my people, and the safety of my hold, forever,” she said. “What else would I want?”

Ash remade himself as a handsome, dark-haired man with a limp. “Power,” he said. “All of you mortals want it. I have it.”

She smiled, and her fangs were well hidden, and her lips parted slightly; lips lusher and redder than any human woman’s. “Power?” she asked. “For what do I need power, Ash?”

“Power to work your will on the world,” he said.

“Alas, my will is only that of an old irk woman,” she said. A billow of incense showed a long arm, naked to a shoulder, and Ash stirred.

“If you are old, then I am ancient,” Ash said. “Surely there is something you want.”

Tamsin was already dancing away from him across the plane of the aethereal.

“Perhaps,” she said with an enigmatic smile.

Ash shook, and suddenly she was looking at a single, baleful eye.

“Let me tell you what I want,” Ash said. “I want you to leave all the little men to me. And my friends.”

“Perhaps,” Tamsin said. “To tell you the truth, Lord Ash, I am not at all sure you will be the victor in this contest.” She turned, and the smoke turned with her, weaving tendrils. An ankle showed, and then a thigh.

“Of course I will be victor!” Ash roared.

“Not the will?” Tamsin asked. “Even now, the will attacks the gate. If it wins the gate, what will it give you?”

“I can master it. It is weak in the real; a mistake I have made too often. This time, I am the stronger in the real.”

“Even now, a mighty army builds against you; it will be led by Harmodius and Desiderata.” Tamsin’s voice was laced with concern.

“You are a great fool if you think that bitch can resist me,” Ash spat.

“But . . . she has, has she not?” Tamsin said.

“She is already dead,” Ash said with enormous satisfaction.

“Really?” Tamsin asked. “I think you are deceived.”

She allowed the dragon a glimpse of her apparently unguarded thought.

“At the falls?” Ash reacted. “That deceptive bitch.”

He vanished.