Boddy returned as I was thanking Gary for his help. True to his word, it had taken us a mere couple of hours to build what I thought of as a firewall for my brain. Unlike Warden, who was specific, this construct had been general; it had not specific form in my mindscape, and it was omnipresent, which was a lot more useful. It wasn’t as strong as Warden; it would require my direct involvement if it detected an intrusion. But I was more confident that I wouldn’t let any constructions out nor any outside thoughtstuff in without knowing about it.

Gary had also insisted that I learn to pull thoughtstuff in a way that didn’t involve dismembering my thought projection. He called it a ‘motif’, which was apparently constructor-lingo for ‘way that you get thoughtstuff’. It apparently didn’t change the end result, but he still made me learn to pull strands of it from the air like filtering out impurities.

As he left, Gary handed me the promised literature put together by various freelancers explaining thought construction. There honestly wasn’t much, maybe thirty pages all told. But it was still nice to at least have a reference guide to my own weird hold on the irrealis. Boddy waited until the door was closed before passing me a note from Lady Liu.

It wasn’t very long. Boddy had clearly read it before he got here, when I looked up, he seemed to be waiting only for my agreement. I nodded. “I need a minute though. This seems like the sort of thing I should dress for.”

The doctor had visited again while I was in the mindscape with Gary. He had checked some vital signs, decided that I was “stable enough to move around”, taken out the little IV needle from my arm, and left again after setting down a few pills and another tonic from the mystic to wash them down with. I took those first, then hauled myself out of bed, with minimal help from Boddy. I was wearing no shirt but pajama pants that were not mine. I found my clothes in a drawer, neatly folded and obviously freshly washed. It was slow going, because I was still shaky, but I managed to get into them. I felt my bandages once I was dressed, leaning on the wardrobe with one hand for support. Dry, which was good. The doctor said all my wounds had properly closed and should heal in a few days with minimal scarring. I asked about my skull and he had just said “you’ll be alright if you don’t get hit again”. I added medicine and first aid to the list of things I needed to research when I got back, because I was pretty sure that wasn’t how head injuries worked normally.

When I was dressed and more or less steady on my feet, I started towards the door. Boddy got there first and held it as I stumbled out into the hallway. Then he pointed off to the right and started walking. I wasn’t sure how Boddy knew where we were going, but apparently he had directions, somehow. 

The Green Study was quite a bit larger than I expected it to be, and was laid out more like a conference room, complete with a massive oval-shaped table in the middle surrounded by chairs for twenty or thirty people. Three of the chairs were occupied by Lady Liu, Steward, and a feminine-looking cobble I didn’t recognize. Around the walls were a series of binders, rather than the expected books. Clearly the Green Study was dedicated more to records and business than to leisure reading. Without needing to be prompted, I moved to stand by a chair just across the narrow part of the table from Lady Liu and rested my hand on it. Boddy stood at the chair next to mine. When she nodded, we both sat down.

Before I could ask why she had invited us to her strangely big conference room, a narrow side door, tucked in between two bookcases so as to seem hidden without being obstructed, opened and several cobbles came in bearing cups and kettles. Lady Liu solemnly filled five antique cups from a kettle that looked even older, and I sensed a certain ceremony to the whole thing. After we had each taken our first sip, Lady Liu set her cup down in her palm and spoke. “Thank you, Misters Corners and Bodyguard, for agreeing to meet me here. I apologize for how secretive I was about it. I believe you will want to hear what I am about to tell you.”

“Anything you ask. We owe you a lot, ma’am,” I answered, trying my best to affect a formality that I had never learned. Boddy murmured something beside me that I didn’t catch, but it made the cobble sitting with Lady Liu smirk.

“And though you don’t know it yet, I owe you a considerable amount, Mister Corners. But first, I should introduce my assistants. I believe you met Steward at dinner, the other night?” She indicated the humanlike man with the backwards hands on her right. He bowed, slightly, and Boddy and I repeated the gesture. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “Nice to see you again, Steward.”

“Likewise, Master Corners.” Steward answered.

“And on my left here is Youngest Aunt, who sometimes chooses to go by the name Betty,” Lady Liu waved at the cobble, who nodded politely and offered, “Nice to meet you, Master Daniel.”

“Likewise, Miss…or Ma’am? Which do you prefer?” Betty grinned and answered, “Miss is fine.” “Miss Betty.”

Boddy didn’t speak, though I noticed that he did nod back at Youngest Aunt Betty. I suppose he’d had more time to meet the House staff here than I did, seeing as how he wasn’t unconscious either time we arrived.

“Steward is, of course, my right hand man. He sees to all the affairs of the House that I cannot and leads the staff in my absence. Though he did not grow up here like the others, you should consider any agreement or statement from him to be trusted and honorable by myself.

“Youngest Aunt is one of our…I guess the word back on Earth would be ambassadors. She handles certain inter-House matters and negotiations. Things like territory disputes, House wellbeing campaigns in the realis, that sort of thing. Officially, she answers to either myself or Steward, though typically we give her a certain amount of leniency that means she negotiates on our behalf and tells us later.

“The reason Youngest Aunt and Steward and I are all here together is because I believe this may be one of the most important transactions my House has been a part of in some several centuries. But first, I have a few questions about the nature of your mission I was hoping you could clarify for me.

“Mister Corners, you are a human thought constructor, correct?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Though I didn’t know about the latter part until the day before we first met.”

“At which point you had already been to the Lane on several occasions?”

“Correct.” Thanks to Gary, I could read the subtext of that question; normally thought constructors figured out the nature of their abilities the first time they arrived on the Lane, because they were notoriously difficult to control. Apparently, whoever had put Rookie in my brain had assigned him to control my powers on my behalf, mostly so I didn’t realize I had them.

“Mister Westlake informs me that this is due to a construct a third party placed into your mind. I met the construct in question recently when it was here in full manifestation, alongside your House’s Mister Maphandler and one Mister Cudgel, House unknown.”

“I suppose it is.”

“My question is, then, why? Why did an unknown person implant your mind in such a way? Why did that person send two additional attackers to apprehend you when you didn’t complete your delivery?”

I shared a look with Boddy, then whispered, “You didn’t tell her about Mister Carver?”

Boddy looked down at the table and shook his head, eyes closed. Right, that was his House. Hobs were free-willed, but Boddy was loyal. I could tell after just a few days with him. It was fortunate for me that he was more loyal to the concept than to the man in charge, I supposed.

“Lady Liu, you still have Maps and the leprechaun under lock, correct?”

“Yes, Mister Corners. They are comfortable, but they are confined to their rooms. Several of our larger Cousins are keeping a watch over them. Steward saw to it himself.”

“Well, to start shedding some light, the leprechaun answers to the name ‘Cudgel’, and he comes from the House of Opulence, or Ostentation, or---I don’t recall the precise word and it probably doesn’t matter. Excessive and Visible Flaunting of Wealth.”

Steward bared his teeth in a snarl, and Aunt Betty covered her mouth with her fingertips. Lady Liu just looked confused. “I’m not aware that such a House exists anywhere in proximity to my own, Mister Daniel.”

“Lady, if I may,” Steward spoke in a surprisingly deep rumble. “That House is the damaged reflection of healthier Houses. It is an Alley House.”

“I see.” Lady Liu said, and her expression turned stony. “Mister Daniel, I assume you were aware of that and what it means?”

I decided to trust her reputation. “Umm, yes, ma’am. Boddy filled me in when we first arrived at House Opulence, the day we left here with Maps. It was, unbeknownst to me until I got there, the location of my delivery.”

“And the nature of your delivery?”

“Symbolic, Lady. I was warned that speaking of it in specifics while on the Lane might have dangerous consequences. They seemed to be similar to the consequences of metaphor on the Lane. I would happily accompany you to realis to tell you there, or I can give you an assessment of what I believe it was meant to accomplish.”

“Tell me what you think it was meant to accomplish now. If I need more information we can go to realis at that time.”

“Well, I think he was trying to transfer authority over his House and a few others to the Alley House, Ma’am. I explained the delivery to Boddy when we managed to flee to realis that night and he agrees.” Boddy nodded beside me in confirmation. “When I realized that, I also realized that I wasn’t supposed to realize that--that the construct you met was placed in my mind to prevent me from realizing that. When he failed, he manifested on his own and held Boddy and me at gunpoint. That led to the fleeing, and eventually to our confrontation in your front garden, for which I apologize.”

“And you came here rather than return to House Community because you were not sure how many of the staff had been aware of this little scheme.” Lady Liu concluded.

“Essentially, yes. We didn’t know how to get to Curiosity, and Community was too risky. We knew that some of the staff were unaware of the scheme, since Boddy didn’t know about it. He suspects that the other Bodyguard who he was filling in for did though. And obviously Maps, previously Porter, knew about it. Presumably there were others. Regardless, Mister Carver had to know about it. He handed me the item personally, though he didn’t explain it. I’m not the head of House over there, so we have to assume that when it comes to my word against his, well…”

“But here, you and he have the same authority, which is to say, none.”

“Yeah. Basically.”

“Very smart choice, Mister Daniel. Because I suspect I have another piece of the puzzle. I didn’t realize it at the time, but a couple weeks before we met, Mister Carver sent another delivery, though this one he sent…directly. Not through the Lane. Not official House business. But I suspected its nature before, and I suspect it more now.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “What did he send here?”

“A…coffin, for lack of a better word. I believe it holds another member of his staff. One who learned of the plan you suspect, but did not agree to it. In fact, that is why I asked for my favor returned in the form of thought construction. As a representative of the House, I believe you can make a key.”

Boddy and I shared a look. He said one word, and I knew in a moment it had to be correct. “Archie.”