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beside Fence, and offered him her handkerchief.
    “Shan’s mercy,” said Fence, taking it and blowing his nose vigorously. “Shan’s mercy on the lot of us, it’s better than we deserve. Thy lessons from Edward were well learned, my lad.”
    “Faugh!” said Randolph, still not loudly. “Had they been well learned, I were dead long since.”
    Fence looked up at him, all hilarity gone. “No,” he said. “Those were your lessons. Not Edward’s. And not mine.”
    They were going to start arguing again. Laura looked hopefully at Ted.
    Ted took a very deep breath and pushed his fists into the pockets of his jeans. Laura knew he wanted to yell. But you didn’t yell at Fence and Randolph. As King Edward, Ted might have come to it in the next few months; and they might have let him get away with it. But as Ted, he had to start all over; worse than that, because they didn’t want him. All the kindness and trust he had had from them these three months had been for Edward, and the actions that they had approved of were not, now, marks in his favor but rather evidence of betrayal.
    “You’d better go,” said Fence again. “And of your courtesy, save your ill-wishing for more worthy foes.”
    “Now look,” said Ted, not yelling. “I didn’t come back here for my health. A sinister man came close to making us come back. He asked three riddles you haven’t even considered, and he gave us one quotation from your world and one from ours. You’re not thinking. All you want to do is get rid of us. I wouldn’t want to look at us either, if I were you. But we didn’t kill those kids. Claudia did it. And she did to us the exact same things that we did to you—but she knew it. We’re as mad at her as you are.”
    Laura admired this logic. He should have tried it before the threats.
    Fence quirked the corner of his mouth and looked at Randolph, who, without noticing, slapped his hand down on Agatha’s table and started to speak. Fence, with his habitual gesture, put a hand on Randolph’s wrist. Randolph turned on him with a ferocious expression. Fence took his hand away.
    “I would cry you mercy,” said Randolph to Fence, “were there mercy in the universe to nick the edge of my iniquity.”
    “Take less pleasure in thy mouthings,” said Fence, in an astonishingly deadly voice, “and thou shalt have mercy enow.”
    There was a pause worse than the last one. Then Randolph said, “What, a villain that mouthes not?” and without waiting for an answer, turned to Ted. Laura saw that Fence looked more relieved than otherwise.
    “Do we grant,” said Randolph to Ted, in a cooler voice than he had used with Fence, “that until we have studied what to do, ’tis better for the country that nothing seem to be amiss, will you in turn agree that you are nowise trained for statecraft and that for you to take up your duties would be disaster?”
    “Well,” said Ted, “I don’t know about disaster, but I don’t really want all my duties. What do you propose to do?”
    “Randolph is Regent,” said Fence.
    “I have told you, no,” said Randolph.
    “What about you, Fence?” said Laura. “Can’t you help Ted?”
    “In the end,” said Fence, “what Edward orders, that must we accomplish. But if you will agree to take my guidance, Edward, and to gainsay my advice only under desperate conditions, I think we will deal very well.”
    “That’s fine with me,” said Ted, quickly.
    “Excellent,” said Fence. “Now. For all to seem as it was, it is needful that we retrieve your companions from their exile. They are gone by way of the green sword under the bottle trees, and may be recovered by that means?”
    “Well, yes and no,” said Ted. Laura was rather taken aback by the speed with which plans were being made, but Ted seemed to be following them well enough. “We can get to where they are that way. But then we’ll have to persuade them to come back.”
    “It liked them well enough before,” observed