The Office of Shadow by Matthew Sturges Page B

you're done
with your map-thingy yet. He was just blah blah blah about that map."
    "I see," said Ironfoot. "Thank you."
    "Oh, happy day, you like me again!" it said, looking at him with a loopy
grin. "You want to be my boyfriend? I realize that there's a serious size difference that could present some interesting physical challenges, but I'm
willing to work through it if you are."

    Ironfoot sighed. Maybe this was what he liked about message sprites:
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,