Boreas was silent a moment, his eyes measuring me.
"Are we really that powerful?" I asked.
"Trismegistus threw four armies at you, my dear girl, and took the field against you himself. I do not imagine your powers will decrease as age and wisdom ripen within you."
"I just thought we were lucky."
"How modest of you. We, the Immortals of Olympos, we control luck. Fate is our ally and weapon. With it, we have conquered the giants and Titans, Typhon and the monsters spawned from Echidna, the Cyclopes, the Hecatonchire, the Phaeacians; the Oceanids, Nereids, Meliades, and Oreads all pay homage to the sons of Chronos. Even the Ker and the powers of Hell bow down. And this omnipotent weapon, Fate, which conquered heaven and hell, ocean and earth, glanced from your breastplate. So, in sum, I am forced to admit, yes, you were indeed lucky, as you say. I am merely at a loss, or so it would appear, to explain that extraordinary fact."
I said, "We were not fighting among ourselves. You were."
"Well, there you have touched on an interesting matter, considering that the very keystone and fulcrum of your present threat against me relies on that fact. Taking advantage of our lack of leadership, so to speak.
"And yet you have not yet answered what seems to be a crucial flaw in the scheme; namely, if contemplating the possibility that you might return to Chaos, or even that the rumor of your liberty might eventually leak out to the Lords of Chaos, creates in me so much terror, or such high sentiment, that the prospect of losing my life holds no more fear for me. My life would end one way or the other, if the ordered foundations of reality were overturned.
"Nor is the danger, so to speak, unreal. I have it on good authority, from my spies among the prelapsarians, that the Green Energy was infused into the Thousand-Dimensional Object, which was moved several inches from its base before its progress was arrested by Phlegon of Myriagon.
I know also that Morpheus, riding a steed of silver-white, crossed the moon-path of the Ocean of Untranquil Night, with six million of his phantasms, night-fancies, and long-tailed comets marching and floating behind him; and even now scratches at the windows of the day-world, calling to be let in."
I said, "You will be our emissary."
That caught him by surprise. He stopped his thorough inspection of my thighs, hips, and breasts to jerk his eyes up to my face, searching for some trace to tell him if I were serious.
"What-? I mean, please explain yourself, Miss Windrose."
I said, "I hope you believe that we have no more wish than you to have the world destroyed. We also wish to return to our homes in Chaos, some of us, at least. The only way to accomplish that is to wait until you Olympians set-le your succession dispute, and rally behind a throne filled by a king you deem able to hold off an attack from Chaos. Until that time comes, our only hope of continued liberty lies in our willingness to help you deceive the chaoticists, and the other factions of Olympos, into thinking that we children are still under your control. And by you, I mean you, personally, Boreas.
"So this is the deal I suggest. You will be our go-between and emissary to the other Olympians.
Anyone who wants to make a deal with us has to go through you, or else we don't talk to them.
Not Mavors, not Mulciber, not the Unseen One. Nobody. We talk to nobody without your approval. You are the only one who knows where I am. All communication has to come through you."
I smiled archly. "You can tell them we are filled with affection and loyalty to the man who educated us, if you like."
He quirked an eyebrow. "The ones who were at my bedside in the hospital might not believe that Mr. mac FirBolg is so filled with affection."
"You can tell them anything you want. But tell them this one point: Any faction that tries to pressure, harass, or threaten us will make us go straight into the arms of their opposite faction.
"Tell ambassadors from Chaos that you still have us under tight control, but that we have been moved from the school grounds to another area, and that you occasionally let us out for field trips. If you need our help, in any limited extent, to help put on a charade that will continue to fool the chaoticists, if we can help in a way that will not expose us to danger from you, we will not be opposed to negotiation on that point. We will decide that on a case-by-case basis.
"In the meanwhile, you can now present yourself to the other Olympians as the man who has the children from Chaos in your pocket. I assume you will be able to parley that into some sort of advantage. All you need to do is keep them away from us."
He said, "Let me see if I understand the two sides of your offer. If I cross you, you have my head on a platter. If I help you, I receive a powerful advantage that raises me in eminence above my brethren, and makes me almost equal to my superiors."
I realized in that moment that, nude or not, I no longer felt shy in front of this man.
Exposing everything now, I put my hands on my hips and threw my wet lank hair out of my eyes with a toss of the head. It was one of those arms-akimbo, toss-of-the-head kind of moments. They come up so rarely in life, and it is worth a good nose-in-the-air head-toss when they do. "If your answer is no, go ahead and try to grab me. If the answer is yes, you can just leave by the same window you came in by."
He pondered a moment, stroking his mouth. I think the fact that I flaunted my breasts made him nervous. I was not doing it coyly, or to arouse him, but to show disdain. My lack of fear made him... not afraid, exactly... but wary. A chess player seeing a coming checkmate.
Boreas said, "If you agree to live without making any obvious use of your powers, I can agree.
Chaos has spies and agents among us; we only have a limited ability to hide the evidence of your actions."
I said, 'The Queen Elizabeth made it to home port, with no record of any deaths, and no scratches on her."
"Echidna's attack occurred in the dreamland waters, not the seas of Earth, and Mulciber's ability to hide evidence, repair damage to man-made things, and erase human memories and records, on this world, at least, is somewhat less limited. Men forget dreams. I insist on your discretion."