InsaneJournal

Who: Henry, then Daniel, and Sam.
What: Henry once again astonishing people with his relative sanity in comparison to Daniel.
Where: The hall outside the fairy tale door.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Sam's language. Some triggery topics.
Notes: Part I

Sam was pissed, and it was kind of nice to feel that way for a fucking change. She didn't feel broken or bruised or scared; she just felt pissed. She didn't understand how Lin could just not check on Daniel for weeks. Hadn't he seen Daniel's face at the hospital? The man had been completely fucking freaked out and, yeah, him hiding through the door made sense, but it didn't make Sam any less fucking worried. And if she'd been less pissed, she might have stopped to wonder what the fuck Lin had been doing alone in that big apartment for weeks at a time. But she was pissed, and she was worried for a man that (even after everything that had fucking happened to her) she thought was vulnerable, and there wasn't anything on her mind just then but getting to the hotel.

She still had the shitty bike that Russ had helped her fix up, and she rode it to the hotel without stopping to think about all the things that freaked her out about the outside world. The guards were gone, and while her witness protection cover was a good one, she was still half waiting for the day when shit would all go wrong again. She was fucking numb to that eventually, and it had dulled the panic somehow, in the way that living with terror did. She spent most of her time inside the studio that the remuneration had bought her, where alarms and wall and the familiar smell of paint and torches kept her sane, and she only left to go to Passages. She knew that shit would need to change too, eventually, but not yet. She wasn't ready for that yet.

And so, she parked the bike outside the hotel, and she went inside in a flurry of overalls that were way too fucking loose and a man's white undershirt that was way too fucking thin. She had blue paint stains on her clothes and hands, and she smelled of clove cigarettes and paint thinner and whiskey. Her long blonde hair was a mess, her reluctance to brush it making it clump and begin turning to dreads in the ponytail she wore. The bruises were gone, and the swelling was gone, and only the haunted look in her inky blue eyes indicated that anything happened at all. But she was sober, not even buzzed, and there weren't any drugs in her system, not even a joint. If she'd had time to think, she would have taken something to calm herself the fuck down, but she'd left the art studio without thinking about anything, and she found herself outside the door that she knew belonged to the Fairy Tales within minutes of entering the hotel.

She considered kicking at the thing, screaming, making some kind of infernal fucking racket. But, in the end, she decided that she wasn't in any kind of fucking hurry. She slid down against the crackled wallpaper, and she sat on the dirty carpet, knees up against her chest, and then she scooted over against the door itself. When Daniel got kicked, which he would at some point in the next twenty four hours, she'd be there. If someone else got kicked first, she'd make them let her in or something. She lit a clove, the dark paper and sickly sweet smell filling the hall and slipping smoke-thick beneath the door. Yeah, ok, the dark quiet was nice. She wasn't in any hurry. She tucked her earbuds in, and Musetta's Waltz filtered in from the phone in the pocket of her overalls, the tinny sound joining the smoke and rising in the dark hallway.

The Door changed first. It was old musty hotel door at first, the old white paint stripped, splinters coming out of the surface and hanging out in defiance of the dusty air. As she watched, the tarnished doorknob with its misshapen dent twisted and transformed into a massive iron ring set in a fixture that was nothing in comparison to the thick oak, wood so old it was black and so stout it was more firm than stone. This new door creaked as it opened, swinging outward, and a figure resolved itself in the gloom.

There was no light behind Henry in the old stone hallway. Massive vaulted ceilings unlit by human hand made the darkness behind him more complete, and fingers of black trailed away at the fabric of an overlong cloak made of moth-eaten blue velvet. The fabric hissed on the stone around him as he moved in the wake of the door, the pale shape of one foot separating out of the darkness and setting down without sound only a short distance from the threshold. His hair an unpredictable nest and his hazel eyes soft and brown with fatigue, Henry clutched the fabric a little closer around his rounded shoulders and looked up only just in time.

Henry’s toes gripped the edge of the stone as he stopped short and stared across the familiar carpet at something new. The sight of a person waiting on the other side of the door was so totally unexpected that his tongue temporarily failed him. His head came up on the strong length of his neck and even his mouth, gently rounded down, fell slightly open. At first he thought it was a boy, because of the loose attire and the peasant’s pants, but then he got a better look at that white shirt and rapidly corrected his assumption. He sniffed at the air to take in the alien scent of clove and blinked thickly.

When the door started fucking around, Sam had moved away from it. Not much; just enough to keep from falling inside if it opened, because Gwen wasn't going to be any help with Daniel. So, she was sitting there, a few feet away, when the guy opened the door. Guy? What the fuck? Yeah, that so wasn't the furry thing she was expecting, and she just stared for a second, inky blue eyes wide as he sniffed the air. "You're so not the fucking Beast," she said eventually, dragging herself to her feet and making it clear that, yeah, she absolutely wasn't a guy. Loose overalls and all, she was definitely a girl, one that was a little on the curvy side, even with all the fucking shit she'd gone through. "That's who I'm looking for," she said, looking past him into the door and thinking it looked exactly like some old fairy tale castle should. And, yeah, she was rough and tough and all that shit, but life had been crappy enough lately that living in a castle seemed like some nice shit. "Are you Prince Charming or something?" she asked, stubbing the clove out beneath her welding boot and letting the earbuds fall and swing over her shoulders. The aria sounded quiet and moody in the dark hall, and she took a step forward. "Can you find him for me? I need to talk to his guy on this side. His name's Daniel," she added, the worry something she couldn't keep off her features. Sam was too young to hide shit very well, especially these days when everything felt like raw pins and needles.

He took her in from his side of the frame and remained where he was. It seemed wildly unlikely to him that anyone who looked like this might be a danger to Daniel, but Henry knew comparatively little about Daniel’s life and so far had been too polite (ha) to pry. Daniel, on the other hand, knew everything there was to know about Henry, and Rose, too. Henry had not yet noticed, but Daniel was a master at getting people to tell him their secrets, given enough time and a general surfeit of whiskey.

Henry tipped his head, and the dim hotel light cast a rich, pleasing amber into the solemn depths of his eyes. “I,” he said, very carefully, “am Henry.” He gave a very short little bow of his shoulders without taking his eyes off her. “I am not Charming. I am…” (He thought about it a moment, and then nodded with a bit of irony.) “King here. And the one you seek. Why is it that you need to talk to Daniel?” He was inescapably curious, even dressed in only a curtain and speaking to a woman dressed like a child.

Sam had never heard of Henry, and her eyes narrowed with a new kind of distrust that looked all fucking wrong on her face, like she wasn't used to wearing it yet. "I haven't heard of Henry, and I haven't heard of any king. Daniel never mentioned either of those people," she said. "And if you're the king, why are you wearing a curtain or whatever that is? I didn't grow up on fairy tales or whatever, but that's not a fucking crown, baby," she assured the man in the doorway. But she needed his fucking help, whoever this guy in the sheet was, and she motioned past him with a paint-stained and calloused fingertip. "I'm seeking someone who's furry," she explained, as if it would clear everything up. Another sigh. "Yeah, ok, so he came to see me at the hospital, and he freaked, and he hasn't been home in fucking weeks, and I'm worried. I want to talk to him and tell him to get his ass back home, yeah?" And she didn't even know if they had hospitals in happily ever after land, but she didn't exactly have a word to substitute. "I just want to see him," she added, younger and more vulnerable; she hated asking for shit.

Henry listened to the series of questions and accusations without a lot of visible concern. He watched her curiously but his gaze was not disturbingly steady. As he straightened the heavy velvet slid down one bicep, causing his silhouette to shift, faintly askew on the long line of his neck. He rearranged the makeshift cloak and then shifted against the very edge of the doorframe. “I am not always as you see,” he informed her, managing to sound faintly aloof about it. “And there are no crowns or treasures left here.” His pause was barely the length of a word. “Daniel is my other half through here. I am not… much aware most of the time. He may likely have been here.” Henry lifted his slightly rough chin to indicate over the threshold. “Hospital is a building for the sick. You were ill?”

She took a step back when the velvet slid. It was all instinct and movement, something like a scared doe hearing a crack in the woods during hunting season. It was a long fucking step, a quick one, and it put her across the hall from the door, instead of leaving her in the middle. It took a second for her to even realize she'd fucking done it, and her inky eyes refocused and she swallowed heavily. He was already talking by then, and it took her a few seconds to catch up, and then to backtrack and remember what he'd said when she wasn't listening. "So, you're not always that big hairy thing that came to Gwen's door when things were fucked up with Chloe?" she asked, not really getting that he didn't know the shit that went on in Daniel's head entirely, not yet. "I thought your curse was like a permanent thing, and it stuck around until some chick in a yellow dress came and fixed your fucking chipped cup or something." Disney? So not Sam's thing.

She reached into the pockets of her overalls, and she fished out the box of sickly sweet cloves. She lit one without dropping the ornate, custom metal lighter or the pack of smokes themselves, and she took a long, long drag of the smoke and wished it was a joint. "You smoke?" she asked, holding the pack out. "I can throw it through or something," she offered, the lighter already tucked inside the cardboard.

"Daniel's been in that door for weeks, baby, and I care about him, and I worry," she admitted. And she didn't know this fucker, so what the hell? Talking was always easier with people she didn't know. "I got myself caught up in some bad shit. Take responsibility, yeah? Well, someone thought it was a good idea to drag Daniel into it, and it wasn't a good idea, so-" She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm here. After pissing Lin off and making him call me an asshole a bunch of times, which I should get, I don't know, some kind of fucking prize for." Her expression turned curious. "Do you know about Lin? Or don't you know about anything over here? Gwen knows everything, and she fucking meddles."

He had absolutely no understanding of any of this long series of names. Gwen? Chloe? All blank. They were names he remembered hearing from his enchanted book, people who spoke amongst themselves about things that confused him, but he did not remember ever hearing Daniel’s name coupled with theirs. Henry looked completely flummoxed by the commentary about the yellow dress. He owned no yellow dresses, nor did Rose as far as he knew. He quirked a brow. “Cup?” His quiet eyes searched the ceiling as he thought, trying to recall any specific conversational topic in the book’s long deep voice, but perhaps he had not told it to read him those conversations in whole. Henry’s attention to the book came and went more often than the moon; sometimes the cheerful chatter made him angry, other times mournful.

Henry recognized the offer of the smoke as a friendly gesture, like old men at their pipes and young men at their cups. Paper was too expensive in his world to simply burn it into one’s lungs, but he remembered seeing many people smoking similarly-shaped white sticks when he’d visited her desert world before. He nodded his gratitude. “Throw, and I will catch it. I will need to borrow your… fire-starter.”

“Drag Daniel into what, precisely? I have heard of Lin,” he admitted, peering into her face with obvious interest. He looked forward to learning more about Daniel’s activities. “He has angered Daniel?” Henry was obviously confused, and he shook his head. “I do not know this “Gwen.”

She tossed the box at him, underhand and easy, and she waited for him to catch it. The lighter was one she'd worked, silver whorls and hematite worked in when she'd been playing at getting metal to hug stone and keep it in place. The whorls were tiny, delicate things that she'd crafted using a torch-rigged needle to melt it down, fine and delicate, and the black peeked out at the curves, not giving away that there was a smooth layer of it beneath the silver. The thing was old, four years old and banged up from her pockets and various work tables, but it was full of fluid, and it lit right the fuck up. As for the cloves, they came in a red box with words that weren't in English. She'd need to find her own packs, once she worked through the box Toby had given her. "Cup, you know, the chipped one. I haven't actually seen the movie," she admitted. If Lin found out about that she'd be so fucked, and the last thing she wanted to do was sit down and watch cartoons, especially lately.

The fact that he didn't move again calmed her down, and she reminded herself that he couldn't actually step into the hall. And, yeah, ok, that calmed her down. She looked at him for a second, and then she hunkered back down onto the dusty carpet, not giving a shit about it being dirty. She crossed her legs like a schoolgirl, and she looked up at him. "Dragged Daniel to the hospital. He went to visit me, and he freaked out. I didn't look good," she admitted, minimizing. Minimizing was fucking important. "I'm Sam," she added, not really expecting him to know her name, but figuring it was polite to give it or whatever. "Gwen is my door girl. And no, Lin didn't piss Daniel off, not that I know of. He's just home being fucking useless for some reason I don't get." Because she totally didn't get that shit, but she didn't understand a lot of what Lin did recently.

Henry was ready for the small box, and he tucked the folds of the velvet cloak under his elbow. He kept his elbow close to his ribs and the cloak did not slide further as he put out a palm and unerringly scooped the box out of the air. He had long, capable fingers and enough bicep to catch something several times its weight. He transferred the box from his right hand to his left with the rapidity of a bowman reaching for another arrow. His hand was free in plenty of time for the silver fire-starter. Henry was not at his best, deep underground and tired from what felt like a few nights without sleep, but his coordination was unerring. The soldier was not so far beneath the surface.

Henry turned slightly away from Sam so that he could use the light from the hallway to inspect its workmanship. “My thanks, mistress,” he said, distractedly. He took one of the cigarettes, holding it suspended under his palm because he had no experience with little bits of paper. It smelled fine, however, and smoking, from corncob to carved ivory, was very common in Henry’s world. It took him some experimentation to make the lighter work, and then he sucked in some of the clove smoke with incautious interest.

He turned his head through the first exhale and offered the silver lighter so he could gently lob it back in her direction when she was ready. “I did not know Daniel was so easily… ‘freaked… out.’” Henry said, managing to sound polite about it. “However, I do know something of him, and it seems likely that he was cruel to this Lin so he would stop asking questions. It is something he does very often to me.” He took a closer look at the package with the cloves once more.

Mistress made her smile. Fuck, actually, so did the catch. It was good, and she wasn't used to anyone who could move like that. Luckily, he wasn't old and Ianlike, and the longer she sat looking at him, the less she got freaked by him. She grinned, and the grin turned into a laugh at the way he examined the paper. Ok, this fucker was kind of cute in a Merlin way or whatever, she decided. She was expecting him to choke on the smoke or something, and she was surprised when he didn't even cough. They must smoke in the Disney movie door. That was new, and she wondered that she'd never gotten nosy about whatever happened in Daniel's door. Maybe it was the whole Beast In Marvel incident. It hadn't exactly made this guy seem very inviting. "You're actually nice," she said, the surprise there carrying. "Sorry, but I just met the furry guy, and he was protective, sure, but kind of fucking scary."

She caught the lighter easily, and she tucked it into the pocket of her overalls. "Daniel pretends he's a lot stronger than he fucking is," she said, not thinking to keep that to herself. It had to be obvious to someone who shared brainspace with Daniel, yeah? "That's why he's an asshole to people, because it keeps them from getting too close or whatever." She knew all about walls, but Daniel was something special when it came to trying to get people to fuck off. "Lin bounces back. And I don't think Daniel is as mean to him. He's really into him or something," she said, and then she shrugged, some sadness slipping through in the way her shoulders fell. "I haven't seen Daniel in fucking months. Not since I introduced him to Lin, actually, but I doubt he's changed all that much."

She pointed at the cigarettes. "Those are cloves. If you like them, I can throw some boxes through every once in awhile," she offered. "My door's not far from here, and it's no big thing. I have some money now." Which, at the rate she was giving it away, wasn't going to last out the fucking month.

“Nice?” Henry echoed, obviously amused at the contrast. To Henry’s ear, the word “nice” sounded more like the word “precise” than it did “kindly,” but he knew from the enchanted book what the girl in the boy’s clothes meant. Both definitions were amusing to him, however, and he smiled through the smoke, letting it leak gently out of either side of his mouth, which made him look faintly devilish in the shadows. His expression as it cleared, however, made it obvious that he knew the kind of face he was making and he was doing it quite intentionally.

This was not the soldier. It was the man that had come before.

Henry’s eyebrows went down at the ends closest to his temples, giving an expression of surprise and doubt; more of the former than the latter. “Daniel is indeed weak if it is as you say. He is very cruel very often.” Henry’s mouth threatened to curl into something dangerously close to humor as Sam said that Daniel was ‘into’ Lin. He thought he knew what that meant and he was already shelving things to say away about it. In his travels Henry had learned that men found companionship in each other at times, and it happened more often than most common folk realized. That Daniel was such a man he had not realized. His mouth curled ever deeper and he hoisted the velvet wrap a little closer around his bare shoulders.

Of the smoke he said, “It is spicy, and enjoyable. What would you prefer in trade?”

"Yeah, well, I thought you were going to furrily snap your fucking jaws at me or something," she admitted. "So, yeah, nice." She laughed when he smiled that devilish smile, and she shook her head, tangled blonde slipping over her shoulders. "Now you look like Daniel. Stop that. He causes enough fucking trouble when he wants to be charming," she said fondly. Because Daniel might be a bitch when he was trying to be cruel, but he could be dangerous as fuck when he was trying to be charming, and the guy in the doorway had that same kind of smile, and just as intentional.

When he said Daniel was often cruel, she pointed a finger at him. "Hey, he's my friend. Be nice," she said, though she knew he was right. "He does it because he thinks it's fucking safe. It's actually kind of sad, yeah? Not letting anyone in?" She might be fucked up in a million ways, and she might be really good at fucking walls, but she also let people in all the damn time. She might have been safer if she didn't do it, but she thought it would suck, being lonely like that. "That's not weakness. It's vulnerability. There's a difference, baby." As for that blossoming humor at the realization that Daniel and Lin had a thing, Sam just shook her head again. "He's fucked me too. He likes both or something. I don't think he's gay. Bi, and there's nothing wrong with that," she explained, in case fairy tale dude had a fucking problem with it.

"I don't need anything in trade," she added. "That's not how I do shit. It's a gift," she explained, and she rifled into the front pocket of her overalls, where something tiny was causing the denim to bulge. She pulled out something small, and she held it out for him to see. "It's for Daniel. He'll throw it at my head, or he'll tell me he hates it, and maybe he'll forget to be weirded out. See? A gift, yeah?"

Strangely enough, when she mentioned snapping jaws, Henry did not smile. He sobered instead, and his eyes became closer to stone than amber. It was a sad look, not an angry one. It held secrets. His distance stretched a little farther than just the door. “Another night, I may. But you could not open this door without me, so you would be in no danger.” He seemed to work through this thought as they stood there, and satisfied himself on this point. After that he seemed to remember the gently drifting smoke in his hand, and he inhaled against it once more. “Do I look like Daniel?” he wondered. He had not thought it.

Henry continued to smoke gently while he listened to Sam speak. He had not smoked for a very long time, and it was an act of leisure. “In that case, Daniel is very safe. I have been in his home. It is even more secure than my castle.” This girl had an astonishingly filthy mouth, but Henry did not allow it to trouble him. He had heard worse in taverns and even worse than that in battle. He smiled. “Daniel has always been very confident when it comes to women. He has the most interesting advice. He has not mentioned any men.” The smoke curled up through the wet tips of Henry’s hair. As the sweat dried faint gold threads made themselves visible against his scalp.

Henry got a good grip on his cloak and stepped into the center of the doorframe so he could see the shining object a little better. His eyes widened. The delicate filigree was of astonishing craftsmanship, and he was visibly impressed, so much so that he held the cigarette from his body for a moment, staring at the tiny tree of precious metal growing from the sandy box. “A fine gift, indeed,” he said, quietly. “Will it continue to grow?” He cocked his head curiously and looked across the hall into her face.

"Gwen's not scared of shit," Sam admitted of anything happening through the door that Henry was standing in. Once, she'd thought the teenager a complete fucking idiot, but that had changed when the shit with Goblin had happened. Now, Gwen was older, and Sam didn't think she was so stupid anymore. After all, Gwen was the one who was supposed to die as a comic book damsel, and Gwen had managed to avoid all that without anyone's help. So, yeah, she wasn't worried about anything inside that door with Henry, not now that she was calmer and thinking it through clearly. As for looking like Daniel, that made her grin a gap-toothed and crooked little grin. "Just that roguish smile, baby, the one that says you can grin yourself right into a woman's bed without barely trying." Sam liked men that didn't have to try, and it showed. "Daniel has black curls for fucking days and really blue eyes."

She twirled the clove between her fingertips, and she took another long drag. "Daniel's place is huge, yeah," she admitted, and Daniel had managed to keep Lin inside and safe, even with all of Ian's threats, so she couldn't argue against his place being safe. "What kind of advice?" she asked a second later, because she suspected Daniel's romance advice had everything to do with keeping the chick naked, yeah? "I don't think he's really come to terms with liking dick yet. It takes some time for men to come around to that kind of thing," she explained, thinking of Neil and whoever he hooked up with at that party. Her expression darkened slightly, saddened, and she took a stronger drag off the cigarette, as if more tar in her lungs would help burn that shit away.

His question about the tree made her decide that she liked him. Just like that, all at fucking once. That was how Sam decided about people. She didn't think it through or worry it to death. She liked him, and it was done. "It won't grow. I get into phases where I do small things or big things. It was small things this week." She was considering selling the things on the internet. People bought the weirdest shit on Etsy.

Henry’s roguish smile threatened to reveal itself again at this new stretch of compliments, but it remained mostly in his eyes, stuttering soft replicas of times past under layers of hardened amber. “I tried a lot, in times past,” he informed her, not without penitence. “I recall putting quite a lot of effort into it.” A thought seemed to occur to him, and he twitched his nose behind the new veil of smoke. It was a gesture of concentration, the kind of thing a man might do when he was trying to work out a puzzle. “...Do not mention that to Rose, if you please,” he added, just in case Sam knew her or planned on making any of the easily discovered bits of writing that sometimes spilled out onto the pages of the enchanted book.

“Blue eyes,” Henry said, with a faint sigh. “Women always melt for blue eyes. It isn’t fair. My brother got my mother’s blue eyes. I will never understand how.”

Henry chuckled through a taste of smoke, making the sound thicker than usual and more like the rumbling purr of the Beast. “Advice about when to keep one’s mouth shut, mostly. He is very perceptive, despite the difference in worlds.” Henry bowed his wrist and indicated the dividing line of carpet and old damp stone between them. “I think it more likely that Daniel is simply…” Henry searched for a word for the very briefest of pauses, before deciding upon: “discerning. He seems to have his pick of wo--people.” The flashing smile. “And therefore has some obscure criteria of his own to decide who to allow into his bed. My brother was like that, as well. Do you think it is a blue-eyed trait?”

He allowed her to keep the tree and leaned back with an air of satisfaction. Now her strange attire made sense. “Ah. You are a goldsmith, a craftsman.” He eyed her strange clothes, and then seemed to accept, “Crafts-woman.”

She scoffed at the concept of him putting effort into anything. But then, she had a thing for fuckers that didn't try. It was a seriously fucked up thing to like about a guy, but it was what it was. She liked the lazy fuckers that didn't even have to put forth the effort, lazy smiles and a confidence that was (usually) only skin deep, but that looked really attractive on that first layer. "I don't know who Rose is," she admitted. "So I can't tell her anything. Is she the yellow dress chick?" she asked, honestly not knowing and wishing she'd paid attention to Lin's babbling for once. As for blue eyes, that just made her grin. "They're pretty," she said, and she could have been talking about them in general, about Daniel's, about Neil's. She didn't add any caveat to that shit.

She had to laugh at the very notion of Daniel being perceptive, and then she wondered if she had the word meaning right. "That means to understand people, yeah? Perceptive?" she asked. She didn't think this guy had a shitton of school learning, so she wasn't worried about sounding stupid around him. Around Lin or Daniel, she would have just pretended she got it. With him, she asked.

"I think he has a thing for this glitter obsessed guy, that's what I think. I'm not sure that being picky has anything to do with it. Lin's smart and weird and different, and I think Daniel's probably fucking bored by any shit he can predict," she said, and it was just a guesstimate, which she indicated by following it all up with a shrug of her shoulders. "But what do I know? Like I said, I haven't seen him in a fucking year or something."

Being a craftswoman made her laugh, head back and all teeth. "Yeah, no, I just fuck around. I think you have to make money to be able to call yourself something like that. Maybe someday, though, yeah? I worked welding buildings and shit, but I don't think that's the kind of craft you mean. And that's just day labor, minimum wage, yeah?"

Henry just stared at her with his own eyes (disappointing hazel-brown), not understanding the continual references to a yellow dress he had not seen nor did he own. He smiled allowances for her at any rate, not being overly troubled by her strange speech. He discovered that he did not understand more than half of what she said, and if he hounded after every word they would not get through the conversation in one sitting. He was mildly pleased she didn’t understand quite everything he said, though he nodded confirmation when she asked after the definition of perceptive. He could not have spelled it for her, but he knew its meaning.

“Glitter. Shine. Gold?” he asked, knowing all about the kind of people who profited from the lesser desires of the rich. His father had done little but warn Henry and his brother away from bestowing their affections and giving false hopes where they could not be. Henry was surprised. “I would think Daniel should be more wary if that is the case.”

He took a better grip of her box of cloves in the palm of one hand and delicately crouched to tap out the tiny stub remaining of the one he had taken for himself. “I shall not keep you waiting any longer, Mistress Sam. I am sure he will be pleased to see you, and your fine craftsmanship.” Henry rose once more, leaving the tiny stub where it was and bringing the box with him as he took a better grip on the robe and moved closer to the threshold.