"If you say so!" He's really got to move on, there are glasses close to emptying out there, and he needs to be really good at this. There's the future to consider. Even this half of him doesn't have the look of the Prince's day servants, not anymore. What happens to him when the Carnival is gone is doubtless going to depend on how he does tonight. He's not good at malice, it's not in his nature and his nature hasn't changed, much, but he can be good at service.

He snorts gently, already starting to step away. "Well, yeah! I knew that already." Having someone to help and take care of is what makes pretty much anything worth it. In the year after turning into a bird it was the knowledge of why that had sustained him, the fact that even though he hadn't saved everyone or solved the crisis he'd been such a help.

Julien had never been happier with a job than those few years when he'd worked in a ramshackle clinic on the wrong side of town, with a sour doctor defrosting slowly. Well. Can't go back. Only onwards.