Even in that first session, I could see how bright she was. Languages did not come easily to her. She struggled with pronunciation, and she had no patience with her own mind. She grew more and more frustrated with herself. In one sentence, she had the grammar right but not the vocabulary. In another attempt, the tenses were wrong. There was always something wrong with the phonemes. That she got anything right at all, frankly, was impressive, but she quickly became as disgusted with her own limitations as she was with anything and everything about me. And since languages came so easily to me, and since I was still a little distracted, I found it easy to be patient with her. About an hour in, she growled halfway through a sentence when I reminded her about word order. “Stop correcting me!”

“I’m teaching you.”

“Just stop.” She sighed and leaned back on her hands. Her shoulders arced up toward her ears, and her mouth formed a hard, bitter line. She looked over at me. “It must be strange, teaching them.”

“Strange how?”

“A whole room of Qin, and you’re in charge.”

I laughed. “In charge of what? I’m in charge of the roster, that’s all. The class is a formality.”

“Still,” she said. “They’re there to listen. To listen to an elf.” She leaned forward again. “Can I ask you something?”

I didn’t want her to. Whatever it was, I knew instinctively it was something I wouldn’t want to answer. Still, it seemed rude to refuse. “Yes?”

She grinned. I had hoped that she would notice my resistance and think twice. The fact of it was she had noticed my resistance, and it likely sparked a hundred more invasive questions. “Just how red are you, professor?”

“What?” It came out a croak. The blood rushed to my face.

“Don’t be like that,” she said. “You’re begging the question, the way you dress. You probably don’t even need to shave.”

“Just say it.”

“Say what?”

“Really? You’re going to mention everything but my eyes?”

She glanced away; she carried in her a sullen, irritable incrimination.

“Just say it. Ask me if I’m nahsiyya.”

She was quiet for a second. “Professor, I…”

“Am I even really Semadran? What am I even doing here? Who in the district would rent a man like me a room, anyway?”

“Professor…”

“And you’re here alone with me. The neighborhood will talk.”

She held up her hands. “All right! All right. I was rude. I’m sorry.”

“The hell you are,” I said, pulling myself up. “From now on keep your questions to yourself or the lessons are off.”