I couldn’t eat. My stomach was in knots. I took a piece of bread and tore it slowly to pieces. Abira dove into to the food, eating with a passion that precluded table manners. She kept talking to me and about me regardless of how full her mouth happened to be. “Still odd as all hell. What’s your name, kid?”

“Ariah,” I said quietly.

“That mean anything in tink-speak?” she asked.

Dirva frowned at her. “It means wild. Don’t say it like that.”

Abira snorted. “Gah, you’re a quarter, tops.”

“I’ll throw you out. I know it’s hard for you to show respect to anything, Abbie, but you’ll have to find a way to do it.”

Abira started to say something, thought the better of it, and went back to her food. “Don’t seem wild to me,” she said after a second. I hated that I was once again the topic of conversation. I had hoped that she would continue to press Dirva on whatever old nerve she had just pressed so that they would fight, and I could slip away.

“He isn’t. Ariah’s very, very well-mannered. Unlike you,” Dirva said, grinning at her.

“Manners are overrated,” she said. “Like education.”

Dirva’s grin evaporated. He tapped the fingers of his left hand on the table, a gesture I had come to notice—after four years at his side—meant he was holding his tongue. “Abbie, please.”

“Rest of us turned out just fine,” she said. Dirva’s jaw clenched tight. He went to the faucet for a glass of water. Abira once again turned her attentions to me. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four.”

“And he’s just got you stuck up here day and night with your nose in a damn book, eh? What a waste of youth. Gah, when Lor there was your age, he was…”

“He doesn’t need to know, Abbie,” Dirva said sharply from the other side of the kitchen.

Abira raised her eyebrows. “Oh, someone’s a might protective. Guess he’s red enough after all.”

Dirva’s head whipped around. “He is my student.” His voice was a touch too even, too controlled. It made me uneasy.

“Bet you’re giving him all sorts of lessons, eh?”

“Don’t,” he said.