The other sheet of parchment was blank, and resting on top of it was a leather case containing coal sticks of many colors.

That’s when she understood there was a test being administered to her, and it had begun the morning before. Dyeawan picked up the pouch and sorted through the sticks of colored coal, her eyes flitting between them and the colors used to create the rendering of the building on the first sheet of parchment. She’d never drawn much before, let alone painted. She would often trace shapes in the dirt or the dust on alley walls, but that was the extent of Dyeawan’s artistic endeavors to date.

Still, she’d observed the finest architects and artists in the Planning Cadre at work dozens upon dozens of times by then. More than that, as with the wooden pieces, she could look at the drawing and simply see how it was supposed to be done.

Dyeawan removed a red stick of coal from the pouch and touched it to the blank sheet of paper.

Less than an hour later all the sticks were nubs and she’d not only perfectly replicated the drawing, she’d made several improvements to both its composition and the design of the building. Her use of shadows and the illusion of light made the scene look far more vivid and more real than the original. The windows of the building appeared to be less cluttered together, and Dyeawan moved the main entrance to what seemed to her to be a more logical place to avoid bottling up the people seeking audience inside with those simply moving through the streets.

Dyeawan left the drawing behind as she’d left the star model and went about her day. At breakfast and lunch she was aching to tell Tahei and Riko about the tests, but something held her back. She couldn’t be certain what it was, perhaps her long learned instincts to make herself as small and unobserved as possible. It might’ve been as simple as the fact she hadn’t had friends in a very long time, and she was afraid they might become suspicious or, even worse, jealous.

She continued to wake up to tests for the next four days. The morning after the drawing she found a miniature maze constructed out of sandstone walls set in a box the size of her room’s sea-facing window. The top of the box was covered by glass. A smoothed, rounded pebble had been placed beneath the glass on the outside of the maze. She couldn’t touch it, but she found she could maneuver the pebble by holding and moving the box.

It took Dyeawan precisely eight movements to guide the pebble to the center of the maze.