“I suppose I’ve picked them up from the reading I’ve been doing.”

“In our library?”

Dyeawan nods.

“And that’s how you acquired the knowledge to do all this?”

“Well, Tahei helped me understand a lot of it. But I didn’t want him solving any of the problems for me, so the rest came from books.”

“Could you read before you came here?”

“No. Not really. Except for some signs in the Capitol.”

“May I sit?” Edger asks.

“Of course.”

He settles himself gently on the foot of her bed, the hollow bones in the back of the wind dragon with its jaw perpetually clamped on his throat exhaling slowly.

“I came here tonight because today marks three months since you’ve been with us,” he says. “I wanted to see how you felt, how you’d adjusted. Are you telling me in one month you taught yourself to read, learned advanced principles of alchemy, engineering, and metallurgy, and adapted them all to build this wondrous device?”

“I just… I have a head for it, I suppose.”

“You do indeed, my dear. In fact, I have drastically underestimated you. I owe you an apology.”

Dyeawan frowns. “No, you don’t. You’ve given me everything. Every morning I wake up breathless because I’m afraid I dreamed all this, and I’m back inside a stinking empty wine barrel in some alley. I owe you, not the other way around.”

Edger nods, replacing his surprised face with his cordial smile.

“Still and all,” he says, “the fact remains that I have woefully underestimated your potential. And I do not do that. Not ever. It’s quite shocking, really. I simply didn’t see it.”

He rises from the bed, turning and walking toward the door.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Dyeawan calls after him, the concern in her voice unmasked. “That you underestimated me, I mean.”

“I don’t know yet,” Edger says without turning around. “But I promise you, we shall see, one way or the other. Your new invention is marvelous, Slider. Reward yourself with sleep, and see what else you can dream up.”

He leaves her with that, closing her door behind him.

Dyeawan stares at the door for a long time after he’s gone, her heart beating faster than normal. To calm herself, she pulls the levers on her invention several times, running through the sequence or extinguishing the light and then reigniting it.

It works precisely as she intended.

She never allowed herself to acknowledge it while she was designing and building the device, but it wasn’t and isn’t simple curiosity or inspiration. She wanted to impress Edger with it. She wanted to feel pride.

Now that she has, Dyeawan finds there is no pride within her, only a quiet sense of fear.

SAVAGERY PAYS A CALL