And the Phoenix could read. It could learn. It could recognise, and resent, its own ignorance of a useful skill—that was what was upsetting it now; that Walden, in her funny little human body all made of water and meat, had a power it lacked. The power to control—

No, Walden told it. The power to help.

Help?

Try another tack, Walden thought. And then, with one of the rare, valuable inspirations that had once made her a reasonably good scholar, she saw a connection. The Phoenix, fighting the archdemonic minibus on that planar patrol a few weeks ago, had ordered its opponent to go and be another self.

“Imagine,” she said out loud to her office, “being another self.”

Silence from her fellow traveller. But a considering silence, not a sullen one.

“Imagine being seventeen years old—” No, that didn’t work, she felt at once; demons did not have enough of a concept of childhood. “Imagine being small,” she said instead. “Imagine being new, and weak, and surrounded by the strong.”

That got her a brief, fearsome flare of reaction. Walden thought it might be terror.

“You can get stronger,” Walden said. “But you don’t know that yet. You have no proof. You and I, who are older—we have seen small and weak things grow powerful, plenty of times. But that small self is afraid. It is too afraid to try.”

It took the Phoenix a little while to understand. The higher demon was not stupid—no, not stupid at all, Walden could tell. But it had real difficulty with the why of teaching: why be generous, why be thoughtful, why consider so carefully the precise angles and goals of the criticisms you made, why bother with any of it at all? Was Walden not afraid of raising up Mathias to take her place in her own domain? He was strong enough, or could be—

Really? Walden thought, surprised; Mathias had talent, yes, but surely any of the other three—

Of course the strongest one is the best of them, said the Phoenix impatiently. But why? Why waste your time helping the weak get stronger, when you could be growing yourself?

It didn’t buy altruism as an excuse—which was fair enough. Teaching wasn’t a career you got into for the money alone, but Walden was not marking practice exams late on Saturday night in December out of the goodness of her heart. She wouldn’t have been doing any of this if she wasn’t getting paid for it. Attempts to elicit interest or sympathy for Mathias’s own sake got her precisely nowhere. Demons didn’t care, not like that, not for each other.

“I am a teacher,” Walden said at last. “This is what I do. And I choose to do it well.”

Ah, said the Phoenix abruptly. A self.