The upper training courtyard had the quality it always had when something was about to be assessed — a specific alertness in the air, the particular atmosphere of a space that was about to be used for something that mattered.
The difference today was the audience.
Word had moved through the faculty with the specific efficiency of a small institution processing significant information. Tal had met with Mourne before the first bell. Mourne had said something to Rhett in the corridor. Rhett had said nothing to anyone, but the quality of his expression when he arrived at the courtyard had communicated something that did not require words.
The result was that the swordsmanship assessment had more observers than any previous session.
Commandant Solenne was there — standing at the courtyard's eastern edge with her hands clasped behind her back and the expression she wore when she had decided something was worth her time. Scholar Mast was there — positioned near the northern wall with a notebook, which he had not brought to any previous assessment. Professor Tal was there — which was notable, since she had her own department's obligations and had clearly decided that those obligations could accommodate a temporary rearrangement.
The students noticed.
The Class S swordsmanship track students noticed first — already present, organized along the southern observation wall, the specific focused energy of people about to be assessed in their primary discipline. The magic track students who had come to observe registered the faculty presence with varying degrees of reaction. Several whispered. Several did not, because they had learned in the magic session the previous day that things worth whispering about were also worth watching closely, and whispering and watching closely were difficult to do simultaneously.
Rhett stood at the assessment position.
He looked at the assembled students and faculty with the unhurried thoroughness of someone taking inventory.
Then he began.
The Format.
"Rotation pairs," Rhett said. "Same structure as the first practical session. I assign the matchups. I watch technique, decision quality, physical threshold, and response to genuine pressure." He paused. "Some of you were here for the magic assessment yesterday."
He let that sit for one beat.
"I will tell you what I told the magic track students at the beginning of that session: I am not watching who wins. I am watching what you actually are." Another beat. "Today I intend to find out."
He looked at his list.
Called the first pairing.
The Early Rounds — The Field Assembles.
The session opened with the energy of an assessment that had context — the magic session had established that certain students were not what they had appeared to be, and the quality of thirty people watching a sparring session when they were waiting to find out what else they didn't know was different from routine observation.
Crest Dunmore versus a student named Aldren Koss. Crest opened with the burst combination that was the Dunmore family's signature — aggressive, percussive, designed for immediate dominance of space. Koss had no comparable burst capacity and was overwhelmed in the first four seconds of committed exchange. He yielded at eleven seconds with the honest acknowledgment of someone who had been clearly outclassed in a specific area.
"Dunmore," said a student named Bren Ashmore, from the observation line, confirming a thing he had expected.
Crest returned to the observation line with the satisfied expression of someone who had done what they came to do.
Wren Ashford versus Taren Voss — a more even matchup, both students with solid technical foundations. Wren's slow-form precision against Taren's reactive counter style, two different philosophies of swordsmanship working out their disagreement in real time. Wren won it through patience — forty seconds, the round eventually reaching the point where Taren's reactive style required something to react to and Wren's patience refused to provide it.
Rhett watched this with the focused attention of someone collecting information he was going to use.
Sael Morrow — who had faced Zynar in the magic session with steel attribute — had a decent swordsmanship foundation and an aggressive style that compensated for the technical gap through sheer commitment. She won her first round and lost her second to Crest Dunmore in seven seconds, which she accepted with honest acknowledgment.
Isolde Vayne had the session's most unusual swordsmanship performance — technique not built from a house tradition but from the specific practical framework of someone who had understood that competence in physical disciplines was a survival tool. Precise, economical, applying the minimum effective input required for each exchange and nothing more. She won both her rounds without producing anything impressive and without losing anything dignified.
Dorian Velkros was in the observation group — magic track primary, present to watch. He stood at the eastern edge of the observation line with the composed stillness of someone who had decided that composure was the most important thing available to him. He watched Zynar's rounds with the cold, organized attention of someone reviewing evidence — adding data points to a picture that had acquired a shape he could not make not be there.
After the soul magic. After the involuntary step back. After Baal and Zephon's stillness in the spirit layer.
He watched.
Zynar's First Round — Ferris Hale.
Zynar took his position with the unhurried quality he always brought to assessment floors. He picked up the practice blade from the equipment rack with the specific ease of someone for whom the weight and balance was simply a parameter to register, not a tool to adjust to.
Ferris Hale opened with his house's standard sequence — three-step advance, diagonal cut from the right shoulder, recovery guard.
Zynar blocked the diagonal cut at the angle that redirected rather than opposed — the force absorbed and turned aside, Ferris's momentum carrying him slightly past his recovery position. The counter arrived in the gap that the overcommitted momentum created — a clean tap to the inside of Ferris's guard with enough deliberate precision to register on the practice blade's impact recorder.
Nine seconds.
From the observation line, the reaction was the specific reaction that Zynar's swordsmanship always produced — the particular unsettled quality of watching someone make a technique look like a suggestion.
Several faculty members looked at each other.
Tal wrote something.
Rhett watched.
Zynar's Second Round — Wren Ashford.
They stood across the lane for approximately four seconds — two students who had separately decided that waiting was not a liability and were both prepared to wait longer than the other. The observation line had the quality of people watching a patience contest between two entities who had very different relationships with patience.
Then Zynar moved.
Not fast — moderately paced, a standard advance that invited Wren to respond with his house technique. He let Wren establish the exchange's rhythm on his own terms. Then he responded to that rhythm — not opposing it, not disrupting it, but moving within it the way water moved within a channel, following the shape and finding the points where the shape had gaps.
Wren's technique was precise. It was also, by virtue of being slow-form, predictable in its precision — each movement finished before the next began, which meant that between the finishing of one and the beginning of the next there was a brief, small, consistent gap.
Zynar found the gap on the third exchange.
Twenty-eight seconds.
"He didn't fight the technique," Crest Dunmore said, from the observation line, working through something out loud. "He waited for the technique to tell him where to go."
Nobody responded. But Aldric, standing two positions from Crest, had the expression of someone who had thought the same thing and was now thinking about it harder.
Zynar's Third Round — Bren Ashmore.
The Ashmore house technique — aggressive, designed for forward pressure, with a specific combination at the fourth step that was the house technique's most effective weapon. Fast, layered, difficult to read because the first three steps were setup rather than attack.
Zynar read the setup.
He blocked the fourth step's combination at its initiation point — before it had fully expressed itself, the counter arriving while the combination was still organizing itself rather than after it had launched. Bren Ashmore's combination dissolved before it landed.
Fifteen seconds.
Scholar Mast had written something in his notebook. He looked at it for a moment and then back at Zynar returning to the observation line and wrote something else.
Commandant Solenne had the expression she wore when she was filing something she considered significant. She had worn this expression continuously since Zynar's first round.
Zynar's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Rounds.
Fourth round — against Kael Ashmore. House technique with a defensive emphasis — blocks and redirects as the primary vocabulary, counters secondary. Zynar used the redirect's momentum, following the energy of each block to the natural next point rather than opposing it. Kael Ashmore's defensive technique became the mechanism of his own defeat.
Twenty-two seconds.
Fifth round — against Mira Voss. Fast, direct fighter, trained to close distance quickly and apply pressure before an opponent could organize a response.
Zynar let her close the distance.
Students on the observation line who had been paying attention exchanged glances with the quality of people who knew something Mira Voss was about to find out.
At close distance, Zynar's fighting produced its most economical expression — the small movements, the minimal footwork, the specific quality of someone for whom the effective range of a sword was fully understood at every point within it. Mira's close-range aggression ran directly into someone who was more comfortable at close range than anywhere else.
Seventeen seconds.
Sixth round — against Soren Aldrath. Methodical, technically complete, with the precision of someone whose preparation had been thorough and whose execution was reliable.
Zynar won it with patient efficiency.
Thirty-one seconds.
Aldrath stepped back and looked at the lane.
"Thank you," he said, with the quality of someone who had lost a round and found it valuable.
Zynar looked at him briefly.
Returned to the observation line.
The Observation Line — Accumulated Reactions.
By the sixth round, the faculty observers had developed a collective quality of attention that was different from what they had brought to the session's opening.
Commandant Solenne had stopped maintaining her filing expression and had arrived at a simpler one — the expression of someone watching something and not doing anything with it yet because doing something would require looking away.
Scholar Mast had written several pages in his notebook. He looked at them periodically and then back at the floor, as though checking that the floor confirmed what the pages said.
Professor Tal had her notes open and was not using them. She was watching with the direct attention of someone who had decided that classification could resume when the session was over.
Zynar's Seventh Round — Edric Dunne.
A student who had been quiet through most of the session — not because he lacked presence but because he had the quality of someone collecting himself, organizing his resources, waiting for a context where they would be most useful.
Edric Dunne was the second son of House Dunne — a minor ducal family from the empire's eastern province, with a house technique that was, among swordsmanship practitioners who knew the eastern tradition, considered one of the more technically demanding forms in the empire.
The Dunne Crescent Technique — named for the crescent-shaped arc of its signature movement, a sweeping diagonal that began at the left hip, rotated through the full body's momentum, and delivered a strike carrying not just the arm's force but the complete kinetic chain of the rotation. Slow to initiate — the rotation required a specific setup, a planted left foot, a weight transfer — but the delivery was powerful and the arc covered a defensive range that was difficult to get outside of once committed.
The difficulty was not the delivery. It was the transition — the specific footwork required to set up the rotation without the setup being read and countered beforehand. Most practitioners spent years learning to disguise the setup.
Edric Dunne had been learning it since he was four years old.
He was good at it.
The round opened with Edric's characteristic quality — patient, precise, the setup concealed in what appeared to be standard advance footwork, the planted left foot arriving as a natural step rather than a telegraph.
It was genuinely good concealment. Rhett, watching, noted it with the appreciation of a professional who recognized serious training.
Zynar read the setup anyway.
He did not counter the setup. He let it complete — let the rotation initiate, let the Dunne Crescent begin its committed arc. Then he stepped into it. Not away — into. Inside the arc's radius, to the point where the crescent's delivery overextended, where the full rotation's momentum carried Edric's blade past the point where it could change direction or recover, where the commitment of the technique had produced a gap in the exact shape of someone stepping into it.
His counter landed in the gap with the precision of someone who had known the gap would be there.
Edric Dunne stepped back from the lane.
His expression was not the expression of someone who had been defeated. It was the expression of someone who had been defeated specifically — by something that had understood his technique well enough to find the one place it could not cover, and had found it not through speed or power but through the reading quality that had characterized every previous round.
From the observation line, the reaction was quiet.
Rhett looked at the floor where the round had concluded.
Then Zynar laughed.
It was not the open, unbothered laugh from the classroom. It was not even the quiet, private variety he had produced before using the soul magic. This was different — louder, genuinely evil in its specific character, carrying the specific quality of someone who had found something funny in a way that had nothing to do with warmth or kindness, a laugh that came from the part of him that found the world amusing in the way that certain people found the world amusing when they had a particular relationship with power and its absence.
It filled the courtyard.
The students on the observation line did not all react the same way. Some turned. Some went still. Some produced the involuntary response of a body that has received a sound it classifies as a warning before the conscious mind has caught up with the classification.
Sael Morrow had the expression of someone who had taken an unexpected step backward and was not entirely certain when she had decided to do it.
Bren Ashmore was very still with the quality of someone whose instincts and their rational mind were having a brief disagreement about the appropriate response.
Wren Ashford looked at Zynar with the expression he wore when something had exceeded the category he had put it in — but this time the expression had a different character underneath it, the specific quality of someone whose framework had just been updated in a direction they were not entirely comfortable with.
Aldric was looking at Zynar with the arrested expression — the fascination was still there, genuine and unchanged, but underneath it something more complex had arrived and was not going anywhere.
Dorian did not move. His composure held. But his hands had acquired the specific quality of hands that were being kept still rather than hands that were naturally still, and there was a difference between those two things that someone paying careful attention could observe.
Seraphine was very still.
She was looking at Zynar with an expression that she had organized carefully since the magic session — the expression of someone who has integrated a new dimension of a person into their understanding of that person and is continuing to do so in real time. The laugh was not a surprise to her. It was a confirmation.
Commandant Solenne had the expression of someone who had filed many things this session and had just filed something that required a different category from everything preceding it.
Scholar Mast wrote something in his notebook with the focused efficiency of someone capturing something they do not want to forget.
Professor Tal looked at Zynar with the expression she had been wearing since yesterday and did not write anything.
Rhett did not move from the assessment position. He watched the laugh with the specific attention of a professional who had just received data he had not been expecting and was in the process of integrating it.
The laugh continued for approximately four seconds. Then it ended with the natural completion of something that had run its course. Zynar looked at Edric Dunne with the mild, unhurried quality of someone returning from a briefly interesting place.
"I would like this technique for me," he said.
His voice was even. Conversational. As though he had said something entirely normal.
The courtyard processed this sentence with the specific quality of a room that had understood every word individually and had not assembled them into meaning at the sentence level.
I would like this technique for me.
Crest Dunmore said, to Aldric, very quietly: "What does that mean?"
Aldric did not respond. He was watching the lane with the focused quality of someone who had decided from the tone of the statement that it was going to mean something specific and was going to watch it mean something specific rather than speculate.
Zynar took his position.
The round recommenced.
He opened with the Dunne Crescent.
The setup was not the same as Edric Dunne's setup.
It was better.
The planted left foot arrived as a natural step — more natural than Edric's version, the concealment more complete, the weight transfer invisible at the angle from which most of the observation line was watching. The rotation initiated from a preparation so complete that Edric Dunne himself — who had been watching for exactly this, who knew the technique's setup better than anyone else in the courtyard because it was his family's technique — did not read it in time.
The Dunne Crescent delivered.
The crescent arc moved through the full range of the rotation with the specific power that the technique was built to produce. Edric's guard dispersed under it — the rotation's kinetic chain expressing itself at the delivery point with the force that the Dunne family had been developing in this technique for generations.
Edric stepped back.
The round was over.
The courtyard was completely silent.
Not the silence of people who were watching something and had stopped breathing to watch it more completely. This was a different silence. The silence of people who were watching something that their framework told them was impossible and whose framework had not yet been updated to accommodate the evidence.
The Dunne Crescent, as Zynar executed it, was not the same technique that Edric Dunne had used.
It was the same technique — the same footwork, the same rotation, the same crescent arc, the same kinetic chain. Recognizably, unmistakably the Dunne Crescent. And also superior to Edric Dunne's version in the specific ways that understanding the mechanical principles of something was superior to training the something through repetition.
Zynar had found, in his one observation of the technique, two points in the rotation where the standard execution left efficiency on the table — one in the weight transfer, one in the final arc's delivery angle — and had corrected both without being taught to correct them, because he had not been taught the technique at all and had simply seen it.
The corrected version hit harder, from a more difficult defensive angle, initiated from more complete concealment.
He did it once.
Put the practice blade back in the lane marker with the unhurried ease of someone completing a task.
Returned to the observation line as though nothing particularly significant had happened.
The courtyard did not recover immediately.
It recovered in stages.
Edric Dunne was looking at the lane. His expression was not wounded. It was the specific expression of someone who had just had their family's technique — which they had been training since the age of four — demonstrated back to them in a superior version by someone who had watched it once and found it amusing enough to want it.
He did not know what to feel about this. He was working through it.
"He said he wanted the technique for himself," Sael Morrow said, slowly, working through it out loud. "And then he just — took it."
"One observation," Bren Ashmore said. Not as a contribution to the conversation. As a fact, placed in the air because the air needed it there. "He watched it once."
The silence that followed had the quality of thirty people finding the statement accurate and not knowing what to do with it being accurate.
"The concealment in the setup," Wren Ashford said, with the tone of someone building an argument carefully. "Dunne has been training that concealment his entire life. Zynar's version was—"
He stopped.
He had been going to say better. He stopped because saying it made it more real and he was still processing whether he wanted it to be more real.
"Better," Crest Dunmore completed, with the direct quality of someone who did not have the same hesitation about making things real. He said it with the frank acknowledgment of a person who had decided that accurate was more useful than comfortable.
Aldric was not talking. He was looking at Zynar on the observation line with the expression — the fascination, the something-more-complex underneath, the specific quality of someone whose picture of a person had just acquired a dimension that changed the shape of every dimension before it.
He looked at the lane where the Dunne Crescent had been demonstrated.
Looked at Zynar.
Looked back at the lane.
Who are you, he thought. Not the question he had been thinking since the examination results board — that version had been curious, interested, the question of someone who had found an interesting problem. This version was different. It had the quality of someone who had received enough answers to understand that the question was much larger than they had initially understood it to be.
Dorian had not moved. His composure was intact. He was looking at Zynar on the observation line with the cold, organized attention of someone who had been accumulating evidence for two days and was now reviewing the accumulated evidence against the shape that had been forming since the previous evening.
The shape was getting very specific.
He thought about Baal's you are not qualified enough to know who he is.
He thought about the soul magic.
He thought about I would like this technique for me and the evil laugh and one observation and a technique demonstrated back better than it had been demonstrated forward.
He thought about what kind of existence combined all of these things simultaneously.
He was not ready to commit to the answer.
But the shape was there.
Faculty Reactions — Accumulated.
Commandant Solenne spoke for the first time since the session began — not to anyone in particular, simply to the air of the courtyard, in the even tone of someone who had observed enough to have reached a conclusion:
"In thirty years of academy assessments," she said, "I have not seen a student take a technique in one observation."
Nobody responded. Nobody had a response that was adequate.
Scholar Mast looked at what he had written in his notebook. He read it once. Then he wrote one more line and closed the notebook with the specific quality of someone who had captured what they needed and did not need to capture more right now.
Professor Tal had been watching every round since Zynar's first with the total attention of someone who had spent yesterday watching the impossible and had come today prepared for more of it and had received it. She was thinking about the soul magic and the six attributes and the atmospheric mana that became something else when it passed through his formations and the technique taken in one observation and the evil laugh that had preceded the taking.
She was thinking about what a complete picture of this student would look like when it was finally assembled.
She thought it was going to be significantly larger than any picture she had assembled of any student in nineteen years.
Rhett stood at the assessment position and thought about the laugh.
He had heard many things in thirty years. He had heard the laughs of talented students discovering their talent, the laughs of competitive students finding advantage, the laughs of people who were good at something and knew it.
He had not heard a laugh like that laugh.
The evil quality of it — the specific, genuine, cold amusement — had arrived before the technique demonstration with the character of something that was not performed. It was not the laugh of someone enjoying the room's reaction. It was the laugh of someone who had genuinely found the situation amusing in a way that had nothing to do with anyone else's experience of the situation.
I would like this technique for me, he thought. And then he took it.
He thought about the mechanism. The what rather than the how — what he had watched, in the technique, to produce what the demonstration had produced.
He had asked Zynar what did you watch in the training room, some sessions ago. Zynar had said the mechanics, the principles, the places the execution left efficiency on the table.
This was what that looked like when expressed in a single round.
Zynar's Eighth Round — Aldric Solvane.
Rhett called the pairing.
The observation line shifted — the specific quality it always produced when these two students were matched. The accumulated weight of two months watching them exist in the same space and understanding that whenever they engaged directly, something worth watching happened.
Aldric took his position with the grin he had stopped suppressing sometime around the fifth week. He settled into his ready stance with the easy confidence of someone whose body knew this and was ready.
Zynar took his position.
He looked at Aldric.
Something moved in his expression. Brief, small, immediately managed. The warmth — genuine, the kind that arrived without being constructed, from somewhere older than the academy and older than the management layer.
Two seconds.
Then it was managed.
Good, Zynar thought, looking at Aldric's ready stance, the natural athleticism of it, the quality of someone whose physical foundation had been taken seriously since childhood and who brought everything he had to things that mattered to him. Good. You should at least be at this level to entertain me, my friend.
Something moved in him — amusement, the warm variety rather than the cold variety, the specific amusement of someone who has found something genuinely worth their attention.
He let himself feel it briefly.
He laughed — quietly this time, to himself, the amusement genuine and unhidden and directed at nothing the room could see. The quality of someone who had found something privately funny and had not bothered to conceal it because it was not important enough to conceal.
Aldric raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Nothing," Zynar said, in the tone of someone who meant it. "Ready."
Tal called the round.
Aldric came forward with everything.
Not the patient reading quality of rounds one through seven's opponents, not the slow-form patience, not the aggressive burst. Aldric fought with the specific quality of someone whose talent was genuine and whose training had been serious and who had decided that this particular round was worth producing everything he had.
The first exchange was clean — Aldric's technique precise and fast, the royal family's swordsmanship tradition expressing itself fully. The second exchange was faster. The third was Aldric pressing — reading the previous two exchanges and adjusting, the quality of a student who processed information during a fight and changed his approach based on what the fight was telling him.
Zynar matched it.
Not the restrained matching of earlier rounds. Something different — he matched Aldric's genuine effort with his own, at a level that was honest, that gave Aldric a real round, that pushed Aldric to the edge of what Aldric actually had.
The round lasted longer than any of Zynar's previous rounds.
Forty-seven seconds.
The observation line watched it with the quality of a room that had stopped tracking technique and was simply watching two people fight.
It ended when Zynar found the gap in Aldric's third combination — the recovery gap, the brief moment after the delivery where the guard had to reorganize for the fourth step — and delivered his counter into it.
Aldric's guard dispersed.
He stepped back.
Breathing — genuinely, with the quality of someone who had been worked to the edge of their threshold. His expression had the specific quality it had after something hard — not the mouth-open fascination exactly, but related to it, the expression of someone whose framework had been genuinely extended.
He looked at Zynar.
"You gave me a real round," he said. Not for the room. Quietly.
Zynar looked at him.
"Yes," he said.
"Why?"
A pause.
One beat.
Two.
"Because you were worth one," Zynar said.
The statement arrived in the air between them with the directness of something simply true. Not performed, not diplomatic, not the social register that most responses in this context would have carried.
Aldric looked at him for a moment.
Then he nodded. Once. The nod of someone who has received something they understand the value of and are not going to make excessive.
He returned to the observation line.
Zynar returned to his.
Rhett's Move.
The session concluded with the efficient finality that Rhett brought to endings — a brief summary statement, the dismissal of students, the complete quiet of a session that had produced what it needed to.
The students dispersed. The faculty dispersed.
Rhett stayed.
He waited until the courtyard was empty. Then he looked at the lane where Zynar had demonstrated the Dunne Crescent and thought about what he had watched. Then he walked toward the dormitory tower with purpose.
He found Zynar in the corridor between the courtyard and the tower entrance.
Zynar stopped when Rhett stopped in front of him.
He looked at his instructor with the calm, unhurried quality he brought to most things.
Rhett looked at him for a moment.
Then he said, simply: "How did you copy the technique so perfectly?"
The question was direct. Not framed as anything other than what it was — a professional asking about a specific thing he had observed and needed to understand.
Zynar looked at him.
He said nothing.
He raised one hand. Pointed, with two fingers, toward his own eyes. The jade green, contact-lensless, simply present.
Then he continued walking toward the tower.
Rhett stood in the corridor and watched him go.
He stood there for a long moment after Zynar had entered the tower and the door had closed behind him.
The eyes, he thought.
He ran back through every round. The reading — the setups identified before they expressed themselves, the gaps found before they opened, the mechanical principles of each technique apparent from the first observation. The Dunne Crescent taken in one round and demonstrated back better than it had been demonstrated forward.
The eyes, he thought again. He watches with them. And what he watches — he sees something different from what everyone else sees. Not the technique. The mechanism beneath the technique.
He thought about the laugh before I would like this technique for me. The specific evil quality of it — not the laugh of someone enjoying competition, not the laugh of talent expressing itself. The laugh of someone who had found something they wanted and had simply taken it, with the specific quality of someone for whom the gap between I want this and I have this was a function of looking rather than working.
What do those eyes actually see, Rhett thought.
He thought about the thirty years he had spent in this profession. The exceptional students — the twice-in-a-generation talents, the students who had forced him to revise his understanding of what exceptional meant.
He thought about what category this student belonged to.
He could not find a category.
He turned and walked toward the faculty building, because there were things he needed to write in his assessment report that he had not been able to write during the session and that Tal and the others needed to have.
He walked with the specific quality of someone who has spent a long time believing their framework was sufficient and has discovered, at the point where they least expected the discovery, that sufficiency was a more complicated concept than they had understood.
In his room on the fourth floor, Zynar poured a glass of wine and stood at the window.
He thought about because you were worth one.
He had not planned to say it. It had arrived the way certain true things arrived — at the point where the managed version and the actual version met and the actual version came out because the managed version was insufficient.
Aldric had received it correctly. Not excessively. The simple, direct acknowledgment of someone who had understood what was being said and treated it as the thing it was.
Still exactly the same, he thought.
He thought about Rhett's question.
How did you copy the technique so perfectly.
He had said nothing. Had pointed toward his eyes. Had walked on.
The answer was accurate — the eyes were where it began, the specific quality of what he saw when he watched movement, the mechanical comprehension that arrived with the watching. But it was also, in the specific way that accurate answers sometimes were, almost entirely uninformative about anything Rhett actually wanted to know.
Which was the point.
He drank the wine.
Thought about the Dunne Crescent — the kinetic chain, the two efficiency points he had identified and corrected, the specific pleasure of finding a technique worth having and simply taking it.
Good technique, he thought. Worth keeping.
He looked at Valdris in the evening dark.
He did not think about the faculty observers or what they had filed or what assessments were being written. He had no information about any of that and therefore nothing useful to think about it.
He finished the wine.
Went to sleep.
[ End of Chapter 17 ]