Chapter 56: Even Tyrants Had Homework

Dante sent Professor Bell the service diagrams before breakfast, then spent several minutes deciding how much pride belonged in the accompanying message.

He described both tests. The first had put the living cost on himself during the equipment failure. The second had used the contracted source Northline had arranged, with the women monitoring the connection. He attached the lease and said there would be no more living-source tests during the vacation.

The professor replied that the assembly needed inspection with a proper reader after their return. Photographs could show a connection and a result, but they could not certify the source arrangement. He also wanted Dante’s full account of why an observation visit had ended with him forcing the controller.

Dante placed the phone facedown beside his eggs. His private council suggested emphasizing the successful rescue. A less pleasant part of his mind reminded him that Professor Bell had probably already considered what came before it.

Across the table, Jett asked whether the message had contained the phrase perfectly reasonable conduct. Dante told him to eat his toast before he received a diplomatic incident of his own.

They rented the winter garden’s practice bench for an ordinary study session. The ruby stayed sealed in the room, with Lucan carrying the key while Dante completed the booking. They would move it into the lodge’s staffed safe before going out later, a sensible precaution that sounded much less grand than securing the treasury.

Honey placed a simple lamp drawing beside Dante’s notes. “Where would you put the stop?”

He pointed confidently. She waited.

Dante examined the line again and discovered that his neat answer had placed the stop where it would interrupt the control without safely ending the supply. It was the kind of mistake that looked excellent until somebody asked the next question.

Jett laughed from the other side of the table. Anika took his diagram, turned it around, and showed him the same error.

“I was testing a shared theory,” he said.

“You shared it very efficiently,” she replied.

They corrected both pages. Lucan explained one junction without borrowing the entire conversation, and Posey asked Dante to describe it back in ordinary words. He managed without using the phrase natural authority, which he considered evidence of considerable restraint.

The gardener lent them a wooden target and marked a ring on the bench. Dante lifted the target with his familiar small spell, moved it above the ring, and lowered it on Posey’s count. It touched down without bouncing or dragging sideways.

“That was clean,” she said, smiling at him.

No great screen filled the room. No ancient lock apologized for misunderstanding him. He had simply done a small thing properly, and Posey looked pleased enough that he asked her to count again.

The second release was better. Dante recorded the result before his imagined advisers could explain why ordinary practice was beneath an emerging ruler. He had seen what happened when the ruler skipped the part about stopping.

Rhae arrived after confirming her small ingredient order. A wooden box floated behind the supplier on a low blue line, following him until he lowered it beside her chair. She checked the contents before paying, then made Dante smell a leaf that gave off pepper and citrus when rubbed.

“That one’s for the drink you liked,” she said. “In a much smaller quantity than your face suggests.”

“I was considering its potential for discouraging enemies.”

“Try selling them a cup first. I’d like repeat customers.”

Honey bought permitted seeds from the gardener, choosing a few for comparison with her troublesome plant rather than replacing the whole project. Jett asked a maintenance worker before photographing a cooling diagram. Even Lucan paid for the extra lamp time, which made Dante contribute his share before his rival could secure financial control of the expedition too.

By lunch, their table held work they could actually use when they returned. Exams waited after break, and neither Jett’s team place nor Posey’s squad place would survive on Dante’s opinion of their importance.

He helped pack the target away, then walked with Anika along the garden’s outer glass. Snow pressed against the lower panes, while inside a tiny worker guided a new bud toward a patch of light. Its companion held a leaf out of the way with the air of someone receiving no credit for the difficult part.

Anika took Dante’s hand. He looked down before managing to continue walking at a normal speed.

“It’s easier when you remember how legs work,” she said.

“I was allowing the moment appropriate attention.”

“Give some of that attention to dinner. You promised me an evening before the trip ended.”

He opened his phone and checked the plan with her. They chose a time, and she kissed his cheek after he saved it instead of declaring that an emperor’s memory was sufficient.

Dante liked that she expected something specific from him. He also liked that she had asked while holding his hand, which made the expectation considerably easier to admire.

They returned to the lobby together and moved the sealed ruby into the staffed safe. The clerk checked the case number against the lease and gave Dante a claim ticket. He put it behind his phone cover, where Jett would be less likely to use it as a bookmark.

Later, while Dante and the men collected towels for the beach, Honey met Rhae in their room. Rhae had spoken to the medic with the director’s permission to relay his condition to the people responsible for the test.

“He can stand now,” she said. “His hands are still bad. He asked why everyone wanted to know whether he could walk when he couldn’t hold his own breakfast.”

Honey added the update beside the short casting interval. The successful movement had lasted seconds. The weakness had continued through sleep and into another morning.

She opened a message to Dante, attached the warning photograph, and stopped before sending it.

Downstairs, he was asking whether Honey wanted the shaded chair beside his. She saved the message instead, then wrote another date in the recovery column without knowing how many more it would need.