Chapter 66: The Seat Beside Him

Honey placed three brass rings on the library worktable while Dante considered whether teamwork rules had been invented specifically to discourage natural rulers. A marble waited beside the first ring, looking untroubled by the political difficulties ahead.

“The rings are the control sections,” Honey said. “The marble stands in for the load. This won’t copy the actual water course, but it will show when you stop helping.”

“I prefer to think of it as distributing responsibility,” Dante said, giving the three rings the attention normally reserved for a map of disputed territory.

“You can distribute that ruler to this side before the table eats it.”

A measuring ruler had begun sliding toward the narrow gap beside the book return slot. Dante caught it with two fingers, achieving a small victory without spending magic or asking anybody to applaud.

Honey floated to a shelf behind him. Her golden wings stirred the corner of his notes as she collected a reference book, which immediately opened to a page of favorable reviews.

“Chapter six,” she told it, turning past several glowing claims about its importance.

The book returned to the reviews as soon as she set it down. Dante admired the confidence until it placed a particularly flattering paragraph across his release diagram.

“Your work is becoming difficult to defend,” he told the cover while Honey pinned the correct page with a padded weight.

Her plant tray occupied the supervised work corner behind the table. One pot lagged behind its neighbors, and Dante asked about it before she could return to his assignment.

“The travel case shaded this side for part of the afternoon,” she said, showing the position in her photographs. “I need to compare the light it actually got, not the light I meant to give it.”

“You keep the mistakes where you can see them,” he said. “Most people would turn the ugly pot toward the wall and call the others a success.”

Honey glanced at him through her amber glasses. “I almost did that with more than a pot.”

He had not meant to reopen the workshop conversation, but she took a folder from beneath the tray before he could improve the subject.

“The self-selected rescue result didn’t prove the drain stopped,” she said. “It only showed one short transfer. A willing person could still have a bad result, and we don’t know whether the cost would stay with them through a longer hold.”

Dante read the marked lines. There had been several attractive places to stop reading, all of them before the part where his future became inconvenient.

“You could have waited until Professor Bell asked,” he said.

“I didn’t want you hearing it from him because I liked you better when you hadn’t heard it.”

He looked at her, then moved the folder onto his own notes. “Thank you for bringing it now.”

Her wings lowered slightly. The relief bothered him less than he expected, which did not mean everything between them had been repaired.

The student with the corrected notebook arrived at the agreed time. Honey set out a padded target and a small charge unit, while Dante explained the ordinary release sequence. The student tipped the target on her first attempt and immediately said where she had lost its balance.

Dante showed her a shorter path. On the next try, she put it down with all four corners touching and ended the lift without dragging it sideways.

“That was yours,” he told her. “Remember what changed instead of deciding the first attempt meant you couldn’t do it.”

She wrote the correction carefully, and Dante enjoyed being the person whose words were worth keeping.

On her third attempt, the student lowered the target too early and caught its edge on the pad. Dante stopped her before she tried to force it flat, moved the pad clear, and had her explain the angle with her hands. When she understood, he gave her the equipment back instead of finishing for her.

She succeeded, then laughed with the surprise of someone who had expected another failure. He liked that almost as much as being thanked. There was a real result on the table, and he had helped make it happen. Unfortunately, it also made every question about his judgment feel like an interruption of something good.

The skeptical student from the fries table stopped outside the work corner. “Could I watch the next one? I still don’t understand how a release carries over.”

“We’re working through her session,” Dante replied, although there was room beside the spare chair.

“I can wait without interrupting,” the student said, keeping his notebook closed beside the spare chair.

Dante let him remain by the shelf until he asked again more politely, then said the group rehearsal would begin soon. The notebook student quietly moved her bag onto the spare chair. Nobody had told her to, and that made Dante’s satisfaction arrive before he had prepared an excuse for it. The student thanked Honey for pointing him toward the relevant chapter and left with a borrowed book.

Honey waited until the practice target was back on its pad. “He was prepared, and he wasn’t being rude.”

“He came to argue yesterday,” Dante said, remembering how quickly the guard question had spoiled his enjoyment of the table.

“He asked what the clip didn’t show. You knew the answer.”

Dante set the charge unit straight beside the target. “I’m allowed to choose how I spend my time.”

“You are, but you made him wait because he didn’t make you feel good first.”

His imaginary council objected to the phrasing while declining to provide a better explanation. He might have called for a recess if Jett and Lucan had not arrived carrying the practical diagram.

They moved to the rings. Jett held the first steady while Lucan guided the marble toward the middle opening. Dante stopped it too sharply, sending the whole model sideways until Honey caught the last ring before it reached the edge.

“You’re releasing against the next movement,” Jett said. “Give it somewhere to go before you stop holding it.”

On the next attempt, Lucan kept the middle ring lined up while Dante eased the marble forward. Jett called the position, Dante released into the opening, and the marble rolled through without striking brass.

Lucan grinned. “That felt better. We can do that on the course.”

Dante agreed while resenting how regularly cooperation was producing useful results. It would have been easier to defeat a rival with fewer helpful suggestions.

When the model worked three times, Jett gathered the rings and Lucan returned the diagram. Dante went with them to check the hall’s posted course measurements, leaving Honey to cover her plant tray.

The notebook student stayed to put the padded target away. She glanced toward the door before speaking.

“You were hard on him earlier,” she told Honey. “He doesn’t need to waste himself on people who don’t trust him.”

Honey stopped with the tray cover between her hands. She had heard the argument before, but this time it came from someone who looked pleased to have understood him.