"I didn't say anything."

"Shut up anyway."

"Oh no, mental censorship!"

"My twin here and I occasionally have conversations that are not remotely designed to be transparent to third parties. Sorry."

"Not a problem," he murmurs.

"The mindreading is part of why I tend to bring him with me everywhere - it's easier to stay five feet away from strangers who don't know what's going on if someone who doesn't feel the need to keep that much distance is helping to run interference. Especially since if I have to do too much complicated or rapid footwork I topple over."

"That does seem helpful, then, yes."

"It took some getting used to though."

"I can see how it might."

"Kiri was a predictable Ardelay prime because the last one was our great-aunt, Kiri's got two sweela blessings and power, she's a totally sweela person - so everybody knew it'd be her. Except then Great-Aunt Elytte keeled over before anybody expected her to. We were eight."

"And you set the bed on fire. That must have been disconcerting."

"Yes. I wasn't hurt - under ordinary circumstances, I haven't experimented with extremes, I'm not burnable or for that matter freezable. But it was alarming."

"And it took a while before anybody was okay with giving her a hug." (Aleko gives her a hug.)

"I can only hope the rest of us tend not to be so rudely awakened," he says.

"Nothing nearly like it, no. It didn't take me long to get the fire handled to the point where it's completely under conscious control, but you shouldn't have that problem at all."

"I certainly hope not."

"Valdin used to talk about trees speaking to him, which I am reasonably confident was a metaphor. He didn't go in for ostentatious public magic at all; I saw him weaving paper as the equivalent of a seal, once or twice for important correspondence. And when he had that mutually fatal duel, Nerine Lalindar was found to have every bone in her body crushed to powder. That's about the extent of what I know he could do."

"I don't plan on crushing any bones, but I'm very curious about what he did with paper."

"There might be examples around the house when we get there. He could disconnect strips of it from itself and then join it up later, so there would be sections of woven paper that one couldn't do without magic or obviously-not-present glue on his envelopes. They used to get very intricate. The Frothens don't have a sealing method for their letters and the Dochenzas don't either, but Lalindars have used watermarks, and I have some sealing wax that melts at such a high temperature that if anyone but me used it, it'd char or at least curl the paper."

"Interesting. How do you prevent it from doing that?"

"I don't let the heat transfer to the paper. It's a little delicate, I need to concentrate, but if you get a letter sealed in that wax you know it's from me."

"I think paper-weaving sounds more fun."

"It probably is. I can do fun things, but you have me beat in letter-sealing."