"...possibly you are mostly confused about how unwilling I am to do unpleasant things to you."

"Oh...is this...a result of the mind control drawback?"

Nod.

"Ah."

"Do you know if there are limitations on who you can give out the abilities to?"

"It's... not impossible that I can only give them to you but I'd expect I could hand them out to anyone, why?"

"The rapid healing you displayed is from one of the artifacts, correct?"

"Yes. But again I don't know what it goes with. If I gave it to someone they might appear in another universe or wind up in love with someone."

Nod.

"I suppose not easily worth the risk in experimenting then... though if it was, it would be quite helpful to give out to people, even temporarily. Especially if it can fix diseases or old wounds."

"I'd be a little surprised if it can do either. It's already a startlingly good healing artifact as they go without having evinced those abilities."

"Hrm, I suppose that limits its usefulness given the rarity of major incidents of such wounds."

"I could still be useful in a hospital, if it's one of the drawbacks that wouldn't be too bad to have only temporarily, but there's no way to - hm, no, I guess I could give out drawbacks, the ones that aren't winding up in another universe or in love, and see what those go with, maybe something useful will fall out that way."

"Oh, that sounds helpful indeed. I suppose if you mind giving me the temperature one we can find someone else."

"I mean, if you really want it - but if I turned out to be wrong about taking it away again that would be awful -"

"That would also be awful for someone else, so if it seems like a plausible outcome I'd be nervous about testing it at all."

"It doesn't seem likely. And whatever it is is livable and has some benefit associated. But - some volunteer who is not you preferably."

"I'm not really sure who exactly would want an unknown ability that comes with possibly permanent overheating... I suppose I can put out flyers in town and offer money, with a stipend if it turns out to be permanent."

"At home there's an artifact that a university controls, which grants the ability to tell what an artifact does without having to touch it, but it goes very slowly, because the drawback makes the touched need twenty hours of sleep a day. Testing one that is probably not permanent and with a known drawback would be I think pretty popular there. But maybe not here where there are other kinds of magic around and that's what people are used to."

"I think the complicated part would be convincing someone that the benefit was worth risking the drawback for?"

"Well, it might be the ability to speak and read all languages, or regeneration, or... the ability to give people one's artifact powers, which I don't know if it'd work on secondhand ones... or my blindsense. Or something I haven't noticed, which I'll grant is less appealing."

"Hm, perhaps I'll find someone who lives further north and might not mind feeling warmer than normal."

"Yeah, I think it might be nice in a really cold environment, though I don't know if it'd actually make it safer than usual instead of only less cold-feeling."

"I'll have someone ask around about visitors from Scotland and make the offer known to any that can be found."

Nod.

And now they should present her unexpected guest, Miss Annabelline Merry Svane, to her grandfather, the Earl of York.

Where exactly is this girl from, the Earl wants to know.