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When Vanyel is ready for the mad science tour, he shows him the monkeys. "They're monkeys," she feels it necessary to clarify. "I know they look very human at this point, because the whole point of them is that I'm going to move into one if I ever die, but they're not people, and I have forbidden the staff to name them. I could move into one now if I had to but I'd like to get one actually looking like me in particular first, and I want to stick more Gifts into them, I got Fetching out of some Changesquirrels but further work is needed." She shows him the mice, too. "Do you suppose Jisa'd like a winged mouse? What's her favorite color?" She shows him all her microbiology eggs. "That's a flu sample from the recent plague! I remembered to take one. Those there are other flus. The white eggs have more-alive microbes and the brown eggs have less-alive kinds - there's a cold one of the staff mages had a few months ago, there's food poisoning, there's the most common kind from healthy intestines - you could get your Sight this fine, you know, I don't do heavy Healing-Gift use apart from Sight for this work."
He's definitely up for giving her some lessons! Moving things with mage-energy is rarely going to be more efficient than Fetching for her, given the strength of her Gift, but he can teach her how anyway, and help her get a steadier mage-light. The technique for purifying water actually feels very similar to the mage-light; Leareth tells her it's nearly the same spell, but the exact kind of energy she's turning the power into is something they can't see. She shouldn't aim it at herself or other people, it doesn't especially make the water hot but it can cause burns on people's skin.
How peculiar. Are the burns bad enough that it would always be unwise to try it on an infected wound? Is it okay to use on food?
Huh! Leareth isn't sure, for wounds, she'd probably want to test it on mice. And he thinks it can get the surface of food but not very far in, unlike water where it can penetrate at least several yards.
She writes these experiments down. Practices sterilizing their water when it arrives.
She's learning things so quickly, because of course she is, and Leareth is very smug about this.
He requests help with eating and drinking again, muttering that he hopes his skin will be in better shape by tomorrow.
"You'll get there. All better except one dashing scar. I think maybe the one on your right shoulder."
"Ooh. I think I like that." And pretty soon after this Leareth is going to be ready to fall asleep.
Midway through the morning, a boy of thirteen or so shows up looking for Belrun. He's wearing the rust-coloured tunic of a Bardic trainee; it clashes horribly with his fiery red hair. "Heya. Heard you were copying Gifts into people."
"Oh, I don't want more Gifts." He lounges, catlike, against the nearest tent-pole. "Just thought you might want to copy one of mine. It's - a secret extra one that I've never heard of someone else having."
"Well, my main Gift is Bardic. Far as I can tell, this one works by music too, but it blocks pain."
"- that's amazing. Uh, I can write up a screening quiz for that, but can I have a look to see if it looks like it requires an underlying Bardic gift or not?"
"Of course, go ahead." He grins at her. "You planning to pay me for copying it? I think it's a big favour I'm doing you."
"It is! I don't have a lot of cash on hand right now, though, and the reason I'm doing all this is to raise money. Do you want to look around for buyers yourself, or - do you have parents handy who could do that end for you - and then take a cut from them, minding that my time is also very valuable and if the cut's very big I'll just sell someone Mindspeech or whatever instead?"
"Don't got parents, but - sure, can find you some buyers." He looks very pleased with himself.
"- is anyone looking after you? I don't myself yet have a good sense of what prices this sort of thing will command and wouldn't want you to wind up making a deal you regret later because you're trying to navigate everything as a - how old are you -"
"Almost fourteen. I'll be fine." He gives her a bright smile. "I know how to make deals."
"Good to meet you. Going to peek at your channels now, see how attached they are - I haven't done Bardic before either, more's the pity, might need to look at a pure example -" Peek.
In Stefen's particular case, the Gift does seem hooked onto Bardic, but this doesn't seem fundamental to it; it looks like it could be hooked onto several other things, like Healing, and could probably be made standalone with more experimentation.
"Oh, that's interesting. I don't have my test monkeys on hand so I wouldn't want to make a lot of changes to how you've got it set up in the first subjects but it looks like sort of an accessory gift that could be attached to a different - vehicle. Obvious synergy is with Healing, but, again, would want to start with a monkey and then get an Animal Mindspeaker to have them test it out."
"You made monkeys with Gifts? Whoa! What do they do with their Gifts?"