"You don't have anyone to teach you how! Anyway he can teleport maybe we can learn to do that. Can we?"

"I'm not genetically engineered I'm a Elf demon, we just look like this. Genetic engineering's illegal in Warp but T'Mir thinks that's stupid and our consortium's offering incentives for researchers. And I can teach you to teleport but it'll take me a while to set up, I've never done it before."

"What other magic do you have?"

"I can make arbitrary matter, I can heal people, I can do illusions, I can turn into a bird, I don't have the grace spell because I didn't bother reading it but it's on the computer and then I can fix the thing where the Bell is clumsy, I can teleport, I can go invisible and inaudible, I can communicate telepathically, I can sing songs that are magic and teach other people the songs - they're magic for anyone - I can make magic artifacts that let me transfer the other powers. I think that's everything? I might be forgetting something I don't use very much."

"...heal people, what's that mean exactly," says Miles in a tone that combines mild suspicion, eager fascination, and reluctant hope. "Heal them of what."

"...not being healthy? It works best on injuries, sort of works on hunger and malnutrition but not much..."

He sighs. "Probably won't do anything for me, then."

"- well how hard is it to try - and the fixing the clumsy, how's that work -"

"The fixing the clumsy I need to read it off my computer which will take all afternoon which is why I haven't done it yet. The healing is just touch-range."

"...does the healing work on yourself, like, if you gave it to me could I use it when I break my legs..."

"...yeah but I'll only give it to you if the Bell thinks I should, it's really powerful and we try to be careful who has it."

"How is a healing spell dangerous?"

"If someone could reverse-engineer it they could do other stuff. No one's been able to reverse engineer it and it's probably completely impossible but maybe with a crazy supercomputer or something it could be done."

"...and why do I get to say who you give it to?"

"Because you're the Bell."

"Okay," says Miles. "Well, now I really want to try reverse-engineering it, but I'll give my word not to if you think it would be too dangerous, I really want to be able to just heal myself every time I break my bones. Nika, can I have the healing spell?"

"Of course you can - why is it so important that I'm the Bell -"

"Uh, specifically for the spells it's because a Bell invented them and she worries about sharing them but she trusts her alts' judgment. In general because Bells make good decisions so I trust them?"

"I'm eight."

"I hate it when people don't treat me like a person because I'm still little."

"...We should introduce you to our mother," says Miles. "I'm just not sure how to do that without Grandda or Sergeant Bothari seeing you - we're lucky they haven't already - invisibility, you can go invisible, can you go invisible for now?"

Invisible. "Is it just the wings, I could also make the wings invisible and not the rest of me, or I could cut them off but I don't really want to."

"It's the wings and you're too - arty looking."

"Oh. Can't do much about that, I could illusion it but I'm clumsy with them and eventually you'd notice."

"If your wings were invisible and your ears looked human then people wouldn't panic about you," says Miles. "But they'd still be weird about you looking Cetagandan. Okay, I should go call Mama. Nika, can you stay out here and find out everything about magic and alternate universes while I do that?"