He smiles at her.

She glares at him.

"Come in," he says cheerfully.

She stands still for a few seconds and then stalks inside.

He follows her into his room and closes the door behind them.

"Where'd he even find you?" he wonders.

"I was somebody else's apprentice and he decided to poach."

"You were probably better off with them, whoever they were."

"I'm going to kill him."

He looks at her appraisingly for a long moment.

Then he says, "You'll have to get in line."

...She considers him. "He killed my mother in front of me because I couldn't do something well enough."

"If I'd ever met my mother maybe I'd know what that's like," he says. "Of the two people I've ever met that I liked, he killed one and the other one killed herself for reasons that were probably his fault, but I can't ask her because she didn't say a word to me about it before she blew herself up."

"Okay, I guess we'll have to collaborate, then."

"Guess we will. Do you know anything useful?"

"I know some stuff. Mostly he noticed me because I can do this," she says, and reaches out, and rips the power from an obscenely large chunk of space.

"Huh. Nice."

"Well, if I couldn't do it my mother would still be alive, but as long as I'm already here..."

"He gave you to me because he expects me to torture you. I'm not sure you can plausibly act like you've been tortured. I'm not sure you could plausibly act like you'd been tortured even if I actually did."

"Why does he expect you to torture me?"

"Care to guess?"

She looks at him.

She does not guess.

She says, "What does 'has been tortured' look like?"

"It's kind of hard to describe... if I tortured you I'd just expect you to kill me, I tortured Kaseo and she decided it was great and she wanted to be friends, I tortured Telana and she just kind of constantly made snide remarks, but those aren't the normal thing. The normal thing is... you're scared and you really don't want it to happen again, it's constantly on your mind, everything you do you're thinking 'is this going to get me tortured again, how do I not do that'... and then eventually you get better but that part takes a while."

"I would kill you if you tortured me," she nods. "What do you think he expects me to act like?"

"...Can you manage 'intimidated'?"

"Yeah."

"That, then."