That is just as it should be.

He is more conscious of his dignity now. People who spill ink on his work or bump into him in the halls are told to apologize.

They generally do, although with varying levels of apparent sincerity.

He is satisfied with insincere apologies as long as it's clear that he's gotten his point across. If anyone keeps messing with him after their first incident, then he might have to extract more than an apology.

This one girl spills ink on him twice, but she's legitimately clumsy, apologized with apparent sincerity the first time, and panics slightly the second time.

He smiles at her, pets his skeletal drakelet, and says, "Don't do it again."

The menacing effect is only slightly ruined by the fact that he's not quite eight years old.

The girl in question is seven and thereafter stays at least two meters away from him at all times.

Works for him!

Savaross continues teaching him magic. He can generalize from necromancy to, in general, copying function-ripples from biological things. For example, if he takes a cunningly constructed model of a frog, and rips the magic from a frog very precisely, and applies it to the model just so...

Then he has a little mechanical frog! Clever. Necromancy and related subjects are fun.

Well, it needs to be very precise. Even he's not going to get it instantly. There are intermediate steps first. But eventually he will have a little mechanical frog.

The clumsy girl, whose name is Anaseverina, does not earn dessert very often; she's not exactly above-average talented for an apprentice, and she's bad at holding onto anything any of the other apprentices want.

But not very often is not never, and the first time she receives dessert after the second ink incident, she hugs the plate to her chest carefully, crosses the room warily--almost no one tries taking food before the victim has even sat down--comes within two meters of Tassairen for the first time since the ink incident, and holds it out to him in offering.

He looks at her appraisingly, then nods.

"Thanks," he says, accepting the plate.

"Y'welcome," she says quietly. "...Thank you for not hurting me when I spilled on you."

He shrugs. "I told you not to do it again, and you haven't."

She nods, and goes to eat the non-dessert portion of her meal.

Tassairen happily consumes his tribute.

Anaseverina is not strong, but she is small, and quiet, and can often slip away and explore parts of the tower most of the other apprentices don't bother with. Not on any regular schedule, but on average once every few weeks, she has some small token she found, offered tremblingly in case he doesn't like it; an unusually shaped chunk of quartz, a small but bizarre taxidermied animal; at one point a thin, dusty book of poetry.

He smiles at the chunk of quartz and keeps it; laughs at the taxidermied animal and keeps that too; keeps the book of poetry, and reads it during the rare moments when he doesn't have anything better to do. When he doesn't like something, he doesn't make a big deal of it, just shakes his head and says 'no thanks'.

She nods solemnly when he doesn't want something, and smiles tentatively when he does.

He is almost to the point of being able to make a proper mechanical frog when he sees her backed into a corner with silent tears running down her cheeks and a nine-year-old boy saying something threatening to her.

"Hey," he interrupts.

"What," the boy says, irritated.

"She's mine. I don't like it when people mess with my things."

The boy considers him, considers Anaseverina, spits on her cheek and insults her for being a weakling and hiding behind Tassairen, and stalks off.

"You all right?" he says to her, digging a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe spit and tears off her face.

"Mhm," she says. "They go away faster if I start crying before I'm hurt bad enough to warrant it. Thank you."