"Yes, plants are [life]. Plants and also foods that move. Bok bok bok?" He makes chicken noises. "I don't know how to say how to get more magic. It's hard to say things. I am trying but I don't know."

Calsa has never seen a chicken but she can tell he's imitating an animal and not pulling out an exotic racial slur. "We can get a food that moves! I will say more things and then saying things will be less hard later.

I've been here once before, when Merta started working here and said the courthouse was amazing and I had to see it. When I came to Kef, I walked along the equartier path, but the courthouse was smaller then and didn't have the steel and the drawings and the flame..."

Meikalani returns.

...accompanied by a person Nico's size with green skin, round golden eyes, and a mouth that takes up most of the space in her head. She runs up to Calsa and bounces.

"Hiii! Are you my new mom?"

".....Yes! I'm Calsa. What's your name, child?"

"Lin!

...I'm a girl."

whew

(Her smell is uninformative.)

"This is Nico. He's new to Kef. How did you get here, Lin?"

"Some big scary Boarks took me from my family in Argolake. The lake, not the city. Argo Lake. They wanted me to steal things for them. Stealing is wrong!"

He jumps and snatches his rock back into his pocket the moment the Magistrate reappears. And - stands up and walks around the table so he can see everyone at once, actually.

"Hi. I'm Nico. I not talk good, I ran away. City is many many house? What's a lake?"

Lin has been briefed and is not going to pretend to have a child's inability to adjust her language. "Yes, a city is many many houses. A lake is a lot of water on the ground. My family lived among the plants where the water was only a little. Is there water in your house?"

"Not now, but we can get water and put it in our house."

"Nico, do you like water?"

"All us like water. Water is food."

"It is! Not much food in the water here in the drydark, but lots and lots of food in the lake!"

"Calsa, who else knows that Nico is not human? What magic has he demonstrated?"

"I told Paulo - he sells burgers near us, dark of the square. So probably half the catfolk know by now.

Nico made an illusion in the square yesterday. I don't know who witnessed it. He only used magic translation once, at the mill, and I think everyone else was glad to leave him to me... Fuzzer might have heard, uh -"

"I know who you mean." Jake 'Fuzzer' Stirling, foreman of the Breath-shift rollers, part of Meikalani's original expedition to found Kef. "He'll keep a secret if he gets to be in on the fun, and he's a useful person to bring in anyway."

"And Nico just showed me another thing he can do, absorbing my fire into this drawing he made in the sand and letting it out later."

"Okay, that doesn't really change anything. For now, I want you to keep him from doing magic in public other than illusions."

"Ma'am... his previous family controlled him a lot, and I just said to him that he could do any magic he wanted as long as he didn't hurt anyone."

He will play vocabulary games with Lin when they talk!

-Until that last part. "I'm not [stupid]! Magic is [ooh shiny]. Everyone very loud if I do magic. I do not want loud. Maybe I not say anything, but I like Calsa!"

That was a much better response than she was fearing. "How long, ma'am?"

"Two deci-years."

"So we'll sleep three tens and an eight more times, that's ten and ten and ten and eight. And then - if you do magic here or at the mill or by the water pillar, the Magistrate will not be loud. You can still do magic in our house now. Okay?"

"I can only do a little magic until I am big and I'm not good at it yet so okay. I want to learn so many things instead."