21st of Deepwinter, 413 AH
The drill went on for another forty minutes and Vael didn't say much. She watched, circled, grabbed my wrist three more times to check the activation boundary. Her thumb always landed on the same tendon. I was starting to think she'd memorized the geography of my forearm better than I had, which was annoying, because I'd been the one mapping it for two months.
Twice she had me switch to the left arm. Both times the activation failed. The left forearm hadn't had the same thousands of reps, the same visualization precision ground in through daily repetition, and it showed. The technique was only local for now, earned at one specific site, and extending it would mean doing the same grinding work somewhere else.
Good. Testable progression, and I already wanted to start.
She ended the session ten minutes early, didn't explain why, just said "Tomorrow" and walked to her chair in the corner where her bag sat in the same spot it always sat. She was leaving the training hall before me.
That had never happened. I liked it.
I pulled my sleeves down, collected the water flask I'd left by the wall, and headed for the corridor. On the far side of the hall, Sera was mid-drill. She didn't look up.
The corridor was bright after the training hall. Noon sun came through the east-wing windows in broad white bars, making the light-stones in their sconces entirely decorative.
My mind was already somewhere else.
Mana capacity per cell. That was the first question. The activation hold had been five to eight seconds, down from twenty-second delivery-only holds. Part of the drop was split-focus cost, my will stretched between two tasks instead of one. But how much?
The cells might have their own ceiling. A maximum amount of activation they could sustain before whatever mechanism let them respond simply ran out. If the ceiling was cellular, no amount of will-training would push past it. I needed to separate the variables.
The walk back to my room took three minutes through the east wing. I was halfway there before I noticed I'd started walking. My legs had apparently decided where we were going while my brain was busy with mana kinetics, which was reasonable prioritization. The legs knew the route. The brain had better things to do.
Delivery efficiency was next. Mana loss during transit from core to target tissue. I'd been concentrating mana from the center of the body to the forearm, and the targeting was precise, but I had no way to measure how much arrived versus how much I sent. Some energy was leaking during the cascade, cell-to-cell handoffs that weren't quite lossless.
I had no way to confirm without measuring the loss directly, and I had no way to measure the loss directly without instruments that didn't exist in this world.
Yet.
The list from two months ago surfaced. The one I'd written at the desk the night I realized what this body could do. Targeted activation, checked. Overwork management, checked weeks ago. I hadn't burned a dead spot since then.
The items I'd completed were the small ones. The ones still open were bigger by an order of magnitude. Fiber-level targeting. Full stance removal. Automation, if that was even possible. Training the cells to respond without conscious direction, similar to how a nerve reflex bypasses the brain entirely.
I'd checked three items and added more. The list was longer now than when I'd started.
That felt right.
In my room, I stripped off the training clothes and ran the bath. The private basin heated quickly, the water settling at the same steady temperature it always did. I sank in and let the heat work through muscles I'd been using all morning.
My right forearm still carried a residual feeling from the activation, not warmth exactly, more like an awareness in the tissue that it had done something new and hadn't quite settled back to baseline.
I washed up, dried off, dressed in the clean clothes Aldric had laid out. He'd been doing that for weeks now. Anticipating which mornings I'd need fresh clothes after training. Most mornings lately. I hadn't asked him to. He'd started on his own, and at this point questioning it would probably hurt his feelings. The man had turned predicting my schedule into a professional skill. The commitment was amazing.
The collar was fastened at the proper height.
Vael was leaving Mother's study when I came around the corner.
She nodded at me. Bag over one shoulder, coat on, heading home. Vael didn't visit Mother's study after every session. But today something had happened worth the walk, and she'd gone straight to the source before I'd finished washing my hair.
I wondered how long the conversation had taken. Knowing Vael, about four sentences. He activated. Targeted. Stance modified. I'll monitor. Mother would have asked two questions. Vael would have answered both in under ten words. Briefing complete.
Which meant Mother already knew.
I knocked. A voice from inside said something I took as permission, and I pushed the door open.
The study's heating arrays kept the room at an even warmth, and light-stones shone in their sconces. Mother sat behind her desk covered in letters, a cup of something steaming at her elbow, pen still moving on the page in front of her. She didn't look up immediately, just finished whatever she was writing, set the pen in its holder, only then raised her eyes.
Mother's favorite five-second power play. Almost endearing, once you knew the trick.
"Klaus." She smiled. She'd been warmer with me lately, though still controlled. Her warmth always had edges. "Sit down."
I sat in the chair across from the desk. My feet touched the floor now, barely. Two months ago they hadn't. The body was growing, but it was still ten. Her study was built for adults who ran a duchy, not ten-year-olds trying to negotiate laboratory funding.
"Vael tells me you had a productive morning."
"I'd call it that." I nodded.
She studied me for a moment. Vael had studied my forearm looking for a mechanism. Mother studied people. Vael's read stopped at the skin. Mother's didn't, which was the part to keep an eye on. I didn't know exactly what she was reading, but I knew what I was doing. I was here because I wanted something, and coming while the breakthrough was fresh bought more goodwill than coming tomorrow.
"She mentioned the enhancement. Your targeting." She picked up her cup, took a sip. "She used the word 'irregular.' From Vael, that's practically an exclamation point."
"The enhancement worked for the first time today." I gave her the result and left the biology out. "Forearm only for now and the hold time is short. Five to eight seconds, down from my twenty seconds without spell activation. Running both costs focus, so I'm back to building up the time."
One eyebrow rose, just slightly. The small surprise she reserved for things a ten-year-old wouldn't say.
I'd been introducing the household to the real version of me slowly. A longer word here, an adult formulation there, each small enough to pass as progress. It was a calculated risk. I couldn't stop pretending all at once, but I could make the difference look gradual.
I'd held back quite a bit already. The biological framework underneath, the reasons my targeting differed from Vael's teaching, the stance changes.
She asked about the enhancement, and I told her about the enhancement only. Who in this household would I even tell the rest? Nobody. The part of me that wanted to explain the mechanism to someone who might actually appreciate the elegance of it would wait. Possibly forever.
"Vael said not to use the targeted enhancement in sparring. Control exercise only. I agree with that," I said.
I watched her register the last part. I'd volunteered the safety constraint before she could impose it, which was deliberate. Whether I'd actually hold myself to those standards was my business only.
"I'm pleased with your progress." She held my gaze. "Vael is impressed, though she'd rather swallow her own sword than say it. I've watched her for the better part of a decade, and she's not easily impressed."
"She left early today."
"She came here."
Her cup sat between us, steam still rising.
She leaned back in her chair, and her posture loosened a fraction. The pen stayed down.
"I've been glad to see you find direction these past months, Klaus." Her voice had dropped. "The household has adapted well. Your father has been... reassured." Edmund's worry had probably been a project in itself. The man had likely spent two months asking the kitchen staff whether I was eating enough. "You're showing the kind of focus and discipline I'd hoped to see. I think the coming years are going to be very rewarding. For all of us."
For all of us. The family, the duchy, the political machinery that a duchess's only son was part of whether he chose it or not. I heard what she was saying underneath the warmth. The terms were implicit but clear: research time, training resources, excursion approval, all of it flowing from Mother's assessment that I was developing into something useful.
I accepted the terms. They aligned with what I wanted, and the day they stopped aligning, I'd renegotiate.
Not so different from the funding department after all.
"Thank you," I said. "I'd like to keep the momentum going."
"Of course." She sat forward again, and just like that the pen was back in her hand, the posture back to business. The window had closed. "Is there something you need?"
"Actually, yes. I need materials I can't get on the estate. A proper magnifying lens, the best optical quality available. Sealed glass containers for specimen preservation." I paused, looking for the diplomatic version of what I wanted to say about the borrowed magnifier. "The tools I've been working with are... inadequate."
She looked at me. "Magnifying lenses. Sealed containers." She repeated the list, making sure she'd heard it right. "What do you need all of that for?"
"Specimen study. I've been collecting samples from the grounds and preserving them with kitchen jars, but the magnifier I borrowed barely shows surface detail. I need better tools."
Her smile was gone and the silence stretched. Aaand we're back to power plays. I could guess what she'd been hoping for. Something more respectable for a noble son with an obvious place in House Silver's legacy.
"Ah. So that's what you've been doing with the bugs."
"And the plants. And the soil samples. And the moss from the north wall." I considered mentioning the worm collection. Decided against it.
She took a sip from her cup, holding it a moment longer than necessary. "You want to go into the city."
"I want to go shopping."
She didn't quite smile. "I've been considering it, actually. The estate can feel confining for a child who's spent months indoors."
That wasn't why I wanted to go. But Mother would frame the trip however served her purposes. A concerned mother giving her son fresh air was a better story than a ten-year-old requisitioning laboratory equipment from specialty merchants. I minded the magnifier more than the framing.
"Ren would escort you, of course."
"I assumed."
"Give it a few days. I'll have someone coordinate with Ren on the route and timing."
"That's fine."
"Before you go." She set the pen down. "Vael's report mentioned your selective enhancement. It reminded me of someone. A Grandmaster named Margrete. She spent years refining selective enhancement for close combat, past the point where most practitioners gave up the approach."
A Grandmaster who'd pushed through the problems that stopped everyone else.
"I'll reach out to her," Mother continued. "See if she'd be willing to share her notes on the technique. If anyone has useful observations on selective enhancement, it's Margrete."
"Thank you." I meant it. Decades of observations from someone who'd pushed in the same direction I had, but through experience instead of theory. A different path to the same destination. If those notes existed, they were data I couldn't generate on my own, not in years.
"You've become very practical, Klaus. I appreciate that."
I smiled. "Thank you for the notes. And the trip."
"You've earned them," she said.
I had. And I planned to earn considerably more before she stopped offering.