I opened my eyes. Ana was staring at me, her blindfolded expression torn between exasperation and bemusement.
“Well, now I do wonder if you should be my assistant,” she snapped. “But not for your dishonesty, Din. Rather, because you apparently think me a fucking idiot!”
I stared. “I…I beg your par—”
“Ridiculous boy!” she cried. “Absurd child! Do you really not understand that I knew you cheated? That I’ve known all this time?”
“You…What? Truly?”
“Din!” she said, incensed. “Is it not safe to say that you have just witnessed me formulating answers to some very complex problems? Ones far more complicated than the mystifying puzzle of ‘How did this young man who was so shit at his exams suddenly score so well?’ I mean, titan’s taint! The only reason they didn’t investigate further was that I selected you and told them to forget it!”
My mouth fell open. “So…wait. You did not choose me for my scores, ma’am?”
“God, no!” she cried. “Is it not obvious? I chose you because you cheated, Dinios Kol! I didn’t quite know how you did it, no—not until you revealed your lockpicking skills. Then it was quite painfully obvious.”
“You selected me for my dishonesty, ma’am?” I said, offended.
“No!” she said. Then: “Well, yes. Somewhat.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
She thought about it. The guns crackled on.
“I chose you,” she said finally, “because I needed an investigator who was resourceful, cunning, and willing to break the rules when necessary. I needed someone dedicated and determined! And you had not only broken into an Iyalet office and spent hours learning the answers to all the tests—you had somehow survived your engraver’s training despite having tremendous issues reading and writing! That speaks to bloody-minded, grim determination if ever I’ve heard it!”
I grew faint. “W-wait. Wait. So you knew…”
“Am I to name every obvious thing I know, boy?”
“But, ma’am…I thought before now, I had been very…”
There was a limp silence, broken only by another crackle of bombards.
“I have good ears,” she said. “I could hear you reading aloud to yourself. And I have seen your writing, of course. I thought it was obvious when you duplicated Sazi text that I was aware of your condition.”
I felt myself blushing hugely. I felt a fool. What a fantasy it had been, to think my blatant weaknesses could go hidden.
“Why would you tolerate me so, ma’am?” I asked. “Why would you wish to…to have someone like me as your assistant?”
She laughed. It was a high, cruel sound. “Would you like to know what alterations I have, Din, that make me so averse to stimulation, and so reluctant to leave my residence?”
I looked at her, startled. To have her so cavalierly propose answering a question I’d debated for months was bewildering. “Well, I…”
“None,” she said.
“What?”
“I have no augmentations that afflict me so. Rather, I have always been this way. This is my natural state.”
There was a long silence.
“Truly?” I said.
“Truly,” she said. “I have never liked the company of too many people, Din. I have always preferred patterns and the consumption of information to socializing. I have preferred and will always prefer staying in my residence and will avoid stimulation at all costs. This is simply who I am.”
“But…but your abilities, the way you…”
“My situation,” she continued, “made me amenable to an…experiment.” She was silent for a bit, as if debating something, before finally saying, “An alteration. The nature of which should not bother you—for you would not be able to comprehend it. But if I hadn’t been the person that I was, then the alterations would not have been a success. It was my choice. I changed and became. I self-assembled. Just as you have done.” She leaned forward. “Sen sez imperiya. The Empire is strong because it recognizes the value in all our people. Including you, Dinios Kol. And when the Empire is weak, it is often because a powerful few have denied us the abundance of our people. That is exactly what has happened in Talagray. And I was assigned here specifically to amend that—and I mean to do so.”
I leaned against the rampart, stunned. None of what she’d said had been a compliment, exactly, yet I struggled with emotion. I had never had anyone understand me for what I was and accept me—nor tell me that the Empire itself desired my services even so.