Ah-

[Before she even hands him the roll, suffering under the scrutiny of her big, brown eyes. He's been watched by rulers of sovereign nations with less intensity but he meets her gaze, eyebrow raised.

His Small Science wasn't a secret, it wasn't something buried deep and hidden from the view of strangers. It wasn't something he held close to his heart, the way he did his true name. The name he almost forget several times over, despite the tattoo of it on his heart. The boy he had been, the man who got married and who was said to have died on the Fold.]

I can't do magic and that is very offensive. I have Small Science, something with history and solid theory to back it. I do not make something from nothing- [except, it wasn't that farfetched, was it. To speak the words and feel merzost slither through his veins again, that bone-deep longing for the rush of pure power as he tried to create and army to keep his people safe. To feel it again, the ability to create did not lie solely in the Making at the Heart of the World.]

I can summon shadows. And I can amplify the powers of others with a touch.

[He tips his empty hand to show her the palm of his hand, the work-rough pads of his fingers and the sand ground in to the lines.]