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Quinnahunti ends, Quinnatorz elapses, the twins have their ninth birthday on the thirteenth of Quinnasweela, and Kiri has eventually seen bits of everything she will need to take or delegate charge of - the palace, key portions of Chialto, the Ardelay estate, and the various family business concerns (the national network of libraries being the primary thing, but the Ardelay family has been a major investor in museums as well, and Kiri has inherited partial concerns in things ranging from bakeries to stationery stores; eventually she will have to take a more active role in managing the finances, but they should be self-managing for the time being unless too many key people die.)
In Quinncoru, Kiri - with Aleko in tow this time in addition to Renny - makes a visit to the palace, and, since the king seems willing to ignore her and she doesn't really want his attention, and since there is not a full complement of primes around, has nothing much to do with herself but make a beeline for the prince. (Aleko goes exploring by himself.)
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calescent
liakoura
"She was trying to figure out if she can sense hot things from far away, and then there could be signal flares telling her where to go if something needed done," Ko informs the prince. "But it's less than a quarter mile. Also why she can't be a one-kid fire brigade."
"More primes would be fun," muses the prince. "And handy."
liakoura
"I think people would probably get up to things they shouldn't, though."
calescent
"If I wanted to do bad things it might be very hard to stop me before I got them done even if there were lots of primes around," concedes Kiri.
"Bad things like what?"
calescent
"Set things on fire. Melt rocks other people were touching. Freeze people solid. If I didn't want to be obvious I could just have not told anyone I read minds, and done that and hurt people with what I found out."
The prince giggles.
"Yep!" he agrees.
"Melting rocks," he says with a shrug.
"Sorry," says the prince. Possibly wistfully.
calescent
"I'm kind of surprised you still have all your hands and stuff."
"I have more interesting things to do than set myself on fire," he shrugs. "Most of the time."
calescent
"But if I felt like setting you on fire - which I don't because can you imagine what would happen if you left the Ardelay house with fresh burn scars - then it would totally be a good use of your time."
"Yeah," he says cheerfully. "I mean, especially you because you could put it out, it'd be harder to do that part by myself."
calescent
"You could - no, I don't think I'd better give you ideas."
"Awwwwwwww," he says. "Pretty please?"
calescent
"It's not even a complicated idea. I don't think you should set yourself on fire and I don't think I should help you."
"If it's an idea about how to set myself on fire safer then if you tell it to me I'll know it if I ever decide to," he says reasonably. "And I won't be any more going to set myself on fire someday than I already was."
calescent
Kiri scrutinizes his thoughts, and finally sighs and says, "Water's about as good at putting out the sort of medium-temperature fire you could get your hands on as I am. If you were standing in a bathtub or something you could just drop into the water. But you shouldn't do it."
He giggles. "That's good to know, anyway! And I won't do it while I'm here." He takes her point about coming back from the Ardelay house with new burn scars.