"Huh. When Soechins and Thiyecines stumbled into my range I tended to find them harder to read," she volunteers. "Haven't had any informative accidents with Malinquans yet, but it's convenient in its way, since they won't understand me if I tell them to back off - at least not why; they might get the picture that I'm antisocial."

"Interesting," Sarelle murmurs. "Books... we are pursuing a scholar, I believe, or a librarian. Something of that nature. Only one. The other has not been here in some time. At least a week, but I suspect longer."

"Ooh, a librarian."

—at a young man of about their age or a little older, emerging from a building across the street and some distance ahead, who is quite possibly even more blatantly sweela than Sarelle herself is blatantly hunti.

"...You've got to be kidding me."

"Not in the slightest," she says, smiling. "He is very sweela for a hunti, but he is hunti nevertheless, and prime."

"All right then. I guess next we see if he speaks Welchin."

Sarelle crosses the street and asks him, in Malinquan.

"...Er. Yes?" he says, puzzled, in perfectly fluent Welchin.

"We're sorry to descend on you out of nowhere like this," apologizes Kiri, relieved that she won't have to communicate exclusively through Sarelle. "I'm Kiribel Ardelay, this is Sarelle Dochenza, and this is my brother Aleko, and we're here because we believe you have an inheritance back in Welce."

"An inheritance of... what, exactly?"

"Where to start - how much do you know about Welce? Your accent is very good, but I mean the culture? Five elements, etcetera?"

"Very little. Virtually nothing, in fact."

"Okay, well, there are five elements. Sweela is fire and mind, elay is air and soul, coru is blood and water, torz is earth and flesh, and hunti is wood and bone. Everybody in Welce picks an element that best represents their personality, but there are also five families that each represent or embody an element - respectively, the Ardelays, the Dochenzas, the Lalindars, the Frothens, and the Serlasts. And every one of those families is headed by a 'prime' with certain element-themed powers, who is not chosen in any conventional manner of heir selection but rather by a process of idiosyncratic magic."

"...magic," he repeats.

"...Do you not have any magic here? I have always vaguely imagined that even in countries without primes there would have to be something."

"We do not," he says with extreme dryness, "have magic in Malinqua."

"So you haven't noticed any unusual new senses or abilities as regards - trees, wooden objects, paper, the ability to detect people's bone structure from farther away than you ought to be able to, unusual behavior of nearby ivory?" She glances at Sarelle. "You're sure this is him?"

(The alleged prime frowns thoughtfully.)

"I am extremely sure that this is him," says Sarelle.

"Yours would be among the subtler abilities. I woke up one day to find that I had set my bed on fire, so there was little question," says Kiri. "But the previous Serlast prime has been dead for several weeks now."

"You set your bed on fire," he says, taken aback. "In your sleep. With magic?"

"Yes. I have it under control now - although you should be warned that if you get within five feet of me, a little farther on a cold day, I haven't found a way to turn off the mindreading part." She holds her hand palm-up and calls a discreet little touch of flame into it.