"Impatience, annoyance."

Armsmaster will finish his preplanned sequence of questions, ending with exotic languages he doesn't actually speak but can play back. He occasionally repeats a previously tried language in case that makes a difference.

Raimon throws up his hands in exasperation and turns away from the window.

"Sincere exasperation," Gallant reports dutifully.

"That matches my impressions. We shall have to do this the long way. Dragon, if you would be so kind?"

A rectangular section of wall inside the cell lights up, showing a woman's face on a blurred background.

"You were very thorough, I don't think I shall get anywhere trying even less well-known languages," she remarks. "But I have a program that can teach him words and record his answers."

She turns towards Raimon. "I know you can't understand me yet, but in the spirit of cooperation I would like to say that I want to help you, and for that we need to understand each other. So please have patience and try to be a quick student."

"I can understand you, you lying ignorant slime, but only for a couple more minutes, so whatever you want me to know fucking tell me!"

"He's growing angry," Gallant reports perhaps unnecessarily. "And still very frustrated and impatient."

"I leave it in your capable hands." And the two armored men leave.

She can either learn his language or try to teach him English; it depends mainly on how much he'll cooperate with either approach. She just needs to get across the basic concept of naming things aloud, and then she can leave the rest to a dumb program.

She points to herself. "Dragon." Points to him, invitingly.

"You're not a fucking dragon!" Ugh. Point to himself. "Raimon."

Great! Point to him. "Raimon," she pronounces carefully. Here are images of Armsmaster and Gallant; she names them. Here is she again; she points to herself invitingly.

"You are still not a fucking dragon and that's a stupid name."

Sigh. Sad face. She isn't sure if he didn't understand her request or if there's some other problem, and she can't even say this because that would just confuse him.

"Dragon," she repeats patiently. 

"This is an idiotic use of my spell and you're all certifiable morons."

If she records and analyzes several hours of his speech, a language-learning program might be able to get somewhere. But it would be so much easier if the speech was obviously referring to the pictures she showed him!

Is he willing to talk about images of everyday objects, people, actions, places, et cetera? She'll leave a program running that will show him pictures, name or describe the thing, and then let him speak as long as he wants about it and record it. She'll be back in fifteen minutes, unless the program flags something very abnormal.

(It is not obvious from the screen that she isn't paying attention.)

When his spell wears off he loses interest in this process and creates himself some water in the cup they gave him.

That definitely raises a few flags! Dragon carefully inspects the recording of the last few seconds, and notifies Armsmaster.

Rider just used a new power, creating transparent liquid in or just above a cup. He drank some of it. Visually indistinguishable from water, air sensors aren't picking up anything.

Hmm. Do you think it's linked to horses somehow? The unspoken subtext is obvious to both of them: two is not a natural number, and a power of Create Horse is much, much less dangerous than a power of simply Create.

Perhaps the fluid is part of a horse's body? she hazards. There really isn't enough data to speculate.

I want to take the cup away for analysis, but that requires restraining him again.

She sights. I'm not getting anywhere with the language lessons, he's stopped cooperating. He stopped paying any attention, really. I can try some other approaches but he's likely to ignore them too. I suspect there's an explanation we're not seeing, charades are a human universal and if he simply didn't want to communicate for some reason he wouldn't be so upset.

It's not worth your time if you're not making progress. I'll order retrieval of the cup. Dragon's monitoring program will let them know if anything else unusual happens.

The language program keeps running without her personal attention. How does he feel about literal charades? Drawings of people with speech bubbles? Indications that people with speech bubbles walk out of unlocked cells and people without them stay locked in?

"You are ooooooobviously lyyyyyyinnnnnng," he sings to himself when he sees that. (Speech bubbles have, just barely, been invented on his planet, and he's seen lots of different local publications.)