Theron was taller than I remembered.
He'd been at the far end of the throne room during the assessment, behind the king, reading from the court's skill documentation. I'd seen him at the distance of a long, terrible room. Up close he was late fifties, spare in the way of someone whose metabolism had been running on ambient magical energy for decades, with eyes that had the depth of a person who had spent a long time looking at things that weren't visible to everyone.
He came to the guild rather than to the workshop, which was the correct choice — neutral ground, records accessible, both of us on professional footing. He brought an assistant who carried a case of documentation and sat quietly to one side. I sat across from Theron with Sera beside me, which he hadn't expected, and which I'd arranged specifically because her presence was a statement: the skill documentation is already further along than you know.
He looked at her notebook, which was open on the table. He looked at the thickness of it.
"How long has this been running?" he said.
"Since week two," Sera said. "Current volume is four hundred and twelve pages of primary observation data, eighty pages of comparative analysis, and a twelve-page summary document for external review." She slid the summary across. "You'll want to start there."
He read the summary. He read it completely, which took nine minutes, which I had not expected — I'd expected him to skim. He read every page with the focused attention of a professional encountering data that was revising something he'd believed.
When he finished he looked up.
"You were in the throne room," he said to me.
"Yes."
"I read your skill as limited combat application."
"You read it accurately based on the available information," I said. "The stacking mechanism wasn't in any reference documentation because no one had pushed the skill to find it."
"The cap," he said. "Standard Enhancement has a hard cap at single-pass because—"
"Because it was classified as sufficient and no one went further," I said. "Minor Enhancement was classified as insufficient and no one went at all. The cap doesn't exist in the skill architecture. It was assumed because every other Enhancement variant has one."
He was quiet for a moment. The assistant was writing. Theron looked at the summary sheet, then at me, then back at the sheet.
"The elixir performance at level six," he said.
"One hundred and seventy HP restoration from a common health elixir. Yua Brightwell, our healer, has the absorption documentation."
"That's B-rank elixir output."
"Yes."
"From common-grade."
"Yes."
"If the skill continues on this curve—" He stopped. "What does Elara's research designation cover exactly?"
"Documentation and testing. Nothing limiting our work or income."
"She didn't ask for output control."
"She asked for documentation access. Copies to her office."
He looked at me with the eyes of someone recalibrating something large. He's not angry, I noted. He should be, maybe — he made a professional assessment that was wrong, in front of the king, with significant consequences. But he's not performing anger or embarrassment. He's just looking at the data and revising.
I respect that, I thought. I don't like what he did, but I respect how he's handling being wrong about it.
"I should have asked about the cap," he said. "In the throne room. It's the first question for any Enhancement variant — where's the ceiling. I didn't ask because I read the skill as Minor and didn't expect there to be a meaningful ceiling to find."
"No," I said. "You didn't."
"That's an apology, for what it's worth."
"It's noted." For what it's worth. Which is something. Not everything, but something. I'm collecting somethings right now and they're adding up slowly into a shape I can't fully see yet.
"What do you want from this meeting?" I said. "Not what Elara wants. What do you want."
He considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. "I want to understand what the skill becomes at level seven and above. I've been the palace's primary skill analyst for twenty years. I've classified thousands of skills. If Minor Enhancement is what your mage's data implies it might become at higher levels, I want to understand that before someone else does — someone who will use that understanding in a way that isn't in your interest."
That's honest, I thought. That might be a version of what Elara is doing too — getting to me before someone else does. But Theron framed it explicitly as being in my interest, which either makes it more honest or more manipulative and I genuinely can't tell which.
"I'll share the documentation as it develops," I said. "Through Elara's office. With the same terms that arrangement has."
"Those terms don't include me."
"I'm adding you," I said. "Provisionally. If the documentation process goes sideways or your office starts trying to direct the skill development rather than document it, the arrangement ends."
He looked at me for a long moment. "You're F-rank."
"Yes."
"You're negotiating research access with the palace court wizard."
"Yes."
"At what point," he said, with something that might have been the closest thing to humor I was going to get from him, "did you decide you were allowed to do that?"
"About ten minutes after I walked out of that throne room," I said. "When I realized the classification system had called my skill trash and I'd decided to find out if that was actually true."
He was quiet. Then he said: "The throne room assessment was wrong. The skill is not trash. I'm formally revising my classification to 'unstudied variant with potentially significant ceiling' and recommending continued research through the existing designation."
"That's appreciated," I said.
"Don't thank me," he said. "Get me the level seven data when it happens."
After he left, Sera looked at her notebook and then at me.
"He's good," she said. "He knew what questions to ask."
"He is good," I agreed. "He was just working with incomplete information."
"That's what I do when I miss a target," she said. "I look at what information I was missing, not at the fact that I missed."
That's the most personal thing I've ever heard Sera say, I thought. She just compared Theron's professional crisis to her eight months of blaming herself for the broken staff. She noticed the parallel and named it and then went back to her notebook.
"He's going to be useful," I said.
"Yes," she said. "I think so too."