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and exhibit no fear of the great man. And
     then Wraith would have to live that lie for gods-only-knew-how-many months or years. Maybe forever. And his friends would,
     too.
    Solander had a brief, niggling sense that perhaps this plan of his was not the best—that if he enlisted his father in it as
     an ally, he might hope to at least gain some of the credit for the discovery of the magical rules that Wraith broke simply
     by existing. Solander would still further his career, would still get an appointment into the Academy, would still be able
     to become a researcher.
    But he wouldn’t have the discovery under his name alone. He would be a minor footnote to the single greatest proof ever presented
     that the Dragons’ view of the magical universe was incomplete, when what he wanted was to be that theory’s sole author. The
     difference would be one of degree, but at fifteen he was sensitive to how great a degree that would be.
    And his father might decide not to share at all. Rone might decide that the secrets to be found on Wraith’s person were far
     too important to be entrusted to a child; he might classify Wraith “Secret—With Prejudice,” as he did anything that he thought
     might be of real interest to his competitors, and if he did that, Solander wouldn’t even be able to find out what was happening.
    Wraith might not like becoming a classified study object, either, Solander thought.
    Wraith came over and looked at the equipment Solander was putting together and said, “That looks complicated. What is it going
     to do?”
    “It’s a distance viewer—one of the really good new models with focusable sound. My father told me he wouldn’t buy the completed
     model for me because it was much more expensive and had more features than I could justify, but he told me that he would get
     the kit for me if I’d do all the preliminary studies so that I could put it together when I got it. He tested me, too. When
     I had the theory down, he got me the kit.”
    Wraith nodded. “Well. That’s … very good of him, I suppose. But what does it do?”
    Solander stared at him. “You’ve never seen …” But perhaps they didn’t have distance viewers in the Warrens. “Once it’s all
     together, I’ll be able to look at the screen on the base—right here—and turn these knobs—they adjust for altitude, longitude,
     and latitude, you see, based on true north. This one has gross controls and a switch—right over here, you see?—that changes
     the knobs over to fine controls, so that you have basically room-to-room capability anywhere within the viewer’s range. And
     here—this is your sound capability, so that you can hear what people are saying. Getting the spells for simultaneous sound-and-view
     transmission into place has been almost as hard as doing the gross-to-fine coupling link-up to the switch.”
    Wraith sighed, and Solander, who’d become absorbed in the explanation of his new piece of equipment, looked over to find that
     the Warrener looked exasperated.
    “What?”
    “What can you
do
with it?” Wraith asked. “What’s it good for?”
    “Oh.” Solander felt just a bit stupid. “You can watch people with it. This one has a range of about fifteen furlongs—pretty
     good, really. You can get amplifiers that let you see farther away than that, but a lot of them ruin the purity of your main
     signal—” He caught himself and said, “You can turn the viewer to anyplace you’d like to watch, and if that place isn’t shielded
     by magic, you can see what the people there are doing—and with this model, you can also hear what they’re saying.”
    “When they’re outside?” Wraith asked.
    “It wouldn’t be much good if it only worked when they were outside. No, you can see inside, too. No place like here, of course—my
     father has shields on top of shields around this place. All the Dragons do. And a lot of the other people who live in the
     Aboves, too—the ones who know about