“And, also, you’ll have to do all the really hard work for me. So really, who am I to complain.” That ghost of wry humour: Stephen can’t help it, nor that twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. It makes all of it a little easier to bear: slowly coming to terms with how his capabilities are different now, and how being Head Healer looks so very different from being head of neurosurgery or even Sorcerer Supreme.

In this contemplative mood there’s also some barely-articulated thought he’s been stewing on, like gristle caught in his teeth. The lyrium experiments trying to understand the nature of his impermanent self, as a rifter. And then the other half of that thought surfacing unbidden, somewhere between airing out the Head Healer’s offices and starting to make it more his own, putting up that sign on the door, trying to leave his personal stamp on the place. Some mark, some sign that he was here.

“—I have you to thank, I think,” he adds a moment later. Thoughtful. “Indirectly. For my finally getting around to putting in the application with the Seneschal. I’d been somewhat against the concept of holding any responsibility in case I disappear, but someone reminded me that that can happen to anyone, and that it’s better to try in the meantime.”