“If half the stories about her are true, leaving her unchained hardly safe.” He cast a mocking glance at me through his lashes. “Though maybe they’re not. In the tales, they call her beautiful.”

It took a moment for his intended insult to register. A moment longer for me to decide if I was insulted. I’d seen the starved scarecrow in my looking glass and did I really care what this young mageling thought of me?

Maybe not, but I felt Pym bristle beside me.

Better for me to handle it.

“You’re brave for a brass boy.” I looked Tarat over, lingering on his Citadel insignia with the kind of unimpressed smile that would have done my own mage-trainer proud. “I’d return the compliment, except I don’t think I’ve heard any tales of you?”