Four days later, Liam discovered that knowing a language and being able to work in it were two entirely different things.
Old Imperial had carried them through Nuria well enough. It remained understood in government, the palace, academic circles, and most formal settings, largely because it had once been the language of the empire itself. Cassian spoke it flawlessly. Rubis did as well. Anyone brought before Arik had simply adjusted without complaint.
Modern Nurian was another matter.
Liam sat at a broad table in the imperial technical archive with three tablets open before him and an engineering manual projected across the glass surface.
He could read perhaps sixty percent of it.
That was unacceptable.
"Again," he said.
The archivist seated opposite him enlarged the paragraph.
It concerned a municipal ether exchanger used in Deira’s lower districts. Liam understood the diagram immediately: inlet pressure, ether conversion chamber, thermal rejection, and emergency bypass.
The accompanying text looked as though someone had taken perfectly reasonable Imperial terminology and deliberately changed every third word.
Liam traced one sentence with his stylus.
"This means channel degradation."
"Material degradation," Archivist Neris corrected. "If the author meant ether-channel degradation, the modifier would be different."
Liam frowned and changed the annotation.
Beside the engineering manual sat an entirely different collection: medical papers concerning ether contamination, bond integration, foreign-channel rejection, and persistent ether signatures.
Those were considerably less forgiving of mistranslation.
The high arcanists had kept Felix’s corruption isolated, but they still had no safe method of extracting it. It clung too closely to the structures altered by Liam’s mark, and every proposed removal carried the possibility of damaging his own channels with it.
Liam had no intention of sitting quietly while other people solved a problem located inside his body.
He switched documents.
A modern medical paper appeared, filled with annotations from that morning.
Neris noticed. "That is not engineering terminology."
"No."
"You were supposed to finish the industrial vocabulary first."
"I need both."
The archivist regarded him for a moment, then reached across the table and changed the language settings.
Several terms highlighted themselves.
"These three have different meanings in medical and arcane usage. Do not translate them literally into Old Imperial."
Liam leaned closer.
That was exactly the problem he kept finding.
Old Imperial described ether as something conducted, stored, bound, or released. Modern Nurian had developed far more precise distinctions after decades of treating ether technology as an ordinary part of medicine and industry.
There were separate terms for ether that merely occupied a channel and ether that had integrated into it.
Another distinguished contamination attached to a person’s natural signature from contamination attached to a bond.
Liam stared at that one.
"Show me every paper using this term."
Neris hesitated only long enough to confirm which word he meant.
The archive responded.
Twenty-eight documents appeared.
Liam straightened.
Most concerned failed healing procedures or old experimental treatments. Three involved inherited ether abnormalities. One was restricted.
He opened the first.
Two paragraphs in, he understood why their early discussions with the arcanists had irritated him so much.
They had been translating for him.
Accurately, certainly, but translation had flattened the terminology.
"What you called ’foreign ether embedded in my channels’ is not what this says."
Neris looked toward the display. "No."
"It says the ether has established a dependent signature."
"Yes."
Liam’s fingers tightened around the stylus.
"If it is dependent, it requires something else to remain stable."
"That is the technical meaning."
Liam immediately opened the diagnostic reports from the arcanists and began comparing them.
Arik found him that way nearly an hour later.
He entered without the ceremonial clothing he had been trapped in since the oath, dressed instead in a dark shirt and trousers beneath a long court coat. Two guards remained outside. Rubis followed long enough to place another tablet on the table before withdrawing toward the archive desk.
Arik looked at the wall of projected text.
"You have expanded."
"I was translating incorrectly."
Arik came around behind him, one hand settling briefly on Liam’s shoulder as his eyes moved across the screens.
Liam pointed to the highlighted term.
"They told us the corruption was embedded. Modern Nurian is more specific. It is dependent."
"Dependent on what?"
"That is what I’m finding out."
Liam opened another document.
"The arcanists may already understand the distinction. They were explaining it to us in Old Imperial because that is what we speak."
Arik’s expression tightened slightly.
Neither of them had considered how much precision they were losing by forcing everyone around them to use a language several centuries removed from modern technical practice.
"We learn faster," Arik said.
Liam nodded.
He had already reached the same conclusion.
If Liam intended to work again, and he did, he needed to read Nurian engineering standards without someone translating them. He wanted access to laboratories, energy systems, industrial designs, and technical publications without depending on an interpreter.
And Felix had made the need immediate.
Liam pulled one of the digitized Wrohan books onto the central screen.
Its original text was Old Imperial.
Beside it, Rubis had found the modern Nurian edition from the restricted archive.
The Chapter titles did not match exactly.
That had bothered Liam enough to compare them line by line.
Now he knew why.
Modern Nurian possessed concepts the older language had expressed only through long descriptions.
"Inheritance," Liam said quietly. "Felix wasn’t only reading about hereditary ether."
Arik leaned closer.
Liam highlighted a phrase in the modern edition.
"This means persistence of ether identity across biological succession."
Arik went still.
Liam opened Felix’s handwritten notes beside it.
Several marks appeared next to the corresponding Old Imperial passage.
"He knew the distinction," Liam said.
Arik’s hand tightened on the back of Liam’s chair.
Liam looked at the corruption report again. Words like "dependent signature," "persistence of identity," and "rebirth" are living rent-free in his head now.
The vocabulary was finally becoming precise enough to expose the shape of the problem.
Liam picked up his stylus.
"I need to learn this language faster."