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.
