Editing Stitch in Time 4.4 (section)

==Plot==
[[Sy]] talks to [[Genevieve Fray]] by the brook. He tries to set terms for the conversation, and she responds with questions. They watch a sluggish waterbeast in the river. Fray repeatedly expresses vulnerabilities—confessing her loneliness with her asocial companions, that she guessed wrong about which Lamb would find her—and Sy is only more on guard.

She tells him about her academic history. When she was among the last four candidates for professorship, they were given files on Academy weapons in Radham and its surrounding area, including the Lambs. It was as much a test of their political as academic ability. She says that she spent a lot of time thinking them, and particularly Sy, who tries very hard to figure where the trap in this is, whether she has minions hidden behind a door or poisonous vapor to dose him with, and can't find anything.

He dodges admitting that he thought of her as ''sister'' the first time he heard about her, claiming he only thought it would be fun. Fray leans into the connection anyway, saying his survival was why she increased her dose, and that she thought about him when she took her own Wyvern, with a mix of pity and envy that he'd been been able to shape his own mind from just six: the age people start to break away from being the sum of their environments and biology. She wonders aloud if he hated it or not, and if they might've had tea and cookies together in a world where she became a professor.

When she goes to stroke his hair, Sy pulls Mary's knife on her. She tenses, needles between her fingers and a blue-ringed tentacle reaching out of her sleeve. They slowly back down, and Sy asks what she would have talked to Gordon about. They discuss the expiry dates, whether conversations are inherently adversarial, the skills they emphasised with their Wyvern fluidity: negotiation and manipulation, for Sy, strategy and long term planning, for Fray. She notes that he states his opinion on her changes as ''belief''.

Sylvester accuses her of being a liar, a murderer, of having a barbaric and bloodthirsty side and barely holding it back. She tells him there's no separation within her, into a smart planner and instinctive brute: she's still Genevieve.

Genevieve takes out a bottle of purple pills, says she'd wondered if taking Wyvern so young had frozen him in a state incapable of rebellion, offers to keep the Lambs alive if they defect and join her, then asks for the reasons behind Sy's inevitable refusal. He says the Academy offers hope: continual breakthroughs, the promise of a better brain that could design still better next. Fray disputes the word ''hope''.

She puts him to sleep, even as he stabs her hand. He awakes with her coat, and a bandage on his finger.