Livira enters a tall, sunlit chamber for Allocation, steeling herself amid exhaustion and scornful onlookers. At the first table, the bald assessor Botan quizzes her on numbers; Livira answers complex bean problems instantly, ignoring his counting frame. He waves her on, surprised by her mental arithmetic.

At the second table, a severe book woman asks Livira to read. Livira cannot read but, when told to write her name, she instead reproduces from memory a passage in Crunian Four, written upside down with improving penmanship. A thin, powerful man with an eyepatch, Lord Algar, arrives, calls the feat coached, and chills the room’s sympathy.

Master Yute appears, noting Livira’s first-hand sabber speech and the uncommon qualities in her script. Algar orders her rejected and challenges Yute; to test the panel, Botan repeats Livira’s earlier problem to Serra Leetar, who falters. Despite Yute’s arguments for the laboratory, embassy, or university, the assessors and Algar refuse her. A guard escorts Livira out; Hendron gently directs her to the third door.

Yute follows and reveals he was testing the assessors, not Livira—won over by her sabber declaration at the door. Declaring the system broken, he blocks her return to Allocation and offers her a post at the library. Livira, wary but resolute, agrees to go with him.