I sat there, quill mid-air, watching my family transform my life's work into a manual for psychological warfare. The library was quiet again, but the air in our little corner was electric with the kind of focus usually reserved for a siege.
Arin grabbed a stool and pulled it so close our knees touched. "Father, that was incredible. You didn't just bore him; you made his soul feel heavy. I saw his eye twitch at page thirty of the sheep report. Teach me. I want to know how to make Instructor Kael regret having ears."
"It's not a 'skill,' Arin," I protested, desperately trying to maintain my dignity. "It's a genuine passion for the minutiae of rural administration!"
"Precisely!" Lysa said, opening her notebook to a fresh page. "The 'Apathy Overload.' You use truth as a blunt instrument. Tell us, Architect: Is there a specific rhythm to the sentence structure that induces the 'Bureaucratic Coma'? Or is it all in the dry, dusty delivery?"
Avaris leaned against the mahogany desk, her arms crossed, watching me with a look of pure, unadulterated mischief. "Oh, don't be modest, Ilyas love," she purred, her voice like velvet-wrapped steel. "Teach them. Show them how you used to talk to me about irrigation back when we were courting. Remember? By the third hour, I was so 'neutralized' I would have agreed to anything just to see a map of a different drainage basin."
"I thought you liked those maps!" I cried, feeling betrayed by my own history.
"I liked the man holding them," she winked. "But the skills are real. If the children can master the 'Art of the Infinite Tangent,' they can walk through the Empire's front gates and the guards will let them in just so they don't have to hear the rest of the story."
Arin stood up, his small face set in a mask of grim determination. "I'm ready, Father. Give me the 'Sheep-Grazing' protocols. I want to learn how to weaponize the mundane."
I sighed, looking at my two children. They were eight and ten, and they were ready to become the most tedious people in the Northern Hemisphere.
"Very well," I said, leaning back and adjusting my spectacles with a sharp click. "If you wish to truly bore an enemy until they regret their very existence, you must first understand the Principle of the Unnecessary Detail. A normal person says, 'The sheep ate the grass.' A Master of Boredom says, 'The four-legged ruminant, specifically of the Ovis aries lineage, engaged in the mastication of the Festuca ovina, which, as we all know, thrives only in soil with a nitrogen level of exactly—'"
"Exactly what, Father?" Arin whispered, scribbling furiously.
"That's the secret!" I hissed. "The number doesn't matter, as long as you spend ten minutes explaining how you calculated it! You must drain the color from the world. You must make them feel that time itself has stopped flowing and has instead turned into a thick, grey sludge of data."
"The Sludge of Data," Lysa muttered, writing it down. "Brilliant."
"And the eyes!" I continued, getting into the spirit of it despite myself. "Never look them in the eye like a warrior. Look at their forehead. Or better yet, look at a loose thread on their tunic and comment on the weaving technique for half an hour. Discuss the loom. Discuss the sheep again. Circle back to the grass."
Avaris laughed, a warm, rich sound that echoed through the stacks. "See? He's a natural. My Ghost Architect is a genius of the 'Grey Arts.'"
"Now, Arin," I said, pointing to a dusty tome. "Open to the section on 'Wetland Categorization.' I want you to read it to me, but I want you to do it in a voice that sounds like a door that needs oiling. If I don't fall asleep in five minutes, you're being too interesting."
For the next hour, in the heart of the Great Library, the most dangerous children in the Empire practiced how to be completely, utterly, and devastatingly uninteresting. Arin's voice became a flat, rhythmic drone; Lysa learned how to ask questions so specific and dull they made my own brain leak.
By the time we left, the librarian looked like he wanted to jump out a window. My children, however, walked with a new kind of confidence. They weren't just hiding their power anymore; they were burying it under a mountain of wool-tax trivia.
The walk home from the library was a triumph. Arin was practicing his "Dull Drone" voice, reciting the different grades of Northern clay until a passing stray cat decided to fall asleep right on the sidewalk.
"Excellent, Arin," I praised. "The way you lingered on the moisture content of the sub-soil... truly agonizing."
"I learned from the best, Architect," he whispered, giving me that sharp 8-year-old salute.
We reached our front door, expecting a quiet evening of preserved peaches and silence. But sitting on our porch was a man in the Academy's official livery, holding a scroll sealed with a heavy, purple wax.
Avaris shifted instantly. Her hand didn't go to a weapon, but she moved to the left of the porch—cutting off the man's escape route without him even noticing.
"Master Verne," the messenger said, standing up. "Principal Albrecht and the Imperial Courier have requested your presence at the Academy tomorrow morning."
My heart did a little nervous skip. "Me? Did I forget to return a book? I assure you, the 'History of Fences' is still in my bag, but I was—"
"No, Master Verne," the messenger interrupted, looking slightly pained. "The Courier was so... impressed by your knowledge of drainage and structural foundations today that he believes the Academy's current 'settling issues' in the West Wing require your expert consultation."
I blinked. I had bored the man so much that he decided to use my own "passion" as a trap to get me onto school grounds.
"They want a consultation?" Lysa whispered from behind me. "Father, it's an extraction. They want to get the Architect into a controlled environment."
"Or," Arin added, his eyes wide, "they want you to inspect the 'Hollow Paving Stones' we found! They're testing your loyalty to the plumbing!"
Avaris stepped forward, taking the scroll from the messenger with a polite, terrifying smile. "Master Verne would be honored to assist the Academy. We wouldn't want the West Wing to... collapse... due to poor irrigation, would we?"
The messenger practically ran away.
Avaris turned to me, the smile vanishing. She broke the purple seal and scanned the letter. "It's a formal summons, Ilyas. They've invited the whole family for a 'Technical Tour' while you consult. They want to see how we all interact in their territory."
I looked at my children. Arin was already checking his pockets for more lead marbles. Lysa was staring at the "Spoon Protocol" on the kitchen table.
"Well," I said, straightening my vest. "It seems the Ghost Architect is going to school. Children, polish your boring stories. we're going to discuss the Academy's gutters until the Principal cries for mercy."