Tor pointed all this out to Rolph, who raised his shoulders slightly, a subtle movement that Tor almost missed. “Keep your eyes open then, and be ready to move if you have to. You have a shield?” He said this casually, taking a small bite of the chicken, using a knife and fork, like they did at the palace. Tor picked his up country fashion and took a bite, nodding a little himself.

Nothing happened after that, until the meal had almost ended, then Captain Wensa got up, still staring at Tor and made her way over. She actually ignored Rolph, except to tell him that she expected him in class early the next day for extra assignments. Before she left, her look going cold, she leaned over to Tor and whispered softly from about six inches away from his ear.

“I see you still haven't learned to protect yourself against poisons yet? You may want to rectify that. Soon.” Then the woman, lean and hard as he remembered her, steal gray hair pulled into a bun that looked uncomfortable to him, walked out without looking back.

Looking down at his mainly clean plate Tor blanched. Right. He'd kind of forgotten how much she hated him. Poison in the food then? Nice of her to warn him, but what could he do for that? He'd try to think of how to avoid it, but there were just too many different poisons to learn them all. He'd be better off trying to build a field that could recognize food, and tell him if anything thing else was there.

Which made sense.

How many different things did he eat on average? A hundred different things a week? If he broke it down into ingredients it was probably four times that. Compared to the ten thousand or more things that could kill him in food, it seemed easy to manage. He could make a limited feedback field; it was just a complicated version of the temperature control field. Those were rare, but easy enough now that he had the basic concept down. It would take a lot of work to build the whole thing right, but…