Ince shrugged, hating this intensely, but she knew what I meant. Most Progenitors did never cull at all though there were occasionally rumors of secret drownings, suffocations, cryoexcision, always those rumors and whispers but I remained firmly of the opinion that most Progenitors never did cull or allow the maimed, slow, or distinctly different offspring to be erased. I believed they dealt with them in a number of ways from shunting them to far corners of the estate to going to untold lengths to ensure whatever fullfiullment these required. Most Progenitors considered that part of their skills and their duty.
        "She would come to the place where she ensured that I was being educated. She would question me and examine me to make certain I was given adequate food and was not beaten."
        The way Ince spoke I knew that before this time for an unknown number of cycles she had existed ignorant, hungry, cold, beaten.
        The culled rarely survived to mature. They became victims of anyone, everyone, any desire or bent. They were worse off than the unattached. Vryyh, then, had made the difference, all the difference, in Ince's life and Vryyh could have been stripped of all her status, punished, cast off herself for this. I wondered why she had not been.
        Why had she remained Prime? Was it love or did she hold something over her progenitor incredible as that might seem? Was it something else? I turned a black seed idly in its cusp as I considered. Then I looked up. "Mage, why do you think Vryyh was not punished? Why was she let do want she desired with you? And why," I struggled with a knot of emerging thoughts, "why do you think you were the only 1 culled? In all the cycles, the only 1."