"Oh, manual," he says. "And it's by no means a specialty, it's just something I picked up by necessity living in the wilderness and then expanded on here."

A little sheepishly, he holds up one hand to show her the thin pale scar across the palm.

"When we were given new scores, all I could think to do was demonstrate my knowledge of plants and which ones could be used to make a healing salve. There's probably something poetic in that, that the only permanent scar I've earned here was self-inflicted."

But it had worked, hadn't it? They'd moved him up a whole number, probably because they'd figured a man who'd willingly injure himself just to prove a point was dangerous or stupid enough to do anything.