He cursed. She was just down the hall now, and she’d stopped—dropping Uly off at Durzo’s room? Uly and Vi were together? Vi didn’t seem to feel upset or guilty, which was weird, considering she’d kidnapped Uly, beaten her, and starved her only a few months ago. Then Vi was moving again, as tense as he was.

Kylar stood to open the door. There was a quick, firm rap, and then she opened the door, but Vi wasn’t alone. Sister Ariel and another woman of a similar age but with long blonde hair stepped into the room, and Vi followed.

For the tiny room, it was too many people, even if three of them hadn’t been magae. Kylar backed up to the wall.

“Kyle Blackson, this is Speaker Istariel Wyant. She’s in charge here,” Sister Ariel said.

“Nice to meet you,” Kylar said. “Here the guest quarters or here here?”

“I’m the Speaker of the Chantry,” Istariel said, annoyed.

“Then why aren’t you the Chanter?” Kylar asked. What was with him? That had Durzo written all over it, and Vi’s eyes went wide.

Istariel’s lips thinned. “We have problems, young man, they may even be bigger than your ego.”

“Why are we meeting here rather than your office?” Kylar asked.

She blinked. “What was it you said, Ariel, reckless but not stupid? Kyle, the Chantry and all of the south is entering a perilous time. We need Vi’s help if we are to survive.”

“You do?” Vi asked.

“Silence, child,” Sister Ariel said.

“All of this was supposed to happen much more slowly,” Istariel told Vi. “We meant to give you some semblance of a normal tutelage, because the service we require of you entails serious risks for you and the Chantry. The bare fact is that you may be—”

Sister Ariel cleared her throat.

“You are the most Talented woman to come to the Chantry in a century, Vi. You were married before you arrived, so your marriage is not in violation of the Third Alitaeran Accord. A woman’s Talent isn’t enough to guarantee her advancement, but a highly Talented woman is always conspicuous. Thus, you’re highly visible, highly Talented, and married—to a man who’s also highly Talented—and your marriage is not in breach of any treaty.”

“Huh,” Vi said. “What are the odds of that happening by chance?” She stared pointedly at Ariel, who had the decency to blush.

Istariel cleared her throat. “Yes, about that. Kyle, we never expected you to actually come here. In fact, Sister Ariel was adamant that you wouldn’t.”

“I wasn’t aware how susceptible you would be to Vi’s …charms,” Ariel said blandly.

Kylar blushed. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“But here you are,” Istariel said. “So you could destroy Vi—or at the very least destroy her usefulness to the Chantry.”

“Which is why I get some truth. Right. Still doesn’t answer why you have to sneak around to meet me,” Kylar said.

Istariel’s eyes flashed. “The Chantry has had a number of incidents involving Vy’sana wedding rings. A century ago, someone ringed a Speaker against her will.”

“It’s called ring rape,” Ariel said.

Istariel turned a cold gaze on her sister. “Stop helping.” She turned back to Kylar. “It was an attempt to subvert the entire Chantry in one stroke, and it came disastrously close to succeeding. That was only the most recent incident. There is enormous antipathy to forcible ringing.”

“So if I tattle, Vi’s finished. Why do you care?” Kylar asked.

“There’s no reason for us to be enemies,” Istariel said.

“I can think of one,” he said, tugging his earring.

She averted her gaze. “Magae have been forbidden to marry magi for two hundred years, Kyle. The Alitaeran Emperor Dicola Raiis feared we had established a breeding program to make archmages so we could become the dominant force in world politics we once were. At the time, we were closely allied with the men’s blue school, and the treaty required all the married magi to divorce. The men wanted to go to war, but the decision was the Speaker’s, who was herself married to a Blue. She knew that they had no chance against the might of Alitaera, and she signed the accord. The split with the men was acrimonious. Relations have been strained since then. To protect ourselves, and perhaps for many other reasons including to stop the humiliating inspections of compliance, the Chantry has spread the prohibition of marriage to all men. Women who do marry are effectively finished. They are allowed no advancement within the Orders; they are sometimes denied further schooling, and they are often the objects of ridicule. Nonetheless, for their own reasons I suppose, many women choose this path.”

“How many?” Kylar asked.

“Half.”

“You lose half?”

“The only thing worse than losing them is getting them back the wrong way. There is a woman named Eris Buel who has become the de facto leader of a large number of these women. They want to come back. They want to reject the Alitaeran Accords—maybe all of them—and they want to establish a men’s school here. At heart, though, they just want to be Sisters again. Our reports suggest that we may have more ex-magae here this spring than magae.”

“How many are you talking?” Kylar asked.

“Eight to ten thousand. While we have that many active Sisters, ours are spread out throughout the world. If these Chattel—ummm, these married Sisters—arrive and demand to be readmitted and form their own order, we won’t be able to deny them.”

“What happens if they do form an order?” Kylar asked.

“Most likely? They immediately hold a vote of no confidence and oust me and put their leader in my place. At best, Eris Buel is angry, naive, and dangerous.”

“You want Vi to kill her?”

“Light blind me, no!” Sister Istariel said. “We want Vi to replace her.”

“What?!” Vi asked.

“You’re more Talented than she is. You’re prettier, and you’re not as angry.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen Vi when she gets angry,” Kylar said.

“Neither have you!” she snapped.

“The point is,” Sister Ariel said, “Eris Buel doesn’t lead the Chattel yet. These women come from all over Midcyru. Most of them don’t know each other. They’ll look for a leader once they’re here. There’s more. Istariel, tell them about the Khalidorans.”

“Even though Khalidor doesn’t occupy much of its eastern lands, they are still our neighbors,” Istariel said. “After Garoth died, an unknown named Wanhope took the throne. We have reasons to doubt his rule will last. In the north, one of Garoth’s other sons, Moburu, has joined up with the barbarians in the Freeze. They’re rumored to have rediscovered how to raise armies of creatures that are less than human. Moburu is heading east either to fight or to join another group which we think has about fifty Vürdmeisters, led by a Lodricari named Neph Dada, at Black Barrow. The word is that he plans to raise a Titan.”

“What’s a Titan?”

“It’s a myth. We hope. But as the mistress of a floating island, I can only think of one compelling reason a Khalidoran army would need a giant.”

“You think they want to attack the Chantry?” Vi asked.

“I think they’re fools,” Istariel said. “But we only have a mercenary army of five hundred men and not a single battle maja. If the Khalidorans came through the pass with twenty thousand soldiers and a hundred Vürdmeisters, even without krul or a Titan, they could destroy us. Worse, the Lae’knaught plan to march north at the same time. While there’s a small and tempting prospect that our two enemies would converge and destroy each other before our eyes, if either attacked us first, even if we won, we would be so weakened that the other would annihilate us.”

“So you want to turn the ten thousand Chattel into an army so they can die saving women who reject them,” Kylar said.

There was an icy silence.

“I’m responsible for the lives of the women in my care, and the caretaker of the legacy of a thousand years of learning and freedom,” Istariel said. “So if it costs Vi’s life and her honor and your life and your freedom and my life and my reputation and a war with Alitaera to save them, I will gladly pay that and more. Kyle, you can destroy my plans and your wife simply by telling the first maja you see that you were ringed forcibly. I can’t stop you. But neither can I free you. In the centuries when these rings were Made, they were studied by magae greater than any now alive, and they found the bond unbreakable. You can ask anything for your silence, but you can’t ask the impossible. So what’s your price?”