Isla’s eyes shone with her smile. “All that brilliance and a new foal, too. I’m so relieved that you’re in on it now. Now that you know the general direction and the pace of things, we can include you more when the times come. But first, we need to establish one particular Gate. Kordas plans to ask you to help do that.”

Being stunned by something her sister said was getting to be the norm today. It took her more than a moment or two to gather her thoughts. “But I’m not a mage!” she protested.

“But you have a powerful and precise Fetching Gift,” said Isla. “Jonaton intends to establish a small Portal. It may not be safe enough to reach through with tongs, even, so Kordas wants you to Fetch something small, like a stone or a bit of earth, to serve as the anchor on this side. Then he wants you to send something from here to there to establish the anchor on the other side. When that’s done, an actual Gate can be built. Just a tiny one. Small, shieldable.”

Delia knew for a fact that Kordas had been out all day, so the only way that Isla could know this was by Mindspeaking with him. I guess that’s actually the safest way for them to discuss this, she thought numbly. But—

“I don’t know if I can do that,” she admitted, licking her lips nervously. “I’ve never Fetched anything further away than a few leagues.”

“But you don’t know that you can’t,” her sister pointed out. “We are all going to have to do things we are not certain we can. You won’t be the only one. But there is one thing I do know for certain. If we don’t try, all that is going to happen is that we are going to sit here in this Duchy, doing needlework and raising farm stock, waiting for the Emperor, or someone, to move on us. I’ve lived like that all my life, and I can’t do that anymore. More to the point, I’m not going to have that for my boys.” She lifted her head, and her eyes flashed with determination. “I would rather they wore skins and ate half-raw meat around a fire than sit here tamely, like a lot of Squire Lesley’s pigs, waiting to be surprised by the butcher!”

Slowly, Delia nodded, setting her mind to accept her exciting new ‘need to know.’ “All right, then,” she said. “You can tell Kordas that I’m here to help.”

Isla just smiled, as if she could not have imagined Delia saying anything else. “Then let’s gather some herbs to make good on our deception, and get back. We’ll talk more about this tonight.”

6