Fine, bitch. “I was fucking this guy and he was having trouble waking the snake,” Vi said. Sister Gizadin’s eyes went huge. “So I kicked in a sex glamour. That usually does it in about five seconds. I mean, it’s embarrassing. If you use too much, they’re done before they get naked. With this one, the glamour did nothing. In your terms, I guess I was exaggerating my natural attractiveness. So I played around with it until I felt something give. His eyes glazed over and he started talking about my boyish figure—while holding two hands full of tit.”

Sister Gizadin’s mouth was open, but no words came out.

“Anyway,” Vi said, “it wasn’t hard. I mean, I’m most experienced with glamours for sex, but I figured those out with a pointer or two from a courtesan, so with Sisters teaching me, how hard can the other glamours be?”

For a long time, no one said anything. Vi noticed belatedly that everyone was gaping at her. Sister Gizadin’s mouth closed. She began to speak, and then stopped. Finally she looked past Vi to a buck-toothed twelve-year-old who raised her hand. “Yes, Hana?” Sister Gizadin asked.

Hana stood with her hands behind her back. “Please, Sister, what kind of mage is a courtesan?”

Vi laughed.

That snapped Sister Gizadin out of it. “Sit, both of you!”

They sat.

“Unappreciated,” Sister Gizadin said. “Even if people’s perceptions of the caster are not altered, there is still a feeling of wrongness after a glamour. During the spell, they won’t notice they’re being manipulated, but afterward, especially if they were wildly manipulated, they’ll realize that their reactions were out of proportion. The irresponsible use of glamours is one reason why magae have historically been distrusted. No one wants to be manipulated, and in essence, glamours are all about manipulation. That’s all. Class dismissed.”

It was as if Vi had never spoken. Sister Gizadin didn’t answer Vi’s question, or Hana’s. Indeed, she didn’t seem affected in the slightest, except, Vi realized later, that she’d forgotten to teach the last portion of her lecture in triads.

Momma K adjusted the topazes hanging in her long hair, examining herself critically in Master Piccun’s mirror. She’d found a note on her bedside table when she woke. It was written in Durzo’s cramped hand, “I live. I will come for you.” That was all. Bothersome man. She’d gotten up and dyed her hair one last time: a natural gray. No, silver, she decided.

Then she’d come here. It hadn’t been easy to order Master Piccun to make her blue dress for the coronation more muted and higher cut than any she’d ever worn, but at least his hands had strayed when he took her measurements—as they always did. When his hands stopped wandering, she would know she was old.