“Have they?” Vai grinned with such unfeigned delight that Bee looked as startled as if he had turned into a different man. “Kofi said he would write! I don’t suppose there is any chance you have the letters with you?”

“No—” Chartji broke off as I raised a hand for silence.

Footfalls sounded from the passage. The woman with the baby entered, carrying a tray.

“Cook will be having the soup hot soon now, Maester,” she said to Brennan, “meaning no disrespect to the magister.” She glanced at Vai and then took a second look up and down in an admiring way before she began unloading the dishes.

Bee cast me a look, rolling her eyes. Fortunately Vai was speaking to Chartji in a low voice about sending letters back to Expedition, and did not notice. Youths brought the food, a hearty fare of mutton stew and cabbage mashed up with turnips, and we sat. I half expected Bee to be casting sly glances and arch looks at the man she had confessed was her lover, but she treated him no differently from the rest of us.

“We radicals are not working for General Camjiata,” Brennan explained to Vai. “We are working with him to achieve those goals we share in common. He will soon march his army north over the Pyrene Mountains into the Gallic Territories. We need to discover the plans of the Alliance of princes and mages, where and when and with what numbers they mean to fight him, because they will fight him. The general simply cannot have raised as large an army as his enemies will. He will need our help to defeat them.”

“Have the radicals no spies?” I asked.

“We have successfully insinuated a few spies into the princely courts. What we lack is any knowledge of the plans of the mage Houses, for they are closed to us.”

Vai considered his bowl of stew, then met Brennan’s gaze. “I can move easily into any mage House in Europa. But I do not stand so high in mage ranks that I would ever be admitted to councils of war.” He glanced sidelong at me in a way meant to make me smile, and it did. “However, once I introduce my wife into those halls, she can eavesdrop.”

“Are you truly willing to do this for the radicals, Magister?” Brennan asked.

“I don’t do this for you. I do this for my friends in Expedition, and for my village.”

“If the mage Houses discover you are acting as our agent, they will kill you.”

He shrugged. “If I am willing to risk nothing for freedom, then I am not a man.”