That stopped him cold. It hadn’t occurred to him that Myste might want to volunteer. Or that she would actually have some inside knowledge that he didn’t. He’d thought he would have to persuade her, then train her.

“It’s not as if I’d have to act a part, like Keren,” she continued. “I’d just have to be what I was before I was Chosen. An accountant, a clerk, ordinary. Believe me, people like me are just invisible as long as we keep our mouths shut. No one thinks anything about having us around. We’re a kind of servant, and no one ever pays any attention to the servants.”

He didn’t know how true the latter statement was, but the former was true enough. “There could be danger in this,” he warned.

She raised an eyebrow. “You might not think it, but there’s danger in being an independent clerk. You don’t always know just who is hiring you, or for what—or at least, not until they ask you to run two sets of books, or you get a look at papers you weren’t supposed to see. That never happened to me, personally, but I know those it did happen to. And there’s stories about people turning up missing after taking certain jobs.” She chuckled weakly. “Well, that’s probably what most of the people who knew me think is what happened to me. I know for a fact that none of them realize I was Chosen.”

Well, she was on that last battlefield for the Tedrel Wars, and she’d volunteered for that, too. She’d faced danger there, certainly enough. “I might then ask you for help,” he said carefully.

“Ask, and you’ll have it,” she said. And then seemed at a loss for anything else to say.

But he didn’t want her to leave. They sat in awkward silence for a long time. And when the silence was broken, they both broke it at once.

“Can you tell me—”

“What of interest have you—”

They both broke off, flushing. Alberich was just a little angry—at himself. Surely he was more than old enough to have a simple conversation with an interesting woman without blushing like a boy! Particularly this one, that he had shouted at, cursed at, and forced to learn things she adamantly did not want to learn!

“You first,” she said, gesturing.

He paused. What did he want to say? It suddenly occurred to him that there was a lot he didn’t know about her. He might as well start with that.

“So. What was Myste, the clerk, like?” he asked. “What was her life?”