But the chit doesn’t budge. Nor do the diamond eyes so much as blink. “And pardon my asking, but why won’t you teach girls, sir?” The words are polite but there’s a hard edge to her tone, as if that isn’t the answer she wants and damn it all, she’s going to stay here until she gets a better one.

With a sigh he opens the door, and crouches down slightly to meet her at eye level. “Because women can’t master the power, girl. That’s simple fact. You think others haven’t tried? Their nature is not compatible with the demands of true sorcery. Many have tried, and they master the power as witches do, and die as witches do, of their own exertions. So it will be with you if you follow this course.” He stood again. “Forget the Power. Live a long and happy life. That’s my advice for you.”

“Men do both.”

“Yes. Men do both.” But even the majority of those men who seek to become Magisters fail, he thinks, and are never more than witches. To try to do it alone, without training, all but guarantees failure, a short life grasping after a dream that only a precious few are allowed to attain, prematurely exhausted as the soulfire expires. Or sometimes, in the worst cases, success is attained … and brings madness in its wake.

To become a Magister is one thing. To understand what that is, and what one has become, and to accept it and go on living, that is another.

“So what is it in me that makes it impossible?” the girl demands. “Some female part? I’ll cut it out.”

At another time he might laugh at such ridiculous audacity, but her tone makes it clear she is deadly serious. “What,” he challenges her, “take a knife to your gut and gouge out living flesh? At my command?”

“No,” she says evenly, “I’ll go to a witch and have them take it out, so that I don’t die of it. And then I’ll come back here and show you. And if you say there’s another thing that’s got to go, then I’ll have that one taken out too. Until there’s nothing left of me that a man would not have, and you are willing to teach me.”