He steps back a bit, into the shadows of the small house, and gestures to the walls surrounding. “Look at this place, child. Do you see magic here? Is there one brick here laid with the soul’s power, one piece of furniture sculpted by any vehicle other than human sweat and toil? I built this place myself, with my own hands, every inch of it, choosing it to be that way. Now you come to me for lessons? Me?” He shakes his head. “I admire your determination, but you’ve come to the wrong place. Go to the courts of Selden or Amarys and ply your arguments there; perhaps the Magisters will listen to you. Ethanus of Ulran is not Magister any longer, and he does not teach. Not boys, and not girls who would cut themselves up and make themselves into boys.”

The girl points quietly to a far corner of the room, near where the wall meets floor. “There.”

“There what?”

“Power. You said there was none.” The slender finger, with delicate crescent moons of dirt under the nails that have somehow escaped both soap and water, is insistent. “Right there.”

He turns and looks where she is pointing, ready to deny the allegation, but with a start he realizes that she’s right. Down there, in that very spot, the year of the great rains … all his fledgling masonry skills had proven unable to hold the groundwater at bay, so at last he had sealed the inside of the house against leaks. Just in that one place. The rest had been adequate as it was.

“And I’m not a child,” she adds.

He looks back at her. Studying her more deeply this time than before, weighing not only her outer appearance but the fire in her soul as well. It is strong, very strong. A witch with such athra might last many years. A man with such athra … he might risk madness and death to join the ranks of the Magisters, and perhaps succeed.

And she has the Sight. That is rare in anyone.

“What is a child?” he asks her.

The diamond gaze does not flinch. “Creatures that are sold on the street by their parents, to get the coin to make more children.” She paused. “Adults sell themselves.”

So cold. So very cold. Was it strength he was seeing in her, or an outer shell containing a battered soul which would shatter at the first real trial?

“Is that what you have come here to do?” he asks. “Sell yourself?”

“If I must,” she says evenly.

If I were to imagine a woman with the spirit needed to become Magister, he thinks, to survive Transition and the aftermath, this is what she would sound like.