"Of course," she agrees; it costs her nothing to do so, assured now that the greatest threat presented here is like as not the stranger's ego and not his sentinels. "Though I must-"

her repeated use of that word almost certainly a barely there slyness, an undercurrent of her dry humor, clocking the way he objects to it and well he might, at even a glance

"-counsel more caution. The people of this place may not approach a new thing so carefully as myself, nor listen so sympathetically to an explanation. I understand that people such as ourselves," rifters, practitioners of magic, both, "are viewed with less suspicion than we once were, but not none."

They might apologise for overreacting. Then again, they might not. Rifters are owed no more than they earn.