Whiplash. “What?” she said, gripping the knife harder.
“If you’re going to share conversations with me overnight, I may occasionally want to continue them.”
She glared at the table, considered her options, and decided to simply answer his question. “They would work, of course.”
“All of them?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Unemployment is already at ten percent,” he said, fetching garlic and the garlic press. “Where would all these jobs come from?”
“It’s not going to happen overnight, Omnimancer. Women would enter the workforce slowly. More people, more buying power. More buying power, more businesses able to add jobs. It’s a virtuous cycle.”
“Let’s say that’s true. Who would bear and raise the children, or is your ideal world intended to die out after a few generations?”
She set down her knife, giving up the pretense that she could cut lengths of precisely one barleycorn, one poppyseed while arguing with him. “Only women can have children, but nothing stops fathers from raising them.”
“Except for deeply ingrained societal norms.”
“If everyone shared money-earning and household duties, there wouldn’tbe‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work.’ It would be a fairer world.”
“But it isn’t a fair world.” He glanced up at her, then back at the garlic he was skinning. “Let me tell you what I think would happen. Women would only grudgingly be accepted into jobs beyond teaching, nursing and”—his lips twisted—“assisting. They’d have to fight tooth and nail for every tiny advancement. They would be paid less than men for the same work. And when they’d go home at night, physically and mentally exhausted from this battle, they would still be expected to cook dinner.”
She pressed both hands flat on the table. “Worth it.”
“I’m not surprised you feel that way. Your entire adult life has been a battlewithoutthe chance for advancement.” He snapped the press shut on the garlic—she had the mental image of a guillotine—and scraped the results into a glass jar. “But consider that many would sooner stay out of the fray.”
She wanted to chuck a parsnip at his head. Because, damn him, he was right.
“Yes,” she hissed, “some women quite happily stay home and let men work. And some women would lead the charge to keep things that way for everyone. But nobody—least of all you, Omnimancer—will convince me that a real choice about what sort of life to pursue would be anything but good for women. And men, too.”
He looked up at her, silver hair glinting as the light from the ceiling caught it. “Yes, I agree. I’m merely pointing out the difficulties in getting there from where we are now.”
“Youagreewith me? You called me a ‘shopkeeper revolutionist’ the day you got back to town!”
“Very revealing, the things people say when they’re provoked.”
“Shall I say a few of the things that come to mind with this provocation?”
His lips quirked. “Go right ahead. I hope you know some curse words I don’t.”
“Of course not,” she said, aiming for icy but unable to get past red-hot aggravation. “I’m a woman. My delicate ears would burn right off should anyone let an expletive slip in my vicinity.”
Now he was laughing. How shehatedhim.
“I don’t believe for a moment that you’re in favor of women’s rights,” she said.
“Oh? I hired you.”
She gripped the table. “You needed someone who could do magic, and any adult male here had proved himself incapable at the age of thirteen!”
“Why would I pretend to opinions I don’t have?”
She wanted to shake him, cast a spell on him—anything to wipe that grin off his face and smother the laughter in his throat. But all she had were words, so she aimed them well. “Because you’re the most manipulative person I know. A trait you probably inherited from your father.”
It worked.
She was so ashamed of herself, she dropped her eyes from his stricken face and stared at the knife marks in the table.
