Page 62 of Beds and Blades

“Certain women?”

“Women with a true unmet wanting,” Caen said. “Women with capabilities Mytharo needs. Women whose lives have no room for what they are. The mages believe the bridge does not merely take them—it answers them. It brings them somewhere their wanting can become purpose.”

She paused.

“They also believe Mytharo benefits in return. Every woman who came before you proved useful. Some as healers. Some as scholars. Some as strategists, makers, witnesses.”

I could hear my own heartbeat.

“The mechanism is not targeted,” she said. “It is receptive. A net cast into the space between worlds, woven from Yravel’s principle. It catches what the principle recognizes.”

“A net?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“For women?”

Her jaw tightened.

“So I was not summoned?” I asked.

“No.”

“But I was made easier to catch.”

Caen did not answer immediately. That was answer enough.

“You were findable,” she said at last. “In a way many women are not.”

I turned back to her.

Caen looked down at her cup.

“And do mages know when and where these women arrive?”

“The mechanism does not announce itself,” she said. “Not precisely. We can feel when someone has crossed the bridge, but only as a disturbance in the living arts. A shift. A pressure change in the world.”

“So, when I arrived in the field, you already knew someone had arrived?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you have to scan me?”

“The High Commander of this outpost asked me to,” Caen said. “And I preferred to verify rather than assume the disturbance I felt earlier that day was you.”

As a student of the scientific method, I respected that. Deeply inconvenient, but sound.

“And Morvanna?” I asked.

Something tightened around Caen’s eyes.

“She knows, doesn’t she?” I asked.

Caen nodded.

“And she knows that women from Earth usually bring useful skills with them?” I asked. “Knowledge this world does not have? Capabilities it cannot produce for itself?”

“She knows that, too,” Caen said.