“By agreement in those negotiations, rifters and mages are effectively one— which has been more and less vexing for mages,” depending on the nature (and volume) of the rifters their political and personal fates are now inextricably bound from, but although it's effectively an answer to his unasked question, she has a point of her own to make: “but not every rifter is a mage. And not every shard-bearer is either of those things, complicating the fact that some of us can now perform limited feats of what is essentially a form of magic.”

Like, for instance, the abilities Gwenaëlle has at her disposal. What guarantee that the war takes those away? A self-solving problem, given what the anchor might do to them all in time, but maybe not fast enough, and maybe complicating other, knottier problems—

“One problem at a time, ouais,” she allows, “but I think it's worth being prepared for the future where we can be. The Chantry's not going to have no plan.”