THEY WERE ON THEIR third bottle when she finally finished, and at first no one said anything. At last Jasper started to chuckle, quietly at first, then more and more brazenly ... until that too subsided and the silence reasserted itself. At length he said, “We have precisely the same problem.” He reached across the table, still tittering a little, and refilled her glass. “So this, Sister Samain, she’s an extortionist, basically.”
“Essentially, yes,” said Satyena. She swished the wine around gently in her glass. “Her power is unlimited because everyone knows that if anything happens to her, we become visible to your machines.”
“But your covens have been visible to our machines,” said Jeremiah.
“Some of them,” said Satyena. “Her political power may be unlimited, but her spellcasting is no
