"Oh, is that all I'd need to do?" Gabrielle chuckled briefly; she'd always been a sucker for other people's infectious enthusiasm. As evidence: "Do you think it'd be hard for me to learn?"

But he'd asked another question, and she wasn't going to leave it unanswered. "No, nothing quite like that; mostly the petty warlords I'd mentioned . . . the occasional despot. There's always someone looking to overpower someone else and take what they have, but there isn't any one enemy everyone can point to, so it gets a bit messy."