"Both?" The first mate stared at Kira. "That's a proud heritage they gave you. Why didn't you tell anyone aboard before this?"

"My parents did some great things," Kira said. "But that doesn't say anything about me."

The first mate laughed. "I'd say they also raised their girl right if you already know that."

"Sometimes I wonder. Did you argue with your mother?"

"Oh, did I! The hills rang with it." The first mate's smile took on the slightly sad cast of someone recalling the lost past. "She was a farmer, and she loved the land. She wanted me to follow in that, but the sea called me. The day I finally left for the sea was a hard one, but I knew I had to go. No one should have to live the dreams of another. We have to find our own course."

"How do we find it?" Kira asked.

"We go looking. How else?" The first mate gazed toward the land to the north. "If I'd had a son or a daughter, and they had told me they wanted to work the land, I would have wished them the best. That's a mother's job, isn't it? To love them and try to raise them right, hope it all sticks, and when the time comes kick them out of the nest and let them be who they will. Don't forget where you came from, girl. Honor it. But you're neither your father nor your mother. Find the place where your heart lies and hold to it."

"What if…what if a lot of people expect you to do something? Hope that you'll do something? And it's important, but you don't think it's a job you could ever do?"

The first mate scratched her head as she thought. "That'd be a tough one. But if the job is all that important, it makes it all the more important that your heart be in it. And only you can answer that, girl."

Kira smiled at the first mate. "I think my mother would like you. If you ever meet her, you have to tell her that I said that."

"Oh?" the first mate asked skeptically. "And how would I know her?"

"I look a lot like her." It took a moment for Kira to realize that, for the first time she could remember, she had said that without any bitterness or sense of inadequacy.

* * *

The Son of Taris came to anchor in the harbor, putting the longboat over the side to transfer a small amount of cargo ashore and pick up some more.

"We'll send you ashore in the boat," the captain told Kira. "Here are your packs. Change back into your own things and make it quick."