"I know, Father, I'm sorry," Kira said. Her father hadn't had friends growing up. Literally none, since the Mage Guild that had taken him from his family did its best to erase the very concept of friends from the minds of acolytes. "It's not your fault. It's just too hard. Anyone who wants to visit here has a hard time because of the security, and if I want to go somewhere I have a hard time because of the security, and then we found out that anyone I made real friends with might get targeted by Mother's enemies, and how could I do that to anyone? So I've got guys like Gari way off in Danalee and girls like Devi way off in Tiaesun, but…that's not it, Father. Not today. Everybody is going to be there today, and when I'm with Mother everyone looks at me and thinks—" Kira clamped her mouth shut, staring toward the nearest window at the open country around their home.

"You look very much like your mother did when she was younger." Her father said that in a way that made it sound like the greatest thing ever. Kira felt combined affection for him and irritation at the comparison.

"Do you know what they say?" Kira asked in a low voice. "Some people say that because Mother died once she couldn't have a child the normal way, so you cast some spell that made a baby copy of her. Me."

"You should not listen to such nonsense," Alain said.

"Why do I have to go?"

"We think it could be important to have you there," Alain said.

"We're going to look primitive, aren't we?" Kira waved around to encompass the room and the world. "They have all those amazing things, and we have…steam locomotives."

"I thought you liked steam locomotive creatures."

After all this time her father still thought of locomotives as being like Mage creatures rather than Mechanic devices. That managed to get a smile out of her. "I do. They're cool."

"Kira," her father said, "if these people from Urth believe they are better than we are because they have Mechanic devices better than ours, they are fools. We intend to show them the sort of people we are. We do not know what sort of people they are."

"You're…concerned about them?" She had started to say scared, but that was ridiculous. Nothing scared her father. "Why would you want me there, then?"

Alain studied Kira for a moment before replying. "It is important that you be there. You have a role to play in what will happen."

She felt a chill. "Father, is that foresight? Did you see something about the future involving me?"

He paused again, this time considering his words. "Yes. It is time you were told. The vision came before you were born. Its meaning remains unclear. But you were there."