"How?" Jason asked. "I thought you guys didn't have that stuff."

"What stuff?" She sat down at her desk, grabbing a pen, ink, and a sheet of paper. Jason gaped at her as she dipped the pen in the ink and rapidly wrote out a description of what he had told her and her own plans to help hide him. I know you will understand why I had to do this, Kira wrote at the end. It's my job. I love you both.

She centered the note on her desk, noticing that Jason was still watching her in amazement. "What is it?"

"You wrote a note on paper," Jason said, as if he had just witnessed something hard to comprehend. "For real."

"Seriously? That impresses you?" Kira paused to think, her eyes on the map of Dematr above her desk. "Your mother knows you've been here, so this will probably be the first place she comes looking for you. The farther away we can get before anyone knows you're gone, the better."

Jason pointed out through the window. "I've got the flier, and it will be at least another hour before the ship realizes it's gone. We can use it to go someplace not too far off, and then I can send it back to the ship with orders to wipe its route memory just before it gets there."

"We need to go north," Kira said, tapping the map, remembering her own trips and the stories her parents and their friends had told. "And we need to stay around lots of people so we can hide in crowds, at least at first. Your flier can take us over the security patrols around this house without raising an alarm right away. There's a town that's grown up where the road from Pacta Servanda meets the Royal Road, and a train station there for the new rail line heading into the Bakre Confederation. We'll take your flier to the outskirts of that town, get you some common clothes, get rid of the Mage robes, and head for Debran and then Julesport. From Julesport we can take a ship across the Sea of Bakre."

Kira paused, looking at the map. Many of her mother's enemies who had stayed in the west had gone to ground, blending in with everyone else. They could be anywhere, or so she had been warned more times than she could count. But there were two places that Kira knew she had to avoid.

"We need to stay away from the Empire, and this city called Ringhmon, but there are places in the northern parts of the Western Alliance and the areas north of Ihris where we ought to be able to hide, and if I need to contact Mother and Father I have relatives near Ihris who can get word to them. What do you think?"

Jason shook his head. "Why are you asking me? I've never done anything like this."