"It doesn't matter whether you deserved it or not! I shouldn't be doing it!"

"Why not?" Jason asked, sounding like he was mocking her. "If I deserve it, why shouldn't you yell at me?"

Her father's words came back to her. "Because it's not for me to decide what someone else deserves. I want to be better than that! It's not about you. It's about me, wanting to be…"

"Like your mother," Jason finished for her. "Because you're going to be a dragon, too. Just like them."

"No. When did you become this big expert on my mother and who I am and what I'm going to be?"

"I'm not," Jason said, sounding surly again.

"Good night," Kira said, giving the words finality.

"Yeah."

Kira lay there as the stars looked down on her, mocking her insignificance.

* * *

Queen Sien of Tiae had been through a lot in her life, surviving the anarchy of the once-broken kingdom to help reforge her country as the last remaining member of the former royal family. She was still in Pacta Servanda, trying to deal with the people from Urth, when Mari and Alain sought her out.

Mari couldn't help but feel reassured when she embraced Sien. "Things have gone seriously off the rails."

"I've heard the latest warning you sent out by far-talker," Sien said. "Do not cooperate. Do not trust. Most of what you said after that could not be heard."

"I think the ship from Urth was sending some kind of signal over the same frequencies I tried to use," Mari said. "I checked the tech manuals and there's something called 'jamming' that sounds like that. Deliberate interference, rather than signals accidentally interfering with each other."

Sien's residence in Pacta was the old town hall, where she had lived during the desperate years when the walled town was the last place in Tiae where the flag of the kingdom still flew and any measure of law existed. Mari looked around the room they were in, remembering her first meeting with Sien. The once-blank walls now boasted tapestries, joined by displays of artifacts and weapons from the time when Pacta was under siege. A large map of Dematr hung on one wall. Mari went to it, pointing. "Kira didn't tell us where she was trying to go, but I think we can make some good guesses."

Sien came up beside her. "Kira is surely wise enough not to have headed south or east from your home. There is much open country there, but fewer people and longer stretches of still-deserted land. She and that boy would too easily stand out."

Alain nodded. "She also knows that the area around Awanat is where the remnants of the warlord gangs still lurk."

"And Tiaesun," Mari said, pointing to the capital, "is both too obvious and would be far too hard to hide in. Alain and I have family and friends to the north and west, though."