"Kira," her mother said, her voice taking on an edge, "we've been preparing you for things like this your entire life. Here is what we need from you. While we're dealing with the people from Urth, keep your eyes and your ears open. Since you're still young, they might underestimate you and say something they wouldn't in front of Alain or me."

"Like when we meet with the Imperials?" Kira asked.

"Yes," Mari said. "Just like that. We really don't know what's going to happen. The Urth peoples' messages to us have been friendly and peaceful, but also frustratingly vague, and your father and other Mages have had visions that imply some sort of threat."

"How dangerous is this?" Kira asked, suddenly more aware of the pistol resting under her arm, its weight both reassuring and disquieting.

"We don't know. You have a role to play in what's going to happen. We don't know what that is," her mother added, "but your father and I will be with you."

That was reassuring despite the worries churning inside her. Lady Mari and her Mage had defeated the most powerful forces on Dematr when freeing the world, and surmounted every challenge since then as well.

"Your father has been teaching you how to spot when people aren't being truthful," Mari continued. "Are you confident you can do that?"

Kira nodded. "Yes. Maybe not with a Mage, but with most people I can tell."

"That's my girl." Her mother smiled at Kira. "Don't worry. I'm sure we can handle whatever happens."

Kira managed to smile back instead of pointing out to her mother that she had just said she could tell when someone wasn't being truthful. She glanced at her father, who gazed back with a clear message not to call her mother on it.

Kira leaned back in her seat, pretending to sleep as the coach and their cavalry escort headed down the road toward Pacta Servanda.

Pacta Servanda, once only an old town, nowadays popularly known as the city the daughter had built.

The field where the ship from Urth would land lay outside the city and was already surrounded by an immense crowd, kept back by large numbers of soldiers. As the coach swept through a lane kept open in the crowd, Kira huddled back into her seat, embarrassed by sharing the privilege of Lady Mari. It wasn't like she had earned such treatment. "What exactly is landing here?" she asked her mother to distract her thoughts. "Not the whole ship?"

"No," Mari said. "There is some big part that detaches and can land here while the rest, including their main engines, stays above the world. Your Uncle Calu explained about the relative thing, right?"

"Yes," Kira said. "Relativity. Even though it took the ship ten years to get here, time passed at a different rate inside the ship because of the way it was traveling, so to them it only felt like a couple of months."