Orcher gives me and Glacia a short tour of the Embassy’s southwestern sector until a Belvish Official calls him back to Mercator Hall. Before he leaves, he reminds Glacia about the schedule Captain Fallsten made for her. She’ll finish her initial training in two all-day sessions. I, on the other hand, have off until Sunday. My work doesn’t start until after Belvun’s president—Theodore Garner—hosts an assembly to ratify the Belvun Recovery Treatise.

Glacia and I take the rest of the afternoon to wander around the Embassy, and we barely cover three of its nine sectors before nightfall. This place is huge, many times larger than Undil’s Embassy. Not only is this city several miles end-to-end, but a majority of the towers rise fifty, sixty, and even seventy stories into the sky. Glacia gets excited when she sees the Hologis arena in the city’s western sector, but no tournaments are scheduled until several days after we leave.

Bummer.

We meet Ellin and Michael for dinner later that evening. Glacia, Michael, and I decline to sample a poultry dish our waiter offers us, which is disturbingly called Peppered Adeross Throat. That bird can keep its neck out of my food.

Ellin is brave enough to taste it. Her teeth make a sickly crunching noise and her eyes flash open in disgust. She spits the meat into a napkin. Not surprisingly, the napkins smell like Armici trees.

The hotel Glacia and I are assigned to is almost a mile north of the restaurant, located in the northwest sector of the city. We register our IDs at the lobby desk. I’m in Room 4619 and Glacia is in Room 927. We ride an elevator to my floor. The halls curve back and forth, and a single window pane makes up the outer wall.

My trunk and backpack are already sitting against the bed. The window faces south, overlooking the Main Loop. The view extends through the city, beyond the field and docking platforms and southern forest, all the way to the gray mountain that looms in the distance. Rays of pinkish light pierce the clouds and bathe the white-capped mountain in the remnants of sunset.

As the world fades into darkness, lights brighten the Main Loop. White orbs hang off the lower levels of towers and illuminate trunks of trees. Shadows shift on the sidewalks. A door opens and light spills onto the street. One hovercraft circles two towers while it waits for another hovercraft to fly away, and a third approaches from the south.

For the first time in years, total peace fills my body. No worry, or stress, or anger, or pain. I don’t feel like I want to escape. I’ve found my home.

Glacia flops onto the bed and looks upside down at me, then points at a square panel sticking off the wall.

“What’s that?”