“Sounds to me like you already want to retire.”

“Maybe I just need to get a good night’s sleep.”

“If the mainland Chinese will cooperate by not sending bombers or commandos or—”

“If we’re such hot stuff, Alf, why do the mainlanders still have any bombers or helicopters?”

“Because they make them faster than we can blow them out of the sky.”

“When do the Taiwanese with all these enhanced weapons we’ve given them take over and do all the fighting for themselves?”

“They’re doing all they can. Pilots can only fly so many hours. Planes run out of ammunition. We’re dealing with finite numbers here.”

“So we have to keep waking up in the night to take their planes and choppers out of the sky.”

“In a word, yes,” said Alf. “Because when the world sees what we are doing for Taiwan, they take us seriously.”

“They take America seriously.”

“Oh, come on, Gerd. America is us, now. Last week, all it took was the President announcing that America was sending sixteen enhanced jets and fifty enhanced tanks to Israel, and the Islamic armies pulled back from the borders and the jets stopped intruding in Israeli air space.”

Gerd thought about that for a moment. “So maybe with all the killing here, we’re saving lives there.”

“Yes! That’s the point! A powerful demonstration, and then our enemies back down.”

“America’s enemies.”

“When we take a nation under our protection, then their enemies are our enemies. That’s what it means to be gods.”

“The Iliad doesn’t read that way.”

“The story of The Iliad was put together by clowns who didn’t know what they were talking about.”

“The old stories make it all seem so personal. What happens when a great mage from another house takes us on? What good will our jets do against a Watersire who can make America suffer from a drought? Or a Rootherd who can make plants die of some uncontrollable blight—but only within America’s borders?”

“Enough bombs and they’ll decide to stop.”

“Oh, Alf, come on. We know enough history—enough recent history—that we can be sure there aren’t enough bombs to do that. If America is starving, America will submit. And besides, how would we even know which of the other Families was doing it?”

“You have a point. Taiwan and Israel only face enemies who have no mages protecting them.”

“But our enemies can all see the limitations of our power because we’re showing everybody all that we can do,” said Gerd. “And they’ll gang up against us because the other Families have hated us for centuries. Us against everybody. I want to go home to Westil!”

Alf stood there in silence for a moment, and then put the toothbrush back in his mouth and brushed as he returned to the bathroom.

Where he was standing, a young woman suddenly materialized. Gerd recognized her immediately.

“You,” said Gerd. “That Greek girl.”

“Hermia by title,” said the girl. “Yllka was my birth name.”