“If I can’t just live peacefully in Virginia, Alf, then why not go to Westil and see what our ancient homeland is like? Why is it wrong for me to feel nostalgia for a land I’ve only glimpsed for a second or two? Americans all feel nostalgia for whatever homeland their ancestors came from, whether they’ve lived there or not.”

“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.”