“All right,” Jason said. “More than I asked for…”

“A seagull.”

“What?”

“I was being a seagull, not a fish or a porpoise.” She scrunched up her face at Aliver and then turned to give Corinn the same.

Sometime later, after having tried unsuccessfully to resume her avian imaginings, Mena contented herself with following the conversation. The discussion had turned to geography. Corinn named the six provinces and managed to say something about their ruling families and forms of government: the Mainland to the near north, the satrapy of the Mein in the far north, the Candovian Confederacy to the northwest, Talay to their south, and the mountain tribes of Senival to the west. The linked islands collectively called the Vumu Archipelago made up the last province, though it did not have the centralized government of the others.

Jason rolled a map out on the grass and had the children tack the edges down with their knees. Dariel always took particular pleasure in maps. He leaned close to it and repeated anything the tutor said as if he were translating the information for another listener. Something about the slow way he did this spurred Mena to interrupt him.

“Why is Acacia always at the center of maps?” she asked. “If the world curves and has no end-as you taught us, Jason-how is one place the center and not another?”

Corinn found the question silly. She glanced at Jason with upraised eyebrows and a wrinkled pursing of her lips. At fifteen, she was attractive and knew it, with the olive complexion and rounded face that had come to epitomize Acacian beauty. Much of their dead mother, Aleera, lived on in her; at least, that was what everyone seemed to think. “It just is the center, Mena. Everyone knows that.”