Kallista was lying on a bed large enough to sleep three, her face buried in her arms, when she heard a knock at the door.

“Go away,” she called without looking up.

The knock came again.

“I said, go away!”

The door swung open, and she sat up. “Don’t you listen?”

“Not very well,” Trenton said, standing just outside her room. “I thought that was one of the things you liked about me.”

“It’s one of the things I hate about you.”

“Right. I keep getting those mixed up.”

“I know why you’re here,” Kallista said, wiping her eyes. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know you don’t,” Trenton said. “But I think I need to hear what you have to say.”

She was sure her eyes were bright red. She hated to cry worse than almost anything. “Since when do you listen to me?”

Trenton leaned against the doorjamb. “Remember that time in Seattle when I volunteered to take part in the joust? I about got my head knocked off. Then you tricked the guy with the bolt in his ear and coldcocked him.”

“Weasel,” Kallista said. “His name was Weasel.” She couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “What’s your point?”

“No point,” Trenton said. “I just thought that story would cheer you up. Now will you come talk to me?”

Kallista swung her legs over the side of the bed. “You’re a jerk.” She climbed down and followed him to the staircase where they sat side-by-side on a dark wooden step.

“I’m sorry,” Trenton said. “I didn’t have any right to talk about your father.”

“You had every right.” She clasped her hands in her lap and looked at the ragged edges of her thumbnails. When had she started biting them again? She hadn’t done that since she was seven or eight. She thought maybe her father had put some nasty-­tasting solution on them to break her of the habit, but she couldn’t remember.

She raised her thumb to her mouth, realized what she was doing, and pulled it away. “I spent all last night replaying what happened in the warehouse over and over in my head. I’ve thought about it so many times I can repeat every word he said. Do you want to hear it?”

“I heard what your father thinks,” Trenton said. “I want to hear what you think.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know what I think. Do you ever hear yourself talking and realize you’re repeating word-for-word something your father told you?”

Trenton laughed. “Just the opposite. For years, my mother would tell me how bad technology was, so, of course, I’d think the exact opposite. I wonder sometimes if the reason I grew up determined to be a mechanic is because she was so against it. How crazy is that? To spend your whole life trying to prove your mother wrong.”

Kallista shook her head. “No crazier than spending your whole life trying to prove your father right.”

“So is he?” Trenton asked. “Is your father right?”

Kallista could hear the murmur of voices coming from the kitchen downstairs. Were the others talking about her? “Last night I was positive he wasn’t. But something occurred to me this morning. What if there’s nothing to fight for anymore?”

Trenton opened his mouth, but she held up her hand. “I’m not talking about quitting. If there’s something to fight for, I’ll fight. Only . . . were the people in Seattle happier there than they are now?”

“They were free.”

“Right. But free to do what? Starve? Fight for who got the best hole in the ground? What did their freedom buy them? The Whipjacks hated the dragons. The Order of the Beast served the dragons, only without all the benefits they have here. And the people in the middle tried not to get trampled by either one. I talked to some of the people in the dorms, and not one of them wanted to go back. Have you actually met anyone who’s unhappy—other than the Runt Patrol?”

“Well, there was this guy who worked in the fields with us. But I don’t think he was unhappy. He just liked to beat people up.”

Kallista snickered. “Sounds like Angus.”

Trenton grinned. “It kind of does.” Then he turned serious. “What about our friends and families back home? Are we supposed to turn our backs on them?”

“Absolutely not. But you heard what my father said. There are some good things about this place. Maybe it would be okay if our friends and families came here, too.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Your family is already here.”

“Yes, my father is here. And look how much he’s been able to help us.” She waved her hands at the lush carpet, the polished stairs, the grandfather clock with the mechanical bears that marched out and played drums every hour. “You said yourself that the reason we have all this is because my father is valuable to the city. So why not make ourselves valuable, too?”

She tried to drive home the point. “Let’s say we do fight. Without our dragons, our chances of surviving a battle are nearly zero. So when we fail, and when the dragons end up finding Discovery, what do you think they’ll do to the families of the kids who attacked them? Your mother and father. Angus’s family, Simoni’s, Clyde’s.”

“So you’re saying we just do everything the dragons want?”

“I’m saying the people of Discovery are probably going to end up here one way or another. You have to ask yourself what will help them most. Us trying to fight? Or us trying to make ourselves valuable enough that they are treated the way we’d want them to be?”

Trenton tapped his hands on his knees. She could see him turning the idea over in his head. “Let me ask you one question,” he said at last. “If your father was out there instead of in here, would you be saying the same thing?”

She stuck her thumbnail in her mouth, chewing on the ragged edge. “I think so. But I don’t know for sure.”

Trenton got up. “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said before going downstairs to join the others.

Kallista looked at her thumbnail. She’d chewed it so far down it was starting to bleed. Everything she’d said made sense. It was completely logical. Without their dragons, their chances of escape were next to zero. And this house was much better than the dormitory. It was where she’d want her mother to be living, if her mother were still alive.

So why did she feel like what she’d just done was every bit as wrong as what her father had done the night before?