Except for short-term business trips like the one that had taken her to Tokyo, Sly had never left Seattle, never even visited the Cascades lying only a few hours east of the sprawl. She'd always imagined them to be like the Rockies, huge, majestic, rugged peaks of bare rock and snow, which she'd seen once when biz had taken her to Banff and Lake Louise, further north in what used to be the border between Alberta and British Columbia. (It was the preserve of Dunkelzahn the great dragon, although that august personage had had nothing to do with her run—thank whatever gods there happened to be.) She’d loved the Rockies, found them beautiful, overawing, even terrifying in a way.