Ever since the dragon Dunkelzahn’s election to the presidency of UCAS, things had been especially tense between Aztlan and the United Canadian American States. The CAS, which lay between them, was growing increasingly fretful about Aztlan using it as a stepping stone in any attack on UCAS. But the Azzies seemed more concerned with protecting their own borders than with expansionism. There were rumors that they had been vigorously searching for something in this area of late. I hoped we wouldn’t run into them—that whatever they’d been looking for would prove a distraction.