Ariadne shook her head again. This time, there was some astonishment in it. Her eyes widened to the size of coins, the whites visible all the way around. "I don't know...I've never heard of either of those places," she said. And she'd spent plenty of time studying maps of the realm. She loved to lie on her stomach, tracing the lines of the rivers and trade routes, imagining where they went. She had the names of all the countries and major cities memorized. Including the ones that the Red Dragon had sacked.

Especially the ones that the Red Dragon had sacked, really.

"I'm from Valeria," she said. She said it, as if everyone would know the name. But she supposed that couldn't be true.

Not necessarily...