“I should be going with you,” he said plaintively. “Why aren’t I going with you?” He threw the snowball as hard as he could: it splattered against a pine tree, leaving a white lump stuck to the dark bark. “Good shot,” Keltan said. “Did you picture your father’s face when you threw it?” Mara, sitting on a rock in the forest above the Secret City, said nothing. She was looking down into the cove, down to the beach, where Chell was examining one of the unMasked Army’s small fishing boats. It had been a week since she’d found him on the beach, half of him frozen, the other half drowned. Soon she’d be traveling with him and Keltan to Tamita to see her father. It didn’t seem quite real. “Anyway, you know why,” Keltan continued. “This is a stealth mission. The fewer the better. Mara has to go, obviously. I have to go because I know how to get into Tamita unseen. As well, if we are seen, we can both pass for fourteen.
