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showed.
    Amma kept talking. “If we can just talk to General Sarin, and maybe Gevri, too. If we can just sit down and work things out, I’m sure there’s some way to . . .”
    Amma trailed off. They were almost at her house now, the one that had been rebuilt after Yens and Naseph had destroyed her family’s home that hid the secret library. Amma ran ahead and picked up something that lay next to the door. “What’s this?”
    Taemon hurried to catch up. Amma held an unusual package. It was wrapped in colorful flowered fabric, perhaps a scrap from an old tablecloth, with a piece of twine wound around the package diagonally. Into the twine, little sprigs of wildflowers had been tucked and arranged carefully.
    “I think it’s from Vangie,” Amma whispered.
    It made sense. Vangie’s birth sign was Flower, and she did everything with an artistic flair.
    Amma turned the package over and pulled out a note tucked in the twine. She had it open in a blink. Taemon read over her shoulder.
    Dear Amma
,
    I kept this book because Elder Othaniel told us to look for books about how Nathan discovered psi. I thought if I had something he wanted, I could bargain for better food and more free time
.
    Now I’m giving it to you as a way to say I’m sorry. What I did was wrong. I know that now. I hope somehow we can still be friends
.
    Vangie
    She had drawn a flower with a stem that looped around her name.
    Amma let the fabric and the twine fall to her feet. She now held an ancient leather-bound book. “
The Mind That Unlocked Psi
, by Kertrand Lasky,” she read from the spine. “What in the Great Green Earth?”
    “Have you ever seen that book before?” Taemon asked.
    “Not that I remember. Maybe my da will recognize it.” She hugged the book to her chest. “Someday I hope we’ll get all the books back from the Republik. I’d like to think this is a start. My family was charged with preserving the history of Deliverance. I still need to carry that out as best I can.”
    “I’d like to help,” Taemon said.
    “Thanks.” She beamed at him, which made his neck heat up again; then she ran into the house with the book. Taemon walked home, wondering who Kertrand Lasky was and why Elder Othaniel had been so interested in books about Nathaniel.
    Taemon sat alone in his room in Drigg’s house, staring at the peace proposal in his hand. It had been a week since the meeting, and everyone seemed to warm up to the idea of a peace negotiation. Hannova had proposed it to the council, and they had given their approval. Now it was up to him to get this message to General Sarin.
    He stared at the words and repeated the message to himself until he had it memorized.
    Representatives of the people of Deliverance respectfully request a meeting with the people of the Republik to discuss ways in which our two societies can live side by side in peace, without fear of oppression or war
.
    One sentence. He’d made them trim it down to one sentence; it was the most he thought he could send. That had caused a lot of argument, but Taemon insisted that details could be worked out later. This was just the first gesture.
    Taemon let out a big breath. Time to get to work.
    Using clairvoyance, he began sending his awareness along the route that led to the tunnel, through the mountain, into Kanjai. He stretched his psionic senses as far as he could. But the farther he went, the dimmer his awareness felt. He broke the connection. That wasn’t the answer.
    Time to try something new. He’d been to Kanjai. He knew the building where General Sarin trained the archons. If he could imagine that place, recall it in his mind in great detail, maybe he could send his awareness directly there instead of trying to stretch it out over a long distance.
    It took him a few minutes to fully create the scene in his mind. He found it was easier if he focused on one small part of the building. He picked one wall in the building that he had walked past many times during the