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feeling about what it was.
    â€œI have to join the Oil Watch,” Owen said. “So the government will have me for four years.”
    He didn’t look at me when he said it. He didn’t have to.
    My hands hurt. I couldn’t do buttons or use a fork or tuck my hair behind my ear without snagging it on my bandages and dragging half of it forward again. And I might never play again. But I decided then that none of that mattered. I was going to join the Oil Watch, still, even though it was going to be infinitely more difficult now. If the Prime Minister wanted to control Owen, he was going to have to deal with having us both. By the time I released the Manitoulin song on YouTube, I was, at the very least, no longer Owen’s “unknown companion.”
    I replayed that conversation in my head fairly often as I went through my rehab and last year in Trondheim. By the time I got to Gagetown, it was part of who I was. When the helicopter deposited us back in the main base after Owen slayed the Singe’n’burn, I didn’t need to remind myself any more. We only had one more week of drills, and then it would be assignment and deployment time. The cornet-sergeant was on my side, or at least on the side of bet-winning. I had learned to work with Owen’s squad. The government of Canada didn’t quite own us; the Oil Watch did. And we would serve wherever they needed us.
    I was so innocent in those days. I thought that since we had done the right thing, since we had saved lives and prevented wide-scale damage, that we would be rewarded. Or, at the least, not outwardly punished. But our detractors were patient, and they had many more resources to draw on.

    Basic wore out its last week. The girls in our squad—Annie, Courtney, and the other firefighter, Laura Josephson—all shaved their heads to match mine. The boys saved us seats in the mess, even though we weren’t required to eat as a group. The others looked at us with envy. We had done something they had not, and we had done it very well. They would face their first dragon in the field, untested and possibly on enemy soil. We had defended our home, again, and we had been perfect in our execution of manoeuvers.
    â€œI hope we get at least the same country,” said Sadie, the morning of the last day. They would make the announcements at breakfast. She did the buttons on my dress uniform. I could manage them slowly by now, but she did it with much less swearing.
    â€œYou’ll get the Middle East for sure,” the dragon slayer from Chilliwack said. Caroline, I think, but after Owen had slayed the Singe’n’burn a lot of people had introduced themselves to me, and I was having trouble remembering all those names. “And a big fat contract when you get home.”
    I smiled. I knew that we didn’t want that, but getting the offer, when it came, was going to be pretty sweet.
    â€œCome on,” I said. “Let’s go find out.”
    I didn’t want to say it in front of so many people, but I was looking forward to getting out of Canada for a while. I wanted to go somewhere where Owen would be appreciated, not maligned, however obtusely. And overseas they were more receptive to the idea of bards, too.
    We filed into the mess and ate carefully, mindful of our hats and our white dress tunics. Then the cornet-sergeant took to the podium and began to make his announcements. His face was dark despite the fluorescents, and he had the look of a man who had fought for something and lost.
    Deployments were called alphabetically by dragon slayer. We listened as our comrades were sent out to Alaska, Caracas, Kandahar, New Orleans, Newfoundland.
    â€œSadie Fletcher,” came the call, and Sadie sat up straight. “North Sea!”
    Expressions of carefully muffled outrage and disbelief warred for dominance on Sadie’s face. Those were dying gas fields, and ocean rigs besides, and Canadians were very rarely