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“There’s oil in cold places too.”
    â€œThere are pipelines in cold places,” Hannah said. “But they’re not usually in conflict zones.”
    There was a very good chance that both Owen and Sadie would be assigned somewhere in the middle of a war. They had more experience than most dragon slayers their age, and that usually meant a ticket to a place that was hot in more ways than one. It also meant that their support crews would go under heavy arms, which I was not looking forward to. For starters, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fire a gun. And if there was a person at the other end, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
    â€œIt will be okay, Siobhan,” Lottie said, looking at me. “You’ll learn to do the things they ask, or you’ll learn a way around them. And once you’re in the field, you’ll have a dozen people as backup. It will work out.”
    Lottie’s faith was touching, but she wasn’t going to have to figure out a way to get in and out of a uniform that seemed to be nothing but buttons in less than a minute, with ten fingers that refused to perform under that kind of stress.
    â€œOne thing at a time,” Owen said. “We’ve figured out your hair. We’ll figure out the rest.”
    Sadie’s phone rang just as Hannah was finishing, and she answered it as Owen took her place in front of his aunt.
    â€œHi, Emily!” I heard Sadie say, and then, “Oh, no, that’s just the clippers. We’re shaving our heads.”
    I winced. Sadie was quiet for a while, presumably because Emily was yelling at her. Lottie was trying not to laugh.
    â€œStop squirming,” Hannah said to Owen, who was also holding back a giggle.
    There was the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and I realized that Sheila was early.
    Sheila was a professional—well, professional for Trondheim—and managed not to send her eyebrows into low Earth orbit when she saw Sadie and me walking over to greet her.
    â€œLadies,” she said.
    â€œWe’re around back,” Sadie said, as though this was a totally normal day. “Is that okay?”
    Sometimes Sheila did a video recording for the paper’s Web site, and she liked us to be in the living room for that, because it looked homey. Since Emily agreed with her, we went along with it. The local municipalities had been thrilled with the outcome of the Manitoulin disaster, but the provincial and federal governments had a somewhat more adversarial response. Owen, and I for that matter, had both been painted as wayward youths at the least, and one network in Quebec had gone so far as to wonder if we were budding ecoterrorists. Emily assured us that the bulk of public opinion was with us and did what she could to ensure it stayed that way.
    â€œThat’s fine,” said Sheila. “Just a quick chat today. The Blyth spring fair is this weekend, so I have less space than usual.”
    â€œI hope you have room for a picture,” Sadie said. “I spent forever on my hair.”
    I have no idea how she managed to do things like that with a straight face. It was very frustrating.
    It was a medium-length interview, where Owen talked about why we’d decided to take such drastic measures.
    â€œThere’s no guarantee that we’ll be assigned to the same units during Basic Training,” he said, which was true, though unlikely. “We’ve worked together for so long that we wanted to do one last thing as a set, before we take the next step in our journey.” Apparently Emily’s PR training had stuck.
    He didn’t mention me once, which was how I preferred it, but I assumed Sheila could read between the lines. Hopefully, she’d be able to keep her creativity limited when it came to writing the actual article.
    When Sheila left, we went inside because it was starting to get chilly. It hadn’t been a humid spring, which was odd, but since that