 Back home on Altiplano, Esmay is honored with Altiplano's highest award, the Starmount, although she remains convinced that she was not really a hero, that it was blind luck.While talking with an old soldier who had served under her father (one of the four highest military commanders on Altiplano) and was a family friend, she learns that the nightmares and her dislike of command and horses were psychological trauma from when, as a child, she had ventured into a warzone seeking her father.She had been waylaid and molested by one of her father's subordinates; the family friend knew this sordid tale because he had been the one to kill that subordinate, whose politically connected father meant any trial was infeasible.