“Our gazes scanned the rugged cliffs and the crumbling devastation of a war that was slowly being consumed by earth, time, and memory, like the awkward swallowing of a fat hare by a patient snake. Soon, all the destruction would be in the belly of the earth. Who would remember?”

As Kazi and her team ride through the site of the Great Battle, it serves as a reminder of where they have come from and a callback to the Remnant Chronicles, in which the battle took place. The invocation to remember is also part of Kazi’s motivation going forward; she is going on this mission to prevent destruction like this in the future.

“Look. Take a good long look and remember the lives lost. Real people that someone loved. Before you go about the task I have given you, see the devastation and remember what they did. What could happen again. Know what is at stake. Dragons eventually wake and crawl from their dark dens. I had seen the urgency in the queen’s eyes. I had heard it in her voice. This wasn’t only about the past. She feared for the future. Something was brewing, and she was desperate to stop it. I surveyed the valley. From a distance, the bones and wagons blended back into a calm sea of green, hiding the truth. Nothing was ever quite what it seemed.”

Kazi is leaving the valley of the Great Battle and she thinks about her mission to prevent it from happening again. She feels the urgency of her task and her comment about hiding things is a metaphor for the rest of the novel where nothing is as it seems, and she must look to find the truth. This quote also introduces the notion of Illarion as a Dragon who must be slain to protect the kingdom, and the final line reminds the reader not to take everything exactly as it is presented. Espionage and Secret Motives will blur the line between appearance and reality.

“He gave over his own kingdom, the queen had told me, and the lives of thousands to feed his greed for more. Hungry dragons may sleep for years, but they do not change their eating habits. He must be found. The dead demand justice, as do the living. Even before I visited the valley of dead, I already knew the cost of lurking dragons, ones who crept through the night, crashing into a world and devouring whatever pleased them.”

Kazi’s mission is to capture the Watch Captain who caused massive carnage in the war and she thinks of him like a dragon.