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Pausing on a ridgeline that leads to a fertile valley, I look back at the desert one last time. It waits there in the distance, patient, eternal, the graveyard of armies. But not me.

I turn my back on it, but carry its lessons with me.

The next kilometers are almost pleasant. While the temperature hovers around fifty degrees Celsius in the morning, frequent showers from the roiling clouds keep me cool and soothe the agony of my burn. Birds twitter in orderly citrus groves, which I eat heavily from as I pass.

Following the tracks of an abandoned combine, I find a shed and a small farmhouse that looks to have been abandoned in haste. It has been looted at least once, and I’m unable to find medical supplies. But in the garden, I find an aloe plant, which I’m able to distill into a paste for my burn. It takes the sharp edge off the itching sting, but does little for the deep nerve trauma, and nothing at all for my eye, which throbs down to the very root of the ocular nerve.

* * *

—

The power is out in the farm, but it is nice having a puzzle to solve that doesn’t include imminent death. In a few hours I’m able to rig the solar panels of the combine to work with the stove, on which I cook dry-pressed curry from a freshcan. I also manage to power the ancient HC in the living room. The HC won’t link with the holoNet, and instead shows only a Society emergency broadcast message, giving instructions for all citizens to evacuate Erebos and the surrounding lands for Naran, a hundred kilometers northeast.

I think of the tight showers on the Archi as I draw myself a bath. I slip into the cold water and shudder. It is the most pleasant thing I have experienced since the caldarium with Cassius. My legs are too long for the tub and splay out awkwardly against the fraying wallpaper. It’s only then I realize how much weight I’ve lost. Twenty kilos maybe? My body looks like it belongs to a rust lung victim. It is emaciated, any skin exposed to the sun swollen and peeling. I doze lightly in the bath for hours. After drinking another liter of water, I collapse onto the formaFab bed and sleep for an entire day.

I set back out two mornings after arriving at the farm. I have changed the tattered pulseArmor underlining for the farmer’s clothing. I look ludicrous, the sleeves barely coming to my elbows, and the pants to my shins.

I look back at the farm, sorry to leave it, and wonder for a moment if I shouldn’t just stay there. What am I rushing back to? A future as Atalantia’s rival? A duel with Ajax when he must face what he has done? A short life of politics and betrayal? Revenge which I don’t want, even after Darrow took half my face? To be with my people? Why? Gold has grown sicker in my absence. But even knowing all that, there is still an undeniable itch to return, as if my spirit were drawn by gravity.

I need to realize the promise I made to Dido, the excuse I gave to Cassius when I betrayed him. I must unite Gold. More than that. I must change it. That is what makes me leave the farmhouse behind. That and the understanding that I must help liberate Kalindora, Rhone, and the Praetorians from Heliopolis. It would be immoral not to help those who risked all for me. By the good repair of Seneca’s gear, it seems the Ash Legions weren’t broken entirely. An invasion will be coming for Heliopolis. One I doubt my friends will survive.

The walk to Erebos is leisurely compared with the desert. I cut through groves of wild cypress, and orchards redolent with the smell of starheart blossoms. At times I see hovercraft on the horizon, or the occasional Society patrol in the lower atmosphere. Though black clouds brood to the north, the worst of the storm seems to have passed.

I pace myself, stopping frequently to gorge on the food I foraged from the farmhouse and the pack of tangerines pulled from the trees. My route takes me parallel to the Via Gloria, the white frictionless highway that connects the cities that border the Ladon by land. It is broken by bombardment and littered with blackened Republic assault vehicles and desiccated corpses.

I sleep under a grapefruit tree and the next morning come across a family of sunbaked Red natives walking along a country road pushing a cart full of their life’s belongings. They watch me approach with unease. I greet them politely and comment on the weather, as Mercurians always do. They look at each other, then up and up at me and my melted face, and then they bow.

“Odd weather, yes, dominus,” the man says quietly.

“Devil weather,” the woman says with a little more heat, much to her man’s distress. “Greedy Martian thought he could break our spirit. Not this spirit, dominus,” the woman says. “A little weather won’t tame us.”

“Darrow you mean?”

“Don’t even give him a name, dominus,” she says bitterly. “His men ransacked our employer’s latifundia. Took him away, saying he harbored the Fear Knight—Vale bless the man. Did it all with smiles, of course, but when they were done, what’ve we got left? Just what they left us. We work for our share. We don’t take the pity of Martian marauders.” She spits. “Latifundia went to bits. Our headTalk started running the place, but no one ever came for the haul. It’s just sitting out there rotting. You with the legions?” she asks. “You look like you’ve seen Hades itself, dominus.”

I scan the road behind her. “Only its gatekeepers.”

“If there’s anythin’ you desire…” Her eyes dart to my burned face and she waves to her cart, again to her husband’s distress. They barely have enough for themselves.

“Just information. Have you seen any Society forces?” I ask.

“Fear Knight’s men were through here not too long ago, dominus. Never know where you can find them, though. Like Vale spirits they are. Rest of the legions are out to the east last I heard. A bastion’s set down. Hear there be Ash Legions in Naran. It’s flooding with refugees from Tyche and the coast. Poor souls. Whole city’s gone. We’re heading east to the riverlands, hear they’re hiring folk out there for the cleanup.”

“There’s no legions in Erebos?” I say in confusion.

“Erebos? It’s drowned, dominus,” the man says.

I frown. The waves couldn’t have come this far. “What do you mean, drowned?”

* * *

—

By late morning, I summit a hill that looks down into the Valley of Erebos, and see for myself.

Erebos was a proud library city once, a serene and bucolic vanity created as a gift for my grandmother by the Master Maker Glirastes. The high city, all in thrall to the great library, was hewn from the back of a low mountain just beneath a great dam. The dam protected the city from seasonal floods caused by the melting of mountain snow, a quick affair under Mercury’s sun. When I saw it as a child at Glirastes’s side, I deemed it a giant turtle with a vine-wrapped city upon its back. He grumbled that it was a tortoise representing the patience and inevitable victory of knowledge.

Now it is a watery necropolis.