Aristide was loitering down the road. He had booked his ticket in advance, for Erikh Prosser, and now Cyril had to do the same for Ambrose Adam Wallis. Their ostensible final destination was in Ibet—a through-trip, with only a stop at the Tatien border for customs and document checks. No visas necessary in advance, as long as they didn’t leave the train.

As Cyril understood it, they would be leaving the train at some point, though Aristide had been hazy about details.

Now he faced the ticket counter on his own and had to swallow past a dry mouth and aching throat, heartbeat hammering against his sternum.

Calm down. Nothing gives a lie away like fear.

He had to be the man in his altered passport. Just as he’d been Ambrose van Weill on the way over, so he had to be Ambrose Adam Wallis on his way out. And Adam—he went by Adam, yes—wasn’t worried about being waylaid on his way out of the country.

Sweat made the handle of his suitcase slippery.

Space and time telescoped as he approached the ticket booth. He forced air into his lungs like a bellows. He had traversed minefields in Liso’s monsoon season, crawled belly-down through flooded trenches, laid spike traps for the encroaching republican army. For Queen’s sake, he had killed the regionalist government. Or at least plunged a knife in. This was just one train ticket.

Just one ticket, on which hung a thousand hopes that had already been thwarted once, twice, three times.

“Good morning,” said the clerk, stifling a yawn.

“Morning.” He searched for his Enselmese accent: a flattening of the vowels, a dizzy tip between the back of the throat and the tongue on the teeth. Not unlike the way northern Tatiens spoke Geddan. He thought briefly of Vasily Memmediv, and let the immediacy of that anger anchor him in the present time and place. “The six forty-three to West Ballye. Just third class, please.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll need to see your passport.”

His hand would not shake. It couldn’t. He smiled and reached into his jacket, producing the rippled mess of Adam’s official identification.

She remained unfazed until she opened it, revealing smeary ink, illegible.

“Sir,” she said.

“I know. I was drinking, on the train down from—” shits on shits, some Enselmese town, let it come to him before the pause grew obvious, “—Angbrouk, and it got a little rowdy. It’s been causing me problems ever since. I’ll apply for a new one as soon as I’m home.”

“And that’ll be when?”

Holy stones, this would never end. He wished great ill on Aristide and his unsteady hands, and recanted in the next instant. Neither of them could afford ill-wishes now. “Perhaps a week or so?” He shrugged. “I’m visiting friends.”

“In Ibet?”

“Yes.”

“And what were you doing in Gedda, before?”