It would have been less frustrating if there had been anything to do. After all, Maya had reminded herself, they were out here to find Jaedia, not so Maya could sneak in time with her crush. But Kerchwite’s guards and their dogs had the plaguespawn threat well in hand, butchering the small monsters that were drawn to the caravan. They didn’t need her help, and in any event Maya wasn’t sure how much use she could be without revealing herself as a centarch.

In the evenings, Tanax stayed aloof from the rest of the merchants and guards. Maya tried to fit in—Jaedia had once told her a centarch ought to be able to make herself at home in any company—but the sight of Beq sitting in silence at the edge of the tent drew her away again. When she went to keep Beq company, though, neither of them seemed to have much to say among the shouting and dicing. And so two weeks passed in relative comfort but considerable awkwardness, as the caravan wound its slow way across the plain.

The land near the border with the Kingdom of Grace—called the Red Kingdom by the locals, after the colors worn by its soldiers—was flat and grassy, watered by small, meandering streams. It was grazing country, speckled with cows and dotted by small homesteads. These buildings were ringed by defensive walls, and the herds they passed were guarded by well-armed riders. Each watchman was another reminder that they were beyond the boundaries of the Republic and the cordon of safety that the Legions’ sweeps and watch posts provided. Out here plaguespawn attacks were as constant and unavoidable as the rain or the wind.

The city of Grace itself lay on the other side of a range of low hills, jutting up from the flat land like lumpy pillows shoved under a bedsheet. The caravan followed the old Chosen road, a perfectly flat stretch of spongy stone, crumbling at the edges. When it reached the hills, it deigned to divert from its straight-line path to swing through a narrow gap between two large prominences. They took some time to traverse an old cut, where a chunk of one hillside had been sliced back to make room for the road; four hundred years of rain and snow had brought falls of rock encroaching on the path, and they were forced to unhitch the thickheads and use them to clear a fresh spill out of the way. Nevertheless, on the thirteenth day out of Uqaris, they crossed the spine of the hills and found themselves descending a gentle slope, with a good view of the valley beyond.