The steam wagons wound through the Brukheion and Neapolis in the early dawn, passing a few market owners and fishermen walking or riding donkeys to their stalls. The air was crisp, cleaner than it had been the past few days, which seemed auspicious. Alexandreia had once been renowned for the purity of its air; the factories of the delta had changed that.

Once through the Neapolis and Aigyptian district—where the roadway rose above the hovels on disdainful concrete pillars—the nekropolis spread out before them on the city’s western border, a jumble of limestone, red and gray granite and marble tombs. They were not stopped at the city’s gates; the queen’s influence among the police was still strong.

The sun was well up as they passed through the city of the dead. The poor had invaded the nekropolis centuries before, moving into the tombs of forgotten families and setting up a unique, violent social structure that had become a way of life unto itself. The most the police could do was keep the nekropolis from moving into the Neapolis; the Aigyptian quarter acted as a buffer. Still, the caravan was not bothered on the rutted, potholed highway through the tombs.

The queen had her contacts and supporters here, as well.

Beyond the last dismal scatter of old graves, a military highway rose out of the scrub grass and sand like an inky mirage. The caravan followed this route to the aerodromos, an additional ten schoene to the west. Upon their arrival, the morning was well under way. Rhita could smell kerosene and oil on the wind, and heard a continuous low roar as jets and other gullcraft took off to patrol the Libyan borders. She could see little through the plastic windows in the canvas covering the wagon; they faced away from the aerodromos.

“We’re here,” Oresias said, standing and flexing his knees. Demetrios stood beside him, still unsure of his place.

The caravan had stopped on an apron of asphalt near a broad concrete quadrangle. As she stepped down, glancing left, Rhita saw long rows of gleaming silver gullcraft, sleek fighters that were all wing and larger needle-shaped bombers with markings of the provinces of Ioudaia and Syrian Antiokheia. Beyond them lay the western desert, a narrow ribbon of cream above the white concrete and black asphalt. A fighter screamed down the closest runway, passing within barely a hundred arms of the line of wagons. Rhita shifted the box with the clavicle to one arm and covered her left ear, wincing at the din.