“West of Gaza,” Oresias said. “Making good time. We’re following Alexandros’s route! Sort of. We have a stop in Damaske for refueling, then Bagdade, then on to Raki below the Kaspian Sea, where we’re followed by an aerial tanker. We refuel in mid-air over the Hunnos Republic, and within two hours we’re at your site in the prairie steppes. I hope our allied provinces are good on their pledges to the queen.”

The sound of the beecraft’s engines equated with security for Rhita now. She napped for an hour, dreaming of sandy wastes, and found they had crossed Ioudaia and were nearing Damaske. Like an enormous pastry fresh from the oven, the sand and rock and crusted mountains passed below. She thought of caravans and days of travel, of dying of thirst and digging for water in ancient wells…That was romance.

Crossing it all like god’s bird was simply unreal.

Out of the baked pastry desert came a distant patch of green, spread across the sands like a spill of paint. Rhita smelled Damaske before she actually saw it; a smell of life and water and greenery that made her lift her head and twitch her nose, hoping for more. Demetrios and Oresias were deep in expedition plans; the mekhanikos was catching up on what he had missed. She wondered how she would feel if she had been conscripted, as Demetrios had. But I was conscripted, she reminded herself. My grandmother chose me. She crawled from her harness and looked through a window.

Damaske claimed to be the oldest city in the world. Excavations at Jericho in the last century had challenged that claim, but Jericho was a much smaller community, hardly more than a village; Damaske had truly been a city for millennia. It was the major trading center of Syria, surrounded by orchards and fields, squat glass and steel and stone ziggurats rising from the Jewish quarter and the Horian quarter, the massive stone Persian fortress dominating the south of the city, and south of that, the international civilian aerodromos of El Zarra.

Atta returned from the kybernetes’ cabin and told her they would be landing on the outskirts of El Zarra for refueling. “I hope to get some news there, if anybody’s talking.” He shook his long head gloomily.

The beecraft dropped low and approached the aerodromos just above tree-top level. Rhita smelled dates and cook-stove camel-dung smoke and smiled despite the tension. She had never been to any of these places; if she lived, she would be a very well-traveled young woman.