We march side by side without a word. He sets a grueling pace, and soon I’m too tired to speak even if I wanted to. From the way he eyes me as we walk and the challenge in the tilt of his chin, I know he expects me to ask him to slow. But Dineas thinks I’m weak enough as it is, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right. So I grit my teeth and keep one foot stepping in front of the other. It’s strange though. Even if I’m tired every day from our travels, it’s the normal fatigue of excessive exertion, the kind I used to feel before I fell ill. The unnatural heaviness that’s weighed down my limbs since I became rosemarked is gone.

Still, the next few weeks test my resolve. My sore muscles and throbbing feet are bad enough, but I hadn’t realized how unsettling the changing landscape would be. The air becomes dryer as we go inland, and the sun beats down hotter on my face and shoulders. I’d known the continent would be different, but to actually see the forest turn to grassland, then desert before my eyes…We start being more careful with our water and ration it between springs and wells. The shrubs and gnarled bushes we pass are alien to me, and it’s unsettling. What would I do if one of us suffered heatstroke or was wounded by a wild animal? In Dara, I would smooth sap of cloudweed over a bite, but any cloudweed would wither and die in this climate. All my favorite remedies are gone, except for what I’ve carried with me. A lifetime of study and practice rendered useless by just a bit of walking.

As we travel, the marks of the empire become stronger. The villages and hamlets we pass gradually become bigger, and people speak Amparan instead of their native tongues. We pass temples with carved facades, large halls of cedar, and ornate tombs carved in limestone cliff faces. Several times, I’m awoken at dawn by distant chants sung by priests of Yaras, the Amparan god of the sky. I can’t help but compare this grandeur to the modest cottages of Dara and wonder just how we can resist an empire with such resources at its disposal.

Then there are the ruins. We pass by two burned-out villages—half-collapsed houses, blackened thatching, no trace of those who lived there before except for somber signs written in stark Amparan, informing passersby of this village’s crimes and the swiftness of punishment. One village withheld a quarterly tithe. Another took an Amparan soldier into their prisons without consulting with the empire. If villages were destroyed for this, then what’s the punishment for infecting a battalion of soldiers? Of sending spies into the capital?