L’Eesh was watching me analytically. “You’re, what, twenty, twenty-one? No children yet?”

“Not until I can buy them out of the Coalition draft.”

He nodded. “As Hily did you. I knew her ambition for you. It’s good to see it realized so well. It must have been hard for you when she died. I imagine you got thrown into a cadre by the Commissaries—right?”

“I won’t talk to you about my mother, L’Eesh.”

“As you wish. But here and now you need to keep your mind clear, little Raida. And you might want to think about saving your energy. We have a long way to go.”

I worked with my bone spear and tried to ignore him.

We had to sleep in our suits, of course. I dug a shallow trench in the dust. I couldn’t shut out the crimson light. I slept in patches.

I woke up in my own stink.

The recycled gloop from my hood nipples already tasted stale, my skinsuit was chafing in a dozen places, and I felt bruises from that landing that hadn’t registered at the time. If the sun had moved across the sky at all, I couldn’t see it.

It’s a strange thing, but it wasn’t until that second “morning” that I took seriously the possibility that I might die here. I guess I had been distracted by the hunt, my conflict with L’Eesh. Or maybe I just lack imagination. Anyhow, my adrenaline rush was long gone; I was numb, flat, feeling beaten.

Through that endless day, we walked on.

We came to what might have been a township. There was little left but a gridwork of foundations, a few pits like cellars, bits of low wall. I thought I could see a sequence, of older buildings constructed of massive marble-like blocks, later structures made of what looked like the local sandstone or else bits of broken-up marble ruins.