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into my fatigue.
    “You there!”
    I whipped my head around in dread, but the mounted men were calling to the hunched woman I’d just passed at the corner. The riders wore the Talatan sigil—a grey coursing hound on a sky-blue field.
    One of the Talatans said, “We’re searching for a young woman, blonde hair, blue eyes. May have a red mark on the right side of her face.”
    I ducked around the nearest corner, into a narrow alley between ramshackle houses. There, I flung myself into a doorway and cowered, praying to Amassis they had not seen me.
    The riders proceeded past my alley, but at a slower pace. I waited until they had completely faded.
    House Talata was looking for me, then. But why? To use as a prize to appease Costas Galatien? To kill me? To protect me? The last two options were both unlikely. If Tirienne Talata were behind Papa’s murder, she would have waited until he’d been crowned and Erich and I had married. With the Talatan son married to the Ricknagel heir—or declared the joint-heir?—the Talatan position would have been much stronger. If Tirienne or Erich had ambitions for a Talatan King, they’d not have killed Papa so soon.
    No, I was almost certain Galatien loyalists had killed Papa. Whoever had done the deed had freed Costas and his son. That meant Tirienne Talata could want me only as a bargaining piece to help re-align House Talata with House Galatien.
    I slipped from the alley, running back to the boulevard. The sooner I left Engashta, the better. My only advantage was that they could have no idea which direction I had fled.
    I walked all day, as fast as my feet could carry me, constantly checking my shoulder. My stomach growled and tears pricked my eyes. I dabbed more cosmetic on my mark, constantly panicked it might show.
    Any sensible person would have given up, stopped to rest and hide when her feet felt as mine did. But if I stopped walking, I wouldn’t be able to start again. The road transformed into a narrower route with fewer buildings dotting it. By darkfall, I moved along a dirt carriage track through a barren landscape.
    My toes were blistered, but I walked on into the dark, fearing the Talatan riders, anticipating the thunder of hooves.
    I was terribly thirsty.
    My feet stopped moving. Sterling Ricknagel , I thought, you are an idiot. The Talash River runs no more than a league southwest of you!
    Even with the lure of water, I was reluctant to leave the road. To go out on my own frightened me. I loved maps, and I’d spent hours of my life pouring over them in the comfort of my father’s library. But to be out in the landscape itself was an entirely different experience. No handy compass rose pointed north. Would I know how to get back to the road if I left it? The surrounding land was distressingly nondescript, open steppes dotted with rocks.
    “I can’t do it,” I said aloud. “I’d get lost.” Only the moon lit the road; darkness swallowed most of the landscape. Perhaps it would feel safer in the morning.
    On I walked. I thought my eyes deceived me when a soft yellow light appeared ahead. Had I finally grown so thirsty my senses no longer functioned properly?
    But fear drove me on to the light. Soon I could see a building in its glow.
    A lamp lit a swinging sign on the rustic, barn-like building: Lone Line Stagecoaches. A posting station!
    How could I have been such a ninny? Of course there were public stagecoaches that ran out of Engashta, with fares much cheaper than ships’ berths. I’d simply never thought about a public coach.
    Relief robbed my legs of any remnant of strength. I dropped to my knees, leaning my head against the door. The door handle did not give.
    I made my way around the building. The Lone Line posting station wasn’t much of a place. The stable and carriage house were small—enough for two vehicles and eight animals. I searched for a well, a trough, anything that might offer me liquid. I found nothing.
    Finally, in utter exhaustion and