21They boarded a train going off into the mountains. Alexei slept most of the traveling hours because it helped rid him of the boiling nausea, which was either a remnant of the opium he had smoked or a symptom of morbid depression.
Days passed as they traveled across the Empire, far past the former land of Persian kings and the ruins of their dynasties, past the new and bustling market towns, past holy spaces and pilgrimage sites. Rivers ran beside the rails, fields stretched out, and cities were denser, larger, with higher walls than Alexei thought possible. The smell of rose water and the taste of sweet almond bread calmed him.
“Now this,” Lancaster spoke to him as he walked through a market one day. Past cloth of every color, texture, and pattern. Past potent spices, past brazen merch
