The shimmering glass plain lies utterly deserted. Thick, brooding clouds smother a sun that hangs low and weary. The heat here is unbearable; I’ve been on this world for a few seconds and sweat is already sliding down my spine. Disgusting. And the stench—an acrid, penetrating reek of manure—wraps itself around me. I snap my helmet into place.

  The red bar in the corner of my visor warns that the heat alone would boil me alive within hours, were it not for my protective suit. Beneath it, blue?green icons blink calmly: the air is thick with carbon dioxide and methane.

  “This is the most toxic one yet. Tell me—are we finally close?”

  How many times have I asked him that question? My counter says fifty-eight.

  Lord Solune surveys the desolation. “Perhaps. Maybe this one, maybe the next. Patience, my friend. Patience. You will know when the moment comes.”

  How many times have I heard those words? Of course—fifty-eight.

  “Patience?” I shout. “We’ve been wandering for more than a year!”

  Solune merely lifts his shoulders and strides toward the horizon. I seal my visor and follow. Another week of living inside this helmet—sweating, staying silent, relieving myself in a tube, sipping lukewarm soup—trapped in yet another uninhabited hell.

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  Nothing ever troubles Solune. His white robes cool him when boiling rain falls from the sky; they warm him in the sharpest blizzard; they give him air on the ocean floor and in the foulest atmospheres; they shield him from sandstorms and biting swarms. I’ve journeyed beside him through the worlds of the Eighth Circle for a year now, and I have never seen him wear anything else. My own armor is far less noble. It turns the unlivable merely tolerable, and the tolerable barely bearable. That is all.

  Solune is unlike most lords. He does not forge silver or bronze Watchers out of unsuspecting citizens. Before we departed, he even warned me that the road ahead would be harsh and trying, that he did not know how long it would take, and that I would come to curse him. I answered, “Never, my lord. I will follow you to the end.”

  Fifty-seven times we have walked from the needle at the center to the shore of a glass sea. Fifty-seven times we have inspected the hundred portals arrayed along its rim, and fifty-seven times we have walked back. There, at the station, we return to Lanta. There, I can peel off my protective armor and sink into a hot bath. Servants will clean my suit. I can sleep in my own bed. And the next day, we venture into yet another world.

  Hunger, thirst, heat, cold, ocean, sandstorms, biting insects—I have endured them all. My suit keeps me alive, but not invulnerable. And yes, I have cursed him often enough. My suffering leaves him wholly unmoved.

  Still, I follow him. We share the same purpose.