“The refugees from Parcia are going to put more strain upon Rhodes’s food supply,” Aquitaine murmured, finally. “Raucus, send out a call for volunteers. We’ll send Rhodes every earthcrafter willing to go in and help produce more food.”
“We can’t keep that up, Attis,” Raucus said. “Oh, the earthcrafters can bring in a season’s crop once a month, if they need to, maybe faster. But there just isn’t enough soil inside the city’s walls. They’re depleting it of what the crops need to grow far more quickly than it can restore itself.”
“Yes,” Aquitaine said. “They can only maintain that kind of production for a year. Eighteen months at the outside. But even with every rooftop and avenue in Rhodes converted to grow crops, it will be a strain to fill another eighty thousand bellies. Once starvation sets in, disease will follow, and with the city so crowded, they will never recover.” He shrugged elegantly. “This will all be decided in well under eighteen months, after which we will break the sieges. We will keep as many as possible alive until then. Send the earthcrafters.”
Raucus put his fist to his heart in a Legion salute and sighed. “I just don’t get it. These fields where they’re growing new vord. The Legion Aeris is burning them to ash before they can get more than a crop or two of their own out. How can there be so crowbegotten
many
of the bastards?”
“Actually,” Ehren said, “I think I know the answer to that, my lords.”
Aquitaine looked up and arched an eyebrow at Ehren.
“I’ve gotten a report from an old business acquaintance of mine outside of Forcia. He’s an aphrodin smuggler who used to use furycraft to grow crops of hollybells in caverns beneath the ground.” Hollybells, the lovely blue flower from which the drug aphrodin was made, could thrive without sunlight in certain conditions. The smugglers who manufactured the drug for recreational use, despite laws against such activity, had taken advantage of the fact. “He says that the areas where the vord seem to be most populous coincide almost exactly with parts of the land that have a large number of such suitable caverns.”
Aquitaine smiled thinly. “The fields on the surface were a ruse,” he murmured. “Something to keep our attention, to make us feel as if we were succeeding—and to prevent us from searching for the true source of the enemy’s numbers until it was too late to do any good.” He shook his head. “That’s Invidia’s influence. It’s the way she thinks.”
Ehren coughed into an awkward silence.
“Attis,” Raucus said, evidently choosing his words carefully, “she’s helping the vord Queen. Maybe of her own will. I know that she is your wife, but . . .”
“She is a traitor to the Realm,” Aquitaine said, his voice calm and hard. “Whether or not she has turned against Alera of her own will is irrelevant. She is an enemy asset that must be removed.” He slashed a hand gently at the air. “We’re wasting time, gentlemen. Sir Ehren, what else have you to report?”
Ehren focused his thoughts and kept his report concise. Other than Parcia’s loss, little had changed. “The other cities are holding. None report a sighting of a vord queen.”
“Are there any signs that the
croach
has invaded the Feverthorn Jungle?” the First Lord asked.
“None as yet, sire.”
Aquitaine sighed and shook his head. “I suppose whatever the Children of the Sun left behind has kept us out for five hundred years. Why should the vord be any different?” He glanced over at Raucus. “If we had more time, we could use that against them, somehow. I’m sure of it.”
“If wishes were horses,” Raucus rumbled back.
“Being a trite cliché makes it no less true,” Aquitaine said. “Please continue, Sir Ehren.”
Ehren took a deep breath. This was the moment he’d dreaded all morning. “Sire,” he said, “I think I know how to slow their advance toward Riva.”
Raucus let out a startled huff of a laugh. “Really, boy? And you just now thought of mentioning it?”
Aquitaine frowned and folded his arms. “Speak your mind, Cursor.”
Ehren nodded. “I’ve been running calculations of the rate of the vord advance in various stages of their campaign, and I’ve isolated where they moved slowest and most rapidly.” He cleared his throat. “I can show you the figures if—”
“If I didn’t trust your competence, you wouldn’t be here,” Aquitaine responded. “Continue.”
Ehren nodded. “The vord moved most quickly during their advance through the Amaranth Vale, sire. And their slowest advance came when they crossed the Waste of Kalare—and again when they advanced through the region around Alera Imperia.” He took a deep breath. “Sire, as you know, the vord use the
croach
as a sort of food. It’s mostly a gelatinous liquid, underneath a very tough, leathery shell.”
Aquitaine nodded. “And they can somehow control the flow of nutrients through it. It’s something like an aqueduct; only instead of water, it conveys their food supply.”
“Yes, sire. It is my belief that, in order to grow, the
croach
needs to consume other forms of life—animals, insects, grass, trees, other plants, and so on. Think of them as the casing around a seed. Without that initial source of nutrients, the seed can’t grow, can’t extend roots, and can’t begin its life.”
“I follow you,” Aquitaine said quietly.
“The Waste of Kalare was virtually lifeless. When the
croach
reached it, its rate of advance dropped precipitously. It did so again when it was crossing the region that had been blasted by the forces Gaius Sextus unleashed—another area that had been virtually emptied of life.”
“Whereas in the Vale, the richness of the soil and land fed the
croach
very well, enabling it to spread more quickly,” Aquitaine murmured. “Interesting.”
“Frankly, sire,” Ehren said, “the
croach
is an enemy just as dangerous as any of the creatures the vord queen creates. It chokes off life, feeds the enemy, serves as a sentinel to them—and who knows, it may do even more that we aren’t yet aware of—and we know that the main body of their troops does not advance without the
croach
to supply them. The only time they’ve done so—”
“Was in the presence of the vord queen,” Aquitaine said, his eyes glinting.
Ehren nodded and exhaled slowly. The First Lord understood.
“How much time might this give us?”
“Assuming my calculations are correct and that the rate of progress is slowed to a comparable degree, four to five weeks.”
“Giving us time enough to equip at least four more Legions, and a high probability of forcing the vord Queen to appear to lead the horde over the open ground.” Aquitaine nodded, his expression pleased. “Excellent.”
Raucus looked between the pair of them, frowning. “So . . . if we can keep the
croach
from coming up, the vord Queen has to attend to fighting us in person?”
“Essentially, yes,” Aquitaine said. “The extra time to prepare will hardly hurt, either.” He glanced over at Ehren and nodded. “You have the full authority of the Crown to recruit the necessary firecrafters, evacuate anyone left in that corridor of approach, and deny its resources to the enemy. See to it.”
“See to
what
?” Raucus said.
“In order to slow the
croach
and compel the Queen to reveal herself,” Ehren said quietly, “we’ll need to starve it. Burn out anything that grows. Salt the fields. Poison the wells. Make sure that it has nothing to help it set down roots between the current line of advance and Riva.”
Raucus’s eyes widened. “But that means . . . bloody crows. That’s nearly three hundred
miles
of settled, arable land. Some of the
last
such in Alera that’s still free. You’re talking about burning down the best of the croplands we have left. Destroying thousands of our own people’s steadholts, cities, homes. Creating tens of thousands of additional refugees.”
“Yes,” Aquitaine said simply. “And it will be a great deal of work. Best get started at once, Sir Ehren.”
Ehren’s stomach twisted in revulsion. After all that he had been through since the vord had come, he had seen more than enough of destruction and loss inflicted by the enemy. How much worse would it be to see more of Alera destroyed—this time at the hands of her own defenders?
Especially when, deep down in his guts, he knew that it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever they did, this war could end in only one way.
But they had to try. And it wasn’t as though the vord would destroy those lands any less thoroughly, when they came.
Ehren put his fist to his heart in a salute and bowed to the First Lord. Then he turned and left the tent, to arrange the greatest act of premeditated destruction ever perpetrated by Aleran forces. He only hoped that he wasn’t doing it for nothing—that in the end, the desolation he was about to create would serve some sort of purpose.
As such things went, Ehren thought, it was a rather small and anemic hope, but the slender little Cursor decided to nurture it anyway.
After all.
It was the only one he had left.
Gaius Isana, the theoretical First Lady of Alera, wrapped her thick traveling cloak about her a little more securely and stared out the window of the enclosed wind coach. They must be very close to her home now—the Calderon Valley, once considered the farthest, most primitive frontier in all of Alera. She looked down at the landscape rolling slowly by, far beneath them, and felt somewhat frustrated. She had only infrequently seen Calderon from the air, and the countryside beneath her stretched out for miles and miles and miles all around. It all looked the same—either wild forest, with rolling mountains that looked like wrinkles in a tablecloth, or settled land, marked by broad, flat swaths of winter fields being prepared for spring, its roads running like ruler lines between steadholts and towns.
For all that she knew, she could be looking at her home at that precise moment. She had no reference point with which to recognize it from this high.
“. . . which has had the effect of reducing the spread of sickness through the refugee camp,” said a calm young woman’s voice.
Isana blinked and looked at her companion, a slender, serious-looking young woman with wispy, white-blond hair that fell in a silken sheet to her elbows. Isana could feel the girl’s patience and gentle amusement, tainted with an equally gentle sadness, radiating out from her like heat from a kitchen oven. Isana knew that Veradis had doubtlessly sensed her own bemusement as Isana’s thoughts wandered.
Veradis looked up from a sheaf of notes and arched a faint, pale eyebrow. The barest hint of a smile haunted her mouth, but she maintained the fiction. “My lady?”
“I’m sorry,” Isana said, shaking her head. “I was thinking of home. It can be distracting.”
“True enough,” Veradis said, inclining her head. “Which is why I try not to think of mine.”
A spear of bitter grief flashed from the young woman, its base fashioned from guilt, its tip from rage. As quickly as it appeared, the feeling vanished. Veradis applied her furycraft to conceal her emotions from Isana’s acute watercrafting senses. Isana was grateful for the gesture. Without a talent for metalcrafting to balance the empathic sensitivity native to any watercrafter of Isana’s skill, strong emotions could be as startling and painful as a sudden blow to the face.
Not that Isana could blame the young woman for feeling it. Veradis’s father was the High Lord of Ceres. She had seen what happened to her home when the vord came for it.
Nothing human dwelt there now.
“I’m sorry,” Isana said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Honestly, my lady,” Veradis said, her voice calm and slightly detached, a telltale sign of the use of metalcrafting to stabilize and conceal emotion. “You’ve got to get over that. If you try to avoid every subject that might remind me of Cer . . . of my former home, you’ll never speak another word to me. It’s natural for me to be feeling pain right now. You did nothing to cause it.”
Isana reached out to touch Veradis’s hand lightly for a moment, and nodded. “But all the same, child.”
Veradis gave her another small smile. She glanced down at her papers, then back to Isana. The First Lady straightened her spine and shoulders and nodded. “Excuse me. You were saying? Something about rats?”
“We had no idea that they might be carrying the disease,” the young woman said. “But once the security measures were put in place to guard three camps against the vord takers, the rat populations in them were severely reduced. A month later, those same camps had become almost completely free of the sickness.”
Isana nodded. “Then we’ll use the remaining security budget from the Dianic League to begin implementing the same measures in the other camps. Priority will be given to those who are hardest hit by the disease.”
Veradis nodded and withdrew a second paper from her sheaf. She passed it to Isana, along with a quill.
Isana scanned the document and smiled. “If you already knew how I was going to respond in any case, why not proceed without me?”
“Because I am not the First Lady,” Veradis said. “I have no authority to dispense the League’s funds.”
Something in the young woman’s tone of voice or perhaps in her posture raised an alarm in Isana’s mind. She’d felt a similar instinctive suspicion when Tavi had been withholding the truth from her, as a child. A very small child. As Tavi grew, he’d become increasingly capable of avoiding such discoveries. Veradis’s skills of evasion simply did not compare.
Isana cleared her throat and gave the young woman an arch look.
Veradis’s eyes sparkled, and though her cheeks didn’t become pink, Isana suspected it was only because the younger woman was using her furycraft to prevent it. “Though, my lady, since lives were at stake, I
did
issue letters of credit to the appropriate contractors, so that they could go ahead and begin their work, beginning at the worst camps.”
Isana signed the bottom of the document and smiled. “Isn’t that the same thing as doing it without me?”