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other precious things in the ground. You can use your imagination. Anyhow, after I told this envoy no, I heard nothing. It had been three seasons since we saw crops from Leera and five since there was any trade in fish or meat, and I figured that they would have to return soon enough, but then the attacks began, and the cannibalism followed.”
    â€œThey’re starving?”
    â€œYour guess is as good as mine. No one I have sent has come back with information. Not spies, diplomats or mercenaries.”
    â€œDead?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow did you hear that?”
    â€œI didn’t, but the border of Leera tells many tales. The only rumor we have heard relates to two years of stories about priests.”
    â€œPriests?”
    â€œYes.”
    Bueralan placed his empty glass on the table. “Any particular god they worship?”
    â€œThey want to dig up the mountain, Captain” she said, the sun dipping further into the room. “There has been nothing officially said, and this close to Yeflam, I can understand why. But the rumor is that they have put priests in positions of power, though they are probably nothing more than witches and warlocks. There have been a few signs of rituals in campsites, and my husband’s torture was not the work of a simple man. I assume that the general is nothing more than the man with the largest bag of blood by his side for use in their blood magic, but regardless the information suggests I am caught in a holy war—or the appearance of one. I need to know for sure, however, and that is why I have hired you and your soldiers. I need to know who is running Leera’s war. I also need to know what kind of feeling is in the country, whether food and water is low, how big an army it is, and how deep the chains of command run. I need to know if they can be stopped before a siege is laid, or if it will be a longer, more drawn out path to victory.”
    â€œBut you would win?”
    Her smile was easy, confident. “Mireea is a small nation, but not a poor one. I will use my resources wisely.”
    â€œIndeed you will, ma’am. Dark could do with a few days’ rest before you send us out, if that’s possible.”
    â€œThe wet season ended a week ago in Leera. Take a day or two, but don’t wait too long. The roads will start to fill up soon.”
    He nodded, pushed himself up, ready to leave.
    â€œCaptain?” The Lady’s gaze was intent, unwavering. “Speed and accuracy is important. There are already spies in my city.”

 
    4.
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    The inside of Orlan’s Cartography smelt faintly of incense. A decidedly religious odor for a man who, Ayae knew, viewed himself as anything but that.
    She let the door close, the chimes sounding as it did, and did not bother with the lock. Ayae crossed the warm wooden floor, the maps on the walls around her a recollection of past and current events. Each was a finely detailed study of roads, borders and names, both current and obsolete, all of which fetched tidy sums. Ayae had still not gotten used to the money involved, especially for the older maps, and she doubted that she ever would. It was the oddities in these prices that struck her: how the slanting script of an Orlan two hundred years ago was worth far more than the initialled maps six hundred years old. She had been told—lectured, she remembered with a smile—that the younger Orlan’s maps had been mostly lost in a fire a century and a half ago and their scarcity therefore increased their value.
    Samuel Orlan was an important symbol. To say that there had always been one was not quite right, for the original Orlan had lived and died before the War of the Gods. He had been famous, but had become more so after the war, when the world had been so different. But a second Samuel Orlan did not emerge until early in the Five Kingdoms, where in the huge libraries of Samar, a slim man had stumbled across the