Only a month?
My eyes shift to Slade, his elbow bent on the table, hand running over his jaw in thought. I’m stranded in the sticky unease, wondering how monarchs can justify making innocent people starve. The stickiness glues up my memory, tacking to the time when I went through Highbell’s city—into the denied parts of the shanties. The hardship carved out into every rundown building, the weightless rags hanging on people’s thin forms. I only had that single glance at the people’s hardship, at how they’d gone without.
“Four weeks?” Judd whistles. “Well, that’s not ideal.”
“I thought they’d be too stuck on our oil and gems to do something that bold,” Lu adds.
Slade drains the last dregs of his drink. “Morale will drop with the rationing. Which means unrest and spikes in crime. We’ll need more patrols. Not an easy ask of the returning army when they’re coming off of weeks of travel through the frozen fucking Barrens.” He shakes his head. “We can sustain a siege from another kingdom. Our army can win against any other that meets them in battle. But we can’t win againstallof them at once. Not with our food supplies cut off. Not with our army already tired.”
“They’re hitting when we’re most vulnerable,” Lu goes on. “And cutting off our food... It’s a pretty steep punishment for not agreeing to bring Auren for this stupid trial.”
“They’re scared of her,” Digby says. When everyone turns to him, he shrugs. “If they’re believing these rumors, then they’ll be thinking she can steal their powers too. They don’t want that.”
“What they truly don’t want is to make an enemy of me,” Slade practically snarls. “Starvation takes a hell of a lot longer than rot.”
Cold sweat curdles in frigid droplets against my skin, the dark threat of his words like a heavy fog I can’t see through, can’t breathe through. Beside me, I feel Slade’s tension as if it’s a string tied from his chest to mine. The taut line thrums with strain, knotting me with stretched pressure.
An entire kingdom. All of Fourth can only go one month living on reserves, or they’re in danger of starving. And that’s just Slade’s people. If he retaliates against the other kingdoms, it won’t just be Fourth that suffers, but everyone.
“Slade…”
“Don’t,” he snaps out. “Don’t even suggest it.”
“But maybe I should go. I don’t want your people to suffer. Or any innocent person.”
Green eyes brined with anger flick to me. “You arenotgoing.”
My gaze drops down with the weight of the guilt on my shoulders.
Lu reaches over and taps me on the back of my hand. “Slade’s right, Gildy. That’s the worst plan. We can’t give in to threats and blackmail. Fourth is strong, and so is Rip. They’re too afraid of him to do anything for long. In the meantime, we’ll figure this out, and he’ll retaliate just enough to make them back off.”
That’s what I’m worried about.
CHAPTER 53
OSRIK
The army is fucking tired.
I’ve been pushing them hard, trying to get the hell out of Fifth. The goal was to get to Cliffhelm. Since the outpost is right at our border, I was planning on letting the army stock up on supplies, have a few days to rest, and then travel the rest of the way through Fourth Kingdom at a slower pace.
But that all went to shit.
The shipment never showed up to Cliffhelm, so instead of being able to recoup, I was forced to send the soldiers off quicker than I anticipated, because we were seriously lacking in supplies.
Luckily, the terrain changes a lot more as we get further into Fourth. The last bit of snow is on the balding heads of the mining mountains. Dust rises around their bases in a halo, evidence of our own people working the veins and getting up gems and oil.
Before we could get into the better part of Fourth where the landscape finally has trees and wildlife and shit, we had to get past the layer of rot. Doesn’t bother me so much anymore, I’m so damn used to it. There’s rot surrounding the entirety of Fourth’s border, so I’ve walked past decayed plants and sunken right through collapsed, sickly ground many, many times.
This rot isn’t just an eyesore, either. Because we get a lot of rain out here, the cracked, wasted landstinks. With the warmer weather and the perpetual rot feeding on the wet soil, the air is the scent of rancid meat and molded fruit.
Smells like home.
It makes for a shitty day of travel though, and everyone tied a thick piece of cloth around their faces. But this rot is a damn good deterrent for enemies. No one wants to cross this shit, not even our own army.
As soon as we passed the last of the squishy, mildewed ground, I let the army stop to rest. Luckily, the breeze is on our side, keeping the stench downwind. But no one has much of an appetite tonight, much to Keg’s annoyance. Good for our dwindling supplies though.
The camp is quieter than normal. The lieutenants have been trying to keep everyone’s mood up, so the talk about hunting fresh meat tomorrow night is the damned slapped-on bandage on the gaping morale that we need.
