“How is recruiting going? Is there anything I can do?” Caris asked.
Clarence smiled briefly at her, but it seemed strained. “You have done more than enough, Your Royal Majesty.”
She’d sat for press interviews and photographs used in recruitment and propaganda posters that were put up in every city and town throughout Ashion. Her face was plastered everywhere, her words a rallying cry for her people, but it all seemed so meaningless in the face of the losses they were sustaining. Caris hated that so many people were willing to die in her name for a freedom that Daijal was trying to steal.
“We may need to rethink our objective. If our timeframe has shrunk, perhaps we shouldn’t wait for the fight to come to us,” Meleri said.
“We don’t have the capacity to bring the fight to Daijal and win,” Clarence reluctantly said. He wasn’t one to provide false optimism, something Caris appreciated, but it was still disheartening to know the general was doing his best to win this war and it wasn’t good enough.
“I’m not talking about Daijal.” Meleri looked across the table at Caris. “I’m talking about Amari.”
Caris stiffened even as others around the table muttered amongst themselves. She thought of the broadsheet she’d opened the other day with a photograph of her parents splashed across the front page. The news story had reported on their transfer back to Amari for an eventual trial that everyone knew would be a sham.
She’d cried when she’d seen the photograph, Nathaniel barely able to console her. Her parents were alive but prisoners of war. Caris would always wonder if she’d made different choices, if she’d taken a different road, if her parents would be with her right now, seated at this table.
“Amari is a deathtrap. We’d have to push through the front, and our losses would be twice what they are now once Daijal realized our intention. Daijal would throw everything they had at our forces and decimate us. Amari is off the table right now,” Clarence said.
“Amari holds the starfire throne. If we can get Caris inside the city, she could claim her birthright, and it would be enough to stop this war.”
“You don’t know that,” Caris said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Do you really think Eimarille will bow to me? She doesn’t believe we’re sisters or that my claim to the Rourke bloodline is valid.”
Even with Blaine returned to her and his memories of carrying her out of Amari, Caris knew it still wouldn’t be enough for those people who believed Eimarille’s truth. Him standing as witness wouldn’t change the minds of people who didn’t see her as queen.
“My dear, if you put out the North Star’s decree, then no one would have the right to question your claim to the throne.”
“That’s a fairly optimistic view, Mother,” Lore said evenly. “We all know Eimarille would undermine Caris’ rule. The Inferno happened because the Iverson bloodline sought to eradicate anyone who might have a single claim to royal power who wasn’t Eimarille. Bernard knew what he was doing when he gained her as his ward in the aftermath of so much murder. Better every claimant dead than a country split between two queens. That’s what Eimarille is trying to do here.”
“All the more reason to try for Amari,” Meleri persisted.
“You’re asking to reset the battlefield. It’s not that easy,” Clarence argued.
“There won’t be a battlefield left to worry about if we’re alldead. If you’re concerned about breaching the city walls, we can enter through the catacombs and bypass their defenses.”
Clarence barked out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. “We’d need to fight our way for months through Daijalan forces and war machines to reach the capital. It’d be a suicide push.”
“What if we split Eimarille’s attention?” Caris asked.
Meleri snapped her teeth together on whatever she was going to say to the general. “Pardon?”
“Eimarille is pitting all her forces against us in Ashion. So, what if we attack somewhere else that isn’t the front lines? Get her army to split their focus.”
“We have no way to reposition our army and supply lines without them knowing and countering,” Clarence said.
Caris shrugged, clutching her hands together on the table. “I wasn’t talking about our land forces. What about asking the Tovan Isles for help? We haven’t tried sending an envoy to that country yet.”
“Because we haven’t any ships and no ports to meet them at. Their ambassadors always came to us in our capital,” Lore said.
“Surely we sent our own to Port Avi?”
“Not for a decade at least. The Ashion parliament ceded that right to Daijal.”
“If we reached out to them through diplomatic channels via another country, it might buy us some time before Eimarille found out,” Caris said.
Lore hummed thoughtfully. “As far as distractions would go, an attack on New Haven would certainly catch Eimarille’s attention and split the Daijal army’s focus.”
Clarence stared at them in disbelief. “An attack on Daijal’s capital would require far more coordination between countries than we currently have, not to mention the cost and logistics of such an endeavor.”
Caris spread her hands. “But it would be a distraction.”
