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Amelia bit back a sigh. “How many?”

“Fifteen,” Edward said. “Women and children, one old man leading the way with a lame leg. He said they were the first group brave enough to make the journey from there, but that he thought the others might follow, if the rains hold off. There are Sels camped out in their lord’s mansion, and they’ve raided all the surrounding villages; picked their grain stores and barns clean.”

She nodded. It was a story they were hearing more and more, as more and more Aquitainians sought to escape their occupiers. She didn’t blame them, and she wanted to help them – they had no food, and no chance to acquire more, with invaders watching their every move.

But their own supplies were limited. The winter stores were down to the dregs, and with the war on, the men dead, captured, or residing now in her own camp, the spring seeds had not been sown; Aquitainia’s rich, fertile farmland could feed them all, and the North as well…but only if it was farmed. Potatoes should have been in the ground already, and kale seeds, cold-weather lettuces. Green houses should have been heaving under the weight of tomato and pepper seedlings, garlic and onions, radishes and early carrots. The compost heaps, piled after a winter of mucking stalls, should have been turned, the rich, black contents loaded into baskets, and wagons, and spread over the fields as fertilizer. There was–

Too much to think about. To worry about.

Amelia massaged at the persistent headache that had been throbbing in her temples since she woke, and nodded. “Leda, could you–”

“I’ll get them settled,” she agreed, readily. When Amelia glanced her way to say thanks, she found the woman frowning at her in concern.

She forced her hands to the table and said, “Who is their lord?”

Reggie consulted a red, leatherbound ledger that contained the full list of the peerage. “Chalmers,” he read. “He’s dead. Died in the first wave. No heirs,” he said, before she could ask. “His wife was with child, and she apparently lost it when she heard of his passing.”

“Passing,” Connor said with a grunt. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

Reggie tilted his head in concession. “Needless to say, there’s no one available to defend the Bridelands.”

“There wasn’t to begin with,” Amelia said, “not with Chalmers’ small forces.”

“It’s worse than that,” Edward said, tone grim. “The refugees say it isn’t merely a general and his troops installed at the mansion. They say a family of Sels has moved in. Mother, father, little girl. Finely dressed and unarmored.”

“Damn,” Leda murmured. “A lord and lady.Civilians.”

Amelia’s slim breakfast soured in her stomach. If the Sels were shipping in civilians, their invasion was no longer simply a military maneuver: they were colonizing. Confident in their ability to hold the west; sure enough in their defensive capabilities to think they could protect important Selesee peerage from Aquitainian forces. And that was who it would be: a peer. Some lord and his lady, as Leda had said. Paupers didn’t get first settling rights in this sort of invasion.

Her gaze fell to the map. “How far out have they pushed from the Bridelands? Their full force, I mean.”

“We have confirmed occupations here, here, and here.”

They were on the march. Winter’s harsh grip was easing, spring coming on warmer and fresher every day, and the Sels were on the move.

The lines on the map blurred, and she realized she hadn’t blinked for a time.

Connor said, “We’re going to have to carry out some sorties. Our supplies won’t last if we try to hold out here.”

“I know.”

“And they’re going to come for us. We’ve killed a fair few of their lads, at this point. They won’t let that stand.”

“I know, Connor.”

He lifted his hands.Don’t shoot the messenger. “I’m only saying. If they all come bearing down on us at once, we’ll fall, drakes or no.”

She sighed. “Gods, I hate it when you’re right.”

“It’s interminable, isn’t it?” Reggie asked, and Connor shot him a rude gesture.

Amelia took a bracing sip of her tea – sugared, for now, though the sugar was running low, and the tea leaves wouldn’t be far behind – and sat up straight. Spread her hands on the table. “Right, then. Sorties. We need to pick a target, and then reconnoiter, I suppose.”

“If I may?” Edward waited for herplease dogesture, and then bent over the map again. “The Bridelands are the ideal means of accessing the Crownlands.”

“Yes, I agree.”

At its inception, Aquitainia had borne a tradition that involved the king of the land riding out across his duchies, attending ball after ball in search of a wife. Part fairy story, part truth, it had been a means of keeping the royal bloodlines refined, yet diverse enough to be strong, keeping inherited illnesses at bay. But at some point over the past century, the Bridelands – previously a narrow scrap of mountainous territory that sat along the Crownlands’ southern border, not even a duchy, but a region called “the elbow” for its shape – had become a destination for up-jumped knights appointed titles…but not lands. They’d settled in the Elbow, discovered a wealth of natural emeralds within the mountain caves, and had worked to become the very upper crust of nobility. Their riches had enticed the daughters of the wealthiest lords across the kingdom, and the knights-turned-lords had had their pick of the prettiest and fairest of the lot. The kings had stopped their tours of the countryside, then, choosing brides closer to home, brought up by mothers eager to raise future queens, all of them delicate mountain flowers bred for one purpose.