“Joseba, you said it yourself—he wants a fight.” Amarande’s grin was as sharp as her boot knife. “There will be no diplomacy with him. If Renard wanted a formal discussion, he wouldn’t have announced to us that he took liberties with my brother and heir. Nor would he have lied about Ferdinand and Geneva being in cahoots. Hewantsa reaction. We should give him one.”
“Or,” Luca mused, “we should do what he doesn’t expect and have a conversation with him.” Amarande froze.Oh. “As much as I really want to storm in there and have Geneva to ourselves, Renard would be blindsided by a polite negotiation.Andit would get us into the castle.”
“Diplomacy, not anger, would be a fine strategy,” Joseba answered immediately, his preference clear.
Amarande stared at the map, every bit of advice her father had ever given her running through her mind.
Make the first mark.
Beware or be dead.
If you underestimate an opponent, you overestimate yourself.
And on and on.
Every piece of wisdom carefully crafted to ensure plotting, planning, and complete and total focus on the problem, solution, and alternative possibilities.
The queen lifted her eyes, drew in a steadying breath, and asked a question of those she trusted rather than giving an order. “What if we do both?”
“Both?” Joseba’s thick eyebrows wound together.
“Yes.” In Amarande’s mind, the plan was already as solid as the table before them. “What if we send an official royal party to the castleanda regiment through the weak point we breached when escaping the Bellringe?”
“A regiment to dowhat?” Joseba again with a question. As erudite as the councilor was, he really didn’t understand the first thing about the realities of battle, despite all the time he’d spent in this room with Sendoa and Koldo.
Luca hadn’t spent a lick of time in the council room with either of them, but by now knew exactly what the regiment’s role was in this scenario. He grinned at the councilor and gave the plainest answer. “To ensure we get out.”
Ula slapped the table. “I like it.”
“Let’s do it,” Urtzi echoed.
Around the room, everyone nodded.
Everyone… save for Joseba.
“Forgive me if I don’t understand the point of this plan. Is it to release the prince to our custody and the Warlord to await trial for crimes against the people of Torrence,oris it to make King Renard pay for holding them and taunting us? Because those are two very different aims.” The councilor wrung his pale hands. “Furthermore, I’m uncomfortable with the rulers of two of the Sand and Sky’s kingdoms being embroiled in a physical battle with that of another. Letme remind you that the future of your kingdoms lies with you—that you have no heirs, my Otsakumea—”
“Joseba, the pointisthe future of our kingdoms.” Amarande’s heart had begun to hammer in her chest. “There is no future where a half-dead king—with no known heirs himself, by the way—holds hostage the key to Torrence’s safety and the heir to my throne, lies about doing so, and gets away with it.”
“Let’s not forget he has the poisons,” Ula added.
“Yes, and that. We saw what those poisons did to Basilica and Myrcell. You know Renard has a plan for them—that’s why he wanted them in the first place.” Every inch of Amarande’s skin blazed with certainty. “Simply requesting them was a threat.”
Joseba gestured to General Xixi. “The threat is the same as our great army’s reputation—one that lives in the mind and fights battles for him.”
Luca’s mouth pulled into a wry grin. “Ask Basilica and Myrcell how they feel about that.”
“They did not object to his request for the poisons’ return,” the councilor replied.
“That’s because they don’t wantusto have the poisons along with the most powerful army on the continent,” Amarande answered. “Trust is our problem, not strength. We did that to ourselves.”
It pained Amarande to admit this, but it was accurate.
“The point,” she continued, “is what future does the Sand and Sky have if we let these lies persist and don’t challenge them as Ardenia itself has been challenged? We say this continent’s foundation is its laws and decrees and pronouncements, but if it sits upon lies, too, what good will that do our people? How can I ask the men and women who have been conscripted into roles in the world’s greatest army to lay down their lives for a battle built upon lies?”
The councilor considered this with a bowed head and slumped shoulders. Finally, he decided to push her one final time. “These lies are not our own, Your Highness.”
“They are ifwedo not challengethem. Renard must be challenged about Ferdinand and Geneva, and he must be challenged about his mere existence. Our fellow rulers are allergic to asking questions that inconvenience their patriarchal ideals.”
