RavensDagger

  Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Fame of Groans

  “We o go over everything, then pn out what we’ll be doing while we stay in Goldenalden,” Amaryllis said. She spped her book onto the surface of the room’s dining table, then slid a rolled up map out of her bag and unrolled it.

  “I thought we just had to deliver some letters,” I said , bunny ears twitg. “And maybe snoop about, have some fun? Py tourist.”

  Amaryllis huffed, a very particur huff that I thi something like “this is going to take some expining.” “Things are more plicated than that. I don’t have a good y of the situatioher, until thehing I’m about to say is entirely specutive.”

  Awen and I g each other, then back to the table. It felt like she should have been doing this in the Beaver instead of the Dewdrop Inn, but if Amaryllis thought this was the right time... “Okay,” I said. “What do you want to expin, and what will we be doing?”

  “The situation first,” Amaryllis said. She tapped at the world map with the tip of a talon, something that I’d noticed she liked doing. “There are fger pyers here, and quite a few smallers ones.”

  "I'm guessing Mattergrove isn't one of the bigger ones," Awen said, her expression someained.

  I supposed she was worried about her home.

  "I'm afraid you're correct," Amaryllis firmed. Her talon moved to the west and dowling over the Seven Points. “Mattergrove has eic ties with Deepmarsh and the Harpy Mountains, and deeper ties with the indepe cities to its north, but otherwise, I don’t think they have a big enough stake in things to truly get involved. If a war breaks out, they might be a source of supplies for the harpy and grenoil, but I don’t think they’ll be any more involved than that.”

  “Oh, alright,” Awen said. “That’s probably good.”

  “So who are the big pyers?” I asked. “And what’s that mean, anyway?”

  “The big nations to watch out for are the ing Kingdom, Deepmarsh, the Tres, and Sylphfree.” She tapped eaation’s capital as she hem. “Deepmarsh is the smallest of these, but they are well-situated. Their marshnd is inhospitable te troop movements, and the grenoil are capable of having big popution booms if they so choose.”

  “They ?”

  Amaryllis nodded. “You’ve spent some time in their kingdom, I’m surprised you didn’t know how they’re born.”

  “I never asked,” I said. “Do they do it like... frogs?”

  “Essentially, yes. They have pools where eggs are id by the hundreds. The fittest of these are chosen and are raised to bee tadpoles aually members of whichever family they’re from. Most eggs are never hatched though.”

  “Huh,” I said. I didn’t know what to think about that.

  “It’s an important factor to sider in the grand scheme,” Amaryllis said. “But we’re going off topic. The try to sider is the ing Kingdom.”

  “Your home,” I said. “Would they go to war?”

  “Against the sylph or the cervid? Definitely. We’ve skirmished against the cervid before, and the sylph are long-time enemies.” She touched the mountaiweewo nations. “The Golden Peak is a natural wohat both of us want. Not only for the gold found there, but the a dungeons as well. Right now, it’s ostensibly owned by both sides, with everyone having cims over the same area. In practicality, it’s ral, uerritory.”

  “That’s not great,” I said.

  “It isn’t,” Amaryllis agreed. “Having fought the sylph before means that we... the ing Kingdom, that is, don’t think the idea is impossible. The st war was a long time ago though. Now there are proper airships and neons; the poputions of both nations are quite a bit rger too.”

  “Does that make it more or less likely that they’ll want to fight?”

  “I don’t know. People have been at peace for a while, they might not want that ged. And some of the xenophobia has settled down a little.”

  I hat was good to hear. “What about the other two? The Tres and Sylphfree.”

  “The Tres are a problem. Regardless of whether a war is started or not, the nation is an issue. They’ve been expanding a lot. They nearly have cities spanning the tral ti. They’re stretched thin aost of that though. A lot of wide, barren swatches with nothing but pins and a few forests. Still, they have by far the rgest military, though it is also the least advanced.”

  “Advanced how?” Awen asked.

  “Cervid airships, as far as I’m aware, are still two geions behind anyone else’s. Their bodies also mean that piloting isn’t as easy for them as it is for a harpy or sylph. Their entments are generally of lower quality, as is most of their magecraft. Really, their greatest advantage is their numbers.”

  “There’s a lot of them,” I said.

  She nodded. “Plenty more than any other nation field. If it es to a wide-scale battle, it doesn’t matter that their mages are weaker. A modern, academy-educated harpy warmage will run out of mana long before the cervid run out of poorly-trained novice mages to throw into the battlefield. Likewise for their soldiery. Every single soldier ts as cavalry, being who they are. On an open pin their mobility is a huge advaheir bowmen are also quite gifted.”

  “Scary,” I said. I could imagine a big group of them charging across a hill. That would be terrifying.

  “Indeed. Unfortunately, I think any modern war will be fought in the skies. Which brings us to the sylph.”`

  “They have a big army,” I said.

  “It’s not only big, it’s modern,” Amaryllis said. “I think only the Snownds might have better equipped and trained soldiery. It’s a mark of pride here to have served, as well as an obligation. They have... usable airships as well. They ck elegand I believe any harpy ship could outpad fly circles around a sylph ship, but there’s no denying that they make up for it in durability and numbers.”

  Nothing I didn’t know, though I doubted some of Amaryllis’ patriotic views about ship designs. She had some biases. Airships that looked like ships were nice, very romantic, but there was nothing wrong with big boxy ships too.

  It wasn’t the size or the shape of the ship that mattered, but the way it handled and how much it was loved by its crew.

  “So, that’s the, ah, pyers? That’s what my mother always called the people who were taking part in a big political event,” Awen said.

  “That’s the pyers, yes. The big ones, at least. There’s also the Snownds to the north, who are likely to only defend their borders uhe cervid antagohem, in which case they might expand southwards a little. The indepe cities are a mixed bag. No two of them are simir, except in their scope. For the most part they’re too small to really ge things on an iional scale.”

  “Those are pces like Rosenbell, right?” The pce where we’d first met Rhawrexdee and where I fought in that tour.

  “That’s one of them, yes,” Amaryllis said. “It’s somewhere in the middle in terms of size, I think.”

  I hose cities likely had a lot of people in them, but they probably didn’t care too much about other tries sihey weren’t part of any. “What about the desert?”

  “The Ostri? They’ll be on both sides as meraries. Likely more of them on the harpy and grenoil side, if only because of geographical veniehe only pyer on the ti is the Kingdom of Endless Swells, and that’s only because they have a few ies set up to the west, along the shores of the Moonstruck Sea.”

  “Are they nice?” I asked.

  “They’re very fixated on the sea and its surroundings. I ’t say whether or not they’ll fit whatever definition you have of nice,” Amaryllis said.

  Awen “awa’d” silently. “I’ve met some of them. Traders. They dressed strangely, but they were very kind.”

  I nodded. “That covers everyohen?”

  “We could go over the groups that make up these pyers,” Amaryllis said. I think she noticed my pout because she rolled her eyes. “But we should move on. The current situation is somerecarious.”

  “Because of Rei,” I said. The no-good mean... jerk who had tricked Amaryllis and I into almost getting kidnapped and who had blown up that ball.

  She nodded. “In part, yes. Pointing out that he’s likely an outside fact to aggravate the current political situation would be a good pce to start. But there are a lot of tensioween all these nations. Right now, we o navigate things towards a peaceful resolution.”

  “It’s like trying to calm things dowween angry neighbours,” I said.

  “And one of them is acg the other’s dog of pooping on their porches,” Awen said with a barely-restrained giggle.

  “Immature, both of you,” Amaryllis said. “But essentially yes. Even if this problem is solved, that doesn’t meaension will disappear. Accusations are likely to be tossed around and insults will follht behind.”

  “So even after learning that it’s a stray pooping on their porch, they’ll still be mad at each other because they said mean things to each other before,” I surmised.

  Amaryllis gred. “Anyway. The situation is votile, but I think we keep ahead of it. First though, we o know what everyohinks is going on, and how they’ll move. Which meaher spying on everyone, which we don’t have the equipment, people, or experience for, or we use the Broethod.”

  “What’s the Broethod?” I asked. I was Broccoli. I should probably know what that was.

  She grinned. “Aggressively befriend everyone.”

  I felt my cheeks puffing out. “I don’t befriend people aggressively,” I said. “And you ’t just... onize friendship!”

  “Not with that attitude you ’t,” she replied. “We o get information from each fa, in particur the diplomats who will be gathering here. There should be some from every nation, which means that Goldenalden will bee the tre from which a lot of important choices will be made. We o learn what those diplomats know in order to know how to act ourselves.”

  I thumped my foot down. “I don’t like any pns that involve pretending to be someone’s friend just to use them. Friendship should be treasured, not odified.”

  “I don’t know,” Awen said. “Forced friendship would be han doing some of the things my mother enced me to learn. It’s a lot more ho.”

  I thumped my foot harder. “Awen!”

  Awen raised her hands in surrender. “It’s like walking from house to house to see what everyone in the neighborhood thinks of the yard-poop situation before trying to fix things.”

  I sidered it for a moment, then gave in with a nod. “Okay, fine. I wouldn’t miing more people anyway. Is that the whole pn?”

  Amaryllis started to roll up her map. “That’s part of it. A lot of it will depend on what we discover. For the most part, if I represent the ing Kingdom, then oal bees defleg and discing any open flict. We want to avoid any war at any cost.”

  “I’m sure everyone get over a few stains on their porch,” I said.

  My head stung and it took me a moment to realize that Amaryllis had ed me with her map. “Stop it with the dog turd analogies!”

  I rubbed at the spot between my ears, then go Awen, ah started to giggle while Amaryllis fumed. She couldn’t resist for long though, and soon she chuckled before trying to hide her own amusement.

  “So, what now?” I asked. A g the window revealed that it was still midday.

  “We have a week to get everything ready, which should afford us some time to reoiter betweeing up appois,” Amaryllis said. “I also need an idea of where and when to meet everyone important.”

  “Oh! Then we have time for fun!”

  ***

  RavensDagger

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