SIXORANSTONIAN LORDS HAD ACCOMPANIEDAlizon. Farrawell, the one who’d yelled at Tychis, I knew by reputation though not by sight. He was the only one of the Oranstonians I hadn’t met, so I had no trouble fitting the name to the man.

Farrawell had accounted himself well in the wake of the Oranstonian Rebellion, surviving not by diplomacy, as with many of the older Oranstonian lords—like, say, Haverness—but because he’d been imprisoned when the Oranstonians broke. I’d heard he was a man of hot temper and little insight. He’d been one of Haverness’s Hundred and, like Haverness, had taken the defeat of the Vorsag as a signal that he could stay at his estates—which were vast by any standards.

Beckram’s friend Kirkovenal was there, a generation younger than the other Oranstonians. He sat next to Garranon, who wore his usual bland court-face. Only the shadows under his eyes showed the strain of Jakoven’s attack.

Danerra, Levenstar, Revenell, and Willettem had all fought in the Rebellion and the Hundred—which was all I knew of them. There was an empty seat between Willettem and Kirkovenal, and Beckram slid into it. I leaned against the wall. If I sat down now, I’d be asleep in five minutes unless someone did something more interesting than talk.

Alizon, when I’d known him at court, had been famed for his outlandish clothes and dyed hair. Today his hair was streaked with gray and cut short in no particular fashion. If I’d walked by him in a market, I wouldn’t have recognized him.

Kellen and Rosem were noticeably absent, but my uncle sat on Alizon’s right, watching the faces around him intently. Tosten wasn’t there, either.

My uncle greeted me with a glance and then launched off into speech with the air of a man repeating something for the twentieth time.

“You say that you want to attack Estian,” he said, looking from one Oranstonian face to another. “Which at this point is utterly foolish.”

“Fighting in the streets of Estian, where every hand might be against you, will only lose men,” agreed Alizon. “We have to pick our target.”

“If not Estian, then where?” asked Kirkovenal. “Would the Shavig lords attack Avinhelle? Then we could attack Tallven while Jakoven was concentrating his efforts in the north.”

Garranon shook his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt you’d get more than a tenth of the Oranstonian lords who would be willing to send armies to fight in Tallven. It leaves us too vulnerable to attack from the Vorsag on our southern border.”

Revenell shifted forward on his seat and said, “If we split our forces and left half the army to defend our homes . . .”