But that still left him with the problem of dealing with Zuulaman. He was certainly willing to sell them surplus grains, meat, and produce for a reasonable price that wouldn’t beggar Zuulaman’s people, but he wasn’t willing to cut prices to the point that his own people suffered, especially when the islands still had enough arable land to feed their population, despite the fact that they made little effort to care for the land. Which was part of the problem. They overfished their waters, overplanted their farmland, pushed the islands’ resources to the breaking point. Then the Zuulaman Queens complained that they couldn’t sell their surplus, which rightly should have gone to feed their own people—or they complained that they had no surplus, and the pottery and other art forms that were distinct to their people didn’t sell at the prices they wanted. Which wasn’t surprising. No one but aristos with surplus income, or debts enough to ruin their families, could afford the asking price for most of what Zuulaman tried to sell.

Still, as the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, it was his responsibility to deal with the Queens who ruled the other Territories in Terreille, so he would meet with the Zuulaman ambassador once more and hope that, this time, there would be some glimmer of understanding in the man’s eyes when he explained why the trade agreements the Zuulaman Queens wanted were not acceptable.

As he reached for the letter to review its contents again, the door of his study opened, and his wife, Hekatah, hurried into the room as quickly as a woman three weeks away from childbirth could move.

“Saetan,” Hekatah said as she lowered herself into the chair in front of his desk. “I just had the most distressing news from home.”

This is home. But he bit back the words since it was as useless to think them as it would be to say them. Hekatah was a Red-Jeweled Priestess from one of Hayll’s Hundred Families, and she looked at the Territory of Dhemlan in much the same way that she looked at her family’s country estates—as something quaint and inferior . . . and valued only for what she could take from it.

“Is someone ill?” he asked politely, although he knew the reason for her distress.

“No, but Mother says you refused to give my father and brothers a loan. I’m sure she misunderstood something, because that accusation is utterly—”

“True.”

She stared at him. “It can’t be.”

Her gold eyes filled with tears, and her mouth moved into that sexy, sulky pout that had pulled at his loins when he’d first met her and now always scraped against his temper.