Raucus’s eyes widened. “But that means... bloody crows. That’s nearly three hundred miles of settled, arable land. Some of the last such in Alera that’s still free. You’re talking about burning down the best of the croplands we have left. Destroying thousands of our own people’s steadholts, cities, homes. Creating tens of thousands of additional refugees.”

“Yes,” Aquitaine said simply. “And it will be a great deal of work. Best get started at once, Sir Ehren.”

Ehren’s stomach twisted in revulsion. After all that he had been through since the vord had come, he had seen more than enough of destruction and loss inflicted by the enemy. How much worse would it be to see more of Alera destroyed—this time at the hands of her own defenders?

Especially when, deep down in his guts, he knew that it wouldn’t make any difference. Whatever they did, this war could end in only one way.

But they had to try. And it wasn’t as though the vord would destroy those lands any less thoroughly, when they came.

Ehren put his fist to his heart in a salute and bowed to the First Lord. Then he turned and left the tent, to arrange the greatest act of premeditated destruction ever perpetrated by Aleran forces. He only hoped that he wasn’t doing it for nothing—that in the end, the desolation he was about to create would serve some sort of purpose.

As such things went, Ehren thought, it was a rather small and anemic hope, but the slender little Cursor decided to nurture it anyway.

After all.

It was the only one he had left.

* * *

Gaius Isana, the theoretical First Lady of Alera, wrapped her thick traveling cloak about her a little more securely and stared out the window of the enclosed wind coach. They must be very close to her home now—the Calderon Valley, once considered the farthest, most primitive frontier in all of Alera. She looked down at the landscape rolling slowly by, far beneath them, and felt somewhat frustrated. She had only infrequently seen Calderon from the air, and the countryside beneath her stretched out for miles and miles and miles all around. It all looked the same—either wild forest, with rolling mountains that looked like wrinkles in a tablecloth, or settled land, marked by broad, flat swaths of winter fields being prepared for spring, its roads running like ruler lines between steadholts and towns.

For all that she knew, she could be looking at her home at that precise moment. She had no reference point with which to recognize it from this high.

“. . . which has had the effect of reducing the spread of sickness through the refugee camp,” said a calm young woman’s voice.

Isana blinked and looked at her companion, a slender, serious-looking young woman with wispy, white-blond hair that fell in a silken sheet to her elbows. Isana could feel the girl’s patience and gentle amusement, tainted with an equally gentle sadness, radiating out from her like heat from a kitchen oven. Isana knew that Veradis had doubtlessly sensed her own bemusement as Isana’s thoughts wandered.