“It is.” Her smile was strained. “I’ll say goodbye before I leave in the morning.”

A gentle hand shook me awake. “What time is it?” I asked, trying to get my bearings in the windowless cabin. I’d been ordered off to bed after I’d started dropping off mid-sentence, and I’d slept curled up next to my gran on the floor. She’d been asleep when I arrived, so I hadn’t a chance to thank her for speaking to Joss on my behalf. My back ached, but I felt alert. Ready.

“An hour or so before dawn.” Victoria faintly illuminated the room, then pressed a bowl of porridge into my hands. “Eat this. It’s dreadfully bland, but it appears no one thought to pack sugar. Or raisins. A life without raisins is barely a life at all.”

Laughing softly so as not to disturb those still sleeping in the cabin, I followed her outside, spooning the hot oats into my mouth as we walked. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll show you.” Bending low, she went inside the other cabin.

Chris broke off his conversation with Vincent and nodded at me, but my eyes were all for the magical miniature town suspended above the cold firepit at the center of the room. “What is this?”

“A map, of sorts.” My father handed me a tin cup of weak tea. “Jérôme and I have been working with the, uh, Baron Vincent to construct a replica of Revigny and its surroundings.”

“It’s only Lord Vincent at the moment,” Vincent replied. “But I hope to rectify that shortly.”

My father frowned, then shrugged. “It’s been a world of help with planning, given that not everyone has ventured so far out of the Hollow. Chris?”

“Right.” My friend cleared his throat, and I watched how the eyes of everyone in the room went to him. He was, I realized, their leader.

“We received word from our scouts that Roland and Lessa took control of Triaucourt in the night,” he said. “If he holds to his pattern – and I think he will – they’ll remain under cover, taking oaths from those his militiamen round up, and then move on again tonight.”

“Then why aren’t we looking at Triaucourt?” I asked.

“Because the same gambit isn’t going to work twice, and we don’t have the clout,” he gave an apologetic look to the twins, “to take them on directly.”

He picked up a map and laid it out in front of me, and I noted the marks indicating the villages Roland had either destroyed or taken over. “This process of taking oaths eats up time,” Chris said. “Time that people could use to flee their homes and seek refuge in the mountains. The militiamen are rounding up those in the smaller hamlets, but Angoulême has groups of two or three trolls capturing and holding the more middling size villages until Roland has time to reach them. Revigny is one of them.”

I traced a finger over the little dots on the map. “Why bother?” I muttered. “These places can’t have more than a hundred people living in them. I hate to say it, but they’re hardly worth the effort. Why doesn’t he just attack Courville? In one fell swoop he’d have the human army he needs.”