She stood with her fingertips on the table and slowly looked them all in the eye. Most of their faces were neutral, politely attentive; everyone at this table was a politician, in their way.

Including me, she thought. Dammit.

“First, I bring you the greetings of our High King, Artos the First, and the High Queen Mathilda, our own Princess of House Arminger.”

There was a murmur of pleasure, mostly genuine from the expressions. The Associates were generally happy that the grandchild of the Lord Protector would end up ruling the whole shebang, albeit by marriage rather than conquest. The dynasty was popular these days, far more so than it had been in Norman’s time. For that matter, a lot of people still thought of him with gratitude. Commoners might be pleased for that reason—they were, after all, alive because of what he’d done—or because the next High King wouldn’t wholly be the scion of House Arminger. Plenty still remembered just how heavy his hand could be, too.

“Next, I have intelligence to share with you concerning the larger course of this war. As of a month ago, the armies of the Lakota nation . . . now part of the High Kingdom . . . and our allies of the League of Des Moines and the three Dominions have crossed the borders of the territories held by the Church Universal and Triumphant. Those armies are more than ninety thousand men strong, horse, foot and artillery, and they are converging on Corwin, the Prophet’s capital in the Valley of Paradise. They’ve already won several engagements. Taken together, we—the alliance against the Prophet and Boise—now have superior numbers. That changes our long-term prospects rather substantially.”

This time the pleasure verged on delight. Tiphaine held up one long hand.

“And the CUT has withdrawn some of the troops they were massing in Boise’s territories to attack us, taken them back across the Rockies to the Bitterroot country and the High Plains while the passes are still open. We think that shifting forces around to compensate for the new eastern front is the reason we haven’t seen a full-scale attack yet this summer. However, that attack will come, and very soon. The Prophet has not taken all his men out to face the threat from the east and north, and Boise is ignoring it altogether.”

“That’s bad strategy,” one of de Aguirre’s barons said, a forty-something man with a scarred face that looked as if it had been adzed out of a stump, and very cold eyes. “Dividing their forces in the face of converging attacks? They’re risking being weak everywhere. They’d be better advised to defend against us and throw everything they have east. Or the other way ’round, of course, my lady.”