Amren slammed shut the book she’d been perusing. “Fools.” She shook her head, inky hair swaying, as she scowled up at me. “Hybern’s wealth has been dwindling for centuries. Most of their trade routes before the War dealt with the South—with the Black Land. But once it went to the humans … We don’t know if Hybern’s king deliberately failed to establish new trade routes and opportunities for his people in order to one day fuel this war, or if he was just that shortsighted and let everything fall apart. But for centuries now, Hybern’s people have been festering. Hybern let their resentment of their growing stagnation and poverty fester.”
“There are many High Fae,” Mor said carefully, “who believed before the War, and still believe now, that humans … that they are property. There were many High Fae who knew nothing but privilege thanks to those slaves. And when that privilege was ripped away from them, when they were forced to leave their homelands or forced to make room for other High Fae and re-form territories—create new ones—above that wall … They have not forgotten that anger, even centuries later. Especially not in places like Hybern, where their territory and population remained mostly untouched by change. They were one of the few who did not have to yield any land to the wall—and did not yield any land to the Fae territories now looking for a new home. Isolated, growing poorer, with no slaves to do their labor … Hybern has long viewed the days before the War as a golden era. And these centuries since as a dark age.”
I rubbed at my chest. “They’re all insane, to think that.”
Rhys nodded. “Yes—they certainly are. But don’t forget that their king has encouraged these limited world views. He did not expand their trade routes, did not allow other territories to take any of his land and bring their cultures. He considered where things went wrong for the Loyalists in the War. How they ultimately yielded not from being overwhelmed but because they began arguing amongst themselves. Hybern has had a long, long while to think on those mistakes. And how to avoid them at any cost. So he made sure his people are completely for this war, completely for the idea of the wall coming down, because they think it will somehow restore this … gilded vision of the past. Hybern’s people see their king and their armies not as conquerors, but as liberators of High Fae and those who stand with them.”
Nausea churned in my gut. “How can anyone believe that?”
Azriel ran a scarred hand through his hair. “That’s what we’ve been learning. Listening in Hybern. And in territories like Rask and Montesere and Vallahan.”
“We’re to be made an example of, girl,” Amren explained. “Prythian. We were among the fiercest defenders and negotiators of the Treaty. Hybern wants to claim Prythian not only to clear the path to the continent, but to make an example of what happens to High Fae territories that defend the Treaty.”
“But surely other territories would protect it,” I said, scanning their faces.
“Not as many as we’d hoped,” Rhys admitted, wincing. “There are many—too many—who have also felt squashed and suffocated during these centuries. They want their old lands back beneath the wall, and the power and prosperity that came with it. Their vision of the past has been colored by five hundred years of struggling to adjust and thrive.”
“Perhaps we did them a disservice,” Mor mused, “in not sharing enough of our wealth, our territory. Perhaps we are to blame for allowing some of this to rot and fester.”
“That remains to be discussed,” Amren said, waving a delicate hand. “The point is that we are not facing an army hell-bent on destruction. They are hell-bent on what they believe is liberation. Of High Fae stifled by the wall, and what they believe still belongs to them.”
I swallowed. “So how do the other territories play into it—the three Hybern claims will ally with them?” I looked between Rhys and Azriel. “You said you were … over there?”
Rhys shrugged. “Over there, in Hybern, in the other territories …” He winked at my gaping mouth. “I had to keep myself busy to avoid missing you.”
Mor rolled her eyes. But it was Cassian who said, “We can’t afford to let those three territories join with Hybern. If they send armies to Prythian, we’re done.”
“So what do we do?”
Rhys leaned against the carved post of Amren’s bed. “We’ve been keeping them busy.” He jerked his chin to Azriel. “We planted information—truth and lies and a blend of both—for them to find. And also scattered some of it among our old allies, who are now balking at supporting us.” Azriel’s smile was a slash of white. Lies and truth—the shadowsinger and his spies had sowed them in foreign courts.
My brow narrowed. “You’ve been playing the territories on the continent off each other?”
“We’ve been making sure that they’re kept busy with each other,” Cassian said, a hint of wicked humor glinting in his hazel eyes. “Making sure that longtime enemies and rival-nations of Rask, Vallahan, and Montesere have suddenly received information that has them worried about being attacked. And raising their own defenses. Which in turn has made Rask, Vallahan, and Montesere start looking toward their own borders and not our own.”
“If our allies from the War are too scared to come here to fight,” Mor said, folding her arms over her chest, “then as long as they’re keeping the others occupied—keeping them from sailing here—we don’t care.”
I blinked at them. At Rhys.
Brilliant. Utterly brilliant, to keep them so focused and fearful of each other that they stayed away. “So … they won’t be coming?”
“We can only pray,” Amren said. “And pray we deal with this fast enough that they don’t figure out we’ve played them all.”
“What of the human queens, though?” I chewed on the tip of my thumb. “They have to be aware that no bargain with Hybern would ultimately work to their advantage.”
Mor braced her forearms on her thighs. “Who knows what Hybern promised them—lied about? He already granted them immortality through the Cauldron in exchange for their cooperation. If they were foolish enough to agree to it, then I don’t doubt they’ve already thrown open the gates to him.”
“But we don’t know that for certain,” Amren countered. “And none of it explains why they’ve been so quiet—locked up in that palace.”
Rhys and Azriel shook their heads in silent confirmation.
I surveyed them, their fading amusement. “It drives you mad, doesn’t it, that no one has been able to get inside that palace.”
A low growl from both of them before Azriel muttered, “You have no idea.”
Amren just clicked her tongue, her upswept eyes settling on me. “Those Hybern commanders were fools to reveal their plans in regard to breaking the wall. Or perhaps they knew the information would return to us, and their master wants us to stew.”
I angled my head. “You mean shattering the wall through the holes already in it?”
A bob of her sharp chin as she gestured to the books around her. “It’s complex spell work—a loophole through the magic that binds the wall.”
“And it implies,” Mor said, frowning deeply, “that something might be amiss with the Cauldron.”