Rise of the Vicious Princess by C. J. Redwine

Author:C. J. Redwine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

“ALL THE TRADE delegate ships went down?”

“Not Rullenvor, though that’s not going to help much if—”

“This is a disaster!”

“Nine naval boats lost? How could—”

“Impossible. Simply im—”

“Montevallo must have help. Another kingdom must be—”

“Silence.” The queen’s voice cut through the frantic din of voices filling the war room as she and Charis entered. The noise stopped immediately. She faced her council, her ball gown glittering in the light of the oil lamps lit along the walls. Far from the war room, the ball continued. The queen and Charis had stayed at the festivities for over an hour, greeting guests, picking at the plates of food their staff presented them, and spreading the story that the delegates had been unavoidably delayed, but that it was no reason not to enjoy the party.

The last thing they needed was a full-blown panic on their hands, though Charis remembered the ship owners who were arguing in the corner of the ballroom and felt sure word of the tragedy was already spreading.

Finally, when the queen had felt confident they could slip out without causing an uproar, she’d sent a page to discreetly round up the council members for an emergency meeting. Now the queen murmured instructions to the page who’d escorted the council to the war room and then closed the door firmly behind the boy’s back. Tal took up his position against the wall directly behind Charis, watching each council member with unwavering intensity.

“Be seated.” The queen moved to the map of the sea and its kingdoms that was tacked to a wall. There was a soft scuffle behind her, chairs scraping against the floor, silk rustling against wood, and then silence again.

Charis moved to the opposite wall, the better to have an unobstructed view of the entire map. Tal followed at her heels.

Arborlay was located at the southern tip of the kingdom. Calera’s sea border was a wavy line of jutting peninsulas and deep curves. There were a few sheltered coves, a handful of small harbors, but nothing of consequence after the capital’s port until she reached Ebbington, far to the north, just before the kingdom’s borders stopped at the edge of the large expanse of sea.

The other sea kingdoms were ranged across the map with small, neatly printed numbers below their names to indicate their longitude and latitude and their distance from Calera’s major port.

There was Morg, a good distance south of Calera with nothing between the two kingdoms but water. Nowhere to hide the ships that had helped Montevallo commit their latest atrocity. To the east, Solvang, Thallis, and Rullenvor were lined up like buttons on the back of a dress, their large borders so close to each other that it would take less than a week to sail from one to the other.

Beyond them, far to the north, lay Verace, with its swift channels connecting its string of islands, and then the kingdom of Embre, its inhospitable coastline and rocky outcroppings broken up by its two small ports. To the west of Rullenvor, the basilisk cave was marked in bold red.

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