Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy #3)(40)

“A map, of sorts.” My father handed me a tin cup of weak tea. “Jér?me 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.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Chris replied. “If he attacked Courville, Tristan would likely intervene before Roland could take control of the city, and he’d be risking a direct confrontation with his elder brother, which he wouldn’t win.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I kept my doubts to myself.

“But by doing it this way, building his army in small attacks, the risk of Tristan leaving Trianon unprotected – especially with their father’s plans remaining unknown – are much less.”

“And once he has this army, then what?” My mind filled with the image of families driven to take up pitchforks and shovels, rusty swords, and pistols that hadn’t been fired in years, and then to attack their countrymen. Not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice.

“When he’s ready, we think he’ll have them march en masse on Courville,” Vincent replied. “Tristan would have to leave Trianon unprotected to save the other city from his brother’s army.”

“While Roland and Lessa backtrack to Trianon and take it while it’s undefended,” I said, not waiting for him to finish. “They have to know he won’t fall for such a strategy.”

“True.” Chris set the map aside. “So Tristan sees through their game and remains in Trianon. Roland’s army takes Courville. Not only is the death toll likely to be catastrophic, he’ll now have control over nearly half the Isle’s population, none of whom will hold Tristan in particularly high regard given he’s remained holed up behind castle walls the entire time.”

And none of them would care that he hadn’t had a choice. I exhaled softly. “Then Roland can march his army against Trianon, or even Trollus, at his pleasure. It won’t matter to him or Angoulême how many humans die, because keeping them alive has never been their plan. It was ours.” The porridge soured in my stomach. “How do we stop him?”

“By taking away his army, bit by bit, village by village,” Chris replied. “By forcing Roland to meet Tristan on a level playing field and making the battle between them alone. Watch.” He gestured at the faintly glowing miniature.

Two figures appeared in the model, tiny replicas of Vincent and Victoria. They were both standing on their hands, wobbling back and forth. Victoria’s figure toppled over, and I heard her grumble softly over my shoulder. Vincent smiled, and a dozen tiny figures bearing our faces appeared. “This,” he said, “is how it will go.”





Chapter Twenty-Four





Cécile





“Stones and sky, but they’re cocky,” Victoria muttered, kneeling next to me in the snow.

Revigny sat between two mountains, a cluster of houses and one general store, with a population that was far outnumbered by the goats they raised on the grassy southern slopes. And by my reckoning, every one of them was locked behind the invisible wall encasing the village. Goats included.

Their troll captors relaxed in a pavilion that looked like it had been plucked from the glass gardens, only this version was an illusion with the sole purpose of blocking out the brilliant sun from overhead. Two of them sat on rough wooden chairs plucked from someone’s kitchen, while a third twirled about half-naked in the snow, hands raised up to the sun.

“Do you recognize them?” I asked. That had been one of the bigger unknowns. Victoria and Vincent had an idea of which trolls the Duke had recruited to his cause, but there was no way to know who had been sent to each village. Or how much power they had.