Eirian got herself under control and sipped her coffee. "Suppose that's true. Even Queen Helia's bride price wasn't that high, and she came with an entire kingdom."
Chenzhou nodded, though he only had a vague idea who Helia was.
"Lord Zhao ran out last night." Eirian admitted with a sigh.
Confused, Chenzhou asked. "As in he wasn't…interested?"
Eirian groaned. "Honestly, I have no idea. I thought it was going well." She glanced at the kitchenmaids lining the wall. "He even agreed to…weekly sessions."
Chenzhou nodded in understanding. He'd been avoiding thinking about Mingzhe's magic anyway.
"He even…he said I was beautiful, and I had a fire going and I made tea, and he just left!" Eirian stabbed a piece of bacon more viciously than it deserved.
Chenzhou blinked. "What was the fire and tea for?"
"A romantic atmosphere! I tried wine, but apparently the Zhao's don't imbibe alcohol."
Ah, now that he was hearing it, Chenzhou realized he'd heard it before. "Right. Romantic."
Eirian glared at him. "What was that?"
Chenzhou shifted. "Romantic?"
"You don't think so?"
"…I guess I wasn't aware fire and wine were romantic?"
Eirian stared at him. "How did you woo Anna then?"
"I asked her to join me for dinner!"
"Well, I did that too! You helped!"
Chenzhou nodded. "Was that romantic?"
Eirian groaned. "It was."
Chenzhou didn't look convinced. "I think you might have to be a bit more…maybe just tell him?"
Eirian scowled. "How forward. Too forward."
Chenzhou snorted. "Your bothered by being too forward?"
"Of course not." Eirian scoffed. "People just usually aren't when it comes to romance."
"Ah, I suppose I've not much experience with it." Chenzhou admitted, but he didn't look sold on the idea either. "What if Lord Zhao doesn't have experience with it either?"
Eirian scoffed again, then stopped and groaned. "Truely? But he's so…attractive. In the capital he'd have half of society fighting over him."
"But this is not Aontacht." Chenzhou pointed out. "We just finished one war and we're already facing another."
Eirian straightened. "What?"
Chenzhou waved the kitchenmaids out. Once the door closed behind them, he lowered his voice. "That's what Yuze came to me about last night. The tribes are moving early. It's starting to seem like the fighting season will start early."
"I thought they suffered significant losses in the last war? How are they already prepared for another?"
Chenzhou shook his head. "They did. But their tactics require surprisingly little to be effective."
"So why don't you adopt their tactics?"
"Retraining the Crimson Army would take too long. We'd suffer to great losses during the transition. But mostly, we do not inhabit the terrain the way they do, which is part of what makes their tactics so effective."
Eirian nodded along thoughtfully. "And you don't have the personnel to occupy a portion of the borderlands to learn."
Chenzhou shook his head. "The Crimson Army and the Imperial Army together would not be enough to occupy a quarter of the borderlands."
Eirian's eyes widened.
"If you're interested, I can show you the atlas after breakfast."
She looked excited. "You have an atlas?"
Chenzhou nodded. "Made by an ancestor of the Arnheims, interestingly enough."
A knock on the door interrupted them before Eirian could ask more and Marian stepped inside. "My apologies for interrupting Lord Ye, Lady Ye."
"It's fine. What is it?" Chenzhou gestured at her to come closer.
"Captain Li just sent word." She gave Eirian an apologetic look. "It seems Lord and Lady Soliel left at dawn this morning to return to the capital."
"They left without saying goodbye?" Chenzhou, outraged.
"Thank the rock." Eirian said, relieved.
Chenzhou and Marian shared a surprised look.
"Please, they got what they wanted. They weren't going to stay after that." Eirian dismissed the insult of her father and stepmother leaving without a word.
Neither Chenzhou nor Marian looked convinced, but they dropped it.
Eirian changed the subject. "Tell me more about the atlas."
***
The atlas was twice the width of Eirian's bed. It would have seated forty at an official dinner, just as big as the one her uncle had in the Sun Palace in Aontacht. Her uncle had commissioned his not long after his coronation and it had taken the Vermeer sculptor who'd made it three years to complete.
This one was clearly much older. Set on sturdy allgreen legs carved to resemble bundles of stalks of wheat. The tabletop lay in a frame of allgreen wood with ruby and gold accents. The atlas itself, a detailed relief map of the eastern portion of the rock had peaks that were taller than Eirian. The Spine of the World running east to west, north to south along two edges of the table.
Everything east of the spine was laid out in startling detail. Starting in the northwest with the Land of the Great Fall and its kingdoms of Antiquity and the Long Fall. Just south of that was the Hearthland and its kingdoms. The great White City with its thirteen circular walls on the coast of the Saragosa Sea. Just inland were the Tilled Lands and just south along the coast were the three Isles of Trees, one of the three great empires of elves and along their borders. Along the southern borders of the Isles of Trees and the Tilled Lands was Farrah and its gran capital of Bal-Kha-Ket, the northern most desert kingdom of the Wasteland and just at the edge of the table the start of the Sea of Sand and the Red Waste. Eirian knew from flat maps and history books that the Wasteland stretched for hundreds of miles beyond the Sea of Sand but was usually cut off on maps or atlases because of its sheer size. The same reason the lands west of the Spine of the World were never included.
The Crimson Cliffs and its capital of Aviarium were depicted east of Farrah and the Isle of Salt north of that.
The Land of Song and Snow and its most current kingdoms, including Chala-Mai the epic trading city and its famous pier on the cost of the Sovereign Sea and then The Great Forrest Veil, the second great kingdoms of elves, that stretched from the Sovereign Sea along the Spine of the World all the way back to the Saragosa Sea.
Right in the middle was the Land of Sorrow and at its heart the Still Water, with the three isles that Aontacht was built on in the center and just along the southern edge, the Isles of Smoke.
Along the northern edge of the Still Water was the dreaded Illuminated City. To the west was the Forrest of Rhiannon and the hidden city of Arkleion and to the south the Burning Mountains, the great kingdom of dwarves.
To the east of the Still Water, between the fjords of the Camelia and the Burning Gorge of the Land of Song and Snow, were the borderlands.
~ tbc