“How’s it structured?” I asked.
Mila turned so we could see the open face of the nearest barracks block, and his three aides stepped back, giving him space to teach. He gestured once at the yard.
“Four Rimebreak Doans.”
I paused.
“Rimebreak Doans?”
Lola was already flipping to a fresh page on her clipboard, and I caught the small flash of delight she got every time I asked a question that let her explain something. Her hair twist was holding, against all reasonable expectation. I’d need to mess up even with her Rimelion hair.
“We didn’t have time to design a new army from scratch,” she said. “So we adapted. Imperial organizational procedures as the base, they’re already in every officer’s muscle memory, with some structural adjustments from Earth military doctrine. The General had opinions.”
“I had observations,” Mila corrected mildly.
“Observations,” Lola repeated, making a small mark. “Implemented.”
Mila nodded once. “The imperial Doan was nominally four thousand. In practice, the number drifted. Understrength formations were common. Overstrength formations were used to absorb political appointees, or to pad the rolls for funding.” He paused. “This offended me.”
“Offended you?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
I looked at him. His face hadn’t moved. The word offended had been delivered in the same tone he used for scout reports and supply figures, and it was, somehow, still one of the more interesting things I’d heard him say.
“A Rimebreak Doan,” he continued, “is four thousand. Four Banners of one thousand. Four Columns of two hundred and fifty per Banner. Four Files of fifty per Column. Ten Squads of five per File.” His voice had settled into the even cadence of a man reciting something he believed in. “If the number drifts, we fix it. A Doan that is not four thousand is not a Doan.”
“And what is it?”
“A problem.”
Lola’s mouth twitched.
We started walking. Mila moved us along the edge of the inner courtyard, past the formation squares and toward the first of the barracks blocks, and as we went, he named the ranks in order—Doan-Commander, Banner-Captain, Column-Lieutenant, File-Sergeant, Squad-Leader—the titles landing with the dry weight of a man who’d argued for each of them in a meeting I hadn’t been in.
“And the emblems?” I asked.
“Every Doan carries the Rimebreak snowflake crowning the top. This is the kingdom. This never changes.” He turned and gestured toward the nearest flag, hanging beside the barracks gate. “Below the snowflake, the Doan symbol fills the main field. Every soldier of that Doan wears it. The Banner is a smaller badge at the lower corner.”
“So at a glance—”
“Same kingdom, same Doan, same or different Banner. Yes.”
I looked at the flag. The snowflake sat clean white at the top, unmistakably Rimebreak’s. Below it was a symbol I didn’t recognize; a sheaf of arrows crossed over a shield.
We kept walking. The second Doan’s barracks had a different emblem under the snowflake—a bronze sunburst. The third, a stylized wolf’s head.
Wolves are friends... tasty friends.
Mila stopped at the fourth, I looked up at the flag and stopped too. The snowflake. And under it, filling the main field in dark iron against pale stone: a broken chain. Two heavy links, severed, the break clean.
“The Fourth Doan,” Mila said finally. “Majority Altandai recruits. Freed from the mines, the manor houses, the workshops. When the emblems were proposed, I expected a negotiation.” He paused again. “There was none. They insisted.”
“Insisted.”
“One of the older recruits—a blacksmith—told me that if the Crown would not approve the broken chain, the Crown would be receiving a very politely worded resignation from four thousand soldiers.” His mouth did the pre-smile thing. “I approved the emblem that afternoon.”
I stood there a second longer than I needed to. “Good,” I said.
Mila inclined his head, and we kept walking. “The Royal Navy,” he said after a moment, “is structured differently.”
“Of course it is.”
“It has its own ranks. Its own traditions. Its own—” he paused— “linguistic conventions.”
“Linguistic conventions.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Mila.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Is this about—”
“Lucy,” I said, because I’d already put it together. “Pirate Lucy.”
“Admiral Lucy,” Mila corrected, in a tone that suggested he’d had to make this correction before, possibly many times, possibly to himself. “Her manner is distinctive. I will not pretend otherwise. But she is a ruthless commander. When the south-eastern officer corps deserted and my families were on the coast with no ships and a blockade forming, it was Admiral Lucy who came.”
He paused yet again.
“She engaged an imperial flotilla with two vessels against six. She won. She lost neither ship and gained two more for her fleet. She brought my people home.” His voice had gone flat in a way I recognized meant the opposite of emotionless. “I owe her a debt I do not expect to repay. Whatever additional elements accompany her command, she has earned the right to them.”
I looked at Lola. “Why don’t I know this?”
Lola did not look up from her clipboard. “It was in a report,” she said, turning a page.
“A report.”
“Yes.”
“...Which report.”
“The one summarizing naval engagements. The one I put in your queue. The one you read.”
“I read it.”
“You told me you read it.”
“I did read it.”
“You did.” She finally looked up. Her expression was neutral in the specific way that was worse than any expression she could have made. “Do you remember the second paragraph?”
“...No.”
“Mm.”
“In my defense—”
“Mhm.”
“—the first paragraph was long.”
“It was.”
“And I was very tired.”
“You were.”
Mila, to his credit, was examining the flagstones as if he were Yuki, who found out they were mined in a random village with a random village head who had a son who had a sick daughter…
I could feel the heat climbing my neck.
I adjusted my collar, which did not help. I looked at Lola. Lola looked at me. Her mouth was not smiling, but it was doing the thing her mouth did when she was winning at something and had decided not to press it.
I cleared my throat. “Mila.”
“Your Majesty.”
“Is there somewhere we could talk about our—problem.” The word came out more hedged than I wanted. “Somewhere quiet. A command room. Something with walls.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
He turned without ceremony and led us across the courtyard toward the administrative block.
Lola fell into step on my other side. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. The clipboard rested against her chest, and I caught, out of the corner of my eye, the small, private, deeply satisfied expression that had settled on her face.
I was going to make her pay for that later.
I was absolutely not going to succeed.
—
The command room was smaller than I’d expected.
I’d built something grander in my head on the walk over; vaulted ceilings, a war table the size of a small pond, maps on every wall with little tokens representing enemies.
What I got was a stone room with a square table, six chairs, three map cases along one wall, and a pitcher of water that was either freshly poured or had been waiting a long time. A brazier in the corner radiated low heat. The walls were bare.
Mila’s aesthetic, cooked down to its elements.
The aides did not follow us in. The door closed behind Lola with the soft, weighted sound of stone on stone, and the three of us were alone with a table.
I sat.
Lola sat. Clipboard across her lap. Posture immaculate.
Mila remained standing for exactly the length of time that was appropriate, then sat when I gestured at a chair.
“So,” I said, brisk, changing the subject with the elegance of a woman pushing a piece of furniture into a different room. “The Necromancers.”
Mila inclined his head. “I’ve been briefed. We’ve prepared a preliminary strategy.”
I blinked. “That was fast.” I turned to Lola.
“My people are efficient,” Lola said, without looking up from her clipboard.
“Mm.” I let the word sit. “I’m one of them now.”
The blush started at her collar.
It was a small one; she’d been building tolerance, but it was real, and she did not look up, and her pen paused for half a beat on the page, and I watched it happen with deep, unrepentant satisfaction.
“Continue, General,” Lola said.
“I’ve selected the Wolf Doan for the primary engagement,” he said. “They are the most experienced formation under the new structure. Most of their officers are veterans from the southern campaigns, and the Doan-Commander, Beril, was a Banner-Captain under the empire before the defection. I trust him. The Broken Chain Doan would serve as encirclement and reserve. They can be mobilized and prepared to set sail within thirty-six hours.”
“Set sail?”
“The river approach. Same route the expedition used. Faster than overland at that scale, and it keeps us out of the miasma corridor until we’re within striking range of the tower.”
“Okay,” I said. “And the miasma?”
Lola was already flipping to her logistics tab. “Four hours.”
Mila nodded.
I glanced between them as if they were keeping a secret joke I wasn’t in on. “Four hours, what?”
“The anti-condition potions,” Lola said. “We’ve been sourcing them from the Altandai alchemist guilds for the past week as an economic stimulus program. Dmitry’s idea, originally—create demand, stabilize the sector, give the newly licensed practitioners steady Crown contracts. We now have a significant stockpile. Each potion neutralizes the debuff for four hours.”
“Huh.” I leaned back. “So the economy accidentally solved the problem.”
“The economy deliberately solved a problem,” Lola said. “It just happened to be this one.”
“I love it when boring meetings pay off.”
“You don’t attend the boring meetings, Charlie.”
“I read the reports.”
“Mhm.”
Mila’s eyes flicked between us exactly once.
“Four hours is the engagement window,” he continued, steady. “Once a soldier consumes the potion, the clock starts. At hour four, the debuff returns at full strength. We’ve built the plan around clean extraction at that mark.”
“Good,” I said. “Keep going.”
“Mila,” Lola set her pen down. Mila stopped. “This plan is a nightmare.”
“Your Grace,” Mila said.
“Wolf Doan as the combat force, Broken Chain as encirclement and reserve—that’s half our standing army, General. Half.” She turned a page. “We can’t yet move eight thousand troops and their supplies in one cycle. We’d need two waves, which means either half the force lands and waits to be reinforced under miasma conditions, or we stagger the deployment over two days, which destroys operational surprise. And the potion stockpile”—another page—“is enough for one Doan. Not two. If you put both Doans in the field, half of them fight at forty-percent debuff.”
“I was going to propose rotation—“
“Rotation doesn’t work with a four-hour consumable, General. The math is linear. If you have enough potions for four thousand soldiers for four hours, you don’t have them for eight thousand for two hours each. The debuff returns when the potion wears off, not when the individual soldier’s shift ends. They’d hit the field already compromised.”
Mila said nothing for a moment. “Your Grace, the enemy count—“
“I saw the enemy count. Korven’s guild posted it themselves. Hundreds of Death Knights. Thousands of skeletons. Yes.” She mimicked his pause. “One Doan. Not two. And they return the next day.”
“One Doan against that many Death Knights and thousands of organized undead—“
“One elite Doan with full potion support, against an enemy that will not, cannot, grow additional skilled combatants in the time we have. We aren’t fighting Death Knights for territory. We are fighting them for a tower, with a four-hour window, and then we are leaving.”
“And if we don’t take the tower?”
“Then we don’t take the tower.” Lola met his eyes. “It happens tomorrow, or it happens in a month with a full mobilization while we travel to homeland. The Necromancers are recruiting right now. Every day we delay, they grow. Every day we delay, our losses get worse. Tomorrow or in a month, General. I know which one the Crown wants.”
Silence.
I watched Mila.
He sat still, his fingers flattened against the tabletop, and then, with a grim expression, he nodded. “One Doan,” he said.
“One Doan,” Lola confirmed.
Mila exhaled. “Then if the Doan is on containment,“ his eyes flicked to me, then away, “we need an elite team for the leader.”
“Lunaris,” Lola said.
I looked at her, and she looked back. “She’s the one,” Lola said. “She’s already seen the terrain. She has a quest thread tied directly to this operation. She has Lisa, who can work a boss fight at tier. And the kingdom narrative writes itself—the knight who retreated returns, finishes what she started, brings Rimebreak the tower. We respect the quest.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Mila nodded. “Then the constraint is the same. Four hours. The elite team enters when the Doan engages. At hour three, they are recalled. At hour four, the entire force withdraws, tower or no tower.”
I frowned. “Hour three?”
“Hour three for the elite team. One-hour buffer to extract before the potions expire. If they’re past hour three and not moving, we assume the worst and withdraw before the debuff compromises the recovery effort.”
“And if they’re close?”
“Then they’ll have to be close faster.”
I leaned back in the chair. “Mila. We can’t just leave the tower. That’s a defeat.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“That’s a PR disaster.”
“That is a tactical withdrawal under a hard operational constraint that we set in advance, publicly, as a condition of the engagement.” His voice was very even. “Your Grace can frame it. She is good at framing.”
Lola made a note.
“Your Majesty,” Mila waited until I looked at him. “Sometimes defeat is part of the plan. A Doan that returns at four thousand is a Doan. A Doan that pushes through to three thousand five hundred for a symbolic tower is not a victory. It is a number I will have to explain to families, and I will not be explaining it well.”
“Lunaris can do it.” Lola’s voice was quieter now. “She has Lisa. She has the skill.
“She doesn’t have Poundcake,” I said.
Lola’s pen paused. “No,” Lola said. “She doesn’t. His respawn isn’t done.”
“Three days.”
“Three days. We mobilize tomorrow.”
“Then she goes in without him.”
“We bolster with someone else. The team has a slot. We can discuss who.” She tilted her head. “I have candidates.”
“We’ll get to it.”
“Mm.”
Mila cleared his throat. “Your Majesty. There is one more decision.”
“Hm?”
“The Doan needs a field commander for this operation.”
I blinked. “Not you?”
“I am a general.”
“...Yes.”
“A general,” Mila said carefully, “commands the army. The army is the question of what we do. Which force engages, where, under what objectives, with what supporting assets. That decision is mine, in consultation with the Crown. I make it here, at this table, before we sail.”
“Okay.”
“How the Doan fights—how the Banners move, how the Columns position, how the Files respond—is the Doan-Commander’s authority. It must be. Command at that tempo cannot flow upward. If I am in the field, I am a general in a Doan-Commander’s chair.”
“So you stay at the camp.”
“Yes, but we need someone who decides the question of what and why, and that can only be done with the Crown representative. The army does as the Crown commands, but only the Crown can decide to engage. Someone you trust.”
“Actually,” Lola said, “there’s a version that might work. Lunaris,” she said. I looked at her. “Hear me out,” Lola continued to Mila. “She is the knight and she will act as the Crown representative.
“It could work.”
I didn’t say anything. Lola glanced at me. Then back at Mila. Then at me again. “Your Majesty?” Mila asked.
I looked down at the table for a second. Looked up. “I’ll think on it.”
Lola’s pen stopped. “You’ll think on it?”
“Yes.”
“Charlie.” Her voice had softened, but not by much. “You don’t trust Lunaris?”
I thought about Luna in the cave, grinning at Ashenvault. Luna on the ridge, walking at the front of a column of five, turning the weight of leading into a tempo. Luna handed a quest. Luna, who had run because Poundcake had told her to, and had not looked back because if she looked back she would turn around.
I thought about the word reckless. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll see.” Lola held my eyes for a second longer than she needed to.
Then she made a note.