“It’s impossible,” said Piloxides. “How could they field an army that size?”

“By having more wealth than we can possibly imagine,” the king told him.

“There is no way they could march an army that size through Roa without Roa knowing!” Piloxides argued.

“No, they couldn’t,” the king agreed. “Our allies have betrayed us, Piloxides.”

Not since Nussam led his forces across the isthmus to conquer the Sidosian empire had the world seen an army that size. I tried to imagine seventy thousand men marching together like a city on the move. What road could it travel? The head of the army might be in one town while the tail was in an entirely different one. And how would they make camp at night? If all the soldiers lay down to sleep side by side, how much ground would they cover? If, like my father, every soldier came with servants to accompany him, were there only a fifth as many soldiers in an army of seventy thousand, or were there seventy thousand fighting men and an army of even more? Did they bring medics, advisors, cooks? How much food would they eat? How much grain would be needed every day to feed a man, a horse, an ox? Distracted by the wealth of numbers, I let most of what was said next pass over my head.

Most scholars now agree on the number fifty thousand for the fighting men of the Mede army. At one helpmeet for every three men—a cautious estimate—there would be sixteen thousand supporters. Bu-seneth, the general in charge of the army, had forbidden the use of any carts until they reached the cultivated land of Roa. That was how he had moved a city’s worth of men so quickly. By the time they’d reached the king of Roa’s highways, the Medes had bought up more than six thousand horses and five thousand or more mules and donkeys and oxen.

As everyone tried to imagine the scale of the disaster, Attolia looked to Relius.

He said, “I have—”

“—taken liberties,” Orutus hissed.

“—told Teleus to have the ambassadors of Kimmer and Roa arrested.”

“Send word to the city walls to close the gates,” ordered Attolia. “Do it now. No one is to leave the palace or leave the city until further notice.”

As Relius left, Attolia turned to Costis. “Do you have any idea how close this army is now?”

“The farmers told me they were expected to have their surpluses gathered in Put for sale in a month.” I had no idea where Put was, so this meant little to me.

“We have at least that long, then,” said Sounis.

“There is almost no farmed land between Put and the border with Attolia to supply an army. That might slow their advance,” Eddis said.

“Unless they have laid caches in those places ahead of time,” said Attolia.

“All the surplus in Roa cannot feed an army that size. How, how can they possibly lay caches?” said Casartus angrily. Both he and Orutus had taken Costis’s news as a personal attack, the behavior of men very afraid of the blame that might land on their shoulders.

Attolia ignored them. Leaning forward, she addressed Sounis and Eddis. “You will want to speak privately with your own council. Let us meet again this afternoon.”

To Pegistus, Piloxides, and Casartus, she said, “You will consider how to address an army of seventy thousand on our northeast border.” To Costis, she said, “Get a bath and a nap. It will be a long day.”

I wasn’t there when they met. Nor was Relius, as Orutus had his way.

“Neither your position nor mine is official,” Relius said to me. “Not even a war will dislodge Orutus’s sense of self-importance.”

Official or unofficial, eavesdroppers or none, every word spoken in the council chamber was common knowledge in the palace before the sun set. In the king’s waiting room, the attendants picked apart the day’s rumors.

“Not all of the Mede ships were sunk at Hemsha. Sounis’s magus thinks they might have landed supplies at harbors west of Put, maybe at Nedus and Mesithilia.”

I sat in a corner, pretending to address a math problem on my slate that the magus had set for me. Once Relius had reached out to him about the number sequence I’d found so fascinating, he and the magus had begun to negotiate a very prickly sort of friendship as they colluded in my education. It didn’t surprise me at all that the magus would be so familiar with the harbors of Roa.

No one could guess how quickly an army so vast might move, but all agreed that if the Medes were to be stopped, the only chance was at the Leonyla Pass. The Medes would be coming down the coast from Roa. They would have to cross over the coastal mountains to reach the interior of Attolia, and the only place an army that size could do that was the Leonyla.

“Pegistus swears that if we fortify that pass, we could hold it forever,” said Sotis. “He says we can starve the Medes out.”

“If they can cache supplies at the ports in Roa, they can resupply from there as well,” Motis said. “We don’t have the ships to protect our ports and blockade theirs too.”

“The Brael ambassador has said his king will give us ships,” said his brother, Drusis.

“And why would the Braelings do that?” Xikos asked. “That would be war with the Medes, which is what they have been trying to avoid, and war with Roa, to boot.”

“I don’t think the Braelings need to worry about being at war with Roa,” Motis pointed out, making Xikos scowl.

Drusis said what everyone was thinking. “No one needs fifty thousand men to conquer the Little Peninsula. The Braelings have to know that the Continent will be next.”

“I heard the Gants have promised troops as well,” said Motis. “Ferria leads the League of Seven this year, and her ambassador says they’ll send men and artillery. They all want the Medes stopped before they are sitting on Melenze’s doorstep.”

Xikos asked, “If we can hold the Leonyla forever, then why are the Medes attacking there?”

“That’s why they are moving so fast,” said Ion, who’d been sitting quietly with his feet propped on a bench, looking out the window at the darkening sky.

“They mean to get to the pass before we have time to assemble a defense,” Drusis told Xikos.

“Given the bickering today in the council chamber, they may well do it,” said Ion.

Yorn Fordad tipped the last of the stuffed grape leaves onto the Epidian ambassador’s plate. “You were as surprised as I was, then?”

“Utterly.”

“Melenze can’t be pleased,” said the Epidian.

“Ferria will be frantic.”

“I talked to her ambassador,” said Fordad. “Camoria says Ferria will leave her larger warships with the allied navy, but she’s calling the fast ships home. She’ll ask her merchants to bring their ships in as well. He’s afraid the merchants will refuse, take their ships out of the Middle Sea entirely.”

“Any word of the Roan ambassador?”

“None. They’ve arrested some of his retinue, but he and his junior man have disappeared into thin air.”

“I suppose we can all be thankful we are not the ambassador of Kimmer today.”

The Epidian agreed. “I cannot imagine a worse position to be in.”

“Nor I,” said Fordad.

The ambassador from Kimmer had been summoned to explain the passage of the Mede army through his country. He was still protected by his diplomatic position, but only just. That he seemed to have been left completely in the dark by his own government was all that kept Attolia from pitching him into her darkest dungeon.