Heir of Beasts

Ch. 4.5- A Roze by Any Other Name

"Our biggest challenge is food," Sholu says didactically. He's loving this, I realize; sitting at the head of the table, every eye in the room on him, every word he utters mistaken for prophecy. If I'm honest, it would please me immensely if what he said were exponentially stupider. He's good at this, like he's been doing it all his life. They work together with a convivial familiarity my family was never able to master, though we all shared the same blue blood.

They're thieves, whores, and liars. Cowards, anarchists, mercenaries. And now, by some mad twist of fate, I'm their queen. Esaroth Ysana called me his lady and made a chivalric promise to defend my honor, like he was a knight of old and I, the damsel tucking a handkerchief into his pocket as a sign of favor. Even if Lord Shirarka is right and he's merely taking any excuse he can to pick up a sword, having a vasayastisi volunteer as my champion is absurd. I wish I had a coin that I could flip to decide whether I should laugh or cry.

"Throwing bread at their heads, as Lord Ysana so eloquently put it, won't fix everything, but food is a major stabilizer. It will lessen the pressure and lengthen the fuse, so to speak. The great news," Sholu says, tapping his hand against the wooden desk for emphasis, "is that we have access to import sources that the Amarins never did. Dogmatic inflexibility and an arrogant refusal to engage regimes that they considered distasteful cut us off from the south and its abundance for decades. The Macchonese waterways have been discounted due to aggressive piracy, and Yukkaita's so hostile that they bristle at us transporting goods through neighboring Brekka, let alone taking the more direct route through their own land. We've been stuck dragging everything down through the Suumari flatlands, or getting it from the far east via Kama, which has set absurd tariffs knowing we'd rather pay them than dare the lawless southern seas." He looks so confident at the helm, so natural. It infuriates me.

"Well, we don't have to work within those limited parameters anymore. The Yukkaiti will engage with us, as will the Macchonese pirazarin," Sholu says, referring to the pirate-barons ruling the southern waters. Men and women my family would have shot on sight, now apparently our allies. "And if we can move food through Macchon and Yukkaita, our supply issues are cut by half. It won't be enough to put a feast on every table, but it will be enough to keep our people from starving. The bigger issue, really, is distribution; how can we get the food where it's needed before it spoils, and do so consistently?"

"Have we considered using the noraya's distribution channels to get food out?" Rillian Aidha asks, looking contemplative. They have networks in place that are startlingly efficient, they have existing contacts beyond our borders- like you said, why build something new when we have perfectly good infrastructure already in place?"

"The Shotori are ours, but what of the rest of them?" A man in a teal suit just as ugly as Sholu said it would be asks. Lord Taban, I presume. "For this to work, we'd need at the very least the Chalnori noraya covering the northwest. Ideally, we'd have the cooperation of the Asrakali noraya and access to their southern networks as well."

Lord Ysana looks thoughtful for a moment before his eyes light up. He leans forward and catches the eye of a woman sitting several seats down. "Dakara," he asks, "you still have contacts within the Chalnori Noraya, don't you?"

"Of course, pet," A dark eyed, dark haired woman, obviously not Shikkan by birth, says. Her lips are full and red and draw out every syllable in a pleasing way. "My half-brother is the nordeme's right hand." I snort at the reminder that the noraya have given their leaders a version of our own titles. Nordeme, nordizsa.

"Jana Semiroth is a reasonable man," the rosy-faced woman called Dakara pronounces in a mild accent- Brekkan, I think. "He will treat with us if we make it worth his while."