Uther began making alterations to his tactics to include the additional element of the teewah riders. I left the battle planning to Uther and only checked in on him periodically. I was focusing mainly on the issues of civilian administration and agriculture. I summoned the Theran ambassador for an audience and we talked about how they might assist us in meeting our food needs while we focused on destroying the Caeda fields so that we could restore our grain production. The Theran ambassador was a woman named Gail, who was quick to share with me her delight to discover that Aseron had a queen for its new ruler. Theran, she informed me, was a kingdom that had been ruled by queens for over a thousand years, and it was because of this fact, they believed, that the kingdom had experienced centuries of peaceful prosperity.

"I think it has more to do with the other kingdoms not wishing to jeopardize their food supply," I countered.

"You're probably right, but it was a wise decision by our predecessors to focus on making us an agricultural powerhouse and we've been benefiting from it ever since."

"That's true, if you have a specialty that others depend on it will insulate you from any threat they might pose, I'm hoping to do the same for Aseron but we're not blessed with natural resources so I'm having a hard time figuring out how we would make ourselves invaluable to the other kingdoms."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something, but if you come up with something agricultural we're going to have a problem."

"We don't have your warm climate and rich soil, so there's no need for you to be concerned about that."

I was able to get the Theran ambassador to agree to increase their agricultural exports to us until our grain production was back to the level it was at before the cultivation of the Caeda flowers began. I was also able to secure a reduction in what we owed them by once again offering to take in their dwarven refugees.

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By offering to take in the dwarves it was looking like I was going to be able to reduce our indebtedness to all of the kingdoms that were our creditors, leaving us with more funds available to us from what we confiscated from the nobles. Having funds available to spend meant that I could pursue ambitions that I had for the kingdom, namely the social and economic reforms that I believed were necessary to empower the citizens which in turn would empower the kingdom. First and foremost I wanted to make it possible for every child in the kingdom to receive an education. This was important to me because were it not for all of the books of my father's that I had read during our time in the Northlands I would be useless as queen. The nobles had denied the children of ordinary citizens the opportunity to receive an education for the purpose of keeping them subservient. Of all the horrible things that the nobles had done this was, in my opinion, the worst, and I was more motivated to address this unfairness that the nobles had inflicted upon the citizens than I was any other. The other big change that I wished to make was to change the livestock breeding practices of the peasant farmers. At present the farmers in the kingdom raised livestock primarily for the nobles and their retainers, whose meat of choice was beef. Raising cows for beef was expensive, time consuming and labor intensive because they ate a lot and bred slow. The peasant farmers would be better off if they kept cows primarily for milk and focused on breeding chickens and pigs for meat, that way they would produce enough meat for themselves and to sell.

But all of that came later, for now our entire focus needed to be on the Volstaff invasion. Three weeks after our audience the Dranii ambassador returned to the palace to inform us that they had delivered the news of Esmeralda's ouster to the king of Volstaff and they had succeeded in convincing him to take of advantage of this period of transition and uncertainty within the kingdom by having his army march on the capital.

"Are they going to march through the southern pass?" I asked the ambassador.

"We told them that it was the best way to enter your kingdom and that we'll make preparations to assist their army as they make their way through our kingdom in the direction of the southern pass."

"Then everything is in place."

"Yes, everything is in place."

I called for Uther as soon as the ambassador left.

"Start moving the army, Volstaff are making their move."