The envoy took Hajin's audience in the registry hall an hour after the horn, seated across the map table with wine he had brought himself, since it would have been rude to drink a besieged town's stock.
He was good at his work, complimenting the walls, the patrols, the smell of actual cooking in the streets. None of it carried a single note of surprise, as if reports had told him everything and he had come to confirm the inventory.
Hajin let him talk, watching the man's eyes catalogue the room while Ash slept in the crook of his arm.
"My lady's position is simple," the envoy finally arrived at the point, turning his cup slowly by the rim, "you sit on more gold than any vault in the kingdom, and every road it could travel is currently owned by people who want you starved. She finds that arrangement wasteful."
"And her solution comes with her banner on it, I'm guessing."
