Back at the sunlit Iris Flower Manor once more, Angel dealt with the tasks that had piled up over the past few days, then returned to the south-facing suite reserved for her as the lady of the house. She sat down at her desk and took out some stationery and a fountain pen, but did not begin writing right away.
It was already early November. Even without the frequent dark clouds over Backlund, the winery was finding it difficult to get enough sunlight.
To keep the war from affecting the harvest, the winery had picked its late-harvest grapes ahead of schedule and made them into a new batch of wine, now stored in the cellar. The workers, left with nothing to do, were allowed to stay at the manor and even bring their families over. Had Angel not ordered the butler to buy large quantities of grain and store them on the estate at the start of the war, everyone would have gone hungry by now.
This act of kindness had also earned her a fine reputation among the winery workers. Only after asking did Angel learn that, apart from Klein's Meige Manor and Councilor Macht's Elk Manor, most wineries and holiday villas in the suburbs had dismissed their workers and servants, retaining only a handful to keep up appearances. This made survival even harder for those poor people in Backlund, where unemployment was already soaring.
Thinking of the war, Angel looked up again at the map of the North Continent hanging on the wall. Amid its markings for counties, cities, and borders, two black patches like scars covered the northern slopes of the Ammantha Mountain Range in Winter County and the coastal stretch from Conston to Limon in Midseashire.
They represented the two main directions of Feysac's offensive.
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