"Should I celebrate early because you managed to get a knight of the Knights' Order on your side?"
Ingrid sounded delighted as they headed back.
"You should say, 'Their rehabilitation is starting to show results,'" Annan corrected her.
"Do you really want to take them in?"
"They didn't hurt any of my subjects—" Annan walked along a path through the flower fields. The sunflower seeds in this batch were poor, producing heads no bigger than a palm. They were fine to look at, but forget eating them. You'd starve faster trying to fill up on them. "I mean, my people. The people here don't hate them either. Making skilled people do manual labor is a waste."
Those who deserved hatred had already paid with their lives in Atonement.
"But they're members of the Knights' Order. They have a complicated web of connections behind them."
"Then let their families pay to redeem them. They can work for us and pay us too."
Abby, waiting inside the door, opened it for Annan and Ingrid. "Let's keep them in 'labor reform' for a few more months... Star-Moon Bay has four or five thousand workers on the job every day. We can never have too much defense."
The Rikaner Kingdom had twenty-four counties. A few days ago, the New Origin Ones had observed the Rat Tide spreading into the far northern county, leaving fewer than three counties between it and the Royal Capital... In less than three weeks, the people of the Royal Capital would see the overwhelming Rat Tide appear on the horizon.
One small glimmer of hope was that the New Origin Ones had spotted people migrating ahead of the Rat Tide. Like Annan, they were trying to wake a drunk from his stupor.
With Annan and Olmedo courting them, the Diatra