Orders came down quick after the summit. No rest, no warm meal. Cedar Company—Shale's company—and a dozen others were dispatched to the outer reaches of the empire. Scattered like seeds in the wind. Their mission: forage, barter, beg if they had to. Feed the starving empire. Feed the Solokhians too, now, thanks to the emperor’s mercy.

  Shale read the orders twice, just to be sure he wasn’t misunderstanding. He wasn’t.

  The newly conquered humans would be fed first.

  His men grumbled about it as they marched eastward, into the maenad lands. The dryad regiments headed elsewhere, toward the human towns and broken farmlands, but Cedar Company had been chosen to deal with the tree-folk. The maenads.

  “Blighted waste of time,” grumbled Sergeant Hawthorn, trudging alongside Shale as the company followed the winding forest path. “Maenads don’t need karmata. A hundred karmata could buy enough grain to feed a family for a month, but these blighters wouldn’t know what to do with the stuff. They’ve never used it. They stay far, far away from settled places. They don’t trade in markets—they don’t even visit towns.”

  A murmur of agreement rippled through the ranks. Some cursed, others laughed bitterly. One or two—rotbrains if there ever were any—still wore hopeful expressions, muttering about how the emperor would see the empire through. Shale bit his tongue.

  “What’s your take, lieutenant?” Hawthorn asked, eyes narrowing. “You think His Majesty’s got a plan? Or are we just hauling our sorry hides out here to scrounge for bark and berries?”

  Shale exhaled slow. He couldn’t afford to speak his mind fully—not with ears listening for anything they could report back to the officers or the priests. There were still those in Cedar Company who thought questioning the newly anointed Emperor Phiniaster was blasphemy.

  “I think the emperor sees something we don’t,” Shale said carefully. “Doesn’t mean I understand it. Doesn’t mean I like it.”

  Hawthorn grunted. “You’d make a fine politician, sir.”

  The forests thickened as they marched deeper into maenad lands. The trees grew taller here, their branches woven tight like cathedral arches. Sunlight filtered down in golden shafts. Somewhere above, the chatter of creatures echoed—a different kind of life. Wilder.

  Shale felt it in his bones. This was maenad territory.

  When they finally stumbled upon the first signs of life—a half-hidden village strung between the branches of giant trees—Shale called for a halt. The maenads descended like shadows, swinging down from the canopy with lazy grace. Their eyes were too bright, too glassy, their movements too loose, as if the breeze itself carried them.

  “Dryads,” one of them said, blinking slow. Her fur was bluish-gray, her tail twitching lazily behind her. Her words slurred, thick with the haze of intoxication. “Welcome back to the forest.”

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  Shale nodded, stepping forward with his palms open. “We come seeking trade.”

  “Trade?” The maenad laughed, spinning in a slow circle. “What could you give us, leaf-brother? We've no use for your shiny coins.”

  Shale offered a gentle smile, lowering his voice as if coaxing a wary animal. “No, I imagine you wouldn’t. But it’s not trade in the old sense. We need food. For the empire.”

  The maenad blinked, the grin fading into confusion. “Food? Why?”

  Shale hesitated, feeling the weight of the moment, the childlike innocence—or ignorance—staring back at him. He softened his tone further. “The war is over.”

  That earned a murmur from the maenads overhead, shifting in the branches like restless birds. The first maenad’s brow furrowed, her glassy eyes struggling to focus.

  “Over?” she echoed, as if tasting the word. “No more fire in the skies? No more screaming at night?”

  “None,” Shale confirmed softly. “It’s over. Livadia won.”

  The maenad’s tail flicked, her mouth working soundlessly. She glanced at her kin, who stared back with wide, unfocused eyes. “And the humans?” she asked faintly.

  “They are… conquered,” Shale said, choosing his words with care. “But they starve. We are asked to feed them.”

  The maenad blinked, slow and ponderous, like a child processing bad news. “Feed them?”

  Shale inclined his head, voice low and patient. “Yes. They are part of the empire now. The emperor has ordered it.”

  For a moment, she just swayed, as if the idea were too large to grasp. Finally, she giggled—a thin, hollow sound—and plucked a ripe fruit from the vine. “We have food,” she said. “Enough. But grow more? Why would we do that?”

  Shale’s men shifted uneasily behind him.

  Shale crouched slightly and let out a deep sigh, meeting her eyes with exaggerated patience. “Because if you give food now, and more people eat, then fewer people cry. And if fewer cry, then fewer scream. And isn’t that better for dreaming?”

  The maenad blinked slowly, clearly mulling this over with all the sobriety of a berry-wine philosopher. “Fewer screams... better dreaming.” She nodded solemnly, as if he had delivered a profound truth.

  “We don’t need karmata,” another maenad chimed in, her voice distant, dreamy. “What do we need? Forgetfulness. Sleep. That’s what we need.”

  Shale saw the signs now—the erratic laughter, the swaying bodies, the faint scent of burning herbs and alchemical brews in the air. The maenads were masters of alchemy, of potion and concoction, and they had turned their own talents against themselves. They dulled their senses with their brews, clouding their minds with elixirs designed to make them forget the screaming skies, the flames, the war that had pressed even here. All of them were inebriated, lost in a self-made haze to numb whatever scars the war had carved into their hearts.

  “We’ll take what we can,” Shale said quietly. “But the empire may need more soon.”

  The first maenad swayed, leaning in close, her breath heavy with the scent of fermented berries. “Come back with more of the purple grass,” she whispered. “Bring us dreams, dryad. Bring us dreams, and we’ll make your empire bloom.”

  Shale turned back toward his men, eyes hard. “Load the food,” he ordered. “Take what they’ll give.”

  As they worked, Shale glanced back at the maenads lounging beneath the trees, laughing at things only they could see.

  The war had left no one untouched.

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