"And they haven't stopped it yet?"

"I'm afraid not, Minister."

That was bad news. They hardly had time to celebrate one obstacle overcome before the next disaster struck. Well, it would be Tenanrild's problem. She was responsible for transportation and that made her indirectly responsible for forcing the population to stay where they lived. Olvar helped out with armed muscle, as did Hepaten. Mairild wasn't too happy about the last, but they were spread thin and the latest recruits weren't trained enough to take up soldiers' duty yet.

"You may leave. Send messengers to Hasselden. They are to continue rebuilding the fleet, but if they run out of timber shipbuilding will have to stop until the plague is contained." Mairild waited for the courtier to nod understanding. "These are orders signed by Minister de Dagd." She handed the papers over and waited for the woman to leave.

The day could have begun better. Now she had to send message to Roadbreak by farwriter. The plague couldn't be allowed to spread into Vimarin, but using the farwriter for her message spelled danger for her personally. Speed was more important than secrecy though, and she needed the magehealers in Ri Khi to know of the invisible killer that was headed their way.

The plague had started in Keen. It was their responsibility to warn others now. For once they had the luxury of doing so while treating a disease safely at home, or rather, the outworlder medics did the treating. Keen had no knowledge sufficient enough in those matters.

Mairild hurried to the wing set apart for New Sweden. They were the only sky kingdom here in force now, and they supplied help to Keen in a scale the federation had never done. That made them Keen's most important ally at the moment, and so the council had agreed to temporarily cede them two floors of the Imperial Castle's east wing.

Anita Kirchenstein-Yui was there for once. The last days she had occupied the rooms assigned for her and her staff more and more often. Maybe she had finally agreed that her primary task was that of an envoy, or maybe she'd been directly ordered to by her queen. No matter what, it made Mairild's work easier.

Mairild was on her way to beg. With Tenanrild halfway to Krante on a mission to sort things out after Trindai's forced acquisition of most anything on wheels. The grand caravan and the sudden need to feed Vimarin and Erkateren alike had drained Keen's resources of vehicles to almost nothing. She suspected the general would even have forced carts into his use hadn't speed been a priority of his.

Which was the reason she was taking the steps two at a time to meet with the outworlder envoy. The sky kingdom had a seemingly endless supply of those hover craft. Since they had started handling the daily operations of the sky port one or two of the incredibly fast vehicles had arrived in Verd each day. If Mairild could only lay her hands on three or four of them on Tenanrild's behalf.

They should able to exchange information with the client states on the Ming Peninsula, and more importantly, with the isolated villages in marshy Levs. If what Mairild had heard was true those hover crafts could run on water which would make those marshes open fields to traverse rather than a deadly maze.

She ran on, paused and straightened her clothes and strode into the New Sweden quarters as if she'd just happened to stroll in that direction. Time for begging. She'd grown skilled at that art the last eightdays.