Brigitte could not believe it. She had accepted it when she had been told that the army was not doing as well as had been hoped in the countryside. That, after all, had not seemed like much of a problem. She had sent reinforcements - had gone herself into battle - and then, for a little while, it had seemed, once more, like the Empire was guaranteed victory.

After that, she was not sure what had gone wrong. They had been on the brink of victory, she was sure, and then ... and then they had been ambushed, had walked right into it. The Empire's forces had been decimated; not completely - she still would not admit that they had lost - but badly enough that she, after heavy deliberation, and relying heavily on advice from several Captains, had given the order to pull out.

It might have been salvageable, she thought, had her Captain of the Blue not been slain. But the offensive in the countryside relied heavily on the army, no less after the other forces had been sent in, and she knew, however reluctantly, that it could not continue, leaderless. She had appointed another almost as soon as they had returned to the capital, but that would not have been enough, in the field. She had given up - had given in - and she was not happy about it.

She was so unhappy, in fact, that she had spent the months since coming up with a plan even grander, more ambitious, than her last. She had been unable to find her mother's killer. Well, had been; the Seekers informed her that, this time, they had a genuine suspect. She had been unable to defeat and assimilate those blasted tribes in the countryside.

Fine.

She had moved on.

She was going to invade the mainland.