Chapter 18-Dividing Supplies

Odett’s POV

  Nolan divided every supply into thirds. His answer looked fair until Cassian pointed out that the smallest community lived underground and did not need heating stones. Their healers needed twice as much medicine because a fever had spread through the tunnels.

  “Equal shares are easy to defend,” Nolan said with a conflicted expression as he studied the ledger.

  “No one can claim we favored one community,” he added uncertainly.

  “The underground settlement will receive stones it cannot use while sick people wait for medicine,” Cassian replied.

  “That is equal waste, not equal protection,” he added pointedly.

  Joshy moved the unused heating stones toward the northern village, where several homes had damaged roofs. I shifted part of the medicine toward the tunnels but refused to move all of it because the third community was four days from the nearest healer.

  “They have not reported an illness,” Nolan argued with a doubtful frown.

  “They also cannot replace anything quickly if one begins,” I reminded him while marking the travel time beside their request.

  “Need includes what happens after the supply vehicles leave,” I added.

  The instructor listened without correcting us. When we finished, she asked each team to identify what information could change its decision. Weather, population, storage conditions, travel time, and the severity of the fever covered most of our page.

  “You were given enough information to make a decision,” she explained with a serious expression.

  “You weren’t given enough to know it would stay the right decision,” she continued.

  “You have to act before you’re certain, and you have to admit what you still don’t know,” she said.

  I kept thinking about Dad sending help to the coven before he had every answer. Sam couldn’t wait for every border to open, either. They had to make a choice, knowing the next report might prove them wrong. It was easier to understand that in a classroom than when I pictured Sam out there.

  ‘You dislike decisions that cannot be finished,’ Lorilie observed.

  ‘I dislike being wrong,’ I corrected silently.

  ‘Those are not the same thing,’ Lorilie replied.

  She was right, which made her amusement worse. I copied our final supply plan neatly and added a review date after the next fictional weather report. If certainty was unavailable, the least a leader could do was create a reason to look again.

  The younger students faced a missing-child exercise that afternoon. Three witnesses had seen the child in different parts of a simulated town. Zerina trusted the guard at the gate, while Zander wanted to follow the loudest witness. Sean asked where each person had stood, and Gaven moved their markers onto the map.

  Zerina placed her marker at the gate. Zander set his beside the market witness, then leaned over to see what Sean was doing. Sean left his own marker off the board until Gaven finished checking the sight lines.

  “The market witness could not see the alley,” Sean explained with patient focus as he moved the wooden figures into position.

  “The guard could see the gate,” Zerina argued with a frustrated frown.

  “He could also see anyone crossing the square,” Gaven pointed out thoughtfully.

  “He never said the child passed through the gate,” he added.

  Zander stared at the map before moving his marker toward the abandoned shops between the three reported locations.

  “If everyone saw a different part of her route, she could have ended here,” he said with unusual seriousness.

  They found the wooden child marker inside a shop between the reported locations. No witness had lied. Each had seen only part of the route. The twins argued about whose idea had led them there, but Sean looked pleased that they had listened to all three people.

  “We passed,” Zander announced with a proud grin after the instructor ended the exercise.

  “After you tried to question the loudest witness twice,” Zerina reminded him with lingering irritation.

  “Confidence deserves investigation,” Zander defended himself with an innocent expression.

  “Confidence is not accuracy,” Sean corrected calmly.

  Gaven rolled their map before the argument could begin again. Their assessment stayed at the Academy, and they knew nothing about the conflicting paths at the coven. The resemblance existed only because incomplete information caused the same problems everywhere.

  Back at the castle, Dad gave us one last redacted sheet. It showed when the team had begun its inventory and placed the report in protected custody, with every name and finding removed. I could see the care he had taken with the boundary, even if I still wished he trusted me beyond it.

  “List the missing administrative information without filling it with theories,” Dad instructed in a firm tone.

  Joshy marked the exact time of the community’s disappearance as unknown. I added the reason for the incomplete earlier patrol record and the cause of the communication failure to the unresolved column. None of those entries told us what happened inside the coven, and Dad collected the sheet before the restricted report was opened.

  Lorilie moved restlessly inside my mind, but even she could not argue with the boundary. The investigators had their work, and we had ours. Knowing a sealed report existed did not give us the right to know what it contained.

  Sam sent a message before dinner. Dad shared the part about the new procedure: the team could compare later reports more reliably if every approval and exclusion appeared in the record. I looked for a line addressed to me, though I knew Dad had read the message first and would have told me if there had been one.

  “Where is his team now?” I asked.

  Dad’s gaze remained on the travel seal.

  “They are taking the route toward King Arnald’s palace,” he answered.

  “How long before they arrive?” Mom asked with a worried expression.

  “Three days, if the final crossing remains open,” Dad answered tensely.

  Uncle Orian studied the route and released a tired breath.

  “Edric’s border,” he said.

  Alpha King Edric had already delayed Sam’s team more than any other ruler. He still refused vampire representatives and had not accepted the shared travel procedure.

  “He granted Sam permission,” Dad said in a controlled tone.

  “The rest of the team is still waiting for an answer,” he added.

  We had spent days trying to keep the team together at the borders. Edric could still make Sam cross alone. I stared at his territory until the map blurred, searching for a road Sam could take back. There had to be somewhere he could turn around before it was too late.