Amara sipped at her tea and nodded. "Then should I assume you wish the Crown to know that you want to be relieved of your command?"

Miles gave her a flat stare of shock. Then he said, "Of course not."

"Very well."

"Who would you trust with it, if not me?" Miles demanded.

"I only thought-"

"What? That I couldn't handle it?" Miles snorted. "No. I'll think of something." He turned back to stare at the sand table. "But there's a major problem we've got to address."

Amara listened, stepping to the table beside him.

"Kalare and his forces aren't hard to contain. If he moves too far from his stronghold, we'll crush them or else move in and take the city behind them. We have the numbers for it." He nodded toward the table's "north" end. "But the Canim are another story. Since they were thrown back from the Elinarch, they haven't pitched in on Kalare's side, but they haven't been fighting against him, either, and their presence secures his northern flank."

"While his presence secures the Canim's southern flank in turn."

"Exactly," Miles said. "That's bad enough. But if they redeploy to actually support Kalare, it's going to change the balance of power here dramatically."

"That's one of the reasons I'm here," Amara told him. "Gaius sent me to find out what you need to finish off Kalare."

"One of two things. Either we commit more-dependable-forces here in the southern theater and drive to a decisive victory, or we neutralize the Canim in the northern theater so that we can hit Kalare from two sides at once."

Amara grimaced and nodded. "I suspect that will more or less be the subject of the council at the Elinarch."

Miles nodded grimly, and scowled at the miniature forces deployed on the sand table. "Bloody rebels. Bloody, crowbegotten Canim. If that new captain, Rufus Scipio, was all the rumors say he is, you'd think he'd have driven the dogs back into the bloody sea by now. He probably just got lucky."