Vera's Story(To Love and To Lie)

Chapter Twelve

Shortly after all the food had been eaten, Vera repeated her question.

Derek sighed, leaning back on his hands and staring lazily over at her. "Well, there's been almost a seven-year famine going on, if you hadn't noticed." He began, "and our main supplier of food, Fanera and Faneran merchants who travel here themselves, have been jacking up their prices sky high because they know we can't get the amounts of food we need from anyone else. Seeing as Wistera barely produces enough crops to feed its own population, Allessia is too dangerous to trade with at all, and Binerias is hoarding its food for some reason and refuses to trade their stores until the absolute last second, I don't think we're going to get any more good trades. You would think one of them would take the chance to swipe the food market out of Fanera's filthy rich hands, but no, Fanera scares everyone so much. After all, Fanera can feed its entire population and almost the entire kingdom of Duria without breaking a sweat. What food we grow ourselves is marked up and almost always goes directly to noble plates. And thus, we have an orphan problem. Parents not eating so that their kids can eat, entire families starving to death. It's not pretty."

"I knew our fields weren't producing as much as normal, but, a famine? A *Seven-Year* famine? Only on Duria?" Vera inquired.

"Yep, only Duria. All the other kingdoms still produce enough, more than enough, some of them."

"What's wrong with our fields?"

"Last I heard, people were saying that the farmers had overused the fields and only planted crops that took nutrients from the ground, and not planted enough that gave nutrients back to the ground, so the land is on vacation right now and is getting a ten year spa day. Why it's not fixed by now, I don't know." Derek answered. "That's all I heard. The master makes enough money from his establishment that he can feed and pay me and his other servants, and that's all I can afford to care about most days."

"Isn't there anything we can do? Shouldn't the other kingdoms be helping us? They're in an alliance with us, they're *supposed* to support us. Aren't there more jobs for the people so they can earn more money to pay for food?"

"I don't know what fantasy world you've been living in your whole life, but Binerias and Fanera practically aren't a part of the alliance anymore. Fanera acts like they're better than all the other kingdoms, which if we're speaking about food and money, they are. They may as well own us at this point, we depend on them for food. Binerias' royalty hasn't been seen in years, and they've sent a representative instead of coming themselves for the last five meetings of the royals hold annually. I'm surprised the alliance is still even valid, no one has sent us free aid since my grandfathers time."

"What about Allessia and Wistera? They both have land that they could lend us so that we could grow a couple extra crops to get us through the famine." Vera asked, frowning. The kingdoms were all Allie's, why weren't they helping each other?

"Allessia is doing this thing right now where they are trying to secretly but not so secretly have a huge boost in their innovation, and they're getting even *more* difficult to work with and extra full of tricks to get you to sign your life away. Wistera is not motivated to do anything more than it did for your wedding."

*So, basically, the kingdoms are all acting like silly children and snubbing each other for little to no reason.* Vera concluded.

"Well... That's a problem for another day. It's time for training." Vera decided not to dwell on the five kingdoms problems for now. She couldn't do anything while she was hiding from her family and looking for Damon, but she would most definitely be following this problem up once she was home with Damon.

"Speaking of Damon-" Tom began casually, pulling a sheet of paper out of one of his pockets.

"We weren't," Derek interjected, "No one said anything about Damon."

"Speaking of Damon," Tom repeated, ignoring Derek and focusing on Vera, "My friend found him, he is being held captive by the mob." Tom held the piece of paper out to her. "My friend said that if you wanted to introduce yourself to the mob there's a recruitment meeting in two weeks at a tea house called 'The Lilacs', so, that's some really good timing."

"Who's this friend?" Derek asked, "And how are they getting all of this information?"

"Why, he's in the mob, of course."

Derek opened his mouth again, then shut it, an irritated look on his face. "I should've known."

"Yes, yes you should've." Tom said, seeming smug even about this small victory.

"I assume you know for sure that you can trust this person?" Mira asked concernedly, "It wouldn't do to have him betray you after Vera's in there."

"Yes, I'm sure. This guy wouldn't lie to me even if his life depended on it. He's Allessian by birth, you see, and I've saved his life something like seven times now. He's all but pledged to be my permanent bodyguard/manservant/spy. So since he was already in the mob and I had hopes of getting back at them someday, I had him stay and spy on them for me. He also creates minor trouble whenever he can get away with it without blowing his cover. He never really liked them anyway."

Mira nodded, clearly satisfied with this answer.

*Funny how all the people I hear about who are in the mob don't want to be there.* Vera thought. "Will your informant be helping me?" She asked hopefully. Vera was getting the feeling that she would be going in there alone. Derek and Mira couldn't help because they were tied to the inn, and Tom couldn't go because he was an escaped prisoner of theirs.

"No, he will keep his distance. He needs to make sure that he isn't associated with you should you get caught. You'll be fine because you're the princess, they can ransom you and/or try and get information out of you. My friend would just be killed. That leads me to something else we have to discuss. Since now we know for sure Damon is with the mob. This isn't going to be a cakewalk, you're probably going to be scarred for the rest of your life. You're likely going to see a lot of things that you never ever wanted to see in your whole life, and you will probably have to do things you would never ever do normally. Just, be aware that the next few months are probably going to be the worst in your life." Tom warned, staring seriously over at Vera.

"Then the rest of my life will be easy as pie."Vera said, grinning as fiercely as she could manage. She wasn't saying that because she wasn't scared. Quite the opposite. In fact, Vera was petrified by her fear, she knew that bad things were going to happen and that it would probably be thirty times worse than what she was imagining, but if she stopped now she would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile, Damon might die, she would be a failure. She couldn't fall to the first big trial life had thrown at her, she just couldn't. So she grinned and pretended that grinning would cure her fear.

"I guess that's true," Tom agreed. "Well, anyway, time for training."