Free The Carnelian Tyranny: Savino’s Revenge by Cheryl Koevoet

to a flourished asterisk at the center of the map, she bent down closer to examine the details. Scrawled in beautiful penmanship was the ancient spelling for Croc etta.
    “Now, imagine each of the ten capital cities is connected to the city at the opposite end.”
    With his forefinger, he drew four bisecting lines across the map between each of the cities. “If you drew lines between them, it would look something like a star. Crocetta is situated at the exact point where all the kingdoms intersect. In other words, at the point where they all c ross .”
    “ Okay…”
    “Now, name the two western kingdoms. And no peeking on the map!”
    She turned around, facing the other direction. “Bandaline, and—oh, I forgot the other one—”
    “It starts with a T.”
    “Trampoline?” She smiled sheepi shly.
    “Close; it’s Tantaline. And the two eastern king doms?”
    Marisa sighed. “I can’t remember those at all.”
    After weeks of lessons about the ten kingdoms, she was starting to feel overwhelmed. The countries seemed to blend together, and she had a hard time keeping them all stra ight.
    “Your Highness, those two are the most impor tant.”
    She stared at him helple ssly.
    “Turn around and look at the map,” he answered finally. “The two eastern kingdoms are Drychen and My chen.”
    “They were right on the tip of my to ngue!”
    “Of course they were,” he added drolly, rolling up the map and placing an even larger scroll on the table. “Now, you have already seen much of these lands, but you may have forgotten some of the regional names. Let us see if you can identify them corre ctly.”
    He rolled out the parchment and placed lead paperweights on either side, revealing a detailed map of the Crocine Kin gdom.
    “Sho w me.”
    “This is Castle Beauriél here.” She pointed to a dot on the map. “There’s the lake where we found the Wounded Hearts, so the Styrian Ice Caves must be somewhere here in these mountains.” She traced her finger along the main road between Crocetta and Abb adon.
    “Good, very good.”
    “This is the Mychen Forest where those horrible beasts chased us and I’m guessing that this green area here is the forest where you and Darian found me.” Her finger circled back around towards Crocetta in a wide arc. “This must be Andrésis right here.”
    “Excellent. You have correctly navigated Crocetta proper. Now, your task for this evening will be to study this map, and the other one, memorizing all the place names, roads and landmarks by tomorrow. Do you have any quest ions?”
    “Yes,” she replied, staring at him pointedly. “How is any of this supposed to help me rule the cou ntry?”
    He smiled. “If one is to rule a country successfully, then one must have a solid knowledge of its people. And how does one obtain this knowledge? By studying the land where the people live. Land is everything to a man and, for many of us, it is the most valuable asset we will ever own. If you know the land, you have the edge. Know the land, know the people, have the p ower.”
    “Got it. I t hink.”
    She gazed back down at the map, studying it carefully for the next hour. Concentrating on the place names, she retraced their entire journey from Andrésis to Abbadon and back to Crocetta. Arrie rolled up the parchment, satisfied with her prog ress.
    “Your Highness, I shall have both maps delivered to your chambers, so please remember to study them again this eve ning.”
    A soft knock at the door interrupted him. It was his mother standing in the doorway. “I see that it is time for your protocol lesson,” he said with a wink. “From the best teacher in the kingdom, I might add.”
    Baroness Cinzia Macario smiled at him. The graceful, salt-and-pepper-haired woman waited patiently as her son gathered the maps together and placed them into the ba sket.
    “Good day, Your Highness,” Arrie said, nodding and bowing. Carefully heaving the basket up onto his shoulder, he stopped briefly