Chapter 533: Schemes and Celebrations (1)
"Dragon eggs?" Lyan blinked. "We barely have chickens."
"Exactly." Wilhelmina’s smile was all blade, no polish. "They’ll waste weeks chasing it. Meanwhile, their purse strings tighten and their men stay home guarding empty nests."
"Why dragon eggs?" Alice asked, incredulous but curious.
A giggle preceded Josephine, Belle, and Alina squeezing together into a single doorway like conspiring siblings. Josephine popped an exaggerated curtsey. "Because a lie should sparkle," she said. "Goblins and grain tithes bore nobles. Ancient reptiles get them frothing."
Belle twirled a copper cage in her fingers; inside sat a plump pigeon with faintly glowing runes across its feathers. "We enchanted a flock of gossip birds," she announced proudly. "They’ll perch on city balconies and coo hints about the eggs, complete with scandal—apparently Baron Roston wants to hatch one for a pet." She winked. "Let envy do the rest."
Alina produced a length of parchment covered in doodles—some questionable—and waved it like a banner. "Also drafted bawdy poems mocking any noble who ’plays with dragon shells.’ I’ll slip them into taverns."
Lyan massaged his temple. "Remind me to build a bigger dungeon for whoever taught you strategic slander."
Josephine perched on the edge of the table, legs swinging, grinning like a fox that’d found the henhouse key. "You said deter, we deliver. Nothing scares an ambitious lord faster than the possibility he looks ridiculous."
Surena’s eyes flicked to Wilhelmina. "Their schemes create distraction but not resolution."
Wilhelmina nodded. "Correct. Hence real measures." She unrolled one last parchment—hand-drawn diagrams of a supply caravan. "We leak a rumour that this week’s convoy carries Wyvern glass—very expensive, very fragile. The nobles drool, send spies. Our convoy actually holds timber and salted pork but travels with an escort of thirty veterans and two illusionists." She rapped the parchment. "First scout arrow loosed, the illusions bloom—makes it look like a hundred soldiers. Spies will retreat and report inflated numbers."