He swallowed nervously and nodded, his eyes darting between the five of them.
"Cohort strength," she said. "Exact numbers that you saw with your own eyes at the quarry. No guesses, just exactly what you saw."
"Two cohorts in place before I left, " he said at once. "At least sixty in each. One construct handler for every ten lycans and I know that a coven team of eight moved in last night."
"Good. Supply schedule," Ann said. "How often do they send out for supplies for food and water?"
"Every other day at dusk," he said. "Water comes by wagon from the south spring because vehicles are too noisy and they don't want to draw attention to their location. Food comes in by packhorses from the Lycan Kings territories. They keep the wagons at the south side of the Quarry."
"Construct count observed," Ann said. "Only what you saw standing."
"Seven" he said as his face went gray. "Two tall, five small. One with a broken arm."
Ann shifted to the older man.
"Your turn, three questions and three answers."
He lifted his chin like he wanted to spit at her and then he didn't.
"What's the handler routine at night," she said. "Do they sleep near the cages or under cover?"
"Under cover," he said. "They rotate two awake inside the mouth and one at each vent." He squinted at her. "They're lazy when they think the coven isn't watching."
"Coven command signs," she said. "Describe one. Not words, with your hands. We'll train our people to spot it."
He lifted his fingers and drew a small shape in the air. It looked like a circle missed on purpose, gap at the top, then a twist of the wrist.
"That opens cages. Sometimes," he said with a sinister grin. "Sometimes it opens men."
Maeve bared her teeth and growled, but Ann didn't even blink.
"The vent placement," she said. "What's the distance between the two?"
"Forty paces down the west face," he said. "Twenty up the far slope. The climb is a bitch though…just so you know."
She turned to Tomas last.
"And three questions for you," she said, her tone a little softer, "You can refuse one if it will pull a word from you that we shouldn't hear."
He nodded, grateful for the offer.
"Thank you."
"Who chooses which wolves become constructs," she asked. "A single handler? A coven lead? Or Ely himself."
"The woman with bone rings and a boy with eyes like ash," he said. "Sometimes they ask the King if he's there. Sometimes they don't."
"Do they test with brands or cuts before they change a person?" she asked. "If so, where."
He flinched. "They cut the sternum and the ribs. They draw a broken circle at the center. If the skin burns without smoke, they take you."
Ann kept her voice flat.
"Skip the last part if it risks speaking a word aloud."
He nodded and shut his mouth without protest.
"Enough," Adam said behind her, voice low. "We're done in here."
By the time they left the barn again the sun had risen higher than Ann expected.The outpost looked like a machine finally moving at the pace it was built for. Ann passed one of the Vanguard team leaders and pressed two orders into his hands.
"You need to start holding drills at the dry creek bed every hour until dusk," she said. "No shouting, no bragging, just solid practice runs. I don't want echoes running down the valley and alerting them to our plans."
"Yes, Your Majesty." He saluted.
Adam matched her stride back to the table and the argument that he was holding back rolled from his aura as obviously as if he had spoken it out loud.
"I'm not calling this a full offensive," he said, grudgingly. "Not yet, but I want to."
"Good," Ann said. "Because it isn't a full offensive. It's a cut and run to make them bleed on ground that we choose, just as we agreed. Then we drag them where we want them and cut them again."
His shoulders seemed to ease a fraction and Maeve stretched, satisfied.
"That's much better. You're more involved and keeping him steady, a good solid leash on the big bad alphas rage. If you keep this up we might actually live to name the pups."
"And how exactly are you contributing to this?"
"Are you serious?!" Maeve gasped in mock outrage, "I am providing the legendary wit and sarcasm and comic relief that you two clearly need."
Ann ignored her and reached for the tablet that the liaison slid under her hand.
"Write this for the council," she told the woman. "Two days of staged pressure. List the mock pushes and the deployment maps. Don't put the creek bed on paper. I'll say that one out loud to their faces."
"Understood," the liaison said.
A runner from the city arrived mid-sentence, gasping.
"Message from Eva," he said, holding out a strip. "She says the ward team can replicate the dampening marks on the plates by nightfall if the blacksmith doesn't throw a hammer at her. She'll be back at the palace in a few hours once she's finished in the city center."
"Tell the blacksmith I'll stand between him and Eva," Adam said. "He can throw a hammer at me first."
The runner looked like he wasn't sure if that was a joke but he nodded anyway and sprinted back toward the road.
Ann took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The plan sat in her hands now, and it looked fairly solid. She glanced at Adam and he met her eyes without flinching.
"This doesn't end the war," she said.
"I know," he sighed.
"It might save a town though," she said.
He nodded. "That's enough. It's a start at least to let them know that we aren't going to sit back and do nothing."
They stood there for a few minutes in the middle of the yard with noise drifting over them from every side. Duty and instinct still pulled her in opposite directions.
"You should eat," Adam said, because he would never stop saying it.
"After I send the council note," Ann replied, because she would never stop answering his demands without making him wait.
He grunted, then lifted his chin toward the barn.
"I'll have the prisoners moved to the inner cells while we wait for secure transport. I want them where I can get to them without riding an hour if something changes."
"Do it," Ann said. "And Adam."
He paused.
"If you get a clean shot at a handler," she said. "Take it."
"I plan to." he said, as his eyes warmed with something dark and primal as his wolf rumbled happily.
They broke apart without touching and he moved toward the tower stairs to send a final set of orders down the line.
She bent back over the tablet to put the day in words that would hold up under scrutiny in court and in her memory.
They had two days to teach the enemy where to look, two days to set the ground work and two days to hit them where it hurt the most.
"Tick tock," Maeve said, amused and impatient. "Let's make them choke on their own timing of their patrols."