The silence in the Planning Bureau was heavy enough to register on a pressure gauge.
Lady Millicent Croft sat with her hands folded over her closed tally-book. She stared down at the blueprint that covered the floor like a huge white carpet.
Her steel glasses had slipped down to the middle of her nose. But she had forgotten to push them back up.
“Forty cubic miles of seawater,” Millicent said. Her voice dropped into the terrifying whisper she used when a clerk discovered a shortfall in the grain reserves.
“One cubic mile of water contains one trillion one hundred and one billion gallons. Forty cubic miles is forty-four trillion gallons.”
She slowly looked up at Giles.
“Brother... If you laid that much water across the kingdom of Maras, the entire empire would be sunk under six feet of soup.”
“Which is why we’re not dumping it on Maras,” Giles replied mildly. He set his pencil behind his ear.
