Icara

Icara is flat, cold, and quiet, and it grows more grain than any nation north of Veldom. The plains stretch for days without a hill and the winter wind comes straight across them. Nothing much happens in Icara. That is the reputation, and Icara pays to keep it.

The grain goes everywhere. To Britannia under contract, to Almania under a different contract, to the occupied Frysian north under a third that nobody signs. The merchants who move it carry two ledgers. One is for the tax office. The other is for whichever foreign ministry is paying for what the merchant heard at the last dinner. In Icara a trading house and an intelligence service are the same building with two doors.

Colara is the sister nation to the south, same founding family, split two centuries ago over whether to feed the occupation. Icara grows the food. Colara ships it. Each side calls the other the one that sold out.

A bad harvest in Icara is a crisis in four capitals. The last three harvests have been very good, and the granaries are fuller than the sales explain.