So he stopped reacting. Pretended to treat her behavior as his due. On the theory that she knelt to him just to get a reaction, such as Ser Yrsa was giving her right now.

  But that didn’t seem to stop her either…

  Ser Deirdre, on one knee before him, there on the afterdeck of the Duke’s Hand, spread her arms out low and wide. Her smile was wry. Her green eyes taunting. But her tone almost respectful as she said, “You want me, your grace?”

  “I told you I had a mission for you, if you could handle it.”

  “I’m sure I can handle anything your grace has for me.”

  “When we dock at Ajenmoor, I need you to find someone. Morgard Ol’Nara. Bring him to me. On my ship is fine, if I’m still in Ajenmoor. Otherwise, bring him to me at Water’s End.”

  “Have you a description, your grace?”

  “No,” Aefric said, but Ser Yrsa spoke up.

  “I’ve seen him, your grace,” she said. “Though not in at least a decade. Hair pale as sunshine, like his sister. Probably tending towards slender. Probably dressed like a merchant.”

  “Not much to go on,” Ser Deirdre said. “Especially in a place as big as Ajenmoor.”

  “I know,” Aefric said. “But I have every confidence in you. Morgard will be working with Brangford Couglas, son of—”

  “Son of that foul old mayor in Lachedran,” Ser Deirdre said with a sneer. “I’ve had the displeasure.” She sighed. “More than enough to go on, then. I know the sorts of places Couglas haunts.”

  “What sorts of places?” Aefric asked, then finally gestured for her to rise.

  “Couglas tried to impress me once by telling me he could get me Kefthali leather,” she said as she came smoothly to her feet.

  “He does business with Kefthal?” Sers Beornric and Yrsa said at the same time.

  “Kefthal,” Aefric said, trying to recall. “Kefthal.”

  His eyes widened, as information read in a book a world a way surfaced in his head, meshing with rumors he’d heard during his travels across Qorunn.

  “Not that place ruled by a council of necromancers,” he said.

  “That’s Kefthal,” Ser Yrsa said, and Ser Beornric nodded.

  “The Nine Beyond Death,” Ser Deirdre said with a grimace. “And yes, your grace, they still hold Kefthal in their bony clutches.”

  “Which is why civilized people don’t do business with them,” Ser Beornric said.

  “The point is,” Ser Deirdre said, “if Couglas has contacts that deal with the likes of Kefthal, then I’ll know where to find him in Ajenmoor.” She nodded. “I’ll bring you this Morgard Ol’Nara, your grace. Wrapped in a bow, if you like.”

  “There’s no need to go that far,” Aefric said with a smile. “But thank you, Ser Deirdre.”

  “Am I to arrest him?”

  “If necessary,” Aefric said, “but I’d rather you didn’t. I want him to come to court so I can see him formally acknowledged as ler of his family lands. But I need him to come now, because I suspect a plot to steal those lands.”

  Aefric shook his head. “He doesn’t need to know about the plot. All he needs to know is that he’s summoned to my court at once, and he’s not allowed to refuse.”

  “He’s in danger here, isn’t he?” Ser Deirdre said, her lips twisting in that wry smile again.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “Oh, your grace does know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “I can assign you some soldiers to assist, if you like.”

  “Please, your grace,” Ser Deirdre scoffed. “I work best without an audience.”

  “All right then,” Aefric said, chuckling. “Here are your official orders, and a letter of introduction, in case you need it.”

  “I won’t,” she said, taking the papers, “but it’s best to be safe.”

  He gave her the knight’s salute then, and she bowed and took her leave.

  “You realize she might just cut a bloody swath through Ajenmoor,” Ser Beornric said.

  “No,” Ser Yrsa said, watching Ser Deirdre’s departure. “Not if she doesn’t have to. Not while working in his grace’s name.”

  “Think that’ll make a difference to her?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t doubt it,” Ser Yrsa said, then turned to Aefric and raised an eyebrow. “But there’s another matter we should discuss.”

  Aefric, whose thoughts were already at Ajenmoor, gave her a blank look.

  “Princess Astrid of Malimfar.”

  “You really ought to have received her before leaving,” Ser Beornric said.

  “I told you,” Aefric said, shaking his head. “If she wants to duel me for her father’s honor, she can wait until we get back.”

  “Two problems there,” Ser Yrsa said. “First, she’s a princess. She shouldn’t have to wait.”

  “Lives hang in the balance,” Aefric started, but Ser Yrsa cut in.

  “Commoner lives.” She shook her head, and she was so agitated that the skin around her scar was darker. “And not even the lives of your own people, but refugees.”

  “They’re my people,” Aefric said, matching her tone, “because they’ve chosen to be.”

  “I hate to say it,” Ser Beornric said, “but Yrsa’s right. They’re still commoners, and Astrid’s a princess.”

  “Not just any princess, either,” Ser Yrsa said, tone becoming more heated. “A crown princess. You just told the future ruler of Malimfar that she has to wait, because you have more important matters to attend to.”

  “And I do,” Aefric said.

  Ser Beornric cleared his throat.

  “That’s adventurer thinking,” Ser Beornric said, voice impressively calm, as he poured them each a fresh glass of wine. “Expected ducal behavior here is for you to give priority to the visiting royalty. Assign someone else to handle whatever other business is so pressing.”

  “No,” Aefric said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. But I’m not going to put pleasing some uninvited guest — even a royal guest — ahead of saving lives.”

  “And if this leads to Malimfar harassing our shipping?” Ser Yrsa asked. “Fighting with us out on the sea lanes, where we’re only just starting to rebuild?”

  Aefric drew a long breath, and thought about those poor refugees. Only saved from a life of slavery because Aefric had wanted to see the Dragonscar.

  He shook his head.

  “I stand by my decision. For all I know, going to Ajenmoor myself, today, may mean the difference in stopping countless innocents from falling prey to those slavers.”

  Ser Yrsa opened her mouth, likely to say something scathing. But Ser Beornric touched her shoulder. She frowned and turned her head away.

  “All right then,” Ser Beornric said. “Done is done. Now let’s discuss the possible ramifications from this decision.”

  That discussion went on for much longer than Aefric expected.

  By the time the Duke’s Hand approached Ajenmoor, Aefric found himself accepting that, yes, in fact, he probably should have delayed sailing for an hour or two, while he dealt with that princess from Malimfar.

  If he’d counted correctly, and he feared he had, there were at least sixty-eight ways his declining to receive Princess Astrid himself that day — even if he sailed shortly afterwards — could come back to haunt him.

  And those were only the ways that Sers Yrsa and Beornric could think of as they made their way down the Searun River in the hot afternoon sun.

  But now, at least, he could set those worries aside for a time, and focus on others.

  For they were at last approaching Ajenmoor.

  Now that he could see it — or at least the beginnings of it — Aefric had to admit that Ser Deirdre was right. If all she’d had to go on was a vague description, she would never find Morgard in a place that size.

  The city of Ajenmoor started with a thirty-foot-high wooden wall, on both sides of the Searun. And Aefric could see the edges of a thick chain dipping into the water on both sides of the roughly five-hundred-foot width of the river. Likely they could cut off access here, as well as in the harbor.

  The city was impressively big. Larger than Behal, certainly, though smaller than Water’s End.

  It descended towards the docks in large hemispheres the locals called “rings.” From what Kentigern had told Aefric previously, the lowest ring was for the docks and the offices of associated businesses.

  The second ring up was for the wealthy, with land values and … associated qualities descending further with each level from the third to the fifth.

  Apparently, there was heavy traffic in riverboats going from the docks to the fifth ring, both bringing sailors to cheap entertainment and ferrying locals down to their work on the docks. Faster — and less likely to lead to being stopped by the city watch — than taking the sloping roads that ran from the wooden wall down to the docks.

  It was a busy city. They were still passing the fifth ring, and already Aefric could hear and smell and see the sounds of bustling city life all about him.

  His caravan of ships no longer had the waters to themselves. Two merchant vessels were working against the river’s flow to make their way to smaller towns along the Searun and, eventually, Lake Deepwater. Several smaller craft plied the waterways as well going back, forth, and across.

  Of course, all these ships and boats were smart enough to clear space for the caravan flying the duke’s banner.

  Aefric was less interested in the river traffic, though, in those first moments of entering Ajenmoor, than he was in what he was smelling.

  On the voyage here, he’d been smelling mostly the clean smells of the river since they’d left the lake.

  But now, sailing into another city, part of Aefric — the part that had grown up in another world — once more found the smells … almost sanitized.

  The aromas of cooking and baking, and the stench of hard work, the odors of fish, and the sea. Those were all present, and to be expected.

  But as they’d been everywhere else so far, the rank tangs of dung and urine were missing.

  The part of Aefric that had grown up in Sartis understood the absence. That the means of waste disposal here were just a part of life. But there was a touch of magic to those means, and the part of him that had grown up in Oregon — on a world called not Qorunn, but Earth — kept expecting the lack of technological sanitation beyond aqueducts to mean more than it did here.

  It was a habit of expectation. Though the habit, by now, was stronger than the expectation itself.

  Every town, every city so far, had all been free of those smells. And yet, Aefric still found himself checking the air every time he entered a new place. Just to see if this one was different.

  But even here among the fifth ring, those odors were absent.

  So Aefric chuckled at himself, and turned his attention to looking out over his port city.

  Ajenmoor. The largest of that scant handful of settlements that had survived the Godswalk Wars, here along his coastline.

  Ajenmoor was old, and as he sailed towards the docks, Aefric could see that best in the buildings of the fourth ring. The fifth ring, that had been all wooden construction, and much of it recent, and cheaply made. The roads were hard-packed dirt, and muddy in places.

  But the fourth ring was where some of the older buildings were visible that hadn’t gotten the … care of buildings farther down. Certain larger temples that had fallen from favor, and old guildhalls, for guilds whose power and influence had waned.

  The stone of those buildings looked worn, cracked and tired. And though the roadways here in the fourth ring were cobbled with stones from the river, they were ill-matched, and missing in places.

  The third ring stood in sharper contrast. The people here dressed better, carried themselves straighter. The cobblestones of their streets were smoother, more regular. Their houses and buildings were painted, and in good repair. And some of them even took note of the passing ducal caravan, and doffed hats or waved, or held their right fists high in salute.

  The second ring looked finer still. More of the houses and buildings had glass in their windows. The streets here were tiled, not cobblestoned, and lined with bright flowers, or leafy trees, or both.

  More silks and velvets and jewelry for the denizens of the second ring, and those who took note of Aefric’s ship did not wave or salute, but nodded. Some as though considering what the duke’s visit might mean for them, personally.

  The mayor’s house would be somewhere in that second ring.

  Finally, Aefric’s ship reached the lowest ring, and the docks.

  Aefric had been getting used to the docks of Water’s End, and come to think of them as large. But sailing into Ajenmoor that day, he had to laugh at himself.

  The docks at Water’s End could handle two dozen, perhaps two score ships at a time.

  But the massive docks and piers of Ajenmoor looked as though they could handle ten, perhaps twenty times that many.

  They weren’t. At the moment, they looked to have no more than thirty ships at dock, and another … half-dozen out in the harbor. In fact, the docks here at Ajenmoor had probably not seen full usage since before — or at least sometime during — the Godswalk Wars.

  Out in the harbor, a series of ancient stone posts had been installed, with heavy chain links dipping from them down below the water line. And, yes, Aefric could spot the chain towers, at the edges of the harbor.

  Those chains might have been sagging at the moment, but those towers could pull them tight to raise either a chain or a net or similar, and close the harbor.

  Good.

  Aefric looked out over the ships both at dock and in the harbor. Shook his head.

  “I don’t see the ship Ser Micham took,” he said. “At least, I don’t think I do. Though I see four that look rather like it. What about you two?”

  Ser Beornric frowned so hard his bushy mustaches almost drooped past his chin. Shook his head.

  “To be honest, your grace,” Ser Yrsa said, “I wasn’t paying much attention to the details of the ship he took. I think I know which four you mean, but if any of them are that ship, I couldn’t pick it out.”

  “Ah, well,” Aefric said with a sigh. “Didn’t expect it to be that easy.”

  But then he spotted a ship at anchor in the harbor. A familiar looking ship, without any masts at all.

  Aefric nodded. At least some of the ships from the Dragonscar had returned then.

  As planned, the Duke’s Hand sailed into dock and prepared for debarkation. The other five ships sailed out into the harbor and spread out.

  The Duke’s Hand was still settling in when a dozen members of the dock patrol showed up — wearing chainmail and carrying crossbows — flanking some kind of functionary. A dusky, older man dressed in dark velvets and hose.

  “Are you the harbormaster?” Aefric called down.

  “No … your grace?” the man said, caught somewhere between a sentence and a question. “I’m—”

  “Ser Deirdre,” Aefric said, over whatever the man had been about to say.

  “At once, your grace,” she said and dove over the side of the ship, somersaulted twice in the air, and was running as soon as her boots hit the docks.

  The city watch lost their formation then, as some of them looked as though they wanted to pursue her, or shoot their crossbows at her, but weren’t sure whether or not they should do either.

  Just then, the boatswain blew the disembark, and the gangplank was lowered. The dock patrol turned all their attention back to Aefric and his ship, though they were smart enough not to raise those crossbows.

  Nevertheless, the soldiers and knights of Aefric’s personal guard put themselves between those crossbows and their duke.

  General Yrsa stepped onto the gangplank.

  “I am Ser Yrsa Azenai, general in charge of the armies of his grace, Ser Aefric Brightstaff, Hero of Deepwater, Hero of Frozen Ridge, Baron of Netar, and Duke of Deepwater. And if you are not the harbormaster, who are you, to meet your duke with weapons drawn?”

  The dock patrol immediately started slinging their crossbows on their backs once more, as though ordered. Which flustered the man in velvet.

  “I am Nashen Ol’Nashek,” he said, bowing. “Chief assistant to Harbormaster Jojen Ol’Talas. And, having seen the duke’s standard flying above this ship, which I recognize of course as the Duke’s Hand, I have come to greet his grace on this most unexpected visit. Those about me are nothing more than a guard of honor.”

  Ser Yrsa began walking slowly down the gangplank, followed by Aefric, Ser Beornric, and Aefric’s guards.

  “And why,” Ser Yrsa said as she walked, “does this Jojen Ol’Talas not come greet the duke himself?”

  “Forgive him, your grace,” Nashen Ol’Nashek said, addressing Aefric now, not Ser Yrsa. “He is in a meeting with the mayor and city council.”

  “I presume,” Ser Yrsa said — and Aefric could tell by the way Nashen Ol’Nashek paled that she’d arched the eyebrow above her scarred, red left eye — “that I’ll be given the same excuse if I ask why the mayor did not come to greet his duke?”

  “Alas,” Nashen Ol’Nashek said, “I have no other reason to provide.”

  “I am disappointed,” Aefric said. “I was already displeased with Ajenmoor when I arrived, and this does nothing to improve my disposition.”

  “Your grace,” Nashen Ol’Nashek said, bowing even deeper. “What may I do to improve your grace’s humor?”

  “You may take me to this so-important meeting at once,” Aefric said, then smiled as he heard a loud, metallic creaking sound coming from the harbor behind him.

  “The chain,” Nashen Ol’Nashek gasped.

  “Yes,” Aefric said, pleased that Ser Deirdre had gotten the first part of her job done so quickly. “Until I have the answers I seek, this port is closed.”

  He leveled a glare on Nashen Ol’Nashek.

  “Pray I get my answers quickly.”

  Aefric had to admit. The city council building really was quite pretty. Its stonework was overlaid with a mosaic of tilework in blues and greens, to represent the seas, and dark yellows and browns to represent different trading lanes.