“Dweomerbane?” Deirdre said, sounding outraged.

  “That’s right,” Bebara said to Deirdre. “You are a dweomerblade. So I will allow you this one interruption.”

  She turned back to Aefric.

  “Is your grace familiar with the poison?”

  Aefric shook his head.

  “It was developed during the Godswalk Wars. It targets the magic inherent in a dweomerblade and uses it to burn them to death from the inside.”

  “How did I survive?”

  “Honestly?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have. You obviously received at least one full dose of the poison, possibly more. And as powerful as your grace is, he should have died within … no more than fifty breaths. Possibly twenty.”

  But Beornric was smiling. “Does your grace remember dancing with a woman named Jodella?”

  Aefric frowned, but Bebara nodded as though her question had been answered.

  “Yes,” Aefric said slowly. “Large woman, with a lot of wild, curly hair, I think?”

  “That’s her,” Beornric said. “It seems she was the last woman your grace danced with before seeking someplace quiet with Sighild. So she was nearby when the attack came.”

  Beornric stepped closer, smiling wider now.

  “Good thing, too,” he said. “She happens to be Motte’s county physician. She answered the call for aid almost as fast as this one did.”

  He nodded to Deirdre, but Deirdre didn’t preen as she usually would.

  “I was too slow,” she said. “I should’ve been closer. I should’ve been ready. I—”

  “Enough,” Beornric barked. “His grace owes you his life, Deirdre. Without your quick actions, even Bebara here could not have saved him. I’ll not have you acting as though you failed.”

  Deirdre frowned as Beornric turned to Aefric and continued.

  “Your grace, there were two assassins. Professionals. A team. The first was the distraction. He was the one who put Sighild to sleep. He was also the one found and killed quickly by Leppina and Temat.”

  He nodded towards Deirdre.

  “She was the only one who realized there was a second assassin. Blade poised to finish the job. And he would have, too, if not for her. But Deirdre dispatched him with admirable speed. And more than a little fury.”

  “He dared attack my … duke,” Deirdre said quietly, still not sounding like herself.

  “How did you spot him, Deirdre?” Aefric asked. “And why didn’t Leppina and Temat?”

  “He was disguised with magic,” she said. “But it wasn’t invisibility or any kind of illusion. It was a blending spell.”

  Understanding washed over Aefric. “Which is from the clay and stone branch of magic.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Which, I suspect, was why your grace didn’t feel the assassin settling into place. His small magic was hidden by the sense of Burrew’s stronger magic. But when he struck—”

  “When he struck,” Aefric said, “his magic had to work harder to hide him. Became easier to notice.”

  “Especially since I was looking for it,” she said, then frowned. “I wish I could kill him twice.”

  “You may yet be able to,” Yrsa said. “Metaphorically speaking. Whoever sent that assassin is still out there.”

  “Am I done then?” Bebara asked. “Am I being dismissed?”

  “No,” Aefric said, managing a half-smile. “I think your work comes first right now.”

  Bebara whisked everyone else back out of the room — including Deirdre — and gave Aefric a thorough examination. Which mostly involved touching him here and there, while praying. Sometimes her touch felt cold, other times hot, and each time, he was to tell her.

  When she finished, she said, “All right. Your grace will live. Though I will wish him to drink a potion I’ll brew for him each morning for the next aett.”

  “I’ll be sure to drink it.”

  “And though your grace will feel stronger in a day or so, your grace is not to exert himself. At least until he’s drunk the eighth and final draught of that potion.”

  “I’ll be good,” Aefric said, smiling.

  “I include spellcasting in this,” she said, raising a warning finger. “For the next aett you are to attempt nothing more demanding than you would honestly expect an apprentice to accomplish.”

  That would be harder, but so was the look in Bebara’s eye.

  Aefric nodded. “I’ll … control the impulse to do more.”

  “Thank you, your grace,” she said, then opened a drawer in the nightstand. “Now before I leave, your grace should see something.”

  What she pulled out of the drawer was round, dark brown, and so very dry it was spider-webbed with cracks. It looked like a small, desiccated wooden ball.

  “This, your grace, was once a gold-sheened pearl.”

  A pearl? That thing was almost big enough to fill Aefric’s palm.

  She set in on the nightstand.

  She reached into the drawer and pulled out another. Held it up significantly, and set it beside the first.

  She did this three more times, until five such husks sat on the nightstand.

  “Your grace lives,” she said, “because Jodella was swift enough and skilled enough and smart enough to know she could not save him. She placed your grace in suspension, where he remained until Karbin was recalled from Kivash to magically transport your grace here to me. Where I had the resources to do what she could not.”

  She gestured to the ex-pearls. “Golden-sheened pearls. Of sufficient size and quantity to allow me to filter all of the poison from not only your grace’s body, but his power. The only way to defeat dweomerbane, stop the damage from spreading, and allow healing to begin.”

  She folded her arms.

  “This treatment is quite difficult. And as your grace can probably imagine, quite expensive.” She managed to look even sterner. “Now, I realize that your grace is one of the wealthiest men in this part of the continent. And yet, I ask that your grace keep in mind that pearls as rare as these are not quickly replaced, even for the rich.”

  “In other words, don’t let this happen again?”

  “Very good, your grace,” she said, with a fierce smile. “I shall take my leave now and send in your grace’s very worried advisers.”

  Aefric managed to prop himself up on the bed enough to feel as though he were sitting. Though, in truth, he was slumping.

  Still. He supposed that was close enough. He was still in a bed he hadn’t known he had, in a private room he hadn’t realized existed.

  He supposed he should’ve known that the duke would have a special healing room in the physician’s offices here at Water’s End. The castle was large enough that he probably had rooms for anything he could think of, and he still hadn’t seen close to half of the place.

  But the glass windows brought in encouraging sunshine, if not a breeze. And the smell in here wasn’t antiseptic, like part of him kept expecting from his experiences with hospitals in another world.

  No, in here the smell was flowery and pleasant. Slightly of peonies.

  Aefric should have been hungry. He knew that. He could even feel a rumble in his stomach. And yet, staring at those five, huge, dried out husks that had once been golden pearls, he found he had no appetite.

  He was still staring at those husks when the others came in.

  Beornric and Yrsa, both wearing dark tunics and hose — his more of a brown, and hers more of a very dark red.

  In Yrsa’s case, the color brought out the reds in her hair and in that major scar of hers. The one that drew a line down the left side of her face, right through the eye, which was left a shade of red itself, by the healers’ efforts to save it.

  Karbin, in his colors of sand and dusk, with three wands on his belt, and that strange, obsidian rod of his. Karbin’s skin wasn’t much lighter in shade than that rod, and still glowed with the bloom of youth, even though the man had to be at least two or three times Aefric’s age.

  A side benefit to mastery of wizardry, his youthful appearance.

  Deirdre followed them in. She had fixed her hair, and doing so seemed to give her a little of her swagger back. Although she looked now as though she had a lot of anger and just wanted a place to vent it.

  “Deirdre,” Beornric said, “there are matters the three of us must go over with his grace. Perhaps—”

  “One moment,” Aefric said. “Deirdre, if you would come closer?”

  She stepped up and bowed. “I am at your command, your grace.”

  She bowed. She didn’t kneel. And there was nothing flirty or teasing in her tone or her word choice.

  “Deirdre,” he said, “you do realize that you didn’t fail me, do you not?”

  “Those assassins should never have gotten close to your grace,” she said. “I should have demanded to search the roof myself before his arrival. I should have—”

  “Enough,” Aefric said.

  She grimaced, but bowed.

  “Deirdre,” he said, in what he hoped were soothing tones, “any demands about security would have had to come from Beornric, not you. And if he’d made such demands as you just began to list, he would have been insulting the baroness and her people.”

  Deirdre arched a dark red eyebrow. “Then perhaps her lordship should’ve been insulted.”

  Aefric chuckled, and for just a moment he saw a spark of Deirdre’s normal self in her eyes.

  “No,” Aefric said. “In fact, I expect that Herewyn is excoriating her commanders and soldiers for allowing me to come that close to getting killed while in her care.”

  Aefric raised a hand for silence before she could reply.

  “Herewyn knows I’m alive?” Aefric asked Beornric.

  “Kentigern sent out rikas once Bebara declared your grace out of danger,” Beornric said. “All of your important vassals have been informed, as has his majesty.”

  “If we’re going to talk about that,” Yrsa started, but Aefric shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he said, and turned back to Deirdre. “Please forgive my distraction. As I was saying, I am very proud of my knights. Leppina and Temat reacted swiftly and did their job. And I intend to thank them personally, later. And as for you...”

  She glanced at Aefric, something like muted hope in her jade green eyes.

  He smiled and shook his head in wonder.

  “Once more, Deirdre,” he said, “you managed to go above and beyond. As you always seem to. Once again, you sensed what others missed, and accomplished more than I could dare ask.”

  Deirdre frowned, looking caught between smiling at the compliment, and her self-recriminations.

  “You were instrumental in saving my life,” Aefric said. “And you bear no blame in the fact that my life needed saving.”

  She frowned as though she might object.

  “Ser Deirdre Ol’Miri,” Aefric snapped. “I am your liege, and I am telling you that you bear no blame in the matter of the attempt on my life.”

  “Yes, your grace,” she said, bowing again.

  “And there’s something more,” Aefric said.

  “Your grace?” she asked, looking honestly curious.

  “I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time now. You’ve more than earned it.” He shook his head, giving her a chagrined smile. “I don’t have the badge here, so we can do this formally later.”

  “Your grace?” she asked, with hope in those jade green eyes.

  “Ser Deirdre Ol’Miri,” Aefric said, “I would name you my ducal champion.”

  “Thank you, your grace!” she said, and now she did take one knee, giving Aefric the purest smile he’d seen from her since he’d woken up.

  “And as I expect my champion to keep herself in excellent shape, I suggest you see about both food and sleep.”

  “Yes, your grace,” Deirdre said, with an embarrassed smile. “At once.”

  She stood and turned to leave, but before she could, Aefric said, “And Deirdre?”

  “Yes, your grace?” she said, turning back.

  “Thank you for your vigil,” he said. “As I woke, it was a great comfort to realize you were nearby. Because it meant I was safe.”

  Her posture straightened, shoulders back again, chest out proudly once more. She looked herself again. But the smile she gave Aefric still wasn’t her usual tease. It was … more personal, but no less sincere.

  “Always, your grace,” she said. “I will stand between your grace and harm to my last breath. And beyond, if I am able.”

  Then she bowed, turned and left.

  Aefric smiled as Deirdre left his recovery room. Though that did mean that he was now alone with Yrsa, Beornric and Karbin. So as much as he wanted to rest right then — and exhaustion was taking its toll — he knew he had at least one matter to deal with first.

  The assassins.

  “That was well done, your grace,” Yrsa said, and Aefric caught something about her tone. Like a shift in the wind that portended a storm. “She bore no blame for the attempt on your life. And she certainly shouldn’t blame herself that way.”

  “I’m glad you agree,” Aefric said, tentatively.

  “Sadly,” she continued, “I cannot say the same for your grace.”

  “What do you—”

  She tossed a bracer onto Aefric’s bed.

  Oh. Apparently they weren’t going to talk about the assassins yet.

  It looked like a simple bronze bracer, to be worn about the bicep. But this bracer was magical. Something he had gotten from Duke Wylyn’s wizard, Sifwyn…

  “When I learned the details of that attack on your grace, it made no sense,” Yrsa said. “At least, not until I asked Dajen to check your rooms. He discovered this among your grace’s jewelry. Not on his person. Where it belonged.”

  “Why,” Beornric asked, picking up from Yrsa, for the two worked well together, “was that bracer here at Water’s End, and not on your grace’s person?”

  Aefric sighed. They were both right, of course. The magic of that bracer turned aside blades and arrows.

  “You do realize,” Aefric said, “that even the enchantments on that bracer aren’t foolproof against assass—”

  “They’re right,” Karbin said, cutting in smoothly. “Even if that bracer didn’t force the assassin to miss, it might’ve turned a deep stab wound into a grazing cut. With significantly less poison going into your system.”

  “Why, your grace,” Beornric said, his voice like restrained thunder, “was this bracer here at Water’s End and not on your arm? Where it should’ve been?”

  “Sifwyn’s arms are smaller,” Aefric said, “I never got around to—”

  “Aefric,” Karbin said, angrily.

  “Does your grace realize,” Yrsa asked, in surprisingly casual tones, “just how difficult it is to restrain myself from beating some sense into his noble person?”

  Likely just a threat. Likely Yrsa wouldn’t actually give Aefric a beating. After all, he was her liege.

  Still. Even the thought that she might do it was sobering. Gods knew the woman stood even taller than Aefric, and had a scary kind of strength. Especially in her hands.

  “Enough,” Aefric said. “Point made. Hand it here.”

  Yrsa picked up the bracer and tossed it to Aefric. He caught it and put it on his left arm.

  After all, it was an enchanted bracer. It immediately adjusted to fit him. As it did, he felt its protective magic settle into place.

  “Good,” Beornric said. “I hope we can count on it remaining there. Especially when your grace is in public?”

  “To be sure of that,” Yrsa said, giving Aefric a look that said the beating wasn’t off the table yet, “I think his grace should explain why he wasn’t wearing it in the first place.”

  “I would be interested in the answer,” Karbin said.

  Aefric drew a deep breath.

  “Ever since the king created me Duke of Deepwater, you two” — Aefric nodded to Beornric and Yrsa — “have been emphasizing that I need to act and think like a duke, not an adventurer.”

  “Don’t blame this on us,” Yrsa said.

  “I’m not blaming anyone or making excuses,” Aefric said, his own patience beginning to wane. “I’m explaining reasoning. So I expect you to let me finish.”

  Yrsa’s chin jerked with a rough nod.

  “When I was an adventurer, I would have put this bracer on the moment I knew what it did.” Aefric saw Karbin nod absently, in agreement. “After all, I lived a life of never-ending threats and challenges. If I found a bracer like this one in a room in an ancient keep, I might need its magic in the very next room.”

  Aefric shook his head.

  “But now I’m a duke. I’m supposed to have others take those risks for me.”

  Karbin’s eyes widened, and he nodded once. He understood. Of course, he’d known Aefric the longest. And like Aefric, he was a former adventurer.

  But Yrsa and Beornric didn’t get it yet. So Aefric kept talking.

  “That’s not easy for me. It goes against a lifetime of habit. But I’ve been trying. And one of the hardest things for me to do is, in the moment, assess which risks I should take and which I shouldn’t.”

  He patted the cold bronze bracer, now on his arm.

  “This bracer makes me safer. More than that, I knew that wearing it would make me feel safer. Which would throw off my risk-assessment.”

  “Ah,” Beornric said, and drew a long, slow breath. “This is very much like what we were talking about before, isn’t it? About how you shouldn’t risk yourself for your knights, even if they might die.”

  Aefric nodded. “I was going to avoid wearing this until I’d developed the habit of acting and thinking like a duke first and foremost. Then I figured it would be safe for me to wear the bracer, because it wouldn’t make me more likely to do something … questionable.”

  Yrsa cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at Aefric.

  “That hardly agrees with your own recounting of the attempt on your life, your grace. The moment you spotted the blow dart, you immediately cast a spell that would have turned more blow darts aside.”

  “Of course.”

  “So the only difference between that spell and that bracer is that you would need a moment to cast the spell.”