Aefric flared his nostrils in a quick, deep breath.

  “One is all it takes,” Ser Beornric said. “And you’d be out there alone. Dying. With no aid anywhere nearby.”

  “Fine,” Aefric said, though he hated saying it. “If they get away, though, I’m taking it out on the mayor of Ajenmoor.”

  “Your grace,” Ser Micham said. Ser Micham was the only one of Aefric’s guards who had enough of a sea-worn look to pass for a sailor. But that was because he’d grown up the son of Ajenmoor’s mayor.

  “Micham,” Aefric said. “I know he’s your father. But still—”

  “Did you tell him about the slavers?”

  “I told Karbin to tell him, yes.”

  “Then the ships will be here with all speed,” Ser Micham said confidently. “Father hates slavers.”

  “Well,” Aefric said, watching the slave ship depart. “He better hurry.”

  Aefric couldn’t simply stand there and watch, while the slave ship escaped. And there was nothing he could do, from where he stood on the shore, in the mouth of the Dragonscar, to prevent it.

  So he turned back to the people who had been the slavers’ cargo.

  “All right,” he said. “None of you have homes? Well, if you want one here in Deepwater, you have it. If you have someplace else in mind, tell me where and I’ll get you there. On my word.”

  He was only just starting to translate that for the derekek — over the bubble of excited conversation from the humans and eldrani — when Ser Yrsa started talking to him.

  He couldn’t both translate and listen at the same time, so he made her wait until he’d at least finished telling the derekek what he’d told the others.

  “Your grace,” she said in a low voice. “Your offer is most generous, but the borogs… Would you even be doing them a favor? It’s not as though they’d be welcomed here.”

  Aefric gave her a flat look. “If they want to live here, I’ll find them a home and work. And I’ll do my damnedest to make sure people learn to live with them.”

  He did his best to translate for the borogs. Which came out something like. “You run with me clan? You choose. Run other clan. Or … outcast… No. No outcast. But … outcast?”

  He shrugged hopelessly. The closest he could come to telling them they could make their own way was the Borog word for “outcast.”

  The borogs spoke to each other for a moment. Then the big one said, as near as Aefric could understand, “You order kra naruk me choose gron kraknon ortok nak kor run with you clan?”

  Aefric shrugged helplessly.

  “Speak it humanway,” the bigger borog said.

  “You two are welcome to live and work in my lands. If you choose.”

  The borog snorted. Said something to the smaller borog. They spoke for a moment.

  “You, me and me,” the bigger borog said. And there was a difference in those two “mes,” but Aefric couldn’t quite pick it out. He shrugged.

  “You,” the borog said, pointing at Aefric. “Me,” he — Aefric was pretty sure it was a he — pointed to himself. “Me,” he said in that slightly different way, indicating the smaller borog.

  Aefric nodded.

  “What humanway speak you, me and me.”

  “Us,” Aefric said. He pointed to the two of them, and then himself. “Us.”

  The bigger borog snorted, then forced himself to make a slow nod. “You speak, me and me choose, me and me run with us?”

  “Yes,” Aefric said.

  “You human. Me and me borog.”

  “You choose,” Aefric said.

  The borog snorted. “Me and me speak. Answer soon.”

  Aefric nodded.

  “I think this is a mistake,” Ser Yrsa said softly.

  “Wouldn’t be my first or my last,” Aefric said, just as softly. “While they consider the offer, let’s talk to the slavers.”

  Their captain was a hard, scarred woman who looked as though her gray-streaked black hair had been on fire when sections of it were hacked off to save the rest.

  “Don’t bother, pretty man,” she said as Aefric approached. “Won’t talk just ’cause you know a trick or two.”

  “Do you know what the punishment is for slavery, here in Armyr?” Ser Yrsa asked.

  “Death, I imagine,” she said, as though it didn’t matter. “Don’t give us a lot o’ incentive to wag our tongues. Do it?”

  “It’s an interesting law, actually,” Ser Beornric said. “King Colm’s great, great, great grandmother, Queen Celia Stronghand, thought it up. If you took slaves from Armyr, well,” — Ser Beornric smiled that wolfish smile of his — “you didn’t, so I’ll leave that part to your imagination. But if we find out where you took your slaves from, we’ll return you there to face justice.”

  “Really?” Aefric asked, while his smile spread out slowly. “The Free Baronies of Olwich take their free part very seriously, you know.”

  “Oh, indeed they do,” Ser Yrsa said. “I understand that they execute slavers publicly, and they have to start each execution at dawn or the slaver might not be dead before dark.”

  “Are you suggesting we might face justice here?” the hard captain asked.

  “Well,” Aefric said, hazarding a guess, “the law does differentiate between unrepentant slavers and cooperative former slavers.”

  “Everyone deserves a second chance,” Ser Beornric said. “Assuming they show remorse.”

  “That part is important,” Ser Yrsa said.

  “And how do we know you wouldn’t just kill us here and be done with us, once you have your answers?”

  “You don’t,” Aefric said. “But it seems to me that a quick death here would be preferable to what they’d do to you in Olwich.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, but Aefric thought he saw hope in her dark eyes.

  “Offer goes for all of you,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be the captain, speaking up.”

  “Any of you speaks up,” the captain said, “you better hope they kill you before I do. Because what I’ll do to you will be nastier than anything Olwich can dream up.”

  “She might believe that,” Aefric said. “But doesn’t mean you should. Your lives are on the line here too.”

  Aefric turned away then, and Ser Yrsa told the soldiers standing guard to call out if any of the prisoners wanted to talk.

  Aefric and Sers Yrsa and Beornric went over to talk to the smugglers then. Turned out he had to renew his freeze spell while he did, because the wizard in green had almost gotten himself free.

  “Not bad,” Aefric said. “You’ve been held by a spell like this before, then.”

  The wizard in green couldn’t answer, of course.

  “Guards,” Aefric said, “if he shows any sign of movement before I’ve released him. Anything at all, even a blink. Don’t hesitate. Kill him.”

  When his guards nodded, Aefric wondered if they were more pale because of their wounds, or at the thought of killing a prisoner.

  Wouldn’t matter. If the wizard in green got free, he’d kill them as fast as look at them. And if the choice was a wizard who was a pirate and smuggler — as well as a slaver — or even one of his soldiers, Aefric knew which he’d choose.

  “Your grace,” Ser Beornric said softly. “Unless you know something I don’t. He’s just a wizard. We could knock him out and tie him up safe enough.”

  “Can’t knock him out while he’s held by my spell.”

  Ser Yrsa cleared her throat and drew a mace.

  “Fair point,” Aefric said. Odds were that wizard wouldn’t get a spell off in the time it took Ser Yrsa to knock him out. “Fine then.”

  Aefric stepped up to the wizard in green, while Ser Yrsa took up position behind him.

  Aefric held up a sharp dagger to get the wizard’s attention.

  “I’m going to hold this to your chest. And then I’m going to release my spell. I strongly suggest not doing anything I might misinterpret while we tie you up.”

  The wizard in green couldn’t respond, of course.

  Aefric didn’t actually put the dagger to the wizard’s chest, just in case. He turned the point away as he released the spell.

  Ser Yrsa swung her mace, fast as a stroke of lightning, and the wizard in green fell like a ship’s mast.

  Two of Aefric’s soldiers bound and gagged the wizard tightly.

  “All right, Mavash,” Aefric said turning to the smuggler he’d spoken with earlier, who’d watched the interplay with wide eyes. “You knew that was a slaver ship coming, don’t try to deny it.”

  Mavash hung his head, but nodded.

  “And I bet you heard what we were saying about the punishment for slavery.”

  “But we ain’t never carried no slaves!” Mavash insisted. “Wouldn’t be doin’ it now. But you can’t say no to the pirate queen.”

  “So you insist you’ve never carried slaves before,” Aefric said.

  Mavash nodded rapidly, still looking down.

  “There’s only one way you can prove that,” Aefric said. When Mavash looked up, hope in his eyes, Aefric continued, “Give us the Swift Wave. If you’re kitted to carry cargo, not people, should be easy enough to tell.”

  “I could tell, your grace,” Ser Micham said, confidently. “If I saw her hold.”

  Mavash shook his head.

  “Give us the Swift Wave,” Aefric said. “Or we’ll have to assume you’re refusing because a search of that ship would prove that you’re slavers too.”

  “We ain’t slavers,” another of the smugglers insisted. “Give ’em the ship, Mavash. You given ’em everything else already anyway.”

  “I give you the ship, no one will ever sail with me again,” he said.

  “If you don’t,” Aefric said, “you could be looking at a life so short it wouldn’t matter.”

  For a moment the only sounds were the whipping of the sea wind and the distant, excited conversation of the refugees.

  “Don’t matter where they are now,” Mavash mumbled, sounding defeated. “They’ll be back for us at dusk. You can take ’em then.”

  “Which way will they be coming?” Aefric asked.

  “South,” Mavash said, sounding thoroughly miserable. “You could hide your ships here in the cove. Swift Wind wouldn’t see ’em before they’re in shooting range.”

  “Is there a reef to worry about?” Aefric asked.

  “Ain’t no reef, yer grace,” Mavash said. “We don’t bring the ship to shore while sun’s up ’cause it’d draw eyes to us.”

  “Your grace,” one of the scouts called. “Three ships incoming, from the south. Warships. Three-masted frigates. Flying Deepwater and Ajenmoor flags.”

  “I can signal them, your grace,” Ser Micham said. “There’s a code. Send them after the slave ship.”

  “Do it,” Aefric said. “But make sure at least one ship comes back here.”

  “Yes, your grace,” Ser Micham said, giving a battlefield salute then running toward the shore.

  The man ran well, if noisily, in full plate armor.

  “All right,” Aefric said, turning back to Mavash. “Tell us everything we need to know about the Swift Wave. Complement. Armament. Everything.”

  Mavash sighed, and began to talk.

  There was probably something Aefric hated worse than letting others do his fighting. In fact, there were probably several things he hated worse than that.

  Slavers, for example.

  But letting other people go and fight slavers on his behalf, while he remained behind, waiting. Surely that was the worst feeling in the world.

  His empty stomach seethed. He paced in the hot afternoon sun, just to give his tense muscles something to do. But the problem was that even pacing seemed to remind him what he was not doing.

  The sound of his boots and the butt of his staff on the hard, brown rocks of the Dragonscar sounded to him like the clash of battle. The cool, salt sea wind in his face called him to take to the air and chase down that slaver ship.

  Intellectually, he knew that remaining with his troops at the Dragonscar was what he needed to do. Sers Yrsa and Beornric were right. He wasn’t just an adventurer anymore, free to risk his life every time it suited him.

  He was a duke now. He had responsibilities. Even if they felt abstract, compared to a ship full of enemies.

  Nevertheless. This was a battle he could, in theory, leave to sailors who had their share of experience fighting the likes of pirates and slavers. They could handle chasing down one, mastless ship. Especially a ship that was already short its captain and nineteen others from the fighting members of its crew.

  “You should eat something, your grace,” Ser Beornric said. “You haven’t eaten since your morning toast and bacon.”

  Aefric hadn’t seen the knight approach. Been too wrapped up in what he wanted to be doing.

  Now he looked up to see Sers Beornric and Yrsa standing side by side, not five paces seaward of him. Beornric looked sympathetic, and offered an apple with one gauntleted hand, and some jerked deer with the other.

  Ser Yrsa’s look was more gauging. Or perhaps irritated. She had something of a scowl going, and the area around her main scar was darker than its usual tan.

  “I couldn’t eat right now,” Aefric said. “Not until we’re done here.”

  “Then perhaps it’s time for that conversation,” Ser Yrsa said.

  “Fine,” Aefric said, and the three of them moved deeper into the Dragonscar. Farther from the rest of both troops and prisoners, and forcing two of the scouts to move deeper in as well, to maintain their watch.

  The rock walls of the Dragonscar were jagged, and many shades of brown and dark red. Legend claimed that one of the last of the great, giant dragons had died while flying above the valley that was now the Risen Sea. That the dragon had crashed to the face of Qorunn and, in so doing, torn its way through the cliffs as it died.

  The displaced rock and dirt was said to form the Threepeaks Mountains, though they were too far south — nearly twenty miles — for that to be a serious possibility.

  Still. Looking up at the walls of the chasm, Aefric could almost believe it. The walls were jagged as though ripped up by violence, but their edges had been rounded and worn through the centuries since whatever had happened to them.

  Of course, given the width of the Dragonscar, that dragon would have to have been immense…

  “Don’t try to tell me you’re scouting dangers,” Ser Yrsa said. “Body language is all wrong. I can tell you’re wondering if the legends are true.”

  “I’m still inside the area declared clear by the scouts,” Aefric said, turning to his general. “So I felt comfortable enough to wonder.”

  “Fair enough,” Ser Beornric said, looking back and forth between the other two.

  “I did not rush headlong,” Aefric said. “When I went after that slaver ship. I did it right. I approached from a blind angle, and struck from outside their range. I did the damage I intended, and stopped before fire could consume the ship.”

  “And flew back directly over that ship,” Ser Yrsa said, and smiled viciously when Aefric’s eyes widened in surprise. “I had the scouts watching for you.”

  “I was outside bowshot,” Aefric said. “And I admit I was trying to draw out any wizards they might have had. And before you ask, I was confident that they didn’t have any exceptional wizards, because an exceptional wizard would have detected me, and possibly stopped or diverted my second strike.”

  Ser Yrsa sighed.

  “The point is,” Aefric said. “You asked me not to act impulsively and foolishly. I didn’t. I went after the slaver ship the right way. With caution, then speed. I did not expose myself to undue risk.”

  Ser Yrsa raised her eyebrows at Ser Beornric, who gave a heavy sigh.

  “Yes, your grace,” he said. “You did. Because we already had their captain, many of their fighters, and most if not all of their cargo. There was no pressing need for you to risk yourself at all.”

  “I couldn’t chance their getting away, in case they had more slaves aboard.”

  “Yes,” Ser Yrsa insisted. “You could have. And not the least because you had already summoned aid.”

  “That aid was hours away.”

  “You cannot save everyone.” Ser Yrsa stepped in close, staring Aefric in the eye. “I understand that you wish to. And I respect the desire. Even admire it, after a fashion. But if you continue to act like an adventurer, you will meet the untimely fate of an adventurer.”

  “By all rights,” Ser Beornric said, “you should have died at Frozen Ridge. And you know it. Only the actions of a god spared your life.”

  Aefric opened his mouth to deny that — after all, he had been the only witness, and he’d not been in a coherent frame of mind at the time.

  But he closed his mouth and frowned, instead.

  Even standing here in the Dragonscar, a full season later, he could still see that flash of silver eyes. Feel the press of those lips to his forehead.

  Aefric nodded.

  “Tell me which god saved you,” Ser Yrsa said, one eyebrow high, “and I’ll light a candle to him—”

  “To her,” Aefric said softly. “It was Kalinda, the new goddess of magic.”

  “Then I’ll happily make offerings of thanksgiving at her temple,” Ser Yrsa said. “For saving the life of my duke. But only a fool would count on such a thing happening twice to the same person.”

  “You’ve done well as a duke so far,” Ser Beornric said. “You have your vassals working together, all save Count Ferrin of Motte. And you’re bringing him to heel.”

  “He’s right,” Ser Yrsa said. “Your intercessions are going to help Deepwater recover faster from the Godswalk Wars than either of your peers in Silverlake and Merrek.”

  “And even Merrek would be far worse off, if not for what you did at Frozen Ridge. And Duchess Ashling knows it. Those three ships she gave you were a princely expression of thanks. And even so she said there would be something more to come.”

  “All right,” Aefric said, raising his hands in surrender. “I get your point.”