“Now,” Aefric said. “A person desperate to survive, especially with a sibling to watch out for, may … bend a great many rules and laws. Over time, such actions can become habits that … twist one’s view of the world.”

  Aefric looked Morgard over again. His merchant-style clothing.

  “I’m aware that your plan has been to amass enough of a fortune to rebuild and restore your family’s lands. And I have reason to suspect that not all of what you’ve gathered has been done by means I would approve of. Has it?”

  Morgard hung his head the way he probably thought he was supposed to, but there was a touch of defiance to his posture. Interesting.

  Aefric let his question hang.

  “You may answer,” Kentigern said.

  “No, your grace,” Morgard said at last. He looked up at Aefric. “I … have not always placed considerations for what was right and legal ahead of what would keep my sister and me fed and clothed.”

  Aefric considered saying something then, but Morgard drew a deep breath, so Aefric let him speak.

  “But I understand your grace spent many years as one of those itinerant adventurers the skalds love to sing about. If so, may I ask, did your grace always place what was legal ahead of what was necessary?”

  “I always placed what was right ahead of other considerations,” Aefric said, one eyebrow cocked. “Can you say the same?”

  Morgard considered that through an expressive frown.

  “Your grace,” he said, “I … I will not deny that I have not always done what was right. But I would swear before Taesark Himself that I have mended my ways, and in my business dealings try to do what is right, as well as what is profitable.”

  “And how has that fared for you, on the profitable front?”

  “Not so well as I’d like,” Morgard admitted. “I’ve amassed a small sum. But I doubt it’s enough to restore my family’s keep and grounds. Let alone aid our people in rebuilding farms and vineyards and more.”

  “And now we have come to the crux of the matter,” Aefric said. “The two points that make me hesitate to simply confirm you in your lands and send you on your way. You don’t have the money to do what needs doing with your lands. And the temptation to seek a faster means of gathering that money might pull you back to old ways.”

  Morgard knelt before Aefric. “Your grace, I am yours to command.”

  “Stand,” Aefric said. “You’re not to kneel to me until the time comes to swear fealty and take up your lands.”

  Morgard stood, hesitantly.

  “In the interim,” Aefric said, “you will remain here at Water’s End. You will serve as an assistant to my seneschal. He will test you in the things you should have learned as a page, and make sure you are ready, when the time comes to take up your lands.”

  Aefric smiled. “And as for your funds, he will help you invest the money you have, while you earn more in my service.”

  “Thank you, your grace,” Morgard said, sounding uncertain and more than a little amazed.

  Had he expected to have the family lands stripped from him? Interesting. Made Aefric wonder just what Morgard had done for money.

  But that mattered a great deal less than setting him on the right path from this point forward.

  “You will also train with weapons, according to General Yrsa’s assessment of your talents and needs.” Aefric raised a cautioning finger. “You are not being trained as a knight. But the discipline of martial training will serve you well, over time.”

  “Your grace, I am at a loss for how to express my thanks.”

  “Express them by working hard, learning well, and when you’re ready, ruling your lands well in my name.”

  “Your grace,” Morgard said fiercely, “I shall do my best.”

  “Good,” Aefric said. “Kentigern?”

  “Come with me, Morgard,” Kentigern said.

  “Master Morgard,” Morgard corrected absently as he stepped up to Kentigern.

  Kentigern gave Morgard an evil smile and said, “Not while you serve as my assistant.”

  Kentigern began a lecture about position and propriety as he led Morgard off the balcony and into the castle.

  Aefric watched them go. “Think he’ll be all right?”

  “With Kentigern riding herd on him, and Yrsa cracking the whip?” Ser Beornric chuckled. “He may become the best ler you have.”

  “I can only hope.” Aefric rolled his shoulders. Perhaps it was just the summertime, but his days lately had felt much longer than normal. “Suppose I should see how his majesty and the justiciar are doing with Sifwyn.”

  “First,” Ser Yrsa said, raising one hand to slow Aefric’s exit, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Aefric looked the question at her.

  “I know that your grace is fond of Zoleen Fyrenn,” Yrsa said cautiously. “But given her family, I have had … an eye kept on her.”

  “Part of your role as my general is to assess and watch for threats,” Aefric said. “And you’re telling me that you consider her a threat in need of watching?”

  Ser Yrsa nodded. Once.

  “And I take it you saw something I need to be made aware of?”

  “A correlation that, in this instance, implies causality. Your grace gave permission for Byrhta Ol’Caran and Vercy Ol’Karmak to come here to Water’s End during their majesties’ visit.”

  Aefric nodded.

  “Well, not long after you gave that permission, Zoleen Fyrenn sent rikas to Riverbreak. A short time later, we received word that Baroness Regent Byrhta and Mistress Vercy were obliged to cancel their visit.”

  Aefric drew a long, slow breath. The implication was obvious. And yet…

  “Do you know whom Zoleen contacted in Riverbreak?”

  “Three lers. Ora Ol’Panya, Ilsk Ol’Arente, and Flizan Ol’Orvash.”

  “By all the thirteen hells,” Aefric muttered, then said louder. “In Byrhta’s letter to me, she made clear that she and Vercy were almost ready to leave when Ler Flizan Ol’Orvash and a few unidentified ‘cronies’ made demands she couldn’t ignore. Something to do with a Riverbreak policy for maintaining equity among the lers.”

  “I take it this seemed unusual?” Ser Beornric asked.

  “Byrhta was furious. Called it pointless. Said it was an abuse of the policy, to go once more over ground already covered.”

  “Your grace now understands why I mention this?” Ser Yrsa asked.

  “The implications are that Zoleen somehow pressured the lers into keeping Byrhta — and perhaps Vercy — away from me.”

  “Thus keeping her competition at a safe distance,” Ser Yrsa said, “while she continued to make her play for you.”

  Aefric’s guts roiled at the thought that Zoleen would do something so … calculating. After professing such innocence in the ways of intrigue.

  “Great,” he said. “I’ll need to talk to her later, then.” Another deep breath. “Ser Yrsa, obviously you were right to watch her. Know that I appreciate your vigilance, and hope you will continue to watch those you think might threaten me. Even if I myself do not see the threat.”

  “That is my role, your grace,” Ser Yrsa said. “And I shall always do so to the best of my ability.”

  “And knowing that helps me sleep soundly at night,” Aefric said. “Come now. Let’s see how their majesties fare.”

  The cells in the Castle at Water’s End were a long walk from the ducal apartments. Getting there took Aefric and Ser Beornric — as well as Aefric’s current guards, Ser Leppina with her tanned skin and long braid and Ser Arras with the noble beauty and bearing of her rumored mother, Duchess Arinda — down a great many flights of stairs.

  So many stairs that Aefric was reminded of descending sheer mountain sides on the edge of the Southern Wastes.

  This was a much more comfortable setting, at least. The duke had a private set of stairs here that led from his apartments down to behind the great hall on the main floor. So he and Ser Beornric could make the descent undisturbed by even the passage of servants, among plastered walls painted a soothing, icy shade of blue. The floors and stairs were covered in panels of cherry wood.

  The air had a pleasant floral scent from the vases of fresh zinnias at every landing.

  Rather than use the enchanted light of these passages and stairs, Aefric simply lit the yellow diamond atop the Brightstaff, to guide them.

  For the first few brief, blissful flights, Aefric thought he would make his way down all those smooth, well-shaped stairs in silence. Without any new cares being layered onto his brow.

  He really should’ve known better.

  “So,” Beornric said before they were even halfway down. “What did her majesty offer you to marry Zoleen?”

  “What makes you think she offered me anything?”

  “Didn’t she?” Ser Beornric asked with a knowing look.

  “She pushed for Zoleen,” Aefric said, “but didn’t try to bribe me.”

  “Damn,” Ser Beornric said. “I was sure she would.”

  Aefric chuckled. “Another of your bets with Yrsa?”

  Beornric nodded. “Figured I’d ask while she was off getting the most recent news from the Dragonscar.” He sighed. “She’s going to taunt me with my own gold.”

  “Her majesty did say that if Zoleen ‘displeased’ me, she’d give Sighild Ol’Norette another title and ‘see her well dowered,’ if I wanted to marry her.”

  “Why would…” Ser Beornric shook his head. “That’s right. Sighild is her majesty’s … third cousin, I think? Possibly fourth.”

  “It’s less about Sighild than about getting me to forget Maev.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Ser Beornric said. “It’s both. She wants the princess married to Varondam, and she wants a Fyrenn married to Deepwater.”

  “Sighild’s an Ol’Masarkor. And just look at her. She’s obviously closer kin to Baroness Herewyn than to her majesty.”

  “Nevertheless, she has Fyrenn blood. That’s all they care about.” Ser Beornric nodded his head back and forth. “Though, of course, she’d rather see you wed to Zoleen. Tighter tie to the bloodline.”

  “Well, Zoleen shot that one right out of the sky.”

  “Are you certain?” Ser Beornric asked. “Over a few rikas?”

  “This time it’s a few rikas. What will it be next time?”

  “Intrigue is part of a noble’s life,” Ser Beornric said gently. “Any woman of sufficient standing to make a good match for you might have done the same. She would expect Byrhta to recognize the maneuver, and counter. Which she may have done by giving you a name you could trace to Zoleen’s handiwork.”

  “You make it sound like a wargame.”

  “It is a wargame. One of the oldest. And one of the oldest causes of war.”

  They lapsed into silence then, though the cool color of the paint seemed less soothing now, and more … lonely. As though Aefric were adrift in a sea of ice, that somehow smelled like zinnias.

  If only Andi hadn’t died. If only she’d been around when, as Keifer, he’d backed that Jumpstart. They could have come here together and become duke and duchess.

  Aefric felt a pang of the heartache he’d known so well, a world away. It was faint, compared to what it once had been. He’d learned to move on, the way she would have wanted him too.

  But now and then, he still missed her. Her playful smile. Her casual grace. Her laugh. Andi’s laugh always had this way of perking him up, no matter how lost and blue he felt.

  Memories of her laughter put a sad smile on Aefric’s face as they left the stairwell for a tight side passage, skirted the great hall, and took yet more stairs down two levels underground, to the cells.

  Here, he passed guards at every level. Spears at the ready, and short swords if needed. Well-oiled chainmail, coif and hauberk.

  Down here the halls and stairs were brightly spell-lit at all times, so no flame could be available as a weapon, should a prisoner fight to escape.

  The halls were wide enough for two to walk abreast comfortably, but the ceiling was low enough to remind Aefric just how much weight of castle was above his head.

  Reminded Aefric of his adventuring days when he sometimes delved deeply beneath the surface of Qorunn.

  No plaster or paint on the gray stone walls down here. No floorboards either, or flowers to chase away the smell of dust.

  The cell doors Aefric passed were simple oak, but strong, thick, with iron bars, and small windows to pass food and words.

  Those cells were all empty now, their doors standing just a little bit open.

  Down at the end of the hall, a wider, thicker door.

  Aefric knew that on the other side of that door was another short flight of steps, and the four wizard cells.

  Normally, that door would be unguarded. Largely because enchantments graven into the door frame would not only give it the appearance of bare wall, but represented the first layer of scry wards that kept anyone from looking past — in either direction.

  Today, of course, with their majesties and the justiciar down below, the door was visible. And guarded.

  Four soldiers did that duty today. Two with spears and two with loaded crossbows.

  Aefric didn’t have to say a thing to the guards. They saluted, one fist high, and one of them opened the doors for Aefric, Beornric, and Aefric’s knight-guardians.

  One more flight of stairs.

  At the bottom of that final flight of stairs waited an octagonal room full of magic.

  The very air down here tasted of dust seared by the presence of so much magic. The stone walls, floor, and ceiling were all inscribed with powerful sigils, in shades of black, red and blue.

  This room, and the four cells around it, were even more heavily warded than Aefric’s magic laboratory. And that didn’t include the magical traps which would punish those who tried to escape, or aid another’s escape.

  That reminded Aefric. While wards such as these would no longer open for Calder — once he was removed from his post as castellan, the wards of Water’s End would no longer acknowledge him — but the mundane locks all needed to be changed. Just in case.

  King Colm and Queen Eppida looked quite out of place here in their dark yellow silks. They stood outside one of the four cells, which had to be the cell where the justiciar interrogated Sifwyn.

  The two Knights of the Crown — both strong-looking men and their majesties current guards — suited the environment much better.

  King Colm looked through the cell door’s rune-graven glass window. He was flanked on either side by guards who bore both the sigil of Armyr and the three-edged greatsword symbol of Taesark.

  “Your majesties,” Aefric said, by way of a greeting, “how goes the questioning?”

  “The knights were innocent,” King Colm said, absently, “if you can believe that.”

  “How can there be any question?” Queen Eppida asked. “The justiciar confirmed it.”

  “There’s no question,” King Colm said, sounding irritated. “It’s just … unexpected.”

  “I’m not surprised myself,” Aefric admitted. “The best distraction doesn’t know it’s a distraction.”

  “Adventurer wisdom?” Queen Eppida asked with a small smile.

  “No,” Aefric said. “Just part of basic illusion theory.”

  “The justiciar appears to be finishing up,” King Colm said. “He’s got that three-edged sword of his held high, and is making some kind of proclamation to Sifwyn.”

  “Is it a he?” Queen Eppida asked. “For the life of me, I can’t tell. I never can with a justiciar.”

  “I’m not sure a justiciar is male or female,” Aefric said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re either neuter or both. More balanced that way.”

  “Doesn’t matter either way,” Ser Beornric said. “Families, children, even sex. The justiciars leave all such cares behind when taking up their calling.”

  “Whatever the justiciar is,” King Colm said, “approaches.”

  They all stepped back from the door.

  There was no knock. No indication of any kind. And yet, one of the guards reached over and pulled open the door just in time for the justiciar to emerge.

  Neither tall nor short, neither heavy nor thin was the justiciar. Nothing of the justiciar’s size would call attention. Nor would the clothes. All simple roughspun, dyed brown. Tunic and breeches, gloves and boots, and hooded cowl, worn so low and deep that nothing could be seen of whoever lay beneath it.

  The only distinction to the justiciar was the triple-edged greatsword naked in their hands. A simple iron hilt, but a gleaming blade, held point up, as though in salute.

  Cold power radiated from that sword. Aefric found himself hoping he hadn’t committed any crimes, because if he had, the justiciar might know them all with a single glance.

  Behind the justiciar, a guard closed the door.

  The justiciar spoke, in a voice that sounded almost hollow. Eerily empty of all emotion, or anything like humanity.

  “I have completed my questioning of Sifwyn Rikassa on the topic requested of me. Would your majesties hear my findings?”

  “We would,” King Colm said.

  “Her guilt is certain, of the following crimes. The murder and injury of several soldiers in service to his grace, Aefric Brightstaff, Duke of Deepwater. Conspiracy to mine without permission on the lands of his grace, Aefric Brightstaff, Duke of Deepwater. Conspiracy to steal a significant amount of gold from his grace, Aefric Brightstaff, Duke of Deepwater. Unprovoked scrying and lethal magic wielded against the person, soldiers, and knights of his grace, Aefric Brightstaff, Duke of Deepwater. Spying on—”

  “Yes, yes,” Queen Eppida said, “on his grace, Aefric Brightstaff, Duke of Deepwater. Can we skip that part?”

  “Your majesty, we cannot. The justice of Taesark demands precision in all things. I was asked to determine the crimes of Sifwyn Rikassa in regard to the gold in the Dragonscar, and those crimes cannot be listed without naming those most harmed by said crimes.”

  “We understand,” King Colm said. “Please carry on.”