The beach, at least, was still beautiful.
I had decided, unilaterally and without consulting anyone, that the morning program would include a coastal walk before the formal afternoon activities. This was technically within my authority as the delegation's host and also happened to coincide with my personal need to stand near the ocean and remember that something in this world was not currently trying to kill anyone.
The Solidarian delegation had agreed to this with the polite enthusiasm of people who had been told "coastal walk" and imagined something leisurely.
They were getting something leisurely. More or less.
The cove behind the Tezca estate was exactly as it had been two nights ago — pale sand, impossible clear-green water, the morning light turning everything gold. The fishing boats were out. The cliffs were doing their thing with the wind and the old guardian statues. A handful of local vendors had set up on the upper path, selling fried things and cold drinks and shell-and-glass trinkets that caught the light.
I had already purchased two fried something-or-others from the first stall and was eating them while walking, which the Solidarian attendants were dealing with in that specific way of people who kept looking at each other and deciding not to say anything.
The delegation had spread out comfortably across the path. Sera, the lead envoy, was in conversation with two of the Tezca sub-family representatives about trade route alignment, which I had arranged for her specifically because she was sharp and genuinely curious and I figured she'd get more out of direct conversation than out of another prepared briefing.
Julius walked beside me.
He had been beside me for approximately twenty minutes without either of us making much of a production of it. He was dressed more simply than yesterday — traveling clothes, sword at his hip, none of the ceremonial layering. It suited him better.
"You look different today," he said.
I glanced at him sideways. "I'm always in a dress. This is the dress."
"The one from yesterday was more formal."
"The one from today is also formal, just southern formal, which means it has more air in it." I took another bite of fried thing. "Is there a point to this observation?"
"I was wondering if you were planning to—" He stopped. Looked at the water. Then at me. "Never mind."
I stared at him for a moment.
'Did this man just almost ask me—'
[Eros perks up with great interest.]
'Don't,' I thought at him.
[Eros subsides, but keeps watching.]
"Finish the sentence," I said.
"It's not important."
"Now I want to know."
Julius kept his eyes on the water. "I was going to ask whether you'd be joining us for the swimming portion later. Since you've been walking in formal shoes."
I looked at my shoes. They were, in fact, impractical for beach walking. I had known this before leaving the estate and had done it anyway on principle, which was a choice I was prepared to defend.
"The swimming portion," I said.
"Some of my delegation swim in the mornings when the conditions allow. It was mentioned as a possible activity."
"I'm the host," I said pleasantly. "Not a participant."
Julius didn't say anything for a moment. Something in his expression was very carefully not a smile.
"If you have something to say," I told him, "say it."
"I have nothing to say."
He had something to say. He had several things to say and he was choosing not to say any of them, which was its own kind of answer.
[Eros is barely containing himself.]
I decided to let it go on the grounds that engaging with it further would only make Eros insufferable, which was already a high bar.
We walked. The sea air came in off the water in clean, warm bursts. I pointed out things as we went — the cliffs and their guardian statues, what the fishing boats' flag patterns meant in terms of which family they belonged to, the way the tide patterns shifted between the outer cove and the inner harbor. Julius listened and asked questions that were specific and sensible, the questions of someone who was genuinely trying to understand rather than performing interest.
"The vendor at the third stall," he said. "She was watching us."
"She's been watching us since the first stall," I said. "Eyes consistent with local guild contact but not active. Probably just reporting to someone that we're here."
Julius absorbed this. "You noticed before me."
"You were looking at the guardian statues."
"They're interesting architecture."
"They are," I agreed.
We kept walking.
'Okay, I'll give him this much,' I thought. 'He's easy company.'
Which was the problem, in a way, and I was aware that I was thinking about it more than the observation warranted. Julius Ainsworth was the kind of person who was easy to be around, which was not a quality I had reliable defenses for — I had a track record of getting tangled up with people who were easy to be around, and it never ended simply. Peter was exhibit A. My grandmother was the exception that proved the rule. Jane was — well, Jane was Jane, that was different.
Julius needed to go back to Solidana, win his succession battle, and figure out the hero thing, ideally with Adele involved at some point in a way I was still planning. That was the full scope of what Julius needed, and I was his host, and the walk was nice, and I was going to stop thinking about it.
'It will be fine,' I told myself.
[Eros hums.]
'Stop that.'
The upper path curved around the base of the cliff and opened onto a wider beach where the sand was coarser and the water was deeper blue. The fishing boats were visible from here as small shapes out toward the horizon. A few children were playing in the shallows farther down. The vendors thinned out and the path became more open.
I was mid-sentence about the Tezca coastal boundary laws when Julius's hand came up.
Small gesture. Controlled.
Stop.
I stopped.
He was looking at the water.
I looked at the water.
The ships that had been shapes on the horizon twenty minutes ago were shapes on the horizon no more. They were closer. Significantly closer. And they were moving with the particular purposeful speed of vessels that had decided where they were going and had stopped pretending otherwise.
I counted.
Four. Five.
Seven.
'More than forty,' I thought. 'Right. Reiner moves fast.'
Although — and this was the part that was less comfortable to sit with — Reiner moving fast wasn't quite the right frame. These ships had not appeared in the last twenty minutes. They had been in transit already, which meant the third phase had been initiated before the second phase even concluded, which meant either Reiner was more decisive than I had modeled or more desperate, and the difference between those two things mattered a great deal for what he would do next.
"How many," Julius said quietly.
"Seven ships visible. Probably two to three more in reserve beyond the headland, waiting to cut off the harbor exit." I shaded my eyes with one hand, squinting. "The lead ship has a Crimson Wake flag. That's not subtle."
"You know them."
"I know of them. Privateers out of the southern lanes. Forty-plus crew per ship at full complement." I looked around at the beach. The delegation, spread out across the path. Sera, still talking trade routes. Twelve Solidarian attendants. Four Tezca sub-family representatives who were competent enough for normal diplomatic work and unlikely to be useful here.
Julius was looking at them too. Running his own count. His hand had moved to his sword — not drawn, just resting there, the unconscious adjustment of a body getting ready.
'He's fast,' I thought. 'Clocked it at the same time I did.'
I turned back to the water. The lead ship was close enough now to see the shapes of people on the deck. They were not being subtle about the approach.
"The civilians need to be moved back up the path," I said. "The vendors, the children — there are about fourteen people between here and the cliff turn who don't belong in this."
Julius was already talking quietly to two of his attendants. They moved without making it obvious they were moving — casual repositioning, the practiced skill of a delegation that had apparently dealt with worse than this before.
I put a spare protection charm on the nearest vendor without breaking stride.
The first ship grounded on the sand at the outer beach.
They came off it fast. Well-organized, spreading across the sand in a practiced arc that covered the exits. Armed, light — these weren't boarding gear, they were beach assault gear. Someone had briefed them on the target and the terrain.
The rest of the ships were still landing.
One ship at a time, then the next, then the next — and they kept coming, fanning across the beach in numbers that were, even accounting for the fact that I was me, sufficient to cause a significant amount of problems for the people around me who were not me.
I counted to fifty visible. More still coming off the last two ships.
I looked at Julius.
"Your Highness," I said. "This is your problem, technically. I'm the host." I gestured at the incoming pirates with exactly the energy of someone indicating a minor inconvenience. "Would you like to handle them, or shall I?"
Julius looked at me.
Looked at the pirates.
Looked at me.
"I'll handle them," he said.
"Good," I said. I stepped back slightly and took a piece of fruit from my jacket pocket — I had brought snacks, of course I had brought snacks, you always brought snacks to coastal walks — and bit into it. "Don't kill anyone. Alive hostages are more useful than bodies and bodies create diplomatic paperwork."
Julius drew his sword.
The delegation, in a move that suggested they had been in worse situations than this, fell into formation with efficient quiet.
What followed was — actually impressive.
Julius moved through the first wave with everything I had seen the previous night but applied to a different axis — no wooden practice sword, no clean-room conditions. Real terrain, real numbers, real stakes. And the thing about finesse, I observed, was that it scaled better than force did. Peter at full capacity against forty-plus pirates would have resulted in a crater. Julius against forty-plus pirates resulted in something that looked, from a distance, like a very controlled storm. Specific, targeted, efficient.
He went through them like water found the path of least resistance.
The delegation held the flanks. His attendants were good — not Julius-level, but solid, working in the coordinated shorthand of people who had fought together before.
I ate my fruit and maintained a protective perimeter around the civilians without making it visible.
Two of the pirates tried to flank around the group toward Sera. I redirected them into each other without moving from my spot, using two small gravitational adjustments that looked, if anyone had been watching, like the men had simply stumbled on the sand.
[Hecatia notes that it is very restrained of their child to not simply end this immediately.]
'I'm being a good host,' I thought back. 'Julius gets the credit for this. That's the point.'
[Hecatia accepts this explanation while making clear she finds it tedious.]
The main group was down by then — Julius had moved through the bulk of them in under four minutes, which I noted in the mental file under things that were genuinely surprising — and the remainder were backing toward the water, most of them with at least one injury that wasn't going to get better quickly.
Then one of the ones retreating grabbed Sera.
Arm around her throat. Blade up.
Sera was, to her credit, completely still. Eyes forward, chin level, the expression of a woman who had been in enough dangerous situations to know that panicking helped nothing.
The pirate shouted something in a southern dialect about the crown prince surrendering or the woman losing her head.
Julius stopped.
His attendants stopped.
I set the fruit core down on a convenient rock and tilted my head slightly.
I had the pirate mapped. Three meters. Blade position suboptimal — he was holding it wrong for the grip he had on her, which meant the actual cutting pressure was lower than he thought it was, and the angle he'd taken put the edge against the collar rather than below it. Sera knew it too, judging by the way she was distributing her weight. She was already finding her ground, already deciding.
One second. Give it one second.
Sera dropped her weight. Clean — she dropped it straight down and twisted left simultaneously, exactly as she'd been trained to do, or had figured out from the physics of the situation, and the blade skated off the armor sewn into the inner collar of her diplomatic coat.
Julius closed the distance before the pirate registered what had happened.
He was on the ground.
Sera straightened her coat.
"Thank you," she said, to Julius and to the coast and to the general principle of good training.
Julius stood over the pirate and looked at him for a moment. Then he sheathed his sword.
The remaining pirates surrendered with the energy of people who had expected easier odds.
We tied them. All of them — Julius had taken my "alive" instruction seriously, which I respected. Even the ones who had tried to run were rounded up and secured with the delegation's reserve rope in a way that suggested someone on his team had packed for this possibility.
Sixty-three total.
'That's a lot of pirates,' I thought, and then immediately: 'He sent sixty-three people after one foreign crown prince on a beach walk, which means either his intelligence was bad or he was accounting for me, and I am genuinely not sure which one is worse.'
One of Julius's attendants was already going through them — methodical, searching for identifying marks, ship manifests, anything useful. He produced, from the third pirate he searched, a folded document that he brought to Julius.
Julius read it.
His expression went through two stages — controlled and controlled but with more effort — before he handed it to me.
I read it.
'Oh,' I thought. 'That's the hostage manifest.'
The Crimson Wake hadn't just been hired to deal with Julius. They had been mid-operation when this commission came in. Currently in progress: sixteen hostages from a merchant convoy they had taken three days ago, held on the reserve ships beyond the headland.
Merchant families. Two children listed by age.
Julius looked at the horizon where the reserve ships were anchored.
"We need to—" he started.
"No," I said.
He looked at me.
"Your Highness," I said pleasantly, "you are a foreign dignitary on a diplomatic mission in my custody. You are not an operative. You are not a rescue party. You do not have jurisdiction over anything in this harbor, and if you go out to those ships without authorization, you create an international incident that involves Solidana, Carlisle, and every maritime law framework the empire has spent two hundred years establishing."
"There are children—"
"There are children," I agreed. "And there is also a chain of authority, which exists specifically so that children don't end up in worse situations because well-meaning foreign royals improvised." I looked at him steadily. "You are a guest here. Act like one."
Julius's jaw set.
"The Tezca maritime authority will be notified within the hour," I said. "The harbor master has legal mandate for exactly this kind of operation and has more resources than you do. The hostages will be recovered."
"You can't know that."
"I can make it significantly more likely," I said.
He looked at me.
"By doing what I'm telling you," I said. "Which is go back to the estate, write a formal account of this incident in your delegation's record — because there will be inquiries and you want your account in writing before anyone else's — and allow the people with the authority to handle the parts that are theirs to handle."
Julius's hand had curled into a fist at his side. His eyes were the particular steady that came before someone who had decided to hold themselves still, and I watched him run through it — the children, the ships, the distance, the calculation, all of it — and come to the end of the calculation and not like the answer.
"The children," he said quietly. "You'll make sure—"
"Yes," I said.
He looked at me for another moment. Something in his expression was not quite a question anymore.
Then he exhaled. Turned. Walked back toward the upper path with a controlled, even pace, his delegation falling in around him, and he did not look back.
I watched until the last of them cleared the cliff path.
Then I turned toward the harbor.
[Tyr acknowledges that was handled well, then asks how she intends to explain sixty-three tied-up pirates to the Tezca sub-family staff.]
'I'll think of something,' I thought.
[Tyr says that is her answer for everything.]
'It usually works.'
I walked toward the harbor master's office.
The reserve ships weren't going anywhere — I had put a quiet [Spatial Lock] on them the moment I'd identified them — and the hostages had approximately four hours of comfortable window before the situation became uncomfortable. Four hours was more than enough, and more importantly, it meant Reiner had sent sixty-three people and seven ships and a standing privateer contract, and the sum total of what that had accomplished was sixty-three tied pirates on a beach and a manifest that was going to be very useful in about two hours.
I found that more satisfying than it probably should have been.
Reiner was going to have a very bad afternoon.