“As for the rest—” He shrugged. “The worst of mercenaries, and the most foolish of fortune hunters they are. Perhaps some are here, in Valdemar. The first—will swiftly run afoul of constables and Guards, or even of farm folk, and in trouble they soon will be, and have them you will. Now, how to tell are we which are those that fought here, and which mere outlanders? Arrest all, who with an accent speak?” He raised his eyebrow. “Then, without acting Queen’s Own you will be—”

She blinked, but nodded, and some of the muttering stopped. He had to say this much for most of the people she had about her now, they weren’t stupid.

“What is Valdemar if not just?” he asked rhetorically. “Leave some Guards, perhaps, to deal with them as found they are, but I think you need not hunt them. Live off the land, they cannot; when their swords they cannot hire out, leave they shall, or break the law, and so you have them, as lawbreakers, which can be proved. The second, either a lesson will have learned, or will not, and thus also—” He spread his hands.

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t track them down?” Lord Orthallen asked smoothly, as if the question was of no matter to him. “Just leave them as a menace to the countryside?”

“I say find them you will, without hunting. Hide, they cannot, and with nothing more than what on their bodies they have, little have they to live on, and only one trade they know.”

“But what if they try and pass themselves off as laborers?” someone asked angrily.

Alberich raised an eyebrow. “To escape labor it was, that most turned to sell-swording. Wish them joy of it, I do—and find may they, only the hardhearted as masters.”

“Please,” said Selenay in an exasperated tone of voice, “Do think this through! Do any of you want to keep this army together, spending the treasury dry to feed them and keep them in wages, just to frighten the locals by riding over their fields and interrogating anyone who looks the least bit out of place? And how do you propose to tell one of these Tedrels from—oh, say a hillman out of Rethwellan looking for work? Or a poor brute of a Karsite who’s taken advantage of this to cross into Valdemar for sanctuary? Or are you actually proposing, as Alberich said, to string up every man with a foreign accent from the nearest tree?”

“I repeat, begin with me, you would have to,” Alberich pointed out gently.

There were some embarrassed coughs.