The silver-rank leader of the expedition had been Beth’s uncle, Jason discovered. He was the one who had defeated the Ustei chief and accepted the surrender of their leadership.

“The Adventure Society wants to find out why the Ustei came south in the first place, then put them on their barge and send them back,” Beth said. “It isn’t going smoothly.”

“They don’t want to go back?”

“No,” Beth said, “and Uncle Ephraim won’t say why. What he did tell me was that if I did pick anything up, I should keep it to myself. To prevent any potential unrest, is what he said.”

“That sounds serious.”

“What he did tell me is the other problems the Ustei have caused. For one thing, they take their defeat and surrender seriously. They’re claiming that their war barge and everything in it belongs to Uncle Ephraim, now.”

“Is that a problem?”

“It is once you realise that includes all the women, children and slaves,” Beth said. “We didn’t fight our way high enough to find where they were all chained up.”

“Slaves,” Jason said. “That’s never a good sign. Wait, they want to give up all the tribe’s women? Won’t the tribe die out?”

“It’s their culture, apparently. The idea is that now they have to go raiding for more women.”

Jason shook his head. “It just keeps getting worse.”

“You’re right about that. Remember I said they don’t want to go north?”

“Yeah.”

“They want to go east. The nomad tribes follow a circuit around the northern oases. The eastern desert isn’t as harsh as the north, and there are more oases.”

“With towns and villages around them, not to mention everything in the delta they would chew through to get there.” Jason said. “Do they seriously expect us to unleash a literal horde of men looking to kidnap women and slaves on a bunch of small, isolated populations?”

“It’s their way, and they say we should kill them or let them be.”

“I’m all for freedom,” Jason said, “but that does not include the freedom to take people as slaves.”

“You know they hit up one of the coastal villages, the day before we attacked?”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“Those villages make a living from fishing and collecting water quintessence. The raiders rely on water quintessence for survival in the desert, so they raided a village. Losing food and quintessence is one thing, but they took all the people.”

“We got them back right?”

“The ones who survived. Nasty business.”

“What are they going to do with all these tribesmen?” Jason asked. “Doesn’t sound like we can let them go, but we can’t just lock them all in a prison somewhere.”