Elsa was exhausted when they returned to the castle from the North Mountain. It wasn't the long day, she was accustomed to that well enough, but she had not used her powers for this long or with this intensity … well, ever. It was like an ache one might get from over exerting an under used muscle, and she would have said it was a good ache, except for the doubt and unease that lingered in the back of her mind.

"Good night … or morning, your Majesty. With your permission I'll retire until this evening."

Elsa turned and faced Captain Larsson. "Of course, Captain," she answered immediately, but she continued after a moment's thought. "If you would let me know, if any of the men have a … a problem with what happened tonight. It would probably be best if my guard isn't," she hesitated, "afraid of me."

"Afraid of you, your Majesty? Why even would you think that?" Larsson scoffed. "They're just glad you're on their side. There's not one of them that wouldn't have done the same … or worse … if they had the ability to do so." He chuckled darkly, "I myself would have sent the spike someplace less sunny than up that foul idiot's coat … if you know what I mean."

Elsa's face registered her surprise, both eyebrows up, her eyes wide, and a blush creeping up her face. She blinked.

"Pardon, my vulgarity, your Majesty. It's late."

"All is forgiven, Captain," she managed. "I will see you … soon."

Her next conversation was, as she had expected, with Kai. She found him coming down the hall from an unused area of the first floor that contained a number of guest rooms. He had probably been up as long as she had. Some how, no matter what the hour or how hard he worked, he never looked tired. Idly Elsa wondered if he had some magic of his own.

"Your Majesty," he gave the perfectly appropriate bow as always. "The captain has been seen by your physician. She has some broken or bruised ribs and the lingering effects of a traumatic head blow, although the physician seems to think that will pass with a few days rest. She has been bathed, given a change of clothing and is now sleeping in a guest room under guard."

It had been Elsa's order that kept Fitzwilliam confined and guarded. Should anyone from the Vigilant attempt to rescue the Captain, or just try to take her back for whatever unfortunate purpose they had in mind, they would find her being treated like a prisoner, perhaps not as harshly as Elsa's words had suggested when they had taken her, but still like a prisoner. They would also find her impossible to reclaim until Elsa allowed them to. Of course she doubted there would be much of a rescue attempt given how shaken the crew of the Vigilant had seemed after she was done with them.

Her mind flashed back to the assault she had executed on the Vigilant.

It had been very late night or very early in the morning, depending on how you thought of these things, when Elsa and her company of hand picked guards approached the Vigilant at her dock. She was in the lead, which in itself had been quite a fight. But she was far more confident in the ability of her ice powers to keep her from harm than she was of their guard uniforms. She also wanted a clear field of fire in front of her.

The Vigilant rocked gently before her, the creak of rope and the slap of the waves punctuating the night air. She took a breath, and reached out with her powers. She could feel the water beneath the ship. Water was always the easiest, too easy at times; it called to her to freeze it. But she could also feel the heavier touch of metal, the iron cannon and shot, the heavy chains, the fittings and pulleys, and the guns and swords. Those were the things she was looking for first. Holding that weight in at the tips of her fingers as if it was a tangible thing, she opened her eyes. 'They asked for this,' she reminded herself and then she let go of her power.

The temperature plunged. The air was wracked by the sound of groaning and cracking. Her hands shot out, and each of the visible cannon was frozen in turn, its partner on the far side of the ship not one second later. There were shouts of alarm from the ship, first a few voices and then building as more and more of the crew was awakened. Elsa focused her outrage, her anger, and a snowy gale began to blow tightly around her. Larsson and his men held back reluctantly, but she did not want them incapacitated by the storm. Then slowly, at a pace befitting an angry goddess, she walked up the gang plank and onto the ship. As she walked onto the deck she continued dispensing her justice in the form of ice magic. The sails froze; long icicles hung from the lines, jagged shards of ice protruded from the hull and from the structures on the deck. A quick stamp of her foot froze the deck into sheet of thick ice.

Crewmen who were coming up in ones and twos from below in sleep addled confusion found the deck impossibly slick. Some of them had guns, but Elsa instantly froze them making them too cold to hold let alone fire. Officers found their swords frozen into scabbards. Belaying pins could not be moved from where they were fixed solid in their pin rails. She sent another blast through her feet and the wood below decks froze. Men running toward her found their purchase gone and, blown back by the wind, slipped across the deck. Some she simply froze in place, their boots covered in blocks of ice. Then as suddenly as she had conjured it the howling storm as gone. She heard the hobnailed boots of her guards trotting up the gangplank behind her.

She turned to the nearest blue coat she saw. "Bring me your captain," she demanded.

"Here, your Majesty," Hanson's voice trembled slightly either from cold or nerves or both as he called out from his position where he had come up to the main deck. He was pulling on his coat.

"Not you," she spat back at him. "That bitch Fitzwilliam." She punctuated her words by sending a blast of ice to the nearest deck gun. The frozen wall ripped it from its fittings and pushed it through the rail into the water. "Now!"

Hanson must have given an order; she heard the scramble of men hurrying off below deck.

"Your Majesty," Hanson managed to slowly pick his way across the ice. "Your Majesty …"

She saved him from having to finish his thought. "I have grown tired of Avalon's toothless threats. I have humored you long enough." Her voice was all the more threatening with its furious calm. "You have come here to see my power … now see it."

She turned and gestured. The mizzen mast was surrounded by the same gale she had created around herself earlier, carefully controlled to be just larger than the mast and well off the deck. She pushed her hand upward and with a horrifying explosion of sound the mast snapped and slowly rose up from the deck. Everyone on the Vigilant watched stunned as pieces of the quarter deck were ripped up where the mast's fittings had pulled through, although the lower mast, the section below deck, was still in place. Lines strained and snapped. Elsa continued raising the mast, like some enormous cloth wrapped tree, until it was well clear of the ship, and then bringing her fingers together in a fist destroyed it, shredding the sails into rags, snapping the thick wood like twigs. With a toss of her hand the remains of the mast were thrown well clear of the entrance to the harbor.

"My apologies if your trip home takes longer than you intended," she snarled at Hanson.

Before he could answer a large sailor stumbled forward carrying something over his shoulder. He dumped it unceremoniously in front of her. It was Fitzwilliam, manacled and shackled, both held together in a painful looking position by a short length of chain. Fitzwilliam groaned, moving slightly. Her eyes opened, and she blinked as she looked up at Elsa. Then she turned her head away, trying to roll herself on her side so she didn't not have to show her face.

The first thing that struck Elsa was the smell. Clearly it was not enough to beat and confine Carolina, they had to humiliate her as well. It took everything she had not to break down at the sight. It did, however, make rage very easy to generate.

"Take her," she ordered her guard. Two of her men trotted forward and wrestled the captain up, carrying her toward the gangplank and off the ship.

"What are you doing with the Captain?" A young woman's voice rang out from the edge of the crowd that had gathered on deck.

"She's not your captain, girl," Elsa snapped at the voice that could only be Wainwright. "She's my prisoner. One does not betray Elsa of Arendelle without consequences." Elsa swung her head around to Hanson and glared, "I would advise you to remember that."

Then the queen stepped backward toward the gangplank. "Mr. Hanson, you have fifteen minutes to clear this ship. I cannot guarantee anyone's safety after that."

"But ..."

"Fifteen minutes. That is the extent of my patience." The queen wheeled and walked off the ship to wait. As she left the dock and stood on the solid ground of the quay she dissolved all the ice on the ship. Immediately the crew scrambled off, Lieutenant Hanson coming at the tail end of the swarm. She saw him salute the flag of Avalon from his position alone on the gangplank before he walked down to the dock. Elsa waved Larsson over.

"Captain, assign a detail of men to go get the Avalonian ambassador and bring him up to my ice palace on the North Mountain. They needn't be polite. Pull him out of bed if you have to."

"My pleasure, your Majesty!" Larsson returned with a feral grin.

Elsa was sure that Hanson would have been the last one to leave the ship. Confident that none of the crew remained on board, she continued her object lesson that Arendelle was not to be treated lightly, not even by the mighty kingdom of Avalon.

This time when she reached out with her power she embraced the water, at least the water directly under the Vigilant. Pushing upward just as she had done when she built her palace, she pulled a mass of ice up, allowing it to freeze so it cradled the large ship tightly covering it's gun ports. She continued raising it until it was well above sea level; she stopped at what she determined was fifty feet. As the ship was lifted and swallowed by the ice everything else on it was frozen. The decks, the masts, the sails, every bit of wood, metal and rope. When she finished the Vigilant looked like a huge ice sculpture on a pedestal, something that might have been done for a nautically themed ball. She had almost smiled at that.

"Your Majesty," Kai's voice pulled Elsa out of her reverie. "Given the state she was in, the captain is likely to sleep late into tomorrow. What do you wish us to do with her?"

Elsa wasn't sure how to answer that question. She had intended to allow the captain to return to the Vigilant. That was what she had told the Ambassador. "I'm not sure this is a question for me, Kai."

"Your Majesty," his voice took on a patient tone that she recognized from her childhood. "You cannot send her back to that ship, or to Avalon, not unless you really do want her hanged."

"I thought I had done enough to make it clear she wasn't a traitor to Avalon, but to me."

Kai shook his head. "Someone is going to have to pay for the humiliation Avalon has suffered at your hands. The two obvious choices are Ledsham and Fitzwilliam, perhaps both. Are you willing to risk the captain's life on that chance, on the reasonableness of Avalon's king?"

Elsa thought back to what Carolina had said to her about the king. Kai had a point. But still if she kept her here, she would be depriving her of her command, of her ship, of the very thing she had said she lived for. Did Elsa have that right?

"Do I have that right?" she repeated aloud. "To make this decision about her future?"

"Your Majesty," this time Kai leaned heavily on the word 'Majesty' and that was not lost on Elsa. "Someone is going to have to make this difficult decision. The captain, even if she is wakened, is in no condition to make it herself."

"Someone," she muttered and lifted her head, pulling back her shoulders. "Fine. Fitzwilliam stays, at least until the Vigilant is gone. Double the guard. Do not allow anyone from the Vigilant to claim her. You may remove the guard once the Vigilant has left, which will be at tomorrow's first high tide."

"As you wish, your Majesty."

"Make sure she has sufficient clothing. Several changes and something to put them in. She is free to leave after that God forsaken ship sails. You are free to remind her of the likely consequences of returning to Avalon."

Kai waited to see if the queen had anything else to say. When it became apparent she did not, he asked, "Will you wish to see the captain before she leaves the castle, your Majesty?"

Elsa exhaled, worrying her lower lip. "I am very tired, Kai. I have a few things to finish, and then I am going to bed. I will decide that in the morning. I'm sure I'll be up before she is."

"Very well, your Majesty," Kai gave her the bow that she sometimes suspected was him dismissing her.

As she turned to go up the stairs to her room she heard him speak again and turned.

The butler looked pleased, his usually taciturn face showing a warm smile. "Well done, your Majesty. Well done."

"Thank you, Kai," Elsa replied, although she was not sure exactly which of her actions he was referring to.

A/N: So here it is, the long awaited chapter 10. I must tell you that there is a chapter 11. With any luck it will be out soon. I am pleased with both of them, certainly more pleased that I was with my last chapter 10. (Now referred to as "the chapter formerly known as chapter 10"). My greatest thanks for grrlgeek72 for helping me see the light and for proofing. My thanks to all of your for your patience and your kind words.