Cuddy nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, when you put it that way…"

"Besides, it's fun. Booze and cooze are all right, but you can only party so long."

"Ah, try me on that one, boss!" They laughed. "Yeah, I see what you mean, though. Sort of a challenge."

Walker went on: "Anyway, I'm off. Alice has something really special planned for those two that came in with the last shipment, and I've got a starring role."

Cuddy made a slight face. "Whatever, boss."

Walker laughed again as he heaved himself out of the tub. Water hissed over the indigo and white of the tiles, and the girls hastened over to rub him down with linen towels and dress him in a long embroidered robe imported from the Hittite country.

"Oh, she's a complete nutcase, I know," Walker said. "But it can be sort of diverting, for a change. Hasta la vista."

And the screams and bodies keep the staff really on their toes, he thought, glancing back over his shoulder as he left. Two of the serving-maids were sliding into the tub, minus kilts, giggling and squealing.

Guards brought their muskets to present arms with a slap of hands on wood and crash of hobnailed heels on stone. Walker nodded back with lordly politeness.

"Philowergos, Eumenes," he said.

He'd seen a movie once, when he was young-Battleship Potemkin, that was it, about a mutiny in the Russian navy, sailors given rotten food and such. He still remembered his own reaction of contempt; what sort of doink shorted the hired muscle? He knew enough to spread around the vig generously, and that included knowing names. The thought warmed him as he walked past into the main body of the mansion.

Glass windows kept it reasonably bright even on an overcast winter's day, and fires boomed in proper fireplaces at either end; the floor was honeycomb yellow marble from a nearby quarry. He'd kept the traditional high seat on the southern wall, but added tables and chairs to make it more like a formal dining room. A curving staircase led to the second floor and Hong's quarters-Ekhnonpa and the children he'd had by her were over in the other wing, and glad to be there.

No mistaking Hong's door, dark oiled beechwood with silver bolts through it, and the mask of a skull in a golden setting above it with a candle burning behind the empty eyes. He walked through, past a sitting room with couches and a couple of beautiful locally woven rugs in front of the cheerful fireplace, and into the bedroom.

"You're late," Hong said. "But I haven't really started. Just sort of establishing the scenario."

Despotnia Algeos, the locals were calling her: the Lady of Pain, avatar of Hekate, with power over life and death. Some of the noble Achaean ladies were incorporating her suggestions in their rites. She was dressed in black gold-stamped sandals, a silver domino skull-mask, and an ivory-hilted riding crop thonged to one wrist, with a few straps and buckles elsewhere. He had to admit it all looked quite dramatic.

He didn't think the subjects today were concerned with niceties like that at the moment. One was a thirtysomething Sophia Loren type, spread eagled naked to the wall and bound with built-in ties at wrists, ankles, and waist. Her mouth was gagged with a leather ball tied with a strap around her head, and tears and spittle ran down her face and heavy breasts. There were thin silver needles through her earlobes, the webs between finger and thumb, and a few other parts of her body, and ivory alligator clips on her nipples. Thread-thin trickles of blood crept over her skin, disturbed by shuddering twitches.

The other, on the bed, was about fourteen, with small, pert breasts and a black fuzz of hair between her legs. He had a good view of that, because she was secured to the four-poster with a net of straps and buckles that held her arms stretched taut above her head and her legs spread wide and hauled back. There was a creaking and sobbing as she struggled.

Trays of polished instruments stood on wheeled trays above the gleaming tile of the floor; the rugs and tapestries were rolled up and safely elsewhere, leaving the half-done murals bare… and Hong had drawn those herself. She wasn't bad, sort of an Alphonse Mucha Art Nouveau style, but with subjects the Czech had never gone for. A bed of glowing coals burned in the fireplace, where other blades and spikes heated to cherry-red. Walker went to a sideboard and poured wine into an elegant shallow local cup, then sipped it. Too sweet, but not bad for all that.

Hong smiled at him sidelong, licked her lips and let the tip of the springy whip trail down from the bound girl's mouth, slowly drawing it across sweat-slick skin and down to her crotch, tickling with the tuft of feathers. Then her hand moved with blurring speed and thin red welts appeared on the inside of her victim's thighs.

Dr. Alice Hong gave a long shivering sigh at the squeal of helpless pain. "Just the right reception for visiting princesses, don't you think?" she said. The whip flicked again, a sharp, expert motion that brought a heaving convulsion. "Oh, does that smart, little princess? Shall I kiss it better?"

Actually they're the wife and daughter of an important rebel chief, Walker thought, watching her work and drinking again. An important dead chief; the rest of his relations were digging sulfur, hauling stone, and building roads in the new Achaean fiefs of Sicily-the ones who weren't hanging on crosses beside the roads. He pulled the robe over his head and tossed it aside. Alice would have been quite happy to include the chief himself in this little playlet, she was an equal-opportunity sadist, but he just didn't find that much of a turn-on.

Hong chuckled as she watched him. "Impatient as always, Will," she said, reaching out to tickle him strategically with the feathers. "But all right, let's start with the traditional defloration… or would you rather give momma there something to remember…?"

"Decisions, decisions," Walker laughed thickly. "I think… yes, youth should be served first."

He walked toward the bed.

"Reveille, reveille, heave out, trice up, lash and stow, lash and stow! Here I come, with a sharp knife and a clear conscience!"

Alston opened her eyes as the brass bell rang. The big stern cabin of the Joshua Chamberlain was filled with light from the windows that formed a curving wall along the rear of the ship. The clipper-frigate creaked and groaned around her, the endless speaking of a big wood-built ship; water slapped at the hull, and the stiff breeze hummed through the rigging. The sound and the long, rolling pitch of the ship beneath filled her with a quiet happiness.

Swindapa stirred. The first voyage together they'd kept to the old no-fraternization-on-board rule, but the new NCMJ (Nantucket Code of Military Justice) allowed married couples and registered domestic partners to bunk together at sea. Above them they could hear the crisp Sir! Crew turned out! of the master-at-arms reporting to the officer of the deck. The ship resounded to a thunder of feet as the crew and the hundred-odd Marine troopers aboard raced up the gangways to stow their tight-rolled hammocks along the gunwales of the ship. Then another thunder, this time as water gushed from the pumps onto the immaculate deck planking, and hollystones and "bears"-heavy blocks of sandstone-began to growl as they were pushed over the wood.

"Time to be up and doing," Alston said.

"You Eagle People-always in a hurry," Swindapa laughed, rolling out of bed and tossing Alston's uniform to her.

Alston paused for a second to admire the sleek, graceful nakedness that smiled at her. Eight years and I still get that catch in my throat, she thought happily, then sighed and began her morning stretches. Those got just a little more difficult every year. The captain's cabin on the Liberator class had room enough, at least. With an eye to impressing foreign potentates, it also had paneling of curly maple, polished and stained to bring out the swirling grain of the wood, and strips of carving along the edges of the yard-wide planks. Even more likely to impress were the two long cast-steel twelve-pounder rifles that served as stern-chasers, bowsed tight in place with double lashings.