I understand your motivations, too, he thought. Horses and dogs were more honest than human beings; they didn't pretend to love you because you fed them, they actually did.

Rover had been sniffing around; now he raised his head, cocked his own hairy ears, whined, and then growled slightly. Walker heard the noise a little later, and then a stablehand was backing into the hallway. Althea came after him, in riding clothes, slashing at him with her riding crop; at nine she was only a couple of inches shorter than the slave, showing promise of her father's height. The stable worker backed up, babbling excuses and sheltering his face with crossed arms that showed bleeding welts from the steel-cored leather; he knew better than to try and touch the girl, of course.

"Hey, what's up?" Walker said.

Quite a temper on that chick, he thought, looking at his daughter objectively. In a couple of years, she's going to be quite a sight, too. Long buttercup-colored hair fell down her back, shining from careful attention; her face was oval and regular, the eyes large and cornflower blue.

"This… this… this fool had Stamper taken over to the farriers to be shod today!" Althea said. "I wanted to ride him, and now I can't!"

The slave was from some tribe in the northern mountains and had most of his face covered with woad-blue tattoos; it didn't hide the depth of his fear as he turned and threw himself at Walker's feet.

"Lord, it wasn't my fault! Nobody said he'd be needed today, I swear by Rheasos the Rider!"

"Get out," Walker said, nudging him with a toe.

When the man had scurried away, he reached out and gripped his daughter by the back of the neck in an iron grip that brought a squeak of surprise. Then he effortlessly plucked the quirt out of her grasp and gave her three strokes with it, across the seat of her tight riding pants, hard enough to make her jump.

"Quiet!" he said, when she squalled.

"Yes, Father," she said, stepping back and rubbing her backside reflexively. Her blue eyes narrowed; not a hint of tears, he saw with approval. "Why did you do that?"

"Because you lost your temper," Walker said.

"Father! He's just a slave."

"Oh, it's not the slave," Walker said. "Plenty more where he came from. You're the one who screwed up. What do I say about anger?"

"Oh." She frowned in thought. "I see, Father. Yes, that it's a good servant but a poor master."

"Right on, infant. You can't master anything unless you master yourself. If you ate sweets whenever you felt like it and didn't bother to exercise, who would you be?"

She giggled. "A big fat ugly sausage-Minister Selznick."

"And if you started hitting and killing every time you felt angry?"

"I'd be Auntie Hong!"

Walker shouted laughter, and the girl grinned. "That's funny but not true, Althea. Your Aunt Hong is… ah, sort of strange."

"Dad," Althea said, dropping into English for a moment, "she's a sicko."

"Well, yes, actually… who did you get that word from?"

"Bill-Mr. Cuddy."

"Ah, yes… and don't try to distract me, young lady. If you didn't control your anger, you'd be no better than all these wog lordlets. Think about it for a moment. It's good to have people fear you, but they shouldn't be afraid you'll start whipping them the moment some little thing goes wrong, or killing them for telling you something you don't want to hear. If you do, they'll lie to you-more than they would otherwise-and always tell you what they think you do want to hear. That's like being fucking blind, girl. And they may fear your temper, but they'll lack respect for you."

He bent over and caught her eye, his voice going cold. "And you will never, never do anything that might make people lose respect for us. Understand?"

She flushed and looked down at her booted toes. "Okay, Dad," she said in a small voice.

"Okay, then. Now go get yourself another horse."

Walker ruffled the dog's ears as his daughter trotted away. "Good kid," he said, sighing with contentment.

"Well, that's that," Marian Alston said. She looked down at the paper and the totals of her prize money and Swindapa's, neatly summed up and deposited to their account at the Pacific Bank. "It seems a little excessive."

Jared Cofflin quirked the corner of his mouth. "So were the cargoes on those boats you captured excessive. The government's share is enough to pay the repairs on the Chamberlain and a good chunk of the expedition's costs as well. And where they found the gold dust and nuggets God alone knows."

"She isn't talking, but I suspect Australia, then back via the Sunda Strait," Marian said. "And they were ships, not boats. Well, a schooner and a brig, if you want to get technical."

"Now you're sounding like Leaton," Cofflin said.

"No," Swindapa said, looking up from her seat by the fire across the room. "Not quite like Ronald."

Her goddaughter Marian Cofflin and Heather and Lucy were curled up on the settee with her, and the rest of the Cofflins' children sat on the rug at her feet as she read from a big leather-bound book. The rain had canceled the high school football game they'd originally planned to attend today. She marked her place with her thumb and went on:

"Marian just sounds like she loves ships. Leaton sounds like he wants to-" She visibly remembered Eagle People taboos about what could be said in front of children-"become very intimate with the machinery he loves."

Martha chuckled from the other side of the dining-room table, and there was a chorus of giggles from the children.

"It looks like we'll be getting that place in the country, sugar," Marian said. Martha raised a brow and the commodore went on: "We were talking it over-retirement place, and 'dapa would like to raise horses. Somewhere with a pier for a boat."

"We're going to have ponies'." Heather said; Lucy nodded vigorously, and the Cofflins' children looked at them with envy.

"That sounds nice. The question right now, though, is are we at war with Tartessos?" Martha said.

"I don't think so," Cofflin said. "I had Ian on the radio this morning, and he doesn't think so either, and neither does Christa Beale, and she's holding the fort as far as the Tartessos desk is concerned. Their assessment is that Isketerol wants to stay neutral for now and will claim-what did Ian say-plausible deniability and pay us a whonking great fine to get the men and ships back. Ayup, no war."

"Not yet," Alston said grimly. "It's coming, though. So I'd advise you to keep the ships, at least-we have to give the crews back, of course, but I think Isketerol can afford losing silver more than he can two good hulls."

"You think so?" Cofflin said. "Hmmm. You know, I'm not altogether sure that just having an alliance with Walker will push Isketerol into fighting us."

"It wouldn't, but there's more than that. Walker is pushing Isketerol, but it's a direction he wants to be pushed. Without us, Tartessos would be one of the two great powers-and the only one with access to the world ocean. With us, they're frustrated everywhere they turn, and we're helping the Albans catch up quickly. Walker will give him all the help he can; he's probably realized what we're doing in Babylonia by now."

Cofflin scowled. "I don't like fighting two wars at once."

"I don't like fighting any at all, but I also don't think we're going to have any choice," Alston said, sipping at her lukewarm cocoa. The late-autumn rain was beating outside the windows of the Chief's House, cold and on the verge of being slush.

Good old Gray Lady of the Northern Sea, Alston thought. Living up to her Yankee ways. She loved her adopted home, but there was no denying that the climate was lousy six to eight months a year. Eight months of winter, four months of bad skiing.

"We'll have to consider what we're going to do to convince Isketerol of the error of his ways," Cofflin said.