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can show restraint when you call me a sickly, clumsy impotent, why would I care if you called me an egomaniac?”
    “I never said that!” Skye gasped, and immediately amended, “Okay, I called you an egomaniac—”
    “And a bastard,” he inserted, and bared a little more of his teeth, not without a wince. “Which did offend me.”
    “—but I never called you sick or...or impotent!”
    “You said I looked tired,” he said, distinctly and accusingly. “You said that I didn’t intend to summon you and you implied, strongly implied , that I would not be able to make use of you.”
    “Vala…” Helplessly, she raised her hands and dropped them again, coming all the way into his room. “You did! I wasn’t insulting you, I was just telling the truth!”
    “I—Sit down. I am a Vaaji warrior of the highest rank and caste and your superior. I don’t look tired and I don’t make mistakes.”
    “And you don’t scrub your own floors,” she said with a sigh, dropping onto the bed beside him, also not without a wince. “When were you going to tell me about all that? When were you ever going to mention, ‘Oh, by the way, if I ever hit the button in my sleep, I still totally meant to do it’?”
    He snorted and wiped his eye.
    “And for God’s sake, who were you saving face for? We’re the only ones here!”
    “I’m here,” he insisted, then looked at the bloody towel and tightened his lips in a pained, yet genuinely amused, alien sort of smile. “I stood my training under the most sadistic legion-master in the service. He never hit me half as hard as you did.”
    “I didn’t know how much that would hurt you or I never would have done it, I swear.”
    “We don’t know very much about each other,” he agreed. And gave her a pointed stare. “Which is why I asked where striking you would be acceptable. I don’t want to hurt you. I would never hit you just because I was angry with you.”
    “Bullshit,” she said. “What do you call what you did last night?”
    “I thought you were provoking me.”
    “Well then, you were too tired to think straight, weren’t you? Or is that supposedly the same as calling you stupid?”
    He started to speak, then stopped and wiped his eye again. “I came to this assignment prepared to forgive your misunderstandings and your mistakes,” he said, and snarled ruefully under his breath. “I don’t know why I expected you to think and act like a woman from the Empire. But you are wrong. I did not discipline you out of anger alone. I thought I was correcting you.” He paused. “Harshly. But necessarily so, considering the depth of the offense.”
    “Perceived offense,” Skye muttered.
    He grunted, then looked at her again, his good eye narrowing until it matched his bad one. “You are never to hit me again. For any perceived threat.”
    “I won’t, I swear.” She crossed her heart to prove it—his gaze dropped to watch—and then hesitated. “You’re not…going to punish Earth, are you? For what I did?”
    He looked annoyed. “I am perfectly capable of keeping our squabbles ours alone. I don’t need to blow holes in planets to win arguments with women.”
    “Well, I’m sorry anyway.”
    “Are you?” he snorted, looking for a dry patch on the towel to wipe his eye.
    “Yes! I’ve been making myself sick with it all this time. I know you must hate me, but I—”
    “Do not presume to know my mind.”
    Skye sat quiet and miserable beside him on the bed. At last, she ventured, “Maybe you should ask for another—”
    “And don’t presume to give me advice!”
    Silence between them, silence like a pit of spears.
    “I’ll heal.” Vala dabbed at his eye and tossed the towel aside. He faced her, half a gargoyle leaking tears of blood. “But you are never going to hit me again, for any reason.”
    She got up without a word and skinned out of her pants, bracing her hands on the side-table. She didn’t dread this spanking. In a way, she almost welcomed