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My idiots of Vallia? Pirating each other, which is what it came down to, how did that help us against the greater foe?
    As though further to emphasize the difference between a Vallian galleon and an argenter of any other seafaring nation, the breeze slackened, backing, and
Tuscurs Maiden
although sailing well lost a deal of her speed. Not so the Vallian. He came on at a great rate, and it was now transparently plain that he was, indeed, steering an intercept course.
    Linson eyed the other craft meanly.
    “If he means to fight, then we can accommodate him.”
    This idea dismayed me. Of course, from the first moments I’d realized that as a member, supernumerary, of the ship’s crew, I would expect to fight her enemies. Those enemies were seamen of my own nation. Before I believed that, I had to cling to the belief that seamen of Vallia no longer preyed on the seamen of Pandahem. But — some still did. I knew that. It was no good blinking at facts. If that galleon over there, foaming along with the bone in her teeth spuming white, all her canvas drawing, was in truth a pirate — why then I, Dray Prescot, Emperor of Vallia, had better keep that fact very quiet. Very quiet indeed. A gang of cutthroat renders would as lief string up the emperor as spit at him — they’d more than likely spit on his corpse. My Delia had experienced something of this dilemma in her brush with the Sisters of the Whip, when to be acknowledged Empress of Vallia would have brought not instant obedience and protection but chains, the whip and a death in torment.
    The crew took up the positions they occupied at action stations without the usual rush and scurry. The drums did not beat, the trumpet remained mute. Quietly, fingering their weapons, the men and women of
Tuscurs Maiden
stood to.Up on the forward platform our varterists waited around their ballistae. The forward boarding party, the prijikers, kept close, waiting for orders. Weapons were held down, inconspicuously out of sight of the Vallian. Captain Linson nodded as Pompino finished speaking to him, and issued orders.
    Very shortly thereafter, the blue flag charged with the golden zhantil rose above our decks. We sailed under the flag of Bormark of Tomboram. How would the Vallian react to that?
    Itching with impatience to know the outcome of the puzzle I took a glass up to the crosstrees again. The galleon neared. She was a splendid craft, one of the new construction we had put in hand after the Times of Troubles. She would be able to range
Tuscurs Maiden
, outsail her, riddle her. As to her crew, well, the Vallian sailorman is a fearsome foe upon the sea, as I knew and joyed in. If it came to a fight, the Pandaheem were on a losing wicket.
    The circle of the spyglass roved across the approaching vessel. She was splendid! Soon I could discern the features of the men upon her quarterdeck. I did not recognize any — but at this range I could easily be mistaken.
    I thought one man looked remarkably like Ortyg Fondal, and another like Nath Cwophorlin, both capable ship-officers of the old emperor’s navy; but I could not be sure.
    The glass carried my gaze forrard and picked out the superior gros-varters of Vallia arranged on the forecastle. I stared. One man leaped into focus. His lean body was bare to the waist and his buff breeches were cut off at the knee. He wore a close-fitting leather cap, and there were not one but three red feathers sporting there. I could visualize the thin streak of black chin beard under his jaws, the lean eager look of him, the broken nose. Well, Wersting Rogahan had served me well and fought for Vallia; but he would just as easily fight to line his own pocket with pickings from a Pandaheem as not. I had to hope. Wersting Rogahan would listen to me if I spoke, that was certain.
    I switched the glass back to the quarterdeck.
    A man climbed up out of the aft cabin, and stretched, and looked across at us.
    I felt a suffusing tide of relief. Upright, strongly built,