Mercifully, his fist and the wadded tunic ran interference in the split second before Kip could twist, taking the contact on his hip rather than his horn. He made it past her, but his motion jostled her as she set down the bucket, slopping water on the floor.

Verity stood slowly, leaving the bucket on the floor. With the air of one extremely put out, she sighed, looking at the mess. Then she glared judgment at Kip, naked as he was. Kip swallowed.

“Does my lord need something?” Verity asked.

Kip had picked up on the very subtle cues that Verity didn’t approve of Tisis’s marrying without her sister Eirene’s consent. She had extended that disapproval to Kip himself.

“Sorry,” Kip said.

She sniffed and turned to Tisis, muttering none too quietly, “A proper lord would know not to apologize to slaves.” She raised and brightened her voice: “Milady?”

“Only a sponge bath?” Tisis asked, disappointed.

“I fought the captain long and hard, milady. He avers fresh water is too precious on a voyage to be used for bathing.”

Verity took a folding screen and set it up to block Tisis from view, though the logic of that escaped Kip. Verity spoke aloud, too, as if the screen were a real barrier. “I see that your lord husband has mussed your braids. I suppose we shall have to set aside a few hours to fix them this morning. I think you should also speak to him about procuring a room slave.”

“What?” Kip interrupted. “Why would I need a room slave? We have you.”

“I’m not that kind of room slave, my lord. You’ll need to get your own for that.”

Tisis started laughing immediately, but Kip didn’t understand.

“My lord doesn’t need that kind of room slave, Verity,” Tisis said. “I’m keeping him quite contented.”

“Many a lord tells his wife that while seeking additional pleasures on the side. But a lord who strays must have the decency to do so safely, so as not to bring disease and dishonor to his house.”

“Verity!” Tisis said. “I’ll not have you speak so.”

Kip caught up only slowly. First, he wanted to laugh incredulously. Verity was worried he wanted to take her to bed? And then all the rest crystallized as dirty whispers, not quite directed at him, but definitely directed at him.

He had long felt like a bumpkin lost in the tightly circumscribed manners of the nobility, and the customs of slaveholding were the most opaque to him, and made him more reticent than anything else.

It was baffling to him that when he made mistakes, if anything erred on the side of being too nice—giving a gratuity or looking a slave in the eye or apologizing—slaves resented those slips most. It was as if they were saying, ‘Don’t break the rules. They’re all we have.’

They knew how to deal with abuse, or with being ignored or taken for granted, but making them remember all the privileges of freedom was too hard.

“Hmph,” Verity said. “You’re a woman married now, Mistress, and it’s time you face facts. Your duty in the bed chamber is to provide my lord with children. It is his to satisfy your carnal desires fully. But you have no reciprocal duties on that count. If he desires activities you don’t enjoy or even ones you do more frequently than you wish to indulge him, he has a room slave for that. Of course, as the lady running the household, it is your duty to procure a room slave pleasing to your lord husband.”

“Orholam have mercy,” Tisis said.

“It is his mercy,” Verity said. “What else are slaves for, but to ease the burdens on my lady?”

The old Kip would have shrunk back, would have accepted the slave’s sly insinuations.

Kip swept the folding screen crashing aside. Verity was dunking a cube of soap into her bucket. Kip hauled her up and pinned her against the wall, his fire-scarred left hand around her throat.

“You listen to me,” Kip growled. “I keep my oaths—all of them, including my wedding oaths—and if you impugn my honor again, I swear to Orholam, I’ll throw you overboard for the sharks.”

“My lord, I wasn’t—”

“We both know you were.”

She’d gone limp. Just another slave being abused by another master.

“Look at me. Look at me!” he shouted.

She looked at him with the cold impassivity of a woman who didn’t value her life much. Or perhaps the cold terror of a woman who thought she was going to die.

“You can hate me, but you will not pour poison in my wife’s ears about me. Not while I’m here. Not while I’m gone. Do I make myself understood?”

“Perfectly, my lord.”

He released her. “If you can’t stand to serve us loyally, we’ll sell you immediately. I’ll even let you choose which offer for you we accept. I won’t send you somewhere terrible as a punishment, but I also won’t have you here.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said quietly.

“Now take the laundry and get out. I’ll have your answer by tonight.”

She moved around the cabin more nimbly than Kip would have imagined possible, gathering Tisis’s cast-off clothing and noticing but making no comment on the tears. She mopped up the spilled water, and Kip realized then that he was still naked. Tisis was staring at him, but there was no teasing now. She was holding a cloth up in front of herself, and she looked a little scared.

Oh hells. Did I just jump the wrong way?

“My lord?” Verity asked. “Do you wish me to launder your tunic as well?”

He was holding it in his hand still. “Uh… yes? Yes,” he said. It did actually need laundering. He’d been training on deck daily with the squad, and though he washed himself daily, he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning his clothing. At the Chromeria, you put your dirty clothes in a basket and they magically appeared the next day, clean and folded on your bed.

But he didn’t hand over the tunic.

Verity handed him a towel. “For your sponge bath, milord,” she said. It was big enough that he could hold it in front of himself while he handed her the tunic.

She walked to the door with her pile of laundry. “Oh, milord? Just in case my lady is too delicate to speak of such things, and since you’ll be washing yourself. Do make sure to clean well under your foreskin. A lady’s perfumed garden ought to be fragrant, but a gentleman’s oak should smell only of soap.”