Gideon Tar's face flushed crimson.

Owen stepped toward the angry man. "Mr. Wattling, it has been a trying passage. I shall assume your ill-humor and poor manners are because of fatigue."

"Assume what you wish…"

Owen raised his voice, his green eyes widening for emphasis. "Sir, you are speaking when you should be listening."

Wattling raised his stick. "I will not have some grubby Colonial speak to me in such a tone. Flog him, Captain!"

Gideon Tar stepped between the two men. "I should remind you, sir, that you are on a ship crewed by 'grubby Colonials' and that it is yet a long swim to Temperance."

Wattling hesitated a moment, then stepped back and barked out a harsh laugh. "You wouldn't dare, none of you. Mystrians haven't the fortitude. The moral defects for which you were shipped here are writ large on you all. You barely eek out an existence in a fecund land, but have neither the intelligence nor courage of true men."

His cane became a scepter brandished. "I know all about you. I've read every word of Lord Rivendell's The Five Days Battle of Villerupt. Had to. Set the type myself. I printed it on the very press in the hold of this ship. I know all about Colonial cowardice facing the godless Tharyngians."

" You printed that sheaf of lies?" The moment he'd spoken Owen knew he had gone too far.

"Lies?" Rage cast Wattling's expression in iron. Even his jowls ceased quaking. "I set every word as given to me by his lordship directly. Are you saying he lies?"

Owen shook his head. "He was not even at Villerupt. I was-First Battalion, Scouts Company. The closest Lord Rivendell got was L'Averne. Gout kept him from walking and his piles left him unable to sit a horse." Owen almost added that medicinal brandy left Rivendell unconscious for the first three days, and hopelessly hungover for the last two, but thought better of it.

"This is an outrage! You slander the man."

"As you slander the Colonials."