Chapter one
GoldHow do you get on to civilized speaking terms with a daughter you haven’t met until she was a grown woman, a tiger-lady with Whip and Claw who once sought to rip your face off? It’s not all that easy. No, by Vox, not at all easy!
We sat together in the mizzen top, looking aft. Far astern two shining triangles showed where the pursuit gained remorselessly upon us in the quartering breeze. Soon they would overtake us and attempt to board and we would fall to handstrokes in the red roaring madness of battle — but far, far more important than that were these first stumbling steps in building a relationship between father and daughter.
My daughter, the Princess Dayra of Vallia, known as Ros the Claw, could not be expected to become suddenly all Sweetness and Light. After all,
