As for Valnu, his long, lean face stayed sober. Maybe he really did think he owed Lurcanio a debt. Or maybe he didn't feel like taking the chance of getting caught again, either.
His cook and his cellarer had set out an elegant and lavish display, as they always did. Krasta hadn't eaten supper. Even so, she hesitated to go over and get anything. The guests already here left her dismayed. Oh, not the Algarvian officers and their Valmieran mistresses: she was used to them. But the few Valmieran nobles who'd come were either of the fierce and brutal sort or else were those who fawned on the Algarvians the most extravagantly.
"Where are all the interesting people?" Krasta murmured to Lurcanio.
Her Algarvian lover had also been surveying the crowd- not that it unduly crowded Valnu's reception hall. Lurcanio sighed. "Fair-weather friends, most of them."
"What do you mean?" Krasta asked.
"What do I mean? I mean that too many of them are wondering about their choices." Lurcanio let out a scornful sniff. "Mark my words, my dear: no one can recover his virginity as easily as that."
He was being obscure again. Krasta hated it when he wouldn't come out and say what he meant. Powers above, she thought. I always say what I mean. But she'd already asked what he meant once. She had too much pride- and too much dread of his sharp tongue- to embarrass herself by asking again.
With another sigh, Colonel Lurcanio said, "We might as well drink. After a while at the bar, things may look better."
"Why, so they may." Krasta had improved plenty of gatherings with enough porter or wine or, for severe cases, wormwood-laced brandy. This festivity, if that was what it was, looked like a severe case. Even so, she started with red wine, reasoning she could always move up to something stronger later on.
Lurcanio raised an eyebrow when she gave the tapman her order. Maybe he'd expected her to drink herself blind in short order. She smiled at him over the top of her goblet. She didn't want to be too predictable. Smiling himself, a little quizzically, Lurcanio asked for red wine, too. "To what shall we drink?" he asked.
That startled Krasta; he usually proposed toasts himself rather than asking her for them. She raised her goblet. "To good company!" she said, and then, under her breath, "May we find some soon." She drank.
With a laugh, so did Lurcanio. Then the laughter slipped from his face. "I think we are about to have company, whether good or otherwise." He bowed to the Valmieran nobleman approaching him. "Good evening sir. I do not believe we have met. I am Lurcanio. I present to you also my companion here, the Marchioness Krasta."
"Right pleased to meet you, Colonel," the Valmieran said in a backwoods dialect. "I'm Viscount Terbatu." He held out his hand. Lurcanio, in Algarvian fashion, clasped his wrist. Except for a brief nod, Terbatu ignored Krasta. That suited her fine. He looked more like a tavern brawler than a viscount: his nose bent sideways, and one of his ears was missing half the lobe. She drank more wine, content to let Lurcanio deal with him.
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, your Excellency," Lurcanio said, polite as a cat. "And what can I do for you?" By his tone, he assumed Terbatu would want him to do something.
"Fight," Terbatu growled.
"I beg your pardon?" Lurcanio said. And then, though he remained a polished gentleman, he showed he was polished steel. Drawing himself a little straighter, he asked, "Do we need to continue this conversation through friends? If so, I shall make every effort to give satisfaction."
By that, even Krasta understood him to mean, I'll kill you. She thought he could do it, too, and without breaking a sweat. Terbatu put her in mind of a bad-tempered hound barking at a viper. He was liable to be dead before he knew it.
But he shook his close-cropped head. "No, no, no. Not fight you, sir- not that at all. Fight for you, I meant. Valmierans fighting for Algarve. I've tried to get your people to let me raise a regiment and go hunting Unkerlanters, but nobody wants to pay any attention to me. Who do I have to kill to make you wake up?"
Lurcanio rocked back on his heels. To Krasta, who knew him well, that showed astonishment. To Terbatu, it might have shown nothing at all. Krasta was astonished, too, and not so good at hiding it as Lurcanio. "You want to fight for the redheads?" she blurted, careless of her lover beside her. How could any man of Kaunian blood want to do that when Mezentio's men were murdering the Kaunians from Forthweg for the sake of their life energy?
Terbatu said, "I'm not wild about the notion of fighting for Algarve." He nodded to Lurcanio. "No offense, your Excellency." Turning back to Krasta, he went on, "But the Unkerlanters, now, the Unkerlanters deserve smashing up. If ever a kingdom was a boil on the arse of mankind, Unkerlant's the one. Bloody big boil, too," he added, looking to Lurcanio again.
"It certainly is," the Algarvian colonel agreed. After a moment, he bowed to Terbatu. "You must understand, sir, that I appreciate the spirit in which you offer yourself and whatever countrymen who might fight under your banner. There are, however, certain practical difficulties of which I doubt you are aware."
You're a Kaunian, and we're already killing Kaunians to fight Unkerlant. That was what Lurcanio meant. Krasta knew it. Again, she had all she could do not to shout it at the top of her lungs.
And then Terbatu said, "Wouldn't you sooner have live men fighting on your side than dead ones, Colonel?"
Krasta stared at him. So did Lurcanio. After a long, long pause, Lurcanio said, "I have no idea what you are talking about, my lord Viscount."
The backwoods noble started to get angry. Then, grudgingly, he checked himself and nodded. "I suppose I see why you have to say such things, your Excellency. But we're men of the world, eh, you and I?"
Lurcanio certainly was. He didn't look as if he wanted to admit any such thing about Terbatu. Krasta didn't blame him there. He let another pause stretch longer than it should have, then said, "In any case, your Excellency, I am not the man to hear such proposals. You must put them to Grand Duke Ivone, my sovereign's military governor for Valmiera. If you will excuse me-" Rather pointedly, he took Krasta by the elbow and steered her away.
He also left Valnu's mansion earlier than he might have. "I trust you enjoyed yourself, your Excellency, milady?" Valnu said.
Krasta was willing to keep silent for politeness' sake. Lurcanio said, "I am glad to find you such a trusting soul." Once out of the mansion and into his carriage, he asked Krasta, "Do you know what that Terbatu fellow was talking about back there?"
Cautiously- ever so cautiously- she answered, "I think a lot of people have heard things. Nobody knows how much to believe." The first sentence was true, the second anything but: she, at least, knew exactly how much to believe.
"A good working rule," Lurcanio said, "is to believe as little as one possibly can." Krasta laughed a nervous laugh, but he was plainly serious. And if a crack like that didn't mark him as a man of the world, what would?
King Shazli of Zuwayza leaned toward his foreign minister. "The question, I gather, is no longer whether Algarve can go forward against Unkerlant, but whether she can keep Unkerlant from going forward against her."
"No, your Majesty." Hajjaj solemnly shook his head.
"No?" Shazli frowned. "This is what I have understood from everything you and General Ikhshid have been telling me. Am I mistaken?"
"I'm afraid you are, your Majesty." Hajjaj wondered how he would have been able to say such a thing to King Swemmel. Well, no: actually, he didn't wonder. He knew it would have been impossible. As things were, he had no trouble continuing, "Unkerlant will go forward against Algarve this summer. This question is, how far?"