"The very thing!" Krasta's smile was not without a certain small malice. Algarvians had a way of looking down their noses at robust Valmieran cooking. Lurcanio could eat tongue tonight and like it- or at least pretend. She made sure the rest of the menu was along the same lines: fried parsnips with butter, sour cabbage, and a rhubarb pie for dessert. "Nothing spare and Algarvian tonight," she told the cook. "Tonight the guest is a countryman."
"Just as you say, milady, so it'll be," he replied.
"Well, of course," Krasta said. As long as she wasn't dealing with Lurcanio, her word remained law on her estate.
Having made sure of the cook, she went up to her bedchamber, shouting for Bauska as she went. The maidservant never got there fast enough to suit her. "I'm sorry, milady," she said when Krasta shouted at her rather than for her. "My little girl had soiled herself, and I was cleaning her off."
Krasta wrinkled her nose. "Is that what I smell?" she said, which was unfair: Bauska took good care of her bastard by an Algarvian officer, and the baby was not only cheerful and happy but gave promise of good looks. Krasta, however, worried very little about fairness. She went on, "Count Amatu is coming to supper tonight, and I want to impress him. What shall I wear?"
"How do you want to impress him?" Bauska asked. Krasta rolled her eyes. As far as she was concerned, only one way mattered. Bauska set out a gold silk tunic that looked transparent but wasn't quite and a pair of dark blue trousers in slashed velvet with side laces to get them to fit as tightly as possible. She added, "You might wear the black shoes with the heels, milady. They give your walk a certain something it wouldn't have otherwise."
"My walk already has everything it needs," Krasta said. But she did wear the shoes. They were even more uncomfortable than the trousers, which Bauska took savage pleasure in lacing till Krasta could hardly breathe. The serving woman looked disappointed when Krasta condescended to thank her for her help.
The way Colonel Lurcanio's eyes lit up when Krasta came downstairs was its own reward. He set a hand on the curve of her hip. "Perhaps I should send Amatu away and keep you all to myself tonight."
"Perhaps you should," she purred, looking up at him from under half-lowered eyelids.
But he laughed and patted her and shook his head. "No, he'll be here any moment, and I truly do want the two of you to meet… so long as I am chaperoning. You may have more in common than you think."
"What does that mean?" Krasta asked. "I don't like it when you make your little jokes and I don't know what's going on."
"You'll know soon enough, my sweet; I promise you that," Lurcanio said: more in the way of reassurance than he usually gave her.
Count Amatu knocked on the door a few minutes later. He bowed over Krasta's hand, then clasped wrists, Algarvian style, with Lurcanio. He was thinner than Krasta remembered, thinner and somehow harsher. He knocked back a brandy and nodded. "That opens your eyes," he said, and then, "I've had my eyes opened lately, by the powers above. That I have."
"How do you mean?" Krasta asked.
Amatu glanced over to Colonel Lurcanio, then asked her, "Have you seen your brother lately?"
"Skarnu?" Krasta exclaimed, as if she had some other brother, too. Count Amatu nodded. "No," she said. "I haven't seen him since he went off to fight in the war." That was true. "I've never been sure since whether he was alive or dead." That was anything but true, though she didn't think Lurcanio knew it. She knew her brother was alive and still doing something to resist the Algarvians. But what did Amatu know? She did her best to sound intrigued and pleased as she asked, "Why? Have you seen him? Where is he?"
"Oh, I've seen him, all right." Amatu didn't sound pleased about it, either. After muttering something under his breath that Krasta, perhaps fortunately, didn't catch, he went on, "He's down in the south somewhere, mucking about with those miserable bandits who don't know a lost cause when they see one."
"Is he? I had no idea." Krasta was very conscious of Lurcanio's eye on her. He'd invited Amatu here to see what she would do when she got this news. She had to let it seem a surprise. "I wish he'd chosen differently." And part of her did. Had he chosen differently, she wouldn't have had to think about how she'd chosen. One way and another, she'd learned too much about what the Algarvians were doing. That left her unhappy with herself: not a feeling she was used to having.
"They're hopeless, useless, worthless- the bandits, I mean," Amatu said with fine aristocratic scorn. "But your brother's having a fine time slumming, I will say. He's knocked up some peasant wench, and he couldn't be prouder if he'd taken one of King Gainibu's daughters to bed."
Now Krasta drew herself up very straight. "Skarnu and some woman off a farm? I don't believe you." She didn't think her brother immune to lust. Bad taste, however, was an altogether different question.
But Amatu said, "Only shows what you know. I heard him with my own ears- heard more than I ever want to, believe you me. He's as head over heels as if he'd invented this tart, and I'll take oath on that by the powers above."
He meant it. Krasta could see, could hear, as much. She asked, "How do you know all this? If he's with these bandits- were you with them, too?"
"For a little while," Amatu answered. "I spent some time down in Lagoas. When I came back across the Strait to Valmiera, I fell in with those people for a bit. But they haven't got the faintest idea what they're doing to the kingdom. They didn't want to listen to anybody who tried to tell them otherwise, either."
They didn't want to listen to you, and that's why you went over to the Algarvians, Krasta thought. She knew cattiness when she heard it; it came around too often in her own circle to let her mistake it. She was saved from having to say anything when a servant announced, "Milady, lords, supper is ready."
Amatu ate with good appetite, and did a good deal of drinking, too. When Lurcanio saw what the bill of fare was, he sent Krasta a reproachful look. She gave back her own most innocent stare, and said, "Don't you fancy our hearty Valmieran recipes?"
"I certainly do," Amatu said, and helped himself to another slice of tongue. He took a big spoonful of the onions the cook had boiled in the pot with the beef tongues. Lurcanio sighed, as if to say that even his own tool had turned in his hand and cut him. Krasta hid her smile.
After demolishing half the rhubarb pie himself, Amatu took his leave. Lurcanio sat in the dining hall, still sipping a cup of tea. He remarked, "You did not seem very excited about the news he had of your brother."
Krasta shrugged. "He seemed more interested in throwing it in my face than in really telling me anything about Skarnu, so I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He doesn't like Skarnu much, does he?"
"One need hardly be a first-rank mage to see that," Lurcanio remarked. "Your brother, I gather, gave Amatu a good set of lumps before the count decided he might be better served on the Algarvian side."
"Did he?" Krasta said. "Well, good for him."
"I never claimed Amatu was the most lovable man ever born, though he does love himself rather well, would you not agreed?" Lurcanio said.
"Someone has to, I suppose," Krasta said. "He makes one."
"Sweet as ever," Lurcanio said, and Krasta smiled, as if at a compliment. Her Algarvian lover went on, "What do you think of what he did have to tell you?"
"I can't believe my brother would take up with a peasant girl," Krasta said. "It's… beneath his dignity."
"It also happens to be true," Lurcanio said. "Her name is Merkela. We were going to seize her, to use her as a lure to draw your brother, but she seems to have got wind of that, for she fled her farm."
"What would you have done with Skarnu if you'd caught him?" Krasta didn't want to ask the question, but didn't see how she could avoid it.
"Squeezed him for what he knew about the other bandits, of course," Lurcanio answered. "We are fighting a war, after all. Still, we wouldn't have done anything, ah, drastic if he had come out and told us what we needed to learn. Does Amatu look much the worse for wear?"
"Well, no," Krasta admitted.
"There you are, then," Lurcanio said. But Krasta wondered if it were so simple. Amatu, unless she misread things, had had a bellyful of Algarve's foes and had gone to the redheads of his own accord. No wonder they'd taken it easy on him, then. Skarnu wouldn't have had that on his side of the ledger.
I went to the redheads of my own accord, too, Krasta thought. No wonder they've taken it easy on me, then. To her amazement- indeed, to something not far from her horror- she burst into tears.