When Krasta walked through the west wing of her mansion, the wing given over to the Algarvians who helped rule occupied Priekule, she knew at once that things were not as they should have been. On any normal day, the clerks and spies and military constables who labored there would have leered and muttered among themselves as she walked past. They were redheads. Leering at good-looking women was in their blood. The only thing that kept them from reaching out and fondling her as she went by was in their blood. The only thing that kept them from reaching out and fondling her as she went by was her being Lurcanio’s mistress. The count and colonel could punish anyone who go to gay with his hands.
Today, though, the Algarvians scarcely seemed to notice her, though she was wearing a pair of green velvet trousers cut like a second skin. Mezentio’s men talked in low voices, but not about her. The looks on their faces put her in mind of those the servants had worn after her parents died. They’d had a shock, and they were wondering what would come next.
When she strode into the anteroom where Captain Mosco worked, she demanded, “Nothing’s gone and happened to your precious king, has it?”
Colonel Lurcanio’s aide looked up from his paperwork. “To Mezentio?” he said. “No indeed, milady--as far as I know, he’s hale as can be.” But his face had that pinched, pained expression on it, too, and his voice was full of things he wasn’t saying. Setting his pen in the inkwell, he rose from his desk. “I’ll tell the colonel you’re here.” He returned a moment later. “Aye, he’ll see you.”
Krasta went into Lurcanio’s office. The Algarvian was, as always, courteous as a cat. He got to his feet, bowed over Krasta’s hand, and gallantly raised it to his lips. He handed her into the chair across from his desk. But it all struck Krasta as a performance, and not a very good one at that. “What is the matter with you people today?” she fumed.
“Have you not heard?” Lurcanio asked. Even his accent seemed thicker than usual, as if he wasn’t trying so hard to shape the sounds that went into Valmieran.
“If I’d heard--whatever there is to hear--would I be asking you?” Krasta said. “By all the long faces out there, I thought something was wrong with your king. Mosco said that wasn’t it, but he didn’t say what was.”
“No, Mezentio is hale,” Lurcanio said, echoing his aide. “But, against all expectations, we have been thrown back before Cottbus, which naturally pains us.”
“Oh,” Krasta said. “Is that all?”
Lurcanio stared at her from under gingery eyebrows going gray. “You may not think it so much of a much, milady, but there are those who will tell you it is no small thing. Indeed, I fear I am one of them.”
“But why?” Krasta asked in genuine perplexity. “By the powers above, Lurcanio, it’s on the other side of the world.” Few things outside Priekule, and next to none outside Valmiera, carried much weight with her.
Lurcanio perplexed her by rising and giving her another bow. “Ah, milady, I almost envy you: you are invincibly provincial,” he said. By his tone, it was a compliment, even if Krasta didn’t quite understand it.
“As far as I’m concerned,” she said with a sniff, “King Swemmel is welcome to Cottbus. A nasty place for a nasty man.”
“He is a nasty man. It is a nasty place,” Lurcanio agreed with a sniff of his own. “But Unkerlant has a great many nasty places, and none of them so strong or so strongly held as Cottbus. It should have fallen. That it did not fall will mean . . . complications in the war ahead.”
To Krasta, tomorrow was a mystery, a week hence the far side of the moon. “You will beat the Unkerlanters,” she said. “After all, if you beat us, you can beat anyone.”
For a moment, what looked uncommonly like a smirk lit Lurcanio’s face. It vanished before Krasta could be sure she’d seen it. He said, “Actually, the Unkerlanter army has given us a rather better fight than Valmiera’s did.”
“I can’t imagine how that could be,” Krasta said.
“I know you can’t. I almost envy you that, too,” Lurcanio said; he might have been speaking Gyongyosian for all the sense he made to her. “But whether you can imagine it or not, the thing is there, and we have to see what comes of it.”
Krasta tossed her head. “I know what will come of it. No one will be having any parties worth going to until you people decide you can be happy again, and powers above only know how long that will take.” Before Lurcanio could answer, she spun on her heel and stalked out of his office.
She swung her hips more than usual when she headed back toward the part of the mansion that still belonged to her. Even so, hardly any of the Algarvians looked up from their work as she went by. That only made her unhappier. If no one was watching her, she hardly felt she was alive.
“Bauska!” she shouted when she got back into her own section of the mansion. “Curse it, you lazy slut, where are you hiding?”
“Coming, milady,” the maidservant said, hurrying down the stairway and up to her. She was very pale and gulped as if hoping her stomach would stay quiet. As far as Krasta was concerned, she’d been next to useless since Captain Mosco put a loaf in her oven. Gulping again, she said, “How may I serve you?”
“Fetch me my wolfskin jacket,” Krasta said, enjoying the prospect of sending Bauska back upstairs. “I am going to go for a walk on the grounds here.”
“You are, milady?” Bauska sounded astonished. Walking the grounds was not Krasta’s usual idea of amusement. The only good Krasta usually saw in having wide grounds, as a matter of fact, was in keeping neighbors at a nice, respectful distance. But she was feeling contrary today, all the more so after than unsatisfactory conversation with Lurcanio.
And so she snapped, “I certainly am. Now get moving.” With a sigh, Bauska trudged up the stairs to get the jacket. She gave it to Krasta and gave her a reproachful look with it. That was wasted; Krasta never noticed it.
Fastening the wooden toggles on the wolfskin jacket, Krasta went outside. She exclaimed as the cold bit at her cheeks and nose, but neither of the Algarvian sentries at the front door stirred an inch. She cursed their indifference under her breath.
The skins in the jacket came from Unkerlant; few wolves survived farther east in Derlavai. Krasta patted the soft gray sleeve. At the moment, she quite enjoyed wearing something from Swemmel’s kingdom. She wished she could throw that in Lurcanio’s face, but knew she didn’t dare. He got quite stuffy where what he saw as Algarve’s honor was concerned.
Snow crunched under her shoes. It was a couple of days old; soot from the countless coal and wood fires in Priekule had already streaked it with gray. Everything was cold and quiet, so quiet she could hear the scream of a dragon high overhead. The Algarvians kept a couple of them in the air above Priekule all the time, to give warning of Lagoan raiders. The Lagoans didn’t fly north very often. Krasta sniffed. She scorned Valmiera’s former allies even more than she did its conquerors. The Algarvians, at least, had proved their strength.
She walked on, getting chillier with every step in spite of the wolfskin jacket. The Algarvians had to be mad to want to fight a war in Unkerlant in the wintertime. They should have settled down where they were and waited till spring. Next time I meet a general at some feast or other, maybe I’ll tell him so, Krasta thought. Some people just can’t see what’s in front of them.