Pekka didn’t think he was wrong. She feared he was right. But she said, “Two things, your Highness. What a man does to save himself is different from what he will do to hurt another. And Mezentio is leaving his own untouched. He has other victims, who can do nothing to make him stop.”
The princes murmured to one another. Rustolainen said, “We thank you, Masters, Mistress. If we need to hear more of your views, we shall summon you.” Pekka left the conference chamber downhearted. She had hoped for more--she had hoped for a promise. But the news of the Seven Princes’ declaration of war on Algarve beat her carriage back to the Principality. She had never dreamt she could be so pleased about something that promised such sorrow.
Rumors swirled through Priekule. Some were frightened. Some were furious. Krasta had no idea which of them to believe, or whether to believe any. She wanted to ignore them, but could not do that, either.
If anyone would know the truth, Colonel Lurcanio would. He looked up from his paperwork when she pushed her way past Captain Mosco and stood in the doorway to the chamber he was using as his office--she didn’t quite dare bursting in on him. “Come in, my dear,” he said with his usual cruelly charming smile, setting down a steel pen. “What can I do for you?”
“Is it true?” Krasta demanded. “Tell me it is not true.”
“Very well: it is not true,” Lurcanio said agreeably. Krasta knew a moment’s relief, a moment shattered when her Algarvian lover’s smile grew broader and he inquired, “Now--what are we talking about?”
Krasta set her hands on her hips. Her temper flared, as it had a way of doing. “Why, what everyone says, of course.”
“ ‘Everyone says’ all manner of things,” Lurcanio replied with a shrug. “Most of them are stupid. Almost none are true. I think I stood on fairly safe ground when I denied yours, whatever it was.” He made as if to go back to his papers.
Being brushed off, even by the formidable Lurcanio, was more than Krasta would tolerate. Voice whipcrack sharp, she said, “Then why did Kuusamo go to war against Algarve?”
She succeeded in getting her lover’s attention. He set down the pen and looked her full in the face. His smile, now, was gone. The expression that replaced it made Krasta wish she hadn’t sounded so prickly: she’d got more of Lurcanio’s attention than she wanted. “You had better tell me just what you are saying, and where you heard it, and from whom,” he said softly; unlike every other man she knew, the quieter he was, the more menacing he sounded.
“You know perfectly well, or you cursed well ought to.” Krasta tried to hold on to her defiance. Against Lurcanio, that was next to impossible. He had the edge on her, just as Algarve’s army had had the edge on Valmiera’s a year and a half before.
And he knew it. “Suppose you tell me,” he repeated. “Suppose you tell me in great detail. Come in and sit down; do make yourself comfortable. And close the door behind you.”
Krasta obeyed. She was very conscious of obeying, of following his will rather than her own. It chafed at her, like trousers too tight in the crotch. Trying to get a little freedom, a little breathing space, she gave Lurcanio a saucy smile and said, “Your men will think I came her for another reason.” She’d done that once, on a whim, and certainly had distracted Lurcanio from whatever he’d been working on.
She did not distract him today. “Let my men think whatever they please,” he said. “You came down here to tell me you had heard . .. certain things. Now you do not seem to want to tell me what these things are. I need to know that.” He waited, looking at her.
Again, Krasta felt herself obeying. Because she was obeying and not doing as she wanted--as she did whenever she was not around Colonel Lurcanio--she gave it to him full in the face: “Is it true that Algarve is taking Kaunians out of Valmiera or Jelgava or ... or wherever”--she’d been shaky in geography, as she’d been shaky in a good many subjects at the academies she’d sometimes (often briefly) graced--“and doing horrible things to them off in barbarous Unkerlant?”
“Oh. That.” Lurcanio gestured dismissively, as if flicking a speck off his tunic. “I thought you were talking about something important, my sweet. No, it is not true that we are taking people out of Valmiera or Jelgava or doing anything to them anywhere. There. Is that plain enough?”
She didn’t notice he hadn’t answered quite all of her questions; had she paid closer attention at one of her academies or unfinished finishing schools, perhaps she might have. But his assertion didn’t lay a fortnight’s rumors to rest at a stroke, either. “Then why do people say you are?” she persisted.
“Why?” Lurcanio sighed. “Have you not seen for yourself that most people--especially most common people--are fools and will repeat anything they hear, as if they were so many trained jackdaws?”
