"To victory!" Krasta sipped her ale. Part of her- she wasn't sure how much, and it varied from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute- even meant it. An Algarvian triumph in the west would justify everything she'd done here, and the Unkerlanters were surely uncultured barbarians who deserved whatever happened to them. The other things an Algarvian triumph in the west would mean…

This time, Krasta gulped at the ale. She didn't want to think about that.

She was relieved when the waiter brought the dinners they'd ordered: beef ribs in a creamy gravy with spinach in cheese sauce and boiled beans for her, a trout sautйed in wine and a green salad for Lurcanio. He stared at her plate in some bemusement, remarking, "I have never understood why Valmierans aren't round as footballs, considering what you eat."

"You complain about things like that almost every time we go out," Krasta said. "I like the way my kingdom cooks. Why aren't Algarvians all skin and bones, if they eat the way you do?"

Lurcanio laughed and mimed taking a sword in the chest. Like so many of his countrymen, he had a gift for pantomime. Even though Krasta had been feeling gloomy, his antics made her smile. He had charm when he chose to use it. And he also had frightful severity when he chose to use that. The combination kept Krasta off balance, never quite sure where she stood.

Before long, he'd reduced his trout to nothing but a skeleton with head and tail still attached. "It's looking at you," Krasta said with more than a little distaste. "Those boiled eyes staring up…"

"You, milady, have never seen combat," Lurcanio answered. "If you had, you would not let something so small as a fish head get in the way of your appetite." Under the table, his hand found her leg, well above the knee. "Of any of your appetites," he added.

Krasta sighed. She knew what that meant. Lurcanio never raised a fuss if she kept him out of her bed of an evening. But she didn't dare do it very often. If she did, he was liable to find someone else who wouldn't. That would leave her without an Algarvian protector. Spring was in the air, but the thought filled her with winter. The occupiers answered to themselves, and to themselves alone. Without an Algarvian by her side, what was she? Fair game, she thought, and shivered.

"Are you cold, milady?" Colonel Lurcanio asked. Startled, Krasta shook her head. Lurcanio's smile put her in mind of that of a beast of prey. "Good. You are well advised not to be cold." She sighed again.

After supper, Lurcanio's driver threaded his way through the dark streets of Priekule to a theater not far from the palace. The play, like so many showing these days, was a comedy of manners from a couple of centuries before: nothing in it that could offend anyone, Valmieran or Algarvian. Nothing political, at any rate; the manners it featured were mostly bad, including an inordinate number of cuckoldings. Lurcanio laughed his head off.

"Do you think infidelity is funny?" Krasta asked, not without malice aforethought, as they headed for the exit.

"That depends," Lurcanio replied with a splendid Algarvian shrug. "If it happens to someone else, most certainly. If I give the horns, all the more so. If I have to wear them- and if I have to notice I am wearing them- that is another business altogether. Do you understand me?"

"Aye," Krasta said coldly. He'd made her very unhappy when he caught her kissing Viscount Valnu. She didn't want that to happen again. If she decided to stray once more, she knew she dared not get caught.

She was moodily silent on the ride back to the mansion on the edge of town. Lurcanio affected not to notice. That, Krasta knew, was an act. It was a good act, and would have been better had he not been so conscious of how good it was.

When they got there, Lurcanio went up the stairs to Krasta's bedchamber with the easy familiarity of a man who had visited it many times before. His manner in the bedchamber sometimes struck her as a good act, too, again slightly marred by his being aware of how good it was. But he succeeded in giving her pleasure as well as taking his own. Things could have been worse. Lurcanio occasionally made it plain that they could have been worse. What he'd done with her, to her, after catching her with Valnu… Such things had been against the law in Valmiera, and still were, she'd heard, in Jelgava.

Afterwards, Lurcanio dressed quickly. "Sleep well, my sweet," he said. "I know I shall." Even his yawn was as calculated, as theatrical, as anything she'd seen on the stage earlier in the evening.

But Krasta, full and sated, did sleep well- until, some time after midnight, a noisy commotion at the front entrance woke her. Someone was pounding on the door and shouting, "Let me in! By the powers above, let me in!" at the same time as the Algarvian sentries out there yelled, "Silence! Stopping! Stopping or blazing!"

Krasta threw open her window and cried, "No! No blazing! I know this man." Then, in a lower voice, she went on, "This is most unseemly, Viscount Valnu. What in blazes are you doing here at whatever hour this is?"

"Marchioness, I am here to save my life, if I can," Valnu answered. "If I don't do it here, I won't do it anywhere."

"I can't imagine what you're talking about," Krasta said.

"Let me in and I'll tell you." Valnu's voice rose with urgency once more: "Oh, by the powers above, let me in!"

"Shutting up, noisy maniac," one of the sentries said. "Waking everyone inside, making everyone to hating you."

"I don't hate him," Krasta said sharply, which was, most of the time, true. As if to prove it, she added, "I'll be right down."

Her night tunic and trousers were thin and filmy; she threw on a cloak over them. By the time she got downstairs, several servants had gathered in the front hall. Krasta sent them back to bed with angry gestures and opened the front door herself. Valnu darted in and fell at her feet, as if prostrating himself before the king of Unkerlant. "Save me!" he cried, as melodramatically as an Algarvian.

"Oh, get up." Krasta's voice turned irritable. "I let you into my house. If this is some mad scheme to get me to let you into my bed, you're wasting your time." Anything she said here would get back to Lurcanio, as she was uneasily aware. She hated having to be uneasy about anything.

But Valnu answered, "I did not come here for that. I did not come here to see you at all, milady, though I bless you for letting me in. I came here to see your protector, the eminent Count and Colonel Lurcanio. He can truly save me, where you cannot."

"And why should I save you, Viscount Valnu?" Lurcanio strode into the front hall from the west wing. "Why should I not order you blazed for disturbing my rest, if not for any of a large number of other good reasons?"

"Because, except in this particular instance, perhaps, you would be blazing an innocent man," Valnu said.

"My dear fellow, you have not been an innocent for a great many years," Lurcanio said with sardonic glee. "Not even in your left ear."

Valnu bowed very low. "That you pick the left rather than the right proves how closely you listen to your fellow officers who know me well- know me intimately, one might even say. But I am an innocent in matters concerning your bold Algarvian hounds. By the powers above, your Excellency, I am!"

"And what matters are those?" Sure enough, Lurcanio had a purr in his voice, almost as if he were talking to Krasta after bedding her.

"They think I am playing some sort of stupid- some sort of idiotic- double game, looking to tear down everything Algarve's done," Valnu answered. "It's a lie! By the powers above, a lie!" He did not draw attention to the kilt he was wearing. At first, Krasta thought that might be a mistake. Then she decided Valnu was making Lurcanio notice it for himself- not a bad ploy.