Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 104

But tonight's crowd… Except for Lurcanio- possibly except for Lurcanio, Krasta thought with a sweet dash of spite- the Algarvian officers were boors, busy getting drunk as fast as they could. The women with them were sluts; half of them were making plays for men of higher rank than the ones who'd brought them.

One of them, in too much powder and paint and not enough clothes, sidled up to Lurcanio, who didn't bother pretending he didn't notice her. "Go away," Krasta hissed at her. "You'll give him a disease."

"He already has one," the tart retorted. "You're here."

"What's your name?" Krasta asked sweetly. "Do you dare tell it? If they look in the constabulary records, how many solicitation charges will they find?"

She hadn't meant to be anything but bitchy, but the other woman, instead of going on with the row, turned pale under her thick makeup and found something else to do in a hurry.

"I have better taste than that, I assure you," Lurcanio said.

"Maybe you do." Krasta's eyes left her Algarvian lover's face and slid down to the front of his kilt. "I'm not so sure about him." Lurcanio threw back his head and laughed, for all the world as if she were joking.

She didn't enjoy her little triumph long. It oozed away as she went back to contemplating the company she was keeping. The Algarvian officers were bad. The Valmieran women were worse. But the Valmieran men were worst of all.

Even the handful of nobles depressed her. Backwoods counts and viscounts, they'd never shown their faces in Priekule before the Algarvians came- and there were good reasons why they hadn't. Krasta knew a couple of them by reputation. The Valmieran nobility was and always had been reactionary. Krasta despised commoners and was proud of it. But, even by her standards, that count over there- the one who belted his trousers with a short, nasty whip- went too far.

She had little use for the commoners in the crowd, either. Some people came from families that had been prominent for generations, even if they weren't noble. You could rely on folk like that. The ones here at the cheese merchant's… Krasta hadn't heard of any of them before the Algarvians took Priekule, and wished she hadn't heard of most of them since.

"We shall prevail," one of them told another not far away.

"Oh, aye, of course we shall," the other man answered. "We'll grind Swemmel into the dust. Plenty of time after that to settle with treacherous Lagoas."

Both men wore kilts and tunics not merely Algarvian in style but modeled after those of Algarvian soldiers. They'd grown side whiskers and little strips of chin beard, too; one of them waxed his mustaches so that they stuck out like horns. But for being blond and speaking Valmieran, they might have been born in Mezentio's kingdom.

Krasta nudged Lurcanio and pointed to the two men. "Buy them some hair dye and you could have a couple of new Algarvians to throw into the fighting against Unkerlant."