Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 353

"I trust that met with your approval?" Kugu asked as the waiter carried the plate away. The silversmith had also demolished his supper. Talsu nodded; he was too full to speak. But he discovered he still had room for the brandied cherries the man brought back. They were potent. After only three or four, his eyes started to cross. Kugu ate them, too, but they didn't look to bother him. He said, "Shall we get down to business?"

"Aye. We might as well," Talsu agreed. He would have agreed to anything about then, regardless of how he felt about the silversmith.

Kugu's smile reached his mouth but not his eyes. "You alarmed the occupying authorities, you know."

"How could I have done that?" Talsu asked. "Powers above, I was in a dungeon. I was about as alarming as a mouse in a trap."

"Mice don't write denunciations," Kugu said patiently, as if he'd had nothing to do with Talsu's ending up in a dungeon. "You named people the Algarvians thought were safe. They did some checking and found out that some of those people weren't so safe after all. Do you wonder that they started worrying?"

Talsu shrugged. "If I'd told them a pack of lies, I'd still be in that miserable place." And I remember who put me there. Aye, I remember.

"I understand that," the silversmith said, more patiently still. "But when they found out they'd trusted some of the wrong people, they started checking everybody they'd trusted. They even checked me, if you can imagine."

Talsu didn't trust himself to say anything to that. Any reply he gave would have sounded sardonic, and he didn't dare make Kugu any more suspicious than he was already. He sat there and waited.

Kugu nodded, as if acknowledging a clever ploy. He went on, "And so, you see, we have to show we can work together. Then the Algarvians will know they can trust both of us. That's something they need to know. There's a lot of treason in this kingdom."

He spoke very earnestly, as if he meant treason against Jelgava rather than treason against her occupiers. Maybe he confused the two. Maybe Talsu had come closer to getting him in serious trouble than he'd thought possible, too. He hoped so. He wanted Kugu in serious trouble, however it happened. He wasn't the least bit fussy about that. "What have you got in mind?" he asked.

Kugu returned a question for a question: "Do you know Zverinu the banker?"

"I know of him. Who doesn't?" Talsu answered. He didn't point out how unlikely it was for a tailor's son to have made the acquaintance of probably the richest man in Skrunda.

"That will do," Kugu said. Maybe he really did know Zverinu. Talsu had seen that he knew some surprising people. For now, he went on, "If we both denounce him, a few days apart, the Algarvians are bound to haul him in. That will make us look good in their eyes. It'll make us look busy, if you know what I mean?"

"Has he done anything that needs denouncing?" Talsu asked. If Kugu said aye, he would find some excuse not to do anything of the sort.