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"Only to the cook, so he would know to make something special," Krasta replied around a yawn.

Lurcanio shook his head. "He is safe enough. He can't fart without our knowing it, let alone betray us. You are certain of that?"

"Of course I am- as certain as I am that I'm sleepy," Krasta said. Lurcanio cursed in Valmieran, and then, as if that didn't satisfy him, said several things in Algarvian that certainly sounded incandescent. And Krasta, yawning again, realized she'd just told a lie, though she hadn't intended to. She'd mentioned Amatu to Viscount Valnu when they went into that place called Classical Cuisine. Which meant…

Which means I hold Valnu's life in the hollow of my hand, Krasta thought. I wonder what I ought to do with it.

***

Cornelu would rather have entered Tirgoviste harbor aboard his own leviathan. But the Lagoan and Kuusaman naval patrols around the harbor were attacking all leviathans without warning; the Algarvians had already sneaked in a couple and sunk several warships. And so Cornelu stood on the foredeck of a Lagoan ley-line frigate and watched the wharves and piers come nearer.

Speaking Algarvian, a Lagoan lieutenant said, "Coming home must feel good for you, eh, Commander?"

"My kingdom no longer has King Mezentio's hobnailed boot on its neck," Cornelu replied, also in the language of the enemy. "That feels very good indeed." Thinking he'd got agreement, the Lagoan nodded and went away.

The frigate glided up to its assigned berth, a pretty piece of work by its captain and the mages who kept it afloat. Sailors on the pier caught bow lines and stern lines and made the ship fast. When the gangplank thudded down, Cornelu was the first man off the ship. He'd had a new sea-green uniform tunic and kilt made up in Sigisoara town, so that he looked every inch a proper Sibian officer- well, almost every inch, for the truly observant would have noticed he still wore Lagoan-issue shoes.

He cursed when he got a close look at the harbor buildings. They'd taken a beating when the Algarvians first seized the city, and had been allowed to decay. It would be a while before Tirgoviste became a first-class port again. "Whoresons," he muttered under his breath.

But he had more reasons, and more urgent and intimate reasons, for cursing Mezentio's men than what they'd done to the harbor district. Three Algarvian officers had been billeted in the house his wife and daughter shared, and he feared- no, he was all too certain- Costache had been more than friendly with them.

Away from the harbor, Tirgoviste town looked better. The town had yielded to Algarve once the harbor installations fell, and the Algarvians hadn't made much of a stand here after Lagoan and Kuusaman soldiers gained a foothold elsewhere on Tirgoviste island. Cornelu didn't know whether to be grateful to them for that or to sneer at them for their faint-heartedness.