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Olympus grinned proudly at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “Lefric is not my pup. I bought him from Radulph, then I set him free. He’s just an ordinary lover now. But that mouth of his is a dream.”
Jorgen and Hati looked surprised.
“How do you keep him from leaving you when someone else with a bigger cock crooks a finger at him?” Jorgen asked.
Again, I knew he was joking, but I hadn’t realized Peter, Magnus, Neil, and Jace had caught up to us, and Peter took the question at face value.
“So you admit that those two young men you’ve enslaved don’t have free will after all?” he demanded, like he’d won a point without being part of the argument.
“Peter, please don’t start up again,” Neil sighed.
I glanced between Peter and Neil and Jorgen and Hati, guessing that the whole issue of free will was what they’d been talking about earlier.
“Again,” Jorgen said with strained patience, “Kliment and Nikandr are very much with us of their own free will. They wouldn’t survive on their own, and they are well aware of the fact.”
“You should ask them yourselves, since you seem so hot and bothered about how the lads are treated,” Hati growled.
Peter opened his mouth to reply, but Magnus cut him off with a falsely cheerful, “I think that’s an excellent idea. Why don’t you bring your delightful pups to the cottages tomorrow morning before the next round of meetings? Perhaps then they can meet the other men their age and exchange ideas.”
There was something funny in the way Magnus glanced to Jorgen and Hati, and to Olympus. And even me, if I wasn’t mistaken.
“Yes, perhaps that is a good idea,” Jorgen said slowly as we all passed through the palace door and out into the late-afternoon twilight. “But I’m a bit concerned for their safety. Kliment and Nikandr are precious to us, after all.”
“Perhaps it would be a wise idea for Jorgen and I to take a look at these cottages you have been given so that we can be certain our pups will be sheltered and protected during their visit tomorrow,” Hati said. He glanced to one of the palace guards who stood near the door. “We wolves are notoriously protective of our pups, after all.”
“I think that is a wise course of action,” Magnus said. “And perhaps you could stay and dine with us before returning to your camp to discuss the day’s proceedings with your advisors.”
I glanced to Jorgen and Hati on one side, then Magnus, Peter, and Neil on the other. It was a bit too obvious, if you asked me. They were going to meet at Magnus’s cottage, or maybe mine and Olympus’s. Anyone with half a brain could figure that out.
Then again, city-dwellers didn’t really know anything about wolves. They probably knew even less about pups. For all they knew, that was just how wolves were about their pups. And it was arguably true that pups were precious commodities that needed to be protected. And if it was true that most city-dwellers, like the guard who Hati had deliberately given an excuse about why he and Jorgen were heading straight to Magnus’s cottage after the meeting, believed wolves were savage barbarians incapable of strategy or subterfuge, concern for pups might be enough to divert suspicion.
I shook my head as we crossed the palace grounds and started off along the road that would take us to the cottages. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy politics, there was just so much my head could take before it threatened to start leaking. I would much rather stick to balancing ledgers and sorting through numbers.
Which reminded me….
“We need to find time to finish sorting your ledgers,” I told Olympus as we turned onto the side street that would take us to the cottages. “And the letters we took from Mrs. Ali. We need to make sense of those as well.”
I’d spoken too loudly.
“You allow your pup—I’m sorry, your young lover—to fiddle with your ledgers?” Jorgen asked.
“He looks like the sort who would rather fiddle with something else,” Hati muttered.
My face heated, but not because of the way Jorgen and Hati were still teasing me—and possibly still trying to goad Peter as well by the way he was talking to me. I suddenly felt self-conscious because I didn’t see a way out of spilling all of my suspicions about the involvement of the Old Realm on the frontier by answering the simple question.
I tried anyhow with, “I’m good with numbers and I learned bookkeeping before leaving Klovisgard and ending up with Radulph. Someone has been undermining Olympus’s business by embezzling from him, so I’ve been trying to set things right.”
“And you trust him with this task?” Jorgen asked Olympus, still grinning like it was all in fun.
“Lefric is right when he says he’s good with numbers,” Olympus said, meeting the joke with seriousness. “He’s uncovered quite a few things that concern me.”
I wasn’t at all comfortable with where the conversation was heading. It should have just been casual banter, a bit of fun and poking at me for being one of those boys who always had his nose in a book.
The problem was that everyone turned serious when the subject was brought up. Jorgen and Hati lost their grins quickly, particularly when they noticed Magnus was as serious as a tomb.
That immediately had me wondering if Magnus was being serious on purpose. Magnus was too smart to think that neither Jorgen nor Hati would catch on that something was wrong. It was almost as if his sudden seriousness was a signal that the real negotiations were about to begin.
Sure enough, as we reached Sebald’s cottage, Jorgen asked, “Is something afoot that you haven’t told us about yet?”
