"Alright."
Meera smoothed the white silk over her knees and lifted her chin.
"Then let us speak of your men, Count Rubenhart. Since you clearly would rather speak of them than of yourself."
Ulrich returned to the armchair.
He sat with his right hand resting on the carved arm and his left laid along his thigh, and he waited.
Meera did not make him wait long. Whatever else she was, she was a captain, and when she chose to report she reported the way she sailed, without wasted motion.
"Twelve names," she said. "That is how many I carried out of New Ruben. Men and women the sea has not managed to kill in thirty years of trying. Some of them you would call pirates. Some of them would call you worse. All of them know the eastern waters better than the Crown's charts do."
"And?"
"Two are dead. One drowned off the northern reefs in the autumn storms, one was hanged in Port Callan by a magistrate who did not appreciate his sense of humor. Of the ten who live, ten will hear you."
