Rulers of the Darkness

So did Talsu, less confidently. He was thinking furiously as he went back to his father's tailor's shop and his room above it. He kept right on thinking furiously all the next day. He was thinking so hard, he wasn't worth much at work. Traku scolded him: "How many times are you going to use the undo spell, son? The idea is to get it right the first time, not to see how many different kinds of mistake you can fix."

"I'm sorry." Talsu didn't like lying to his father, but he didn't know what else to do. He wanted to see just how many things he could undo, and in how many ways.

His father and his mother and his sister and Gailisa all squawked at him when he went out that night, but he did a good job of pretending to be deaf. He also did a good job of evading patrols as he made his way to Kugu's house. Skrunda was his town. In the mandatory darkness of night, he knew how to disappear.

He didn't knock on Kugu's door. He waited across the street, hidden in a deeper shadow. Several language students went in. They didn't see him, any more than the Algarvian constables had. He lurked there till he was sure Kugu would be immersed in his classical Kaunian lesson and then, very quietly, he began to chant.

Odds are, I'm wasting my time, he thought. Undoing spells were funny business. Could he make what worked with cloth work on a man, too? He'd twiddled up a spell as best he knew how, but he knew he didn't know much. Could he really undo Kugu's mask of virtue and patriotism and make him reveal himself to the men he taught for what he really was? Even if he could, would he ever know he'd done it? Might he have to write his denunciation even if he succeeded?

He hadn't known if he would get answers to any of those questions, but he got answers to all of them, and in short order, too. Without warning, furious shouts and screams from inside Kugu's house shattered the stillness of the night. Crashes and thuds followed immediately thereafter. The front door flew open. The silversmith's students fled into the night.

Talsu slipped away, too, still unseen. He wondered how by word or deed he'd made Kugu betray himself. He would never know, and it didn't matter, but he still wondered. When he got back home, he found his whole family waiting anxiously for him. He grinned, greeted them with two words- "He's undone" -and laughed loud and long.

***

The crystallomancer nodded to Rathar. "Go ahead, lord Marshal. His Majesty awaits you."

"So I see," Rathar said: King Swemmel's pale, long-faced image peered out of the crystal at him. He took a deep breath and went on, "Your Majesty, as I greet you I stand on the soil of the Duchy of Grelz."

"Ah." The king's eyes glittered. "We are pleased to hear that, Marshal. Aye, we are very pleased indeed."

Rathar bowed. "So I hoped. And the Algarvians continue to fall back before us."

He might as well not have spoken, for the king talked right through him: "We would have been better pleased still, though, had Grelz never fallen to the invader in the first place."

"So would I, your Majesty." That was true, even if Rathar knew how lucky Unkerlant was to have survived the first dreadful year of fighting against the redheads. "Your armies are doing their best to make amends."

"Aye." The king sounded as if that best were not nearly good enough. But then he brightened. "Inside Grelz," he murmured, at least half to himself. "The time comes for a great burning and boiling and flaying of traitors."

"As you say, your Majesty." Rathar knew there were traitors aplenty in Grelz. His men had already run up against Grelzer soldiers: men of good Unkerlanter blood wearing dark green tunics and fighting for Raniero, the Algarvian puppet king. Some of those companies and battalions broke and fled when the first eggs burst near them. Some fought his men harder and with more grim determination than any Algarvians. That was what Swemmel's reign had sown, and what it now reaped.

If Swemmel himself realized as much, he gave no sign of it. "Carry on, then, Marshal," he said. "Purify the land. Purify it with fire and water and sweet-edged steel." Before Rathar could answer, the king's image disappeared. The crystal flared and then became nothing but an inert globe of glass.

"Do you require any other connections, lord Marshal?" the crystallomancer asked.

"What?" Rathar said absently. Then he shook his head. "No. Not right now."

He took his umbrella and left the ruined house where the crystallomancer had set up shop. Rain thrummed on the umbrella's canvas when he stepped outside. His boots squelched in mud. Two years before, the fall rains and mud had slowed Mezentio's men on their drive toward Cottbus. Now they slowed the Unkerlanters in their assault on the invaders. Rain and mud were impartial. Curse them, Rathar thought, squelching again.