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.
But the silversmith only shrugged, as Talsu had a while before. “Who knows? By the time the Algarvians are done digging, though, they’ll find something. You can bet on that.”
Talsu abruptly wondered if he’d be sick all over the table in front of him. This was fouler than anything he’d imagined. It felt like wading in sewage. Worse still was being unable to show what he thought. He spoke carefully: “The Algarvians are liable to know I don’t know anything about Zverinu.”
“Not if you phrase the denunciation the right way.” Kugu taught treason with the same methodical thoroughness he gave classical Kaunian. “You can say you heard him on the street, or in the market square, or any place where you could both plausibly be. You can even say you had to ask somebody who he was. That’s a nice touch, in fact. It makes things feel real.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.” Talsu gulped the fine wine Kugu was buying. That first denunciation had got him out of the dungeon, but it hadn’t got him out of trouble. If anything, it had got him in deeper.
“All right.” Kugu emptied his own goblet. “Don’t take too long, though. They’re keeping an eye on both of us. It’s a hard, cold world, and a man has to get along as best he can.”
A man has to get along as best he can. Talsu had lived by that rule in the army. The idea of living by it to the extent of turning against his own kingdom filled him with loathing. But all he said was, “Aye.” Here he was, getting along with Kugu as best he could till he found some way to pay back the silversmith.
Kugu set coins on the table, some with King Donalitu’s image, more with that of King Mainardo, the younger brother of King Mezentio. If nothing else, Talsu had made him spend a good deal of his, or perhaps Algarve’s, money. That wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly.
In the cool evening twilight outside the eatery, Kugu asked, “Do you want to lead off with your denunciation, or shall I go first?”
“You go ahead,” Talsu answered. “Yours will be better than mine; it’s bound to be. So mine can add on to what you’ve already said.” The longer he delayed, the more time he had to come up with something to undo Kugu.
But the silversmith took Talsu’s flattery, if that was what it was, as no more than his due. Nodding, he said, “I give my language lessons tomorrow. I’ll work on mine over the next couple of days after that and turn it in. That gives you plenty of time to get something ready.”
“All right,” Talsu said, though it wasn’t. “I’d better get back before curfew catches me.”
“Before long, you won’t need to worry about that,” Kugu said. “People will know who you are.” Confident as if he were a redhead, he strode away.
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 i
n their assault on the invaders. Rain and mud were impartial. Curse them, Rathar thought, squelching again.
Every house in this village was wrecked, to a greater or lesser degree. The Algarvians had fought hard to hold the place before sullenly, stubbornly withdrawing. Curse them, too, Rathar thought. Nothing in this summer’s drive toward the east had been easy. The redheads never had enough men or behemoths or dragons to halt his men for long, but they always knew what to do with the ones they had. Despite the rain, the stench of death was strong here.
Eggs burst, somewhere not far away. No, the redheads hadn’t given up, nor the Grelzers they led, either. If they could stop the Unkerlanters, they would. And if they couldn’t, they would make King Swemmel’s soldiers pay the highest possible price for going forward. He’d seen that, too.
“Urra!” a peasant shouted as Rathar walked down the street toward what had probably been the firstman’s house. Rathar nodded at him and went on. The peasant was gray-haired and limped. Maybe he’d been wounded in the Six Years’ War. That might keep Swemmel’s impressers from hauling him into the army once the front moved a little farther east. The younger, haler men in the village, though, those of them that were left, would probably be wearing rock-gray and carrying sticks before long.
Those of them that were left. A sour expression on his face, Rathar surveyed the village. Aye, it had been fought over. But he’d been through plenty of other villages that had been fought over. Once the fighting was over, the peasants came back from wherever they’d been hiding and got on with their lives. Here in Grelz, a lot of them didn’t. A lot of them fled east with the retreating Algarvians. He’d seen some of that before, in lands to the south and west. He’d never seen it to the degree he was seeing it here, however.
How bad would it be if the Algarvians had set up a local noble as king, and not King Mezentio’s first cousin? he wondered. No way to know, of course, but he suspected it would have been a good deal worse. As things were, a lot of Grelzers still remained loyal to the throne of Unkerlant. Had they had one of their own set above them, not some foreign overlord …
Algarvians were arrogant. It was their worst failing. They hadn’t thought they would need to worry about how the Grelzers felt. And so Raniero got to wear a fancy crown and call himself king—and plenty of men who might have put up with a Grelzer puppet went into the woods and fought for Swemmel.
Rathar stomped on over to the firstman’s house, scraping mud from his boots off against the doorsill. General Vatran looked up from a mug of tea—fortified tea, for Rathar’s nose caught the tang of spirits. “Well?” Vatran asked. “I trust his Majesty was pleased to learn where we are?”
“Aye, so he was,” Rathar agreed. “Much easier to explain advances than retreats, by the powers above.”
“I believe it.” Vatran lifted his mug in salute. “May we have many more advances to explain, then.”
“That would be very fine.” Rathar raised his voice a little: “Ysolt, can I get a mug of tea, too? And a good slug of whatever Vatran poured into it?”
“Coming up, lord Marshal.” The headquarters cook had been plucking a chicken. Now she went over to the brass kettle hanging above the fire and poured tea for Rathar. As she brought it to him, she went on, “You’ll have to pry the brandy out of the general. That’s his, not ours.” She went back to the bird, rolling her formidable haunches as she walked.
Rathar held out the mug to Vatran. “How about it, General?”
Vatran undid the flask he wore on his belt. “Here you go, lord Marshal. If this doesn’t make your eyes open wide, you’re dead.”
Rathar undid the stopper, sniffed, and then coughed. “That’s strong, all right.” He poured some into the tea and handed the flask back to General Vatran. With caution exaggerated enough to make Vatran laugh, he raised the mug to his lips. “Ahh!” he said. “Well, you’re right. That’s the straight goods.”
“You bet it is. It’ll put hair on your chest.” Vatran pulled open the neck of his tunic and peered down at himself. “Works for me, anyway.” Rathar knew Vatran had a thick thatch of white hair there. Most Unkerlanter men were pretty hairy. Of course, most Unkerlanter men drank a good deal, too. Maybe the one had something to do with the other.
Vatran said, “All right, now that we’re inside Grelz, what does the king want us to do next?”
“Purify the land,” he said, “Rathar answered, and took another sip of tea. He coughed again.”Pouring these spirits over it ought to do the trick there.” While Vatran laughed once more, the marshal went on, “Past that, he didn’t give any detailed orders.”
“Good,” Vatran murmured—but only after glancing around to make sure Ysolt was out of earshot. Rathar nodded. He hated nothing worse than Swemmel’s trying to direct the campaign from Cottbus. The king often couldn’t resist sticking his oar in, but he usually made things worse, not better. In more normal tones, Vatran asked, “What have you got in mind, then?”
“I want to strike for Herborn,” Rathar said.
That made Vatran’s bushy white eyebrows fly up toward his hairline. Rathar had been sure it would, which was one of the reasons he hadn’t mentioned it till now. “During the fall mud-time, lord Marshal?” Vatran said. “Do you really think we’ve got a chance of bringing it off?”
“I do, by the powers above,” Rathar answered, “and one of the reasons I do is that the Algarvians won’t think we’d dare try. We’re better in the mud, the same as we’re better in the snow. We have to be. We deal with them every year. If we can crack the crust and get a couple of columns moving fast, we can cut off a lot of redheads.”
“That’s the game they like to play against us,” Vatran said.
“It’s a good game,” Rathar said. “And I’ll tell you something else, too: it’s a lot more fun when you’re on the giving end than when you’ve got to take it.”
“That’s the truth!” Vatran boomed. “Getting our own back feels pretty cursed good; bugger me if it doesn’t. But speaking of buggers, what about the Grelzers? They’re flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. They know what to do in mud and snow, even if Mezentio’s men don’t.”
Rathar cursed. “You’re right,” he said reluctantly. “But I still think we can do it. From everything we’ve seen, the Grelzers are just footsoldiers. They’re light on horses and unicorns, they haven’t got any behemoths the scouts have seen, and they haven’t got much in the way of egg-tossers. The redheads have been using ‘em to hold down the countryside, not to do any real fighting. Send General Gurmun through’em with a column of behemoths and they’ll shatter like glass.”
“Here’s hoping.” Vatran rubbed his chin, considering. “It could be, I suppose. You’re really going to try it?”
“Aye, I’m really going to try it. Even if it doesn’t go the way we hope it will, the Algarvians can’t knock us back very far.” Rathar cocked his head to one side in some astonishment, listening to what he’d just said.
Vatran’s face bore a bemused look, too. “You know, I think you may be right,” he said. “That’s what the cursed redheads were saying about us a couple of years ago.”
“I know,” Rathar said. “They turned out to be wrong. We have to keep hammering them. That’s the best hope we’ve got of turning out to be right.” He nodded to himself. “Sure enough: I’m going for Herborn.”
“Command me, then, lord Marshal,” Vatran said. “If you’ve got the stomach for pushing forward even through mud, I’ll help you ram the knife home.”
“Good,” Rathar told him. “I’ll need all the help I can—” He broke off and turned toward the front door, through which a panting young lieutenant of crystallomancers had just come. “Hello! What’s this about?”
“Lord Marshal.” The young officer saluted. “We’re getting reports from the front that the Algarvians have started pulling some of their units out of the line and taking them back to the east.
“What?” Rathar exclaimed. “Why in blazes are they doing that? Have they forgot
ten they’re still fighting us?”
“I don’t know why, sir,” the crystallomancer said. “I just know what’s reported to me.”
“Well, whatever the reason—” Rathar smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Whatever the reason, we’ll make’em pay for it.”
Seventeen
Come on, my beauty.” Cornelu urged his leviathan forward as if he were urging a lover into his bedchamber. “Come on, my sweet.” He stroked, he caressed, he cajoled, trying to get every bit of speed he could out of the beast.
And the leviathan gave him everything he asked, which was more than he could say about Janira back in Setubal. On it swam, toward Sibiu, toward—if the powers above proved kind—a return from exile after close to three and a half bitter years.
“This time,” he murmured, “this time I won’t swim up onto Tirgoviste because I had my mount killed out from under me. This time, this time”—he caressed the words, too—“if the powers above be kind, I’m coming home to a free kingdom. A freed kingdom, anyhow.”
He ordered the leviathan up into a tailstand so he could see farther. There straight ahead lay Sigisoara, the easternmost of Sibiu’s five main islands. He wished he’d been ordered to Tirgoviste, but his wishes counted for nothing in the eyes of the Lagoan Admiralty. And there, coming along every ley line that bore on the islands of Sibiu from east, southeast, and south, glided perhaps the largest fleet the world had ever seen: Sibian and Kuusaman warships of every size shepherding transports full of soldiers. Cornelu’s was but one of a pod of leviathans helping to protect both the transports and the warships.
And there overhead, also warding the grand fleet from Algarvian attack, flew the greatest swarm of dragons Cornelu had ever seen. He didn’t know how it measured in the historical scheme of things. He did know he’d never seen so many dragons accompanying a naval expedition. He couldn’t imagine how the Lagoans and Kuusamans had got so many of the huge, fractious beasts aboard ship.
Rulers of the Darkness Page 59
