Someone dropped his sword, and then another, and soon, the clanging of swords against ground filled the air.
“How? What?” Phyro was full of questions.
Théra pointed in the direction of Noda Mi and Doru Solofi, and imperiously ordered, “Seize them!”
But the two men had already cast off their bright royal regalia and faded into the dark woods like cuttlefish escaping into the deep sea, leaving behind only clouds of ink.
“Don’t move it too fast,” said Théra. “And don’t press down. Pretend that you’re the gentle breeze driving a boat evenly over the pond.”
Carefully, Phyro moved the semispherical glass lens over the mirror. The light passed through the lens, struck the smooth bronze surface underneath, and was reflected back. Rainbow-sheened rings appeared in the lens, like concentric ripples, like the whirls of a fingerprint.
“What are these?”
“I call them Tututika’s Rings,” said Théra.
“Very pretty,” said Phyro.
“They’re more than pretty. They tell you if the surface beneath them is smooth. The light reflected from the mirror interferes with the light reflected by the lens itself, and if the surface is perfectly smooth, you’ll see the rings as perfect circles. But if the surface is not perfectly smooth, you’ll see the rings as deformed, revealing dips and protrusions undetectable by the naked eye.”
As Phyro moved the lens around, he found that he could indeed trace valleys and ridges in the mirror by the deformation of Tututika’s Rings in the lens.
He removed the lens and felt the surface again: nothing, no bumps or depressions at all. He gazed into the mirror: The reflection appeared completely faithful.
He sighed in admiration. “These patterns in the surface must be minuscule. But they cause the image to appear in the projection?”
“Precisely,” said Théra. “I was certain that there was some trick to these mirrors. With the aid of Tututika’s Rings, I finally figured out their secret.”
“Including how to make them?”
“I don’t know exactly what Noda and Doru did, but it turns out that the relief carving on the back is the key. To make my mirror, I had the image I wanted projected cast in relief in the back and then scraped and ground the surface vigorously. The embossed back meant that some parts of the mirror were thicker than others, and as a result, the tension and stress of the polishing caused tiny wrinkles in the surface that reproduce the design on the back without being visible to the eye.”
“But how do you get a design of the back view of Father and the Hegemon on the back of the mirror but a picture of their fronts to be projected from the front?”
“Easy. The mirror was cast in two parts. First, we embossed the image we wanted into the mirror, polished it, and then added a new backing.”
Phyro held up the lens. “And how did you discover Tututika’s Rings?”
“I had excellent teachers,” said Théra, somewhat mysteriously. “One showed me that light was like waves, and the other showed me that deviation from an expected pattern of interference could be used to detect minute variations in thickness. The rest was just a lot of experimentation.”
Phyro held up the mirror in the sun and admired the projection of the emperor and the Hegemon on the wall. “Knowing how this was done, I can now admire the craft. Before, even I felt a bit awed by them.”
Théra nodded. “Absolutely. Noda Mi and Doru Solofi relied on ‘magic’ to fool their followers. But once we figured out the secret, the magic belonged to everyone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
REFUGE
Gin Mazoti surveyed the two men kneeling before her, experiencing a sense of déjà vu. Years earlier, the very same two men had also knelt before her, when she had captured the city of Dimu as the Marshal of Dasu.
Noda Mi and Doru Solofi had disguised themselves as Tunoa fishermen and arrived in Nokida earlier after braving the unpredictable currents of the Kishi Channel. They had come straight to the palace and begged to see the queen.
They now spread out their hands, bowed, and touched their foreheads to the stone floor, which was pockmarked and in need of repairs. “Your Majesty, Honored Queen of Géjira, Marshal of Dara, we are at your mercy!” They continued to strike their foreheads against the floor tiles until the dull thudding had stained the stones crimson with blood.
“That’s enough.”
Noda and Doru stopped moving, still prostrate.
“You’ve committed treason against the emperor. What good is pleading for mercy from me?”
Noda parsed Gin’s words carefully. The very fact that Gin was asking questions instead of throwing them into a prisoner wagon bound for Pan was a good sign. The fact that she spoke of the emperor and herself in two separate sentences was another.
“Most Sagacious and Honored Queen, Paragon of Virtue!” he said, still not lifting his face from the floor. “We have been foolish in thinking that it was possible for mere grass to resist the might of the Imperial scythe, or for lowly praying mantises to dare stand against the march of the Imperial carriage. We can only blame our own greed and ambition for our sorry state and know that death is our just desert. Emperor Ragin is truly peerless in the arts of war and a commander of men without equal.”
Gin listened, a slight frown creasing her brows. Noda stole a quick glance at the brightly polished surface of the sword lying at Gin’s feet and saw the reflection of the queen’s face. He almost smiled but quickly lowered his head again. Ah, vanity.
“You were arrogant,” said Gin, standing up. “That was why you lost to a mere child on the battlefield. Trusting in the prowess of men lost in a feverish dream is a tactic that Mata Zyndu relied on to great success, but you two are no Mata Zyndu. Had I been—” She checked herself. “This is all beside the point. There is nothing I can do for you. I will give you a comfortable bed and a good meal tonight, and send you on your way to Pan in the morning.”
Noda and Doru crawled forward and each grabbed one of Gin’s feet. “Mercy! Mercy! Oh, Merciful Queen, Lord Rufizo Reborn, if you send us to Pan, we’ll be faced with a fate worse than death! The emperor will make us into examples. He will slaughter our families and followers, and all the members of their families within three degrees of relatedness.”
“What is that to me?”
“Once before, when we fought on the side of the Hegemon against the emperor, you showed mercy and let us go. We pray that you again repeat that act of great courage so that your immortal name may live on in song and story. In war, it has always been the rule that the nobles are treated differently from common men at arms.”
“Is that so?” said Gin. “I suppose that’s true—you certainly deserve a fate far worse than the fools who followed you. I doubt you’ll find a single Lord of Dara who would disagree on this point.”
“Yet surely it is not true that all the Lords of Dara are equal! Everyone knows that of all the emperor’s advisers, the only one who can bring her sword into the palace and whose counsel the emperor heeds is you!” Once again, Noda went back to knocking his forehead against the floor, and Doru copied him.
Gin frowned again. Though their effort at appealing to her pride was rather transparent, she had to admit that it was working—after all, who had done more to build Kuni’s empire than she? If he was going to listen to anyone, he should listen to her.