Clever Kuru

Seeing Black Snake weigh the plan's chances, Gravel nudged his thigh with an elbow.

"If the lord finds out we botched the job, he'll probably hire a new batch of mercenaries to garrison this town, won't he?

"Even if we get to stay, things won't be nearly as easy as they are now.

"Hell, I don't want a bunch of newcomers lording it over me!"

Black Snake narrowed his eyes and rubbed the stubble on his chin.

"You want to help him?"

"I want to help you! Have you forgotten why we stayed here?"

Gravel gave him a light punch.

"Of course, if you're tired of this place, forget I said anything.

"You saved my life, after all. I only came with you to repay the favor—

"So what if I can't drink Star Plum Wine? I can still go into the city for some fine tequila."

Black Snake smiled. He weighed his options and made up his mind.

There were too many uncertainties to come up with a foolproof plan.

But with two Spellcasters on hand, it stood a reasonable chance of working...

He looked at Tang Qi.

"All right, Poet. You've convinced me again. You didn't pull another trick this time, did you?"

He meant what had happened at the execution platform.

"Casting spells takes certain conditions. That Kobold has to chant, for instance, and I have to sing."

Tang Qi shook his head.

"If you'd like to hear more, I wouldn't mind singing a couple of lines."

"No need. I'm afraid I'd end up punching you."

Black Snake waved a hand, then turned to the Kobold kneeling on the ground.

"Listen. Help me get this done tomorrow, and I'll spare your life."

The Kobold, relieved to have survived, repeatedly knocked his head against the ground.

"Kuru will! Kuru will!"

"Poet—forget it. What's your name?"

"Tang Qi."

"I'm leaving this entirely in your hands.

"I don't care how you do it. I only care about the result.

"Mess it up, and I won't spare you."

Tang Qi wasn't happy that Black Snake wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair, but he could hardly object.

Not when that curved blade could cross more than a hundred feet in two breaths and come to rest against his throat.

Jackal was a raw recruit. These two mercenaries were not.

For now, though, they needed to get the remaining Star Plums—their spoils—back to town.

The robed Kobold appeared to be the clan chief. He directed his people to gather the Star Plums that hadn't rotted.

They filled seven crates and loaded them onto the cart blocking the cave entrance.

Four Kobolds shouldered the cart's handles while two pushed from behind. Together, they barely managed to move the wagon, which was meant to be pulled by oxen or horses...

Perhaps they really were beasts of burden?

On the way, Tang Qi was curious about this Kobold who understood human speech. Eager to fill out his Journal, he asked him question after question.

"Do you have a name?"

"Kuru!"

"You can cast spells, right? That strange trail of footprints in the orchard—was that your doing?

"But if you used magic to erase the footprints there, why didn't you erase them all? Why leave a trail pointing toward town?"

That was what Tang Qi found strangest about the whole affair.

Without that trail, he wouldn't have noticed anything amiss, much less investigated in the opposite direction.

Kuru understood what he meant, but he lacked the words to explain everything that had happened.

Fortunately, Tang Qi was determined to find out. After a good while, he finally pieced together the story.

Kuru had decided early on to steal the Star Plums.

He wanted offerings to present.

To get them, he had led his people out of their cave and spent some time secretly observing when the orchards outside Star Plum Town were watered.

Because the orchards bordered Twilight Forest, their soil was always damp and took footprints easily.

So three days earlier, once Kuru had decided to steal the Star Plums, he first ordered his people to steal several pairs of boots.

They were small and could only steal a few pairs of ordinary small boots.

There weren't enough boots to go around, and none of them was very strong, so they had to carry their haul away in batches.

To cast suspicion on the townsfolk, they had also begun picking on the eastern side of the orchards, nearest the town.

By walking backward as they worked, they avoided leaving a confusing jumble of prints and made the trail point where they wanted it to.

But it wasn't until yesterday that Kuru learned a cantrip called [Earth Shaping].

It was also a level-zero spell and could smooth away marks in the soil within a limited area.

With that, they wouldn't even need to leave misleading footprints to throw off an investigation.

Earth Shaping only covered five feet, though. Erasing every trace they had already left would take a great deal of time.

And walking backward had still left flaws in their trail.

Kuru had no choice but to send his people ahead with the Star Plums while he stayed behind to cast the spell.

While he was there, a fruit farmer happened to get up in the night and spotted him.

Kuru had to abandon the plan and flee, leaving some of the footprints unerased.

After that, the fruit farmer reported the theft to Black Snake, setting in motion everything that had pointed suspicion at Anbi.

Tang Qi understood. Then he asked another question.

"If that's so, why didn't you learn [Earth Shaping] before stealing anything?"

"Kuru didn't know it... shaped earth."

"You only learned what it could do after you'd mastered it?"

"Rua!"

Tang Qi stared at him in surprise.

"So no one ever taught you magic?

"Then how did you get [Earth Shaping], [Frozen Ray], [Silent Illusion]... all those spells?"

Kuru was clever.

But keeping himself alive clearly mattered more than keeping a secret.

After a moment's hesitation, he pulled an exquisite notebook from inside his robe.

It was a thick spellbook, fifteen inches tall and bound by hand in cowhide, with a six-pointed star worked into the leather in black thread.

He pointed to his robe, then to the splint armor on the cart.

"Forest. Hunting. Three humans. Dying. Kuru ate them. Found book. Read book. Learned."

From those scattered words, Tang Qi could piece together the gist.

A Group of Adventurers must have run into danger in Twilight Forest. Near death, they had fallen into the hands of these Kobolds.

Kuru had inherited one of the mages' possessions. Mages were forever studying spells, and their packs held more books than food.

By studying the symbols, Kuru had learned the mage's spells.

"When did this happen?" Tang Qi asked, astonished.

"Recently!"

Kobolds who spent their lives in an Underground Cavern had little grasp of months, so Tang Qi couldn't pin down when it had happened.

But "recently" alone was enough to leave him dumbfounded.

He took the Kobold's spellbook and opened it. Its pages were filled with obscure writing and symbols.

Unlike sorcerers, whose power was innate, mages had to discover, study, and systematize magic.

In that sense, it was like mathematics.

The elements and the Magic Web, present throughout the world, were like numbers: things that existed in their own right.

Arrange them in a particular way, forming a kind of "formula," and the result was a spell.

Yet the gap between two people could sometimes be wider than the gap between a person and an animal.

Because mages understood things in different ways, they sometimes used symbols only they could decipher to express those "formulas" in their spellbooks.

That made each spellbook intensely personal.

As a result, someone who acquired another mage's spellbook generally couldn't understand it at once.

They had to spend time studying and decoding it before they could grasp the logic within.

For people who shared a language, copying down a spell might take anywhere from a few hours to several days.

But Kuru was a Kobold.

Before this, he might not even have known the Common Tongue existed.

Through sheer intelligence, he had learned to read and decipher a mage's symbols in a short time, then worked out the secrets they contained...

It was like coming home one day to find Husky solving advanced mathematics.

Tang Qi took a deep breath.

"I never thought I'd see the day a Kobold outsmarted me."