Trickster's Choice (38 page)

“That’s very different from what you’ve said before,” the duchess pointed out.

“Well, I’m sixteen, and giddy,” Sarai told them mischievously. “My husband had best be faithful to me alone. Bronau isn’t likely to do that. Besides, unless King Hazarin gifts him with offices or estates, he’s not very wealthy.” She went to kneel beside her father. “Don’t fret, Papa,” she said, her face turned up to his. “I’d never do anything without your approval.” She looked at Winnamine, hesitated, then said, “Or yours, Winna.”

Aly looked down, not wanting anyone to realize she had seen the sudden happiness in the duchess’s face. It made her feel very much an outsider. She missed her mother, prickly though she was.

The July days that followed were filled with hazy summer heat that made even the lightest cottons stick to their skins. Despite the temperatures, Aly did not give in to the urge to laze. She sewed, cleaned, and helped Sarai and Dove to amuse the younger children so that Rihani could help to put up herbal teas and medicines against the winter. At night Aly met with the raka conspirators, Ochobu, and Nawat, going over what news had come in that day from crows, people, and Ochobu’s scrying bowl. They discussed fresh arrivals in the valley while the raka filled Aly in on who in the Isles might support them in times of trouble—the nature of those times left carefully undescribed—as well as who it was who might turn on them.

Each day Sarai bounced away from the breakfast table, Aly and Dove following at a sleepy distance. Outside they would find their mounts and guards waiting by the stables. Some days they had instructions: errands to run for the duchess or mushrooms, berries, and herbs to collect for Chenaol and Ochobu. Other days Nawat came with them, to collect wood for arrows or simply to keep the girls amused.

“Falthin is an easy master indeed,” Sarai remarked on Nawat’s third such ride with them. She looked at him sidelong through her lashes and made her mare prance so that Nawat might look at her hips if he chose. Aly just shook her head, remembering that she had flirted just as much when she wasn’t working for her father and grandfather. She wished that Sarai had something serious to do with her time instead of wasting it in the enticement of a man who didn’t see her as a potential mate.

Not, she told herself hurriedly, that she cared if Nawat
did
look at Sarai as a potential mate.

“Falthin the bowyer tells me I am only young once, and the winters indoors are long,” Nawat replied, his eyes not on Sarai’s hips but on Aly’s face.

Their group often carried medicines brewed by Ochobu and Rihani to the villages of Inti and Pohon. If they were not invited to take their lunch with the wealthier families, they found shady brookside places to eat their bread, cheese, and whatever else Chenaol might have packed for them. Afterward they would doze, cool their feet in the water, talk, or sew. If it wasn’t too hot, they practiced hand-to-hand combat and weapons skills with Aly and Junai. Aly loved the long, slow days, filled with the buzz of crickets and the sight of blindingly white clouds scudding over the turquoise sky. Summer was as beautiful on Lombyn as at Pirate’s Swoop. She barely missed the stacks of reports at home, the bustle of messengers coming and going, or her fair-weather round of visits to relatives and foster relatives.

As lazy as the time could be, Aly never forgot who her companions were. Everywhere they went, the raka turned out to look at the Balitang girls. Sarai always stopped to say hello, to learn their names, admire their children, and listen to their old people. The girls would be offered cups of the villainous Kyprian tea, which they had to accept or risk offending their hosts. Drinking it, Aly always wondered if it could be used to remove varnish from furniture.

She had hoped that the novelty of watching Sarai might wear off, but she reckoned without Sarai or the raka. Like Aly’s mother, Sarai detested going home by the same route she had taken to leave it. She led them along tracks Aly would have sworn were game trails, past small farms, hunters’ cabins, and mining and lumber camps on the plateau’s edge. They chatted with people Aly suspected were poachers and others she knew were smugglers. Sarai greeted women dyeing cloth and men tanning hides. Aly would not have suspected that so much of the plateau was taken up by farms, or that Sarai had a talent for locating them all.

Despite her reservations about the raka mounting a successful rebellion, Aly had to admit that Sarai showed promise. She had the same air of genuine interest in people’s lives that Queen Thayet had shown when Aly had accompanied her godsmother on trips. Sarai cared for the people, and they responded. Looking at her, their faces were bright with hope. Aly could only pray that their hopes were fulfilled, for them and for Sarai.

One day they rode to Inti. When they got within view of the village, Aly, who had been using her Sight to eye the road ahead, made the girls halt. Thirty-odd people were camped on the village outskirts. As they stopped, a raka patrol melted out of the trees on the northern side of the road. Their leader rode out to meet Fesgao. The two men spoke briefly. Fesgao then brought his horse around and came back to their group.

“They are raka,” he told the girls. “They have come to see the lady.” His long eyes flicked up to Sarai’s face, then away. To Aly he said, “It is well. They came up from the coast, and have no taint of the assassin to them.”

“Then let’s say hello,” Sarai declared. “It’s the least we can do, if they’ve made that horrible climb up the western road.”

Aly still didn’t like it, but she had no choice. Sarai had already urged her gelding forward. As they approached, the raka patrol vanished under the trees once more, while the raka in the camp gathered on either side of the road. Watching Sarai approach the nearest of them, Aly sent a hurried call to Kyprioth for help.

“Let them see their ladies,”
the god replied. His voice boomed in the empty air, coming from the open sky. The raka from the camp immediately dropped to their knees. Sarai hurriedly controlled her mount and Dove’s as the frightened horses began to plunge and fight the rein. The guards’ mounts held steady, though white showed all the way around their eyes. Aly’s Cinnamon calmly helped herself to mouthfuls of grass. “Let them greet Saraiyu and Dovasary,” Kyprioth went on, “and return to speak of them in their home villages, with hope.”

As Sarai dismounted, Aly directed an angry but unspoken remark to the god.
It was a
private
question. Why did you have to make such a revelation of it?!
[_

_]
p.
Because this is part of the biggest trick I have ever played,
the god said for her ears alone.
Because they must be heralded with signs of divine favor. I just showed them some.
[_

_]
p.
You upset the horses,
Aly retorted silently.
Show-off.
[_

_]
p.
Now you begin to understand me.
The god’s private voice was filled with amusement.
I knew it would happen sooner or later.

Sarai passed her reins to Aly. She started forward, then turned to glare at Dove.

Aly nudged Cinnamon closer to the younger girl. “I’ll hold your mare,” she offered.

“What are we getting ourselves into?” Dove whispered. “If word of things like this gets back to the palace, we’ll be cooked in front of its gates over a slow fire.”

Despite her concern, she dismounted and gave her horse’s reins to Aly. Fesgao and the rest of the guards were getting down from their mounts, too. Aly sighed and did the same for them. She knew better than to even ask Junai to hold the horses’ reins. Junai would say, quite properly, that as a guard in an uncertain situation she had to keep her hands and her attention free.

The raka bowed low to the girls, arms crossed over their chests, palms to their shoulders. These were poor people, Aly noted, with scarcely an unpatched jacket or sarong to their names. Their numbers encompassed all ages and both sexes, from people so old they were carried in stretchers to babies still at the breast. Aly observed the crowd as the guards watched those closest to the Balitang girls, alert for assassins who might have slipped by the patrol. All went quietly. Once each raka had said hello and told Sarai a little about him- or herself, they bowed, collected their belongings, and quietly left their camp.

“They appeared overnight from the coast,” said Inti’s headman when they finally reached the village itself. “They haven’t been any trouble, but they said they meant to stay until they saw you. I don’t see what I could have done.”

“Next time, send word,” snapped Fesgao, his normal calm disturbed by the unexpected encounter. “We could have brought more guards with us.”

On their way home, Aly dropped behind to ride next to Fesgao. Softly she asked, “Is there any way to keep such groups from coming? It attracts attention.”

The man shook his head. “The raka have lived without hope for so long,” he explained. “I cannot blame them for wanting to see it with their own eyes.”

“If you think these girls will let you foment a rebellion in their names, you will get a rude awakening,” Aly cautioned Fesgao. “They and their parents are loyal to the Crown.”

“Ah, but is the Crown loyal to them?” asked the raka. “That has yet to be seen.”

Fort Mastiff, Tortall, on the Scanran border

This was yet another of her dream visits to Tortall, Aly realized, coming from sleep to wakefulness in the air above a large, new, wooden fortress. It flew the flag of the realm of Tortall, a silver sword and a silver crown on a blue shield. Beneath it flew a scarlet flag with a golden cat rearing on it, the banner of the King’s Champion, Alanna the Lioness.

Aly could see her famous mother below, planted solidly at the center of a ring of onlookers. She was dueling with someone. From the fighters’ quilted tunics and absent helmets, Aly judged that this was a practice session, not a real fight, though both her mother and her opponent wielded live sword blades. There was a risk.

Aly drifted down, curious about who might be mad enough to take on her mother, even for practice. By the looks of things, Alanna was overmatched. Her opponent was nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, with muscled legs revealed by cotton breeches. Sweat-soaked brown hair, cut short at the nape of the neck and across the forehead, framed a face tanned in the sun, and brown-hazel eyes, a dreamer’s eyes, with ridiculously long lashes. Those eyes were steady as they watched the Lioness’s sword.

“Go, Kel!” someone yelled from the sidelines. “Youth and skill!”

“Age and treachery!” bellowed a large man on the far side of the ring. Aly knew him. Lord Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak was one of her adoptive uncles, a big man who kept a short, brown-skinned woman in the circle of his arm even as he urged his friend Alanna on. Aly recognized the brown woman as yet another of her adoptive aunts, Buri, married to Uncle Raoul less than a year.

“Youth and skill!” cried another man Aly knew well, Nealan of Queenscove, her mother’s former squire. “Don’t let that old lady cut you, Kel!”

“Whose side are you on?” Alanna demanded, her eyes flicking over to Neal. “You were
my
squire!”

Her opponent surged forward as the Lioness’s attention wavered, her blade slicing the air in an overhand swing. This had to be Keladry of Mindelan, Aly realized, fascinated. Since Aly had been eight or so her mother had spoken continually of Keladry, the first girl to go for her knighthood since Alanna. For a while Aly had been jealous of the girl, thinking her mother was more interested in Kel than she was in Aly. Only in the last few years had she realized her mother simply understood Kel better than she understood Aly.

Kel bore in on her smaller foe fast, but Alanna came up and under Kel’s attack, smacking the bigger woman hard in the ribs. “You’ve been using that pig-sticker of yours so much, you’ve forgotten how to wield your Griffin,” Alanna taunted. “You’ve gotten lazy!”

Griffin, Aly thought, then remembered. Mother said Kel had named the sword Alanna had given her Griffin.

Kel lunged in again, her sword blade tangling with the Lioness’s, until the two women were locked together, hilt to hilt. Now Kel brought her superior height and weight to bear, forcing the Lioness down and back. “Lazy, is it?” Keladry said, panting. “I’ll give you laziness, shorty.”

Alanna laughed and sprang free of the tangle, darting around to swat Keladry on the behind with the flat of her blade. “Age and treachery!” she taunted Kel.

Kel stood back and, gasping, saluted Alanna with her weapon. “I guess I need to work on my sword skill after all, Lioness,” she said, accepting someone’s water bottle. She nodded toward the gate. “I think we have company.”

A tall gray figure—Tkaa the basilisk—strode through the gate, holding his long tail off the ground as a lady would hold the train to her gown. From crown to tail he was covered in dust that turned his beaded gray skin to gray-brown.

“Tkaa,” cried Alanna, running to greet the newcomer. “Whatever brings you here?”

The basilisk bent his head so that he could whisper into her ear. Aly dropped down until she was close enough to hear him. “I bear news from your husband.” Tkaa’s voice was like the whisper of flutes. “He asks me to tell you that he’s got real word at last, from Rajmuat. You must not worry if he disappears for a time.”

Alanna seized the basilisk’s paw. Aly, looking around, saw that everyone else was keeping a respectful distance from the unlikely pair.

“Aly?” whispered Alanna. “He’s got word of her?”

Tkaa nodded.

Alanna turned and walked speedily back to her quarters, the men shifting out of her path. Like Aly, they knew the set look on Alanna’s face meant she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

“Please tell me you have good news.” Lord Raoul had walked over to greet the basilisk. “Whatever it is. She’s been as jumpy as a horse covered in ants all summer.”

“I sorrow to hear it,” said the basilisk. “I can tell you that diplomats from Scanra are in Corus to negotiate a peace treaty.”

His information was greeted with a shout from the people who had followed Raoul to say hello to the newcomer. Aly’s dream began to fade as men and boys ran to tell their fellows Tkaa’s news.