Trickster's Choice (45 page)

She heard a thump, then a creak. Someone was definitely opening the sitting room door. “Your Grace!” Aly whispered, scrambling to her feet. “Wake up!” She lunged for the door and braced her shoulder against it, cursing the absence of locks on the family’s rooms. What could she use to barricade the entry besides her own weight? Behind her she heard people scrambling out of their blankets.

As Aly braced her shoulder against the door to keep it shut, someone pushed on it from outside. It edged open. She scrabbled for purchase on the floor with her bare feet, without success, and leaned into the door with all of her weight. It wasn’t enough. The door slammed open, smashing her against the wall behind it. Pain seared through her as her back hit stone with a crack. Aly groaned and shoved the door away from her. She sank to the floor, fighting to stay conscious.

Someone in the room threw the water pitcher: Aly saw it fly through the open doorway. A man yelped outside; the pitcher shattered on something hard. Mequen shouted orders to his wife and servants. Then Bronau, clinking in a chain mail shirt over a leather tunic and breeches, walked in. He carried an unsheathed sword in his hand. Three of his soldiers, wearing mail and carrying torches, followed.

The duke’s manservant, howling in rage, attacked with no better weapon than an iron candelabrum. Bronau ran him through, then thrust the dead man off his blade with a booted foot. His men spread out behind him. Mequen had grabbed the sword Aly had left for him. He now stood between Bronau and the women of his family. Winnamine placed herself in front of Sarai and Pembery, another iron candelabrum in her hand like a sword. Aly couldn’t see Dove behind the bulk of the master bed.

“I didn’t want this, Mequen, Winna,” Bronau said, pain and regret in his voice. “Not a fight. We’re all friends, aren’t we?”

“Friends don’t call at midnight with swords in hand,” Mequen retorted.

“Swords don’t have to come into play,” Bronau said with his charming smile. “We can work this out. All you need do is declare your claim to the throne. Once you are crowned, you’ll abdicate in favor of your oldest daughter and her husband—me. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Sarai?” he asked, his voice honey-sweet. “To be queen, clothed and jeweled as your beauty deserves. It could be a step forward for your mother’s people. I know you have a sentimental attachment to them.” Bronau looked from Mequen to Winnamine. “Don’t make me do this,” he pleaded.

“Our servants will be at your back momentarily,” said the duke. “You can’t believe you and ten men can take my daughter and me.”

“Of course not. That is why the forty other warriors I’ve recruited came onto the plateau after sundown,” Bronau informed them. “I
did
notice all those idle raka warriors riding to and fro when I visited here. My lads are combat veterans, not peasants or slaves with arrows and rusty swords. Your gates are now open to my armsmen—I’m afraid we had to kill some of your guards to do that.”

“We have a mage,” snapped Sarai. “You won’t defeat her so easily!”

Bronau smiled as if she were a clever student who had given a good answer. “I thought you might have one by now. I have three. They are keeping your old woman busy, if they haven’t killed her yet. Mequen, be sensible. I don’t want to kill you. You’re going to be my father-in-law.”

Aly got her feet under her. She leaped onto the back of the closest man-at-arms. Wrapping her right hand around his chin, she yanked his head back and dragged her left-hand knife across his throat. He choked, staggered, and toppled backward, crushing Aly under his body. She squirmed madly, trying to free herself.

“Papa!” cried Sarai as Winnamine held her back.

Mequen lunged with his sword, chopping at his old friend. Bronau parried the blow with a half-turn, pushing Mequen’s blade aside. Mequen kept his sword moving in a sidelong cut that bit into the belly of Bronau’s second man-at-arms. The wounded man dropped his torch. Mequen used a bare foot to sweep the soldier’s feet from under him, dumping him onto it. The body smothered most of the flames as Mequen blocked another of Bronau’s strikes.

Pembery shrieked and hid under the bed, begging the gods for help, as Winnamine and Sarai threw everything they could reach at the third of Bronau’s soldiers. Aly cursed as she struggled to free herself of the corpse that weighed her down. The remaining man-at-arms advanced on Winnamine and Sarai, shielding his face from the rain of vases, plates, and cosmetics jars. Aly saw no sign of Dove.

“Don’t kill the girl!” shouted Bronau as he hacked the bed curtains by mistake. Mequen cut a long, shallow slice down Bronau’s leg, cutting through leather into flesh.

Aly got her right hand free. In it she held a knife. Clenching her teeth, she rose halfway under the dead man’s weight and threw the blade. It struck the last man-at-arms on the cheekbone, opening a gash there. He glanced toward Aly with a snarl.

The moment his attention shifted to Aly, Winnamine slammed her candelabrum across his face. The armsman’s nose broke with a dull crunch. Ornate metal leaves opened cuts in his eyebrows, cuts that blinded him with blood. Winnamine hit him twice more with all her strength. The soldier’s knees gave way.

As he dropped, he lashed out, cutting Mequen’s leg. Mequen glanced down and stabbed him through the throat. Then the duke’s feet slipped in the armsman’s blood. He fell across the downed man’s body. As he fought to rise, Bronau ran him through.

“Papa!” Sarai shrieked. She darted past Winnamine and grabbed her father’s sword. Facing Bronau, she brought it up to the ready position. “He is your
friend
!” cried Sarai.

Bronau stepped back, raising both hands, though he kept a grip on his sword. “He would be the first to tell you that when a crown’s at stake, friendship becomes a luxury.” He pointed to Mequen. “I’ve seen men survive worse. Only swear that you’ll marry me and be my queen, and I’ll call one of my mages to heal him.”

“He lies,” Aly croaked, Seeing it in Bronau.

“I know that,” snapped Sarai. “His lips move, don’t they?” She lunged, her sword aimed at Bronau’s heart. He stepped back, half-pivoting, as her sword cut a bright line across his mail. Sarai caught herself, pivoted, and lunged again.

Bronau seized her blade in gauntleted hands and wrenched it out of Sarai’s grip, tossing it aside. As she stumbled, he shoved her onto the bed. “We can do this nicely, or not,” he informed her calmly, “but you are going to lead a revolt at my side.”

Aly wriggled free of the body that had pinned her. She gripped a knife in her left hand and jumped for Bronau’s back, grabbing for his chin with blood-slick fingers. Her hand slipped. Instead she hooked her fingers in his nostrils and pulled, then stabbed blindly. Her dagger scraped bone, not flesh. She’d gotten his jaw by mistake.

Bronau roared and threw himself back, slamming Aly against the unforgiving stone wall. Her ribs cracked. Still she clung, raising her left hand for another slash. He wrenched the knife from her grip, breaking more of her bones, then slammed her into the wall again. Aly’s vision went dark. She hung on for her life and dragged on his nose, keeping his head back.

Something thudded into Bronau. Aly couldn’t see what it was. He went still, wobbling on his feet. Something else hit him. Aly groped the man’s neck until her swelling fingers hit two long, slender shafts buried in his throat. She freed Bronau and shoved him forward. He dropped onto his face. Bracing herself against the wall, Aly looked across the bed. Dove stood on its far side, a bow in her hand. A few griffin-fletched arrows lay on the coverlet where she could reach them.

“Papa,” whispered Sarai. She lurched off of the bed without so much as a glance at the man who would have made her queen, and ran to her father’s side. Dove dropped her bow and did the same.

Winnamine grabbed a shirt and knelt beside the girls. Carefully she laid the wadded-up shirt on Mequen’s bleeding wound and pressed down with it. “Pressure slows the bleeding,” she whispered.

Aly seized a goosefeather bolster from the bed and used it to beat out the small fire that had spread from the second man-at-arms’s torch. She used what was left of that to light candles, then stumbled through the study and battered the door to Petranne and Elsren’s rooms.

“Who is it?” asked Rihani, her voice shaking with terror. The two younger children were crying.

“Aly. The duke’s cut in the belly. Come see to him.”

“I don’t know if I can help,” Rihani protested.

“I’ll find Ochobu!” snapped Aly. “Just keep his grace alive!”

She heard furniture scrape. Weeks ago Rihani had been told that, if an attack came, she was to barricade the door, to keep the younger children safe. When the door opened, and Rihani saw Aly, she nodded.

Aly didn’t watch her enter the duke’s bedroom. She raced down the stairs to the main hall. Her broken left arm hung by one side, limp and bluish purple. Sharp pains stabbed her right side, where she had broken ribs. She prayed they wouldn’t puncture her lungs, then ignored them. Without Ochobu, Mequen would die.

Ochobu was not in the great hall. The room was in chaos as Ulasim and a few armed footmen fought nearly thirty invaders, most in leather armor covered with metal rings. This must be what’s left of the men Bronau sneaked onto the plateau after dark, Aly thought bitterly. He thought he was evading raka patrols, but he hid them from the crows as well. Had they killed the raka who guarded the road to the pass? They looked like they’d had a fight of some kind, either with the raka or with Veron and his men.

“Stop!” she yelled over the noise. “Bronau is dead! Put down your arms!”

A ruffian grinned up at Aly, his face a blood-streaked mask. “If he’s dead, we’ll take as we like!” he shouted. “Lots of fine wenches here, and the men will be worth sommat as slaves.”

“Oh, we make very bad slaves,” someone announced from the main door.

For a moment there was only silence in the great hall. Everyone turned to look at the speaker. It was Nawat. He stood with a bow at the ready, an arrow on the string. Calmly he shot the man who had taunted Aly. The invader fell, in silence. Behind Nawat stood nearly thirty half-naked people, their hair and skin dotted with clumps of gleaming black feathers. Each held a crude weapon of some kind, sickles, hay rakes, cleavers, and kitchen knives.

Nawat placed another arrow on the string. “You were wrong to come here,” he said, and shot a man in a chain mail shirt. With that shot the paralysis that had seized the enemy at the sight of Nawat’s allies shattered. Trapped between Ulasim and his fighters and Nawat’s transformed crows, Bronau’s men fought for their lives, and lost them. The crow-people were fast, strong, and merciless. Ulasim and his raka battled ferociously.

Aly watched it all unfold, leaning against the wall as pain throbbed in her chest and broken arm. Only one man reached the stairs where she stood. She gazed at him with the glassy calm of shock, knowing she couldn’t possibly defend herself. He collapsed with two of Nawat’s arrows in his back.

When the crows and the raka finished, Aly carefully walked down to Nawat. “Ochobu,” she told him. Her head was spinning. Her stomach lurched, a warning that she might throw up.

“She holds three mages at the village gate.” Nawat selected three arrows with Stormwing fletchings from his quiver. “I will bring her. You sit.”

Aly sat. Someone took her torch. She propped her forehead on her good hand, watching as sweat dribbled down her face to splash on the bloody stones of the floor. Here came Ulasim, bleeding from an assortment of cuts. Junai followed. She was unmarked except for a long gouge that sliced her shirt and skin from collarbone to navel. Aly mumbled, “My mother has one just like that, only it’s healed.”

“Shock,” Ulasim said.

“This is broken,” replied Junai, lifting Aly’s left arm. Aly gasped as the world spun wildly. The gasp brought a stab of agony from her broken ribs.

“Is anyone alive up there?” Ulasim asked. “Our ladies?”

Aly bit her tongue to keep from fainting as Junai tied her wrist to a length of wood. “They’re fine,” she said when she could talk again. “It’s the duke who’s hurt.” She looked at the open doors. Here came Nawat, supporting Ochobu. The old woman was pale under her brown skin, but no less ferocious for all that.

“Idiot luarin thought he could hold me with three mages,” she grumbled as Nawat helped her over to the stair. “Is he alive to learn he can’t?”

Aly shook her head and gulped. She was well into shock now, and had reached her least favorite stage of it, nausea. Her stomach fought to cast out the remains of her supper. “He’s dead. And His Grace is belly-cut.”

For once Ochobu did not hesitate at the suggestion that she attend a luarin. Instead she let Ulasim help her upstairs. Junai continued to splint Aly’s arm.

The great hall fell silent. Everyone cleaned weapons and wounds as they listened to the sounds from the duke’s quarters. It was not long before they heard the wail of a woman whose heart was broken.

“Bronau couldn’t even judge wounds right,” Aly mumbled. “Saying he might still live.” Tears slid over her dirty cheeks.

Ulasim walked down the stairs, gray-faced. “His Grace is dead,” he told the household.

Aly rested her head back against the wall, wincing as she bumped the knot on her skull. A curse on the Jimajens and their power games, she thought bitterly. A curse on the rulers of this country, Rubinyan and Imajane, who let Bronau escape them. I
will
bring them down. And I
will
put a half-raka queen on the throne if it’s the last thing I ever do.

By dawn the changed crow-people had vanished, leaving only some feathers and their abandoned weapons to show they had been there at all. The feathers were set reverently aside by those who cleaned up after the battle.

They lay their own people to rest in the castle’s ancient burial ground two days later, in a ceremony that lasted from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. Raka came from all over the plateau to bury their folk and to witness the aftermath of Bronau’s greed.

The tally of the dead was painful. Veron had been killed as he defended the castle gate. It no longer seemed to matter that he’d been a royal spy—in his own way he had been loyal. Old Lokeij was gone, but not before he’d cut down three of the enemy with a scythe. Visda and Ekit had lost their father and older brother, who belonged to the raka patrol that had been overwhelmed by Bronau’s soldiers. Two dead crows were found in the great hall. They were as honored in their burial as if they’d been human. The slave Hasui had let the enemy in; they found her dead outside the kitchen wing. It was impossible to tell who had murdered her, though Aly suspected Chenaol. The raka cook would never forgive such a betrayal. There was Mequen’s body servant to bury, five men-at-arms—three of them the bandits captured on the road from Dimari—and Mequen himself. Fesgao was alive, barely. He attended the funeral on a litter. Winnamine gave him the command of her remaining men-at-arms.