Trickster's Queen

by Tamora Pierce

  Ulasim leaned in and sniffed the air around the maid. “You stink of Topabaw,” he informed her, his voice thick with scorn. “You were spelled to die before you named your true master—that's spy work.” He nudged the lock picks. “These aren't needed to steal paper. If you were a slave, you would pay for these with your life. As it is, you won't look so good with a thief's brand on your forehead.”

  “I swear, I swear, those were here when I came in!” protested the maid.

  “And the gloves?” inquired Aly. “Spelled to leave no trace of you?”

  “They belong to my mistress!” cried the woman. “I just borrowed them, you know, to make my hands softer, like hers!” She started to cry.

  Aly let Ulasim and Junai question her for a while, listening with appreciation. The woman had been well trained. When Aly judged the time was right, she laid a gentle hand on the desk in front of her. Everyone stopped talking. Aly let the silence linger for a moment, then asked gravely, “What is your name?”

  The maid drew breath to speak.

  Aly raised the index finger of her hand. So frightened—and so clever—was the maid that she saw even that tiny gesture. She clamped her lips shut.

  “I will know if you lie, and I will be displeased,” Aly said.

  The woman hesitated, apparently considering whether she dared lie in any case. Aly smiled, and the woman reconsidered. “Vitorcine Townsend.”

  “Very good,” Aly replied. “What household employs you?”

  Head hanging, Vitorcine murmured, “Obemaek. I am Lady Isalena's maid.”

  Aly nodded. “Well, then, Vitorcine Townsend. Perhaps we need to summon Lady Isalena. By your own admission, you are a thief.” She saw Vitorcine's shoulders relax slightly. She probably has something she can blackmail Isalena with if she should get caught, Aly thought. I would, in her place. “Better still, perhaps the young lady will thank us for pointing to Topabaw's spy in her household.”

  Vitorcine's skin went dead white. She swayed. Only the spell around her hips and legs kept her upright. “I beg you, no,” she whispered. “I will do anything you ask. Only do not tell.”

  “Why should we not?” Ulasim wanted to know. “You have taken advantage of our mistresses' hospitality and defiled this house with your prying.” He stepped closer until he loomed over the woman, his eyes fixed on hers. Vitorcine could not escape the fact that he was large, well muscled, and full-raka. In the city, there were feuds based on how much raka blood someone had. Vitorcine had a drop, no more. Used to the city, she would expect full-bloods to be hostile to part-bloods.

  Aly leaned forward, drawing everyone's attention. Even Vitorcine looked at her as she cringed from Ulasim. “What has your mistress to fear from Topabaw?” Aly asked softly.

  “It may be paltry,” the woman babbled, more broken by her own terror than anything the rebels had said. Aly had seen this before with some of her da's agents. She fought to keep her face bland. She knew she had just hit treasure.

  “Is it arms?” she asked, her voice gentle. “Or is it correspondence?”

  The woman bit her lip. “The Obemaeks will kill me,” she said at last. “As Topabaw will kill me if I am found out.”

  “A moment,” Aly interrupted gently. “Both of your masters would kill you?”

  Vitorcine nodded. “I have not told Topabaw. It could be nothing. What I have gathered is only hints. They write letters in code. It may only be family gossip. I did not wish to inform Topabaw until I have the key to the code. When I find it, I will have to tell him. I have no proof until then, so they are safe from me.”

  Aly's nerves sang with excitement. Two gifts had dropped into her lap. Vitorcine obviously knew those communications would mean bloody trouble for the Obemaeks should Topabaw learn of them. Yet she was trying to protect her mistress and her family. Whatever Topabaw had used to frighten Vitorcine into spying for him, it wasn't strong enough yet to overcome her loyalty to the Obemaeks.

  “You are brave, to take such risks,” Aly told Vitorcine kindly, signaling Ysul to free the maid. “A chair, I think.” Ulasim brought it over and helped the frightened woman to sit. “Would you like tea?” Aly asked. “Something stronger?”

  Vitorcine shook her head. From the sudden grim twist in her mouth, she knew as well as Aly that it was very bad for spies to take spirits.

  “I believe we may help each other,” Aly continued. This young woman required a velvet touch. Aly would have to be teacher and mother figure. She put an elder's authority into her voice. “Will you do this for me? Copy those coded letters and bring the copies here. We shall see if there is even anything in them that would interest Topabaw.” She caught Vitorcine's gaze. “In addition, you report to me what you report to Topabaw. You will also report to me what Topabaw says to you, do you understand?”

  “He'll kill me,” whispered the woman.

  “Then you must be very careful,” Aly told her, still kind. “He is not as all-powerful as you may think. I heard somewhere that he is losing his grip on the realm and will soon be replaced.”

  Vitorcine met Aly's eyes with her own. “Is it true?” she asked breathlessly.

  Aly smiled. “Keep it in mind.” From the front of her sarong she drew a small, thick book. In it she kept pledges of obedience, signed in blood. Opening it to a clean page, she drew a small dagger she kept in her sash for these occasions. “This is just a formality,” she assured Vitorcine. “Write here—you can write, can you not?”

  Vitorcine nodded.

  “Write that you will serve Balitang House and keep its secrets,” Aly explained, setting out an inkpot and pen. She unsheathed the dagger. Its blade was the length of Aly's little finger, and razor sharp. “Then you will sign in blood.” As Vitorcine shrank back—the breaking of a blood oath meant the oathbreaker died with the blood boiling in her veins—Aly leaned closer and held Vitorcine's deep-set brown eyes with her own. “You will swear, or they will find you floating in the harbor tomorrow,” she whispered.

  Vitorcine swore, as Aly knew she would. Everyone thought they could get out of a bad situation if they could just buy some time. Vitorcine was no exception. Besides, Aly had promised to help her with the coded letters.

  Once her oath was given and Ysul had put healing balm on the small cut in the maid's finger, Aly went in search of their second captive, another of Topabaw's agents. Ochobu stripped this one, a footman, of any death magics before Aly began her questions. The man had no pearls of news like Vitorcine, but Aly knew better than to expect two such windfalls in one day. Ochobu took the footman's blood vow, giving Aly two agents who would report both on the activities of their noble masters and on Topabaw's orders.

  A good day's work, Aly told herself. Da was right. With careful handling, and plans laid in advance, I can pluck my enemies' spies like ripe plums from a tree.

  While she had worked, new guests had arrived. A glance into the salon where the older men and women met showed her that Duke Nomru sat in quiet conversation with the duchess, Nuritin, and Lord Obemaek, whose daughter Isalena was one of Sarai's friends. Aly's fingers prickled. She would have loved to know what they said, but she was in the wrong position to read their lips.

  You can't hear everything all the time, Aly thought as she went to see what was happening with Sarai. But it's so frustrating. It occurred to her that she was trying to fill her brain with anything but Nawat. She banished the thought.

  There were more new guests in the courtyard. Dove had left the sitting room to speak with two of them. Aly found her mistress seated between Baron Engan, the astronomer, and Tkaa the basilisk.

  Aly didn't think Tkaa had come to visit the Balitangs. She gathered up a tray of drinks and circulated, drifting toward Dove and her company. When she reached them, her tray was empty. She placed it on a table and ambled into the house. There she turned down the corridor and out into a separate garden where lovers could talk unseen. She was wondering how often Sarai came here when she heard the click of claws on the flagstones.

>   Like the rest of the house, the courtyard was spelled to protect it from eavesdroppers. Aly felt no qualms about beaming up at the basilisk as he arrived and saying, “Of all the people I thought to see here, none of them was you!” She hugged him, careful of his bulging pouch.

  “I was fortunate enough to be chosen to bring the monarchs' greetings to the new king and his regents.” For so large a creature, Tkaa had a soft, whispery voice. “I also bring greetings from your family. The Scanran War is done. Your mother has returned to court, and your father with her. Your brother Alan is squire to Raoul of the King's Own, your brother Thom continues his mage studies. Your grandparents, your uncle Numair, and your aunt Daine send their love, as does your immediate family. Prince Roald's bride, Princess Shinkokami, awaits her first child. Your aunt Daine expects a second child. And Daine has also sent you a gift.”

  Tkaa opened his pouch. A glossy black glob about twice the size of Aly's head dropped to the ground with a plop. There it began to wriggle. A round piece broke off, then another, and a third, until thirty-six small blobs sat before her. Despite their similar appearance, many held visible differences inside their bodies: a piece of ribbon or stone, lace and honeycomb patterns, streaks of bright color or light.

  The first to break away from the main mass had made its glossy surface resemble Tkaa's beaded hide. Now it produced a neck and a head. “Hello,” it squeaked. “I am Trick.”

  Aly knelt, staring in wonder. “I'd heard of them, but I never saw one,” she whispered. “You're darkings, aren't you?”

  The blobs produced their own heads to nod. Aly rocked back on her heels. “But I thought you lived with the dragons.” One of her favorite Daine stories was about these creatures, made of blood and magic. Aly had always been disappointed that they had stayed in the Divine Realms rather than live in the mortal world with Daine.

  “Dragons are boring,” announced a darking with a bit of clear quartz at its center. “Dragons study and peer and eat and sleep.”

  “And talk,” Trick added. “For days and days and days.”

  A number of tiny heads nodded agreement and chorused, “Boring.”

  “Some stay,” said Quartz. “Gold-streak stay. Olders stay. We go.”

  “Aunt Daine said all but one of you was killed in the Battle of Port Legann,” Aly murmured, thinking aloud.

  Trick shook its head. “More that Daine not meet in Divine Realms,” it told her. “And more born as we split in two.”

  Aly scratched her head and looked up—far up—at Tkaa. “Why bring them to me?” she asked.

  “Daine said to tell you, what one darking knows, all will know,” Tkaa explained. “And they are very good at getting into places where humans cannot.”

  To illustrate, the one patterned like lace flattened itself into a thin sheet on the ground.

  “I stay with you,” Trick squeaked. “They tell me, I tell you. Sometimes show.” Spreading itself thin, it presented a view of the garden where they now stood from the ground.

  “Not boring,” added one that had blue ribbon inside itself.

  “Fun,” chorused the others. “Funfunfun.”

  For once, Aly had nothing to say. In a moment, she knew, her mind would be whirling with ideas, places to send these creatures where the discovery of a human would result in a spy's or Aly's death. And unlike her human spies, these creatures had no tasks they were supposed to be about, so they might hide, and listen, day and night.

  “But I'll have to train them so they know what to listen for,” Aly mused. “So they can tell what's important or not.”

  “No,” peeped the tiniest of the creatures. “Whisper Man teach us before we come. We know secret. We know trouble. We know rumor. We know fact.”

  “And murder,” added another darking.

  “And poison,” said a third.

  “We know allies and enemies,” a fourth darking said. “Between dragons and Whisper Man, we know plenty.”

  The one called Trick oozed over to Aly. Producing small limbs or tentacles, it began to crawl up her sarong-covered thigh until it reached her sash. Stretching itself cord-thin, it wriggled until only its head showed above the cloth. “Fun,” it reassured Aly. “Mortals are always doing things.”

  After long thought Aly murmured, “Such a delightful gift. And it isn't even my birthday.”

  After more news from home, she said goodbye to Tkaa and went in search of a covered basket for the darkings. Carry- ing it, and them, into her workroom, she realized she could tell no one of her new guests. The darkings were too odd. Once Ulasim or the other rebel leaders saw them, they would start to ask questions that Aly dared not answer.

  “I'll just say I developed new sources,” she decided as she set the basket on her desk. “This will have to do for the present,” she told her new spies. “I'll be taking you places later on. Actually, if two of you would join me? I'd like to settle you right away.”

  The darkings started to bounce like eager children. She chose one that contained a bit of lace in its depth and one that had patterned its skin like bird feathers. “There will be fun enough for all of you,” she told the rest as she tucked Lace and Feather into a pouch she could hang from her sash. “Do you need anything? Food? Water?”

  The darkings shook their heads. “We get our own,” Trick assured her. “No one will see. Mortals don't look.”

  Since Aly had frequently observed that most people didn't pay attention to the details of the world around them, she was inclined to agree. “No one should be able to come here once I lock the door,” she explained, “but if someone does, hide.”

  Every darking nodded. Aly looked at them helplessly. Darkings, she thought. In Tortall she was used to living among legends. After a year in the Isles, she had fallen out of the habit of expecting the extraordinary. As she locked her door and entered the meeting room, she wondered if Kyprioth had anything to do with this.

  As if he'd been eavesdropping, the god spoke in her mind. No, but they are quite delightful. Maybe I can recruit them to my service when this is done.

  Lucky darkings, thought Aly as she took Lace from her pouch. “You stay here,” she told the darking. Its cocked head managed to convey complete attention. “Some people will come in from time to time. I may be with them, so don't say hello, or nice to see you, or even wait till I tell you what I heard. Just listen, and pass things on to Trick.”

  Lace nodded, and dropped from Aly's hand to the floor with a plop. Off it rolled, making an inspection of its new quarters.

  Aly went out around the house until she came to the window of the room where the older guests had met that afternoon. Most of them were already gone; the rest were preparing to leave. Aly gave Feather the instructions she had given Lace, then held the darking so that it could trickle through a gap in the carved wooden screen and down into the room. The others she meant to place at Grosbeak's and the palace, but she was interested in that group of older luarin nobles who gravitated toward Nuritin and the duchess. Their movement to silently take Winnamine's part at court had been done with such grace and speed that it looked practiced. Something was going on there. With Feather's help, she would learn what it was and if she could use it. As for Lace and its position in the leaders' meeting room, it never hurt to know what her fellow conspirators were up to. Probably she wouldn't have gotten word of Nawat's commission from even a darking in time to stop him from going, but she wanted no more surprises.

  Nawat. The thought of him plunged into a war zone jammed a hot fist of anger and fear under Aly's lungs. Until now she had managed to put off thinking about him. She hurriedly crossed the small garden to one of the lovers' nooks, where she could get her heart under control. She didn't know what to think or say about his departure; she feared so much what she might say that she would have to try not to speak of him at all.

  She clenched her hands. She knew what damage a sharp tongue could do from her long years with her mother. Aly could not exercise it on Ulasim, or on Nawat if he came home s
afe. It would be cruel to ask Nawat who he thought he was, to dive into human battles. It would be cruel to point out to him that the household message runners knew more of war than he did. No, she would calm down and get a grip on herself. She would have to handle him properly so that he would stay where he belonged once he returned, if he returned.

  That night, when Aly walked into the big meeting room, she found the leaders already present. Ulasim, Fesgao, and Ochobu stood, looking down at a good-sized wooden chest. The others were seated, their chairs pushed well back from the chest as they, too, eyed it.

  “There are no spells on it,” Ochobu said. She looked at Aly as the girl closed the door behind her.

  Ulasim nodded to Aly. “Come have a look,” he invited. “This was found on the doorstep of Temaida House this morning, with a label that read For the Twice-Royal.”

  Aly nodded. In the prophecy that spoke of the freeing of the Isles, the main person mentioned was the twice-royal queen. The conspirators and the rebels believed that was Sarai, who was Rittevon on her father's side, Haiming on her mother's.

  “They had it conveyed secretly to us. Need I say the Temaidas were very frightened?” the big raka asked Aly.

  She smiled crookedly. For a house that had secretly raised the last descendants of the Haiming line for three hundred years, the Temaidas as a whole were terrified of their own shadows. Then she reconsidered. Perhaps that very skittishness was what had enabled the Temaidas to survive.

  “Ochobu and Ysul say there is no magic on it,” Fesgao pointed out. “Yet we are not sure about a box that has come to us from someone unknown.”

  Aly knelt and inspected it closely. It was a plain chest, banded in iron and locked. She got to her feet and went to her workroom to fetch her lock picks. Little Trick thrust its head out of her sash as she picked up the rolled cloth that held her tools.

  “Fun?” it asked.

  “Probably not,” Aly murmured. “Someone is playing a game, but I'll bet my sarong it's just to send a message. No fun. Back into hiding, you.” Trick pulled its head under her sash with what sounded very like a sigh.