Trickster's Queen

by Tamora Pierce

  In the meeting room, Aly peered into the keyhole of the box and saw no magic. By the time she had inserted three lock picks, she knew the lock's mechanism as well as she knew her own name. Two more picks did the trick. The lock sprang open. Aly tucked it into her sash as a memento and shoved back the lid. Inside were bags, each with a round wax seal on the drawstring. Aly picked one bag up. It was heavy with clinking metal. The thick seal, in bright blue wax, was glossy on one side and dull on the other. Her heart was pounding. She had always loved presents from home.

  She reached up under her sarong, where she wore fine cotton breeches to keep the knives strapped to her inner thighs from chafing her bloody. Drawing the right knife, she reversed it in her grip and smashed the pommel onto the glossy side of the wax seal. The top layer shattered, as it was meant to do, laying bare a second seal. A metal emblem was pressed into the blue wax of the true seal: a tin sword thrust through a tin crown. The drawstring loosened, revealing a bag full of silver and gold coins, mixed in age and origin so that they would be impossible to trace.

  Aly held out the bag, the seal facing up. Ulasim took it from her with a frown.

  “It's the Tortallan national emblem,” she told her companions. She smashed the outer seal on each bag to reveal the same hidden seal. “All this money is a love token from the Tortallan king's spymaster.” She looked at Ulasim. “They're giving you funding for any mischief you care to concoct. Their spies believe you are preparing to stir this country up. They want to help.”

  The raka went very still. Finally Chenaol, white under her bronze skin, whispered, “If the Tortallans know, the Crown's spies know. Topabaw knows.”

  Aly shook her head, busily constructing a story they would believe. She couldn't tell them the truth, that her father, one of Tortall's spymasters, had wanted to be sure his little girl had the coin for whatever she was up to. She got to her feet and stretched, grinning impishly at them. “You may thank the god for this, I think.”

  They stared at her as if she'd grown a second head. “What do you mean?” Fesgao asked at last.

  “The god mentioned once that he was the patron of one of Tortall's highest-ranking spies,” Aly told them. It was not completely a lie. Kyprioth had been her father's patron god for years, though George Cooper's family had been unaware of the alliance. “I imagine he whispered a word to that spy that things were unsettled here. There's enough bad blood between the Tortallans and the Rittevon kings that no doubt Tortall would be happy to do the Rittevons and their supporters an ill turn. Promoting rebellion among the raka is a way to do it while still claiming friendship with the Copper Isles.” The raka continued to stare at her. Aly shook her head. “You had a princess nearly twenty years back, Josiane. She was being groomed as a future queen of Tortall, except that the heir to the throne didn't wish to marry her. She took it badly. Well, she was a Rittevon. She was killed in an attempted takeover, and things have not gone well between your realm and mine ever since. King Oron lost two sons, didn't he, in the attack on Port Legann nine years ago? The god knows the Tortallans would love to pay off an old grudge, and rebellions always need money.”

  “The god told you this?” Ulasim wanted to know.

  “I will ask him,” Aly said truthfully. She suspected that her father had pieced together her story during his visit to Tanair the previous autumn, and that he had commissioned Tkaa to deliver the money to the Temaidas without being seen. “But I know he has a connection with Tortall.”

  “We should send it back,” said Fesgao. “I do not like it that they think to buy us.”

  Aly beamed at him. “Very sweet and very silly, Fesgao. They are buying mischief. Face it—unrest in the Isles means the regents will be too busy to pay fake pirates to raid Tortall's shores this year. The Tortallans aren't putting any names to it, and they won't expect you to pay them back.” She propped her hands on her hips and looked at them one by one. “Countries do this to each other all of the time, you know,” she explained. “Meddle in one another's affairs. Look for the tiniest bit of advantage over their neighbors. You don't have to marry the Tortallans, just take their money. If I thought you could trust any Carthakis, I'd suggest you approach them for extra funding.”

  “But we can't trust the Carthakis,” said Chenaol.

  Aly gathered up the lock picks. “Well, you can't trust anybody, but if the money's all clean of spells, there's no reason for you to refuse it. They've done it this way so it can't be traced back to them. So if someone from here was to accuse the Tortallan monarchs and their spymaster of sending money to support unrest, they can say, ‘What money?' and not be caught in a lie.” She settled into a chair and began to slide her picks back into their pouches. “Now what else have we to discuss?”

  Ulasim shook his head. “You were born a spy, Aly.”

  She smiled cheerfully. “No, but I'm a very fast study.”

  7

  PUTTING DARKINGS

  TO WORK

  The next morning, Aly woke before dawn because her nose itched. She crossed her eyes to see the cause. It was the darking Trick, who had produced a thin tentacle to tickle her with. Aly groaned quietly—Dove was still asleep, Junai gone—and retreated to the privy closet. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Look,” the darking told her. It leaped to the shelf that lined the wall and stretched until it formed a thin snake nearly thirty inches long. Then it changed shape until it looked like a long string of black beads. Rising and turning, it made itself into a continuous necklace. Sticking up the bead that seemed to be its head, it told Aly, “Neck more fun than sash.”

  Aly twiddled her thumbs. Finally she asked, “Where did you get this idea?”

  “I snoop,” Trick said proudly. “Dove have beads. Sarai have many, many beads. Duchess have beads. Rihani have beads. Chenaol—”

  Aly raised a hand for silence. She had the idea that the enterprising creature would have told her the contents of every jewel box in the house if she had asked. Trick stopped talking. “Do you ever sleep?” Aly asked.

  “Sometimes,” Trick replied. “After we split to make new darking.”

  Which could be useful, Aly thought. Spies that seldom need rest. “Have you any information from Lace or Feather?”

  “Feather say there weapons under house and barn and stable and dairy and in tunnels under house,” Trick replied promptly. “Lace say Ochobu and Ysul magic on workroom and bedroom hurt. Lace can't go in there.”

  “And the others? What do they say?” Aly wanted to know.

  “The others explore Joshain Street. Lord Asembat next door snores in night. Lady Asembat meets young man in room by dock. Spies outside Balitang House from Topabaw and Carthak and Tyra bored. They say nothing happens here. Raka man stabbed soldier and other soldiers kill him. Lady Yendrugi in pink stucco house expects baby. Guards in Kadyet House across street owe Fesgao fifty silver gigits over dice. They tell Fesgao their master say Duke Nomru must watch step with regents. Daughter in Kadyet House is kissing her maid. In Murtebo House—”

  Once more Aly raised a hand to halt the flow of information spilling out of her darking necklace. “I have to get some of you into the palace,” she murmured. “If you learn all this in just one night, I'll be deluged with what you can learn where it matters.”

  “Kissing maid not matter?” asked Trick.

  “No,” Aly said. “But the stabbing and the news about the duke matter.” She nibbled her lip, then said, “Once I'm dressed, you go back in my sash. Dove will want to visit the market—I'll find an excuse to break away, report to Master Grosbeak, and leave one of you with him. When I return, I'll wear you, so everyone will think I bought you at market. While we eat breakfast, get about four of you into that small red pouch I left in my workroom—the place where I put the others. You're all back, aren't you?”

  “Yes,” replied Trick. Its bead head hung, somewhat forlorn. “No more fun today?”

  Aly smiled and stroked the creature's head with a finger. “Don't worry. All
of you will be having more fun than you can stand by week's end, I promise.”

  She gathered up the darking and quietly went into the other room to dress. Junai's pallet was already folded and stowed. Dove slept with her light coverlet over her head. Once clothed, Aly tucked Trick into her sash and went downstairs.

  In the stable courtyard, working by the pale early morning light, all combat-trained members of the household practiced their skills, with Ochobu and Ysul's spells to keep the sounds of their training from escaping into the air outside the walls. Aly joined them and soon found how rusty she had gotten since the family had left Tanair to come south. When Fesgao dumped her on her back in the dirt and leveled a spear at her throat, Aly noticed a trickle of darkness flow away from her sash. It seemed Trick did not care to be smashed. Aly swiveled her legs, twining them around Fesgao's as she gripped his spear, then yanked his feet from under him while gently touching his throat with the spear's butt. She rolled to her feet as Fesgao lay on the ground and cursed, turning to guard herself as Ukali came at her with double daggers.

  When the sunrise bell rang out over the city, everyone dusted themselves off and checked one another's bruises. Fesgao tousled Aly's hair with a grin and ambled off with the other men-at-arms to change into uniforms. Aly scrubbed herself and combed her hair in the laundry, then went to her office. Trick was already there, exchanging sniffs with a miniature kudarung on Aly's windowsill.

  “There seem to be more of those things every day,” she remarked, picking up a sheaf of reports.

  “They come careful,” said Trick. “They don't all come at once. They can take darkings to other places.”

  “We might do something with that,” Aly said absently, absorbed in her reading. Merchants who dealt in crops were saying that the price of rice would shoot up that summer, which meant poorer folk would be forced to eat millet. It was edible grain, but not by much.

  She was halfway through the stack of paper when Junai stuck her head in the door. “You missed breakfast, and Lady Dove wants to go to Market Town,” she informed Aly.

  “I rejoice,” Aly replied, setting her reports aside. “Nobody even saved me a sago cake?” She didn't love the palm-starch cakes, but they were filling.

  “I saved two,” Junai said, placing them on Aly's desk. “Hurry up. You're supposed to be a lady's maid, remember?”

  After she left, Aly hung her red pouch, with its five darkings, from her sash. She then hurried to dress her mistress for an expedition to Market Town. This time Dove and her guards followed Joshain Street to Susashai Way. After three blocks of eyeing the seamstresses' shops that lined Susashai, they turned down Ratechul Avenue. Dove knew many people here, too—flower sellers, door guards, and booksellers. Having learned the day before that Dove could spend an hour chatting with just one person, Aly asked to leave the group for a short time. She knew Dove would be well watched in her absence.

  Dove nodded permission as a bookseller came out of his shop, beaming. Aly nodded to Dove's guards and left.

  From here, it was nine blocks to the building that Topabaw's man Grosbeak used as his workplace. Aly walked through his door into a large waiting room, where faded bolts of cloth were displayed on counters.

  Seated at a table, with an account book, reeds, and ink before her, was a hard-faced old woman. She glared at Aly but said nothing. Aly looked about as if for a friendlier face, though no one else was there. She wrung her hands to complete the picture of nervousness, then bent down and whispered, “I'm here to see Master Grosbeak. I have messages.”

  The old woman sniffed. “Don't you all.” She got up. “Follow me.” She led Aly down a narrow, badly lit hall to an office. There were bundles of paper stacked everywhere, on shelves and on the desk at the center of the room. There was no chair for visitors: Aly suspected that few people would want to linger.

  Grosbeak himself was a part-raka with wiry black hair. Aly fumbled with her hands, then her sash, wondering if he'd been trapped into this like Vitorcine or if he liked his work. She noticed the large emerald ring on his left hand as he opened the ledger and decided not to care about Grosbeak. Topabaw had made him rich.

  “You're new,” he said, his black eyes memorizing her face. “Name?”

  “Aly Homewood, your lordship,” she said, voice shaking.

  “Where do you work? And it's Master Grosbeak, wench. I don't hold with mockery.” His voice was as tight and flat as his mouth. He picked up a writing brush, dipped it in ink, and began to copy her particulars into his ledger.

  “Please, Master Grosbeak, I'm maid to Lady Dovasary at Balitang House.” Aly had tucked a darking with a peony inside it into her sash on the way to Grosbeak's. Now she smoothed her hands over her sash, as if drying her palms. “I wasn't mocking, sir, truly.” Rubbing the sash was her cue to Peony. The darking flowed out the back of her sash and down to the floor. Aly stepped closer to the desk so that Grosbeak could not see her below the hips.

  “Have you anything to report? Treasonous talk against the regents or His Majesty, letters and messages from mysterious sources, private chats between nobles without the servants to hear? Gossip from the servants about making trouble in the streets? Rumors of unrest, or traitors?” He scowled when she didn't answer right away. “This is Rajmuat, wench. Someone always talks loosely.”

  “Well, but, sir, we've only been back in the city less than a week, and first my ladies had to go to court, and folk are calling, and there's dresses to be made, and my lord Elsren comes and goes from the palace, it's really all very confusing. They were sad when they saw some people from the Ibadun family had been killed when we came, and Lady Dove was scared bad when a fight broke out near us at Dockmarket yesterday. . . .”

  She nattered at him until he tired and dismissed her, with orders to listen to more conversations between noble guests. Aly curtsied as much as the sarong allowed, to ensure that Peony was tucked under Grosbeak's desk. When she saw that glint of flower, she knew the darking would manage well, and retreated. The old woman scowled at her in the front room, while a newcomer turned her head so that Aly could not see her face.

  Aly was smiling as she turned into an alley two doors down from Grosbeak's. By the time she visited the man again, she would know a great deal more about who was loyal to the regents and who was not. Then she could do her best to direct Grosbeak's—and Topabaw's—suspicious eyes toward their own supporters.

  In the alley, she stepped into a dark corner between buildings. “All right, Trick,” she murmured. “If you want to spend life as a necklace . . .”

  The darking poked its new bead-head out of her sash. “See more,” it explained.

  “Very true,” said Aly. She gently lifted the Trick-bead string from her sash and draped it over her neck. It felt like cool drops of water rolling over her skin as Trick arranged itself in two loops of shiny beads. Under her right ear, one bead joined with another as a kind of clasp, giving Trick a slightly bigger head to speak from, where Aly could easily hear it.

  Once she was freshly arrayed, Aly went in search of her mistress. Dove had moved on from the bookseller's where Aly had left her group, so Aly walked along until she saw Dove's unofficial guards. They pointed out the three household guards stationed at the entrance to the largest shop on Dori Way: Herbrand Edgecliff, Bookseller and Importer.

  “How long has she been in there?” Aly asked the man-at-arms positioned by the main entrance.

  “Long enough for my feet to hurt,” drawled the man, an ex-bandit and devoted family servant.

  Aly smiled. “Then I believe I'll wait out here. How many books can one person read?” she joked, with only a little, well-hidden wistfulness for long winter afternoons spent curled up, reading until her eyes began to blur.

  The man-at-arms grinned. “Don't ask me—I can't read anyway.” Then pride dawned on his face. “But my daughter can. Her Grace's maid's been teaching the little ones.”

  Aly smiled. She understood a father's pride. “She's a clever girl,” Aly told hi
m. “With luck she'll go far.”

  To keep from distracting him, she wandered along the storefront, part of her mind on the talk around her, part on what she had planned for that evening, and part on the bookseller's display. He had a very expensive front window, made of small panes of costly glass, the better to show off his wares. The books looked gorgeous, even through the warps and bubbles in the glass.

  Something caught her eye. In the lowest right-hand pane in the corner, someone had scratched a design. Aly sharpened her magical Sight. The emblem of the open shackle was cut into the window. More importantly, it had been done from inside. Someone working in the shop, perhaps Master Edgecliff himself, supported the rebellion.

  She yawned. “Maybe I can hint that it's getting toward lunchtime,” she told the guard, and ambled into the shop, switching her behind like a lazy servant girl. When the door closed behind her, she reached into the bag that hung from her sash. It was like reaching into a bowl filled with lively cool liquid. A ball of it moved up into her palm. Gently Aly brought out a darking and, while looking at a wall of books, deposited it on a bottom shelf. There was an inch-wide gap between shelf and floor: the darking slid into it and vanished.

  Pleased with her morning labor—she would place two more darkings on the way home, one at the checkpoint on Joshain and Trade Winds Street and one near Topabaw's spy outside Balitang House—Aly went to find Dove.

  As the household napped, Aly returned to her workroom to talk with her pack and their recruits. They were training more people, teaching them how to gather information and where to send it. And there was news: Vereyu had sent a note from the palace. It seemed that the night before, Topabaw had been forced to interrupt the regents' supper with the news that the luarin governor of Ikang Island had been murdered. Servants had been present to hear both Topabaw's admission that he had no information as yet and Imajane's enraged reply, “Then what good are you?”