Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

  “Oh, no, I will do nothing of the kind,” Kyprioth said. “I doubt that Chenaol takes it that way.”

  Aly sat up on her knees and looked at the god. “Good,” she said. “A wager is sacred in the Divine Realms—anyone knows it. If you try to change the terms we’ve agreed to? I’ll bring the matter before your fellow gods, including the two whose attention you least want to draw. The two who kicked you off your throne. Don’t even think of pulling the wool over my eyes.”

  He vanished from his rock to reappear in front of Aly. “The thought never crossed my mind,” he said, and kissed her on the forehead. “A wager’s a wager.” He vanished, making the air pop where he had been.

  Aly shook her head, then stood and stretched. “I should feel relieved,” she mused aloud. “And yet, somehow, I don’t.”

  She dozed for a while in the sun. When she woke, it was to a crow’s announcement of riders on the road south from Tanair. Aly sharpened her Sight and saw a noble riding party below her: Prince Bronau, Duke Mequen, Duchess Winnamine, Sarai, and Dove were out riding. The prince called a mocking challenge, which Sarai accepted with a whoop, nudging her horse into a gallop as the prince spurred his own mount. They thundered down the southern road, Sarai like a warrior out of legends, her hair springing from its pins. Two bodyguards followed the racers at the gallop, while Mequen, Winnamine, Dove, and their guards kept to a lively trot. They waved to Aly, who waved back, as they rode on.

  Aly stretched out her leg tendons, touching her toes as she turned things over in her mind. Did Bronau think Sarai might be a bride for him? The prince was a younger son, which meant his pockets might not be very deep. Did he think Sarai had money? Through enthusiastic eavesdropping, Aly had discovered that Balitangs inherited by luarin law. Elsren would get the bulk of the duke’s lands and wealth at his death. Sarai and Dove would split their inheritance from their mother, Tanair and a few other small estates. They would not be wealthy brides.

  She heard footsteps, quiet but not noiseless, among the rocks to her left. Aly bent casually and picked up two of a small pile of stones she had made before her nap. Back at home she had learned to throw rocks from the village boys, until she could kill rabbits or dent heavy wood with the force of her throw.

  “She rides well, our Sarai.”

  Ulasim stepped out from between the rocks. Aly looked him over. Today he wore homespun and moved as easily in the rough garments as her own father moved in his clothes. Aly noticed something else: the outlines of dagger sheaths against his sleeves and on his breeches where they fell over his calf-high boots. Ulasim hadn’t worn blades before.

  “She does ride well,” Aly said. “I suppose you’ve talked to Chenaol.”

  “Of course,” said Ulasim. “We are all in this together.”

  “This,” Aly said musingly, guessing that he spoke of the conspiracy among the Balitang raka. “Tell me, did you ever want to put Sarugani on the throne?”

  Ulasim shook his head. “The time wasn’t right.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “And she wasn’t right—more heart than head, when everyone knows the head is what matters when dealing with the luarin. It matters, too, that she had no royal blood through the luarin line, which will bring more of the part-raka to our cause. Our lady has the Rittevon blood as well as the ancient Haiming blood, and she is wiser than her mother. The people will love Sarai as queen.” He fell silent for a moment, then said, “We have waited a very long time for this. We shall have only one chance—if we fail, the luarin will see to it that we cannot rise again. That is why so many came to see her. They know what is at stake. They have prayed for this chance for generations.”

  The head hostler Lokeij rode up on Duke Mequen’s hunter. The old raka used no saddle, Aly realized, and no bridle. Her estimation of the tiny man rose several notches. She would have shrunk from riding such a big horse with full tack, let alone with none.

  Lokeij dismounted easily and set the horse among the goats to graze. Then he lay down atop a rock, apparently there just to bask in the sun. Ulasim picked up a stick and whittled on it. It seemed they were waiting. Aly put her rocks back in their pile and practiced head and handstands on the soft grass.

  She had just progressed to walking on her hands when Chenaol arrived through the rocks, panting from the exercise. “I told them,” she informed Aly as she collapsed beside the girl.

  “I noticed,” Aly said with a grin. “Who else did you tell?”

  “Fesgao,” replied Chenaol, fanning herself with one hand. “Veron’s got him in charge of the watch today, and he dares not leave.”

  Somehow Aly wasn’t surprised to hear that Fesgao was part of the conspiracy. She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. Time to get my feet wet, she thought, and said, “Veron is the king’s spy. He keeps his papers and coding materials in a box set on the lintel over his door. Have you someone who can watch him, and intercept any reports he might try to send out? Not Fesgao—he’s too obvious.”

  “One of my stable boys will do well at such work,” said Lokeij. “Boys are less obvious than men, and these boys are forever trailing behind the men-at-arms when I’ve no work for them. It will be easy.”

  “Should we tell His Grace?” asked Ulasim.

  Aly shook her head. “The duke and the duchess do not need to know,” she replied. “I will tell them when it is necessary.”

  Lokeij turned his head to stare at her. “They listen to you?” he asked, plainly startled. “But they only know you as a slave.”

  Aly grinned. “Your friend appeared to them as Mithros and told them to listen to me,” she explained. “They think I’m his messenger.”

  “That explains . . .” Chenaol’s voice trailed off as she considered what this information did explain.

  “Fesgao said that you suggested he check the forest for bandits on the way here,” Ulasim remarked. “He wasn’t sure if there were people abroad, having been in the city so long, but you convinced him.”

  Aly shrugged.

  “Well!” Chenaol said, more pleased than she had been the previous night. “Things should go better, now that we have a proper spy. We’re ready for anything.”

  “Anything but a mage,” Aly pointed out, lying back and linking her hands behind her head. As clouds scuttled by, she added, “The healer Rihani is good only for healing, and only a certain amount of it, at that. A true mage, come here on King Oron’s behalf, could crack us wide open. Speaking of the king . . .”

  Lokeij leaned over and spat to one side.

  “Satisfying, but not useful,” Aly said. “If spit made a difference, you raka would have had the Isles back as soon as everyone got to know the luarin. With regard to the king, if he has one of his bad twitches, Veron and his boys won’t be enough to hold off a royal assault. And you can’t count on Veron. Like as not, he’ll just open the Tanair gates like a good dog. Have you raka made your own provisions for warriors? Patrols of the plateau? If outsiders infiltrate this area, you should stop them before they reach Tanair.”

  “But why?” Ulasim wanted to know. “Surely it’s enough to retreat to the castle. We’re safe inside the walls.”

  Aly shook her head. “If they trap us in the castle, then we are well and truly trapped,” she explained. “It would be far better for any assassins the king sends to vanish before they reach Tanair. That way, when the king asks what happened to his soldiers, His Grace can say, ‘What soldiers?’ without even needing to lie. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Lokeij whistled. “Make the king’s warriors vanish if they come . . . what a deceitful turtledove you are.”

  Aly smiled at the sky. “Oh, don’t,” she replied in the tones of a flirtatious court lady. “Stop, I insist. Your flattery makes me blush.”

  “Have we the warriors?” asked Chenaol slowly.

  Lokeij cleared his throat. When the other raka looked at him, he raised his eyebrows. They nodded. The old hostler turned his eyes on Aly. “There are some fighters up here, waiting,” he ex
plained. “In the villages. Over the last three years they have come, young men and women, nearly sixty in all, to train and to wait. The elders will be happy the time has come to put them to use. They hunt, they fight, and they flirt with their daughters and sons.” He smiled. “They are also very good at riding, scouting, shooting, and building walls. They have their own mounts, and can live in the open air.”

  “The crows will help,” said a voice from nearby. Nawat had come up soundlessly to stand near a boulder. “We will teach your fighters as we taught Aly.”

  Aly didn’t even see Ulasim leave his place, the man was so fast. He jammed Nawat against the boulder and put a knife to his throat. Nawat twisted, an arm moving. Ulasim went down on his knees. He bent over, gasping, dead white under his coppery skin. Nawat jumped five feet in the air to the top of his boulder. Two long strides took him across the rocks; a short jump put him on a tree branch over Aly’s head.

  Chenaol went to Ulasim. “What did you do?” she demanded. “If you’ve killed him . . .”

  Nawat smiled at her from his leafy refuge. “I only pecked him with my fingers. He was rude to try to cut me. I will help Aly do whatever she must. He should know that.”

  All three raka stared at the young fletcher. “What are you?” demanded Lokeij. “You aren’t raka.”

  “Isn’t he?” Aly asked lazily, watching Ulasim and Chenaol through her lowered lashes. “What is he, then? Luarin?”

  Ulasim straightened with a grimace. He patted Chenaol on the shoulder, reassuring her that he wasn’t stabbed, then stared at Nawat. Ignoring him, Nawat picked something off the tree trunk, eyed it, then ate it. His eyebrows shot up. He looked around, found a twig and broke it off, and used it to root in a crevice of the tree bark.

  Ulasim wiped a hand over dry lips and crouched a little, holding the spot in his side where Nawat had struck him. “Not luarin,” he said at last, wonder in his eyes and voice. “But not raka, either.”

  “Does it matter, if I give your warriors the secrets of the crows?” asked Nawat. He brought his twig close to his face. A grub squirmed on the end of it. He popped it into his mouth and thrust his twig under a new piece of bark. “We have a wager with the Bright One, too, the god of tricks,” the crow-man explained as he wriggled his twig. “To help Aly, we must help the nestlings. Surely it makes no difference what I am. You humans worry about proper names too much.”

  Chenaol looked at Aly. “Do you vouch for him?”

  “Why not ask your god?” Aly demanded in return. “The crows were his idea.”

  Ulasim rubbed his side. “Things were simpler in Rajmuat,” he complained. “Nawat, tonight you’ll meet with Fesgao and me in the guard barracks. We must work out patrol schedules and decide how your crows will communicate with our fighters. And come down out of that tree. You’re making my neck hurt, and your eating habits make my belly squirm.”

  Nawat jumped to the ground, then found a rock to sit on. “No more knives?” he asked Ulasim.

  “No more pecking?” Ulasim retorted.

  Nawat looked at Aly. “I cannot teach the raka as we taught you. We will sort that out.”

  “I leave it in your capable hands,” Aly told him with a smile. She looked at the raka conspirators. “Any other royal spies in the household?”

  “Just Hasui, and she’s in the kitchen under my eye,” Chenaol replied with a firm nod. “I prefer not to kill her, if it can be helped.”

  “No, don’t,” Aly said. “It’ll leave you short-handed in the kitchen. For another, we can send the wrong information through Hasui and Veron to their masters. Knowing who is your spy can be quite useful.” She scratched her head, reviewing all the things they had discussed. There were plenty of factors to keep in mind, and she wanted to make sure that they had covered the most important ones. She had always expected her first job as a spy to be a simple matter of watching targets and sending reports on their behavior. Da would never thrust a green spy into a political swamp like this one for her first assignment. She grinned. She would have a tale to tell him when she went home!

  Ulasim was staring at her. “What?” she asked.

  “Where did you learn to think this way?” the raka asked slowly. “We would have killed Hasui outright if Chenaol had not said she would be controlled in the kitchen. Killing Veron would break no one’s heart. He’s too fond of whipping raka to get them to move. We never would think to make the spies pass on bad information. And it never occurred to us that a castle might be a trap.”

  “Oh, the god fiddled with my mind,” she replied wickedly. “They’re fond of doing things like that. You never know what they’ll get up to.”

  “I do not believe you,” Ulasim replied, an amused glint in his dark eyes. “No god ever needs to know such tiny things. Who are your people?”

  “Tortallans,” Aly informed him. “Merchants. Harmless. Unless you count my mother, who was a Player. What of Prince Bronau’s people?” she asked, changing the subject. “Are any of them more than they seem to be?”

  The raka looked at one another and shook their heads. “They just got here,” Chenaol reminded Aly.

  Aly yawned. “I’ll have a look around, then. Perhaps Her Grace will excuse me from pouring the wine tonight. You might want to keep a constant watch on them, too. After all, they might find the weapons hidden in the storerooms under the stable.”

  Lokeij cursed eloquently. “You can’t know about them! I’ve got the stables watched all the time!”

  “I didn’t know until now,” Aly replied easily, enjoying the joke she had just played on the old man. She ignored Lokeij’s muttered curse, though she stored it in her memory as a useful one to know. “It’s a central location, after all, and the raka linger there all the time.”

  Ulasim whistled softly. “Our friend picked well when he picked you.”

  Just don’t get used to me, Aly thought at she smiled at him. I don’t mean to be here after the autumn equinox.

  Chenaol looked at the sun. “I’d best get back,” she told them. “Those lazy wenches will slack on the cooking if I’m not there.” She set off among the rocks. Ulasim murmured quietly to Lokeij, then stood aside as the old man mounted his horse as nimbly as a boy. Aly looked around for Nawat—he was nowhere to be seen. Like any crow, he seemed to have the ability to come and go unnoticed, something that didn’t involve magic, only animal craft.

  At last Ulasim was alone with Aly. “Tomorrow I will send Visda to you. She and her dogs will graze her herd with yours every day after this. She will tell no one what you do once you have settled the flock. This way, should you need to leave your post, she can look after the goats as well.”

  Aly nodded. “Good idea. I thank you.”

  “Also, what are your preferred weapons?” he wanted to know. “Can you use any, O child of merchants?”

  Aly raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t believe what I told you of my family. I’m hurt. Maybe even crushed.” Ulasim was unmoved. She delayed by reminding him, “It’s my life if I’m caught with weapons, you know that. Slave owners don’t arm slaves.” She wasn’t sure if it was wise to let anyone know of her skill with knives.

  “Then you must not be caught,” Ulasim replied coolly. “Have you been to the shrine between the stable and the wall?”

  Aly shook her head.

  “The flagstone before the altar can be lifted. What shall we leave there for you?” He smiled thinly.

  Aly nibbled her lower lip. It would be nice to have more blades than just the stolen one hidden in her bedroll. She’d always teased her father when he complained about the magic that alerted the king and queen of people carrying hidden weapons. She had liked telling him that he sounded like a child without his favorite blanket. Now she understood his feeling of vulnerability. Like Aly, he could fight hand to hand at need, but daggers were what he loved. He’d taught that love to her. “Daggers?” she asked. “Good ones, as flat as may be, with sleeve and leg sheaths? They would be a blessing.”

  “Merchan
ts,” Ulasim remarked drily, referring to her false background again. “Yes, of course I believe you. I must, mustn’t I? You are Kyprioth’s chosen, so the truth drips from your tongue like honey from the comb.”

  “Again you are suspicious,” Aly told the raka, shaking her head in sorrow. “You wound me so deeply.” She liked Ulasim. He was smart.

  “I can see that,” retorted Ulasim. “Daggers we shall provide you, under the flagstone tonight.” Aly relaxed, looking at the clouds again, but the raka was not finished. “And since you are so busy watching the plotters who creep up behind us, I will assign a guard to you. Someone who won’t look out of place with the goats.” His voice was firm, his eyes direct as Aly sat up and groaned a protest. Ulasim said firmly, “At the very least he can run your errands.”

  Aly sighed. “What about a girl?” she asked, “or a woman? Less conspicuous and less likely to stir up gossip.”

  Ulasim stiffened. Aly made a face at him. “Sarai told me your women fought together with the men in the raka armies,” she said patiently. “It seems reasonable to guess that the raka who aren’t under the luarin eye continue to train their women to fight. I can understand your not wanting folk to know. This way, the luarin think the number of raka who might give them trouble is half of your actual force. But I’m not going to tell, and a female won’t be noticed as much as a man.”

  “I will see to it,” he said. He started to go, then turned back to face Aly. His dark eyes were puzzled. “I suppose I must trust the god’s opinion of you, but you still worry me. He is a trickster, when all is said and done.”

  “But I’m not,” Aly assured him, the picture of earnest youth. “Why, I’m just as true and honest as dirt. And I’m even more charming than dirt.”

  Ulasim winced. “Thank you for describing yourself in such unforgettable terms,” he said. “I see you and the god are well matched.”