Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

  Aly watched him go. Ulasim is their general, she decided, thinking about the roles each raka played. Lokeij is in charge of communications and storage for weapons and supplies. Fesgao must be their war leader, used to straightforward combat. And Chenaol . . .

  She plucked a grass stem. She supposed every army needed a chief cook who was quick with her knives, but surely there was more to Chenaol than that. Did she command the women of the raka? What could she do that the men could not?

  Aly’s memory showed her an image of Chenaol talking to the merchants who stopped by Tanair from time to time. She was accepting boxes from them, boxes that Aly had seen open in the kitchen: knives. No one questioned a raka cook in the purchase of knives. And it would be easier to smuggle longer blades to a cook than a man-at-arms watched by a luarin superior. Aly smiled. Chenaol was the raka armorer. That was why Ulasim has said “we” when he talked of giving me knives, she thought. He may plant them, but he’ll get them from Chenaol.

  Truly this was a fine morning, Aly reflected as she stretched and thought. Now she had human allies and their resources. With Bronau in residence and the king’s disfavor, the Balitangs’ luarin and raka alike had an excuse to strengthen their defenses. Any of them who had been waiting for “someday” to come would know that day was nearly upon them. They would be razor-sharp, with no need for Aly to sharpen them, and, unlike the crows, they would understand that Bronau might serve as a lightning rod to draw the king’s wrath.

  Aly gnawed a grass stem. The raka and the crows were prepared for attack by armed fighters both from within and without. However, they still could not withstand a strong magical attack. Somehow they would have to produce a mage.

  Once again Aly brought the goats in early. After they were safely penned, she waved to Nawat, who was fletching arrows near the archery butts, and entered the keep in search of the duchess. She found the lady in the small bedchamber where Petranne, Elsren, and their nursemaid slept, giving her son a bath while the maid toweled his sister dry.

  Aly bowed. “Excuse me, Your Grace,” she said.

  Winnamine looked up at her. Her hair had escaped its severe domed style to curl around her face and neck. Her indigo linen gown was water-spotted, and she was flicking drops of water into her gleefully squealing boy’s face.

  “Pembery,” she said to the maid, “would you get some more drying cloths? I fear both Elsren and I will need them.”

  The maid curtsied. “At once, Your Grace,” she murmured. She wrapped Petranne in a cocoon of cloths and trotted from the room.

  “Your Grace, Hasui, one of the kitchen slaves, will take my place as wine pourer tonight,” Aly murmured in Kyprish. Neither Elsren nor Petranne spoke it very well, though Dove, Sarai, and their parents did. “There are some things I must do in your service. And I will need to report to you and His Grace later, once the prince has retired.”

  Winnamine’s eyes sharpened. “You will be careful?” she asked, keeping her voice low as she, too, spoke in Kyprish. “You will take no risks that might endanger us?” Unconsciously she grasped Elsren’s hand in hers.

  “Your Grace, no one will even know what I did,” Aly assured her.

  “Mama, why are you talking that way?” demanded Petranne from her corner by the fire. “Only raka talk that way.”

  “But the raka are our people, too, dear,” Winnamine told her daughter. “We honor them by learning their tongue. They were here long before our ancestors came.”

  “But Aly isn’t raka,” the girl pointed out. “She’s luarin.”

  “She honors our raka friends, too,” Winnamine said, absently soaping Elsren’s back.

  Aly bowed and left the watery room. She had no interest in explaining the language of conquest to a four-year-old, and knowing Petranne from the journey to Tanair, she was aware that the girl would stick to the subject until the end of time if not muzzled.

  She retreated to a small closet off the servants’ stair and changed into the dark, long-sleeved tunic and leggings she kept hidden there. She had stolen them from the Balitang storehouse back in Rajmuat and hidden them for special occasions. She then wrapped a length of dark cloth around her face and head until only her eyes showed. By the time she finished, the household was assembling for the evening meal. Aly hid in the closet where she kept her prowler’s clothing until she heard no footsteps on the servants’ stair for a good space of time. Pocketing the lock picks she also kept there, she emerged carefully and peered into the main hall around the door behind the Balitangs. Hasui, cleaned up and dressed to serve at the dais, poured Bronau a cup of wine as Aly watched. Supper had begun.

  Quickly Aly counted the prince’s household in the hall. Everyone was present, eating with the duke’s servants. Satisfied, Aly climbed the keep stairs, past the floors where the prince, then the Balitangs, slept. When she reached the fourth floor, where Bronau’s household stayed, she got to work on the servants’ trunks, using her picks with care.

  By the time the first course was over downstairs, she had uncovered two royal spies among the prince’s servants. She didn’t flatter herself that it was her skill that made the discovery so easy. Anyone who searched their baggage would have seen it. Both men carried unusual supplies of paper, as well as the general code book issued for the Isles’ lower-level spies. Aly had memorized its contents over a year ago, when it had become the new general code for the Isles. Swiftly but expertly she checked each nook and cranny on the floor where the servants might have hidden more surprises.

  That chore done, she padded down to the second level and used her picks to enter the prince’s rooms. She searched his two menservants’ belongings first. They, too, carried more than their share of writing paper as well as one book. Their volume was The Perfect Servant, a popular book of advice for those who worked in a higher capacity in a house or fiefdom. These men did not report to the Crown, however. One of them had already started his next report to his master. Using the faint marks in the book on service, Aly swiftly deciphered the greeting on the document: “To my lord Rubinyan.”

  She raised an eyebrow. So the Crown used Bronau’s general servants to spy on him, while his older brother bought the services of Bronau’s body servants. What kind of bad feeling existed between these two? She couldn’t imagine Alan or Thom hiring anyone to spy on her. Of course, neither of them was eyeing a feeble king’s throne.

  She left the servants’ belongings exactly as she had found them and proceeded to Bronau’s private writing case. The magic on the lock blazed in her magical Sight. The case wouldn’t open if she tried the various unlocking words that she knew. There was also no keyhole in the lock, which didn’t surprise her. Bronau struck her as the kind of man who was careless with keys, even important ones. He wasn’t the sort to fuss with complex things, either.

  Aly peered more closely at the lock, shifting her Sight to read magic. The signs on it turned dark and appeared one at a time, over and over, until she identified what each meant. The case had been locked with an essence spell, the perfect thing for a man who didn’t like the bother of keys or details. Fortunately for Aly, she had studied these matters under very fine teachers. An essence spell was quite easy to break once recognized.

  Aly reached for Bronau’s riding gloves, which he had thrown on his bed in his rush to dress for supper. His hurried servants had left them right where a bright girl would find a use for them. Aly took a glove and turned it inside out, then pressed a leather fingertip to the lock. A line appeared through the middle of the device. The lid opened. Carefully she turned the glove right side out and replaced it in the exact spot she had found it. Her father had drilled her in such habits over the years, during exercises where he would send her out of the room, shift the things in it, then summon her back to replace everything as it had been. When she was little it was her favorite game. Now it was habit to remember the exact placement of anything she moved.

  Aly knelt on the floor and raised the box’s lid. The first seven letters inside were addressed
to businesses: a draper, a moneylender, a cobbler, a horse coper, a jeweler, an armorer, and a bowyer. In them Bronau wrote that he was aware of the sums that were owed to them. Aly leafed through the papers and found the bills he had mentioned. Reading how much he owed to these people, she raised both eyebrows. This man spent more on shoes than Maude did to supply Pirate’s Swoop with food for a month.

  Aly paused to listen for outside sounds. Hearing only the faint noise from the great hall, she returned to the letters. Bronau wrote the merchants that his debts would be paid, within the year, with interest, and he swore it by Mithros. He also wrote that they would be well rewarded for their patience.

  Aly arranged the letters neatly and put them aside with their bills. Prince Bronau seemed very confident he would be able to pay his creditors in full, even the moneylender. And he’d taken the risk of dragging a god’s name into it. The receipts all had “fourth notice” or “fifth notice” written on them, and the dates covered the last four years.

  How did he intend to pay? Aly wondered. None of Bronau’s people had said that he’d snagged himself a very wealthy heiress. From what Aly knew, the money would not come from his brother and sister-in-law. Now he was out of favor with the king, and yet he was strangely confident. These letters were dated two days ago. Sarai was no heiress, not the kind that Bronau needed. From the notes on their bills, the prince’s creditors were about to haul him before Mithros’s altar, where lawyer-priests would strip Bronau of all he owned.

  Aly looked at the next sheet of paper in the box. It was covered with scratch-outs and rephrasings. It seemed to be a letter to an old friend, chatting of this and that. Aly read it over twice, eyed the scratched out words, and nearly groaned aloud. The letter was in the most simple-minded code in existence, the very first code she had memorized. It was based on The Book of Mithros. Nearly every household in the Eastern and Southern Lands had a copy, even if the residents took some other god as the center of their belief.

  “Duke Zeburon,” she translated, “though you are both on the Royal Council, I have reason to know you are no friend to my brother R. We might find common ground between us, with the end in mind of ousting R. from his position.”

  That was as far as Bronau had written. The rest of the box held empty paper and The Book of Mithros, but Aly checked it all, just to be sure. There were no other signs of code or magic. Carefully she replaced everything as she had found it. After a double check of the room to make sure it looked as it had when she broke in, she left by the servants’ stair, changed into her normal homespun tunic and leggings, and walked into the kitchen.

  The prince has given me plenty to think about, she thought, scrounging leftovers. As soon as the house is quiet, I’ll make sure the duke and duchess are thinking, too.

  Aly was dozing by the kitchen fire as the staff began to carry the dishes out for washing. Pembery woke her with the message that Their Graces had errands for her. Aly grumbled a reply and trudged up the servants’ stair once again.

  The duke and duchess awaited her in the sitting room of their new quarters. To Aly’s surprise and discomfort, Sarai occupied the chair next to her father.

  The older Balitangs correctly read the rigid set of Aly’s body. “Sarai is of age,” the duke said gravely. “She will have to learn these things to survive. We have already told her of the god’s message to us.”

  Aly pressed her lips together. “The more who know, the more you risk” was a motto she’d memorized practically in her cradle. Still, Sarai was Aly’s own age. That had to be old enough to be told there were mysteries afoot. Resigned, Aly swept the room with her Sight, wondering if Mequen and Winnamine had thought the thing all the way through. As she suspected, she caught a flicker of movement in the gap between the door to the main stair and the floor. Immediately she heightened her magical ability to see color and detail and identified the eavesdropper. She crossed the room silently and yanked the door open. Dove stumbled into the room and almost fell. Aly caught her by one thin arm.

  The duchess started from her chair, then settled back into it, biting her lower lip. Mequen scowled at his daughter. “Dovasary, it is the most common of all behaviors to listen at doors,” he told her. “As a lady, such coarseness is beneath you.”

  As she covered the crack under the door with a carpet and stuffed a cloth scrap from the duchess’s sewing basket into the keyhole, Aly glanced at Dove to see the effect of the duke’s words. Dove looked at Aly and rolled her eyes, then went to stand before her father. “You told me curiosity was healthy,” she said. “Is that confined only to books and nature? Sarai would just have told me anyway. I’d have made her.”

  “As if you could!” her older sister snapped.

  Aly ignored their debate as she filled in the cracks under the remaining doors and plugged their keyholes as well. Just to be on the safe side, in case one of the spies who had come with Bronau had the nerve to dangle on a rope outside the window, she closed and barred the shutters. When she finished, the discussion was over. Dove wore a tiny smile of satisfaction as she pulled up a chair next to Sarai.

  “Are you ready?” Aly inquired. The duke nodded. Aly said, “I searched the belongings of the prince and his servants tonight,” she informed her listeners.

  Mequen frowned.

  “Your Grace?” Aly inquired.

  “I’m not sure I approve,” he replied quietly. “He is a friend, a guest in my house. He is entitled to his privacy.”

  Aly caught the glance traded by Sarai and Dove, one that showed exasperation over their father’s unbending good manners. The duchess showed only concentration as she seemed to focus on the neat stitches she set in her sewing.

  Aly thought the duke’s scruples were sweet, if unrealistic. Da had always told her that noble honor hindered those who had it as much as it helped them. “Your Grace is an honorable man, and I respect that. However, I am charged with the safety of you and your family. Honor of the type you describe is a luxury.” Before he could order her never to do so again, she held up a hand. “Before you speak, Your Grace, you should know that the prince already enjoys no privacy whatsoever. His attendants include Crown spies. His body servants are both in his brother’s pay.”

  “Rubinyan?” whispered the duke. He gripped the arms of his chair with white-knuckled hands. “Ridiculous! He would no more spy . . . Rubinyan is as much my friend as Bronau. He is a good man. They don’t get on, but it is temperament, not politics.”

  “Unless you are connected to the royal family and the court,” Winnamine pointed out, keeping her voice low. “Then politics and temperament are never separated.”

  “I cannot believe it,” repeated the duke. “I will not believe it.”

  At least he knows the difference between “cannot” and “will not,” thought Aly. “Would Your Grace like proof of what I say?” she asked. Da had warned her that sometimes people refused to believe even when evidence was waved under their noses, but she thought she should offer.

  Mequen shot her a startled look. “Aly, no, of course not. You are the god’s messenger. You would not lie.”

  I would if I thought it was for your own good, Aly thought as Winnamine patted her husband’s arm.

  “This might be Imajane’s influence,” the duchess murmured. “She has seen so many conspiracies in her own family that she would suspect them of anyone. Wouldn’t you, growing up as His Majesty’s daughter?”

  “True, true,” whispered the duke, but Aly could see his eyes. Mequen was too intelligent not to see that it was sensible for someone near the throne, like Rubinyan, to watch a powerful, charming fellow courtier, even if that courtier was his own brother. The duke also had to be thinking that if Prince Rubinyan suspected his brother, he might suspect anyone, including Mequen himself. “Why am I surprised?” he asked, and sighed. “That is the way of things at court. Everyone spies on everyone else.”

  Aly could see that the duke understood her. No wonder Da prefers to work with clever people, she thought. They c
an work out the obvious without openly speaking of it. She said, “There’s more, Your Grace. I took the liberty of going through the prince’s writing case.”

  “Aly!” cried the duke, shocked. Winnamine hurriedly put a finger over her husband’s lips, to remind him to keep his voice down. The duke tightened his mouth, then leaned forward and fixed Aly with his sharp brown eyes. “Nobles do not read one another’s mail.”

  “I would not know, Your Grace,” replied Aly smoothly. “I was a servant. Now I am a slave. It’s a matter of survival for us to know what our masters know.”

  “I don’t believe I noticed before, but you have perfect grammar,” remarked Dove. “Isn’t that odd for a slave who was once a maid?”

  “The god chose me for my skills at mimicry, my lady,” Aly replied. That was not a lie at all, she virtuously told herself.

  “I take it you found something in Prince Bronau’s case, or you would not have raised the subject,” Winnamine said.

  Aly nodded. “His Highness is greatly in debt,” she told them.

  The duke batted this aside with an impatient hand. “He is always in debt. Really, Aly, if you waste your time with small follies . . .”

  She named the sum she had added from the receipts, stopping the duke in midsentence. The duchess went pale. Sarai gasped.

  At last the duchess said, “He’ll spend the rest of his life repaying that.”

  “He says not, Your Grace.” Aly then told them of the letters he had written but not yet sent—letters to his creditors that promised repayment within a year. She then repeated the contents of the partial letter to Duke Zeburon, offering an alliance against Rubinyan.

  “Papa, whatever it is, I’m sure he can explain,” Sarai said hurriedly, anxiety in her eyes. “Perhaps he believes Rubinyan doesn’t trust him. Perhaps he just wants to make sure he has friends, in case Imajane ever turns the king against him. It’s just more of that jockeying for power you always say goes on at court.”

  “And the money?” asked the duchess, inspecting her sewing.