Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

  Throughout the ceremony and the party, Aly watched her parents. Alanna was stiff near her husband, though obviously happy for her friend Daine. When George touched her elbow and they wandered off under the trees, Aly followed them, worried. What had vexed her mother this time?

  “Lass, what is it?” George asked once they were out of earshot of the others at the naming celebration. “You seem angry.”

  “Angry?” Alanna glared up at her husband. “How would you feel if you found out one of our children had disappeared and I was keeping it from you?”

  George’s shoulders slumped. “You heard.”

  “I should have heard it from you, George! Not the king! She’s my only daughter, you knew she was missing—”

  George rested his hands on her shoulders. “You were in combat. I want you to concentrate on staying alive. I thought for sure I’d have found her by now. I thought—”

  “But you’ve asked?” Alanna’s anger evaporated. She gripped her husband’s tunic. “Sent out your whisperers, asked for a girl of her look?”

  “I dare not.” Aly’s father’s voice was soft. “I dare not, my darling. If our enemies knew she was out there—we cannot risk it. The king’s been scrying for her, but it’s as if she’s clean vanished.”

  Alanna rested her forehead against George’s chest. “I’ve been scrying, every night, every morning, any moment I can. But if she were dead, surely His Majesty or I would have seen it.” She looked up. “Have you asked Alan? Twins often know if the other’s in trouble. He—”

  George laid a gentle finger over her lips. “I did. He only knows she’s not hurt or frightened. Alanna, what of the Goddess? She’s your patron.”

  Alanna shook her head. “I’ve prayed, without a whisper of a reply. Nothing. Perhaps she’s busy elsewhere, I know I’m not her only supplicant—”

  Aly flinched. A few tears rolled down her mother’s cheeks. George gathered Alanna into his arms. Alanna dried her face on his tunic, then turned her head so that she could speak and he would hear. “I want to hunt for her myself.” She cut off her husband as he drew breath to speak. “I know. I said I want to, I didn’t say that I could. I’m noticeable. And there’s still a war to fight. Maggur’s like a rabid wolf, at his most dangerous when he’s cornered. But then I think of our Aly—”

  Aly’s vivid dream faded. She woke. A castle dog sat beside her, surrounded by the shimmering glow that marked a god’s presence.

  You were about to try to get word to them, so they won’t worry, the dog-Kyprioth said into her head. Save your efforts. Any paper you send out of Tanair will vanish. Any courier will forget the message. Our wager is between you and me alone.

  “My mother is worried,” Aly whispered, not wanting to rouse the sleeping servants. “She shouldn’t be thinking about me, only about the war. She could get killed if she’s distracted.”

  The dog licked its chops. We had a bet, Alianne of Pirate’s Swoop. I won’t risk interference from your parents or their patron gods.

  Assassins approach a problem differently from soldiers, you see. They can’t lay siege, they can’t offer an honorable fight. In their trade numbers are dangerous. An assassin’s advantage lies in folk missing him when he’s about. He hits hard and fast, then goes. Once you’ve tried to kill the first time, the target has the wind up. Failure the first time means it’ll be that much harder to get close a second time.

  —Told to Aly when she was eleven, in a conversation with her father

  10

  ASSASSINS

  Through the rest of June Aly’s goat herding was often interrupted by visitors: Dove, occasionally Sarai after her morning ride, various raka. Junai never appeared, not even to eat lunch with them, though Aly always knew where her bodyguard was. One day even the duchess came. She brought Petranne and Elsren for a picnic on the hillside, sharing their lunch with Visda and Aly as well as her own children, and talking about her own country upbringing.

  The raka who stopped by always had questions about Sarai and Dove. What were they like? Were they haughty? Did they know the ways of the raka, or had their hearts been taken by the luarin? Aly tried to build their sympathy and liking for the girls. At the very least, if the family were attacked some night, the raka might be convinced to hide Sarai and Dove.

  Aly’s supper routine was the one she had fallen into after Bronau’s arrival. One night she would pour the wine at the head table. On the next she searched Bronau’s correspondence and that of his servants. Both routines were followed by meetings with the raka conspirators and Nawat to exchange information. Once all that was done, Aly collapsed happily onto her pallet, usually falling asleep in the middle of plans to ferret out the elusive mage.

  On her nights at the head table, Aly noted that the prince got more and more restless, though he did his best to hide it from Sarai. The two of them still rode every day, with the duchess or the duke as chaperons. The rides got longer. It seemed the prince needed more and more exercise to keep from exploding. Even a game of chess with Mequen tried his patience.

  A week after their trip to Pohon, Aly sat with Visda and Ekit over the last scraps of lunch. She was about to practice her combat skills some more when the calls of crows filled the air. Aly listened and translated their sounds: a peaceful caravan of some kind, probably merchants, was coming down the road from Dimari.

  Turning the goats over to Visda, Aly went to get a look from the rocks above the road. She had almost reached the summit of one boulder, where she could watch without being seen, when someone clasped her ankle and yanked her down into a crack between stones. Aly twisted hard to free herself as she slid down, then jammed herself against her would-be captor’s side and arm, pressing one of her daggers to his throat as she kept him from reaching one of his. The young raka who had grabbed her stared down at her with emotionless eyes. Aly looked him over. This was her first encounter with one of the raka who watched over the plateau.

  She patted the man’s cheek. “You would belong to the patrol, yes? Lovely to make your acquaintance. I feel so looked-after.”

  Cloth slithered on stone as Junai slid down to their location. “It’s her,” Junai explained to the raka, her voice very dry. “Don’t let the silly mannerisms fool you.” She looked at Aly. “Were you on your way somewhere?”

  “Nice meeting you,” Aly told the raka warrior, then climbed back up to the higher rock, Junai at her back. Just below the summit Aly flattened herself on the stone and belly-crawled the rest of the way, keeping her head low until she just crested the top.

  It was a merchant caravan. Aly recognized most of the carts and people, who had come to Tanair twice this summer. There were faces she did not know: three full-blood male luarin, a part-raka man, and a beautiful luarin woman. The woman was a charmer, Aly thought, sent as a temptation for men. The four unfamiliar men were hard-looking fellows with their share of knife scars. Aly watched as their eyes flicked restlessly over their surroundings. They seemed more wary than alert. Though they wore only belt-knives openly, she could also see the print of hilts against their shirts and breeches. Their bulging belt purses and saddlebags were guaranteed to hold even more tools for bloody work, unless she had lost her grip on her education entirely. These were not the tougher breed of merchant who followed Lombyn’s jungle and mountain roads. These were killers.

  Aly did her mental trick that allowed her to see distant objects in detail. Now the unfamiliar traders were as clear to her vision as if they stood right before her. One, a luarin dressed in a buckskin tunic and breeches, drove the lead wagon with Gurhart, the chief merchant, beside him. Something about the way he held himself told Aly he was the assassins’ leader. He looked to be five feet eight inches tall, with short brown hair. He was olive-skinned, dark for a luarin, with green eyes and a round scar on his left cheekbone. The remaining three male strangers, two full luarin, one a half-blood, rode as guards, their crossbows set easily on their thighs. Their tunics and breeches were unremarkable shades of brown. Two had brown
hair; the part-raka had black hair. All three were lean and muscular, with swords in plain sheaths that had seen hard use.

  The standout was the woman, but Aly guessed she was meant to divert attention from the men. She wore her blazing red hair coiled and pinned at the back of her head. She sat beside the driver of one of the other wagons, looking around at the scenery. Her eyes, as restless as those of the other assassins, were blue. Her dress almost matched her eyes in color. Despite the pampered smoothness of her skin, the woman had strong arms and capable hands.

  Aly turned her gaze to Gurhart, who ran the caravan. He was part raka and a decent enough fellow. Over his other visits Aly had been careful to talk to him, presenting herself to him and his people as an eager young girl who desired news of the world beyond Tanair. Gurhart, flattered by her attention, had told her more than regular news. Aly knew the names of his wife and children, how much he had made the year before, and how often he’d come to Tanair before the Balitangs made it worth his trouble. From those talks Aly knew Gurhart was no more able to hide his troubles than three-year-old Elsren. She saw no discomfort on the merchant’s round face now, no unease or suspicion. That didn’t necessarily mean the new members of the caravan were all right, she told herself. It might just mean that Gurhart had been short of hands, and these five had shown up. She wondered how many of Gurhart’s original crew of workers had vanished before he’d hired these hard folk.

  Aly watched as the caravan passed, then slithered back down her rock. Only Junai waited at the bottom. The young raka had left to spread the word of the caravan’s arrival.

  “Dish out more stew, Mama, there’s guests for supper,” Aly told Junai. She returned to Visda and asked her to take charge of the goats, then set off toward Tanair at a trot. She had not gone far when the sound of hooves greeted her. One of Lokeij’s stable boys approached on horseback. He led the mare Aly had ridden before, the chestnut called Cinnamon.

  Remembering she was not supposed to ride well, Aly clumsily pulled herself into the saddle and turned Cinnamon toward the castle, with a word of thanks for the boy. The caravan overtook her at the village gate. Aly dismounted and led Cinnamon through the village with a word of greeting for those merchants she knew from their previous visits. From their responses, Aly gathered that word had reached them that the castle was full to the rafters. The merchants were unhappy at the prospect of having to find lodging in the village, but they were used to roughing it. So much the better, Aly thought as she walked through the castle’s outer gate. Fewer people would spent the night inside the castle’s walls, which meant fewer people for her to watch. Those five newcomers would be enough of a problem.

  Lokeij awaited Aly by the stable, a look of concern on his old monkey’s face, contradicted by his gaudy red sarong. He nodded toward the gate to the inner courtyard. Gurhart was there with two wagonloads of goods, talking to the duchess, Chenaol, and Ulasim.

  Aly walked into the stable leading the mare. When Lokeij joined her, she said, “Assassins came with the merchants this time. You’ll need to alert the others. Where’s our family?”

  “The ladies play chess with the prince and His Grace,” Lokeij replied instantly, meaning Dove and Sarai. “The little ones are having baths in the kitchen. You saw Her Grace.” He trotted out of the stable.

  Aly unsaddled Cinnamon and groomed her. Her hands trembled slightly, but that was probably just the excitement that came with a real challenge. She had done this sort of thing before, twice, with her Da when killers had gotten into a place he was guarding. The nice thing about Tanair Castle was its lack of space. It limited the ways that assassins, trained to attack in the dark while the household slept, could approach their targets.

  Ulasim and Fesgao arrived together with Lokeij. Ulasim checked to make sure no one could see or hear them in the depths of the stable, then nodded to Aly. “What do you have?” he asked.

  Aly leaned against the stable wall. “Five strangers are with them,” she replied quietly. “They look like professional assassins to me. By now, they’ll have smuggled themselves into the castle on those wagons I just saw outside the keep. Either that or they might be hiding in wait for an ally who’s inside to let them in after dark.” She described the probable assassins in detail adding: “I worry that there could be more hidden in the carts, and that maybe they turned some of the regular merchants to their side. Can your people search the wagons and take anyone we don’t know? Just to be on the safe side.”

  “You speak as if we will not find them.” Fesgao was the quietest of the four raka leaders, but Aly had come to value the few things he chose to say. Did he value her in the same manner? she wondered.

  “These are professionals,” Aly replied. “The first thing they learn is to get away from their transport, in case some bright-eyed young thing like me suspects something isn’t right.”

  “Then how do you suggest we catch them?” asked Ulasim. He looked down at Aly, his dark eyes impossible to read. “Is it the plan we discussed? Move the family to a safe place after supper, and set our people where these murderers will attack at night?”

  Aly nodded. It was a good plan, arrived at by mutual agreement among the raka conspirators, with only the occasional nudge or suggestion from her. Its success depended on the loyalty of the raka, but the Balitangs—at least their two elder daughters—had that, and none of the conspirators wanted anyone to realize their interest lay solely with the older girls.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to include the prince, too. I’m sorry,” Aly said as the three rakas’ eyes blazed. “But they might be here just for him, and not care who else gets killed in the meantime. I’d as soon not risk it.”

  Lokeij spat on the stable floor to show his disdain for the prince. “What of the prince’s servants?” he wanted to know. “We didn’t account for them when we planned this.”

  Aly looked at Ulasim, their general, to see what he would decide. “Urge the prince’s servants out to the barracks for a nighttime drink and game of dice,” Ulasim said after a moment’s thought. “We can guard them in there safely enough. Our extra fighters will go on the fourth floor in case the assassins try to come down from the roof.” He looked at Aly. “Unless we should guard the roof now?”

  Fesgao answered, “They mustn’t think we know they’re here, in case there are more we haven’t identified. We must act normal. Usually we never go up on the roof.”

  “If we leave the roof and the servants’ stairs open, we’ll control their main line of attack. We can draw them all out right away,” Aly added. “We don’t want to spend the rest of the summer jumping because one got away and is waiting to finish the job.”

  “And we don’t want any escaping to carry word to Rajmuat,” said Lokeij. “If that’s who sent them.”

  He looked at Aly, who shrugged. “We should know when we question them,” she told him.

  “We can do this,” Ulasim said firmly. “We get our fighters in place while the family and the prince dine. Then we pick these gutless shadows up like rats in a trap, so they’ll never trouble us again. The plan we have is a good one. Let’s set it in motion.”

  The three men walked off to do their parts of the plans they had thrashed out with Chenaol and Aly over their many nighttime talks. Aly watched them go. She had faith in them, she realized. They hadn’t been raised to protect themselves and those in their care as she had been, but she felt good knowing they were on her side. She wished Da had fifty like them in his service.

  When Aly passed through the kitchen, Chenaol nodded to her. Her staff was busy with supper preparations. Looking around, Aly noted there were fewer knives in sight than usual. She suspected she would find them on the persons of those servants and slaves approved by the four raka conspirators. When Chenaol herself tossed Aly a roll to nibble, Aly saw the cook’s tunic go flat against a cleaver-like shape tucked into the woman’s waistband.

  A stroll across the courtyard showed Aly a selection of raka men and women drifting into the stable. S
he recognized a number of off-duty men-at-arms, including the six former bandits who had been captured on the road. Others were villagers. Some were raka she had never met, part of Ulasim’s extended force. Aly slipped around behind the stable and entered through a back door. Lokeij stood lookout there.

  Both of them listened as Fesgao gave instructions to the new arrivals as they lounged around the horses’ stalls. “. . . quiet, understand? Stop by the kitchen door. Chenaol has things for you to carry, to hide weapons and give you a reason for being there. Go up the stairs a few at a time before and during supper. Don’t poke along, but don’t rush.”

  “What of Veron and the men on guard duty? Shouldn’t they be told?” someone asked.

  “They’ll be at the gates. Let them stay there in case this is only part of the attack,” Fesgao replied. “We’ll keep this just among us for now.”

  Aly nodded approval to Lokeij, who winked. The raka leaders had trained their people well. The old man followed her outside. “Too bad you don’t have this organization in Raj- muat,” she whispered to Lokeij.

  The old man raised his thin, hard brows. “But we shall,” he replied, his voice quiet. “We guarded our ladies—the girls and Sarugani—in that sinkhole for longer than you’ve been alive, Kyprioth’s mouse. The bigger part of us went to other houses when we were exiled. Our folk recruit more people in the city even now. They know we will come again, and they mean us to have help when we do.”

  Aly smiled. “I don’t know why the god bothered with me,” she told Lokeij.

  “Because you have the crooked eye, and the memory, and you can talk to the luarin,” Lokeij said promptly. “We see four or five paths where you see twenty. Will you go with our family tonight?”

  Aly nodded. “I won’t be of any use in a fight among all those warriors,” she replied. “But I’d like to have at least one assassin alive at the end, if you can manage.”