Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

He bore her up through the keep’s walls and into the open sky beyond. The ground, just touched with silver under the waning moon, raced underneath them, mountains, jungle lowlands, the sea. Lombyn Isle passed into the distance behind them. Below lay the Azure Sea, black in the moonlight.

  “Why do we travel this way?” she inquired, feeling confused. “You show me what’s going on in Tortall through dreams.”

  “I don’t care about Tortall,” replied Kyprioth. “But I do love my Isles, and I love to see them at night. You may as well appreciate the view. Tell me they are not beautiful.”

  “They’re lovely,” Aly said, and yawned. “Can I go back to bed now that I’ve admired them? My skin gets dry if I don’t get my beauty rest.”

  Kyprioth didn’t even bother to reply. He carried her over the eastern side of Imahyn Isle and down the long axis of Kypriang at a speed that would have made Aly dizzy if she had been in her body, instead of dreaming.

  Ahead lay the lights of Rajmuat, spread over the harbor hills. The city was ablaze with light, its people milling in the streets. Kyprioth and Aly popped through the palace roof, landing inside a huge bedroom even more brightly lit than the streets. Courtiers gathered near the door, murmuring to one another. Priests of the Black God, the god of death, stood beside a great bed at the heart of the chamber, silent, waiting.

  At the center of an expanse of heaped pillows, linen sheets and goose-down comforters lay an old, emaciated man with silvery hair, black eyebrows, and stubbled cheeks. Aly had seen sketches of him in Tortall: King Oron. His lips were stained black. At his side a healer lifted away a basin filled with blood and bile. She shook her head at the nobles who stood nearby.

  The man who stood nearest to the old king wore a circlet crown. “Prince Hazarin,” Kyprioth said to Aly.

  The healer jerked around as if she’d heard. Her eyes widened as she looked in their direction. She shivered and hurried out of the room through a small side door.

  Next to the prince stood a woman who also wore a circlet crown. She would be Princess Imajane, King Oron’s only surviving daughter. She was beautiful in an icy, razor-sharp way. Aly looked at her for a moment, then turned her gaze to the third person there who wore the circlet, a yawning boy Elsren’s age: Prince Dunevon. Imajane held the sleepy child upright.

  Behind her stood a man Aly had glimpsed during her early days with the Balitangs: a tall, balding man with chill gray eyes, a thin, straight mouth, and hair that was silver on top of his head, shading to black at the ends. There was a resemblance between Rubinyan and Bronau, though Rubinyan was fifteen years older. He stood behind his wife, Imajane, his calculating eyes on the king.

  The dying man struggled to sit up. As Prince Hazarin assisted him, the courtiers surged forward.

  Aly was unimpressed by Oron’s oldest living son. Hazarin was in his mid-forties. At six feet one inch, he towered over every other man in the room, but his commanding height was offset by his bulk. He had a round face and a belly that spilled over the cloth-of-gold raka sarong he wore in defiance of the luarin court’s dress code. He combed his hair straight back from his face, which accented his soft, blobby features. A small, spade-shaped beard framed his full, pouting lips.

  “His vices are the table and anything that he may smoke, drink, or breathe in,” Kyprioth told her. “He has a wife who begs him for a child, but she will get none. His loins are barren from a child’s disease, contracted when he was a man. He thinks Rubinyan is the wisest man on earth, except for his taste in wives. He detests his half sister, and she him. He doesn’t want to be king.”

  “Attend, all,” croaked the dying Oron as Hazarin supported him in a sitting position. “I hereby name my son Hazarin to be king after me.” He glared at Hazarin. “If I were you, I’d get me an heir. I—”

  “Excuse me,” Kyprioth said abruptly, and vanished. The next moment Aly saw him again, this time inside Oron’s body.

  “A great monarch comes,” Oron said, his voice suddenly full and commanding. “A sunrise of glory for the homeland, harbinger of new power and might in the councils of the Emerald Ocean, when the fields are reaped of the invading plague!”

  The god left the king’s body and mind as easily as he’d entered. Oron collapsed, gasping for air. The surrounding courtiers all murmured and stepped back, uncertain and afraid. Rubinyan whispered in Imajane’s ear as Dunevon started to cry.

  “I love deathbed prophecies,” Kyprioth confided to Aly. He’d returned to his spot beside her. “They always put the cat among the pigeons.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d want to confide this grand plan of yours to me,” Aly asked playfully. “Come on. I know you want to brag how smart you are.” No one in the room seemed to be able to hear her. “Tell, Kyprioth.”

  The god shook his head. “You probably won’t be here for it,” he told her. “If you keep the children alive, you’ll be on your way home in the fall. Besides, it’s dangerous to say some things outright.”

  Aly sighed. She didn’t enjoy being left in the dark.

  Kyprioth patted her shoulder. “It’s too serious for you anyway,” he added.

  “You’re not letting me have fun,” she retorted, pouting.

  The healer returned. She shooed the courtiers to their posts by the door, walked around the king’s family, and made Oron more comfortable. He grabbed her arm, struggled to tell her something, but failed. Slowly he went limp.

  “The king is dead,” Rubinyan said as the healer drew the sheet over the dead man’s face. He turned to face Hazarin. “Long live the king!” He bowed deeply to the former prince. Imajane curtsied low. The courtiers followed them in salute to Hazarin.

  Kyprioth chuckled, rubbing glowing hands together. “The first act ends,” he told Aly as he put his arm around her waist. “The next begins.”

  “Except you won’t tell me what it is,” Aly said as they soared through the palace roof. “It’ll be like leaving before the play’s over. Why can’t you just tell me how you want it to come out?”

  “Because you suffer so prettily, dear,” Kyprioth informed her as they leaped into the starry night.

  In the morning Aly took the goats out. She was still feeling cross that she couldn’t see where the god’s long game might lead him, and the Isles. Rather than visit briefly with Nawat, she nodded to him as she had done the morning before, and bustled past his workbench. For a moment his smile caught and held her attention. She dragged herself away. Every time she looked at the crow-man, her lips remembered the feel of his. And she saw him so often when she was at the castle! It was too distracting. She refused to think about it. At this rate, she would become yet another girl who lingered by his bench when she was free of work. Surely she had more pride than that!

  That night, in her report to the Balitangs, she told them of Oron’s death and Hazarin’s ascension to the throne. She assumed that the god had wanted her to pass the information along.

  “That poor old man,” Winnamine said. “At least he’s out of his misery.”

  “That poor old man had hundreds murdered, Winna,” Dove reminded her softly. “He’s out of our misery, which is more important.”

  “But Hazarin!” exclaimed Sarai. “He’s a disaster. And he can’t have children. If he could, one of his mistresses would have given him some by now, even if his wife’s barren.”

  “She isn’t,” Aly said. “He is. The god told me.” She knew that she ought to feel bad about concealing the true identity of the god who really tampered with the Balitangs’ lives, but she didn’t. Their ignorance was healthier for Aly. She couldn’t tell how they might react if they learned that Aly knew their god was not Mithros. She didn’t want to find out.

  The duke and the duchess now exchanged looks. “It’s Dunevon, then, and a regency council, should he succeed Hazarin while still a child,” Mequen remarked slowly.

  “Or Imajane will get herself appointed regent,” Winnamine pointed out. “Should anything happen to the king, of course. Which we pray it will not.”r />
  “Should we tell the prince King Oron is dead?” asked Dove, deliberately not looking at Sarai. “With Hazarin on the throne, Bronau is back in royal favor. He’ll want to leave for Rajmuat right away.” Sarai gave Dove a glare that would have peeled stone.

  “Speaking of Bronau, young lady,” Mequen said, turning to look at his oldest daughter. Sarai looked up at him. “You are a girl of sense and proper upbringing. This news about the king changes a few things.”

  “He wants to marry me,” Sarai informed her parents airily. “He said so. There were enough eavesdroppers”—she glared at her sister, then at Aly—“to tell you that’s the truth.”

  “But you need to keep things in mind now,” said Winnamine. “More than the fact that he’s in debt and you are no heiress.”

  Sarai thrust her chin out, the image of sixteen-year-old stubbornness. “What sorts of things?”

  The duchess sighed. “Once Bronau courted me, remember. I learned a few things about him. He is ambitious. What can the Balitangs—disgraced, impoverished, exiled—offer an ambitious man? Seemingly nothing, except that with the king dead, your father is one step closer to the throne. Whoever marries you is one step closer. Bronau needs money, but in a pinch, a possible future queen might do, particularly if your father is no longer an obstacle. And he loves both of you.”

  Sarai shook her head. “He loves me. I think he does, anyway.”

  “Daughter, love is wonderful, but Bronau need not marry for it,” the duke said gently. “Countless women at court and in Rajmuat, married and not, will happily give him all the love he requires.” Without taking his eyes from Sarai he added, “He has taken the maid Pembery to his bed every night he has been here.”

  Sarai’s eyes blazed. “I hate you!” she cried. She threw down her hoop and fled the room.

  “She told me she just liked the kissing,” Dove said plaintively. “I thought she was playing at being in love with him, not serious.”

  “No, but she is proud. It hurts her pride to think he’s taken someone else into his bed when he’s supposed to be pining for her,” said the duchess with a sigh. “We build up pretty pictures of men, when we want to be in love. We hate to have them ruined.”

  Now Aly could, and did, slip away. If Bronau didn’t have ways to get court news in a hurry, she would eat her pallet. He would leave them soon, which could only be to the good.

  Three days later a dust-covered messenger with a guard of royal guardsmen arrived from Dimari. Word had reached the island’s governor through a network of mages who communicated through scrying glasses, mirrors, and other devices. They served the Crown throughout the Isles, passing information far more quickly than normal methods carried it. The governor’s message threw life at Tanair into a bustle, as everyone learned what, until now, only the Balitangs, Aly, and the raka conspirators knew. Oron was dead. Hazarin would be crowned soon, and he wanted his friend Bronau at his side. By nightfall that day the prince was ready to set out the next morning at dawn.

  Hasui poured the wine while Aly waited in the shadows under the main stair. She watched Sarai as the girl picked at her food. Just as Aly had expected, Sarai left halfway through supper, making excuses to her parents and Bronau as she fled the hall. Aly moved to wait by the door that led from the servants’ stair to the ladies’ garden.

  As the household left the main hall after the meal, Sarai, cloaked and wearing a maid’s head scarf, emerged from the keep. Without a sound Aly followed her to the garden.

  Bronau was already seated on the lip of the fountain, the picture of male dejection: head down, hands clasped loosely between his knees. He jumped to his feet when he saw Sarai, and crossed the ground between them in four broad strides, sweeping her up in his arms and kissing her fiercely. Sarai hesitated, then her arms went around Bronau’s neck. She kissed him with the same passion he gave her.

  Aly eased into a wall niche to watch. This was better than any drama that Players acted out for an audience. And this was a drama. Sarai played the desperate maiden, yearning for her forbidden lover. Bronau was the older, jaded man who had found his heart’s desire when he ceased to look for it. By now Aly was certain that the indignation Sarai had shown her parents over their assessment of Bronau’s motives came more from Sarai’s belief that they thought her a child than from a broken heart.

  At last the man and girl separated, though they held onto one another’s hands. “I swear to you, this is temporary,” Bronau said, his gray eyes intent on Sarai. “I don’t know if I can bear a separation, but this is our grand chance. Hazarin is my friend. He’ll recall your family from this desolation, and he’ll speak for me to Mequen. Then I can court you in the proper manner, not in this hide-in-the-corner way.”

  “Speak to Papa now,” Sarai pleaded.

  Bronau shook his head. “When I have only my name and little more? Mequen would be a fool to let me have you when there are wealthier men who can offer you proper estates and all that your loveliness deserves. But if Hazarin grants me the things he has always claimed will be mine when he comes to the throne, then I won’t be a second son; I’ll be a wealthy man in my own right. I will dress you in pearls, then, and little else.” He embraced her again.

  This time when they stopped to breathe, Sarai told Bronau, “You’ll find some other woman at court, I know it. One who’s sophisticated, and rich. You’ll forget all about an ignorant girl like me.”

  “You are wrong. I will not ask for your promise now, but you will see I mean what I say,” Bronau told her. “Give me some token of yours, to keep near my heart.”

  Aly twiddled her thumbs. She tried to remember the passionate speeches that had been addressed to her. Had they been this nonsensical? Would she have swallowed them?

  Perhaps when I was twelve, she thought, then grinned. Being the daughter of the Lioness and of a spymaster, she hadn’t been romantic even then, well before she’d had extensive dealings with the people who made up her father’s world. For a moment she saw Nawat’s face in her mind’s eye. He would never say such things to her, or to any girl!

  She banished Nawat’s face from her thoughts and watched the lovers. Bronau was tucking the citrine drop Sarai wore as a pendant into his belt pouch. There were more kisses, more avowals of undying passion. When they heard the duke in the distance, calling Bronau, Sarai fled through the rear entrance to the garden. Aly kept to the base of the keep wall as she followed the girl.

  Sarai waited for her on the keep’s front steps. She sat there, head propped on her hands, staring at the activity around the barracks and the torches that lit the darkness. Aly sat beside her without a word.

  “I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t known you’d be there,” Sarai remarked without looking at Aly. Her lips were swollen with Bronau’s kisses. “Knowing you’re watching helps me to keep my head. Otherwise I might well end up on the grass with my skirts around my waist, like those maids he tumbles.”

  “He seems very passionate,” Aly said idly, running her fingers through her cap of hair.

  Sarai sighed. “He kisses so much better than the boys in Rajmuat.”

  “Do you want to marry him?” Aly wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure.” Sarai frowned. “I daydream about it, but it is just a dream. Papa and Winnamine aren’t sure of him. That has to weigh with me.”

  “They’re his friends. They ought to know,” Aly pointed out.

  “Well, he’s leaving tomorrow. I won’t have to worry about it for a while,” Sarai remarked, and sighed. “Maybe I’ll see if that handsome Nawat has decided to be interested in me yet. He’s only a commoner, and an odd one at that, but it might be fun, teaching him how to kiss.”

  Aly scowled as the other girl stood and went inside. She wasn’t sure that Sarai ought to practice kissing on someone who might not realize it was just a form of amusement. Worse, what if Nawat fell in love with Sarai? Aly knew that Sarai was very much aware of her position as a noble. She would flirt and have fun, but when her father reminded h
er of her duty to her family, Sarai would do it. She would marry for the betterment of her family.

  Aly decided Nawat had to be warned. She told herself that she didn’t want that innocent heart of his broken by a noble beauty trying her wings. Aly refused to admit that she had any personal reason to warn him. It occurred to her, briefly, that she had been much like Sarai back at home, flirting with boys and men just because she was bored and liked kisses. The thought was not a comfortable one.

  No one expects a woman busy at her sewing to pay attention to what’s being said around her. Never mind if a man’s mother and sisters showed them they heard everything while they stitched, he’ll still think a woman who plies her needle saves all her brains for the work. You’re a far better spy hemming sheets than if you clank with daggers.

  —From a letter to Aly from her father, when she was fourteen

  12

  THE MAGE OF POHON

  Aly rose at her usual hour the next day, but instead of immediately leaving with her goats, she waited. When Bronau’s party rode out she collected her herd and followed. She had resigned herself to the fact that the men were likely taking secret communications with them. These were not merchants, who could be frightened by hooded warriors. Aly didn’t worry about any report Veron might smuggle out with Bronau’s company. With a new king on the throne, the royal agents throughout the Isles would await instructions from their masters before they made any reports that might offend the new government.

  Aly tracked the prince and his group to the road out of Tanair, watching them until even their dust was gone. She silently wished them a dangerous voyage and death at sea, then took her goats on to graze. When Aly and the goats reached Ekit and Visda, she found that Nawat, Ulasim, and Junai waited there along with the shepherds. Ulasim was already riding a horse, while Junai held the reins for three mounts, including the mare Cinnamon.

  “Did you sigh over the last of his horse’s droppings?” Ulasim wanted to know, smirking. “You watched him go for long enough.”