Trickster's Choice (12 page)

There’s just one solution, Aly thought as the duke and duchess watched her sidelong to see what, if anything, the god would order her to say. She couldn’t let them know that her particular burden of a god had given her a wager, not instructions. She also couldn’t bear to tell them what they had to do, what her father, grandfather, and mother would have told them they
must
do. They had to execute six impoverished men.

“Let’s kill these raka swine,” Sergeant Veron said, inspecting one bandit’s rusty sword. His eyes were gray ice. “Make sure their kin think twice before they attack luarin.”

Duchess Winnamine looked at her husband and nodded, her face an emotionless mask. “My dear, it’s the only solution.”

Mequen shook his head, troubled.

“No!” cried Sarai, who might one day be faced with such a choice. “We can’t do murder, and that’s what it is, murder!”

“It’s survival,” Ulasim said gently. He was there in his capacity as the head of the male servants and slaves.

“Forgive us!” cried one of the bandits, a haggard-looking man in his forties. “We would never harm the la—”

“Silence,”
ordered Fesgao, his dark eyes flashing.

“We swore a vow, on the altar, that all we would take is food, when you have so much,” babbled another bandit.

“None of the others would help or even stay to hear it done,” the man next to him added. “They did not come to see you pass. They retreated into the jungle to hide their faces in shame, but they know how it is with our village. They know we are desperate.”

“The lord took everything for the tax,
everything,
” explained the first man who had spoken, talking fast. “Our children cry, their bellies empty. So we swore the vow before three villages. Our people would have killed us otherwise, had we harmed the la—”

Fesgao stepped forward and slapped the man, rocking the bandit back on his heels. “Keep your mouth
shut,
you fool,” he hissed.

Aly pretended to be concerned with one of her fingernails. Something besides the normal treatment of criminals was going on here. Fesgao had twice stopped these men from saying one particular word, one that began with “la.” Ladies, again, she told herself. He stops them from saying “ladies” in front of the luarin nobles. And these ladies aren’t just important to the local raka. Fesgao also thinks the ladies are important. She wrote these thoughts on the growing list in her head of things to investigate.

“Their families will come to free them, unless they know their men are dead. They will fear us, and stay well away, if we do it,” the duke said reluctantly.

“Make them slaves,” suggested Dove. Everyone turned to stare at her. “Then sell them at the next army post.”

Aly whistled silently. Now there was a solution she hadn’t considered. She eyed the small, dark twelve-year-old with new respect.

“You can’t enslave them,” Sarai argued. “Look at them. They’re poor, half starved. What is their village like, if the men look this bad? Papa, we’d make their lives worse, not better. Their families need them to hunt, and fish—”

“And rob, and kill?” Winnamine asked, cutting her off.

“Why do we even discuss this?” demanded Veron, his voice hard. “These dogs attacked members of the royal family. By law they must die. If we had time, we ought to hunt down and burn out their nest—in fact, we should report it at the next royal fort. This sort of lawlessness only gets worse if your first response is a soft one.”

The adults debated it further. Aly thought the duke was about to order Veron and his men to kill the captives when Sarai interrupted again. “Give them a choice, Papa,” she begged. “Death, slavery, or free and
loyal
service to our family. If they pick service, we’ll have six more fighters—”

“Who will kill us as we sleep, begging your ladyship’s pardon,” Veron interrupted. “Your offer speaks well of your heart, but you will put us in danger.”

“Make them swear by Mithros,” retorted Sarai. “Or one of the raka gods.”

“People have broken vows to gods before,” Winnamine reminded Sarai gently. “If the god is busy elsewhere, it might be too late for us when the god finally punishes the oath breaker.”

“Make them swear in blood.” The quiet suggestion was Dove’s. “If that’s what they choose. No one breaks a blood oath. We can trust them if they swear that way, and if they don’t …” The girl shrugged.

Those who broke such an oath died as their own blood boiled in their veins. No mage, however powerful, had found a way to prevent that. The gods had decreed it, and so it remained, a promise no one would dare to break. Aly looked from Dove to Sarai, a peculiar emotion stirring in her heart. She wasn’t sure what it was, beyond respect for both girls, but it was powerful and troubling. She put it aside for the moment and looked to Mequen for a decision. The duchess and Ulasim nodded. When the duke looked at Aly, she nodded and ignored Veron’s confused look. He would be asking himself why she was even present, let alone why his master seemed to want her opinion.

Before anyone could stop him, the man who had first spoken had wriggled over to Sarai. Awkwardly he leaned forward to touch his forehead to Sarai’s shoe. “You are as gracious as you are beautiful,” he whispered.

Aly bit her tongue. It was Dove who had truly found a way to keep these men alive. She glanced at Dove, who met her eyes and shrugged. “She’s prettier,” the younger girl murmured as she passed Aly on her way back to the wagon. “Everyone always goes to her first.”

The oaths were given, the bandits untied. When the wagons rolled on, they did so with six new men and a parchment that bore each former bandit’s thumbprint in his own blood. If their families attacked, the men would tell them the bargain they had made, and invite them to live at Tanair.

They camped beside the road at sunset and moved out at sunrise. It took the better part of the day to reach the royal fortress at the foot of Kellaura Pass. Only as they approached the fort did the local raka emerge again to watch them go by.

Inside the fortress walls, the Balitangs spent a day bathing in hot springs, sleeping in clean beds, and eating meals that were not cooked in a single pot. Another day of plodding brought them through the pass, watched at different points by silent raka, and into the high plains country on the far side of the mountains. They stayed the night at a second royal fort, among soldiers eager for fresh faces and news from Dimari and the capital. The raka waited beside the road that led the Balitangs northwest, watching them without a sound. They made Aly’s flesh creep. At home people waved, or called their greetings or insults. She wished the raka would say
something
.

Two days later they passed through a ring of high-thrust rocks and clefts onto a broad, grassy plateau. Here a log palisade encircled a hill: their new home, Tanair Castle and village. Aly complained of stiff muscles to Pembery, Rihani, and the younger children, then hopped out of the wagon. She walked alongside it as they approached Tanair, taking the chance to view what she thought of as her summer home. The twenty-foot-high palisade did not inspire her with confidence, though the fifteen-foot-deep trench that lay before it, with its flooring of jagged-edged rocks, had promise. The wooden bridge to the village gate was sturdy enough to take the weight of their wagons, but wooden bridges could be burned or destroyed in a hurry. That wasn’t too bad.

Inside the palisade lay the village, built around the foot of a raised earthen table capped by a stone wall. Aly swept her eyes over the village as they walked through, her busy mind ticking off details that might be useful later. The streets were clean and the houses sturdy, built half of wood and half of stone. There was plenty of space for herd animals and flocks if they had to be brought inside the palisade in an attack. The place had two smithies, which meant Tanair had a certain level of prosperity, and the people who lined the main street to greet their caravan looked capable enough. The colors ranged from pure luarin white to pure raka copper brown. Unlike the people of the lowland jungles, these villagers dressed for warmth in wraparound jackets and leggings, many of them brightly colored and embroidered. There was an inn with a proper stable, which meant that travelers came and went, and that money fed the village coffers. There were sheds and outbuildings, too, and temples for the luarin gods and the raka gods on opposite sides of the street. Aly liked it. People with a good life would defend it more vigorously than people who were beaten down by their masters and their fates.

The wagon train climbed up the earthen table and through the gate in the stone wall, into Tanair Castle’s outer courtyard. It was on a direct line with the inner gate, which revealed Tanair to be an ancient five-story tower with outbuildings. Aly had thought Pirate’s Swoop was plain, but at least they had three towers, connected by the castle’s wings. Lady Sarugani’s family may have been ancient, but plainly they were not wealthy. The soldiers who lined the stone wall were old men and boys in their midteens.

Aly rubbed the back of her neck. Well, it’s a challenge, she thought. If I can keep these people safe here, I’ll be able to handle anything Da could throw at me later. And who knows? Maybe King Oron will forget us. All I need is to keep the children alive for the summer, after all. It might take him that long to remember he sent the Balitangs away.

You promised me help! she thought to Kyprioth as she helped Elsren and Petranne out of the wagon. The sooner the better, if you please. I can’t see everything at once!

There is no better spy than a slave. No one notices them. They may go anywhere, look into anything, if they are careful. They can ask questions that would be suspicious coming from others, because everyone believes a slave is stupid, even given evidence he is not.

—From a letter to Aly when she was ten from her grandfather, Myles of Olau

T
he realization that life as it had been lived in Rajmuat must now change struck the family, servants, and slaves as they looked over the grounds of Tanair Castle. In the outer courtyard lay stables, storage sheds, a carpentry workshop, a dovecote, a mews, and a small kennel. Within the inner courtyard the broad stone keep was supplied with a kitchen attached to it on the ground floor, a barracks for the men-at-arms, two wells, and a blacksmith’s forge.

“But where do we sleep?” one of the Balitang servants asked.

“In the main hall, on pallets,” Chenaol told them. “This castle was part of Duchess Sarugani’s dowry when she married His Grace. When the family stayed here, servants and slaves slept together in the main hall, on the floor.”

When some of the free servants protested that they would not sleep among slaves, Chenaol shrugged. “Before the family built the upper stories, my mother said
they
slept in the main hall, too,” she said. “Their quarters are right overhead now, where the hearth fire warms the upper rooms.”

A shriek from Elsren called Aly back to her charges. She calmly ended a hair-pulling dispute between the boy and his sister, Petranne, and gave both of them things to carry inside. Petranne tried to shove the box she held back into Aly’s hands. “We’re not
slaves,
” the four-year-old said.

Aly looked at the thick gray clouds that raced over the sky, then shrugged and set the box in a cart. “All right, my lady, but don’t come crying to me when the storm wets your dolls. That’s the box they’re in,” she replied, slinging rolled blankets over one shoulder and a heavy pack over another. “Come on, my lord Elsren.”

The boy turned, stuck his tongue out at his sister, and marched toward the castle door, manfully hauling a small basket. Petranne caught up with them as they entered the castle. In one hand she carried the box with her dolls in it; in the other she carried a basket with Elsren’s wooden toys.

Everyone worked fast to get their belongings into shelter. After her last trip inside, Aly lingered on the steps to the keep’s main door. Thunder growled in the distance. She gnawed her lip, trying to remember if she had found all of the children’s things.

“So, Aly Bright Eyes,” said Ulasim, coming to a halt beside her. The weight of the box he carried made the heavy muscles of his arms bulge, though he stood as if it weighed nothing at all. “Wishing they’d sent you back to the Rajmuat slave pens?”

Aly glanced along the line of his back. His tunic, pulled tight by the weight of the box, revealed extremely heavy muscles for someone who was a head footman. She raised an eyebrow. “Are you?” she asked, curious.

“I savor the delights of civilization,” he informed her, his long mouth in a crooked line. In some ways he reminded her of Da. “I’m spoiled, that’s all. I’ll recover.”

“But for you this is home, isn’t it?” Aly wanted to know. “Aren’t you glad to be home?”

Ulasim shook his head. “Tanair isn’t my home. I’m from Pohon.”

He’d startled her. She let him see it. “And you work for luarin? Chenaol says the people there hate luarin.”

“They do. It’s a long story. I will wager you a gigit that Elsren is now at the top of the stairs, ready to tumble down. He
is
three. They have a talent for such things at that age.”

He was probably right. Aly raced inside, deliberately running with her knees together as she flung up her heels, the awkward run of a maidservant who hated it. There was no need for anyone here to see that Aly could be swift, that she normally ran with the wide-open stride of someone who had been trained to it. She meant to give the household as few reasons to ask questions about her as possible.

Elsren wasn’t near the stairs on the second floor of the keep, but he had found and unsheathed one of his father’s daggers, testing it on the wooden floor. Aly took the weapon, scolded Elsren, then threw the screaming child over one shoulder and climbed up to the third story. She plopped Elsren on the floor of the small chamber he would share with Petranne, next to a heap of his toys. As he started to play with them she got to work making the beds.

She was nearly finished unpacking when Pembery came for her. “His Grace and the duchess wish to speak to you in their rooms,” she told Aly.