Trickster's Choice (13 page)

Aly curtsied to her and trotted downstairs, mentally listing all she had to do before she could sleep that night. Bathe the children tomorrow, she told herself. By the time Petranne and Elsren finish supper, they’ll be so worn out they won’t even be able to sit upright. Little monkeys. No wonder Mother spent so much time away, if Thom, Alan, and I were half as lively as these two. And I need to find that missing trunk of clothes. Ulasim might know what happened to it… .

She knocked on the closed door that was the entrance to the suite of rooms shared by the duke and duchess. “Come in,” Mequen called.

“Close the door behind you,” added Winnamine.

Aly bowed to her masters, wondering what was going on now. Their rooms—sitting room, bedroom, privy, solar—were only half unpacked. Lightning flashed through cracks in the closed wooden shutters, and rain thudded against them. The keep was so old-fashioned that none of the windows had glass, which was still too expensive for all but the greatest lords, let alone the raka nobility. Candles burned on branches set on tables; cressets of burning coals lit the main hall and stairs. Winnamine was kneeling beside a crate in the sitting room, taking out neatly folded clothes, while Mequen stood before the hearth.

“We’re going to free you, Aly,” Winnamine announced.

Aly held a finger to her lips to hush the duchess, then went to the door that opened onto the servants’ stair. It gave way stiffly, and the landing and stairs were covered with dust and cobwebs. She closed it again, reassured that anyone who might have thought to eavesdrop from there would have left a mark. She couldn’t depend on that reassurance in the future. The servants would be cleaning the back passages soon, for access to the rooms on the upper levels. She went to open the bedroom door. The bedchamber was undisturbed except for trunks and boxes piled by the door, to be unpacked as soon as the room was cleaned. She left that door open so that no one could sneak in and eavesdrop. She wanted to do the same with the servants’ stair, but their conversation would echo through the stone corridor if she did.

“Forgive me, Your Graces,” she said, bowing to her owners. “I’d prefer that no one overhear.”

Winnamine raised her eyebrows, then continued, “My lord and I have discussed it. It’s not right, keeping a slave collar on the god’s messenger.”

Aly rubbed her nose gently. This should have occurred to you, she scolded herself. True, she hated that metal ring. It was a constant annoyance, chafing her tender skin, pressing on her throat when she turned over in her sleep. The Balitangs had changed the radius of the magic on the collar for the greater spaces of Tanair, but even so, if she had to go farther than five miles from any member of the family, it would choke her until she returned to them or died.

And she needed the cursed thing.

“I thank you, Your Grace, but no,” she told her mistress. “Truly, I don’t require freedom just yet.”

The duchess froze in the middle of lifting tunics from the chest. The duke turned slowly. Their brown eyes, his deep-set in folds of flesh, hers even under perfect brows, locked on Aly.

“This isn’t our attempt to rid ourselves of you,” Mequen told her. “You may masquerade as a servant, that’s all, free to go wherever you like.”

Aly sighed. “May I sit, Your Grace?” she asked. “I’ve been running up and down those stairs all afternoon. My feet are killing me.”

Both of them stiffened momentarily, half offended that a slave would sit in their presence. It was Mequen who thawed first. “How thoughtless of us. Sit, please.” He took one of the chairs for himself. Winnamine looked at her husband, raising her brows. He shrugged and flicked his eyes at Aly. Aly grinned, having read, “Are you mad?” and “She is the god’s messenger” in their silent exchange. It was a good marriage when a couple could communicate easily without speaking.

The duchess carried the stack of clothes into the bedchamber, then returned. Only when she sat down did Aly do so. It might have been too much to ask her to return to a room where the slave was already seated.

Aly took a deep breath and leaned forward, bracing her arms on her knees, a position her da favored when he needed to explain things. “Servants aren’t free in a way that’s useful, Your Grace. People expect servants to be loyal. Everyone knows that if a servant dislikes a master, he finds a better one. Nobody expects a slave to be loyal or clever. We hear things servants won’t. And if slaves turn up somewhere they don’t usually go, everyone assumes their masters ordered them to go there. I really am far more use to you as a slave.”

Duke Mequen frowned at her. “But every slave wants to be free.”

“Actually, some don’t,” Winnamine remarked in a thoughtful voice. “I’ve overheard them say that servants always risk finding themselves in the street with no money and no way to get proper work, while a slave is cared for all his days.”

“If the slave has a good master,” Mequen pointed out.

“There’s another thing to consider,” Aly told them. “I need answers to questions no one will answer for someone who’s luarin, and free. Me being a slave solves that little problem. Even free raka feel superior to a luarin slave.”

“That’s … very subtle,” the duke remarked slowly. “Tell me, Aly, who were you in Tortall?”

“I was a maid at Fief Tameran,” she said, gazing at him with wide, innocent eyes. She had chosen Tameran because it was a holding she knew as well as the Swoop. “I was visiting my sister at Bay Cove when the raiders got me.”

“What sort of maid?” asked the duchess. “You seem rather more knowing than the usual run of servant.”

“General,” replied Aly, her voice casual. “Minding the other servants’ children, helping in the kitchen when we had guests, sewing, gardening, the like. As for the knowingness, well, I’ve always been nosy, I suppose. We were schooled—by the queen’s decree, all Tortallan children learn their letters and sums. I learned a bit more than that. As for the rest …” She shrugged. “It’s just the way I am. Maybe the god made me smarter.”

“You were free, but you wish to remain a slave,” the duke said, as if he did not believe that he had heard correctly the first time.

“Once I have served the god, he’s promised to send me home,” Aly told him. It wasn’t even a lie. “He won’t need me forever, I’m sure.”

Winnamine inspected her fingernails. “Then we’ll reassign Pembery and give you her place,” she said.

Aly winced. “You’ll make her into an enemy I don’t need, Your Grace,” she replied. “And you’d be hobbling me. The god’s told me what I must do. To keep you safe, I need to know this ground like I know my home. What I need for now is to range outside the walls. Can’t I be given a herd to work? Goats would do best. They can graze anywhere. No one questions a goatherd clambering all over the land.”

“You should have something to excuse your wanderings inside the wall as well,” suggested Mequen. “What if at night, when everyone’s indoors, you carry our messages for us? Thus we shall have reason to talk to you privately, when we give you notes to carry to the rest of the castle and the village.”

Aly stared at him, startled. She hadn’t thought the duke would have a talent for this kind of thing, but it seemed that he did. “Perfect, Your Grace, and thank you,” she said, bowing in her chair. “I hadn’t thought of that.” The best secrets are those kept in full view, she thought to herself. Everyone will see me running the Balitangs’ errands, and no one will think twice about it.

“But surely even looking after the little ones would be better than herd work,” objected Winnamine.

“Not for my side of the god’s bargain, begging Your Graces’ pardon,” explained Aly. “I need to learn how easy it would be for killers to strike the plateau. A herd will give me a reason to wander.” She gnawed her lip and added, “If you wish to help me, I would be grateful if you would take the magic off my collar, so it won’t choke me if I go more than five miles from one of you. A tablet of parchment would help, too, so I can make a map of things.”

Silence fell for a moment as the couple considered what she had said. Mequen frowned in thought, then asked, “Why does the god take an interest in us? He didn’t really say, except to tell us we have a great destiny.”

Aly wanted to reply that the god had tricked them and that their children were his object. But then she would have to explain to these nice people that they were in the hands of a trickster, not Mithros. It would be far better for Aly if they didn’t know about Kyprioth and his wager. “I don’t believe gods are very forthcoming with things like answers, Your Grace,” she replied. “I’ve yet to hear of one that was, anyway.”

“Well,” the duchess said, getting to her feet, “goats and messages it is. I’m afraid you must be demoted, Aly.” She rummaged in a box that sat on a nearby table and produced a booklike tablet of parchment sheets stitched together. “Use this. What have you got to write with?”

“Charcoal’s best, Your Grace, and easy for me to get. Thank you,” Aly said, fitting the tablet into the front of her tunic.

“Send the housekeeper to me, and I will arrange for your change in station,” Winnamine said. “Report to His Grace or me here after supper for our messages. And let us know what we may do to help.”

“Aly, come here.” Aly obeyed, standing in front of the duke. He touched her metal collar with one finger and murmured a phrase in old Thak, the dead language favored by mages for spoken spells. The metal felt a little cooler on Aly’s skin when Mequen dropped his hand. “There you are. You may go, then.”

Aly bowed and left.

Worn out by settling in, the entire household made an early night of it after their arrival at Tanair. On her pallet in Elsren and Petranne’s room, Aly dreamed of crows.

This dream felt real, but not in the same way as that dream of her parents. There she could not feel a thing. In this dream she sat in the fork of an immense tree, its bark rough on her skin. She heard the wind in the leaves overhead and smelled apple blossoms from somewhere. She was surrounded by crows who hopped from branch to branch above her, on either side, sharing her own branch. One flew at her, tugged her sleeve, and dropped back to the ground. Another struck her back with his claws, making Aly hang on to the tree trunk. The crow yanked her clothes, then fell away. Another darted up to pull at her leggings; one more took her right little finger in its beak and felt along its length. When its tongue tickled her, Aly pulled free. She sensed no harm in them, only great curiosity.

The one who had mouthed her finger now gripped her wrist gently with its beak, working its way up until it tasted cloth, then back down to her hand. It wandered over Aly’s lap to her left side to repeat the procedure. Its fellows glided by to tug at Aly’s clothes and hair. It seemed to be an inspection of some kind. The only one who did not touch her and jump back to the branches was the one who went from exploring her hands and arms to her ears, making her giggle.

“That
tickles,
” she said, lifting the bird down to her lap. Something had splashed or marked its back feathers with a white mark like a wave, a mark that sparkled faintly in Aly’s Sight. “Vexed a mage, didn’t you?” she asked the crow with a grin. “Were you tickling him, too?”

The mage was just crotchety,
said a voice in Aly’s head—Kyprioth’s voice.
Our friend here has an excess of curiosity about humans even for a crow.
A new crow settled on the branch across from Aly. Unlike the other birds in the tree, this one wore sparkling rings on each talon and a necklace of sparkling gemstones. He blazed with godhood in Aly’s Sight.

“Hello, Kyprioth,” Aly said drily. “I take it all this is your idea?”

Most certainly,
the bejeweled crow informed her in the god’s crisp, kindly tones.
You asked for help, my dear. I have wagered that these crows will not be able to keep
you
safe from human predators until the autumn equinox. They will teach you their language, so they can spy for you.

Aly scratched her head. Somehow, when she had dreamed of one day creating her own spy network, a flock of crows had not been part of her imaginings.

The crow who’d run afoul of a mage jumped from her lap to her shoulder. Gripping her flesh through her tunic with his powerful claws, he ran his beak through the inch-long brush that was her growing hair.

“That tickles, too, you know,” she told him. The crow continued to preen her. To Kyprioth she said, “If I have a wager with you, and the crows have a wager with you, where’s the trick? Whenever there’s a trickster about, there has to be a trick, everyone says so. What’s yours?”

You don’t have to worry,
said Kyprioth, his tone entirely smug.
You’re only here for the summer, remember? This is going to be my greatest trick ever, pulled off under the noses of mortals and gods alike, but it will take some time to put it in place. In the meantime, your new friends here will teach you useful crow sounds. You in turn will teach them to understand necessary human sounds.
He preened his chest feathers.
At least, I think the crows will teach you. Do you accept the wager, my cousins?
he asked the crows.

Will you keep your word about food?
A crow’s voice sounded in Aly’s mind. It sounded like the speaker was a senior male.
There’s barely enough in this high, flat place to keep two small flocks fed, let alone fifty more of us.

I will ensure that you are all fed,
Kyprioth reassured them.
You can’t win the wager if you’re starving.

One female said,
I am not certain. You know how stupid two-leggers are.

We are two-leggers ourselves.
That voice was light, young, and male. It came from the crow on Aly’s shoulder.
Or are you standing on your wings? We know they use counting words, just like us, and they have words for different kinds of predators. They are as much kin to us as Kyprioth there.

You have always been too fond of those creatures, Nawat,
said another female crow.
It isn’t right.

This seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a wager,
added a new male crow.