Trickster's Choice (18 page)

“She lives with you in the stone sti—the castle,” Nawat corrected himself. “She flocks with you sometimes, when you sit with them.” He pointed over Aly’s shoulder. When she looked back, she saw that the goats had followed her and were grazing beside the road.

“So much for telling you to stay,” Aly remarked, more to herself than to the goats. She turned to watch Nawat again. He means Sarai or Dove, I bet, she thought. That’s why Kyprioth wagered me that I couldn’t keep the children alive. He wants a half-raka queen, and he fears he won’t have a contender after this summer.

“Are you not glad that I came?” Nawat asked, a worried look on his handsome face. “I will help you better this way, with arrows, with the crows. I will be your friend.”

The word hit Aly’s own heart with all the force of an arrow loosed from a bow. She had no real friends here. Spies don’t have friends at all, she told herself, but Nawat’s offer was impossible to resist. She was lonely. Nawat at least wouldn’t penalize her for being luarin, Tortallan, a slave, or her parents’ daughter.

“Put those away,” she told him, pointing to the piles of feathers. “We’ll go eat lunch and figure out what story you will tell the Balitangs, so they’ll take you on as a fletcher.”

“I cannot say I am a crow?” asked Nawat, tying his satchel up once more.

“You can, but they’ll think you’re mad,” Aly said. “They won’t let you near the family unless you have a story they will believe.”

“You will tell a fine story,” Nawat said cheerfully. “You do well with such things.”

Aly grinned. “Thank you for the compliment,” she replied.

“It is my first,” replied Nawat. “I am glad my first compliment is a good one.” Aly looked at him to find his eyes twinkling with mischief. Aly shook her head with a smile. It would be good to have a friend who was a crow. They knew how to have fun.

She worried about taking a stranger who was not raka home, but her worry turned out to be useless. The castle’s part-raka bowyer, Falthin, was a single man whose son had drowned at sea two years before. Nawat reminded him of his lost child. Falthin took the young man into his village home eagerly, particularly when he had seen the treasure trove of feathers Nawat brought with him.

Hearing about the newcomer, Duke Mequen, Sergeant Veron, and Ulasim each went separately to Falthin’s shop or to his home to meet Nawat. All returned with good things to say. Nawat’s singularly innocent, friendly nature opened doors for him that the feathers did not.

Aly overheard Ulasim tell Lokeij, “The boy is a bit simple, but good-hearted—no threat to us as far as I can tell.” At some point during the summer she would find out what precisely Ulasim meant by “us,” but for now she was glad that no one seemed to think Nawat was dangerous. She did wonder if Kyprioth had done anything to smooth the young crow’s way, but if he had, Aly saw no traces of it anywhere.

Nawat also drew a good deal of attention from the castle and village girls. Whenever Aly returned for the day with her goats, she would find one or two girls lingering around the bench where Nawat worked, outside Falthin’s workshop, where the fumes from the glue he used would disperse in the open air. Often one of those women was Sarai, who told Dove in Aly’s hearing that she thought Nawat “adorable.” For some reason that soured Aly’s mood, until she realized that Nawat treated Sarai with the same friendly grace he showed to every other person in Tanair. He kept his most wicked glances and murmured jokes for Aly. She wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not, but she was pleased to get something from him that Sarai could not.

The hardest thing to remember is to keep your mouth closed. You’ll be tempted to say what you know, or mention that you’ve met folk you’ve no right to meet. Keep your counsel, hold your tongue. Good listeners live longer. And keep in mind it’s harder to keep your mouth buttoned on the things you know more about than those you’re with.

—From
A Handbook for the Royal Intelligence Service,
by George Cooper, given to Aly for her tenth birthday

T
hree weeks after the family’s arrival at Tanair, Aly took her goats up into the rocky ground just east of the castle, nearly three miles north of the road that led to Kellaura Pass. Chenaol’s nine-year-old great-niece Visda, who tended one of Tanair village’s herds of sheep, led her flock to graze near Aly’s. She led her dogs, who clearly thought they could herd so much better than these two-leggers.

When Sarai and Dove came with their bodyguards at midmorning, the four girls started a game of skip-rope on the bare ground next to a watering hole. Sarai was taking her turn, with Aly and Visda to spin the rope, when the crows who watched the road set up a racket. Aly dropped the rope and clambered onto a rock to hear them better. Once she could translate what they said, she slid back to the ground where the other three girls waited, staring at her.

“Lady Sarai, might I ask a favor?” she asked in her best well-trained-slave manner. Adding a trace of the attitude of one who is versed in secrets, she went on, “I may not say as yet how I know this, but a party is riding this way from the pass. It is led by a warrior in armor, and numbers twenty soldiers and five others—attendants, I believe. You are a swift rider. Will you carry word of this to His Grace, your father?”

Sarai raised her thin brows. “We have men on guard where the road enters Tanair, Aly,” she pointed out.

“Three miles south of us, my lady,” Aly replied. “The crows do not believe these men are hostile, but a little more warning is always useful.”

“
You
speak to the crows,” Sarai remarked in disbelief.

Aly smiled and bowed, now the mysterious mage. “Say rather, my lady, they speak to me.” It’s the truth, too, she thought, waiting for the young noblewoman to make up her mind. For once it would have been useful if I were Mother, she added ruefully. When she tells people to do things, they snap to. Of course, she isn’t a slave in a hostile country.

“Has this got anything to do with Papa and the duchess’s talking to you every night behind closed doors?” asked Dove.

Aly glanced at the younger girl, all thoughts of her mother gone. “Oh, my lady, you give me far too much credit,” she said, meeting Dove’s stern gaze with amusement. “As if the likes of them would have serious talk with the likes of me.” Behind her humorous mask she mentally kicked herself. She had to remember that Dove was quick and perceptive!

Sarai beckoned to Fesgao, who waited at a slight distance with Dove’s bodyguard and the horses. The raka led Sarai’s mount forward with his own. She swung herself into the saddle. “You’d better keep up,” she told Fesgao. With that, she kneed her mare into a trot, then a gallop. Fesgao urged his mount after Sarai, who rode as if she were a centaur and one creature with her horse.

“She’s the best horsewoman I know,” Dove remarked as her guard brought her mount. “If Mother could ride like Sarai, she’d be alive now. Sarai never would have tried that jump, not without knowing what lay on the other side.” She mounted and followed her sister to the castle, her guard at her side.

Aly turned to Visda. “Watch my goats for me?” she asked.

The girl nodded. “The dogs won’t mind,” she told Aly with a grin.

Aly raced up into the rocks, bound for the ones that afforded a clear view of the distant road. As she climbed, she realized that she needed to cut herself free of the goats. She had covered all of the ground reachable with a herd in tow. Today she’d been lucky to have Visda there when the alarm sounded. Otherwise she might have been forced to leave the goats, risking the loss of some, if not all. They couldn’t afford to lose a single animal, and she needed more freedom of movement.

Panting, she approached the highest point of a giant slab of granite. Once there, she lay down until only her head rose above the stone, noting the crows scattered among the rocks and trees between her position and the road. Now that she was visible to them, they fell silent. Here came the new arrivals, clothed luarin-style in tunics and breeches, their armor and weapons glinting in the sun. Their pack animals were heavily laden, as if for a long march or a long stay. At the head of their double column rode a helmeted man in light armor. Aly sharpened her Sight to get a better look, as the Balitang men-at-arms who were posted to watch the road motioned for him to stop.

She instantly recognized the leader. Silently she wriggled back from her vantage point until she could turn over and stare at the sky. Prince Bronau. Why was he here? Had he come as the duke’s friend or as a servant of the Crown? If so, what were the Crown’s orders?

She hummed to herself, thinking. If Bronau had been ordered to capture or kill the duke and his family, he hadn’t brought enough men. He knew how many trained soldiers the duke had, because he had seen them off on their journey north. For all he knew, the duke might have added new fighters on the way. Aly smiled. Actually, the duke had done just that, binding the six bandits to him with blood. Their families had trickled up to Tanair, solidifying the former bandits’ allegiance to the duke, who now fed and housed them.

Carefully, she rolled onto her stomach and crept back to her vantage point, bringing her magical Sight to bear on the prince once more. Bronau looked to be in a good mood, joking with the roadside guards as they waved him on. The guards’ messenger was already leading his horse out of the shelter of the rocks. As soon as he reached flat ground he rode off at a gallop, carrying the word of the new arrivals to the duke and duchess, not knowing that Sarai would be there before him.

Aly continued to inspect Bronau’s party. The servants who rode behind the prince also looked relaxed and comfortable. If Bronau’s errand was a violent one, surely his attendants and soldiers would be more wary. These soldiers looked as if the only thing on their minds was shedding their armor on this hot, sunny day.

Aly slid down the granite slab. She wouldn’t know anything more until tonight, when she could collect the gossip at Tanair.

The duchess, however, had other plans. Aly and Visda were about to eat lunch when one of Lokeij’s boy hostlers rode up on Winnamine’s own gelding. “Her Grace asks for you to attend her, Aly,” the lad told her, dismounting. “I’m to take the goats and you’re to report to Her Grace in the keep. Hullo, Visda.” When Aly blinked at him, caught off balance, the boy rolled his eyes and thrust the reins at her. “I know you’re practically fresh-caught, but even you ought to know better than to keep the mistress waiting.”

“Oh—yes, of course,” Aly stammered. She mounted the gelding clumsily, so that the two watching her wouldn’t mention how curiously at home Aly was on horseback, and set out, with much flailing and rein tugging, back toward the road. Only when she knew Visda and the boy couldn’t see her anymore did she kick the horse into a gallop.

She slowed when she came within view of Tanair’s walls but kept the gelding at a trot up to the castle, allowing herself to bounce on his back like the greenest of riders. Lokeij himself took the reins from her as she tumbled from the saddle. “You need practice,” he told Aly, grinning.

“Not on your life,” she gasped, as if she had never had to ride before. She lurched into the keep.

Dove waited for her at the door. “
She
wants you,” she told Aly, and towed her into a small room off the main hall. Normally it was a study, but Winnamine stood there now with a basin of steaming water, a towel, soap, and a clean tunic and leggings.

“Thank you, Dovasary,” she said. “Close the door behind you.” Dove obeyed. Winnamine turned to Aly. “Wash up, please,” she ordered. “I have just promoted you to maidservant. You’ll serve the wine right now, while my lord entertains Prince Bronau, and at table tonight. Ordinarily I would do it myself, but we have no housekeeper now, which means I must make all of their sleeping arrangements.”

“Could not Ulasim … ?” Aly inquired.

The duchess shook her head. “Ulasim is off with the men cutting wood for our fires. How could he know we were to have company? Which means I must take charge of our servants and make room for Bronau and his train. Besides, if you are to be our advisor, now is a good time to start. I would like to know what you make of Bronau’s presence. You may see things with your fresh gaze that His Grace and I would not, having been friends with the prince all our adult lives.”

“The duke does not expect me to wait on them?” Aly wanted to know.

“No,” Winnamine replied calmly, “but I can’t arrange this any other way. He may be polite and ask you to stand where you can’t hear them, but at least you’ll be able to form an impression of the prince. Is he hiding anything, is he uncomfortable, is he frightened …” Winnamine sighed. “I wish he’d given us warning!”

“I’m honored to serve, Your Grace,” Aly told her mistress smoothly. “It won’t matter if His Grace asks me to stand out of earshot. I read lips.”

Winnamine put her hands on her hips and looked down the three inches between her eyes and Aly’s. “Well! Now there’s a bit of luck! Or maybe not luck, with a god involved. You read lips. Amazing.”

Aly grinned. “I thought you might feel that way about it, Your Grace,” she replied.

“I am grateful for any advantage,” the duchess confided. “What a mess! Let’s have that tunic off, Aly.” As she helped Aly to pull the dirty tunic over her head, Winnamine continued to speak, thinking aloud. “We’ll give the second floor to him and his servants. My lord and I will share with Sarai and Dove. His men will have to sleep in the new guest quarters. We haven’t got enough beds, but I won’t quarter them on the villagers. Our people work hard enough to feed and house themselves. I wish Bronau had known what a burden he was placing on us. Chances are he didn’t know how small this place is. At least you don’t need a comb.”

Aly soaped her hands and arms. “Why me, Your Grace?” she asked. “Why not a regular maid? You asked for me before I told you I read lips.”

The duchess rubbed cream onto her hands. They were trembling. “We’ve tried to put a good face on it, for the servants, and the children, but Aly, we are in mortal peril. Two years ago …” Her voice shook.