Tricksters Queen (9 page)

Topabaw smiled as she met his eyes. "There. Isn't that more friendly?"

She bobbed her head eagerly.

"Do you know, I am surprised they made you only the maid of the younger daughter," he told Aly. "Such a deed as you did for them, they should at least have given you the post of maid to the older girl, or to Her Grace the duchess."

Aly ducked her head. "I couldn't say, Your Grace." Then she met his eyes again, so he would think she lied, that she
had
thought of a better reward, like a higher position.

"They don't appreciate you." He nodded to a pair of cups and a pitcher on his table. "Pour us both a drink," he commanded. "Some wine will do you good."

Aly slowly rose and did as she was told. In Topabaw's position her da or her grandfather would have done the pouring, to make her feel treated almost as an equal, to flatter her. You're supposed to stroke and slap me, so I won't know what's coming, she thought, exasperated with him already. Inspecting the wine with her Sight, she found the signs of truth spells.

Taking her cup, she settled back onto her stool. It was time to call up her liar's palace. Homewood, homewood, homewood I go, she told herself silently, sinking into her own mind as if it were a pool of water. She surrounded herself with the mind of Aly Homewood. Part of her split off to watch and advise. The rest of her awareness filled the liar's palace. She sipped from the cup, pretending she liked the taste of the wine. She also pretended not to notice that while she drank, he did not, though he put his cup to his lips. The spell in the drink went straight to work, making her lightheaded and relaxed.

"Does it not irk you, to be at the beck and call of raka?" Topabaw asked softly, more confident. "To be under the orders of that head footman, that cook, those armsmen, when your skin is as white as that of the duchess?"

"It's not my place to say, Your Grace," she said, her voice slurred from the drug.

"You may speak freely here," said Topabaw graciously. "Drink up."

She drank. "I mean, sir, Your Grace—" She giggled, then pressed her arm to her mouth to stop herself. "This is quite nice," she told him, and emptied the cup. He refilled it. Leaning forward as if this bone-pale man were her friend, Aly confided, "It was this way at home, you know. Everyone else gets the good stuff. I get the odds and ends. It wasn't
my
fault my mother left, stupid slut. And now?" She made a disgusted noise and flapped her hand as if driving something away. "Nothing for me again, ever. You know, we have these dark-skinned folk at home. Bazhir, they call themselves. Sand lice, Icall them. Riding about like lords when
we
own
their
lands. Acting like you're dirt while they eye your bum." She snorted a laugh.

"The Bazhir?" asked the spymaster, folding his hands on his desk.

"These raka, too," she said earnestly. "They're just the same. I want to tell them, Who owns who? Seems to me we luarin beat your lot like drums, miss, so don't you go looking down your nose at me." Her internal distant watcher shook her head over the look on Topabaw's face. His contemptuous smile and satisfied pose told her that she'd said just what he wanted to hear. He didn't even respect her enough to keep it from his face.

"Tell me, where were you born?"

In her liar's palace, a door opened to show her the answer. "Ginine," she said, "north of Port Legann in Tortall. Didn't want to work there. Too many sand lice, if you take my meaning. Then I come here. Sand lice, jungle lice, they're all the same."

He asked the questions she expected. She answered all of them from her liar's palace. The girl who lived there was small and sordid, a petty servant and thief with a raisin for a heart.

"There is a way you may better yourself," Topabaw explained softly. "One that might grant you revenge on those who show you so little respect. If you will perform a small service for me, I will do one for you. Her Highness is always in search of pure-blood luarin girls for her household."

Aly sat up straight, her eyes blazing. "You'd take me from that pen of mongrels?" she asked eagerly.

"You must remain a while longer," Topabaw said, leaning forward to hold her with his eyes. "We believe there is plotting afoot in that household. Our other spies there bring us stories that hardly seem likely. I believe those spies may be compromised, or worse, that they have betrayed me. I count on
you
to find out the truth."

Distant Aly saw that he lied about spies in the household. She also knew he wanted her to believe him, to keep her from lying to him.

"They'll cut me up if I'm caught," Liar Aly pointed out. "That's a lot of risk for just a promise of 'someday.'"

He smirked and reached into a pocket, drawing out an ordinary leather purse that clinked. "Will this make the risk more bearable?"

Aly seized it greedily and counted the coins—silver and copper, no gold, which might be suspicious if she was searched. There were listening spells on the lot of them. "This is all?" she asked.

Topabaw slammed his fist down onto the table. She jumped. "You overstep!" he barked.

Aly cringed. "Forgive me, Your Grace—I don't know why I'm so loose-tongued," she told him, kneeling on the floor. "Normally I keep my own counsel. I didn't mean any disrespect, I swear. Forgive me, Your Grace!" Distant Aly thought, You ham-handed brute.

Topabaw smiled and sat back. "Mind your place," he ordered. "You will report every third day to Master Grosbeak on Gigit Lane. Depending on what you bring to him, you will receive some manner of payment. And don't try to lie to me, wench," he said coldly, pointing a bony finger at her. "My other spies in your household will be truthful about
your
actions, if about nothing else! Get out."

Aly got out, bowing over and over until she was out of that room, then fled down the hall, bolting past the chained captives on her way to the door. Outside she raced down the path to a clump of trees. She collapsed against one, out of sight, and relaxed, feeling the last traces of the spell vanish from her body. Most such spells were short-lived, so that the person they were used on could return quickly to normal. "Homewood, homewood, homewood I go," she whispered, listening to the shriek of distant Stormwings and the calls of distant crows. Slowly her real self rose from the liar's palace, freeing her mind and concentration.

Waiting, breathing, identifying the scents that met her nose—cumin, roses, jasmine, horse urine, rust—she reassembled herself. Only when that was done did she begin to turn over the interview in her mind. He hadn't made her swear in blood. She assumed Kyprioth would protect her from the penalties for those who broke that magical oath, but Topabaw's omitting it before he'd dismissed her made her even more contemptuous of him than she'd already been.

Ham-handed
and lazy,
she thought with disgust while she stared at the leaves overhead. And sloppy. Maybe he was something once, but no longer.

With a sigh Aly got to her feet, startling a marmoset clan into flight among the trees. "Sorry," she called, and walked down the flagstone path to Golden Road. She ambled down to the Robing Pavilion, sidestepping peacocks and crowned pigeons.

She heard a boisterous call overhead. The three crows who had followed her, seeing through the magical veil over Aly and her captors, were leaving now that she was free and unharmed. She watched as they flew toward a Stormwing that soared overhead, calling insults. The Stormwing jinked in midair, then—with no other Stormwings nearby to watch his back against the crows—fled.

When Aly looked into the Throne Hall, it was empty. The maids at the Robing Pavilion told her that her ladies and their maids had gone to the Pavilion of Delightful Pleasures. Aly nodded as she tucked Topabaw's purse among their boxes, grateful the Balitang party was still here. She could put off the inevitable questions about where she'd been until tonight. Casually she crossed the Golden Road to the pavilion that lay beside the Throne Hall. Aly knew better than to enter through the porch that opened onto the Golden Road. That was a stage, designed to display the court while important guests presented themselves. With the palace map in her mind's eye, she found a small bridge spanning the creek that cupped the pavilion. A well-trodden path led her to the servants' entrance. As she passed into the building, she walked into an invisible cloud of scent: lotus, rose, sandalwood, and lily as well as cherries, mangoes, and cooked chicken.

Servants pointed Aly to a gallery at the end of a long, narrow hall. Everywhere Aly’saw spells for listening and seeing, but their gleam was faint. When was the last time they were renewed? she wondered, seeing glimmers of the spells. Don't they know you have to renew spells every few years? Or are they so sure their spies among the servants will report what is said that they don't bother?

In the servants' gallery the carved screen that served as one of the walls allowed servants to see the nobles beyond. They also allowed the nobles to see their own people, in case they needed something the pavilion did not provide.

Aly took the entire gallery in a second time. The mages of the Chain had been at work here. Pembery, Boulaj, and some other raka servants stood in one corner, talking. Aly heard nothing and could not read their lips. An entire corner of the servants' area was marked out with spells to counter the Crown's magic. These spells were so carefully hidden under other spells that Crown mages might not detect them. The edge of the silent corner was marked out on the floor by a line of boards held in place by a pair of pegs at each end. On this line only, the pegs were perceptibly lighter than the wood in which they were set, the only boards in the floor to show such a marking. It was subtle but effective. Aly approved. It was always nice to see a well-done piece of spy work.

It was also a powerful illustration of how the raka used their magic after the luarin conquest. Raka magic was shaped by subtlety, crafted by mages who spent their lives hiding things from other mages. To those who wielded their Gift as the mages of the Eastern and Southern Lands had been taught, raka magic seemed weak, good only for simple tasks. Its symbols were different, its spells far quieter, shaped for that effect over three hundred years of practice and development, with death for the raka mage who drew a luarin mage's attention.

As she eyed her surroundings, the other servants turned to look at her. Boulaj waved Aly over to the protected corner. As soon as Aly stepped past those marked boards, she could hear Boulaj speak clearly, when her words had been indistinct outside them. "This is Aly, Lady Dovasary's new maid. She is one of us."

The woman next to Boulaj frowned. "A luarin? She can never be one of us."

"That you must ask the god, if you dare," Boulaj informed her pleasantly. "In our household, we do as he bids us. He chose to make Aly his messenger." To Aly Boulaj said, "This is Vereyu. She represents our folk in the palace." When Vereyu protested the use of her real name and position, Boulaj said, "Ask the god about Aly's faithfulness, if you won't believe me. Go on, ask him."

Aly looked at Vereyu and raised an eyebrow. Most people of sense preferred not to call on specific gods unless matters were dire. There was always the chance the god might not care for the summons.

It seemed Vereyu was a woman of sense. She tightened her broad mouth but did not open it to call on Kyprioth. A stocky part-blood raka, Vereyu looked both intelligent and hard. Her clothing was unremarkable, but her hair drew Aly's eye. The long copper pins that secured her black hair in its coil at the back of her head housed lethally sharp miniature knives.

"You don't go near the throne with those, do you?" she asked, gently tapping one of the pins' copper knobs. "Surely the weapon alarm spells would detect them."

Vereyu swung around almost casually, reaching for the arm Aly had just used, ready to grip it and twist it up behind Aly's back. As Vereyu moved, Aly took just one step to the side, letting Vereyu's hands slide uselessly past. When Vereyu moved straight into another attack, Aly took a second step just out of range, guessing that Vereyu would lunge at her. As Vereyu did, Aly gripped a part of her collarbone that would hurt exquisitely if pressed. Vereyu went still.

"Play nicely, if you please," she murmured in Vereyu's ear. "I'm sorry I'm not to your taste. Do you want everyone to see that we know unarmed combat? Only think of how they would gossip at such undovelike behavior on the part of servants."

Vereyu considered her next move. Aly glanced at Boulaj, who was covering a smile with her hand.

Suddenly Vereyu nodded. Aly waited for a moment, alert for a trick, then let her go.

"If they knew real doves, they'd stop telling us serving-women should act like them," Vereyu said, her voice very dry. "What is it the god uses you for, anyway?"

Aly batted her eyes at the woman. "To guard the ladies," she replied. There was no reason anyone should know her real place in the rebellion if they did not already know. "And a bit of this and that."

Vereyu snorted. "You're the god's, all right," she muttered. "You're just his sort."

Why, thank you,
Kyprioth said. The sound of his voice made all the servants in the corner jump, though no one else in the gallery appeared to have heard.

Establishing my credentials with the palace raka?
she asked Kyprioth silently as the servants who'd heard him bowed their heads briefly. /
was doing well enough on my own.

I just wanted to remove any lingering doubts,
he said, apparently to her alone.
Better safe than sorry.

Aly giggled at the thought of the Trickster's ever caring about safety. When she felt his presence fade, she looked around. "I'm famished," she remarked. "Do you people ever feed a girl?"

Vereyu raised a hand and beckoned. A maid came over to them with a tray of fried dumplings and fruit. As Aly ate, she looked around the room. Servants flirted in corners, sat on cushions and chairs and gossiped, or watched their masters in the room beyond. Once she'd cleaned her hands, Aly drifted over to the screen to have a look at the nobility.