“You said I must not kiss you in front of people,” he reminded her. “You said they will think you are frivolous if we are kissing.”
“But we're not in public,” she explained patiently. “Listen. No one's outside. We could go behind a tree—Nawat, it's just a kiss.”
She took a step forward, reaching for his jacket lapel. Nawat took another step back. “I have been thinking,” he said. “You will let me kiss you and preen you, but you will not mate with me. I think you are a mixed-up human. You think that mating is not important if you have kisses and preening. If I do not kiss you and preen you, I think you will want to mate with me. To have nestlings. To be with me all our days.”
Aly rubbed her temples. Sometimes it was very hard to get a former crow to see things properly. “I didn't say I won't mate with you because we kiss and preen,” she said patiently, remembering how close to mating some of that preening had gotten. “I can't be distracted. It's going to be a dangerous spring and summer. This is a horrible time to mate. We can't risk it.”
“All life is a risk, Aly,” he told her soberly, reaching a hand out to her, then hastily lowering it. “At any moment an archer may shoot you, or a hawk break your neck. A forest fire or a volcano will burn you. A Bronau will stab you. Risk will not end if the god gets his islands back.”
Aly sighed. “No, but my task will be done, and then we can mate.”
“And what if you are killed?” Nawat wanted to know. “What if I am killed? What if a Bronau steals you away?”
Sometimes a crow cannot be argued with, thought Aly, feeling a little impatient. Sometimes you only give yourself a headache if you try. He'll be stealing kisses again soon enough.
Changing the subject, she asked, “What was that display this morning? It looked as if all the crows in the Isles had decided to draw attention to our arrival.”
“The crows came to win our bet with the god,” Nawat replied.
Aly raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought that bet was just with the Tanair crows, and just for last summer.”
Nawat shook his head. “Not just with my cousins at Tanair,” he explained, his dark eyes following a Stormwing high overhead. “He wagered with all the crows of the Isles.”
Aly stared at him. “All of them?”
Her friend nodded. “While you are here, they will help to guard Sarai and Dove. Only when Kyprioth rules again may we collect the wager, if you are still alive.”
“That must be some wager, for you all to risk so much,” Aly remarked. “You know, I would be so much more cooperative if I knew what the prize actually was.”
Nawat gave a bird shrug, a lift of his shoulder blades more than his shoulders. “You would not like it,” he said dismissively. “It is for crows.”
For the third time that afternoon Aly felt as if she'd been slapped by someone who had never even frowned at her. In a tiny voice she asked, as she had heard girls she despised ask, “Are you angry with me?”
Nawat closed his eyes as if asking for patience. Then he cupped her face in both hands and kissed her mouth softly, lingering, holding them both absolutely still, as if only this connection between them existed. At last he released her. For once Aly could think of nothing to say.
As she stared at him, he answered her. “Never. Never, never, never.” Then he turned and walked away.
Slowly everyone settled. The ladies ate with Nuritin, then retired upstairs. Before she joined them, Dove dismissed Aly for the night, reminding her that she could still take off a simple gown herself if she wanted to go to bed. Aly took a last walk around the grounds, knowing that her fellow conspirators would have to wait until most of the household had gone to bed before they could meet.
At last Aly strolled into the kitchen and down the hall to the meeting room. Nawat was there already, as were Chenaol and Ulasim. Except for Nawat, who perched on a countertop, the others had taken comfortable chairs. They shared a pitcher of the liquor called arak and bowls of nuts and fruits. They knew better than to offer the potent arak to Aly. She never drank, fearing liquor would loosen her tongue.
As Aly slumped into a chair, Fesgao arrived, then Ochobu. She brought with her a slender, young part-raka with ears like jug handles. In Aly's magical Sight he, like Ochobu, blazed with his magical Gift. This would be the mage who had laid all the fresh spellwork on the house.
“Aly, this is Ysul,” Ulasim told her, pointing to the new man. “Another mage with the Chain. He will live here, to help keep our ladies doubly safe.”
“He is mute,” Ochobu said tartly as she sat. “King Oron's torturers did that when he was small. So don't go trying to talk his ear off just because he's defenseless.”
Aly shook her head. She'd known wolverines with more diplomacy than Ochobu. Then she grinned. Ysul was using military hand-sign code to say I'm not defenseless.
Don't tell Ochobu, Aly hand-signed back, her movements concealed by the arms of her chair. She's happy because she thinks she just insulted me.
Ysul nodded gravely and settled on the floor beside one of the cupboards. The room was supposed to be a linen storeroom, but that was only in the daytime.
“Where's Quedanga?” Fesgao asked, looking for the housekeeper. “Now that we're all in Rajmuat again, she ought to join us.”
“She's keeping watch,” Ulasim replied. “One of us must stand guard for a third of every night, to take reports and deal with the unexpected. I have the time around midnight, and Chenaol gets the time from false dawn to sunrise.”
“I'll always take that one,” Chenaol said comfortably. “I have to start the bread anyway.”
Nawat ate nuts, cracking them with his fingers before devouring them. As Ulasim handed Aly a pitcher of guava juice and a cup, Ochobu spoke a word that set magical signs ablaze throughout the room. They faded slowly until they were all but invisible.
Ulasim leaned in his chair. “It is good to see you all again,” he remarked.
“Is it?” snapped Ochobu. “How could you allow that old woman to move in here, Ulasim? She will ruin everything.”
Ulasim sighed, running his hand through his long hair. “Mother, one does not forbid Lady Nuritin Balitang anything,” he explained with resignation. “She is, as far as all Rajmuat is concerned, the head of the Balitang family with the death of His Grace. Technically this is the Balitangs' house, not Her Grace's. It is Nuritin's signature that makes anything to do with this house possible.”
“How can we keep anything in this house secret with that woman and her servants at our heart like a luarin tumor?” demanded Ochobu.
Chenaol grinned and poured out two cups of arak. She offered one to Ochobu, who ignored it. The cook gave a “Suit yourself” shrug and drank from her own cup, setting the other within reach. “Just as easily as we keep our secrets with tradesmen and messengers coming in and out all day, old woman,” she told the mage. “It's far easier to do in a house like this than it was up in our mountain aerie. You let us worry about Nuritin and her servants. She's good to have on our side—connected to every family of the luarin nobility, and to one in three families among the raka nobles.”
“It would draw attention we cannot afford to keep her out, and it would not be easy to arrange,” added Ulasim. “Topabaw would think we had something to hide.”
“Speaking of hiding . . . ,” Aly began. Everyone looked at her. “I admire the way you've concealed the magics on this house. I noticed them, but fortunately, the Sight is the rarest aspect of the Gift. You did beautiful work here.”
Chenaol looked Aly over. “Since when do you know what's magic and what isn't, mistress?”
Nawat offered Aly a nut. She took it and looked at Ochobu. “You never told them?”
Ulasim snorted. “You spent a winter cooped up with my mother and didn't see it?” he wanted to know. “She never tells anyone anything. She makes clams and oysters look slack-jawed. What is it?”
The old woman grumbled under her breath and tugged her jacket around her shoulders.
&
nbsp; Aly popped the nut into her mouth and chewed it thoroughly. “I have the Sight,” she told them. “I can see magic, or death, or sickness, or godhood. I can see poisons in food. If I concentrate a little differently, I can see distant things clearly, and tiny things in complete detail.”
“So those liar's signs you told us to look for were not real?” Fesgao asked. “The looking aside, the blinking?”
“Oh, no!” Aly reassured him. “A blink, a fidget, a change in body position, those are all perfectly good measures of a lie told by an amateur.” She smiled wickedly. “I just have a little something extra.” She looked at Ochobu. “I spent the whole winter thinking you'd told and they didn't care.”
“I don't care,” Ochobu snapped. “It is foolish to rely on magic, any magic, including the Sight. The Rittevons have that much right, at least—they know too many people use magic as a crutch, and they are wary of it.”
“So says the mage,” grumbled Ulasim.
“And who would know the truth of that, if not a mage?” demanded his mother.
Nawat cracked a nut by slamming it on the counter. Everyone turned to stare at him. “Are we done with all the scoldings?” he wanted to know, his face as open as always. “Because I wish to know what use I will be in this oversized, befouled nest you call a city. I could see plain enough when I came. You have more arrow makers here than you will need.” At home in Tanair, he had made arrows with special fletchings, arrows that would kill mages and arrows that flew straight despite the wind.
“But there is need for the crows,” Chenaol said.
“No,” replied Nawat flatly. “You have your human crows in the palace and the city and the households, picking up whatever news they have. My people cannot enter houses, and there is very little food for us here. We are here to win our wager with the god, not to sit about preening ourselves.” He glanced into Aly's upturned face and away. “I am here to do more than preen myself.”
Ulasim nodded. “He has a point,” the big raka admitted. “At Tanair the crows were our watchers and patrols.”
“We'll find something for him to do,” Aly said impatiently. The thought that Nawat might leave made her chest go tight. “Gods help us, we only arrived today.”
No one else commented. Nawat was considered to be under Aly's command. The rebel commander had agreed that winter to make their subordinates and work areas separate for the most part, though they would share any news and special requests at the nightly meetings. On occasion some areas might need to work with different ones, but those cases would be determined as they arose. It was a rebel's way to fight, rather than the way a government would do things. If the Crown captured some of them, the rest of the movement would still be able to continue the rebellion.
Aly looked at Ulasim. She knew it was pathetic to change the subject to get rid of that tight feeling near her heart, but what she had to say was important. “In the meantime, may we now bring Sarai and Dove in on this? The country is trembling on the sword's edge—we could all feel it on the way here. It's the girls' destiny at play.”
Ochobu made a face. “To risk all on the discretion of a pair of girls . . . Not yet.”
“I agree,” Ulasim replied. “At least, not as regards Lady Sarai's discretion.”
Someone rapped on the door. It could not be a stranger to the household, since the servant's wing was kept under watch. Ulasim stood to open the door and admitted Dove.
“Sorry,” she said, finding a vacant chair. “It was hard to get away from my chess game. I had to let Aunt Nuritin win. I'll never hear the end of it now.”
Ochobu glared at her son. “You could have said she knows.”
Aly hid a grin as the big footman shrugged. “She came to me after supper to tell me,” he explained to his mother. “It seemed only reasonable to ask her to come here.”
“It's so obvious Petranne could see it,” Dove said wearily. “The way the raka watched us all the way to Tanair and back, the crows, a household with all the servants but Aly who are raka full- and part-bloods, servants who used to work for the Temaidas. . . . My mother belonged to some branch of the Haiming clan, didn't she? A small one that escaped the luarin's eyes. It explains a great deal.”
Fesgao smiled at her. “You are right, my lady, it does.”
“The timing makes sense,” Dove continued. “We have only two people with a claim to the Rittevon throne left. Dunevon is a child; his regents make Stormwings look tenderhearted. But do you mean to kill Elsren? Because Sarai and I will never permit that.”
“We shall ford that river when we come to it, my lady,” Ochobu said. “For the present we gather allies, identify our enemies, and look for the regents' weaknesses. There is unrest all over the Isles. It will be war by summer's end.”
“Then don't tell Sarai or Winna,” Dove advised. “It's quite possible Winna will have Elsren swear a blood oath not to try for the throne. She hates it at court.” Dove looked around at the raka's faces. “You were going to tell Winna- mine, weren't you? Or is she supposed to die in the fighting?”
“We have made no decision in that area, either, my lady,” Fesgao said with grave respect. “Many things must take place before we shall be forced to consider such choices.”
Dove leaned back in her chair. “Tell me,” she ordered.
Aly watched as the raka straightened, new life and purpose in their eyes, even Ochobu's. One after another they explained how things stood. Dove's arrival had given them something real to look at. She might have been only their future queen's little sister, but she had the same blood in her veins and the same quick wits.
When they had finished, Dove massaged her temples. “It's so much bigger than I could have imagined,” she murmured. They all waited for what she would say next. Finally Dove took a deep breath and asked, “Have we a symbol? Some ordinary thing, so the common people and the middle classes will know that our country is changing?”
She's good, thought Aly with appreciation. Right to the heart of the matter. I hope Sarai does half as well.
“A symbol?” inquired Fesgao. “Like a kudarung?”
Dove shook her head. “Something more subtle. Something that looks like a message, that can be put in places where officials won't notice it.”
“Something to shake the regents up,” murmured Aly.
“If the regents are shaken up,” Fesgao pointed out, “they will not take it kindly, I warn you.”
“No, I suppose not,” Dove acknowledged. “But they're already behaving stupidly. I saw all the new checkpoints in the city. It's the way the Crown chooses to deal with mindless hooligans. You know what the luarin nobility says—the raka get restless every thirty years, and have to be kicked down. We need to tell them this is no clump of restless raka. This is a movement.”
“If we make the regents angry,” Chenaol said, “they will slam our folk with more laws, more taxes.”
“More arrests,” added Fesgao. “More punishments. More executions.”
“They cannot arrest what they cannot find,” Nawat pointed out. “When the People, animals, claim a territory and drive rivals from it, they mark it. What if you find a way to mark your territory for all to recognize?”
Ulasim rubbed his neck as if it ached. “Please do not tell me we must go out and piss on every street corner,” he said, a faintly pleading note in his voice.
“Then only the People will know it is your territory, not the Crown,” Nawat replied reasonably.
“A symbol,” Dove told them. “Scratched into plaster, written on a proclamation that's been nailed up, dug in the dirt, painted on a door or a shutter. Something easy—”
“An open shackle with a few links of chain attached,” suggested Chenaol eagerly. “For freedom.”
“Harmless enough,” Ulasim admitted slowly. “Easy to spread, easy to set folk talking.” He looked at Dove. “We'll do it.”
“Aly?” Dove whispered in the darkness of her bedroom. Junai was still downstairs with her father.
Al
y had not been asleep. She'd been expecting this. “We'll go outside. There's a pavilion the mages fixed in the garden. It's shielded from just about everything inside the walls as well as outside.”
Dove and Aly wrapped themselves in robes and padded downstairs. Once outside, Aly led her mistress to the open-sided building where she had talked to Nawat. The girls sat for a moment on the couch, enjoying the cool, damp spring breeze.
At last Dove looked at Aly. “I wish you had told me.”
“In all honor, I couldn't,” Aly explained. “They expected me to keep my silence, and it is their plot. I am a newcomer.”
“But the raka, the people not of our household, they know, or they guess,” Dove pointed out. “It's why they always turn out to see Sarai and me. Not because our mother was raka, but because they believe Sarai is the promised queen.” She rubbed her mouth with her thumb. “I'm surprised the regents haven't tried to kill us already.”
“It will come,” Aly said. “If they know their business, they will try nothing in the confines of the palace. They'll try in the city, if they can't get inside these walls—”
“And they can't,” Dove interrupted, her words half a question.
Aly considered this. At last she said, “Not without a frontal assault, I think. And on the city streets . . . The raka have been planning this rebellion for decades. We have more allies on the streets than the regents suspect. Naturally, I'm going to do my best to make sure of what they suspect and what they don't.”
“Alone?” Dove asked.
“Now you're fishing,” Aly said, not in the least alarmed. “I have help, and that's all you need to know for the present. When exactly did you put it together?”
Dove began to braid a lock of her hair. “Around Midwinter, I think. Oh, Sarai and I knew the raka believed Sarai might be the promised queen before that, but it took me some weeks penned up in Tanair to see that there was an actual conspiracy among our upper servants, not the usual mutterings of hotheads. Here in the city, it's even more plain.”
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