Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

  If you’ve a story, make sure it’s a whole one, with details close to hand. It’s the difference between a successful lie and getting caught.

  —From A Workbook for a Young Spy, written and illustrated by Aly’s father and given to her on her sixth birthday

  3

  THE RAKA

  The Long Strait and the Azure Sea

  People out of favor with King Oron did not waste time in farewells. The king had slaughtered entire households, down to the last dog, once he decided he could not live with his fears. Two days after Aly entered into her wager with Kyprioth, the Balitangs loaded their belongings onto several cargo ships and prepared to set sail.

  Only Prince Bronau came to see them off that humid morning. He kissed the duchess on both cheeks, embraced the duke, and kissed Lady Saraiyu’s hand. Aly barely glimpsed this. Her new charges, Petranne and Elsren, did not care for ships, or the early hour, or Aly herself. Their governess and nursemaids had gone to other households along with seventy-four other servants and slaves. Winnamine assigned their care to Aly as the reason they had kept her with them. Neither the duke nor the duchess had summoned her to discuss the visitation from the god they believed to be Mithros. Instead they hid their thoughts behind polite, distant faces and told Ulasim that Aly would mind the little ones.

  Aly hung on to Petranne and Elsren as they jerked and shrieked in her grip. At last she gave up trying to hear. She read the adults’ lips, as she’d been taught by her father.

  “I’ll try to get word of events to you as often as possible,” Bronau assured the older Balitangs. “The king’s none too healthy. Things could change suddenly if he passes on. If Hazarin takes the throne, for instance.”

  “Don’t speak of such things,” Mequen told Bronau. “It could be taken for treason.”

  Winnamine rested a hand on the prince’s arm. “Try to be careful, Bronau.”

  The prince grinned, then walked down the gangplank as the crew prepared to cast off. The Balitangs waved farewell. Bronau stood on the edge of the dock, watching as the ship weighed anchor.

  “Come on, you raka dogs, put your backs into it!” yelled the luarin captain to his sailors. “’Less you want a touch of the whip to smarten you!” It was how many luarin in Rajmuat who were not part of the Balitangs’ circle addressed their raka slaves and servants. Aly thought it was a foolish way to talk to someone who might be inspired to throw one over the rail into a shark-infested sea, but she would be the first to admit she did not have a conqueror’s heart. She couldn’t see who would profit by keeping the original owners of a country ground into the dirt.

  Elsren broke out of Aly’s hold and ran toward the rail. Still clinging to Petranne, Aly seized the boy by his shirt with her free hand and dragged him back. “I want Jafa!” wailed Elsren, tears running down his plump cheeks. Jafana had been his nursemaid. “I hate you!”

  Aly sighed and wrapped an arm around him. “I know, and I’m sorry,” she replied. “In your shoes, I’d hate me, too, but we’re stuck with one another.” She looked at Petranne. Tears rolled down the little girl’s cheeks. “Sometimes being a noble isn’t much fun, is it?” she asked. Petranne shook her head.

  Aly glanced at Mequen and Winnamine. They waited at the rail, none of their feelings on display as the ship drew out into the harbor. As Elsren calmed, Aly studied the city, not having seen it when she first arrived. Rajmuat was splendid, full of peaked gates and three-level temples, each with a spiked tower thrust into the sky. White or rose pink walls contrasted with the dark green of the trees that lined its streets. Homes also sported peaked roofs and intricately carved eaves, those on wealthy houses traced in gold or silver.

  Something else reflected the sun, too, pricking Aly’s eyes with swords of light. She looked up. High above the city Stormwings circled like vultures over a carcass. Aly shivered. These part-human, part-metal immortals feasted on the rage, fear, and death spawned by human combat. Their wings, each metal feather shaped precisely like a bird’s, were the source of the bright flashes of sun on steel.

  “They always know.” Winnamine spoke quietly. “The Stormwings—they always know when unrest is starting. How can they tell?”

  Mequen put an arm around her shoulders. “We don’t know if they do, my dear,” he replied. “Maybe they just know that it’s a sure bet in Rajmuat. There will be fighting in the streets, if he doesn’t appoint an heir soon, or if something happens to whomever he appoints. We’re going to be well out of it.”

  “We hope we’re well out of it now,” replied the duchess.

  Aly knew she had a point. Sometimes King Oron did recover from his fears. Sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he got worse. If Kyprioth was dragging Aly into the Isles’ affairs, they might well be growing.

  At least the Balitangs wouldn’t miss life at court. They occupied themselves with charity work, fashions, books, and music, not politics, court, or trade. They kept their own accounts and oversaw the work of the household. Aly suspected that they would settle quietly into rural life, given half a chance. If she was to win her wager, she had to ensure that they would get that chance, at least until the summer was over.

  She wondered why a Great God would take such a brief interest in the family. In her experience, once a god took an interest in a mortal, that mortal was stuck with that god for life. Still, that wasn’t Aly’s problem right now. Safeguarding this family, without calling notice to herself, was her problem. If anyone were to find out that the daughter of the Tortallan king’s Champion and his assistant spymaster was summering in the Copper Isles, she wouldn’t live long enough to collect on that wager. The thought made her grin as she turned her face into the fresh sea breeze. At long last she had a real challenge, and she meant to enjoy every moment of it.

  The captain never made good on his threats to smarten his raka seamen with his whip. The ship glided up the Long Strait. The warm, damp winds drove them gently north along the long, slender neck of water that separated Kypriang, the capital island, from Gempang Isle in the west. Dolphins, always a sign of good luck, sped alongside the vessel, watching its occupants with mischievous eyes and what looked like mocking smiles.

  The Long Strait was another world compared to Rajmuat’s crowded streets and busy docks. Limestone cliffs rose high on either side, threaded with greenery and falling streams, capped with emerald jungles that steamed as the day warmed up. Brightly colored birds soared to and fro, indifferent to the ships that ploughed the blue waters. From the Gempang jungles came the long, drawn-out hoots of the howler monkeys.

  “Tell me a story,” demanded Elsren after his afternoon nap.

  “Yes, a story,” Petranne insisted, sitting up against the rail with her legs crossed. “A new story. Jafa only ever tells the same ones.”

  “Did not,” retorted her brother. Petranne stuck her tongue out at him.

  Aly listened to the howler monkeys and smiled. She sat cross-legged in front of the two children, keeping one hand in Elsren’s belt. She had spent the morning dragging him from under the crew’s feet. “Once the most beautiful queen in all the world had a menagerie,” she began, thinking wickedly how Aunt Thayet would screech if she could hear this story again. “In it were those self-same monkeys you hear all around us, the howlers. Now, the queen was often out and about, and the only things she liked better than coming home were her reunions with her beloved king, and an unbroken night’s sleep.” Softly she told them about menagerie keepers who sold places in the palace gardens near the queen’s balcony the nights after her return, then roused the howler monkeys to break the silence with their loud, penetrating calls. Woken from her sleep, the hot-tempered queen would race onto her balcony, bow and arrows in hand, in an attempt to shoot the beasts no matter how dark the night. Those who watched from below rejoiced in the fact that their queen slept without a nightgown.

  “Of course, the king’s spymaster put a stop to it, once he knew,” Aly concluded seriously. “He made the keepers use the money they’d made to build ano
ther enclosure for the howlers, where they wouldn’t disturb the queen. But there are still men who will swear by every god you know that they truly have the most beautiful queen in all the world.”

  Petranne and Elsren stared back at Aly soberly. Finally Elsren said, “That one was new. Tell another!”

  “Yes, another!” pleaded his sister. “That was a good one!”

  “You’re from Tortall, aren’t you?”

  Aly turned to look for the source of the new voice. The older girls, Saraiyu and Dovasary, stood nearby, listening as Sarai fanned herself. There was no way for Aly to read what they thought in their level eyes or polite faces. It occurred to her that, being half-raka, these girls must have learned to hide their feelings well. They would have heard the people of Rajmuat and the rest of the Isles speak with careless cruelty of their mother’s people. They may even have heard some of that cruelty from nobles of their own class.

  Dovasary continued, “Your Kyprish is very good—you barely have an accent.”

  “Thank you, your ladyship,” Aly replied meekly. She knew her accent was not Tortallan. Her teachers had come from Imahyn Isle and had pronounced her Kyprish as perfect. The Balitangs spoke with a Rajmuat accent.

  “My sister asked you a question,” Saraiyu said imperiously. “Are you from Tortall?”

  Aly bowed her head, every inch of her the perfect servant. “Yes, your ladyship.”

  Dovasary plopped herself down beside Elsren and pulled him onto her lap. Aly disentangled her fingers from his belt. “Then you know stories of the King’s Champion there, the one they call the Lioness!” she said eagerly. For the first time since Aly had seen her, the younger girl’s eyes were alive with interest. “Tell us some!”

  “Is she really ten feet tall?” asked Petranne.

  Saraiyu settled neatly beside Aly, disposing her cotton skirts perfectly. Waving her fan, she asked, “Is the Lioness as good with a sword as they say? The duchess made me stop my sword lessons.” Her voice turned frosty as she spoke of her stepmother. “She said they were unladylike.”

  Aly scratched her head to cover her confusion. Can I talk of Mother as if I’d never seen her in my life? she wondered. No—as if I’d seen her once or twice, at a distance. They’ll expect that. When Chenaol and Ulasim had first brought her to Balitang House, the steward had questioned her about her origins. Aly had claimed then that she’d been a merchant’s daughter and a maid at Fief Tameran, south of Pirate’s Swoop. The household there had been close to the Grand Progress several years ago. Everyone would have turned out to see the monarchs, the prince and princess, and the King’s Champion ride by.

  Now she folded her hands in her lap. “The Lioness is really that good with a sword, your ladyship,” she replied to Sarai, this time acting the role of a polite servant. “King’s Champion isn’t a title for decoration. Every time a noble demands a challenge to settle a matter of law, the Champion must fight and win for the Crown.”

  “What happens when she loses?” asked Petranne.

  Aly looked at the child, startled. “She doesn’t.”

  “But everybody loses sometime,” Sarai told Aly.

  “Not the Lioness,” Aly said, her mind scrambling. Mother lose? How could she? “Not since she’s been Champion, that I know of.” Remember, you only know the stories, she ordered herself.

  “She must have lost sometimes, when she was training, maybe even when she first got her shield,” Dovasary pointed out. “And Tortall’s at war—she could be killed in that.”

  Aly’s pulse raced. She fought to sound natural, to keep from showing her distress at the idea. “Oh, well, training and that, everyone loses,” she said with a shrug when she was sure of her control. “But the war’s a year old already, and the Lioness is hale enough. She visited her home just before I was taken.” If Alanna was killed in the fighting this year, she would die without Aly having said goodbye.

  “Tell us,” begged Saraiyu, leaning forward, her dark eyes eager. “Tell us how she came to be the Champion. Tell us how she found the Dominion Jewel. Tell us everything.”

  Aly only had time to tell them the story of how the Lioness had brought the Dominion Jewel home to her king. Then Duchess Winnamine declared it was time for the children to study. Even Elsren had lessons in counting to do. Aly remained topside, relieved of her duties for the time being. She stood at the rail, enjoying the calls of colorful birds, the clear blue water under the ship’s prow, and the sheer loveliness of the spring day.

  She registered movement along the cliff tops on either side of the strait. Aly sharpened her Sight for a good look. Her fingers clenched on the rail as she realized that she saw hundreds of copper-skinned raka, men and women alike, dressed in the traditional wrapped jacket or round-collared tunic, and the tied skirtlike wrap called a sarong. Some wore garments that were richly decorated and jeweled, with more jewelry on their fingers and at their throats. Others wore plain colors with embroidery and strings of beads for ornament. The women drew their straight black hair away from their faces in a double-domed style, much like that of Yamani women, while the men wore headbands, turbans, or hats. The raka groups were of all ages, from the smallest infants to the oldest adults. They stood in silence, as far as Aly could tell, watching as the Balitang vessel passed by.

  She turned to look back down the strait, to check whether the natives watched all shipping out here. Two vessels earlier had overtaken the three that carried the duke’s household. No other ships followed in their wake, and nowhere did she see people on the cliffs behind them. The raka left as soon as the duke’s ship drew out of easy view.

  She tugged at a sailor’s arm as he coiled rope on the deck. “Do they always do that?” she asked, pointing at their audience. “Come and see boats go by? They don’t look like they mean to attack.”

  The half-raka man looked at her, then at the cliffs. “No,” he said quietly, “they do not do that. They prefer to remain unseen when the luarin pass.” He touched Aly’s slave collar. “Do not draw attention to it,” he said, nodding toward the duke and duchess, who sat at a small table in the bow playing chess. “The luarin get uneasy when the raka do things they don’t understand.”

  I want to understand. Aly thought it, but she did not say it. She doubted that the sailor would confide in her. One thing seemed obvious: something about these ships drew the interest of many people on the two islands. The raka faces, when she used her magical Sight to better examine them, were expectant and eager. The sailor had told her the watchers were not typical. Something about the duke’s party drew their attention.

  His servants? Aly wondered, drumming her fingers on her thigh as she turned the matter over in her mind. Or his oldest daughters? Mequen was a Rittevon, a lesser one, but still of the line of the luarin conquerors.

  Belowdecks she heard Elsren yell, “I want up!” Aly’s rest time was over.

  Before she fetched the child, Aly took one more look at the cliffs. The raka they had passed were leaving, returning to their jungle towns and their luarin masters’ estates.

  That night after supper the duke and duchess read to their younger children from a book of raka myths. Aly returned to the ship’s rail to watch the cliffs around their anchorage, a small cove on Kypriang’s lush western shore. The night, warm and damp, folded around her like a blanket. With her magical vision she didn’t need light to see the raka, standing or seated on rocks that overlooked the cove. It seemed they required no light, either. Lamps burned only aboard the trio of ships that rocked on the gentle waters. The moon had just begun to show its rim over the mountains that formed Kypriang Isle’s spine.

  “They’re our people, too.” Twelve-year-old Dovasary rested her hands on the rail as she came to stand beside Aly. She spoke in Common, not Kyprish. “Our mother—Sarai’s and mine—was a raka. Sarugani of Temaida. Her family was of the older nobility, from before the luarin came, but they don’t have a title higher than baron now.”

  “They’re lucky to have that much. None of o
ur raka family talks about who they were or what they did before the invasion,” Saraiyu remarked quietly. She came to lean on the rail on Aly’s other side. “They must have seen their friends being slaughtered or sold. They would have beggared themselves with the conquest taxes rather than suffer the same fate.”

  “You’re half luarin yourself,” replied Aly, her voice idle, her attention apparently on the shoreline. “Begging your ladyship’s pardon.”

  “That would be the half that cousin Oron seems determined to murder or disgrace,” Sarai pointed out. “Even a madman should have more care for his own blood kin, particularly given the nest of vipers at court.”

  Aly smoothed a hand over the rail. “Forgive me for saying it, but your ladyship comes close to treasonous talk,” she murmured. “I’d as soon be with the part of the family that’s exiled but alive.”

  “You won’t betray us,” Saraiyu replied casually. “I don’t know about Tortall, but here the entire household is executed along with the suspected traitor. Then they sell the one who reported their masters, if they’re known, to Carthak.”

  “Ouch,” said Aly, meaning it. “That’s not the way to create support among the lower classes.”

  “The thinking is that a servant of traitors who turns the traitors in is doubly treasonous, to her master as well as the king,” Dovasary explained. “They like to nip that sort of thing in the bud.”

  Sarai turned to face east, watching the moon rise, leaning back on the rail with her elbows and rump. The torchlight slid along her long, barely hooked nose and over a full, sensual lower lip, then flickered along the curved lines shaped by her plain pink luarin-style gown. It lent sparkle to her brown eyes and caressed her perfectly arched brows and high cheekbones.

  “Is it so hard, being half raka?” Aly wanted to know. “All Rajmuat—even a fresh-caught luarin slave like me—knows the lady Saraiyu is considered one of the beauties of the city.”