Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

  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.

  Aly looked around the room and spied a pitcher and cups on a tray. The pitcher held water. She poured some into a cup and offered it to Winnamine. The older woman took it with both hands and drank. When she had composed herself, she said evenly, “His Majesty dreamed that his son Hanoren turned into a rat and bit him. Hanoren and all his household were nailed to crosstrees along Rajmuat harbor.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Needless to say, shipping fell off badly that year.”

  Aly started to say she knew the story, but held her tongue. It was not something a country maid would have heard.

  “Now my lord and I are out of royal favor,” Winnamine said, returning her cup to Aly. “The king might still dream about us. And here is Bronau. His could be the breath of wind that knocks us into Rajmuat harbor.”

  Aly removed her leggings and pulled the clean clothes on, watching the duchess through her eyelashes. “Is this your only reason for calling on me, Your Grace?”

  Winnamine twisted a handkerchief in her fingers. “Bronau is amusing, charming, and careless. He goes after what he wants. When he doesn’t want it anymore, he drops it. We live on the edge of the king’s suspicions, Aly, and Bronau doesn’t think. The god says we must trust your insights. I mean to place you where you will get them.” She got to her feet and left as Aly straightened her clothes.

  Watching the duchess go, Aly glimpsed a flicker of orange the shade of Dove’s gown as the door opened. She wondered how long Dove had been listening. If Dove was going to make a habit of it, she ought to learn that anyone who looked at the opening between door hinges would see a color that didn’t match that of the door.

  The duchess returned with the wine tray, two pitchers, and cups. “Don’t kneel, just bow. Serve the prince first,” she told Aly. “The pitcher with the mermaid on the grip is for Mequen. The wine in it is well watered. Fill Bronau’s cup as often as you can, of course. Wine always loosens his tongue, another thing that makes him a perilous friend.”

  Aly nodded. Balancing it carefully, she carried the heavy tray up the stairs to the family’s private chambers.

  A footman let her into the duke’s sitting room, now given over to the prince. Mequen and Bronau sat in chairs on either side of a table, perfectly relaxed. Aly bowed and set the tray down, ignoring the duke’s questioning eyes. She poured out a cup of wine from the unmarked pitcher for the prince and one from the mermaid pitcher for the duke. Mequen accepted the cup with a slight frown. “Will Her Grace not be joining us?” he asked, obviously puzzled.

  “She is finding quarters for His Highness’s servants and guards,” Aly said with a polite bow. “She sends her regrets.”

  Mequen’s frown deepened. “Then why does she not ask the house—” He stopped abruptly, then sighed. “I had forgotten. We no longer have a housekeeper.” To Bronau he said, “I didn’t realize what a spoiled creature I had become until we had to make do with twenty-odd servants and slaves instead of over a hundred. I think you’ll like this vintage, Your Highness.” To Aly he said, “Stand by the far wall, please, Aly. Out of earshot.”

  As she obeyed, Bronau asked, “Do your people expect us to drink ourselves under the table, sending up two pitchers?” He and Mequen touched cups and tasted their wine.

  “Actually, I’ve been drinking the local brew, to help the villagers make a little extra coin against the winter,” the duke replied easily. “It’s crude stuff, but if I don’t drink it after I buy it, they’ll return my money. Proud people, these highlanders. I won’t subject you to it. What you have is a proper wine laid down by my father.”

  “It has a southern taste,” Bronau admitted, drinking. “You coddle your people, Mequen.”

  “It would be different in Rajmuat,” Mequen admitted. “We’re isolated here, and must depend on these folk to get us through the winter.”

  Aly took her place and read the men’s speech on their lips. She also employed her Sight to catch any lies.

  “King Oron has turned that suspicious gaze on me now,” Bronau told his friend. “The old man gets stranger with each sunrise. He’s hiding in his quarter of the palace, has been for weeks. All of his food is tested for poison. He had your old friend Athan Fajering executed for—are you ready for this?—wrong thoughts.”

  Mequen turned white under his summer tan. “But Athan was his chancellor for eighteen years!”

  Bronau nodded. “He was also an enemy of my dear sister-in-law Imajane, and my charming brother Rubinyan. You know Rubinyan has never been that fond of me,” Bronau continued. “When Oron started to watch me, I started to think that Imajane and Rubinyan might well decide to inform him that I have ‘bad thoughts,’ too.”

  Mequen sighed, shaking his head. “I wish that you and Rubinyan would reconcile. It grieves me that my two best friends are at odds. And I think you wrong your brother, suggesting that he is turning the king against you. Rubinyan is a good man,” he said earnestly, almost pleading. “He is reserved, and hard to know, but he is a wise and strong ally.”

  Bronau shook his head. “You always think the best of people, Mequen. If he is so good, why didn’t he come to see you off?”

  After a few more attempts, Mequen gave up trying to get the prince to see his brother in a kinder light. “One day, mark my words, you’ll change your tune about Rubinyan,” he said.

  “The two of them are isolating that old fool Oron,” Bronau said after his fourth cup of wine. “Soon he’ll see only Imajane and Rubinyan, and one day they’ll come to tell the court he’s dead. They also spend plenty of time with Prince Hazarin,” the prince confided. “I have to hope they don’t turn Oron’s most likely heir against me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mequen assured him. “Hazarin likes you. He always says the rest of court’s much too grim when you’re away.”

  “The rest of the court is terrified of Oron,” Bronau replied with a laugh. “They don’t dare twitch.”

  At last Winnamine came to say a hot bath awaited Bronau. Mequen shooed Aly out. She gathered up the wine tray and cups while he and Winnamine told Bronau they would see him at supper. Once they were outside, Winnamine put the tray on a side table and indicated that her husband and Aly should go upstairs. She led the way into the sitting room of what had once been Sarai and Dove’s chambers. Neither girl was in sight.

  The duke and duchess took seats as Aly checked the door to the servants’ stair. She could hear the maids preparing rooms for the prince and his servants. To be on the safe side, when she closed the door, she pulled the carpet up until it covered the space where the door didn’t quite touch the stone floor, and stuffed the rag she used as a handkerchief in the keyhole. Then she covered the crack under the main door. She found a dust cloth and stuffed a corner of it into the keyhole. Then she opened the door to the older girls’ bedchambers so that she would see if anyone came in that way. At last she nodded to her masters.

  Mequen looked at his wife. “My dear, why send Aly to wait on us?” he wanted to know. “I know you were busy with your domestic arrangements, but surely one of the girls with experience waiting on the nobility would have served.” He smiled kindly at Aly. “Though you did a creditable job.”

  “Aly isn’t used to Bronau as we are, my dear,” Winnamine explained. “She might see what would be hidden to us. And she has certain useful skills.”

  “Useful?” Mequen asked, raising his brows at Aly.

  “I read lips, Your Grace,” Aly said meekly. “And I can tell you that the prince is telling the truth about why he came.”

  “What? How could you possibly know that?” the startled duke demanded.

  “Liars blink more when they lie, or they lo
ok away while they answer,” Aly explained. She did not want anyone to know about her Sight if she could help it. Only a fool told all of her secrets. “The prince is frightened.” She looked at the duke. “Did you see he was sweating when he talked about the situation at court?”

  Mequen raised his eyebrows. “All of us sweat when we think of the royal court,” he said drily. “I am so accustomed to it that I didn’t even notice. Truly, the god blessed us when he sent you.” He held Aly’s gaze with his own. “But he didn’t bless you, did he?”

  “I am Your Grace’s servant,” Aly told him, wide-eyed and earnest.

  “Very courtier-like,” remarked the duke. “One would think you a practiced associate of kings.”

  Aly had to shoo him away from this line of thought. She beamed at him. “So many compliments from Your Grace tonight!” she said, allowing her lashes to flutter. “I will become conceited, and the other servants will be hurt that they have not drawn your gracious attention.”

  “Aly, the Players lost a star performer when you didn’t elect to train as a professional fool,” the duchess said with a smile.

  Aly shrugged comically. “The Players’ loss is Your Graces’ gain,” she said, then added as a deliberate afterthought, “Mine, too, of course.” She looked at the duke. “Truly, Your Grace, why fidget over what use the god makes of insignificant me?”

  “Because I receive better service from someone who is happy,” replied Mequen. “Because you are not insignificant, however much you may jest about it. And we know so little about you, except that bright Mithros says you will guide us through great trouble. Don’t blame a man for curiosity, messenger.” He looked at his duchess and sighed. “Well, my dear?”

  From the corner of her eye, Aly saw orange cloth in the crack between the door to the bedroom and the wall. She really would have to suggest better ways for Dove to eavesdrop.

  “We can accommodate them. Barely,” Winnamine replied, bringing Aly’s attention back to the duke and duchess. “We’re putting his men-at-arms up in the new barn. They’re not at all pleased, but they have no choice. What of our people? Shall we send them out of the great hall at mealtimes?”

  Mequen shook his head. “Perhaps if Bronau sees how limited our space is, he’ll rusticate somewhere else. Besides, our people earn their place in the hall through their work.”

  Realizing they had finished with her, Aly murmured a farewell, bowed, and went to the main door of the suite. Carefully she returned the rug to its correct position and removed the dust cloth from the keyhole.

  “You’ll remember to pour the wine at the head table at supper, won’t you, Aly?” asked the duchess.

  Aly turned and bowed. “Of course, Your Grace.”

  First she ought to see to her goats. When she went outside, she found the inner courtyard awash in Bronau’s people, as well as anyone from Tanair who had a reasonable excuse to be present. The only quiet place was the spot near the guard barracks where Nawat worked at his bench in the sun, gluing feathers to arrow shafts. For once he wasn’t encircled by admiring females. Aly hesitated, then walked across to him.

  Nawat didn’t even look up from the painstaking task of setting a goose feather in its bed. “Your feathers are ruffled,” he said.

  “Well, it’s very exciting, having visitors and all,” she said, looking at the new arrivals.

  “You act like a flock when a snake crawls by,” the crow-man pointed out. “If that is excitement, it is not the good kind. Do you wish to mob them, to drive them away?”

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” she informed him, smiling. For all his human guise, he was still very much a crow. Impulsively she asked, “Did you get a look at him? The prince?”

  “The one with fox-colored hair? He came to see me work.” Nawat looked up at Aly and grinned, white teeth flashing against his tanned skin. “I did it badly.”

  “What do you make of him?” Aly wanted to know. “Or did you not have time to get a sense of him?”

  He replied with a wing shrug, then said, “I do not need time. I know a hawk when I see one.”

  “A hawk?” she repeated, thinking he had recognized Bronau’s hunter bird look.

  “A hawk,” Nawat said firmly, his eyes on his work once more. “He will drive you off your own kill and steal your nestlings. He should be mobbed, before he steals any of yours. Shall you and I mob him?”

  Aly tugged her ear, frowning. Somehow Nawat didn’t have the same view of hawks as that held by people who’d been born human. “Unlike a hawk, Bronau comes with a flock of soldiers. You and I are outnumbered.”

  “We could mate,” Nawat suggested eagerly. “In a year our nestlings would be large enough to mob anyone we like. In two or three years we could have still more nestlings, until no hawk will venture near our territory. Shall I court you? Do you like grubs or ants better?”

  Aly smiled, finding him both silly and lovable. “It takes longer for human nestlings to get big enough to mob,” she explained, wondering if Aunt Daine’s conversations with animals were like this. “And I’m too busy to court. I’ve the goats to fetch, for one.”

  “I will be here,” Nawat said placidly, returning to his work. “In case you change your mind about mating.”

  Aly brought her animals in early, then spent the afternoon idling around Bronau’s people. All of them were relieved to be away from the king. They spoke of the arrival of more Stormwings, and of the many noble families who had decided to summer in the country. Only those who feared that the king would consider their departure suspicious had remained at court. Prince Hazarin was the only noble who acted as he had always done, drinking and attending parties in the pleasure district night after night.

  When Bronau joined the Balitangs for supper, he brought gifts for the family. For Mequen and Winnamine he had newly published sets of books, which they received with true enthusiasm. A soldier marionette went to Elsren, a gorgeous doll dressed in Yamani fashions to Petranne, and a history of Carthak to Dove.

  For Sarai, Bronau produced eardrops that were clusters of tiny peach-colored moonstones the same golden tint as her cheeks, and a gold necklace with a matching pendant. Sarai was overwhelmed. She immediately removed her white pearl eardrops and donned the new ones in their place. When she fumbled with the catch on the necklace, Bronau offered to help. Sarai lifted the heavy braided coils of her hair so that he could see better. With the necklace fastened, he turned Sarai to face him as she beamed at him.

  “Lovely,” Bronau said with a tender smile. He took Sarai’s hand and kissed it.

  Aly, standing behind them on the dais, looked at the wine tray she was holding, her mind working busily. Prince Bronau had brought gifts nicely chosen to appeal to each Balitang. It might just be coincidence that his gift to the oldest, marriageable daughter of the house was the kind of token a girl would see as an indication of special affection. It might also be coincidence that his gift had given Bronau a chance to touch Sarai, and Sarai an excuse to let him.

  Aly glanced at Dove. The twelve-year-old held her book open to a detailed map, but her eyes were on Bronau and her sister. Mequen and Winnamine had also seen the exchange between their oldest daughter and their friend.

  A footman collected the books, doll, and marionette as kitchen servants brought out the food. Aly poured wine into the cups of everyone on the dais, then took up the water pitcher. It was customary to dilute supper wine. She used less water for the prince, duke, duchess, and Sarai, and a good bit of it for Dove, Petranne, and Elsren, then took her position behind the prince and the duchess.

  The servants passed along the dais, starting with the prince and ending with Elsren, offering a loaded tray to everyone. The older diners selected the things they wanted, while the healer Rihani chose Petranne’s and Elsren’s meal. The offerings were a mixture of foods of the Eastern Lands, Southern Lands, and raka kitchens. Aly recognized the salad of long beans, chilies, coconut, shrimp paste, and garlic, having sampled it in the leftovers from a meal back
in Rajmuat. There was a noodle salad, another favorite raka dish adopted by the luarin, this one with garlic, chilies, cashews, peanuts, and celery. There were chicken dumplings, dates stuffed with curried jackfruit, and pickled asparagus.

  Looking at it all, Aly shivered. She had eaten a great deal of rice since her arrival in the Isles, to the point where she was beginning to feel a bit grainy. It was hard to trust local fare when there was always a risk that some bright bit of red or green would set her mouth afire, but the diners here, luarin and raka, ate this strange selection as easily as her own family consumed meals of apple fritters, fish pasties, and venison. The chief change to the Balitangs’ diet since their arrival at Tanair was the absence of seafood, which was other- wise the backbone of Isle cooking. She was grateful for the lack. There were too many volcano-blast chilies in the seafood dishes of the Copper Isles.

  During the meal Bronau relayed news of the capital. He described recent plays, performers, and books, and news from the Eastern and Southern Lands. Aly took it all in, noting that Scanra continued to attack Tortall, despite heavy losses and rumors of rebellion among Maggur’s lords. The luarin free servants listened to every word, as did Sergeant Veron and some of his luarin and part-luarin men-at-arms. The raka and many of those who were part raka seemed indifferent. Bronau’s people looked around at their surroundings, obviously unimpressed.

  If you think we’re countrified now, Aly thought evilly, wait till they bring out the dishes made with goat’s milk. That should put a pickle up your noses!

  Petranne and Elsren were soon squabbling, their bellies full. Their nursemaid had to gently scold them several times. Dove was intent on Bronau’s conversation, but what she made of it Aly couldn’t tell. Sarai, too, was listening to the prince, her lovely eyes shining in admiration. Like Dove, Winnamine and Mequen listened with polite interest but without giving away their thoughts. Aly approved. After her observation of the prince, she no more trusted him not to repeat anything the Balitangs might say than she could trust him not to repeat what other nobles had told him since the Balitangs’ departure. Though their remarks were cruel, Bronau didn’t seem to notice that his gossip upset his hosts. Sarai’s admiring mood evaporated as she listened to what their fellow nobles had said of them. She folded her napkin into small pleats, her lips pressed tightly together. The duke and the duchess toyed with their wineglasses, their eyes glittering.