“What are you nosing about for?” demanded one of the men. “Plots, weapons, treachery?”
“Or just something to steal?” asked the biggest man. “As if you luarin left us anything of worth.”
Aly crossed her arms to hide her movements as she freed her wrist knives. “Actually, I’d meant to talk to you about that,” she said cheerfully. “I thought I’d make a list, tell you what I need . . .” She lunged right, clearing that side of her attackers’ line. They charged her and halted, clear of the two blades she now held like the expert she was, one pointed out, one pointed back. She waited, her feet well placed, her balance perfect. It was important that she be careful. Killing one of these people would create more ill will for her and the Balitangs.
The big man came at her, tossing a long knife from one hand to the other like a market-day tough. Aly darted in, knocked the knife flying while it was between his hamlike hands, and jammed the edge of one of her blades up under his chin. His eyes flicked left. Aly snapped out a side kick that forced the man sneaking up on her to stumble away, protecting his bruised arm. On both feet again, she hooked the big man’s legs and yanked his feet from under him, dumping him onto his back. She jumped and landed on his belly with both knees, knocking the wind from his lungs.
A woman threw herself on top of Aly, who rolled away. The woman hit the big man instead, slamming the breath from her own lungs. Aly jumped to her feet and waited, her eyes on one of the men and the other woman. They closed in on her, blades out.
A knife cut the air between the two advancing raka to strike the earth just ahead of them, quivering, planted in the dirt. As the man looked back to find the thrower, Junai advanced, slowly turning her weapon hand over hand. When she passed the two on the ground, she smacked the woman on a kidney with her staff, drawing a yelp of pain. Junai kicked the man in the ankle, her boot slamming a sensitive bunch of muscle. The man swore. The woman facing Aly backed away from Junai, hands raised. The third man, trying to get around her, went down face-first, Nawat on his back.
“Don’t kill him,” Aly told Nawat quickly, not sure what the crow-man would do. “Let him breathe.” She looked at Junai. “Are you going to scold me now? I was handling things myself.”
“How did you do it, back there?” Junai inquired, brows raised. “No magic, no smoke or mist, you were just gone. And I wasn’t born yesterday.”
The woman who held up her hands looked at Junai, then Aly. “She’s that one? But she’s luarin!”
“Don’t talk to me, talk to the god,” Junai replied casually. “That is, if you think you’ll like the way he answers. All of you, memorize her face. Don’t let this happen again.” She looked at Aly and sighed. “They’re getting ready to leave.”
Aly tore off the head cloth and began to rub the sap off her bare skin.
“How did you leave?” Nawat wanted to know. “Even I lost you until I heard the village dogs bark about a fight.”
Aly shrugged, finding clean spots on the cloth to take off each patch of color. “That’s what I do,” she told him. “That’s why I’m here.” She resheathed her knives, then picked up the basket she had dropped.
“Do you speak only dog, or the language of all animals?”
“All animals,” Nawat replied. “Is that good?”
“It could be,” Aly replied. Passing the two on the ground—the woman who lay, both hands pressed to her kidney, the man clutching his ankle—she stopped and smiled. “It was ever so lovely to meet you,” she said politely. “Let’s do it again. Don’t let me see that cheap brawler’s trick a second time,” she added, nudging the man with her foot. “Any decent fighter will take you when you don’t have hold of your weapon.”
She tucked her disguise into her cloth bag, stowed it in her basket, which had been tossed aside in the fight, and walked back to the horses. By the time she and Nawat reached them, and Junai faded to wherever Junai kept herself, the nobles had said farewell to the Pohon elders. Only when they had ridden out of the village did Aly relax and review how she had done. Not so well, she decided. She was rusty. She had used too many flashy moves of her own. She needed to practice more.
As they turned toward home, Nawat fell back. He was on foot now, the wood and arrow shafts he had collected in the villages bundled and strapped to his horse’s back.
Dove joined Aly. “Did you see how they were, in the villages?” Dove asked, keeping her voice low. “The prince wasn’t even trying to be discreet at Inti. No wonder the raka hate us.”
“Us?” Aly repeated.
Dove looked sideways at Aly. “The luarin. We stole their country, killed most of their nobles, put thousands in near slavery, and made the rest complete slaves. I’d hate us, in their place.”
“But you’re not the same,” Aly pointed out. “You and Sarai are half raka.”
“Some villagers in Pohon saw the luarin half before the raka half,” retorted Dove. “I noticed, even if you didn’t.”
“Oh, I got a good idea of it,” Aly murmured.
Sarai let out a cascade of laughter. The prince smiled. Clearly he’d said something to amuse her.
“She’s half in love with him,” Dove said, her eyes on the man who rode between her sister and stepmother. “They’d do more than talk if the duchess left them alone.”
“Only half in love?” To Aly it seemed as if Sarai was head over heels.
“She can’t forget his money problems,” Dove commented. “I’m not helping. Whenever she starts to gush I mention his debts. And she’s no fool. She knows she has no fortune, just some land. So why does he court her? She’s forgotten all about the boy from Matebo House who made up to her in Rajmuat. It used to be I couldn’t get her to shut up about him. But Bronau pours on the honey, and Sarai goes all gooey-eyed.”
Aly saw it then, as clearly as if she’d read Bronau’s plans in one of his hidden letters. “Dove, Prince Hazarin is next in line for the throne, isn’t he? Then who’s after him—Princess Imajane?”
Dove shook her head. “Female. She can’t inherit under luarin law. Hazarin doesn’t have children—and the way he lives, nobody expects it. His only heir is Prince Dunevon, and he’s just three. He’s the only child of Oron’s third queen. She’s dead. I suppose Oron would put Dunevon under the guardianship of Hazarin or Imajane and her husband. Or just Imajane and Rubinyan if Hazarin was king.”
Aly smoothed the reins over her hand. That matched reports on the kingship of the Isles she had read at home. “And if something happened to Hazarin and Dunevon?”
“No, they’re healthy enough,” Dove said automatically. Then her golden cheeks paled. “Papa. Papa’s next in line.”
“Sarai would be a crown princess,” Aly pointed out, her voice soft. “So would you, and Petranne. Elsren would be a prince.” Aly hesitated, then continued, hoping she did not make a mistake with this girl. “Rubinyan married into the royal family,” Aly reminded Dove. “Maybe Bronau wants to do the same.”
Dove chewed her lower lip. “This is too deep for me. We need to tell the duchess. Though if she likes Bronau . . .”
So Dove, at least, now thought of her stepmother as an ally. Aly was relieved to hear it. “She likes him, but she knows he is not as careful as she would like,” she told Dove. “Her Grace would listen.”
“Why did he come?” Dove whispered, glaring at Bronau. “We’re in trouble enough with the Crown. We don’t need more of the king’s attention.”
“I don’t believe the prince thought about that,” Aly replied. “Only about what he wants.”
Supper that night was over in the main hall. The conspirators, Nawat, and Aly had just finished their night’s meeting. Aly was about to leave to report to the Balitangs when Ulasim grabbed her arm.
“Just what did you think you were doing, in Pohon today?” he asked quietly. “You gave Junai the slip. You left your companions to walk through a notoriously hostile village alone, for what reason? To learn they have nothing? That under the luarin they are nothing, when
once they gave birth to queens?”
Aly glanced at the hand on her arm, then looked at Ulasim and raised an eyebrow. He met her gaze, his grip still firm.
“Surely Junai told you I can take care of myself,” Aly said very gently.
“Not against a group,” Ulasim told Aly. “Why? The god cannot watch you always. No god can. And you are too wise to take foolish chances, Aly of the crooked eye.”
“Don’t call me that,” Aly replied. “It hurts my feelings. And Pohon isn’t so badly off, not with five arms caches that I could see on a casual walk. There is also that herd of very fine horses recently moved outside the wall. I am assuming that was so we couldn’t notice how well mounted the Pohon raka are. I didn’t get into any of the barns, but blaze balm has a distinctive smell.”
Ulasim’s eyes went wide. His hold on Aly tightened.
Aly sighed and grabbed his little finger, forcing it back against its normal curve. “Now, be nice. You might startle me into breaking your finger,” she pointed out as beads of sweat formed on Ulasim’s forehead. “Think how unfriendly that would be. It’s not like you don’t trust me, after all. I am the god’s chosen.”
Ulasim let her go. She released his finger. “I’m Tortallan, remember?” she asked. “As long as the Balitangs and I live out the summer, I don’t care what the raka are up to. I’d move the blaze balm, though. Bronau’s served in combat. If he smells it the Pohon folk will be in trouble with the Crown. I was looking for a mage.”
Ulasim massaged the finger she had bent, eyeing her with respect. When she said “mage,” his eyebrows shot up. “Junai said you’d been at her about that. We told you, there isn’t one.”
“And I took it as a nice, polite lie between allies,” Aly said reasonably. “But our guest’s presence makes me uneasy. The longer he stays, the more likely he’ll draw attention this way, attention nobody wants. My task here is quite simple, Ulasim. I’m to keep this family safe. That doesn’t mean dealing with a threat when it actually comes; it means preparing for them in advance. For that, I require a true mage, not a healer with a few extra spells, like Rihani. The raka have one. I need her.”
Ulasim sighed, and rubbed his forehead. “She doesn’t live in Pohon. And you must be patient. Junai is working on her.”
Aly leaned against a nearby wall and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “Junai is working on her?”
“And others,” mumbled Ulasim.
“Why is Junai important enough that this recluse will speak with her?” Aly pressed, knowing there was a secret here, and wanting it.
Ulasim smoothed his hand over his short, neat beard. “Because Ochobu is her grandmother. But I wouldn’t count on her help, Aly. I really wouldn’t. She said when she disowned me that it would take a miracle for her to even come downwind of me again.”
Now Aly knew the secret. “Your mother?”
“Who cast me out,” Ulasim explained. “My father was dying, and she summoned me home. I didn’t feel I could leave the young ladies. Mother never forgave me.”
Aly straightened and dusted off her tunic. “Well, we’ll just have to think of a miracle, then,” she told Ulasim. “Or rather, I will. You think of what to say to her when you see her again.”
Ulasim grabbed Aly’s arm, gently this time. “Don’t ask the god,” he begged. “You don’t know what he might do.”
Aly smiled grimly. “Don’t worry,” she reassured the tall man. “I already know better than to call on gods casually. But there are miracles, and there are miracles. I just need to think of one.”
Midsummer’s Day, June 22, 462 H.E.
Trebond, in northern Tortall
It was another of those not-quite-dreams that Aly knew Kyprioth had sent. The Kyprioth dreams always felt like everyday life, except that she was a ghost and the dream ended before dawn in the Copper Isles.
This dream had a familiar background: the towers of her mother’s former home, Trebond, rising on a bluff just to the west. The ghost Aly stood in a woodland clearing that was filled with creatures one expected to see in dreams. A handful of Stormwings, one of them a glass-crowned queen, perched in the trees. Beside them stood a basilisk, a seven- foot-tall lizard-like immortal with skin like beads of different shades of gray, lighter on its back, darkening to thunderhead gray on its belly. A gray pony stood beside the basilisk, thoughtfully cropping grass. On her back perched five tiny monkey-like creatures, pygmy marmosets, nibbling on raisins as they looked around. Wolves, squirrels, golden eagles, horses, ponies, and dogs lined the edges of the clearing, the squirrels and the dogs tucked behind the horses, where they kept an eye on the wolves.
Among the humans Aly recognized her foster uncle Coram, Baron of Trebond, and his wife, Aly’s aunt Rispah. With them stood a tall older man with silver-blond hair and tanned skin. A peculiar creature Aly knew as Bonedancer—a kind of bat-bird skeleton—rode on his shoulder, peering this way and that, fascinated with its surroundings. As Aly watched, the skeleton took flight, soaring on bone wings with invisible feathers, to land on the pony with the marmosets. One of them politely handed the skeleton something to eat.
Present also were Onua Chamtong and Sergeant Ogunsanwo of the Queen’s Riders, the former Rider commander, Buri, and her new husband, Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak. Aly saw her own mother, and Lord Wyldon of Cavall, one of the commanders of the northern armies. Lord Wyldon stood on the far side of the clearing from Alanna and eyed her much as the squirrels eyed the wolves. Aly’s grandmother Eleni was at the center of the clearing, dressed as a priestess of the Great Goddess. Aly’s grandfather Myles was there, too.
Near Eleni were Numair and Daine, dressed in their finest clothes. Between them they held a blanket like a hammock, each of them gripping two ends of it. The blanket writhed as if a score of creatures did battle for room inside it. Once a pair of hooves thrust through an opening. A moment later a snake’s tail fell out of one end.
Aly’s father rode into the clearing on a lathered horse and slid from the saddle. He rushed over to kiss Daine’s cheek and clap Numair on the shoulder, then looked at his wife. Aly’s mother eyed her husband strangely, her violet eyes cold. She jerked her chin up in some kind of challenge. George frowned, then went to her. He leaned down and whispered something in her ear; Aly saw her mother’s mouth shape the words “Not now.” George straightened, puzzled. Aly, too, was puzzled. Why was her mother angry with Da?
“I’m sure they’ll be here any moment,” Daine told Eleni. “Ma said the Great Gods ag—” She and Numair buckled, the weight in the blanket hammock suddenly large and rounded. A moment later they could raise the hammock again. Daine smiled apologetically at Aly’s grandmother, who eyed the surging blanket as if it were dangerous. “Baby river horse,” Daine explained with a blush.
“I can’t begin to imagine nursing her—him—it,” Eleni said, fumbling.
“It’s a challenge,” replied Daine, determinedly cheerful as she and Numair struggled to keep the squawking contents of the blanket steady.
The air behind Eleni shimmered silver. Two people stepped through. One was a man, over six feet in height, clad only in a loincloth. His skin was green-streaked brown; from his curly brown hair sprouted a rack of antlers that would have made an elk proud. His companion was gowned all in green, with a mist-fine green veil over her hair and face.
These were Daine’s parents, Aly realized in wonder. These guests were divine ones: the hunt god Weiryn, whose territory included the mountains of Galla and Scanra, where Daine had grown up, and his wife, Sarra, Daine’s mother, known as the Green Lady. After she had joined Daine’s father in the Divine Realms, Sarra had become a minor goddess of healing. She appeared to those who lived in and around the village where, in her mortal days, she had raised Daine and served as a midwife. Since the two were restricted to the Divine Realms after their involvement in the Immortals’ War, Aly could only guess that they had gotten special permission to cross over on Midsummer’s Day for the naming of their grandchild.
The gods nodded to Eleni, who curtsied deeply to them. The other humans in the clearing bowed or curtsied as well. Daine and Numair could do nothing but nod. Their child’s latest shape change had sent quills shooting through the fabric of its blanket.
“Now, this will not do.” The Green Lady raised her veil, revealing a pretty face crowned by blond hair. Aly could see how, as a mortal, Sarra had won the love of a god. Sweetness shone from her face and eyes and turned her voice into music. “Really, dear, you must be firm with children.”
Daine’s mouth curled down wryly. “It’s hard to reason with a six-week-old, Ma.”
“We did try,” added Numair, his gaze sharp as he looked at his mother-in-law. “Every way that we could.”
Sarra walked over and reached into the hammock blanket, pulling out a wolf puppy. It turned instantly into a young giraffe, then a gosling. Whatever shape it took, Sarra held it firmly. “Now see here, youngster,” she informed her grandchild, “you ought to be ashamed, wearing your parents out all the time. And this kind of thing isn’t good for you. You’ll exhaust yourself before you’re ten. Enough. Choose a shape and a sex and stick to it, right now.” She listened for a moment, then shook her head. “Five years at least. Learn the limits of one body. Then, if you’re good, you may try others. Now choose.”
A moment later she held a human baby girl in her hands. The child looked up at her with wide, solemn eyes. Sarra gave her to Daine. “She’ll be good now,” the goddess told her daughter. “And in the future, don’t shape-shift while you’re pregnant. It gives them the wrong idea.”
The naming proceeded from there.
Sergeant Ogunsanwo, Onua, and Aly’s mother and father served as godsparents for the new child. Afterward the guests came with gifts and good wishes for the baby. Numair and Daine stood as if a boulder had been lifted from their shoulders, beaming like the happy parents they were. Aly couldn’t imagine what it had been like for them, with a newborn that changed shape so often. Aly had cared for human and animal babies and had been exhausted by them even when they didn’t shape-shift.
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