Trickster's Choice

by Tamora Pierce

  “Stop!” she yelled over the noise. “Bronau is dead! Put down your arms!”

  A ruffian grinned up at Aly, his face a blood-streaked mask. “If he’s dead, we’ll take as we like!” he shouted. “Lots of fine wenches here, and the men will be worth sommat as slaves.”

  “Oh, we make very bad slaves,” someone announced from the main door.

  For a moment there was only silence in the great hall. Everyone turned to look at the speaker. It was Nawat. He stood with a bow at the ready, an arrow on the string. Calmly he shot the man who had taunted Aly. The invader fell, in silence. Behind Nawat stood nearly thirty half-naked people, their hair and skin dotted with clumps of gleaming black feathers. Each held a crude weapon of some kind, sickles, hay rakes, cleavers, and kitchen knives.

  Nawat placed another arrow on the string. “You were wrong to come here,” he said, and shot a man in a chain mail shirt. With that shot the paralysis that had seized the enemy at the sight of Nawat’s allies shattered. Trapped between Ulasim and his fighters and Nawat’s transformed crows, Bronau’s men fought for their lives, and lost them. The crow-people were fast, strong, and merciless. Ulasim and his raka battled ferociously.

  Aly watched it all unfold, leaning against the wall as pain throbbed in her chest and broken arm. Only one man reached the stairs where she stood. She gazed at him with the glassy calm of shock, knowing she couldn’t possibly defend herself. He collapsed with two of Nawat’s arrows in his back.

  When the crows and the raka finished, Aly carefully walked down to Nawat. “Ochobu,” she told him. Her head was spinning. Her stomach lurched, a warning that she might throw up.

  “She holds three mages at the village gate.” Nawat selected three arrows with Stormwing fletchings from his quiver. “I will bring her. You sit.”

  Aly sat. Someone took her torch. She propped her forehead on her good hand, watching as sweat dribbled down her face to splash on the bloody stones of the floor. Here came Ulasim, bleeding from an assortment of cuts. Junai followed. She was unmarked except for a long gouge that sliced her shirt and skin from collarbone to navel. Aly mumbled, “My mother has one just like that, only it’s healed.”

  “Shock,” Ulasim said.

  “This is broken,” replied Junai, lifting Aly’s left arm. Aly gasped as the world spun wildly. The gasp brought a stab of agony from her broken ribs.

  “Is anyone alive up there?” Ulasim asked. “Our ladies?”

  Aly bit her tongue to keep from fainting as Junai tied her wrist to a length of wood. “They’re fine,” she said when she could talk again. “It’s the duke who’s hurt.” She looked at the open doors. Here came Nawat, supporting Ochobu. The old woman was pale under her brown skin, but no less ferocious for all that.

  “Idiot luarin thought he could hold me with three mages,” she grumbled as Nawat helped her over to the stair. “Is he alive to learn he can’t?”

  Aly shook her head and gulped. She was well into shock now, and had reached her least favorite stage of it, nausea. Her stomach fought to cast out the remains of her supper. “He’s dead. And His Grace is belly-cut.”

  For once Ochobu did not hesitate at the suggestion that she attend a luarin. Instead she let Ulasim help her upstairs. Junai continued to splint Aly’s arm.

  The great hall fell silent. Everyone cleaned weapons and wounds as they listened to the sounds from the duke’s quarters. It was not long before they heard the wail of a woman whose heart was broken.

  “Bronau couldn’t even judge wounds right,” Aly mumbled. “Saying he might still live.” Tears slid over her dirty cheeks.

  Ulasim walked down the stairs, gray-faced. “His Grace is dead,” he told the household.

  Aly rested her head back against the wall, wincing as she bumped the knot on her skull. A curse on the Jimajens and their power games, she thought bitterly. A curse on the rulers of this country, Rubinyan and Imajane, who let Bronau escape them. I will bring them down. And I will put a half-raka queen on the throne if it’s the last thing I ever do.

  By dawn the changed crow-people had vanished, leaving only some feathers and their abandoned weapons to show they had been there at all. The feathers were set reverently aside by those who cleaned up after the battle.

  They lay their own people to rest in the castle’s ancient burial ground two days later, in a ceremony that lasted from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. Raka came from all over the plateau to bury their folk and to witness the aftermath of Bronau’s greed.

  The tally of the dead was painful. Veron had been killed as he defended the castle gate. It no longer seemed to matter that he’d been a royal spy—in his own way he had been loyal. Old Lokeij was gone, but not before he’d cut down three of the enemy with a scythe. Visda and Ekit had lost their father and older brother, who belonged to the raka patrol that had been overwhelmed by Bronau’s soldiers. Two dead crows were found in the great hall. They were as honored in their burial as if they’d been human. The slave Hasui had let the enemy in; they found her dead outside the kitchen wing. It was impossible to tell who had murdered her, though Aly suspected Chenaol. The raka cook would never forgive such a betrayal. There was Mequen’s body servant to bury, five men-at-arms—three of them the bandits captured on the road from Dimari—and Mequen himself. Fesgao was alive, barely. He attended the funeral on a litter. Winnamine gave him the command of her remaining men-at-arms.

  The next day they burned the enemy dead near the road to Dimari. Among them were the three mages who had kept Ochobu from the castle. Nawat collected his Stormwing-fletched arrows from them before Ochobu put the torch to the pyre. Bronau had a pyre of his own. A stony-faced Winnamine collected his ashes and placed them in a box for Rubinyan.

  With the funerals over, Winnamine retreated to the family’s rooms to mourn her husband. Sarai and Dove took charge of their stepmother and Petranne and Elsren. The younger children were like bewildered ghosts who kept asking for Mequen. Each time they did, Sarai’s eyes overflowed with tears as she hugged them and tried to explain. Dove never wept. Watching her small, set face, Aly wished that the younger girl could weep. At least Aly had Nawat to comfort her, and to comfort. Aly could endure her sorrow, having seen battles and their aftermath before. The Balitangs had not. Nawat had not. Tanair had been a peaceful place before the arrival of Bronau, and Nawat was still young for a crow.

  A week passed before the duchess left her seclusion, pale but steely-eyed. The first person she summoned to her seat in the great hall was Aly. “That comes off,” she said flatly, pointing to Aly’s metal slave collar. “It was pointless before. It is brutally pointless now. You are free under Kyprish law as well as in your own spirit.”

  Aly bowed her head. For once she didn’t argue. The duchess was right. All the plateau knew what she was to the Balitangs now. There was no more advantage to her pretense of being a slave. She reported to the blacksmith. He spoke the spell formula that released the collar, then pulled it open. He even gave her ointment for the red scar at the base of Aly’s neck. When it was off, she visited Nawat. He had resumed his old place in the inner courtyard, sitting at his large bench as he fletched arrows in the morning sun. He squinted up at Aly. “Your metal ring is gone,” he remarked.

  Aly sat gingerly on the far end of his workbench. Ochobu had fixed the breaks in her ribs and arm, to a point. She couldn’t heal Aly completely and still have strength to help the many other wounded. Instead Aly had to move very carefully as her bones, secured by a wrapping around her ribs and a splint on her arm, finished mending the natural way. “Yes, the ring is gone. It didn’t look good on me anyway. Your clan did a wonderful thing for us. Why didn’t they stay?”

  Nawat bird-shrugged. “They’re about—as crows. They don’t like the human shape. They would rather fly.”

  “Well, thank them for me,” Aly told him. “Without them we would have died.”

  “They were just looking after the wager,” Nawat said, putting his arrow aside.

  “That’s right
, Kyprioth had a wager going with the crows, too, separate from the one he’s got with me,” Aly murmured. “What were the crows’ stakes again? I’d forgotten, if I ever knew.”

  “If the crows help you to live through this changing season, we get a gift from the god,” Nawat answered, plainly uninterested. “Now me, I think this form is fine. These human tools interest me.” Meeting Aly’s eyes, he added, “And human women aren’t so bad.”

  Aly jumped to her feet and winced as her ribs complained. “Now, don’t you start. I have too much on my mind.”

  “I know,” said Nawat, looking down at his work. His voice was meek. “And Sarai tells me I must sneak up on you.”

  Aly fled.

  Eight days later, the crows cried the alarm. A full company of one hundred soldiers was marching onto the plateau. When Aly reported it, Winnamine ordered the men-at-arms to the village gates. She followed with a sword at her hip, a bow and a quiver of arrows in her hands. Aly, Sarai, and Dove all raced in her wake, doing their best to keep up with the long-legged woman as they climbed to the watch post over the gate.

  When she saw who now stood outside, Winnamine sighed with relief. Aly peered through an arrow slit to see a face she knew: Bronau’s cold brother, Rubinyan.

  “We’re here for my brother,” Rubinyan called. “Our mages say he came to you.”

  “Wait,” called the duchess. To the girls she said, “Well, I can’t exactly shout the news, can I? They were brothers.” She went out to meet him as Sarai, Dove, Aly, and Fesgao watched. Rubinyan dismounted and went aside to talk with her. When his shoulders drooped, Winnamine motioned for the guards to open the gate.

  To the relief of Tanair’s inhabitants, Rubinyan let his soldiers camp in a field nearby, not inside the walls. He entered the castle with only a body servant for an attendant. As he rode by, the girls could see he’d been weeping—for Mequen, not Bronau, Winnamine told the girls later.

  He spent his first night at Tanair praying for Mequen and Bronau in the village’s Mithran shrine. The following night Rubinyan took supper with the Balitang women in their sitting room. Aly was at hand as wine pourer.

  “Come back to Rajmuat with me,” Rubinyan said, his gray eyes kind as he looked at Winnamine, Sarai, and Dove. His elegant voice sounded warmer than it had in Aly’s dreams of the palace. “Oron’s order of exile was folly. Imajane and I want you to come home.”

  Dove and Sarai turned to Winnamine. They would let her decide.

  Winnamine gave Rubinyan the weariest of smiles. “Truly, I appreciate the offer,” she said. “And I wish to avail myself of it—but will it displease you if I wait until spring? I want to help our people through the winter. Petranne and Elsren would be so upset, uprooting again so soon after Mequen’s . . . And, to be honest, we need time to mourn. You know how courtiers are when they feel you’ve passed beyond what they see as enough time to be sad. They act as if they’re not sorry any longer, so why should you be?”

  “They have no friends of the heart, or they might see how it is, to lose someone they cherish.” Rubinyan grimaced. “Courtiers put friends on and off according to fashion. I have never been able to do so.” His eyes glittered with unshed tears. He looked aside and hastily blotted them away with his napkin.

  Winnamine clasped his arm and squeezed gently. “There. You understand. We will go in the spring, won’t we, girls?”

  Dove and Sarai nodded.

  Covering Winnamine’s hand with his, Rubinyan asked, “I may count on your return?”

  “As soon as it is safe to sail,” Winnamine said.

  Rubinyan nodded. “Very good. Oh—I just remembered. We passed a merchant caravan on our way here. They have supplies for you.”

  He was right. The day after he and his men took the road back to Dimari, Gurhart returned to Tanair. Aly accompanied the young Balitangs to the village to look over the caravan’s goods. They didn’t notice the tall, broad-shouldered man who slid out of one of the wagons after they passed.

  The newcomer walked to the castle and politely requested the honor of a private word with the head of the Balitang family. He emphasized his request with a gold coin to a man-at-arms on duty; another to Fesgao, who still searched him thoroughly for weapons; and finally one more to Ulasim. The footman found Winnamine to report the visitor and the size of the bribes the man had offered.

  “Interesting,” she said. “By all means, I’ll see this Master Cooper—but in the great hall. Ask Ochobu to observe, please, in case he’s a mage. Keep your people out of earshot, but arm them with bows in case he tries something. I don’t want Aly to scold me for carelessness.”

  “Very wise, Your Grace.” Ulasim smiled at his duchess and escorted her downstairs.

  There she found the stranger, a man whose brown hair was lightly shot with gray. He had green-hazel eyes, a big nose, and a mobile, clever mouth. To her experienced eye his clothes looked as if they’d been very good once, but that was some time ago. They were worn but not patched or ragged. When he smiled, he was very charming.

  “I am Duchess Winnamine Balitang, head of this household,” she greeted him from her chair on the dais. She glimpsed Ochobu in the shadows under the main stair. Three men-at-arms, each with a crossbow cocked and ready to shoot, stood by the main door. “How may I help you?”

  The man bowed gracefully. “It is good of you to put it in just that way, Your Grace,” he said. “I’m here as a buyer, if you’ll excuse me for talkin’ business to so grand a lady as yourself. I deal in slaves. I was told your house bought one I had my eye on, down in Rajmuat. I was short on funds then, but I’ve come about since. I’m hopin’ you’ll be minded to sell. She’s a little thing, about five feet six, reddish blond hair, hazel eyes. Greenish, like. Fresh caught out of Tortall she was, then. I heard she was a fighter, so it may be you’ll be glad to get her off your hands.”

  Winnamine smiled thinly and raised her hand to stop him. “This is quite distressing, since you came all this way. I must refuse you. Aly is free. I would take it very much amiss if anyone enslaved her again. She is part of our family now.”

  The stranger looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Forgive my plain speakin’, milady, but that makes no sense. Slaves aren’t family to nobles.”

  “Aly saved my life and those of my children recently. It was not the first time she had done so.” Winnamine swallowed hard and added, “She was injured while trying to save my late husband. We cannot begin to pay her the debt we owe, but we made our start by removing the collar from her neck and burning her sale papers.” She looked the man over. There was something familiar about him, in the raised brow, the crooked smile, and the way he seemed aware of everything around him, even though he spoke only to her. Suddenly she realized what it was, and gave him her own little smile. “But you’re not really here to buy her, are you, sir?” She beckoned to Ulasim, who waited with her guards. The raka came over, his dark eyes suspicious as he looked on their guest. “Ulasim, please have someone fetch Aly from the village,” Winnamine ordered. To the newcomer she said, “Would you like tea?”

  Down by the caravan, Aly was trying to guide Sarai away from a silver-hilted sword that was more useful as jewelry than as a weapon when a footman raced up to them. “Aly, there’s a man looking to buy you up at the castle,” he said, panting. “Her Grace sent me for you.”

  “Nobody’s going to buy our Aly!” snapped Sarai, brown eyes ablaze. “Who is this interloper?”

  Aly and Dove looked at one another and shrugged. Apparently Sarai was in one of her imperious moods. They followed her to the castle while Aly tried to puzzle through who the visitor might be. She knew that Winnamine wouldn’t sell her: she was free, and Winnamine was incapable of playing such a foul trick. But, on the other hand, the duchess had considered the newcomer’s request important enough to fetch Aly from the village.

  Sarai stamped into the castle’s great hall. “What’s this nonsense about buying Aly? She’s free. She can’t leave us.”

  Winnamin
e sat at one of the long tables where the servants ate, drinking tea with a man in a worn brown coat. As he turned, Aly froze in shock.

  Then she threw herself across the room, shrieking, “Da! Da!”

  He knocked a bench over so he could stand and grab her, lifting her in strong arms, holding Aly so tight that her not-quite-healed ribs protested. Aly hugged back just as ferociously, weeping into her father’s sensible wool collar. He smelled of crisp air, wood smoke, and faintly of spices, just as he always did.

  When they finally let each other go, the great hall was empty of anyone but them. The duchess had shooed her astonished children and servants away. George held Aly by the shoulders, inspecting her. “Now,” he said with a frown, “what is this? Broken nose, eyebrow scar—did we raise such a savage?” His lower-class speech was gone, shed with his identity as a buyer of slaves.

  “I did it on purpose, Da,” Aly explained. “So nobody would buy me to pop into bed with them. How’s Mother? How’s the war going? Is she all right? What are Alan and Thom up to? What did Daine and Numair name the baby—the dream was over before I heard it—”

  “Aly, a man can answer only one question at a time,” George interrupted gently. “The war’s winding down to its end at last. King Maggur’s on the run—his own nobles hunt him like a deer. Your mother’s to come home for a winter’s rest. She’s been half sick with worry for you. You’ll see her, and your brothers, when you come home. Alan told us you weren’t dead, but that was all he knew, and he worried. They tell me you’re no longer a slave.”

  Aly’s joy vanished, startling her. Of course he would think she was coming home now. Why did the thought of going back to the Swoop seem bad all of a sudden? What had happened to her? And if she didn’t go back, how would she explain it? “Duchess Winnamine freed me, Da, but that’s not why I didn’t come home. I’d’ve done it as soon as I got here, but . . .” She fumbled for the right words. “Things are complicated.”