Song of the Lioness #4 - Lioness Rampant

by Tamora Pierce

  Roger inspected his fingernails. "Do you?" he inquired in his melodic voice.

  "Of course I don't. I don't trust anyone."

  "Except your sister," Roger pointed out. "What did they say?"

  "Nothing, this time," Thom replied, puzzled. "Usually I get a lecture about my duty to spy on you and report my suspicions, but this time—nothing."

  "I see. Is there word of your twin?"

  Thom glanced sharply at him, a look Roger met with a bland expression. "Jonathan's had word from some Udayan hedgewitch," he said reluctantly. "Sir Raoul found Alanna there. It's possible they'll sail into Port Caynn sometime next week."

  "You must be pleased," Roger murmured. "Didn't I hear somewhere she is prone to seasickness?"

  "Very." Thom grinned. "To think I'd forgotten that."

  "Does gossip say if she found whatever it was that took her to the Roof of the World?"

  For the thousandth time Thom wondered how Roger really felt about the woman who had killed him. "If his Majesty knows, he's keeping quiet about it. We'll find out for ourselves, soon enough. Are you looking forward to her coming home?"

  Picking up a crystal, Roger shrugged. "I plan to stay out of her way. Shall I start on the Dragon-breaker scrolls next?"

  "Do as you like," Thom snapped. "I'm not your jailer or your keeper."

  Roger smiled, turning on his charm. "I owe you a great debt, dear boy. If not for you, I'd be caught still between here and the Realms of the Dead. If I can repay you, I will."

  "They'll never trust you," Thom said, red with shame. "They watch everything you do for a sign you've regained your Gift."

  Roger stood. "Believe me, Thom—if my magic returns, you will be the very first to know."

  THE INN of the Dancing Dove was quiet. It was an hour before sunset, and the city's rogues still prowled the streets. George looked around the empty common room, aware—not for the first time—that he no longer enjoyed being master here.

  In part it was his war with Claw. It had begun when George had visited Port Caynn, to put down a revolt and then to have a love affair with Alanna. Four months ago Claw had moved to become King of the Thieves in George's absence. He had used blackmail to force many to follow him, and then he'd tried to poison George. George had come to the city to save his throne, and Alanna had returned to her Bazhir. George had known then that he'd probably lost her.

  When George was younger, things were different. A would-be king challenged the old one to a fight before witnesses. The winner took the thronelike chair at the Dancing Dove and a tenth of the profit on each major transaction and theft. He gave the choicest jobs and judged quarrels. He was king of the Tortallan underworld and received far more obedience than his people would ever give the King in the palace.

  Claw would not fight. Claw swore loyalty to George while his men attacked George nightly. Many rogues changed their allegiance on a day-today basis, depending on who appeared to be the winner. Only George's oldest friends kept faith with him.

  The only interest George now had in the Rogue was the effort to bring Claw down. And he hoped finding out who Claw really was would help. Myles had put a man to investigating Claw's secret past. The history the one-eyed rogue had given George on his arrival in Corus was as false as his name. In other thieves this hardly mattered, but Claw spoke and acted at times like a noble.

  "Majesty!" A street boy George didn't know rushed in. "Majesty, come quick! Claw's took by Provost-men!"

  George followed the boy through the rear entrance, still deep in thought. When he emerged, a man struck him from behind, knocking him into the mud of the kitchen yard. George cleared two knives from their sheaths at his waist. This is how you pay, he thought grimly as he slashed and struck. You forget to be watchful and the Black God taps your shoulder…

  He slashed again; someone screamed. The man on his back fell off. George lunged to his feet, his knives sweeping in a silver arc. Of the gang surrounding him, he took one in the throat and the next low. A fourth jumped from the kitchen roof onto his shoulders. George rammed backward into a wall to stun his assailant.

  A swordsman attacked. A line of pain streaked from George's shoulder to his thigh. Gritting his teeth, George threw one of his knives, hitting the swordsman in the chest.

  The kitchen yard boiled with enemies. Where were his own people? He found another of his many concealed knives and faced a man with a hand-axe. This one bellowed and charged, but four arrows cut his voice off. He never completed his attack. Black arrows rained as rearing Bazhir warhorses cut off all chances for escape. Within a second the only sound in the kitchen yard was that of the horses.

  "You're lucky I was coming to visit," Myles said as he rode up. Dismounting, he caught George as the thief staggered. "You need a healer!"

  George shook his head, as much to clear it as to say "no."

  "Solom," he muttered. Myles helped him into the Dancing Dove's kitchen. Just inside the door they found old Solom and two serving girls, dead.

  GEORGE was still recuperating in Myles's house two days later when a servant interrupted the knight at his lunch to say Dalil al Marganit awaited him in the library. Myles put down his knife and scrubbed at his face rapidly with a napkin. Al Marganit was the man he'd put to work seeking Claw's true identity. He'd used the little Sirajit agent before and could count on him to find out almost anything.

  When Myles entered the library, the agent rose and bowed. He gestured to the bowl of fruit and the Tyran wine the servants had already brought him, saying, "I am treated like a noble in this house."

  Myles sat behind his desk with a smile. "You deserve that treatment, Dalil. Sit down, please. What have you learned for me?"

  The little man took a notebook from inside his tunic and leafed through blotted pages. Nearsighted, he had to bring the pages so close to his eyes that they tickled his nose. He sneezed. "Regarding the matter of the thief Claw. Hm! Yes! Arrested by my Lord Provost's men two years ago. Charge of suspected robbery, released for lack of evidence. Our Provost is scrupulous in such matters, unlike many in his place, as your lordship knows. Arrested five months ago in the Dock Riots, escaped. He's now sought by Provost's men. They do not look as hard as they might; one assumes he has paid large bribes.

  "I traced the subject Claw to Vedis in Galla, where he claims to originate. He is unknown in the cities Vedis, Nenet, and Jyotis in Galla, all having large communities of thieves. Going by my lord's guess that Claw's accent is that of the Lake Region in Tortall and that Claw was born of nobles either legitimately or illegitimately, I journeyed to the Lake Region with a good drawing of the subject Claw. Here is an accounting of my expenses." He gave Myles a sheet of notepaper, which the knight barely glanced at.

  Al Marganit closed the notebook and looked at Myles. "Claw is Ralon of Malven…"

  Myles turned white. Another of Alanna's enemies! No one had seen or heard from him in years. While he'd thought Claw might be illegitimate and trained by his noble-born parent's teachers, he'd never considered the possibility that Claw was a true-born son of a noble family, hiding in the Court of the Rogue! He realized the agent was looking at him, worried. Forcing a smile, he said, "It's all right. Go on."

  The little man shrugged and continued. Obviously Sir Myles wasn't going to tell him why he looked as if he'd just stepped on a grave. "He is the third son of Viljo, Count of Malven, and his lady Gaylyah. He was disinherited after the attempted rape of the second daughter of the bailiff, Anala, a village in Eldorne hold. Eldorne is the neighbor of Malven." A connection between Claw and Delia? Myles wondered. He scribbled a note to himself as Dalil continued. "The girl's maid threw acid in his face, thereby leaving the purple scars of which you spoke, and causing him to lose an eye. If I may refresh my lord's memory, Ralon of Malven left court at the age of fourteen, after months of feuding with the page Alan of Trebond. Or, if I may be so bold, in the matter of Alanna of Trebond and Olau."

  Myles gave an absent smile. "Though blessed few of us knew it, then. Ralon
of Malven! How could I have forgotten?"

  "He is well disguised, my lord. He came, as bad men will, to make his name among rogues. He battles the present King of Thieves for his throne, but he will not call for an open fight as the custom decrees. Instead, he fights with treachery. Unlike the legitimate Rogue, Ralon as Claw will hire to do murder or to ruin a good name. He will betray those who follow him." The little man shook his head. "A noble gone bad, my lord. There's no stopping him, not at all. He will say that he is owed something, and he has come to collect."

  Myles sent al Marganit home with well-earned praise and a fat purse. The agent had never failed him, and this time he'd succeeded past Myles's greatest dreams. The knight considered every aspect of what he'd learned for an hour or so, then went to tell Eleni Cooper and her son.

  CHANCE, and the first sunny day in more than a week, brought large numbers of people to the Corus marketplace that spring morning. Jonathan, after much persuasion, agreed to go riding—his first such outing since the King's funeral. He was a commanding figure in mourning black, flanked by Roger and Sir Gary, both also in black. With them rode other knights and ladies, including Delia of Eldorne, Alex of Tirragen, and Princess Josiane of the Copper Isles.

  The company was a beautiful sight, even in their mourning colors of black, lavender, and grey. A crowd soon gathered in the market to watch them pass. The men of the King's Own—many of them uniformed Bazhir, these days—exchanged wary looks and kept an eye on the people who closed in on the riding party. They were disturbed by the crowd's silence. No one called blessings on the King-to-be; many made the Sign against evil when Roger passed them. There were no cheers. The usual audible and sometimes satiric comments on the nobles' dress and private lives were missing.

  George Cooper watched. He'd risked reopening his wounds and being spotted by Claw's or the Provost's men to see how people received their new King. He scanned faces in the crowd, trying to find any feelings other than suspicion or wariness.

  "That Conté Duke looks like a king," someone muttered. "Against him Prince Jonathan's a boy."

  "I never heard bad of the Prince," someone else hissed. "I've heard plenty bad about his Grace! Ain't natural for a man t'live twice—"

  "Th' Prince be cursed," came a third voice, cracked with age. "Th' Sweatin' Sickness when he was a lad, that took my Alish, and both his parents dead, and him, the sorcerer, come back—"

  "He drove the evil from the Black City, away south," a fourth voice argued. "He made peace with the Bazhir. The old King, his grandda, couldn't even do that."

  "He helped a woman make herself a knight. If that ain't unnatural—"

  "Hush! Crowds is full of spies, and you've a loose tongue in your head!"

  The people stirred with interest as the Lord Provost rode up to change places with Gary. George's long-time enemy was blue eyed and lean, his face leathery from years in the sun and framed by heavy silver hair and a short silver beard. The Tortall rogues called him "The Old Demon" and were intensely proud of him; foreign rogues made the Sign when he was mentioned.

  The people in the crowd, the honest ones, liked the fierce old man. Someone applauded, then someone else. A woman raised a cheer and was joined by others.

  Jonathan smiled. Someone cried, "God bless you, Majesty!" This received a cheer from many, and George smiled at the fickle nature of the crowd.

  A woman in front of the riding party held her child up to see, and shrieked when the toddler wriggled out of her hands and ran into the cluster of riders. Jon swung far to the right and down, seizing the child with one hand and scooping it up out of danger from the horses' hooves. Darkness reared and plunged at his rider's activity, but the King-to-be held him as the child wailed. The Provost gripped Darkness's bridle, forcing the stallion down.

  Jonathan dismounted, carrying the squalling toddler. The mother ran forward under the glares of the King's Own, laughing and crying, to take her little one back. She hugged Jon in one arm and the child in the other, thanking the young man. Her words were inaudible against the cheer that went up as word circulated about what Jon had done. Uneasy for some reason, George left his niche and began to make his way through the crowd, heading for the group of nobles.

  His intuition was good. A man near the party drew a knife from his belt and ran for Jonathan while George was too far away to help. The attacker was screaming something. Later the Provost told Myles it sounded like "Death to the unlucky King!"

  Jonathan was tangled in woman and child. His companions were hampered by the crowd and their own horses. It was Darkness who came to his master's defense, rearing to strike the assassin with his hooves. The man went down as other killers swathed in cloaks appeared out of the crowd.

  George tackled one and knifed another. The Provost had dismounted and was fighting with knives, grinning fiercely as he caught one man on crossed blades and kneed him. Horses reared, ladies screamed, and the Great Market Riot had begun.

  Of it all, George remembered only the moment when he and the Provost—for the first time in their long war—came face-to-face in the melee. Given a choice, he would have relinquished the honor. Now he froze, letting the assassin he'd targeted get away. The Provost looked at him, turned, and disappeared back into the crowd. Had he winked?

  Accompanied by his most trusted people—the brothers Orem and Shem, the knife masters Ercole and Marek—George reached Jonathan's party to find the King-to-be nursing a wounded arm. The King's Own closed in, forming a tight circle around Gary, Jonathan, and Josiane. Roger was nowhere to be seen, the thief noted. The Provost was mounting his horse, secure in the middle of a second ring of guards. George's shoulder wound had opened and was bleeding again.

  He ignored it. "I know a way out!" he called to Jon. "If you'll trust me!"

  The leader of the King's Own glanced at the Prince, who nodded. George guided Jon's party into a side street and out of the riot, keeping an eye out for assassins. He and his people left the nobles on the Temple Way when others of the riding party arrived and a second company of the King's Own came riding down from the palace.

  "It was Claw," George told Eleni and Myles at House Olau soon after. He winced as his mother applied yet another poultice to his reopened shoulder. "The assassins were his, every one, and they wanted Jon."

  "What does Claw gain if anything happens to Jonathan?" Myles wanted to know. "He's not connected to anyone at the palace who would benefit—not as far as I've heard. Although Delia—"

  "I find it interestin' that his Grace of Conté got out so easy," George drawled, propping his feet on a hassock. "But you're right, it still makes no sense. 'Twas too easy for the innocent to get hurt along with the guilty this mornin'. If he planned it, he ran as great a risk of bein' trampled as the rest of us."

  Eleni shook her head sadly. "I'm worried about those who got hurt in this madness. I'd best go see what I may do." She stood, shaking out her skirts. "But isn't that always the way when folk plot to steal power? The innocent get hurt."

  The final toll of the Great Market Riot was fifteen dead, thirty-six hurt (including the King-to-be), and untold damages to shops and stalls. The atmosphere of suspicion and fear thickened. In spite of it, or perhaps because of it, Jonathan began to ride once a week through the capital and the surrounding countryside.

  JONATHAN watched the stars appear from a castle balcony, relaxing as he prepared himself for a night among his court. Again Josiane would try to win him back, and again he'd keep her at a distance. Not for the first time he regretted his involvement with the Princess from the Copper Isles. He'd tired of her quickly, and she'd been reluctant to understand that. Now that he knew her better, he also realized that, in spite of his mother's plans for Josiane, the Princess would have made a very bad Queen.

  Still, he had to smile. He'd just come from his time as the Voice of the Tribes. In touch with Coram for the first time since January, he'd learned that the wayfarers had reached Maren's western border and would anchor in Tyra in the morning. Soon Alanna wo
uld be home, and he could put his Lioness—and the Dominion Jewel—to work.

  THAT'S ALL of it, Majesty." The humpbacked man known as Aled the Armorer fidgeted. "I wish Claw'd never come t'me. I don't like this, nor the consequences if words leaks out of what's afoot."

  George sprawled in his chair, rubbing his chin as he surveyed his informant. His hazel eyes glittered through his lashes, making the armorer twist his cap into a knot. "Mayhap Claw fed you a tale, Aled. It won't be the first time a man tested loyalty by givin' out a lie."

  "He paid gold for his tale, then," Aled whined. "Asides, he don't know I've been sellin' tTsham Killmaster and Kasi the Spy these five years. Only Killmaster favors armor in the K'miri style but lacquered black like they never do. And the Spy—"

  "Enough. If you say that's who's involved, I must trust you. I pay you enough."

  "T'ain't just the gold, Majesty," Aled protested. "My mam raised no fools. They's one fate for them as kills a king." His gesture illustrated the fate clearly. "I'm afeared of Claw, bein's he's crazier'n a priest, but Provost's justice is fast. Our folk be crooked, but loyal all the same. If they knew Claw was up t'this, them that helps 'im wouldn't live t'face the Provost. I'm between Goddess and Black God with no place to run."

  George tossed a silver noble to the Armorer, who caught it and bit it (to make sure it wasn't fake). "Not a word to Claw, Aled."

  The other man winced. He knew what Claw would do to him if the news he'd talked to George leaked out. "No, indeed, Majesty!" He left the Dancing Dove, muttering.

  George stared into the distance. When Alanna had introduced him to Jonathan, he knew the day might come when his duty to the Rogue would conflict with his friendship with the Prince. That time had come. What was he to do? A rescue in a riot, with everyone too excited to think clearly, was one thing. Informing on a plot was another. The marketplace assassins were dead and Claw in hiding, so no good would have come of his saying who'd started the whole thing. But Aled's tale had concerned corrupt servants, and a new plot that reached from the palace to Claw.