Trickster's Choice (8 page)

“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 another 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 our 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.”

Sarai’s smile was crooked. “By men, and the raka nobility, and some of the luarin houses, yes, I suppose.” She looked at her sister. “It’s not vanity, Dove. I can count as well as the next person.”

Dove shrugged. “I didn’t utter a word.”

Sarai made a noise that in a less attractive girl would have been labeled a snort. “And yet, when it comes to marriage, it’s amazing how many luarin families discover marriages that were arranged when their sons were in the cradle. Marriages their young men had never
heard
of until then. Particularly the higher-ranking luarin nobles. I can’t help but notice how many young men give way when they learn their mothers don’t care for the color of the future bride’s skin, however beautiful she may be.”

Dove sighed. “And the raka nobles are wary around us because we’ve got Rittevon blood in our veins. They don’t want to lose their sons the next time the king thinks his relatives are plotting against him.”

“Dovasary!” whispered Sarai, shocked.

The younger girl leaned around Aly to look at her sister. “I have ears, Sarai, and people hardly ever notice me. I know what I hear. The raka don’t want to risk the Rittevon insanity for their grandchildren.”

Aly grimaced. She’d once overheard one of Tortall’s young knights, a Bazhir, tell Grandfather Myles, “Oh, I’m considered wonderful when it comes to letting and losing blood for the Crown. But marriage? Even jumped-up merchants who weren’t barons a generation ago won’t let their daughters marry a Bazhir, whatever their wealth and standing.”

I suppose I’d best remember what the Bazhir at home endure, she thought, before I go looking down my nose at the luarin. You really should have a clean house at home before you start picking at the way your neighbor does the dusting.

“What does a slave know of treason and kings anyway?” asked Dove. Her dark eyes were now intent on Aly’s face.

Aly shrugged. “I was a maid in a nobleman’s castle when I was taken,” she replied. “
My
ears are as good as anyone’s.”

“I don’t see how any Tortallan girl would want to be a maid, not with all the choices you have, compared to us,” Sarai remarked. “If I lived there, I’d join the Queen’s Riders, and learn to ride and use a sword and bow like they do. Or maybe even become a knight like the Lady Knight Keladry. The raka ladies of old knew how to fight. In the last great battle against the luarin, on the Plain of Sorrows, a third of the Kyprin warriors were female.”

“And the whole army got thrashed,” Dove reminded her sister mercilessly. “The conquerors had more battle mages, and more catapults, and ballistas, and liquid fire. It didn’t matter how many women fought with the raka that day. They died just as easily as the men.”

“You’re so
prosaic,
Dove. Oh, look, the raka.” Sarai pointed to the rocks about the cove. The moon was above the mountains now, a huge pearl in the indigo sky. By its light the people on the cliffs were clearly visible. “They’ve been doing that all day.”

“Sarai?” called Winnamine. “Dove? It’s time to sleep.”

The two girls rolled their eyes at one another. “No late nights for us,” Sarai remarked drily. They went below.

Aly turned back to watch the sea by moonlight. The older Balitang girls struck her as being much like falcons, always hooded and tethered, not able to hunt as their hearts desired. It was such a waste, keeping fiery girls like this in the background, not letting them forge their own path in the world. She’d like to see what these two would accomplish.

Two mornings later their ships emerged from the Long Strait into the Azure Sea, the body of water that lay between Imahyn and Lombyn Isles. Aly grinned as the captain jubilantly announced that the sea god Kyprioth was smiling on their voyage. Apparently this was the quickest, smoothest passage of the strait the captain had ever made. Duke Mequen finally stopped the man’s recital of how unpredictable the passage could be, a tale of crosscurrents and wind gusts, with a reminder that he might annoy the god by too frequently mentioning his name.