Tricksters Queen (46 page)

"No," said Trick, authority in its tiny voice. "We are not shaped from the Gift of mortals, but by Stormwing blood and magic in the Divine Realms."

Ulasim looked startled.

"It will go better if you treat them as people," Aly’said gently. "With their own minds and thoughts. Treat them as you would any message runner. The only differences are, these never leave you, and they get news from widely scattered forces more quickly than any runner." She raised her eyebrows. "Have I permission to give one to the others?"

"I would be a fool to stop you," said Ulasim. "Though if your sources are limited, I would keep one back for Nawat. He will be meeting Chenaol's party."

"Quartz," suggested Secret. "Quartz came with Countess Tomang. Quartz doesn't want to stay while we hunt."

"Good idea," Aly told it.

Ulasim gazed at Lace with a frown. "These . . . dark;ings ... are in the palace?"

"We hear things and we tell Aly," explained Lace. "Fun."

With his free hand Ulasim rubbed his eyes. "I bless the day the god sent you to us, Aly." When Lace squeaked in indignation, he added, "And you darkings. I hope the god has no more surprises left. I have had all the surprises I can wrap my mind around." He flapped a hand in dismissal.

Aly had similar conversations with Fesgao, Ochobu, Duke Nomru, Chenaol, and Winnamine as she introduced them to their darkings. She made sure to talk to each of them alone. It would be a bother to explain her small friends to even more members of the conspiracies. As it was, Ochobu threatened her with blisters for keeping them to herself.

The last person she sought was Dove. The girl sat on the edge of the courtyard pool, little kudarung tucked and slumbering all around her, the big stallion and his mares dozing nearby on the grass. Though there were no torches lit in the garden, Aly could see Dove's face plainly. It was the face of mutiny.

"If you've come to say I serve best by waiting here..." she warned as Aly approached. "'Stay safe,' they tell me, while people are dying in my name. What kind of queen sits around eating guava while her people are in danger?"

"A creative one," Aly told her, kneeling beside Dove. "I have someone I want you to meet, my lady. Secret."

There was a squeak from her left shoulder. While Trick, on her right, had spoken up with its own firm opinions as Aly introduced the others to their darkings, Secret had shriveled against Aly's skin, making itself smaller and smaller. Secret had believed it would have to stay with Aly.

"I have to meet someone secret?" asked Dove, confused.

"No, someone
named
Secret," Aly said, holding out her left arm and open hand. Secret rolled down her arm and into her palm, producing its head the moment it came to a stop. "I kept you back for Dove," Aly explained to the darking, which shivered with excitement. "I wasn't going to leave you out." She made her introductions and explanations and transferred Secret to its new friend. It gave her a pang to part with the little darking, but she could tell from the way Secret wrapped itself around Dove's slender neck that it had badly wanted work of its own.

Aly got to her feet, her heart pounding. She kept her voice even as she said, "It's important that you stay safe. Without you, we have nothing to secure any kind of victory with. But there's safe and there's
safe,
if you take my meaning." Dove stared at her, then frowned. Aly continued, "True, it would do the fighters good to
see
you, but not if it will bring you within arrow-shot." She bowed to Dove. "My pack and I go hunting at dawn," she said. "If I don't see you again, I just want you to know, I would have worked for you gladly even without the god's involvement."

Aly left the garden, thinking, if she takes the hint, Ulasim will kill me. She grinned. Though he'll have to dethrone Imajane and Rubinyan first. I can live with that.

Her pack and their recruits assembled in her workroom while Aly changed into a specially made sarong that included hidden sheaths for her thin, flat knives. The sash also had a few surprises in its folds. Breifly she envied her mother, able to tuck herself into armor with a number of weapons at hand. Aly felt virtually naked. There was nothing more she could do apart from settling a length of chain in her sash. Her work was different from Mother's, that was all.

"We've been taking orders from a girl who's younger than
any
of us?" cried a recruit who had never met her.

Boulaj and Junai fixed him with stony eyes. "She is the god's gift," Boulaj said in a voice like ice.

"I have a
daughter
her age," protested a woman who loaded grain at the Dockmarket as she gathered information for Eyun.

"I am ancient in treachery," Aly said with an agreeable smile. "If you're going to whine, you may stay and tend the real children here."

Someone whispered, "She brought down Topabaw. She said she would do it, and she did."

"He still rots out by the harbor," added Vitorcine, Aly's first double agent. "I haven't had to betray my masters since he got dead. I'll follow her wherever she likes."

After that, there was no more discussion. They all checked weapons and each other's clothing. Chenaol arrived as they were doing a final count. The cook was also dressed to fight, a cutlass belted at her waist. In one hand she carried a heavy ax. Light slid along its curved, sharp edge.

"Let's go, my dears," she told them. "We have to cross the city by dawn."

Getting to Flowergarden, the district west of Downwind, took them triple the time it would have taken if conditions had been normal. Royal patrols that numbered twenty and thirty grim-faced men roamed the streets. They did not submit to the rain of garbage and stones that fell from the buildings, but killed anyone foolish enough to be caught outside. Any fighter who shot at people who threw things went down the next moment with an arrow in his throat.

After her people's fifth plea to help those attacked by the soldiers, Aly asked Chenaol for a quick halt and gathered them close. "We
cannot
stop and fight every fight along the way," she told them softly, firmly, keeping anger and nerves out of her voice and face. They had to see her calm and in control, these people who had only ever known the pack member who had recruited them. "If you want to drop out and die foolishly, do it without argument. The rest of us have a mission, a vital one. We can’t afford distractions, however many old ladies douse the King's Watch in night soil. Either leave or be silent."

After that, they kept silent. Aly wasn't sure if it was her words or the glares of those who had recruited them. Either way, no one left their group. They moved on through the night, through tunnels, alleys, and sometimes up stairs and over rooftops, any course that would keep them clear of the patrols and the pockets of fighting scattered throughout the city. North and across Dockmarket, Market Town, then Middle Town they followed Chenaol, who seemed to know exactly when to hide and when to advance. As they crossed the city, Trick whispered in Aly's ear. Ulasim and his fighters had met Crown troops on southern side of town. These soldiers came from the Greater Fortress. They were hesitant and inclined to run. As the survivors of the deadly raids and fires at the fortress, they lacked the spirit of other men who had come to battle on the Crowns behalf. Ulasim told his darking that he thought these soldiers felt that they'd had enough raka fighting the night the two fortresses had burned.

They would be remembering that there should have been more of them, and that many of them should have been whole and strong, not marked with burns.

Fesgao's soldiers collided with nearly one hundred men-at-arms in service to loyal luarin families on the northeastern edge of the Swan District, where it met Market Town. The luarin troops were outnumbered but fighting well, his darking reported. Fesgao was far short of his destination, but Ochobu, hearing of his delay, sent two Chain mages to his aid. Three more mages joined Ulasim, while Ochobu herself led a small group of mages, hooded and cloaked like the Black Gods priests, up Rittevon's Lance, straight into the fighting on the square. They started to blast their way through the soldiers of the hated King's Watch.

Nomru and his fighters cut across the city at an angle to Rittevons Lance, driving across Middle Town and into the Swan District, attacking guards at the checkpoints and any household troops foolish enough to get in his way. He gave the same rough treatment to anyone on the edges of the riot if they did not move when he ordered.

Everyone had plenty of light. The Honeypot was ablaze again, its fires spreading into Downwind. Isolated fires burned in Dockmarket, Market Town, and Middle Town. Aly and her group heard the roar of the riot and the shrieks of the injured. Over it all rose the eerie trill of feeding Stormwings. Lit from below, they looked like monsters from the realms of Chaos.

Once Chenaol's group reached the border between Market Town and Flowergarden, they followed the ground as it began to slope upward. There were fewer soldiers to interfere as they cut across the house and temple gardens that gave the district its name. Aly frequently glimpsed a steady flow of warriors that came from the ridge where Flowergarden met the jungles at the city's back. These people stayed clear of Chenaol and her companions. Their faces—male and female, raka and luarin—were grim and eager in Aly's Sight as they flooded into the city to do battle.

Higher Chenaol's group climbed, through a maze of cottage gardens where people grew vegetables for the city's markets. At last they crested the ridge, halting where a dirt road ended in a small shrine to the Jaguar Goddess. As they stopped to drink from their water bottles, each member of their company tossed a small token—a button, a flower, an arrowhead—down the deep well at the heart of the shrine. Even Aly contributed a flower. It was her philosophy that it never hurt to be polite to strange gods.

She heard the rustle of branches, and a crow fledgling's unmistakable call for more food, followed by the call for "friend." Chenaol responded with a soft howler monkey call.

"You do that well," Aly whispered as warrior shadows approached from the shelter of the trees. The sky in the east shone with a pale gray light that just touched the edges of plants and weapons.

"A misspent girlhood in the jungles of Gempang," the cook explained.

Nawat reached them, flanked by a hard-faced raka woman and a thin, whipcord-lean man who looked as if he might be related to Nawat. He had the same nose and floppy black hair, and he sported a knot of crow feathers at the crown of his head. Also like Nawat, he carried an unstrung bow and a fat quiver of crow-fletched arrows. Without making a sound their companions drew up around Aly's group. There were nearly two hundred of them, all wearing clothes that showed signs of hard use, under mismatched and battered armor. All carried bows and quivers of black-feathered arrows, just as all carried swords, from the sailor's heavy cutlass to longswords in nicked sheaths. Like the other groups of raka fighters Aly had seen, this one was composed of both men and women.

Mother would love it here, Aly thought, then shook the notion out of her head. When preparing for combat, it was a good idea to concentrate on that and nothing else.

As the new arrivals crouched to wait with Aly's pack and their recruits, Aly beckoned Nawat aside. From her pouch she took the last darking, Quartz, and introduced it to him. Once they had reached an understanding and Quartz had settled around Nawat's neck, Aly looked at the eastern horizon. The sun was coming. Already the extra-long rays that indicated the god was locked in battle thrust into the sky over the horizon.

Positioning himself so that no one could see him do it, Nawat kissed her fingers. Aly smiled into his eyes. They said or did nothing else, but for them, that was enough.

"We go in first," Chenaol told Nawat's assistants, her voice soft. "Then you. We'll be out doing our work for a time before we call you in—Aly will signal Nawat. Then you must come through and attack anything in a uniform."

"Try not to kill any more than you can help," Aly reminded them. "Particularly among the servants. It's time to start trying to live together. Tie them up or lock them in somewhere, if you get the chance."

"What about the Gray Palace?" asked Lokak. "There are no tunnels there. How will we take the place?"

"Leave the Gray Palace to your old Duani," Aly told him. "We haven't come so far for nothing." Nibbling her lip, she looked at them all. She wanted to tell them to capture Imajane and Rubinyan, not to kill them. It would be nice if the new queen could show neighboring countries that the deposed monarchs had gotten a fair trial. Inspecting their faces, she realized it would be better to hold her tongue. She'd often heard her mother and other warriors say, "Never give an order if you are not sure it will be obeyed." She wasn't sure that her position as Duani gave her the authority to issue orders at all, let alone that one, just as she knew from the grim faces around her that she would not be obeyed if she gave it. She settled for "Don't take trophies from those you slay. They never look as good as you think they will."

A wave of soft chuckles passed through the group.

"The sun comes," Nawat said, raising his face to its rays. "Mithros is angry."

They all turned to look. The sun was the sun, shedding light and heat as it always did. Its rays streamed like dark orange pennants around the disk, whipping and rippling as if a hard wind blew them. The white veils of fire that had marked the Goddess in the daytime lengthened to cover the parts of the sky left to it by the sun, rippling like the sun's rays. Everywhere overhead the sparks that showed the Trickster's fortunes had expanded to the size of greater stars.

On the slopes below their position, the rebels could view the city. The Rittevon Square riot still went on. Pillars of smoke from burning buildings rose all over town.

"Let us vex the sun god some more," said Jimarn. "Or do we wait until we die of old age?"

"No one wants to live forever," added Yoyox.

Aly had already seen the suspiciously sturdy vine that twined around one of the shrine's pillars. Chenaol beckoned for one of the bigger fighters to help her. They hauled together on the ropy vine, teeth clenched, sweat soon gleaming on their faces. Two of Aly's pack went to help. Slowly the square of a doorway became visible in the ground. A handful of Nawat's people circled it, using blades to cut away the bush and grass roots that had woven themselves into the door's cover in the years since this exit had been used. With a last, long rip, the grassy hood pulled free. Those hauling on it dragged it back to rest against the shrine, then tied ropes around the ring in the door below. It too had settled into the ground and was reluctant to leave its bed. Growling, the warriors pulled it up.