Trickster's Choice (25 page)

Aly rubbed her nose and looked Junai over. “So if this mage sees to the bandits, how am I to have faith in
your
ability to protect
me
? I’d think your only fighting practice would be from mock battles with people you’ve known all your life.”

Junai bared teeth in a menacing grin. “I was a caravan guard for seven years,” she informed Aly. “You want to try me?”

“No,” Aly said, waving an arm in dismissal. “I’ll take your word for it.” She let the conversation end. Junai had told her more than she had planned to. Certainly she had not meant to agree that a mage lived on the Tanair lands, but that much she had done openly. She had also told Aly that her orders to guard Aly’s life were more important than her fear of the mage. The mage was raka, probably a full-blood, if she hated luarin with such unmixed passion. And since Pohon village was notorious for its hate of luarin, chances were the mage lived there. Aly had scouting to do, then, before she approached this mage herself.

Aly went back to her exercises. The sun was almost directly overhead when the riding party returned to the castle. Aly heard the beat of their horses’ hooves as she searched for a stray kid among the rocks. When she found the youngster and returned him to his mother, she discovered that one of the riders and her bodyguard had come to join her. A horse idly cropped grass where Aly had set her knife-throwing targets. A guard lingered near Visda and Ekit, talking with the children. There was no sign of Junai, but Aly guessed that the woman was around somewhere, watching.

She rounded the horse and stopped, looking at Dove. She had spread a blanket to sit on and was placing food on it. Aly had thought that if any of the Balitang girls wanted to investigate Aly after learning she represented a god, it would be Sarai, the oldest, who had one foot already in the adult world. Yet here was her younger sister, meek in a pale green riding costume with no embroideries or ornaments at hems and collar. She sat cross-legged in loose, comfortable breeches, a napkin on her lap as she gazed at the meal she had laid out. She wore her black hair in multiple long braids under a sheer head veil, the style favored by maidens in the Isles.

“I thought you might tire of bread and cheese,” Dove remarked, looking up at Aly. “And
I’m
tired of Bronau mooning over my sister when he thinks the duchess isn’t looking. I know Sarai’s just keeping her hand in at flirting, but it makes me queasy to watch.”

Aly sat on the grass beside the blanket. “Your ladyship honors me,” she said, wondering what the girl was up to.

Dove didn’t look at her. “What honor? I doubt my father lied to us and you aren’t really the god’s messenger. If you
are
the god’s messenger, don’t you have a particular standing which has nothing to do with the collar on your neck? Oh, curse it, Chenaol forgot the butter.” She tossed a roll to Aly. This was not the rough brown bread that Aly normally brought to her duties with the goats, but a white bread studded with dates, raisins, and bits of fig.

“Even if your father didn’t lie, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who does, it would still look very odd if you socialized with me,” Aly explained.

“I’m not socializing.” Dove picked up the open book at her side. “I’m the shy little sister, seeking time to read alone with enough people close by that my bodyguard won’t fret.” She looked at Aly. “It was my idea.”

Aly studied her companion and helped herself to a handful of olives from a small crock. She’d heard people talk of Dove. The household had decided she was the intellectual one, without the warmth, charm, or dash of her older sister. Certainly Dove liked to read, but Aly had also noticed that the girl was both curious and observant.

“There’s little I can tell you,” Aly said, spitting an olive pit onto the grass. “I don’t know myself why the god called on me.” Except that I’m to keep you alive through the summer, she added to herself.

“And if you did, you wouldn’t tell us,” said Dove, eyeing dried slices of mango. “Being the close-mouthed sort. Is there anything you need? Information about the family, Tanair … ?”

Aly shrugged. Just because Dove wanted to test her didn’t mean that she couldn’t test Dove back. “I could use the best maps you can find of this area,” she said. “I know nothing about the layout of the ground here, and that could be very troublesome. I’d like to see the other two villages and the road down to the western sea, but for now I can manage with maps. Copies will do, if you have only one original, but they should be good copies, no mistakes.”

Dove shook her head. “Papa gave Sarai and me the maps for all our mother’s lands, since they are our inheritance. And the bailiff has extras. I’ll get a set for you. You’d tell Papa and the duchess if we’re in danger from Bronau, wouldn’t you?”

Aly picked up a sausage baked in dough, country food from the Eastern Lands. She looked it over, wondering if Chenaol had spiced it in the Isles way and if she would regret taking a bite. “Do you have a reason to distrust His Highness?” she asked. She took a careful bite of sausage. It tasted just like those at home.

Dove nibbled her mango. “I don’t trust anyone who feels you should like them because they love themselves so much,” she said tartly. Aly snorted, spraying crumbs on the grass. “Don’t laugh,” Dove told her. “It’s true.”

“I wasn’t laughing at you,” Aly said when she had swallowed the rest of her mouthful and taken a drink of water. “I was laughing because you put it perfectly.”

“He thinks if he smiles at you and gives you presents you won’t notice he can’t keep his mouth closed,” grumbled Dove, appeased. “If we were in Rajmuat and the king’s spies heard the way he talks, we’d all be under arrest. Does he believe there aren’t any spies out here?”

“We’ll just make sure they don’t have the chance to report anything,” Aly assured the girl. “That’s the nice thing about being all tucked away like this. We can control what information comes into these lands and what information leaves them.” She passed a sausage roll to Dove. “Try one of these, and tell me which members of King Oron’s family are still alive.”

In the days that followed, Aly settled into her expanded role among the Balitangs and the raka conspirators. Junai became a silent, constant presence from the moment Aly left the main hall in the morning until she reentered it at night. Wherever Aly spent her days, Junai was at hand, looking on as Aly tended goats, talked to Visda and occasionally Dove, and practiced her hand-to-hand combat.

The raka patrols were now visible. Aly would look up from studying the maps Dove had brought, to note distant groups of riders, mounted on nimble ponies. They skirted the farms and wound through the estate’s rocky eastern border. Sometimes younger riders came with them, to practice fighting and tracking away from the gaze of the duke’s and prince’s men-at-arms.

Aly traded on and off with Hasui as wine pourer on the dais. Every second night she searched the rooms occupied by Bronau and his attendants for new letters. Bronau’s spies wrote nothing, having no way to get correspondence out of Tanair, but the prince himself wrote every day, preparing letters that offered alliances to nobles who were not friends of his brother. Aly memorized each noble’s name, knowing that Bronau would send these calls for aid as soon as the opportunity came. She wanted to know whom Bronau felt was safe to approach.

When Aly took pouring duty, Bronau always made sure to say hello to her. He also flirted constantly with Sarai in the dining hall. Fesgao and the servants said that he did so at all other times as well. Everyone saw how Sarai responded to Bronau’s compliments and teasing, obviously flattered by the man’s charm and attention. At night, as Aly recited what news she found worth the family’s time, Sarai listened without comment. She could not keep the trouble from her face as Aly quoted Bronau’s latest piece of correspondence, any more than her parents could. Only Dove showed real curiosity and appreciation of what Aly had learned.

Bronau did not neglect Mequen and Winnamine, so his dealings with Sarai caused few ripples apart from idle speculation. Aly heard the servants’ and slaves’ observations when she and the chief raka conspirators—Ulasim, Chenaol, Lokeij, and Fesgao—met over a late supper in the kitchen. They talked softly over drinks and snacks while most of the household listened to music in the great hall. Ulasim summed up the patrols’ reports for his three comrades and Aly. Chenaol had the day’s gossip and discoveries from the servants and the villagers, where her own family played a vital part in everyday business. Lokeij and his stable boys shared news from visitors to the stables, as well as Tanair’s herdspeople, while Fesgao passed on the gleanings from the prince’s and the Balitangs’ men-at-arms. Sometimes Nawat joined them if the crows had seen anything of interest. Aly was surprised at first that the raka accepted Nawat so readily, until she overheard Chenaol tell Fesgao that their prophecy had mentioned the help of Kyprioth’s crows. Between the reports from the people and the crows, Aly had as perfect a spy network as her da could have put together.

So far there was little of interest to discuss: crop news, deer and elk sightings, human movement such as the route followed by the daily riding party, and bedroom intrigues between the locals and the royal guests. Aly was confident that she would know about danger before it got very far. With so much information coming in, she felt more like Aly of Pirate’s Swoop every day.

One night Aly finished her day’s report to the Balitangs. She turned to go when the duchess stopped her. “Aly, can someone else take your goats tomorrow?”

Aly nodded.

“The prince wants to see our villages,” explained Sarai. “Inti and Pohon. We thought you might want to come as well.”

“You did want to see more of the plateau,” Dove said. Normally she kept silent during these reports. Now she gave Aly a tiny smile and returned to setting out the chessboard for her nightly game with Mequen.

“I’m having the maid pack some of Rihani’s potions to bring to the villages,” the duchess added. “That will explain your presence. We’ll have soldiers, but you can say I didn’t wish to entrust the bottles and jars to a ham-handed warrior.”

Aly smiled. “Thank you, Your Grace,” she told the duchess. “I await your orders in the morning.” Finally, she thought. A chance to ferret out the mage at Pohon!

She rose at her usual time so that she could take the goats down to Visda, then returned to the castle. Waiting in her cleanest tunic and breeches, a small cloth bag with a few necessary items slung over her shoulder, she watched the men-at-arms at their morning combat drill. There was a quiet, grim competition between the Balitangs’ and Bronau’s men. Neither side was at its friendliest. Blows that should have been taps hit with authority and pain. Looking around the courtyard, Aly noticed Junai in the shadows, her eyes intent on the sparring men. No doubt her guard was considering new fighting techniques.

One person Aly hadn’t seen yet that day was Nawat. Perhaps he worked outside only at dawn, when things were quiet, and went back into Falthin’s bowyer shop when the courtyard got busy. Aly tried to pretend she wasn’t disappointed, but her illusion fell to pieces when she saw Nawat walking toward her, leading two saddled and bridled horses. He was smiling at her in a way that made her throat tighten just a little. She coughed to clear it.

“I am to ride with you,” Nawat explained when he reached her. “Workers in the villages gather wood for bows and arrow shafts, and I must collect it. We will ride together and our crows will visit us.”

“They’ll probably frighten the horses,” Aly said, accepting the reins Nawat offered. “Falthin certainly gives you plenty of time away from work.”

“He says I am young only once,” Nawat informed her. “He says that when I choose a mate he will help me with the bride price. Do you have a bride price? What is a bride price?”

He might as well have touched her with a branding iron. Aly jumped. Had she been someone else’s daughter she might even have shrieked. As it happened, she was saved from having to answer by the arrival of the prince, the duchess, the older girls, and their guards. Lokeij himself brought out Sarai’s mount, and winked at Aly and Nawat.

I suppose
he
thinks I’m interested in bride prices, too! Aly thought, indignant. She would have to explain things to Nawat, so he would know how very uninterested in such things she was. For now she had a performance to give. As far as anyone here knew, Aly had not spent much time in the saddle. To that end she dragged herself onto her shaggy chestnut mare, every inch of her the ignorant servant rider. The horse bridled, pranced, even reared twice. Aly stayed on while she pretended to be on the verge of falling off, flopping here and there as the mare worked off her early- morning fidgets. It seemed that the horse figured out that she was experienced. Once the chestnut calmed down, Aly took the basket of potions from the duchess.

As they set off, Aly and Nawat rode between the nobles and the men-at-arms. Snatches of conversation came back to Aly: talk of weather and crops, hunting and books. More than once she heard the prince tell Sarai, “When you return to the capital,” as if they were on Lombyn for a holiday. Today for a change Aly watched from close quarters as the prince and Sarai had their daily gallop, their bodyguards following. The duchess, confident the pair would never be out of sight of their guards, remained with Dove and the main group of riders.

As a riding companion, Nawat was perfect. He sat his mount as if born in the saddle. Aly supposed it was because in many ways he was as much an animal as his horse. Staying close to Aly, Nawat pointed out the land’s features as they rode across it. Aly memorized them all, placing them on her mental copy of the Tanair map: roads and trails, creeks, springs, farms, stands of trees and of rocks where enemies might hide, herds of animals, clumps of wild berries and fruit trees. She also saw that the raka who labored in the fields stood at attention as Sarai galloped by and bowed to the duchess. They watched Dove from the corners of their eyes. Aly hoped their restraint was due to the Tanair conspirators’ warning them not to show any favor to Sarai before outsiders.