Tricksters Queen (18 page)

Sarai had her riding crop raised; her target was Aly. "Let me go!" she ordered. "I have to stop them before they kill people—before we kill more raka!"

Aly held Sarai's eyes with her own. She did not say it, but she thought it: if Sarai hit her, Aly would teach her a lesson Sarai's supporters would not like.

"Don't be a fool!" snapped Dove over Aly’s head. "Get the wall at our backs, and get our servants behind us!" Boulaj was already ranging among the maids' horses, drawing them together and moving them to the rear, speaking softly as their riders kept very still. Aly was grateful that maids seldom chose lively mounts.

"This bad," Trick murmured in her ear. "Four-leggers mashing two-leggers bad."

Above the cries of the mob Aly heard the sound she'd been dreading: the tramp of boots. "It's about to get worse," she muttered. Here came the King's Watch, stern, hard men in red-painted breastplates, metal helmets, and boots with nails in the soles and metal pieces that covered the toes, making any kick the soldier gave a bloody one. They were armed with short swords, clubs, and shields, and used all three to drive the mob, cutting their way through to the nobles. A raka woman moved to scoop two children out of the way of their mounted captain, diving between the Balitang guards into the protected inner circle. It was Eyun, one of Aly's pack. She bore a scratch down one creamy cheek. She looked at Aly, who nodded that she'd done well, then turned her attention to the shrieking children. One looked to be a merchant's child. Her gown was luarin-style cotton, unfaded and unmended. She yelled for her nursemaid while the other child screamed over his broken arm. He looked like the worst dregs of the slums, ragged and filthy.

"Here." Winnamine knelt beside Eyun, a flask of water in her hands. To the girl she said, "I'm sure your nurse is fine." She offered the boy a drink from her silver flask. The boy blinked at her, then took the flask and drank. He might have then tried to run with it, but light flashed from Nuritin at Winnamine's side. The boy's eyes rolled up and he collapsed, Nuritin's sturdy old hands catching him before his bad arm hit the stones. Aly had heard that the old lady had been rough and ready in her day. It seemed she could still muster a bit of power at need. "Well, I couldn't leave him feeling all that pain," Nuritin said, meeting Winnamine's look. "And softhearted as you are, I suppose we'll need a healer who will tend him."

"That depends on the healer, surely." Zaimid dismounted. He knelt in the street, apparently unaware of the war being fought on the other side of the protective line of men-at-arms and noblemen on horseback. "It's quite a simple break, and luckily, it's not pierced the skin." Gently he wrapped long fingers around the broken limb, his head bent, his brown face closed and thoughtful. In Aly's Sight silvery fire spun a thread from his blazing magical core down through his arm and into the boy's.

He's got wonderful control, thought Aly, impressed. Of course, he would. They wouldn't put a noble idiot in charge of the Carthaki emperor's health.

Zaimid released the boy's arm. The marks of his hands showed pale at first, then faded. The boy stirred, then grabbed his arm. He looked at it, agape, then at Nuritin, who had recovered Winnamine's flask, then at Zaimid.

"You'll do better here until this ends," Zaimid said. "No good sending you out to get something else broken."

Dove nudged Aly and handed over plums that had survived the nobles' meal. Aly gave them to the boy. He began to devour them, his wondering eyes still on Zaimid.

Beyond their circle of safety, the royal soldiers dispersed the mob with brutal speed. Sarai was still trying to fight her way between Ferdy Tomang and Duke Nomru, screaming,

"They weren't hurting anyone! Leave them alone!" She finally gave up when the soldiers had driven the crowd so far down the street that none of them could hear. She glared at Duke Nomru, tears running down her cheeks. "They weren't going to hurt us!"

The older man raised his stern brows. "And do you think that would stop the kind of men they have in the King's Watch? Their orders are to disperse gatherings." He looked down the street, with its litter of bodies. "This one is well and truly dispersed, whatever its intention was." He looked back at the ladies. "I propose we return to Balitang House at all speed, before the animals hired for the Watch return."

Winnamine and Nuritin mounted up.

Aly moved in close to Eyun. "Stay here. Learn what you can, maybe get this little one home?" The little girl had sobbed herself into silence in Eyun's hold.

Eyun nodded and hand-signed,
They wanted to touch the twice-royal. That's all. Just touch her, to know she is real.

"So much beauty shouldn't be marred," Zaimid said over Aly's shoulder. He brushed Eyun's cheekbone with his fingers. Her cut healed before their eyes, as if the work of several weeks had been put into a breath. There was not even a scar. To Nomru he said apologetically, "Your Grace, my ladies"—he looked at the older women next—"forgive me, but I am needed here. I bid you all farewell." To Sarai he added, "I'll make sure these two children are looked after." He was already unbuckling saddlebags from his horse. Draping them over his shoulder, he asked the boy, "Will you hold my reins?" He passed them into the child's hands. Aly thought he was being overcharitable, giving the reins to a boy who had meant to steal the duchess's silver flask, but it seemed the boy held the healer in too much awe to steal the horse at present.

Aly mounted her pony. Sarai might have pulled away from her group, but her grandfather Matfrid came up beside her as she urged her horse forward, and took the reins. "Granddaughter, you are overwrought," he said quietly, holding her dark eyes with his gray ones. "Allow me to escort you."

They rode off, picking their way around the fallen—Aly was pleased to see a few soldiers groaning in the road—the men and the guards in a ring around the ladies and their maids. Aly looked back between two guards. Zaimid, saddlebags on the ground beside him, was engaged in turning over a woman who resembled a bundle of rags, unaware or uncaring that she'd left a bloody handprint on his white lawn sleeve.

At the house, the gathering broke up quickly. Sarai announced that she had a headache and needed to lie down. Without her to hold them together, the young nobles chose to go home. The gloss had been stripped from the afternoon.

Only when the guests had gone did the Balitang ladies and their maids ascend to the family quarters. They entered their private sitting room to find Sarai and a litter of overturned chairs and decorative tables. Gazing at the mess, Aly thought it was just as well that the second-best furnishings went into this room, which was for comfort, not style.

"Have you taken leave of your senses?" asked Nuritin. Her back was as stiff as a poker, her voice chipped ice. "This is not the behavior of a properly bred young woman, it is the behavior of spider monkeys!"

"After seeing all those 'properly bred' people just sit there while people were being thrashed, I'd
rather
live with spider monkeys!" cried Sarai, eyes swollen with furious weeping. "Every last one of us—every last one—just let it happen! Ferdy was
glad
—he called them raka dogs, I heard him!"

"A riot cannot be controlled, Sarai," Winna said calmly, setting a table upright. "All we could have done was get pulled from our horses and savaged. Soldiers can lose control in those circumstances. They don't care who they batter—and they can always claim they didn't realize we were nobility when we were among the commoners. It's happened before." Dove, Aly, and Pembery began to help the duchess pick things up. Nuritin continued to stare at Sarai as if she were a badly trained housemaid.

"It's happened
here"'
Sarai shouted. "It happens
here,
because soldiers believe the poor are a disease, not people. And they get that attitude honestly—it comes straight from the Throne! It always has and it always will, and people who are supposed to be noble in nature will
let
it happen, for fear of their own lives! Only one of us showed any decency today: Zaimid! The foreigner! He actually cares about people, whether they live in kennels or not!" She stormed out, yanking the door open so hard it chipped the stucco wall.

There was a long silence. At last Nuritin said tartly, "Well! I am not charged with her upbringing, Winnamine, but in your place, I would slap her for addressing elders in such a way."

"She was upset, Aunt," Winnamine replied wearily. "There was blood running in the gutters."

"Screaming and shouting will not change that," snapped Nuritin. "Getting enough power among ourselves
to force
the Crown to change how it rules the people, that is the way to change."

Well, it's one way, thought Aly, collecting the pieces of a broken vase.

What Nuritin had just said sounded very close to treason. If Aly really did belong to Topabaw, she could get all kinds of favors from him for that tidbit alone. She wondered if Countess Tomang—certainly not her son!—Lord Matfrid, Duke Nomru, and Baron Engan, Dove's astronomer friend, held the same view that the Crown must be controlled.

At the conspirators' nightly meeting Aly reported on the fight. Ochobu was not present. The moment she'd heard the news, she had packed her bag of medicines and gone to offer help. No one suggested they would pray for any member of the Watch who made the mistake of trying to stop her.

There were more reports to give and to hear. At last the conspirators separated, most bound for their beds. Aly went to her office. Ysul came in not long after with three packs, setting them on the floor very carefully. He was dressed as an itinerant worker, the kind of fellow people expected to see around the docks. In a cloth bag carried like a bedroll on his back he had his waterproof and sight-proof disguise. Aly dressed in her own suit, then in her Carthaki noble's disguise. Fegoro came again as a Bazhir, Lokak as a southern Carthaki, Jimarn as another Carthaki noble, and Yoyox as Death's priest. Aly, Jimarn, and Yoyox hid Ysul's packs under their flowing clothes.

"Fun?" whispered Trick in Aly's ear. "Meeting not fun. Fight in street and house stupid."

She followed the others to the laundry and down into the tunnel, whispering softly inside her veils, "It depends on what you think is fun. It will be loud."

"Loud maybe fun," said Trick. "You think fight in street and house stupid, too?"

Aly was about to ask how the darking could judge what was stupid for humans when she stopped herself. She had to remember, these creatures were intelligent. They learned ferociously fast. They already knew every member of the household by face and voice. And they had lived nearly ten years among dragons. Surely that counted for something, since Daine had also mentioned dragons were less than patient as a whole. Aly grinned wryly as they emerged from the tunnel.

"Fights were stupid," she said. Then she and Jimarn each took one of Fegoro's arms as the rest of their group cut over to other streets.

As before, the King's Watch had abandoned the checkpoints for the night. The afternoon's unpleasantness had taken place in Middle Town, not at the dock. It was habit among the city's guardians to decide that a violent outburst kept the lower classes quiet for days, which meant they were off their guard now.

Their watchman friend was absent. They entered his shack, removed their disguises, then redistributed the packs. Quietly they descended the ladder to the meeting places of stinking piers, stinking water, and stinking boulders. The noise from the dockside merrymakers was as loud as ever, a jangle of music, singing, debate, and the occasional fight. It covered any slips they made on the rocks. At last they came to the metal net and passed into the slave market piers.

Aly adjusted her Sight as the three teams split up. Beside the piers she could see ships at anchor—seventeen in all. They should be close to empty. Even with the net, slavers didn't like the risk that some desperate swimmer might yet escape. Slaves were always taken to the market's pens as soon as their vessel docked. Aly hoped there would be crew aboard but knew the likelihood was small. They would be out, spending the profits of other slave sales.

She led Ysul out to the farthest left pier of the dock she had kept for herself, the dock where she had disembarked as a slave. As he treaded water, she took a small clay globe from his waterproof sack and jammed it into an opening between boards. Back and forth they went, careful to let no water leak into the sack of globes. At last all six were placed. As they waited, Ysul left the waterproof bag close to the nearest globe. It would be incinerated when the globe was set off. It was always important to get rid of any trace of the mage who did a piece of work like this. If Topabaw's people were good enough, they might track any remnants back to Ysul.

Aly and Ysul returned to the net to wait for their companions. The others arrived, their own bags left behind. Swiftly they made their way back to the watchman's shack and changed out of their waterproof clothes into their disguises. As they left the shack, they took the bundled suits over to one of the many fires that lit Dockmarket and burned them. Then they mingled with the crowds.

They reached the end of the night market, a good four blocks from the slave docks and pens. Wooden barriers were set there, manned by rock-muscled freemen with iron-studded clubs. The slave merchants liked to guard their property.

Aly, Jimarn, and Fegoro reached the barriers, inspected the guards by eye as if they too may be for sale, then turned to look at the fading gaiety of the Dockmarket. Ysul was watching a juggler nearby. When he glanced at Aly, she raised two gloved fingers.

She saw the silver flash of Ysul's magic. At the corner of her eye she noted an orange flicker; fast behind it came the roar as the blazebalm ignited, blowing their cheap clay globes into dust and setting the slave docks on fire. Aly turned when the other merrymakers did, to see a vision that made her shiver in delight. Columns of flame clawed the night sky as fire raced over the docks. Within moments their fire was reaching for the ships. A handful of men threw themselves from a few vessels and swam for shore: watchmen, left behind while their mates toured the city.