Tricksters Queen (20 page)

Ulasim shook his head. "Where we must go, we have them."

Aly went to find Ochobu and Fesgao. "No fun for us," Trick muttered in her ear.

"Oh, we'll have fun," Aly assured her companion. "I always do." She wandered into the female servants' dormitory. There she hand-signaled to a woman of her pack who was awake:
Bring the girls to the meeting room soonest.
She left and went to the single men's dormitory. Sadly, she encountered Ukali before she could enter the big room. Aly sighed with regret: she knew most of the men slept in loincloths, and she would have enjoyed the sight. Accepting the disappointment, she gave her message to Ukali and went back to the large meeting room.

It wasn't long before every chair was occupied. Some of those without chairs leaned on the walls; others sat on the floor. When they were all settled and the door was closed, Aly said, "My dear ones, I have something for you to do on the night of the lunar eclipse. Alas, it will not include me. I'm afraid our general has told me that I am quite naughty and will no longer be permitted to do such things."

"He's right, Duani," Olkey remarked as he peeled a mango with his knife. "You can't go risking yourself. What if Topabaw had gotten word of last night's celebration?
You’re
the one who told
us
if we're caught, it's trouble for everyone else once the torturers and the mages get done with you."

Aly raised an eyebrow, not sure that she liked having her student quote her warnings back to her. "This was personal," she replied.

Guchol was working a comb through her tangled hair. "You told us we can't ever let anything be personal, Duani."

"Sometimes personal is too important for rules.” Jimarn said, her cold voice cutting through the room like a blade. "Sometimes personal has to be taken care of." Her flinty eyes met Aly's. They both smiled. Jimarn was a runaway slave.

"Well, I'll be good and not do it again, which means I leave this next bit of deliciousness for those who volunteer," Aly said. She pointed to the map of Rajmuat and its surroundings. On the northeast side of the harbor were the slums of the Downwind District, with the human garbage heap called the Honeypot highest on the slope to the ridge. It was no more than wood cabins on stilts, lean-tos, tents, and shacks. Kanodang was on the far side of the heights. There were only two good things about Kanodang, said the wits. It was upwind of the stench of the Honeypot, and it was a nicer place to live.

At the end of the ridge that split the two was the northeast fortress that guarded the harbor mouth. The Lesser Fortress was two simple towers surrounded by a wall. Aly placed a finger on it, then on the complex that guarded the harbor's far side. The Greater Fortress rose on high ground, dominating the harbor. The display grounds for Examples lay below the fortress's stone ramparts.

"Two nights from this, well after midnight," she explained, "we need fires to start in both fortresses and in the barracks. Ysul will help you with blazebalm. If you set afire all that will burn in both, I will bless you before your ancestors, but I will rest contented if you just keep a large number of soldiers busy for a time. Can you do it?"

"Well, there are the tunnels through the ridge that will get us up into the Lesser Fortress," Rasaj pointed out.

"But they're not safe," objected Hiraos. "They're centuries old, they could collapse any time."

"But they haven't, have they?" asked Lokak. "And the word is they re open still."

"You'll trust 'the
word'?"
demanded Hiraos. "Probably sent in by some old rock rat who wouldn't know if a tunnel dropped on his head, it's happened so many times..."

"So go look for yourselves," Jimarn told them scornfully. "We've got two whole days." She looked at Aly. "There's a pretty big sewer from the Greater Fortress that we can use, if people can stand it. We'd need those special files that cut through iron."

"I know where they're stored," Junai said. To Aly she pointed out, "There's only so much of those things that will burn, you know. They're mostly stone."

"I don't care how much of them burns, only that they burn brightly enough to catch a lot of attention," Aly muttered, rubbing her fingers over her "necklace." She had discovered that Trick vibrated when happy, a sign of contentment as soothing as, and more silent than, a cat's purr.

The room went silent. Aly looked up to see all their eyes on her.

"You want a diversion," Atisa said, grinning. "A big, noisy, attention-getting diversion."

Aly shook her head. "If I'd thought you were stupid, my children, I wouldn't have bothered to train you. Can you do it?" They all nodded. "Well, then, you don't need me. Bring your plans around during the rest period, and we'll have a look. Think it through. I need you all in one piece."

As she walked down the hall on her way back to the kitchen, she asked Trick quietly, "What does Lace report? What are Ulasim, Fesgao, and Ochobu talking about?"

"Getting horses and small sailing boats for escape," replied Trick promptly. "There is cove north of Kanodang where they hide boats. People inside prison will let fighters in. Fesgao must pick out force. They will get word today for people at Kanodang to be ready. We go?" it asked wistfully.

"No," Aly consoled it. "We re going to a party instead."

"Party fun?" asked the darking.

Aly smiled. "It could be."

Once more Dove insisted on a morning walk to see her merchant friends. Elsren was leaving for the palace when they reached the front door. He insisted on hugging his "favorite sister," as he proclaimed to the guards. Aly noted that a number of the black-armored men of the King's Guard turned their heads or brought up their hands to hide smiles.

Once Elsrens party had left, Junai and their escort of men-at-arms emerged from the side courtyard. Dove began to scowl, then sagged. Tacking a proper smile to her face, she greeted everyone by name as they formed up around her. Aly's people slowly collected ahead, to the sides of, and behind their group as they walked down Joshain Street. Today Kioka, Eyun, Hiraos, and Ukali went as secret guards. While Dove visited with her friends, they could deal in rumor.

The walk to the business part of town was not as relaxed as it had been before. Knots of people stood at corners, talking in soft voices, unless soldiers of the King's Watch came to send them on their way. The poorer the gossipers were, the more kicks and blows they got from the soldiers.

"Slime," murmured Dove as they passed one man whose nose was clearly broken and bleeding. Without a word she offered him her handkerchief.

"Stop somewhere and tilt your head back," a man-at-arms advised kindly. "Just wait till the bleeding stops."

The raka muttered his thanks and went into an alley.

"I hope when the time comes things will be done about behavior like that," whispered Dove. "We'll never all live together if the luarin don't accept anyone whose skin is brown."

Her pleasure that day was to stroll down Green Street. Respectable cooks and their assistants shopped here, or they were supposed to. Many stood in tiny groups, whispering. Pairs of men in the scarlet uniform of the Watch paced everywhere, their eyes shifting in the frames made of the face plates of their helmets.

As they passed a small group of civilians, Aly heard a luarin woman with a dusting of flour in her hair whisper to two raka, "Rats, I tell you! My best tenant wakes us all screaming in the dead of night. There was a basketful of rats by his bed! So what does he do but open the door to his room, so they can get out into the house
and
my bakery, if you please! Well, I told him . . ."

Dove and her companions, including Aly, walked out of earshot. Aly’smiled. Looking around, she saw the words
Nomru
and
slave docks
on a number of lips. It wouldn't take long for Dove to hear the news.

They halted at a spice seller's stall, with its baskets of seasonings. Dove greeted the woman who was accepting payment from a customer. Aly observed that one seller of garlic, leeks, and onions had hung a decoration at the corner of her booth. Four bulbs were braided together, connected to a broken circle of leeks tied to a wooden frame. It was a very subtle open shackle.

"You're sure?" Dove asked sharply. Aly turned. Her mistress was gripping the spice seller's arm. "There's no doubt?"

The luarin woman shook her head. "My husband was making a delivery to His Grace's house. There's a seal on the gate and everything. The family's inside—they may come and go, but they're terrified."

I should have told the Balitangs this morning, Aly thought, then shook her head. They would have wanted to know where she had gotten her information, and she could not tell them.

A cluster of Mithran priests brushed past their group without so much as an apology. The priest in the lead sported a bite on his cheek. Two acolytes whispered that the temple's master of the flame had been assaulted by rats. Aly rubbed her hands together. People wrote down their secrets, or had a temple scribe write for them, and gave the folded scraps of paper to the master of the flame. It would not be difficult at all for a man in that position to keep the scraps and sell whatever useful information he collected to Topabaw.

They'll be scrambling like an upended basket of rats themselves when Topabaw falls, Aly thought.

"Were going home," Dove said abruptly. "Aly, come along." The guards closed in as Dove said farewell to the spice seller. Once she was ready, they began to hurry back the way they had come. When Aly came up beside her, Dove said quietly, "Duke Nomru was arrested last night,
and
someone blew up the slave docks."

"Did they?" Aly asked innocently. "Fancy that. And we saw His Grace only yesterday. He didn't say he was on the outs with the regents."

"I'm worried about Nomru," said Dove, biting her lip. "He's too mule-headed to beg the regents for anything. And why the slave docks?" she asked with a frown. "Why the ships? There will be more."

"Perhaps as a hint that there should be no more, my lady," suggested one of the guards. "The first thing built after the conquest was a bigger slave market."

Aly glanced at the man. As far as she was aware, he was simply one of Fesgaos warriors, picked for his loyalty and his skill with arms. From his light skin, if he had a slave ancestor or ancestress, it had been some generations ago.

"But we've always had slavery," Dove reminded him. "Even before the conquest."

"They used it as a way to bring the raka to heel," replied the soldier. "Here it became a weapon. Wise as you are, Lady Dovasary, surely you know, if any members of your family are accused of crimes against the Crown, it is the Crown’s right to sell any of your household with raka blood. That would include you and the lady Saraiyu."

Dove glanced at Aly. "Not one word," she said.

Aly shrugged. "I wasn't going to say a thing." She put her fingers under her Trick necklace to touch the scar where her slave collar used to be. Dove made a face.

"If the Crown abolished slavery, it would beggar the great nobles," she told the man-at-arms. "They would turn to treason before that."

The man shrugged. "I was just mentioning it as history, my lady. If you please, I am forgetting my duty. I must not converse, or I will be distracted from your safety."

Passing a basketmaker's booth on their way out of Market Town, Aly saw an ornament displayed on the edge of the awning. Palm fronds were woven into the shackle-and-chain design.

They want to join, Aly thought, awed. Not just the raka. The merchant luarin. They want to rid themselves of the Rittevons. But will they fight?

"Trick," she murmured, so quietly that only her necklace darking might hear, "what has Peony to report from Grosbeak? Anything?"

Trick extended a very long neck up until it could loop itself around the back of Aly's ear and dangle its head by her eardrum. "Peony says woman called Lutestring come from palace for daily report from Grosbeak. She takes papers and what Grosbeak says. Grosbeak tells her mysterious new sign of four circles then broken circle appears in more places everyday. He say half reports he gets say Topabaw turning against regents. He say other half say regents want to replace Topabaw. Grosbeak is shaking. Grosbeak does not tell Lutestring that he is taking all of his money out of moneychanger accounts and packing a bag if he must run. He already send wife and children into country today."

"Thank you," Aly murmured as they walked through the Balitangs' gate. "I'd hate to lose Grosbeak, though. At least, right at present." She stopped, thinking, nibbling her lip as Dove went into the house and the guards returned to their barracks. Aly’s unofficial watchers would return to their listening and rumor-spreading throughout the city. "Why stopping?" Trick inquired. "Ah," Aly said. The sound of Tricks voice practically inside her head gave her an idea. "Does he take a nap during the rest period?"

Trick waited for a moment, then told Aly, "Every day." "Peony must wait until he's sound asleep, then whisper that Grosbeak should stay to help Topabaw. Tell him that gods are smiling on Grosbeak." Bless me, I'm starting to talk like them, she thought. Aloud she told Trick, "Ask Peony to tell Grosbeak he will be rich if he stays to help Topabaw. Keep repeating it until he is almost awake. Peony must be careful and speak softly, positioning itself like you are doing. The longer Grosbeak stays and works for Topabaw, the more of his agents we'll catch."

Trick was briefly silent, then said aloud, "Peony say, fun."

Aly smiled. "Well, I did promise
all
of you some fun."

The footman in the front hall told Aly that Dove had headed straight for her stepmother's room. Lady Sarai still lay abed. Aly nodded her thanks and proceeded through the house on the way to her workroom, where she was sure a stack of reports awaited her. They had regular deliveries from the rebellions other agents, chosen and working long before Aly had even come to the Isles, people like Vereyu at the palace. Like Grosbeak, these people gathered information from their spies and sent it to Quedanga, who made sure that everyone who should see it did, including Aly. There were also reports from those agents Aly's people had recruited and trained, in addition to those of her own packs.