Tricksters Queen (29 page)

Sarai remained quiet all the way to the Fonfala estate. There they caught up to another party, including Ferdy and Zaimid Hetnim, who charmed her out of her gloom. At supper, when the political situation came up, Zaimid found a way to distract Sarai from the conversation. He had her laughing by the time the second course was served.

"If he'll wait till I'm older,
I'll
marry him," Dove told Aly as she brushed her hair before bedtime. "We could use allies in Carthak, especially the emperors personal physician."

Aly frowned. "Do you know, I think you're right," she said, considering it. "It won't do for Sarai—her husband should be from the Isles, and the queen can't live in another country. But I wouldn't sneeze at a Carthaki alliance."

The next day the celebration began at noon. Fonfala servants directed their guests to the areas of the estate they would most enjoy. For the younger family members, the Fonfalas had decorated the old nursery with enough toys to tempt the most fretful child. The doors at the side of the formal sitting room were open and tables were set on the veranda, perfect for the older adults. The library was available for the more studiously inclined. Dove settled in there with a chessboard and Baron Engan, though by midafternoon she had a score of other opponents, including her aunt Nuritin. Aly thought it funny that Dove had as many chess opponents as Sarai did dance partners.

Winnamine, her brothers and sisters from the family holdings on Malubesang, and Sarai and her companions went riding. They took their lunch together in a grassy clearing beside a small waterfall. Afterward they had an archery contest and a riding contest. Everyone changed clothes for supper, then again for the dancing. After she had set the last hairpin in Sarai's braided and curled hair, Boulaj came to Aly. She was sweating.

"Rihani, Dorilize, and Pembery are ill. So am I," she told Aly, sitting on Dove's bed. I'm afraid the chicken sambal may have been off."

Aly had not had the popular dish at the servants' supper. She had tried sambal once and avoided the spicy dish on principle ever since. She had gotten accustomed to Kyprin spices, she liked to say, but never
that
accustomed. She told Boulaj, "I keep saying that stuff will kill you."

Boulaj gave her a tight smile. "No, but at least this time it makes it difficult to stray far from the privy. I should have listened to Lady Sarai—she said she thought it tasted odd. Can you look after Her Grace, Lady Nuritin, and Lady Sarai as well as Lady Dove? Our ladies are all dressed. We could manage that much, at least."

Aly smiled. "Go to bed. I think I can tend our ladies on my own for one night. It's not like they come rushing in to fix their clothes over and over." The Balitang ladies were the most self-sufficient noblewomen Aly had ever met.

"Gods bless you," said Boulaj gratefully. "Excuse me." She left.

Aly escorted the ladies to the ballroom. Dove headed for a chair next to Nuritin and Baron Engan and was welcomed into their conversation. Sarai and her female friends sat with the young men. Winnamine found a chair with the mothers.

Aly strolled into the gallery where the servants could observe their masters. Once she had explained the absence of Pembery, Dorilize, and Boulaj, she took up a position by the carved screen through which she could see the ballroom. For the first time in months she felt a pang of envy as she watched Sarai, glorious in a white lawn kirtle and doubled silk ivory gown, come down the lines of dancers with a different young man for every dance. Once that might have been Aly herself.

But the colors would have been different, she told herself firmly. Less... insipid.

She knew that was jealousy whispering in her ear. She couldn't help it, any more than she could help thinking how she and Nawat would look, properly dressed, going through the steps. Nawat danced beautifully, she had found out at Midwinter at Tanair.

A pang shot through her; her eyes burned slightly. First I start missing his kisses, then I miss him at a party where we wouldn't be allowed to dance anyway. What's wrong with me? she asked herself. She did not try to answer. Instead she tried to pick out who among the young noblemen might be a good partner, if she were allowed to dance. The only one she liked was Zaimid. He was handsome, graceful, clever, and he had a good heart. But he lacks something, Aly decided. Directness, perhaps. An odd sense of humor. He would never send a girl a shiny rock or a griffin feather as a token.

She was getting up to check her ladies again when brightness—the white-hot blaze of godhood—struck her eyes. She clapped her hands to them and retreated, then did complex things with her Sight, making herself better able to see through that fire. Had Kyprioth returned?

"Aly?" asked a Fonfala maid. "Are you all right?"

"Dust in my eye," Aly replied, blinking. "Yes, that's better." She looked up.

The source of the fire was just vanishing through the door to the hall outside. Aly slid between the other servants and stepped outside. An old brown-skinned woman in a black and orange headcloth and sarong hobbled away from Aly, a tray in her bony hands, godhood shimmering around her. Aly called, "Grandmother, wait."

The old woman glanced at her. She grinned, the essence of mischief in her expression. Then she turned the corner, moving more quickly than Aly would have expected of someone of her age.

"Uh-oh," Trick whispered. "Gods not good. Gods sly."

"I know," Aly replied softly. "But we need to know what brings a god here." She followed, tracking the old goddess by her glowing footprints.

She had a very bad feeling about this. Might this be the Great Mother Goddess, who had returned to the Isles in her aspect as the Crone? Aly prayed it was not as she went on into the gardens. If the Goddess had come, she would uncover Kyprioth's plans. The war between the Great Gods would start with Kyprioth still unprepared.

Finally Aly saw her quarry on a bench near the estate's temple. Aly adjusted her Sight to allow for the dark as the woman shook off her headcloth. Only gray stubble covered her head. There was a scarred socket where one of her eyes had been. When she grinned, Aly’saw gaps in her teeth.

"Bad. Wily. Careful." That was Secret, quavering from Aly's shoulder.

The goddess squinted at Aly. "Ah," she said in a cheerful voice. "You've little tattlers on your shoulders. How sweet. They will be silent for the time being." She pointed: white light swarmed over Aly. Trick and Secret immediately went still. Worried, Aly touched them. Their bodies in her necklace were warm, but she felt no heads.

"They're alive," the goddess assured her. "I just don't want them meddling."

And I don't need
you
meddling, Aly thought, though she said "Good evening" politely. From long acquaintance with her mother and her Aunt Daine, she knew it was wisest to be polite to strange gods. "I never thought the Fonfalas were so remarkable that they might draw a god to their house."

"But I like playing servant, dearie, just like you," the goddess told her. "People think you're furniture. They hardly notice. You can have all kinds of fun without them realizing who's doing it, but you already know that. I love to see their little lives collapse in flames. It's even more amusing when they start blaming each other as things go wrong."

Goose bumps crept over Aly. There was something familiar about this goddess. "Are you a raka god?" she asked, still cautious.

"Gracious, no. Don't they have enough troubles with my cousin mucking about? Just be thankful his sister the Jaguar Goddess is locked up, and all the others are small gods," the goddess told Aly. She snatched at the air, grabbed a firefly, then popped it into her mouth. "Mmm, I like these. I wonder if I could get some at home."

Aly remembered where she'd heard of a goddess much like this one. Daine had told her about the Carthakis' quirky patron goddess. "You're the Graveyard Hag."

The goddess beamed at her, revealing all of seven teeth. "Aren't you the clever boots," she said with pleasure. "I'd heard that you were, but 'Count on it,' I told Gainel—that's the Dream King to you, dearie. 'Count on it,' I told him, 'they're always
said
to be quick, but it turns out to be all smoke.' No," she cautioned as Aly took a step back. "Don't run off. That wouldn't be polite, and I'm not done with you."

Aly could not move her foot—either foot, for that matter. Or her hips. Or her arms. She tried to open her mouth to scream and failed.

The goddess nodded. "Every bit as clever as my cousin says. Mind, I don't want to ruin Kyprioth's game. I just want to tweak it a little. Besides, I'm doing a favor for one of my own lads. Such a good one, he is. He built me a shrine—paid for it with his own money, too! One good turn deserves another, and he's in love."

Aly released the breath she'd meant to use to scream through her nose. Suddenly her mouth could move again. She could talk, but she also knew better than to try to call out. "May I ask questions?" she inquired. "Since I'm going to be here for a time?"

The Hag chuckled. "Oh, you are a treat. Well brought-up, even with a mother who's a violent bumpkin."

Aly ignored the insult. Her mother had been called worse things. "This worshipper must be very devoted, to bring you all the way here. Surely it would be easier to favor him at home. Unless you have other business?" She kept her voice light and sweet.

"It's more personal satisfaction than business," replied the Hag. "Normally I could give duckmole's dung about the Isles, but Kyprioth is annoying even for a god. He gloats. He's been saying we lesser tricksters couldn't fool Mithros and the Goddess ... as if we don't know what we're doing. He deserves a lesson." She seized another firefly. "And I can do my worshipper a favor while I'm at it."

Aly raised an eyebrow.

The Hag grinned. "Besides, I owe Kyprioth. He's gotten the better of me twice. I mean to repay him."

Aly picked through the Hag's words. Aunt Daine
said
gods talk in riddles, she grumbled to herself.

The Hag replied aloud. "Naturally," she said with glee. "You mortals are so adorable with your faces all screwed up when you're trying to think."

Carthaki, Aly thought, shooting a glare at the Hag. A worshipper from there . . . "Zaimid Hetnim?" she asked.

The Hag chortled. "Bright girl." She stood, dusting off her hands. "By the time you can free yourself, my boy will have his heart's desire, Kyprioth will have his comeuppance, and
you
will have some work to do." Wriggling her fingers in a mockery of a wave, she vanished.

Aly didn't like it, but there was nothing she could do. The Graveyard Hag had sealed her lips. Her mind raced frantically. Stupid! she told herself over and over. Stupid, over-confident,
blind
. . . Why did I not see it coming with Sarai and Zaimid? Sarai's not good at hiding how she feels. I've been trained to spot intrigue in every form! But no, I was smug about Topabaw and creating more spies. And while I was being so festering clever, a girl in love cooked something up right under my nose!

She berated herself without mercy, remembering clues that should have been obvious, including Sarai s conviction that nothing in the Isles would ever change for the better. She remembered how quiet Sarai had been after Imajane's offer of marriage to the boy king. Despite everything her advisors told her, Sarai had appeared convinced that she would have to marry her royal cousin.

At last the spell that locked Aly into place began to thaw, like ice on a sunlit pond. It faded bit by bit, driving Aly half insane as she waited. Somewhere, she knew, the Graveyard Hag was enjoying her frustration. At last she was free.

"This bad?" asked Trick, once he and Secret were also able to move again. They settled back into their bead necklace shapes, with the two connecting medallions that were their heads on each of Aly's shoulders.

"It's not good," Aly told the darkings. "And I am an idiot." She didn't even bother with the servants' gallery, but ran into the ballroom itself. When she stumbled to a halt at the room's center, everyone turned to stare. Aly ignored them, scanning every face in the room. Sarai and Zaimid were not there.

She ran into the servants' gallery. Zaimid's attendant was gone. She told herself not to panic yet, then bolted outside. As the Fonfalas' daughter, the duchess had been given her own pavilion separate from the main house, where she and her stepdaughters slept with their attendants. Petranne and Elsren shared the nursery in the main house with the other children. Aly knew that Boulaj, Pembery, and Dorilize would be in the household infirmary, wherever that was.

She raced to the duchess's pavilion. Inside, a lamp was provided for the Balitang ladies' return. In the flickering light it cast, Aly could see that Sarai's trunk—the one into which the vexed Boulaj had simply thrown all her mistress's personal items as Sarai kept changing her mind—was gone. Moreover, there was a folded and sealed document on the duchess's bed. Aly went to look at it. The note was addressed, in Sarai's curling writing, to
Winna and Dove.

Aly was sitting on the pavilion steps when the duchess arrived. "Aly, what's going on?" she asked, her sweet, deep voice concerned. "Papa said you burst into the ballroom looking as if the dead marched on your spine. . . ."

Aly held out the letter Sarai had left.

"Oh, no," said Winnamine. She hurried into the pavilion without taking the letter. Aly stayed where she was.

Soon more footsteps slapped the flagstone path. This time it was Dove. "Aly, have you seen Sarai? Ferdy Tomang is searching all through the main house, and he's saying he'll kill Zaimid or Druce or Vedec if they've sneaked away with her—" She cut herself off abruptly. "Aly?"

Winnamine walked onto the steps and sat next to Aly. "She left a letter for us," she told Dove, and broke the seal. Using the light from the torches that marked the pavilion's entrance, she read the letter to the girls in a leaden voice.

"Dearest Winna and Dove,

"I can only beg your forgiveness a thousand times for running away like this."