Daughter Of The Lioness - Trickster's Choice Part 5

Winnamine shook her head with a rueful smile, then watched the raka craft that continued to sail by. After a moment she returned to Mequen. Tired of the spectacle, Petranne and Elsren followed her.

Aly remained in the bow, leaning on the rail. It was embarra.s.sing to think that rather than truly expressing her independence, she had been difficult with her mother just for the sake of being difficult, because she was sixteen and stubborn.

That night they anch.o.r.ed in the harbor at Ambririp, off the northeast point of Imahyn Isle. The family slept ash.o.r.e at a proper inn. Mequen's and Winnamine's servants took care of the younger children. Aly remained with the rest of the household, the servants, slaves, and men-at-arms. They set up a communal supper on the beach near the dock where their ships were anch.o.r.ed.

Chenaol took command of the meal. True to what she'd told Aly about staying with Sarai and Dove, the raka woman had turned down other n.o.bles' offers of higher pay and more leisure time. Now she sent Ulasim and two other men to the Ambririp market with a list. Three more servants dug a fire pit in the sand and hung a metal cookpot over it from an iron tripod. Once the men returned with Chenaol's ingredients, she set to work, shredding a chicken and cooking it in water, cutting up hard-boiled eggs as the meat simmered. One of the cookmaids chopped shallots, spring onions, garlic, and chilies. Another ground them into paste along with cut ginger, lemongra.s.s, and lime juice. Once the broth was ready, everything went into it, including bean sprouts and bean-flour noodles.

Aly refused the hot sauce they offered her when her bowl was filled. She had tried it once in Rajmuat, at her first meal among the Balitang staff. They had roared with laughter as she gulped water to put out the fire in her nose and throat before finally showing her that yogurt or bread worked better to ease the bite. She'd laughed, too, once she doused the fire. Even now she grinned as they teased her about picking out the visible pieces of chili pepper. Finishing the contents of her bowl, Aly thought that perhaps she was getting used to Isles cooking. This dish made her eat only twice as much yogurt and bread as the raka, instead of her usual four times that amount.

Afterward some maids washed up. Everyone gathered around the fire, luarin, part-raka, and raka alike. Back in Rajmuat the free servants and the men-at-arms each had their own hall. They didn't mingle with the slaves. Here, Aly saw, they felt too lonely and out of place to separate into their usual groups. A leather bottle was pa.s.sed from one person to the next as each took a large drink of its contents. When it came to Aly, she sniffed, caught the unmistakable odor of liquor, smiled, and handed it on.

"That's arak, girl," Chenaol said comfortably, relaxing against a sack of rice next to Aly. "Distilled palm sap wine. It's good for you. Warm your belly, lighten your burdens."

Aly smiled. "But my belly's already far too warm from supper," she joked. "At this rate, I'll open my mouth one day and burn the trees down." That drew a laugh from the others.

Chenaol shrugged. "More for me, then," she said, and took a healthy gulp.

The skin made two more rounds of the household. The men and women from Rajmuat were homesick, though most agreed that life with the Balitangs was better than that with other n.o.ble households. Aly was startled to learn that many of the servants, including Ulasim, and a handful of men-at-arms were actually from the Tanair lands on Lombyn. This would be their first return home since the death of the first d.u.c.h.ess, Sarugani.

At Balitang House the ch.o.r.es had been unending, and most of the staff had been too exhausted to talk at the end of the day. If they did talk, it wasn't to the new, junior slave. Here Aly was one of them. Now she got the worm's-eye view of the Rittevon court, told by those around her after they had gossiped with Rajmuat's other servants and slaves.

They were united in their belief that King Oron would die soon. The old man had been failing in health and mind over the last five years. Hazarin, the sole remaining child of King Oron's first marriage, was the rakas' bet to inherit the throne. They thought Hazarin was as peculiar in his ways as his father, with an affection for huge meals and strange drugs. His next relative was his half sister, Princess Imajane, but under the luarin law no woman could succeed to the throne. Last of all there was Dunevon, born the same year as Elsren, child of the king's third wife.

"Oron's wives don't seem very lucky," Aly remarked. The people around her burst into laughter.

"You're right enough there," the head footman, Ulasim, replied with a grin. He was in his forties, a hard-muscled raka with direct brown eyes, black hair pulled back in a horsetail, a mustache, and a chin beard. His nose had met someone's fist, elbow, or knee far more often than Aly's had. He was a hard man, but fair, and the household respected him. He told Aly, "See, His Majesty starts to think his wives have lovers, and, well . . ." He drew his thumb across his throat.

"Maybe Lombyn's best for us," remarked one woman, her face shadowed.

"You haven't been there," Ulasim informed her. "It getscold on the Tanair plateau. No jungle, the birds all drab little things . . ."

"There's condors," argued a hostler. "And crows."

"Andbig drab birds," retorted Ulasim. "It's in the middle of nowhere, not a town worthy of the name for miles. I was born on those lands. I know."

"Then why did you come?" demanded a maid. "You had plenty of offers to serve elsewhere."

Ulasim looked into the fire, his face somber. Finally he said quietly, "The duke's the best man I've ever served. I came to his house with d.u.c.h.ess Sarugani, and I never regretted it. These are good people. I won't turn my back on them."

He looked around the circle, meeting everyone's eyes. He stopped at Aly. "Maybe you think we'll be left in peace out there. I don't. They'll need all the friends they can get." He took another drink of arak.

He'd be a good man to have on my side, Aly thought. If I can get him there without him thinking I'm up to something. That will be interesting.

She turned to Chenaol. "Didyou know the first d.u.c.h.ess?" she asked. Chenaol had the same Lombyn accent, dulled by years in Rajmuat, as Ulasim.

Chuckles sounded around the fire. "She was a handful," Chenaol admitted. "I worked for her relatives, House Temaida-that'd be the lesser n.o.bility, the raka, Aly. Anyway, Sarugani came down from Lombyn and stayed with us when she was presented to the n.o.bility. I was a.s.sistant cook for the Temaidas then. We got friendly because she liked my herb garden. I asked to go with her when she married, and the family agreed. She was spirited, always up to something. She had half the luarin n.o.bles as well as the raka chasing her. And the present d.u.c.h.ess, she and Sarugani were like sisters."

"You'd never know they were raka and luarin, they were that close," someone murmured. "Her Grace doesn't care what color your skin is."

"Now, Sarugani was fearless in the saddle." The head hostler, Lokeij, was present, a white-haired old raka slave everyone knew would never be sold. The family hadn't even suggested that he be put up for sale. "Ride anything in the stable, broken in or no. She made those luarin biddies cackle, riding in breeches like a proper woman of the raka."

"It was her riding that did her in," Ulasim went on. "Lady Dove was five, or a bit short of that, and Lady Sarai was nine. The d.u.c.h.ess went hunting one day with friends. The horse failed in a jump-broke her neck and the beast's legs. My lord was nearly a ghost for long after. We looked after him and the young ladies till his aunt Nuritin moved in.She woke him up."

"Gave him an earful, told him he was a disgrace," said the raka healer Rihani with a grin. "Told him he was neglecting the girls and his house, he'd no male heir, and he'd let himself go to seed. Hounded him until he started to live again. Convinced him he'd best marry, since he wasn't getting any younger and he'd no son and all. That's when he realized what a treasure Lady Winnamine was."

"Luarin," said Lokeij, shaking his head. "Always getting themselves into this male heir mess. We raka know better. It isn't the equipment the clan chief's got, it's up here." He tapped his forehead. "The old king wouldn't be such a fool if he broke with luarin custom and made Lady Imajane his heir.She'd get the country in order."

"Hush!" someone whispered. Aly saw Lokeij jerk, as if he'd just taken an elbow in the ribs. "It's treason to talk so-a whipping at the very least!"

"So all those raka turned out to see Sarugani's girls." Aly used a tone that implied she didn't believe what she was saying. She wanted to steer the talk away from possible treason, as well as learn a little more about the family. "Is that it? Seems to me they were more interested in how beautiful Lady Sarai is.

How important was her mother, anyway?"

The raka present exchanged glances. Finally Ulasim said quietly, "She was just from an old raka family, that's all. Personally, I think these raka knew of the duke's disgrace. How often will they see anyone who isn't raka being sent into exile? He is related to the king, after all."

Aly could have pointed out that other luarin n.o.bles must have gone into exile, but her instincts told her it was time to shut up. It was always difficult to probe for information gently, without causing others to think she might know more than was safe.

Ulasim got to his feet as nimbly as if he'd never touched the arak. "I don't know about you, but we sail at dawn, and I'd like a proper sleep."

Aly sighed to herself. She would have to teach these people better ways to steer someone away from a dangerous line of thought. Ulasim might as well have shouted that she'd touched on a secret.

The footman's words signaled the other servants and slaves. They, too, rose and went to their hammocks aboard the different ships.

As Aly helped Chenaol carry the cooking tools back aboard ship, the cook told her, "Free raka-the ones who don't work for the luarin-keep their reasons to themselves. They don't trust us city folk, and we fear them. Every time they revolt, and they do, now and then, the luarin usually execute all the raka they can catch. That would include us. So people get jumpy when you ask too many questions."

"You don't keep any ties with your families?" Aly asked as she stowed the last of the herbs. She turned to look Chenaol in the face. The woman blinked. Liar's sign, thought Aly. That's what Da calls it when someone blinks during questioning.

"Seldom," Chenaol replied, blinking again. "Mostly we keep to our city family.

Off to bed with you, then."

Aly obeyed, though it took some time for her to sleep. She was going through her memory, trying to see if she had ever known the proportion of Copper Isle raka to the luarin. And what secret was so important that even slaves and servants with drink in them wouldn't hint at it?

You do your bit, and then you get to pretend to be part of the scenery. You sit and you sweat and you hope that all those who are paid to go out and show their faces and do the b.l.o.o.d.y work don't foul everything up. The waiting for others to act on your information will give you the belly gripes, but that's what agents do. And I advise you not to pray as you wait. You don't know who will answer, times like that.

-FromA Workbook for a Young Spy

4.

THE ROAD.

Lombyn Island, Tanair Castle and village They set sail once more at dawn, baking quietly in a sudden burst of early summer. By midmorning Lombyn was in view, an island nearly as long and wide as Gempang, but far more mountainous, with a ribbon of green jungle at the mountains' feet, pine forest above, and then bare rock. Somewhere behind those granite barriers, Aly knew, was the Tanair estate, part of Sarugani's dowry and Sarai's inheritance. It was as safe as any of the Balitang holdings, since it belonged to Sarai and not Mequen, which made it less vulnerable to seizure by the king. As a refuge, it might just work, Aly thought.

Their ships were closing on Dimari's harbor when Aly noticed movement in the skies. Winged horses rode the columns of warm air that rose along the cliffs of Lombyn, their immense, batlike wings outstretched, their manes and tails fluttering as they climbed and descended. Aly adjusted her Sight. Above the jungles and mountains she saw even more of the great creatures, all colors of horse from solid black to solid white, roan, buckskin, bay, chestnut, piebald, odd-colored, flea-bitten, dapple, a universe of horsedom in the air of Lombyn.

She gasped in awe, thrilled to see these great immortals playing in midair. Did Aunt Daine know there were so many in the Isles? Winged horses were rare in Tortall. Aly had seen a handful of the smallest kinds, no bigger than starlings, and only one of these big creatures. Hurroks, the predatory fanged and clawed variation of this breed of immortal, they had aplenty, but their milder cousins were scarce.

"In the old times, thekudarung, what you would call winged horses, nested in all of our Isles." Ulasim, dressed for the day in a sleeveless cotton tunic and breeches, had come to lean on the rail next to her. He squinted up at the fliers, a hint of a smile on his face. "They are sacred to the raka, the sign of our royal house, and its messengers. Then foreign mages banished the kudarung to the G.o.ds' home with the other immortals, without asking our thoughts on the matter. They left us only songs and paintings to remind us of their beauty.

Kudarung are found in all sizes. Those are just the biggest of them."

"I'd heard they are different sizes," Aly murmured, entranced. "How prideful of those mages, to banish them without asking you." She remembered something she'd read in some of her father's reports. "But they're back now," she pointed out, her tone one of harmless interest. "So do they serve the Rittevon kings? I mean, you said they were royal messengers."

The smile Ulasim had brought to the rail vanished. His mouth flattened into a tight line. At last he leaned over the rail and spat into the water. "You speak lightly of serious things, Aly. Five of the kudarung were captured by Crown mages and forced to breed. So yes, the luarin king has kudarung as messengers, but they did not come freely to him, as they did to our queens." He turned to Aly, his brown eyes sharp as they rested on her face. "There will be more raka than luarin, in the Lombyn highlands," he said. "You should speak more carefully there. None of the raka are so tame as we let the luarin believe." He turned and went below, leaving Aly to consider what he had said.

They docked in Dimari, Lombyn's main port, around noon. Once again the family and a handful of body servants went to an inn to rest. The slaves and servants unloaded possessions from the ships, then packed them in wagons purchased by servants who had left for Dimari the day the Balitangs knew they were going into exile. Some wagons were already loaded with foodstuffs. Near them the servants had penned or cooped domestic animals. The duke had planned ahead, Chenaol told Veron, the luarin who commanded the household men-at-arms. Life was harder on the plateau where Tanair stood, the crops less plentiful. The duke had purchased supplies in advance, to keep the family and their attendants from placing a burden on the local folk. One of the island's merchant caravans had already been engaged to carry extra supplies in when they made their summer rounds. Not only would the family not create a burden for the people who had farmed Tanair for centuries, but they meant to expand what was grown and herded to the benefit of everyone.

"Whatis Tanair, exactly?" Aly asked the cook as she struggled to push a crate onto a wagon of kitchen supplies. "I mean, I know it's a fiefdom, but no one's said if there's a town anywhere near, or a river . . ."

"Tanair Castle is a tower with outbuildings," Chenaol replied with grim good humor. "Inner wall, outer wall. Then there's the village around it. Inti and Pohon are two other villages on the plateau. There's some luarin blood in the Tanair folk and some in Inti, which stands on the road leading to the western ocean. There's no luarin blood in Pohon. It used to be that any part-luarin who wandered into Pohon never wandered out, so the luarin stay away. Word gets around."

"How charming," Aly murmured.

Chenaol shrugged, her dark eyes twinkling in their folds of flesh. "Pohon folk are a righteous lot-or maybedestructive 's a better word. They're so cut off up there that they don't realize the luarin are here to stay, and breed. Maybe when they've had the chance to meet our ladies, they'll change their-Oh, curse it, those idiots will smash my peppers, mauling them about that way. You there!" she yelled to two dockhands as they slung baskets into a wagon. "Those aren't hay bales!"

Interesting, Aly thought as she continued to load the kitchen wagon. Chenaol had almost let something important slip. Why would the Pohon folk change their minds about luarin when they met "the ladies"? What about Sarai and Dove would change minds, and why did the cook want the Pohon minds changed?

Aly felt as if she was reading a book from which every second page was missing.

She needed to learn more about the raka and their politics.

The next morning masters, servants, men-at-arms, slaves, and animals set out from Dimari, bound for the Turnshe Mountains, which formed Tanair's eastern border. On the first day they rode through lush, settled lands owned by luarin and farmed by raka. The people labored in the sun and heat, men and women alike wearing only a tied sarong tucked up to keep them out of the mud. This was one of the most fertile parts of the Isles. Everywhere that Ali looked she saw rice paddies, the plants covering the brown water in which they were planted in a green mist. They also pa.s.sed coconut and bamboo plantations. Struggling to keep Elsren and Petranne from falling out of the covered, padded wagon where they would spend the rest of their trip, Aly did not envy the raka and part-raka who labored everywhere. When overseers descended on the slaves with whips raised, Aly had to look away. Without the Balitangs, she might have been one of those slaves, laboring in filth and being punished if she displeased a man with a whip.

This was the way most of the world lived, on slave labor. Tortall didn't encourage it, any more than Tusaine, Galla, and Tyra did, but some people in those countries did own slaves. Everyone ignored the working slave populations of the great farms of Maren. Aly just wasn't used to it. To her the slaves looked very like the convict gangs who labored on Tortall's roads and in its quarries and mines. At least those people had committed crimes to get a sentence of hard labor.

Overseers or no, when the Balitang wagons pa.s.sed the farms, the raka straightened to watch them pa.s.s. Dark-skinned full-bloods or varying, light-skinned mixed-bloods, all shaded their eyes and looked on in silence as the wagons rattled by. Free raka, not wearing slave collars, dressed in colorful sarongs and light tops, stood by the road to see them. There they remained as the caravan, encircled by Veron's twenty men-at-arms, pa.s.sed by in all its clatter. Others watched in the villages, from trees and upper-story windows of houses, on bridges and on rocks in the rivers. None of them said a word. All returned to their tasks as the last goat and man-at-arms went by.

Aly itched to question them but, trapped in the wagon with Elsren, Petranne, the d.u.c.h.ess's maid, Pembery, and the house's mildly Gifted healer, Rihani, she had to accept it as an itch she couldn't scratch. That vexed her. Grandfather Myles always said it was impossible to have too much information. Aly agreed from the bottom of her heart as she watched those stony, copper-skinned faces. She would not sleep easily until she knew what was on the raka's minds.

They spent the night at a village inn and set out once more at dawn that day and the next. On their third day out of Dimari the road entered dense jungle. It was like being enfolded in a vast, warm, damp woolen cloak under the trees. The ground actually steamed in the early morning as the land gave up moisture under the warming sun. Here the raka appeared at the head of turnoffs that led to their villages. The deeper into the jungle they went, the fewer raka men wore sarongs or shirts in the heat. Many wore only a loincloth; they carried farm and woodland tools or hunting spears.

The men-at-arms rode closer to the wagons, but Aly saw no hostility on those raka faces. None of the onlookers so much as moved when they pa.s.sed. What draws them to stare at Dove and Sarai? she wondered endlessly, until she wished she could just yank the questions out of her head and bury them under a rock. If the raka among the duke's people knew, they were not saying. She ought to know: she took every opportunity to drift near them when they weren't aware of her, listening in on their conversations. Many were as spooked by the local raka as Aly. None would speculate on what made them flock to view the Balitangs.

With the sun directly overhead they stopped on the road for a cold lunch of bread, dates, and sticky rice dumplings stuffed with beef and steamed in banana leaves. Aly expected Elsren and Petranne to complain at the rough fare, but they regarded the food and life in the wagons as an adventure. Elsren promised that as long as Aly produced new stories, he and his sister would behave.

"You have a happy nature," Aly told them as she cleaned Petranne up after lunch.

The four-year-old beamed at her. "I'm having fun," she informed Aly. "Aren't you having fun?"

Aly grinned at the girl. "Actually, now that you mention it, yes, I am. I've never seen jungle before."

"We have lots," Petranne explained as Aly scrubbed Elsren's upturned face.

"There's hundreds and hundreds of islands, and theyall have jungles on them."

"And have you seen them all?" Aly teased. She had spoken only half the truth to Petranne. The jungle, with its myriad flowers, trees, vines, and birds, was a gorgeous place, even if it was so humid it was hard to breathe. Aly could look at such beauty all day, except that she also knew the dangers of such thickly wooded ground. Jungles-any forest, for that matter-limited her field of vision.

They offered outlaws too many opportunities for mischief. The fact that the raka could be so quiet in their movements, never giving away their presence until the Balitangs rounded a bend in the road and saw them, made Aly's nerves fizz with alertness. One of these times the raka around the bend might not be so friendly.

After lunch the raka witnesses vanished. Aly discovered she disliked that even more than she disliked having scores of raka silently watch the Balitangs. Their caravan pa.s.sed a number of openings where roads and trails led away from their road, but they saw no one. As far as Aly knew, the jungle raka might be up to any unpleasant thing.

Their caravan traveled about ten miles before a horse on the lead wagon picked up a stone in her hoof. Mequen commanded their group to halt, which for Aly meant permission to climb out and look around. She stretched as she hobbled down the line of wagons and animals. Her entire body felt cramped. Not only had Petranne, Elsren, Pembery, and Rihani decided to stretch out for a nap, but Dove and Sarai had joined them, filling the wagon bed as full as it could get.

The kinks worked from her back, Aly observed the jungle, thinking. Something wasn't right. This was more than the absence of raka watchers. What was it? She knelt, pretending to tie a sandal lace, as she examined their surroundings.

When in doubt, her mother had said during hunts and rides through bandit country, use your ears. Aly used hers. Leaf movement: some, in a slight breeze.

Tree movement: no, the breeze wasn't strong enough. Moving water: the burble of the stream along the right side of the road. Feet in leaves: a couple of the men-at-arms crouched by the stream for a drink of water.

She heard no animals. Where were the calls of howler monkeys and the chatter of parrots? Where were the rustlings of mice and shrews in the leaf clutter? The jungle should have been alive with wildlife sounds. The hair at the back of her neck p.r.i.c.kled. Something was very wrong. The raka who had vanished from the roadsides knew it, and now she did, too.

Aly looked up and down the length of the train. She didn't want to go shrieking to the duke and d.u.c.h.ess. They would listen, but she would also draw the attention of the other servants and slaves, and she had been bred from the cradle not to draw attention. She needed to encourage someone else to voice concern at the silence.

At the back of the train, where the cows walked on tethers, five men-at-arms, some part raka, one full raka, had cl.u.s.tered to talk. There was tension in every line of their bodies. They would do.

Aly strolled up to them. "I know I'm new here," she began. The five men turned to stare at her. She smiled at them shyly. "It's just, you know, I'm a country girl at home, and my old dad taught me a few things."

The one named Fesgao, Veron's second-in-command and a pure-blood raka, raised angled brows. His ebony eyes were calm and level. His nose followed a straight line down from his forehead; he had high cheekbones and a square chin. Dressed in Balitang tunic and breeches, he was solidly muscled. His sword and dagger were plain but of good-quality steel. Aly guessed him to be thirty or so, younger than Ulasim and more reserved than the head footman. "And why should we be interested in what your father taught to you, little girl?" he inquired.

"Because Da taught me the same thing you have noticed," she said. It was a guess, but judging from the way two of the men looked up at the trees, it was a good guess. "Or do all your birds and mice and monkeys take a nap this time of day? Back home, we hear silence in the woods, and we arm up."

"And do you know woods?" asked Fesgao.

"I know the ones at home," she said. "I know them as well as Da."

The next moment Fesgao gripped Aly by the arm and drew her to the front of the line of wagons. Mequen and his sergeant, Veron, were idly talking while they watched a servant unharness the mare who had taken the stone in her shoe. The old hostler, Lokeij, waited with a fresh horse, his lined, monkey-like face worried as he looked at the lame mare. The other slaves liked to tease him that he thought of each and every Balitang horse as his own child.

"Fesgao, what's this?" demanded the sergeant. "And who's this wench?"

"A country girl who hears the same thing we do," said the raka, letting go of Aly.

"And what does she hear?" asked Mequen, his steady brown eyes on Aly's face.

She bobbed an awkward curtsey. "Nothing, Your Grace," she replied, keeping her eyes down as she acted the same country girl she had pretended to be for Fesgao.

"Back home, in the woods, when the animals go silent, oft-times it's because robbers are waiting up the road."

"I'd like permission to scout ahead, sir," Fesgao said to Veron. "We five are country-bred like her. In the city streets you know I follow your lead without pause. Here . . ." He left the word hanging in the air as he met Veron's gaze.

The sergeant, a luarin, scratched his head and sighed. "Forgive me for saying it, Your Grace, but he's right. I'm not a raka jungle runner. Fesgao is."