"Pierce, Tamora - Daughter Of The Lioness 02 - Tricksters Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Tamora)
"I would not touch your beauty, my dear," said the god with his flashing smile. "And I would be bereft if you chose to commit suicide rather than be tortured or questioned under truthspell. No one will be able to force knowledge from your lips or your hands."
Aly raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh. So they can torture me, they just can't make me tell the truth. An enchanting prospect, sir."
His smile broadened to a grin. "I love it when you call me sir. It makes me feel all..." He hesitated, then found the words he wanted. "All godlike. So there's no need to commit suicide. You won't ever surrender what you know."
"Have you granted the others this splendid favor?" she asked, curious. "I wouldn't want them to be jealous."
Kyprioth leaned against the rail, his expression wry. "No one else in the rebellion has put together as much of the complete picture as you have done over this winter, gathering bits and pieces. You simply had to ferret it all out, didn't you? Ulasim can give perhaps a hundred names. Ochobu can give the names of the Chain and the main conspirators among the Balitang servants. If my other leaders die, they can be replaced."
Aly showed him no sign of the chill that crawled down her spine over that matter-of-fact "they can be replaced." He's a god, she told herself. It's different for them.
Kyprioth sighed. "But you, my dear, have learned nearly the entire thing—not the foot soldiers, but those in command and where they are, the members of the Chain.... You couldn't help it. It's your nature to poke and pry and gather. Even your fellow rebels are ignorant of the extent of your knowledge, which makes me chuckle."
Aly fanned her hand at him, like a beauty who brushed off a compliment.
"Besides, I've grown attached to you," Kyprioth said, capturing her hand. He kissed the back of her fingers and released her. "I would hate it if you used the suicide spell and left me for the Black God's realm. You know how brothers are—we hate to share."
"You'll have to let me go to him sometime," Aly reminded the god. "I'm not immortal."
"That is 'sometime.' I am talking about this summer," Kyprioth replied. His eyes darkened. "Make sure you see this through. Once battle is joined in the Divine Realms, we gods draw strength from the success of our worshippers. If you and I fail, the luarin will exterminate the raka. And I will be unable to help them, because my brother and sister will kick me to the outermost edge of the universe." He brightened. "But there, why be gloomy? We're going to have a wonderful year, I'm sure of it!"
He was gone.
For a moment Aly hoped the god was not placing more trust in her abilities than she deserved. Then she shrugged. There was one way to find out if she was as good at her task as she and Kyprioth hoped, and that was to pull off a war. "What's a little thing like revolution between friends?" she wondered, and looked ahead.
Yards of dirty water lay between the moving ship and the dock, where a welcoming party stood. "So we begin," said Fesgao Yibenu as he came to stand with Aly. The raka sergeant-at-arms swept the docks with his narrow eyes. "No royal welcome, despite Elsren's being the heir," he remarked, settling a helmet over his prematurely silver hair. With a wave he ordered the men-at-arms who had sailed with the family to flank the rail where the gangplank would be lowered. "We are definitely the poor country cousins of the royal house." Fesgao was in charge of the household men-at-arms and the rebellion s war leader. He'd spent his life guarding Sarai and Dove, keeping the last descendants of the old raka queens safe. Now he looked at the man who commanded the twenty extra Balitang men-at-arms waiting on the dock, and saluted him. The man saluted in return, a hand signal that meant all was quiet there.
"They've added checkpoints where the docks meet the land, do you see?" Fesgao murmured to Aly. "They want to know who comes and who goes."
Aly shrugged. Soldiers could not possibly watch every inch of ground between the fortresses that flanked the harbor mouths. In the dark, a hundred raka swimmers could enter the water and no one would know. "If they're watching the docks, they're worried," she murmured. "Let's go and give them more to worry about."
Duchess Winnamine had returned to the deck, leading the two children she had borne Duke Mequen. Petranne, a six-year-old girl with silky black curls and long-lashed eyes, danced in place, excited to come home to Rajmuat. Five-year-old Elsren was his father's son, brown-haired and stoic. He hid his face shyly in his mother's skirts.
Winnamine shook her head as she looked at the dock. "This is not good," she murmured, frowning.
Ochobu, the old raka who was the household mage and healer, came up beside her. She, too, was a leader in the rebellion, responsible for the mage network known as the Chain. They had been the source of the rebels' information all winter. "What is not good?" Ochobu asked. She had a hand against her forehead to shade her brown eyes as she inspected the people on the dock. "You are a duchess, and a woman of property. You cannot walk into the city like a commoner. You must have a proper escort."
"We have a proper escort aboard with us," Winnamine said quietly. "Forty men-at-arms looks as if we consider ourselves important. We aren't important until the regents say we are. And half of those men are new. We cant pay more guards," Winnamine said. "I told Ulasim before he left not to hire anyone!"
"Your Grace," Aly said politely. Winnamine looked at her. "Ulasim always has good reasons for what he does, you know that. See the checkpoints? There's been trouble in the city—they didn't have checkpoints at the docks last year. Maybe Ulasim found a way to pay these men-at-arms. Or maybe they're just rented for the hour, like actors who mourn at funerals. You know, to add to your consequence."
The thought of her consequence made Winnamine chuckle as Sarai and Dove came to join them. Overhead the Stormwings glided, shrieking like gulls.
Once the ship docked and the passengers disembarked, Fes-gao and the guards circled the Balitang family and helped them into litters. Servants loaded the family's belongings into a handful of carts. Only when everything was stowed and the litters surrounded by armed men did Fesgao move the party out. The litter bearers set off into the tangle of streets that ended at the dockside.
Colors, sounds, and smells assaulted Aly, making her shrink against the litter that held Sarai and Dove. She had gotten used to the long silences of winter nights at Tanair. Street vendors shouted news of their wares, bellowing their praises of jackfruit, sweet cakes, and cheap copper and silver bracelets. Bird sellers walked among them, carrying poles laden with dozens of species of loud, unhappy winged creatures. Shops displaying goods for passersby lined the streets near the docks. Perfumes and spices filled the air with scents.
Aly took it in as she walked beside the litter that held Sarai and Dove. She had picked out a couple of watchers— people who paid close attention to their group. She also recognized a couple of her own trainee spies from Tanair. She smiled, proud as a mother whose child had taken her first steps, then glanced up to see how Winnamine and the two younger children did in the litter ahead of them. Fesgao walked beside them, talking quietly with the duchess. Rihani, the raka mage who looked after Petranne and Elsren, walked on the other side of the litter, pointing out sights of interest. Slowly they moved into the quieter, wider streets of Market Town, the city's merchant district.
There were signs of trouble in Market Town, shuttered stores with Crown seals on the doors to show they'd been seized by the law, chipped paint and splintered wood showing where people had hurled rocks. Aly saw a charred open spot where, if she remembered correctly, a temple to Ushjur, the god of the east wind, had stood. This was most certainly a slap at the luarin, who came from the east. Aly made a note to ask about it.
She had no sense of armed watchers, but she felt observed. Aly looked up. In the houses above the shops, people filled each window, their eyes fixed on the open-sided litters. Aly bit the corner of her lip. Ulasim had gotten the word out that people were not supposed to gather in the street to greet their prophesied queen, but he could not stop them from trying to get a look at her. They were drawing the attention of the spies who followed their procession. She could see them noting the audience. Topabaw and prince-regent Rubinyan would have word of this before noon.
"Busy already, Aly?" Fesgao asked. He'd walked back to her. "Your glance darts like dragonflies on the water."
Aly fluttered her lashes at Fesgao. "I never figured you for a poet," she joked.
He smiled. "We can control the common folk only so much," he continued in his softest tones.
"Oh, I know," she replied lightly. "Her Grace was excited to see all these new warriors of ours. Did we rent them, or may we keep them? That tall one with the scar on his chin might actually be able to keep up with me for all of a day."
"You are too gracious," Fesgao replied, face straight. "You would break the poor boy by noon, and I would have to keep him in the infirmary for two weeks." He returned to the duchess at the head of the column.
"It's dangerous," Dove remarked softly from inside the litter. "They shouldn't stare so openly. Someone will notice their interest."
"Perhaps they've never seen disgraced nobility return to Rajmuat before," suggested Aly. "They could just be looking at Elsren. He is Dunevon's heir."
"Not officially," Dove said, meticulous as always about points of law. "The regents have to make Elsren the official heir by decree. They should—it's customary—but they may choose not to, if they think the nobles won't insist. Until then, if people know what's good for them, they won't pay any attention to Elsren at all."
Aly noted more signs of trouble as they entered the wealthier residential neighborhood of Windward: burn marks on stone, and hastily whitewashed stucco. Here no one could watch the streets from the windows of their homes, because these were set back behind walls ten feet high. Instead, people lined the street on both sides.
"The regents will hear of this," Dove added quietly. "They won't like it."
Aly patted the younger girls thin shoulder. "Now, if they got everything they liked, they would be spoiled," she told Dove. "And nobody likes spoiled regents."
"Spoiled regents kill people and leave them at the harbor mouth," Dove said gloomily.
Aly smiled slyly and told her young mistress, "Yes, but they don't seem to be able to keep them there very long."
Dove glanced at Aly sharply, then eyed her sister. Sarai leaned against the side of the litter, watching the street. "She thinks the twice-royal queen is a fairy tale, you know," Dove told Aly "Made up by Mithros and the Goddess to keep the raka quiet under luarin rule. If there is something going on, she will take a lot of convincing."
"If there was anything for her or you to know, you'd have been told, surely," Aly said. As the raka general, Ulasim had ordered that Sarai and Dove not be told of the plans being made on their behalf. "Worry about prophecies another time. Once we've unpacked and had baths, for instance."
Dove sighed. "All right, keep changing the subject," she said as she sank back against the cushions. "But I'm not fooled. You know something. You're harder to work out than Sarai, but I know you too well by now."
Aly was about to reply "Don't ask me, I have brothers," but she caught herself. Over the winter she had nearly told Winnamine, Sarai, and Dove the truth about her own background. Aly wanted to trust them. She would trust them with her life if she had to, as they had trusted her with theirs. But she could not trust them with her past, and her ties to the rival kingdom of Tortall.
She continued to watch the crowd.
There were spells written deep within the walls that surrounded the Balitang home. They appeared as a shimmering silver blaze in Aly's Sight. As the procession passed through the gate, she saw magic sunk below the stones, wood, and carvings. It was partially covered by the silvery gleam of common magical signs for protection and health that any house possessed. Unless someone else in Rajmuat had the Sight in the strength Aly had it, no one would see or sense anything but the everyday spells. Raka mages were very good at keeping their work hidden.
Ornately carved pillars lined the long front porch and framed the front door of Balitang House. The roof was layered, each lesser roof sporting upturned ends. After the summer's heat and rains, and the winter's cold and rains, with no staff to keep the place up, the house should have looked rundown. But this house gleamed. Not one clay tile was missing from the roof. The stucco was the color of fresh milk. Gold and silver leaf glimmered on the eaves and on the carved wood above the posts.
The staff was lined up on either side of the flagstone road. They wore luarin tunics and breeches or hose, raka wrapped jackets and sarongs, or combinations of styles in an explosion of colors that made Aly blink. Housemaids wore white headcloths; the men wore round white caps. They all looked to be wearing every piece of jewelry they owned.
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |