Daughter Of The Lioness - Trickster's Choice Part 1

Pierce, Tamora.

Daughter of the Lioness.

Trickster's Choice.

To Phyllis Westberg, for knowing the best time to fire me and for giving me the best rewrite advice I've ever gotten: read aloud

In a time of fear, the One Who I Promised will come to the raka, bearing glory in her train and justice in her hand. She will restore the G.o.d to his proper temple and his children to her right hand. She will be twice royal, wise and beloved, a living emblem of truth to her people. She will be attended by a wise one, the cunning one, the strong one, the warrior, and the crows. She will give a home to all, and the kudarung will fly in her honor.

-From the Kyprish Prophecy, written in the year 200H.E.

The Luarin Conquest: New Rulers in the Copper Isles by Michabur Durse of Queenscove, published in 312H.E.

In the b.l.o.o.d.y decades before the year 174 of the Human Era, the Kyprish Isles were locked in strife. Rival branches of the royal house traded the throne on a number of occasions. In turn the crown had lost control over the warring houses of theraka, or native, n.o.bility. Scholars said of those years that only the jungles prospered, for the trees and vines fed on the blood of the raka. During this time the Isles exported more slaves than imported them: victors sold their enemies into the Eastern and Southern Lands, only to enter slavery in their own turn when they lost the next battle.

Queen Imiary VI of the house of Haiming made repeated attempts to negotiate peace among the raka. Her efforts failed. She was overthrown after twelve years of rule. Her successor and murderer, Queen Dilsubai, also a Haiming, favored those n.o.bles who supported her shaky claim to the throne, and imprisoned their rivals. The glorious days of the copper-skinned warrior queens of the Isles were over.

On the mainland, the pale-skinned easterners calledluarin by the Kyprish people saw the disorder, and the wealth, of the Isles. Rittevon of Lenman, younger son of a lesser n.o.ble house in Maren, found opportunity in the Isles' disorder. He raised funds and allies among the realms of Tusaine, Galla, Tortall, Maren, Sarain, and Tortall's southern neighbor Barzun.*For an army he summoned younger sons, adventurers, and mercenaries, all bought by the promise of the Isles'

wealth. With them came battle mages trained in the arts of war at the university in Carthak. Rittevon and his chief ally, Ludas Jimajen, son of a Tyran merchant clan, placed their souls in p.a.w.n for the gold that bought the services of their battle mages. They bought all the raka n.o.bles they could in advance, promising them status when Rittevon sat the throne.

The first a.s.sault came in stealth on April 5, 174H.E. The invaders struck not the capital at Rajmuat, where rival Haiming cousins fought over the crown, but the stronghold of the n.o.ble house Malubesai, on the southern island that bears their name. This most powerful clan was taken completely by surprise. Their homes were left in ruins, their warriors in ma.s.s graves, and their descendants in chains, all at the hands of the luarin mages.

For the next seven years, luarin s.h.i.+ps and armies ranged the islands from Malubesang to Lombyn, from Imahyn to Tongkang. Lesser raka n.o.bles and various clans, seeing how the wind blew, offered their allegiance to the conquerors.

These became the lesser n.o.bility of the Isles, allowed to retain lands, freedom, and lives, but taxed into poverty after their strongholds were destroyed. For the greatest raka n.o.bles and the royal house of Haiming, the luarin offered only slavery or death. On Midsummer's Day 181H.E. , the first Rittevon king was crowned as ruler of the newly renamed Copper Isles.

The domination of the raka people continued. The luarin n.o.bles-once tailor's sons and blacksmiths, landless younger sons and mercenaries-took for their new houses and fiefdoms the names of the land and the old n.o.ble houses. More luarin arrived to settle and do business. Marriage among the raka was encouraged for the luarin lower cla.s.ses, producing a mult.i.tude of part-raka servants and slaves. The luarin were there to stay.

Like most who lose such struggles, the raka declared that only war in the Divine Realms explained the failure of their patron G.o.d, Kyprioth, to defeat the luarin. The luarin priests taught, and the raka people believed, that Kyprioth's divine brother and sister, the war G.o.d Mithros and the Great Mother G.o.ddess, had overthrown him. It was these G.o.ds, the priests of both races said, who took the right to govern the islands, while they gave Kyprioth lords.h.i.+p only over the local seas, to keep him occupied under their eyes.

Soon after the last battle of the luarin conquest, an ancient priestess gave voice not to her own prayers, but to the banished G.o.d Kyprioth. His promise was pa.s.sed from raka slave to raka freeman, from raka mothers or fathers to their part-luarin children. Kyprioth told his people that the efforts of the luarin kings to erase the Haiming line had failed. One branch of the old royalty yet survived. The Queen's prophecy is his promise that, from that surviving branch, the One Who Is Promised would come. She would be the Queen with two crowns, chosen by the G.o.d to lead the Isles and those who love them to freedom once more.

1.

PARENTS.

March 27April 21, 462H.E.

Pirate's Swoop, Tortall, on the coast of the Emerald Ocean George Cooper, Baron of Pirate's Swoop, second in command of his realm's spies, put his doc.u.ments aside and surveyed his only daughter as she paused by his study door. Alianne-known as Aly to her family and friends-posed there, arms raised in a Player's dramatic flourish. It seemed that she had enjoyed her month's stay with her Corus relatives.

"Dear Father, I rejoice to return from a sojourn in our gracious capital," she proclaimed in an overly elegant voice. "I yearn to be clasped to your bosom again."

For the most part she looked like his Aly. She wore a neat green wool gown, looser than fas.h.i.+on required because, like her da, she carried weapons on her person. A gold chain belt supported her knife and purse. Her hazel eyes contained more green than George's own, and they were set wide under straight brown brows. Her nose was small and delicate, more like her mother's than his.

She'd put a touch of color on her mouth to accent its width and full lower lip.

But her hair . . .

George blinked. For some reason, his child wore an old-fas.h.i.+oned wimple and veil. The plain white linen covered her neck and hair completely.

He raised an eyebrow. "Do you plan to join the Players, then?" he asked mildly.

"Take up dancing, or some such thing?"

Aly dropped her pretense and removed her veil, the embroidered cloth band that held it in place, and her wimple. Her hair, once revealed, was not its normal shade of reddish blond, but a deep, pure sapphire hue.

George looked at her. His mouth twitched.

"I know," she said, shamefaced. "Forest green and blue go ill together." She smoothed her gown.

George couldn't help it. He roared with laughter. Aly struggled with herself, and lost, to grin in reply.

"What, Da?" she asked. "Apart from the colors, aren't I in the very latest fas.h.i.+on?"

George wiped his eyes on his sleeve. After a few gasps he managed to say, "Whathave you done to yourself, girl?"

Aly touched the gleaming falls of her hair. "But Da," she said, voice and lower lip quivering in mock hurt, "it's all the style at the university!" She resumed her lofty manner. "I proclaim the shallowness of the world and of fas.h.i.+on. I scorn those who sway before each breeze of taste that dictates what is stylish in one's dress, or face, or hair. I scoff at the hollowness of life."

George still chuckled, shaking his head.

"Well, Da, that's what the students say." She plopped herself into a chair and stretched her legs out to show off her shoes, brown leather stamped with gold vines. "Theselook nice."

"They're lovely," he told her with a smile. "Which 'they' is it that proclaim the hollowness of the world?"

Aly flapped a hand in dismissal. "University students. Da, it's the silliest thing. One of the student mages brewed up a hair treatment. It's supposed to make your hair s.h.i.+ny and easy to comb, except it has a wee side effect. And of course the students all decided that blue hair makes a grand statement." She lifted up a sapphire lock and admired it.

"So I see." George thought of his oldest son, one of those very university students. "Don't tell me our Thom's gone blue."

Now it was Aly's turn to raise a mocking eyebrow at her father. "Do you think he even notices blue-haired people are about? Since they started bringing in the magical devices from Scanra, he's done nothing but take notes for the mages who study how they're made. The only reaction I got fromhim was 'Ma better not see you like that.' I had to remind him Mother's safely in the north, waiting for the snows to melt so she can chop up more Scanrans." Aly had left a pair of saddlebags by the door. Now she fetched them and put them on a long table beside George's desk. "The latest doc.u.ments from Grandda. He says to tell you no, you can't go north, you're still needed to watch the coast. Raiding season will begin soon."

"He read my mind," George said crossly. "That cursed war's going into its second year, your mother's in the middle of it, or will be once the fighting warms up, and I stay here, buried under paper." He indicated his heaped desktop with a wave of a big hand and glared at the saddlebags. "I've not seen her in a year, for pity's sake."

"Grandda says he's got an a.s.sistant trained for you," Aly replied. "She'll be here in a month or so. Heis right. It's no good holding Scanra off in the north if Carthak or Tusaine or the Copper Isles try nipping up bits of the south."

"Don't teach your gran to make b.u.t.ter," George advised her drily. "I learned that lesson before you were born." He knew Aly was right; he even knew that what he did was necessary. He just missed his wife. They hadn't been separated for such a long stretch in their twenty-three years of marriage. "And an a.s.sistant in a month does me no good now."

Aly gave him her most charming smile. "Oh, but Da, now you've got me," she said as she gathered a wad of doc.u.ments. "Grandda wanted me to take the job as it was."

"I thought he might," George murmured, watching as she leafed through the papers she held.

"I told him the same thing I did you," replied Aly, setting doc.u.ments in stacks on the long table. "I love code breaking and knowing all the t.i.ttle-tattle, but I'd go half mad having to do it all the time. I asked him if I could spy instead. . . ."

"I said no," George said flatly, hiding his alarm. The thought of his only daughter living in the maze of dangers that was ordinary spy work, with torture and death to endure if she were caught, made his hair stand on end.

"So did Grandda," Aly informed him. "Ican take care of myself."

"It's not the life we want for our only girl," George replied. "My agents are used to living crooked-you're not. And whilst I know, none better, that you can look after yourself, it's those other folk who worry me, the ones whose business it is to sniff out spies." To change the subject he asked, "What of young what's-his-name? The one you wrote was squiring you about Corus?"

Aly rolled her eyes as she sorted doc.u.ments into stacks. "He bored me, Da. They all do, in time. None of them ever measures up to you, or Grandda, or Uncle Numy"-her childhood nickname for her adoptive uncle, Numair, the realm's most powerful mage-"or Uncle Raoul, or Uncle Gary." She shrugged. "It's as if all the interesting men were born in your generation." She scooped up another pile of doc.u.ments from the desk. Soon she had the various reports, letters, messages, and coded coils of knotted string in four heaps: decode, important, not as important, and file. "So you can forget what's-his-name. Marriage is for n.o.blewomen with nothing else to do."

"Marriage gives a woman plenty to do, particularly the n.o.ble ones," George said.

"Keeping your lands in order, supervising the servants, using your men-at-arms to defend the place when your lord's away, working up your stock of medicines, making sure your folk are fed and clothed-it's important work, and it's hard."

"Well, that letsthat straight out," she told him, her eyes dancing wickedly.

"I've decided that my work is having fun. Somebody needs to do it."

George sighed. He knew this mood. Aly would never listen to anyone now. He would have to have a serious conversation at another time. She was sixteen, a woman grown, and she had yet to find her place in the world.

Aly rested her hip on George's desk. "Be reasonable, Da," she advised, smiling.

"Just think. My da and grandda are spymasters, my mother the King's Champion.

Then I've an adopted aunt who's a mageand half a G.o.ddess, and an adopted uncle who's a mage as powerful as she is. My G.o.dsfathers are the king and his youngest advisor, my G.o.dsmothers are the queen and the lady who governs her affairs.

You've got Thom for your mage, Alan for your knight"-she named her oldest brother and her twin, who had entered page training three years before-"and me for fun. I'msurrounded by bustling folk. You need me to do the relaxing for you."

Despite her claim to studying the art of relaxation, Aly had sorted all of the doc.u.ments on her father's desk. She set the important pile in front of him and carried messages to be decoded to the desk that she used when she helped George.

There she set to work on reports coded in the form of a.s.sorted knots in wads of string. Her long, skilled fingers sorted out groups and positions of knots in each message web. They were maps of particular territories and areas where trouble of some kind unfolded. The complexity of the knot told Aly just how bad the problem was. The knots' colors matched the sources of the trouble: Tortallans, foreigners, or immortals-the creatures of myth and legend who lived among them, free of disease and old age. Most immortals were peaceful neighbors who didn't seek fights, since they could be killed by accident, magic, and weapons, but some were none too friendly.

George watched Aly with pride. She'd had an apt.i.tude for codes and translations since she was small, regarding them as games she wanted to win. She had treated the arts of the lock pick, the investigator, the pickpocket, the lip reader, the tracker, and the knife wielder in the same way, stubbornly working until she knew them as well as George himself. She was just as determined a student of the languages and history of the realm's neighbors. How could someone who liked to win as much as she did lack ambition? His own ambition had driven him to become the king of the capital's thieves at the age of seventeen. Her mother's will had made her the first female knight in over one hundred years, as well as the King's Champion, who wielded the Crown's authority when neither king nor queen was present. And yet Aly drifted, seeing this boy and that, helping her father, and arguing with her mother, who wanted her daughter to make something of her life. Aly seemed not to care a whit that girls her age were having babies, keeping shops, fighting in the war, and protecting the realm.

Perhaps Ishould let her work, George thought, then hurriedly dismissed the idea.

She was his only daughter. He would never let her risk her neck alone in the field. It was bad enough that he'd taken her to some deadly meetings in earlier years, meetings where they'd had to fight their way out. If she'd asked to try the warrior life as a knight, one of the Queen's Riders, or one of the battle-ready ladies-in-waiting who served Queen Thayet, he would have found it impossible to refuse. His wife and Aly's adoptive aunts would have had many things to say to him then, and none would be a blessing. But she wanted to be a spy in the field. That he could and did refuse. He'd lost too many agents over the years. He was determined that none of them be his Aly.

He looked up, realizing that she had given him a weapon in her pursuit of fun.

"What would you have done, mistress," he asked sternly, "if youwere a spy and I needed you to go out in the field, with that head of hair acting as a beacon?"

Aly propped her chin on her hand. "It comes out in three was.h.i.+ngs, first of all," she informed him. "Second, if I was in Corus or Port Caynn, it would make no never mind. The apprentices and shopkeepers' young there pick up university fas.h.i.+ons straightaway. Any other big city, I could just say it's the newest style in Corus. Or I'd say that they'd remember the hair and never the face under it, just likeyou taught me." George winced. Aly pressed on, "If none of that eased your flutterings, Da, I'd say that's what razors and wigs are for."

She brightened. "I'll wash it out right now if you've a field a.s.signment for me."

George got to his feet. "Never mind. Leave your poor hair alone. It's near suppertime."

When Aly stood, he came over to put an arm around her shoulders. At five feet six inches, she fitted just under her tall father's chin. George kissed the top of her very blue head. "I'm glad you're home, Aly."

She smiled up at him, all artifice and playacting set aside. "It's always good to see you, Da."

That night they ate with Maude, the Swoop's aging housekeeper and Aly's former nursemaid. Maude clucked over her hair, as Aly had known she would. She loved to make Maude cluck. Then she could remind the old woman how much she had changed from the Maude who had once disguised her young mistress Alanna as a boy and sent her off to become a lady knight. Maude always got fl.u.s.tered by that. Alanna was now a legend and a great lady of the realm. Maude could say it was fate that had made her open-minded back then, but she knew she was being inconsistent when she said it.

Aly liked to tease her nursemaid, not to mention everyone else. Her father knew her tricks and enjoyed catching her at them, which was fine. She knew most of his, too, because he'd taught them to her himself. She disconcerted most people, from the many boys who came calling once they'd noticed her mischievous eyes, ruddy gold hair, and neat figure to the hardened brigands and criminals who carried information to her father. She could even make her brothers yelp like puppies if she worked at it. Her twin, Alan, was particularly vulnerable, since she knew his mind nearly as well as her own.

The only person she left alone was her mother. Lady Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau, King's Champion and lady knight, known throughout the Eastern and Southern Lands as the Lioness, did not startle well. She had a temper and her own particular way of doing things. Alanna showed a sense of humor only around her husband. Aly knew her mother loved her two sons and lone daughter, but she was seldom home. She was forever being summoned to some crisis or other, leaving her children to be raised by her husband and Maude.

Not that her children required any more raising. Aly was sixteen, almost an adult and ready for adult work, as people were forever reminding her. Aly sometimes felt that everyone in her world had more exciting things to do than she did. She hadn't seen her mother, Aunt Daine, or Uncle Numair since the Scanran war began a year before. In the last month, while Aly had been in the capital, her grandparents were constantly advising the king and queen, so much so that she couldn't impose on their hospitality any longer. Her brother Thom, two years older, thought mostly of his studies. Her twin, Alan, who'd begun his page training three years late, was kept busy by the training master. She had seen him twice during her visit, and only for brief periods of time. She had felt left out, even as she had understood that for the time being, Alan belonged to his training master more than he did even to his twin sister. Rather than distract him from his training, she left him alone. Alan was like a cat: he would return to her when he was ready, and not one moment sooner.

All of the young men she had not flirted with and discarded were as busy as her brothers were. They prepared to march north when the mountain pa.s.ses opened, as they would any day, or else they had left to guard the realm's other borders.

None of her family would allow Aly within coughing distance of the war. So back home Aly had gone, feeling restless and in the way. At least Da would use her for paperwork, which wa.s.something.

Sometimes she thought she might scream with boredom. If only Da would let her spy! As she decoded reports and summed them up for him, she tried to work out a plan to change his mind.

On Aly's third day home more reports arrived. One of them was sealed in crimson, for immediate review. She deciphered it: the code was one of many she had memorized, so she required no book to translate it. Once done, she read what she had written and whistled.

George looked up. He sat at his desk, reading letters from Tyra. "Somebody would tell you that's unladylike," he pointed out. "Not your dear old common-born Da, for certain."

"No, not my dear old common-born Da," she replied, smiling at him. "But this is worth whistling over. Somehow our man Landfall's made it to Port Caynn. He's hiding out there, with important messages for you."

George's brows snapped together. "Landfall's supposed to be in Hamrkeng, keeping an eye on King Maggot," he replied slowly, using the Tortallan nickname for Scanra's King Maggur.

Aly reread the message, noting the apparently insignificant marks that marked it as coming from one of their agents, not a forgery. "It's Landfall, Da," she said. "I taught him this code myself, before we got him into Maggur's capital four years back. He kept saying it was a hard day for the realm when a little girl was teaching code."

George thought it over, rubbing his head. "Landfall. Either he was found out and escaped in time, or . . ."

Aly finished the sentence for him. "Or what he has is so important he could only carry it himself. Maybe both. He must have come down by s.h.i.+p."

George got to his feet. "Well, I'd best see what it's about." Landfall was one of a handful of agents smuggled into Scanra in the years before the war. He was vital enough that he reported only to Aly's grandfather Myles or to George. "Be a good la.s.s and handle these papers for me? I shouldn't be gone more than a day or two-I'll fetch him back here. Have Maude get one of the hidden bedchambers ready."

Aly nodded. "You'll get muddy, riding to Port Caynn now," she pointed out.

George kissed her forehead. "It'll do me good to get out in the field, even if it means getting some of the field on me. I'm that restless."

Aly waved goodbye from the castle walls as her father rode out of Pirate's Swoop, two men-at-arms at his back. The ridewould do him good. She only wished he could go all the way to her mother's post at Frasrlund in the far north, where he clearly longed to be.

Aly returned to his office in a gloomy mood. Would she ever find someone to love as much as her parents loved each other? She would miss such a partner dreadfully if they were separated, she supposed, just as her parents did. At least she would have someone to talk to, someone clever who didn't gawp at her and ask her what she meant or, worse, be shocked by her. It wasn't much fun when the only people who could keep up with her were either related or at least ten years older than she was.

The day after her father's departure Aly heard the horn calls that signaled the arrival of a friendly s.h.i.+p in the cove. Normally she would have run to the castle's observation platform to see who the new arrivals were, but she was in the middle of a particularly difficult bit of translation: code entered as pinholes in a bound book. If she was not careful, she would flatten the delicate marks, ending up with gibberish instead of a message. She stayed at her task until she heard hooves in the inner courtyard. Gently she set the book aside and went into the main hall, then out through the open front door.