Trickster's Duet by Tamora Pierce

Author:Tamora Pierce [Pierce, Tamora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-38878-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

“Aly?” Dove whispered in the darkness of her bedroom. Junai was still downstairs with her father.

Aly had not been asleep. She'd been expecting this. “We'll go outside. There's a pavilion the mages fixed in the garden. It's shielded from just about everything inside the walls as well as outside.”

Dove and Aly wrapped themselves in robes and padded downstairs. Once outside, Aly led her mistress to the open-sided building where she had talked to Nawat. The girls sat for a moment on the couch, enjoying the cool, damp spring breeze.

At last Dove looked at Aly. “I wish you had told me.”

“In all honor, I couldn't,” Aly explained. “They expected me to keep my silence, and it is their plot. I am a newcomer.”

“But the raka, the people not of our household, they know, or they guess,” Dove pointed out. “It's why they always turn out to see Sarai and me. Not because our mother was raka, but because they believe Sarai is the promised queen.” She rubbed her mouth with her thumb. “I'm surprised the regents haven't tried to kill us already.”

“It will come,” Aly said. “If they know their business, they will try nothing in the confines of the palace. They'll try in the city, if they can't get inside these walls—”

“And they can't,” Dove interrupted, her words half a question.

Aly considered this. At last she said, “Not without a frontal assault, I think. And on the city streets . . . The raka have been planning this rebellion for decades. We have more allies on the streets than the regents suspect. Naturally, I'm going to do my best to make sure of what they suspect and what they don't.”

“Alone?” Dove asked.

“Now you're fishing,” Aly said, not in the least alarmed. “I have help, and that's all you need to know for the present. When exactly did you put it together?”

Dove began to braid a lock of her hair. “Around Midwinter, I think. Oh, Sarai and I knew the raka believed Sarai might be the promised queen before that, but it took me some weeks penned up in Tanair to see that there was an actual conspiracy among our upper servants, not the usual mutterings of hotheads. Here in the city, it's even more plain.”

Aly looked aside for a moment, to do the mind trick that allowed her Sight to work better in the dark. She wanted to see the expression on Dove's face. The younger girl seemed composed, but a corner of her mouth quivered.

It is one thing to guess, and another to know, Aly reflected. She's starting to see the cost in blood.

“I have been trying to steer them away from a massacre,” Aly said, deliberately adopting the tone of an elderly aunt who had convinced the children to behave. “And they have been listening. Even Ochobu, who hates the luarin more than the rest, sees that there's no profit in killing all the full-bloods, let alone anyone who's a part-blood.”

“I feel so much better,” commented Dove.

“And so

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