Trickster's Queen (Daughter of the Lioness Book 2) Read online

  “Few authors can slay so effectively with a single sentence—I mean fist-in-the-air, shouting-at-my-book slay—as Tamora Pierce. All these years later, I still draw strength from her words.”

  —MARIE LU, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Tamora Pierce’s books shaped me not only as a young writer but also as a young woman. Her complex, unforgettable heroines and vibrant, intricate worlds blazed a trail for young adult fantasy—and I get to write what I love today because of the path she forged throughout her career. She is a pillar, an icon, and an inspiration. Cracking open one of her marvelous novels always feels like coming home.”

  —SARAH J. MAAS, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “It’s impossible to overstate Tamora Pierce’s impact on children’s literature. Her tough, wise, and wonderful heroines have inspired generations of readers. Her encouragement of up-and-coming authors is unparalleled. Thank you, Tammy, for Alanna and Beka and more, for your generosity of spirit, for your incredible legacy.”

  —RAE CARSON, New York Times bestselling author

  “Tamora Pierce’s writing is like water from the swiftest, most refreshingly clear, invigorating, and revitalizing river. I return to her books time and time again.”

  —GARTH NIX, New York Times bestselling author

  “Tamora Pierce’s novels gave me a different way of seeing the world. They were like nothing I’d encountered before. Alanna stormed her way into my thirteen-year-old heart and told me that I could write gorgeous, complicated novels about vibrantly real people in fantastic situations, and, to be honest, she’s never left.”

  —ALAYA DAWN JOHNSON, award-winning author of Love Is the Drug

  “Tamora Pierce is the queen of YA fantasy, and we are all happy subjects in her court.”

  —JESSICA CLUESS, author of A Shadow Bright and Burning

  PRAISE FOR

  TRICKSTER’S QUEEN

  “Through this fast-paced adventure tinged with romance and humor, Aly tries to protect the rightful heir to the kingdom’s throne.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Tamora Pierce has outdone herself in Trickster’s Queen….There’s everything in this book from fighting and suspense to romance and adventure.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “[Aly] is delightful in her deviousness….The plot sweeps readers along in a whirlwind of court intrigue, deception, murder, and romance.”

  —SLJ

  “Aly is easily among the most interesting of Pierce’s heroines. Thrilling fun.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The intricate intrigue is compelling as Aly uses her cadre of spies to collect information and manipulate events leading up to revolution….A thoroughly engrossing novel, sure to please.”

  —Booklist

  “The shockingly unpredictable plot developments and realistically nuanced characters keep the story true to its volatile environment.”

  —The Bulletin

  TORTALL BOOKS

  BY TAMORA PIERCE

  THE NUMAIR CHRONICLES

  Tempests and Slaughter

  TRICKSTER’S DUET

  Trickster’s Choice

  Trickster’s Queen

  PROTECTOR OF THE SMALL QUARTET

  First Test

  Page

  Squire

  Lady Knight

  BEKA COOPER TRILOGY

  Terrier

  Bloodhound

  Mastiff

  THE IMMORTALS QUARTET

  Wild Magic

  Wolf-Speaker

  Emperor Mage

  The Realms of the Gods

  THE SONG OF THE LIONESS QUARTET

  Alanna: The First Adventure

  In the Hand of the Goddess

  The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

  Lioness Rampant

  Tortall: A Spy’s Guide

  Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2004 by Tamora Pierce

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Velvet Spectrum

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ember, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, New York, in 2004.

  Ember and the E colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Excerpt from Tempests and Slaughter copyright © 2017 by Tamora Pierce. Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Visit us on the Web!

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Pierce, Tamora.

  Trickster’s queen / Tamora Pierce

  p. cm.

  Summary: Aly fails to foresee the dangers that await as she uses her magic to safeguard Dove and her younger siblings, despite knowing that her thirteen-year-old charge might be queen of the Copper Isles when the colonial rulers are defeated.

  ISBN 978-0-375-81467-9 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-91467-6 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-375-89053-6 (ebook)

  [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P61464Tq 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2004003120

  Trade paperback ISBN 9780375828782

  Ebook ISBN 9780375890536

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Tortall Books by Tamora Pierce

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. Rajmuat

  2. Dragons, Crows, and Doves

  3. Topabaw

  4. The Pavilion of Delightful Pleasures

  5. The Demands of Rebellion

  6. Spies

  7. Putting Darkings to Work

  8. Plots Hatch

  9. Reports and Conspiracies

  10. Eclipse

  11. A Few Changes

  12. Meddlers

  13. A Change of Plans

  14. Dove Among the Nobles

  15. Rebel Preparation

  16. Dunevon's Birthday

  17. Mourning

  18. Conspiracies

  19. Rittevon Square

  20. Battle Joined

  21. Work

  Epilogue

  Cast of Characters

  Glossary

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Tempests and Slaughter

  About the Author

  To Bruce Coville, divinely tricky, magically inspiring—

  one of the best men I've ever known,

  and

  To Mary Lou Pierce,

  the best Ma in the world

  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 god 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 200 H.E.

  PROLOGUE

  THE COPPER ISLES

  In the winter of 462–463 H.E., the brown-skinned raka people and their many allies, part-bloods and white-skinned luarin, prepared for revolution against the luarin ruling house, the Rittevons. The raka plan was to replace the Rittevons with one who had the bloodlines of both the raka queens and the luarin rulers, a passionate girl named Saraiyu Balitang.

  The leaders of the raka rebel conspiracy did not spend the winter months dozing. Throughout the Isles, Crown tax collectors vanished from their beds, never to be seen again. Even more baffling, all the suspects who were questioned in their disappearances swore under truthspell that they had last seen the missing officials alive and well. Property damage on luarin estates that winter far exceeded that expected from heavy rains. Dams collapsed, sweeping away acres of rice fields. Blackrot invaded grain silos, destroying winter stores. Bridges fell. Overseers and a few nobles were murdered. When the Crown sent soldiers to kill the people of the nearest raka village, as the law required, the troops found that the inhabitants had vanished. Many people reported hearing war gongs sounding from deep within the lowland jungles.

  Life for the Balitang family in the highlands of Lombyn Isle had two sides. One was that of a family that had just lost its patriarch and had to get through the winter months before they could return to the capital city of Rajmuat at the behest of the ruling family. Duchess Winnamine Balitang took solace from her two older stepdaughters, Saraiyu and Dovasary, and her own children, six-year-old Petranne and five-year-old Elsren. She conducted lessons, had snowball fights, told stories, and did her best to keep everyone from screaming with boredom. She also helped train Sarai's maid, a twenty-three-year-old raka woman named Boulaj, and Dove's maid, the former slave Aly Homewood from the kingdom of Tortall.

  Beneath this comfortable domestic life lay a second, less visible and more directed. Many of the leaders of the hoped-for revolution were servants to the Balitangs. They guarded the two older girls and perfected their plans. They sent and received information through a network of mages called the Chain, who used their powers to pass messages from island to island. The members of the household practiced fighting arts, from unarmed combat to sword and spear work, in the outbuildings at Tanair Castle. They had an unusual teacher for new ways of fighting: Nawat, a young man who had once been a crow. The duchess saw this practice as much-needed exercise, and both she and her daughters joined in. To the raka's regret, Sarai refused to continue her lessons in swordcraft after she fought and beheaded her would-be lover, Prince Bronau, the night he slew her father.

  Busiest of all the members of the rebel conspiracy was the newest to join, seventeen-year-old Aly Homewood. She was in reality Alianne of Pirate's Swoop, the daughter and granddaughter of Tortall's spymasters, raised from the cradle to compete in the world of international espionage. During the previous summer she had acted as chief bodyguard to the Balitang children. With the arrival of spring and the move to Rajmuat, Aly knew she would become the rebellion's spymaster. Although the Balitangs' former housekeeper, Quedanga, has remained in Rajmuat to collect information from long-standing networks of spies, Aly's specially recruited spies and those they will train have their own unique work ahead. They will collect information for the rebel leaders to use against their enemies, and conduct whatever actions of sabotage and psychological operations required to put the raka's enemies at odds with each other. For sixteen years she studied such work under her father's eye. Now she would do it herself, for the promise of better leadership for the Isles.

  In preparation, Aly used the winter to build a cadre of trained spies, people among the household who could learn and use all she had to teach. The lessons of these raka and part-raka in their twenties and thirties included written and spoken codes and code breaking, lock picking, and climbing. She also taught them sign language, thorough searches, medicines and herbs, and the detection of other spies. Because she was younger than many of her trainees, Aly treated them in a teasing, grandmotherly way, while they awarded her the raka nickname of Duani or “boss lady.” Aly also spent time with the raka mage Ochobu, creating suicide spells and magic detection charms, and with the rebels' armorer, choosing weapons for her pack and for herself.

  Aly dared not tell anyone why she was so eager to take up the mantle of spymaster. To do so, she would have to reveal her true parentage. The raka would see her as a tool of the Tortallan Crown, while the forces loyal to the Rittevon king and his regents would see her as a spy. Only one being knew her true history: the deposed god of the Copper Isles, the trickster Kyprioth. It was he who had brought Aly to the service of the rebellion that would return him to his seat of power. Although responsible for her presence, Kyprioth did not speak to Aly throughout the long winter. She assumed he was hiding from the god brother and goddess sister who had cast him from his Isles: Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess.

  Luckily, Aly had the crow fighter Nawat to entertain and delight her through the long months. His courtship grew more passionate throughout the winter, and he finally stopped offering her bugs to eat.

  At the beginning of April, most of the household traveled south to ready the family's home in the capital, Rajmuat. The family and the remainder of the servants, including Aly, took the following few weeks to prepare for the move that would change all of their lives completely and irrevocably.

  1

  RAJMUAT

  April 23, 463 H.E.

  Rajmuat harbor, Copper Isles

  As the ship Gwenna glided through the entrance of Rajmuat harbor, a young woman of seventeen years leaned against the bow rail, taking in her surroundings through green-hazel eyes. Despite her white skin, she was dressed like a native raka in sarong, sash, and wrapped jacket. The sarong displayed her neat, if thin, figure—one with the curves that drew male eyes. The calf-length garment also showed muscled legs and trim ankles protected by leather slippers. Her jacket, worn against the chill of the spring air, covered her muscular upper arms, while the loose areas of her clothes hid an assortment of flat knives designed for her needs. She had a small, delicate nose, inherited from her mother, just as her eyes were her father's. The wide mouth, its lower lip fuller than the upper, was all hers, with smiles tucked into the corners. Her reddish gold hair was cut just below her earlobes to fit her head like a helmet.

  Aly looked the soul of repose as she lounged against the rail, but her eyes were busy. She swiftly took in the panorama of Rajmuat as the city came into view. It sprawled over half of the C-shaped harbor, arranged on the rising banks like offerings laid on green steps. Steam rose from the greenery as the early-morning sun heated damp jungle earth. Patches of white and rose pink stucco marked newer houses, while the older houses, built of wood and stone, sported roofs that were sharply peaked and sloping, like the wings of some strange sitting bird. The higher the ground, the more complex the roof, with lesser roofs sprouting beneath the main one. The roofs of the wealthier houses blazed with gilt paint in the sun. Strewn among the homes were the domed, gilded towers of Rajmuat's temples.

  Above them all stood the main palace of the Kyprin rulers. Its walls, twenty feet thick, patrolled by alert guardsmen day and night, gleamed like alabaster. The rulers of the Isles were not well liked. They required the protection of strong walls.

  In the air over the great harbor, winged creatures wheeled and soared, light glancing off their metal-feathered wings. Aly shaded her eyes to look at them. These were Stormwings, harbingers of war and slaughter, creatures with steel feathers and claws whose torsos and heads were made of flesh. They
lived on human pain and fear. In the Copper Isles, ruled by the heavy-handed Rittevons and their luarin nobles, the Stormwings were assured of daily meals. Aly hummed to herself. There had been plenty of Stormwings when she and the Balitangs had sailed north a year before. Now there were a great many more. From the news she had gathered on their voyage to Rajmuat, she wasn't surprised. The regents, Prince Rubinyan and Princess Imajane, had spent the winter rains executing anyone who might give them trouble, in the name of their four-year-old king. Aly nodded in silent approval. It was so useful when the people in charge helped her plans along.

  The Stormwings reminded her that she was not on deck to sightsee. Aly turned her head to the left. Here a fortress guarded the southern side of the harbor entrance. Beyond it, on a short stone pier, stood the posts called Examples. Each harbor had them, public display areas where those who had vexed the government were executed and left on display. In Rajmuat, the capital of the Isles, the Examples were reserved for the nobility. They were surrounded on land by a stone wall broken by a single gate. Over the gate, a banner flapped on the dawn breeze, a rearing bat-winged horse of metallic copper cloth, posed on a white field with a copper border— the flag of the Rittevon kings of the Copper Isles.

  Guards streamed through the gate and onto the pier. At the foot of one of the posts men were arguing, waving their arms and pointing. They wore the red-painted armor of the King's Watch, the force charged with keeping the peace, enforcing the law, and conducting executions. Aly narrowed her eyes to sharpen her magical Sight. The power was her heritage from both parents, and allowed her to read the lips of the men and take note of their insignia. She identified four lieutenants, one captain, and a number of men-at-arms who did their best to pretend they were invisible.

  Someone sniffed behind her. “Carrion crows,” Lady Sarai Balitang remarked scornfully. “What, are they fighting over who gets the ‘honor' of displaying the next wretch? Or just over who does the mopping?” Sarai moved up to stand beside Aly at the rail, her brown eyes blazing with dislike as she watched the men. A year older and an inch taller than Aly, Sarai had creamy gold skin and tumbles of braided and curled black hair under a sheer black veil. An excellent horsewoman, she held herself proudly straight, catching the eye of anyone who saw her.