Tricksters Queen by Tamora Pierce Read Free Book Online Page A

that set magical signs ablaze throughout the room. They faded slowly until they were all but invisible.
    Ulasim leaned in his chair. "It is good to see you all again," he remarked.
    "Is it?" snapped Ochobu. "How could you allow that old woman to move in here, Ulasim? She will ruin everything."
    Ulasim sighed, running his hand through his long hair. "Mother, one does not forbid Lady Nuritin Balitang anything." he explained with resignation. "She is, as far as all Rajmuat is concerned, the head of the Balitang family with the death of His Grace. Technically this is the Balitangs' house, not Her Graces. It is Nuritin's signature that makes anything to do with this house possible."
    "How can we keep anything in this house secret with that woman and her servants at our heart like a luarin tumor?" demanded Ochobu.
    Chenaol grinned and poured out two cups of arak. She offered one to Ochobu, who ignored it. The cook gave a "Suit yourself" shrug and drank from her own cup, setting the other within reach. "Just as easily as we keep our secrets with tradesmen and messengers coming in and out all day, old woman," she told the mage. "It's far easier to do in a house like this than it was up in our mountain aerie. You let us worry about Nuritin and her servants. She's good to have on our side—connected to every family of the luarin nobility, and to one in three families among the raka nobles."
    "It would draw attention we cannot afford to keep her out, and it would not be easy to arrange," added Ulasim. "Topabaw would think we had something to hide."
    "Speaking of hiding . . ." Aly began. Everyone looked at her. "I admire the way you've concealed the magics on this house. I noticed them, but fortunately, the Sight is the rarest aspect of the Gift. You did beautiful work here."
    Chenaol looked Aly over. "Since when do you know what's magic and what isn't, mistress?"
    Nawat offered Aly a nut. She took it and looked at Ochobu. "You never told them?"
    Ulasim snorted. "You spent a winter cooped up with my mother and didn't see it?" he wanted to know. "She never tells anyone anything. She makes clams and oysters look slack-jawed. What is it?"
    The old woman grumbled under her breath and tugged her jacket around her shoulders.
    Aly popped the nut into her mouth and chewed it thoroughly. "I have the Sight," she told them. "I can see magic, or death, or sickness, or godhood. I can see poisons in food. If I concentrate a little differently, I can see distant things clearly, and tiny things in complete detail."
    "So those liars signs you told us to look for were not real?" Fesgao asked. "The looking aside, the blinking?"
    "Oh, no!" Aly reassured him. "A blink, a fidget, a change in body position, those are all perfectly good measures of a lie told by an amateur." She smiled wickedly. "I just have a little something extra." She looked at Ochobu. "I spent the whole winter thinking you'd told and they didn't care."
    "I don’tcare," Ochobu snapped. "It is foolish to rely on magic, any magic, including the Sight. The Rittevons have that much right, at least—they know too many people use magic as a crutch, and they are wary of it."
    "So says the mage," grumbled Ulasim.
    "And who would know the truth of that, if not a mage?" demanded his mother.
    Nawat cracked a nut by slamming it on the counter. Everyone turned to stare at him. "Are we done with all the scoldings?" he wanted to know, his face as open as always. "Because I wish to know what use I will be in this oversized, befouled nest you call a city. I could see plain enough when I came. You have more arrow makers here than you will need." At home in Tanair, he had made arrows with special fletchings, arrows that would kill mages and arrows that flew straight despite the wind.
    "But there is need for the crows," Chenaol said.
    "No," replied Nawat flatly. "You have your human crows in the palace and the city and the households, picking up whatever news they have. My people cannot enter houses, and