A Brother s price

by Wen Spencer

  The plain truth would be easier to cope with if she weren’t stuck with nothing to do but watch changeless scenery glide past.

  Besides, she and Odelia needed to attend Summer Court. If Halley did not reappear, only Trini and Lylia remained at Mayfair. Ren had no fears that Trini could act as Elder Judge; her sister was quietly stubborn-no one would be able to bully Trini into a decision. Lylia? Lylia had turned sixteen at the beginning of the year and was eager to speak her mind. Unfortunately, her mind was filled with odd notions and sweeping reforms, some of them far from practical. It would be best if Ren and Odelia were on hand to dilute Lylia’s presence.

  Denied the release of seeking out the cannons, Ren struggled instead with the perfect set of arguments to convince her mothers to allow a marriage with the Whistlers. She well remembered the declaration of undying love her older sisters gave for their first husband, Keifer. As disappointing as that marriage was, no passionate pleas would work for her. Her only hope, it seemed, lay with establishing that the Whistlers’ grandmothers had, beyond a doubt, kidnapped and married Prince Alannon after they had been knighted. The date of their knighting would be a simple matter of checking the Book of Knights.

  Hopefully they had properly recorded the marriage, although she couldn’t see how they had managed to keep it quiet when the prince’s disappearance had been so widely publicized. Then again, if their claim was valid, they had managed to spirit him out of a castle under siege by the entire royal army, through half of Tastledae, and then across the channel.

  Their success at secrecy could be the undoing of her hopes.

  Still, if she could show they had reasonable access to the castle on the date of the prince’s disappearance, it would be a start. Wellsbury’s memoir recorded the war in minute detail, so getting a copy of her book would be the place to begin.

  At Hera’s Step, a queue formed of boats waiting to pass through the lock, bypassing the massive waterfalls. The royal stern-wheeler docked to wait their turn through the locks and take on coal.

  Normally Ren would ride out to perform devotions at the temple wreathed by the omnipresent spray, overlooking the mile-wide curve of the falls. This time Odelia, with a contingent of their guard, would have to uphold the family obligations. Ren went with her own guard to a small bookstore located at the heart of town. If she found a copy of Wellsbury’s memoir, she could use the rest of the trip scanning it for references to the Whistlers.

  Raven accompanied neither princess, going instead with their pilot to the lock offices. She wanted to check the logbooks. Careful records were kept on the lockage fees; not even a rowboat could bypass the waterfalls unrecorded.

  Raven later found Ren at the bookstore, gathering startled looks and curious stares from the regular patrons. Between the “royal red” of Ren’s hair and the royal guards, everyone knew she was one of the five adult princesses. From their whispers, it was clear the patrons were mistaking her for Halley.

  “I’ve got a list of ships that passed through the locks since the barge ran aground.” Raven said, pulling out a small tablet that she carried, the sharpened nub of a teeth-worried pencil tucked between the pages. Ren noted the pencil with chagrin; recent events were crack-ing Raven’s legendary poise. “There are approximately a dozen ships a day of the tonnage needed to haul the cannons.”

  Ren glanced over the list and shook her head. “The haystack is growing quickly.”

  “Did you see this?”

  “This” being a newspaper folded and tucked under Raven’s arm. When Ren shook her head, Raven unfolded it to reveal the front page.

  It was the Mayfair daily newspaper, the Herald. Dated only two days before, its headline exclaimed in huge dark print, PRINCESS

  ODELIA STRUCK DOWN!

  “Oh, damn.” Ren snatched the paper out of Raven’s hand, FATE OF PRINCESS UNKNOWN, read the second headline in only slightly smaller print. The article took up the entire front page but contained very little real information. Rumors gleaned from crews of ships passing through Heron Landing made up the bones of the story. Snippets of reports from the Queens Justice fleshed it out. It accurately recorded that Odelia had been attacked, left for dead in a stream, and found by local, thankfully unnamed gentry.

  Odelia’s condition, however, was speculated on wildly, putting her at death’s door. Worse, the article raised concerns about Rennsellaer’s safety, and went on to repeat rumors about Halley’s dropping out of the public eye. The article finished with an unsubtle reminder that Trini, at age twenty, and Lylia, who recently turned sixteen, were the only other adult princesses; Ren’s other five sisters were clustered around age eight.

  Had her report via Queens Justice reached her mothers before this hysteria? The article noted that no information was forthcoming from the palace.

  “Is there a more recent paper?” Ren asked.

  “Not yet. They say it normally takes two days for it to travel up from Mayfair.”

  Ren swore, spotting at last a copy of Wellsbury’s memoirs and plucking it up. “See if our ship can be moved to the head of the lock queue. I want to get to

  Mayfair as quickly as possible. The noble houses are probably up in arms about this. We need to get home.“ The paper was two days old. and it would be another two days, at safe speeds, before they reached Mayfair, meaning the nobles would have four days to panic. Hopefully her mothers would have received her report and released some kind of calming news. Still, she and Odelia would both have to make public appearances as soon as possible.

  Chapter 5

  Mayfair first appeared in the distance as a haze on what had been a perfect summer morning sky. Great billowing plumes coughed up from the smokestacks of a score of steamboats joined with hundreds of smaller smudges from the kitchen chimneys and businesses ranging from bakeries to wheelwrights. Later in the summer, when the heat would trap in what the winter winds scoured away, the smoke would hang like a permanent fog over the city.

  Ren’s ancestors built their summer palace on fairgrounds located at the confluence of rivers. For a hundred years or more, the area remained fairly bucolic, a royal park reserved for ambles through groves of live oaks and foxhunts over the downs. The sprawling city of Portsmouth was the capital at that time, and the royal family spent three seasons at the badly named winter palace. During the War of the False Eldest, though, Portsmouth proved vulnerable to enemy ships, and swamp fever outbreaks spread from the poor to the noble families. Ren’s mothers were sent to the summer palace when they were young; when they became Queens, they moved the capital to them.

  Unfortunately, much of the surrounding land had been sold to finance the war. The groves of live oaks were leveled for sprawling city blocks. Soon factories and mills hugged the riverbanks, gathered to Mayfair by the gravity of power. The irony being, of course, that the capital had been moved to a healthier clime, only to have squalor close in around it.

  The royal stern-wheeler had stopped at Annaboro the night before to let off a messenger. Because the river made numerous lazy turns, a woman on a fast horse could reach Mayfair before the ship traveling at night speeds. As the ship docked at Mayfair, the princesses’ court uniforms and royal carriage would be waiting.

  The city bells were ringing seven when the royal stern-wheeler steamed up to the landing. As usual, ships jockeyed for the limited docking space. Raven got the princesses’ uniforms onboard somehow, then went off to see to the boat’s docking. Ren dressed quickly; Summer Court would open within the hour.

  As she stepped out of her cabin, a large stern-wheeler crawling upriver toward them let out a series of quick, urgent-sounding blasts on its steam whistle.

  “Hoy!” the pilot of the stern-wheeler shouted. “Sister!”

  Ren tensed until she recognized it as her sisters-in-law’s Destiny . Cotton bales stacked the Destiny’s decks, clear evidence it was returning to Mayfair from the south. The whistle tooted again, and Kij Porter waved from the pilothouse. Seeing that Ren spotted her, she turned the stern-whe
eler over to a younger sister and hurried to the railing as the ship came along Ren’s.

  Like herself, Kij hadn’t been born Eldest of her family. The blast that killed Ren’s sisters and husband also killed several of Kij’s oldest mothers, and her Eldest. That common point formed a bond of friendship between Ren and the older woman, much stronger than it could have been if their sisters had survived.

  Shaggy and rumpled, Kij didn’t look like the Duchess of Avonar. Apparently returning from a long difficult trip, Kij suddenly no longer seemed young, as if she had crossed over to middle age since Ren last saw her. Dark smudges underlined her vivid blue eyes, and her ash-blonde bangs hung down almost to the tip of her nose.

  Still, the Porter beauty that had made her brother, Keifer, exquisite remained. Kij leaned her lanky frame over the railing to better show Ren the headlines of the newspaper she held out.

  Well, that answered the question of whether the type size was as large as Ren had feared.

  “I saw the Herald yesterday!” Kij shouted. “How is Odelia?”

  “She’s fine!” Ren shouted back. “She’s with me, getting dressed, late as usual!”

  Kij glanced ashore and saw the royal coaches waiting there. “You’re not planning to make the opening of Summer Court after what you’ve been through?”

  “Good gods, yes!” Ren said. “If we don’t show, the rumors will have another day to run rampant. Will you be there?”

  Ren asked out of courtesy. Any noble house could attend, but usually only those involved in the current case made an appearance.

  Kij scrubbed wearily at her face and then shook her head, laughing. “No! No. We aren’t interested in anything scheduled for today. Besides, I’m bone tired. You’ve got more fortitude than I do, sister!”

  A flash of gold hair streaked along the rail of Destiny’s top deck, and a moment later little Eldest Porter scrambled up beside Kij. She squealed at the sight of Ren.

  “Auntie Ren!”

  “Hoy, Eldie,” Ren called to her only niece. The girl was living testament to how badly Kij had taken the loss of her mothers, sister, and brother. In a grief-borne panic, Kij had visited a crib the day after the bombing. Luckily, all she came away with was a child.

  Still, it had been enough to ruin an offering months in the planning, and it had been the stated reason for many rejections since then, despite Kij being able to produce medical records proving she was clean.

  Ren suspected that the truth was that many families were jockeying for a royal match of their own, and only used Kij’s possible infection as a cruel, convenient snub.

  When we marry Jerin, Ren thought, those families will be regretting their heartless rebuffs.

  “Auntie Ren!” Eldie shouted again, bouncing up and down on the railing in excitement. “Look, I lost my top teeth!” She grinned, showing off the gap between her canine teeth.

  “I see! You’re bigger every time I see you! Look at you. How old are you now? Ten?”

  “No, five!” her niece giggled. “I’ll be six at summer’s peak! Auntie Ren, can I come and see the youngest today?”

  Kij’s youngest sisters were in their teens, leaving Eldie without anyone to play with except her slightly older aunts. A sad way to grow up; Kij must have been crazy with grief.

  “Summer Court opens today!” Ren called back. “Zelie and the others have to attend. Tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps.” Kij told them both. “We’re scheduled to continue upriver to home tomorrow-if today goes smoothly.”

  Odelia came out of her cabin, wondering whom Ren was shouting at. There were greetings exchanged at full volume, the missing teeth were displayed, and then the two great ships parted. Ren’s tucked in close to the landing, while Kij’s-with Eldie blowing a farewell on the steam whistle-moved on upriver to find a berth.

  “We could have missed the morning session and bathed like civilized women at the palace,” Odelia complained as the carriage pulled away from the docks.

  Ren glowered, picking up the case binder. “Focus, Odelia, focus.”

  Odelia ignored her binder, choosing instead to rest her head, eyes closed, against the padded wall of the carriage. “I’m focused on a hot bath and a meal prepared by Cook.”

  Ren shook her head, scanning the cases they were to judge. The first one made her curse, startling her sister. “Raven!” At her call, her captain pulled her horse alongside of the carriage window. “Someone has shuffled the caseload. 1 left instructions that the Wakecliff inheritance wasn’t to be tried until we returned home. We weren’t expected to make this morning, so it shouldn’t be first case up.”

  “I’ll look into it while you’re in court.” Raven’s look turned dark.

  Ren slumped back in the carriage, raging at this new miscarriage of justice. The opening day’s schedule would have been posted in the Herald a week ago. By the laws protecting civil rights, once made public, a hearing time couldn’t be changed, even by the royal judges. This guaranteed that a hearing couldn’t be moved to a time unknown to the claimants.

  The Baroness Wakecliff family had managed the impossible this winter: fifty-eight members, from great-grandmothers down to infant granddaughters, had all died within one season. Not all at once, which actually would have been more understandable, but here and there in escalating tragedy. The first ten or so had been drowned in a midwinter shipwreck. Then a fire ripped through the nursery wing late at night; twenty-three mothers and sisters, all under the age of ten, died in their beds. A half-dozen adults, one of them a beloved newly wedded husband, died of burns and smoke inhalation suffered while trying to reach the children. Rev Wakecliff had died trying to give birth to a dead baby boy. Kareem Wakecliff committed suicide when she learned of all four tragedies in a single day. Eldest Wakecliff took to drinking heavily, and died of alcohol poisoning after a carriage accident, claiming another six Wakecliffs, triggered a binge.

  Ren wasn’t sure how the other ten had died. It little mattered; by then all the women of childbearing years and younger had already been killed. The Wakecliff family was dead long before the last member took her final breath. Had any member survived, however. Ren would have been spared trying to determine who received the inheritance today.

  While there were no clear heirs to the great Wakecliff fortunes, three powerful families had issued nebulous claims. Ren had planned to carefully study all claims prior to hearing the case. Someone, however, had juggled the docket.

  The royal carriage pulled up to the front of the courthouse. They were last to arrive, the normal confusion of coaches already cleared. As usual. Raven entered the building at a stride that was nearly a run. four of Ren’s traveling guard half a pace behind their captain. The rest of the guard stood anxious for a signal that the foyer was clear, and then opened the carriage door.

  They swept into the courthouse, flanked all around by the guards, through the foyers. Raven was at the courtroom doors, waiting. Just as Ren and Odelia reached them. Raven swung open the double doors.

  Normally the room seemed to be built on too ponderous a scale, as if the plan of the architect had been to crush the handful of participants by sheer height and breadth of marble. This was the first time Ren had seen a sea of humanity reduce the room to almost claustrophobic size. Almost every noble house-Mother Elder, Eldest, elder sisters-sat in attendance, completely screening the massive marble columns and walls.

  Trini sat in Elder Judge position, her mouth moving, but her voice, which barely carried to the back of the room when it was empty, couldn’t be heard. Lylia perched on the edge of her throne beside Trim’s, eyes eager. In the royal box overlooking the judges’ thrones and the speaker’s floor, their youngest sisters, Zelie, Quin, Nora, Mira, and Selina, watched over what someday would be their duty to uphold.

  Trini spoke again, whatever she was saying lost in the surflike roar of voices.

  Lylia nearly quivered with the tension in her, and then shouted, “Silence! The court is now in session!

  Bailiff! Call t
he first case!”

  “That’s it, Lylia,” Odelia murmured fondly as silence fell. “Give them hell.”

  The bailiff came from her alcove to the center of the speaker’s floor. She cleared her throat, opened her mouth to call the first case, and then caught sight of Ren and Odelia.

  “All rise for Their Royal Highnesses, Princess Renn-sellaer and Princess Odelia!”

  They started forward into stunned silence. Then with a renewed roar, the observers came to their feet, clapping.

  Clap, Ren thought, but some of you bitches are very unhappy to see us.

  Trini and Lylia stood too, not applauding, but their relief plain to read. Trini sidestepped to her normal position and Ren took the throne of the Elder Judge. She made no signal to silence the crowd, taking the opportunity to scan the gathered nobles, wondering which of them had changed the docket and why.

  There were three noble families, all baronesses with massive estates of their own, who had semivalid claims: Dunwood, Lethridge, and Stonevale. The network of marriages, however, extended those three by five- or sixfold, evidenced by the number of women crammed into the courtroom. Whichever family snared the vast estate would need trusted adults to immediately take control of the far-flung shipping fleet, manage the extensive vineyards, oversee the tenant farms, and repair the half-burnt Wakecliff Manor. The heirs would turn to their sisters-in-law, who would in turn lean on their sisters-in-law.

  Most likely, every woman present had a vested interest in the outcome. Any one of them could have moved the case forward.