by Wen Spencer
“Raven is securing a boat,‘” Ren told them, beating her palm with the crumpled paper. Jerin’s kidnapping wasn’t an impromptu grab and run. Kij had planned it in greater detail than Ren had initially given her credit for. What other plans were set? Did Kij count on their chasing after her?
Ren uncrumpled the paper and scanned the story. Not surprisingly, there were no mentions of cribs; Kij would want to keep Jerin’s reputation clean of that rumor. Otherwise, though, the text ran close to hysterical over the possible dangers that Jerin faced. Surely, upon reading the story, even the most coldhearted of women would rush after their betrothed. “Where did you get this, Lylia?”
Lylia was standing on tiptoe, looking over their guard’s heads for Raven. “One of the clerks at the courthouse brought it around. She was concerned that we didn’t know what had happened.” Kij was concerned that they didn’t know. “There’s Raven now!”
“Good! We can get moving!” Odelia started toward Raven.
Ren caught Odelia by the elbow and pulled her back. “No. You three aren’t going anywhere.”
“What?” they cried in dismayed chorus.
Lylia recovered first. “I’m going after Jerin!”
“Me too!” Odelia tried to shake loose from Ren’s hold.
“It’s a wife’s duty to guard and protect her husband,” Trini stated firmly. “You can’t stop me from doing so.”
“The Porters are behind this! They killed Eldest and the others. They want the throne,” Ren told them.
She added in what she knew, and then what she only suspected. “Kij wants us to chase after her. She has some trap in store.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting letting them keep Jerin!” Trini growled, her eyes narrowed in anger. “Not after all they have done to us!”
“No!” Ren cried, hurt that they would think her capable of that. “I’m saying that only one of us should go!”
“Kij doesn’t know that we know it’s her!” Odelia pointed out. “We’ll be on our guard!”
Ren shook her head. “She can’t trust her luck that we haven’t guessed. She’s in too deep. She has to be sure that when she strikes this time, she gets us all. She’s taken our husband, printed this damn story, and left a trail to follow. It’s a trap!”
“And we’re supposed to sit back and let you ride off to get killed, and do nothing?” Lylia asked.
“You’re supposed to stay here and make sure our little sisters are safe, or have you forgotten that they’re between the Porters and the throne too?”
Her sisters exchanged guilty looks.
“You think Kij is going to lure us upriver and then attack here?” Trini asked.
“Quite possibly,” Ren said. “Our mothers might be mostly retired, but they’re still a force to fear. If Kij kills us upriver, unless she counterblows here too, against the palace, then she’ll be facing a very angry Queen Mother Elder.”
“Go upriver,” Trini said quietly. “We’ll guard against the Porters here.”
Raven broke her silence. “It would be best if none of you go. I can take a boat and fetch Jerin back.”
Ren shook her head. “Much as we love Jerin, he figures in this only as bait, and as a royal husband for whoever comes out alive. I need to go upriver and nail Kij to the nearest tree.”
“You can’t arrest a duchess on her ducal grounds, Captain,” Trini added. “You don’t have the power.”
Raven’s mouth quirked into a grin. “It might be fun to try, though. She wouldn’t be suspecting it-a common arrest is much below her own sense of self-importance.”
“I don’t want her warned,” Ren said. “I have a feeling that we’ll have only one shot to get her. I want to make the most of it. Raven, take the boat you just comman-deered to Sparrows Point. Get the Red Dog.
Bring it back. I’ll ready a platoon of marines here.”‘
Raven eyes widened. She controlled a grin, and then bowed slightly. “Yes. Your Highness.”
As Raven hurried off, Lylia crowed with delight. “A gunboat? Ren, that’s truly evil! Blow that bitch out of the water!”
Ren grinned, and swatted Odelia with the newspaper. “You! You’re eldest while I’m gone, unless Halley shows her face, which she may once she sees this paper! Kij has done us a favor there. Send troops to the Herald, find Kij’s mole there, and root her out. I don’t want any more articles that smell-ever so mildly-of treason.”
Odelia gulped at the promotion, and nodded, eyes huge.
“Trini, have a fast messenger go on to Annaboro and let Jerin’s family there know what’s happened. I’ll send one on to Heron Landing once I get upriver. Send word to our cousins-Kij might try to eliminate them too. Send out messengers to the Queens Justice for news on Jerin-Kij will be expecting us to do that, and we don’t want to disappoint her.”
Trini nodded solemnly.
Ren turned last to Lylia. “Call in troops; fortify the palace. The youngest aren’t to go out. Keep our mothers in, if you can. Remember that Kij’s favorite weapon is poison.”
Lylia nodded, and then suddenly hugged Ren tight. “Take care of yourself. Get Jerin back!”
Ren blinked back sudden tears. “I will. Go on, now. Kij has her plan in motion. We’ve got to get ours going too.”
Jerin wasn’t aware Cira was following until her big roan muscled beside his. She reached out, caught him by the waist just as he registered her presence, and jerked him sideways onto her horse. Taken by surprise, he was left with the choice of falling between the horses. perhaps to be trampled, or letting her settle him onto the saddle in front of her.
To his shame, his body chose the latter, clinging tightly to her.
“Where the hell did you learn to ride?” Cira growled, reining her horse sharply and turning suddenly down a side track. His horse raced on without him. She held him tight with one arm, and stripped the pistol from his belt. “You certainly have pluck, I have to say that!”
“Let me go!” He swung at her awkwardly with his free hand, but she dodged the blow.
“What a little lion cub.” Cira laughed at him. “Hush! Quiet as you can! Here they come!”
The shack was a torch in the night behind them. She had tucked her horse into a thick grove of sumac, screening them from the road he had been racing along. Horses were coming, a rolling thunder.
Jerin stopped fighting Cira to be quiet. She held him close, stroking his hair. Her heart pounded under his cheek.
The river trash rode past, dark forms moving through night, hooves drumming on the dry earth.
“It’s okay. We’re safe now.” Cira lowered him to the ground but kept hold of his forearm. “Get on behind me. I can get you back to the palace without so much as a blemish on your reputation. It will get all hushed up, no one the wiser.”
He hesitated, not sure what to do. A throbbing pain in his ankle reminded him that running on foot wasn’t an option.
Cira tightened her hold on him. “Alone, you’d be at the mercy of every woman that sees you.”
She was right. If he didn’t run afoul of a family desperate for a husband, then there were the women that would use him to establish a crib. Much as he didn’t trust Cira, his chances were better with her.
He scrambled up behind her. “Where are we?”
“Halfway to Hera’s Step.” Cira clucked to her roan and guided it out of their hiding space. “This is the main road into Sparrows Point. If we stay on it, well be caught between them and the damn hat-wearing bitches that hired them.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”
Cira chuckled. “I’ll try not to push my credibility with you. Fen and her women went that way; we’ll go this way. How about that?”
“Will it take us downriver to Mayfair?”
“We can’t go downriver. We have to cut across a dozen fields and get upriver.”
“Why?”
“We’re just north of Snake Run, and it’s all white water and deep fast pools. We can’t ford it. We’l
l have to go all the way to Queens Highway for a bridge across. With us riding double, those river rats would catch us before we could get to where we could buy fresh horses.”
“It would have been better if you left me on my horse.”
“I’m hoping they think you were thrown. I don’t know many women that could have kept their seat through that. If they believe you’ve been thrown, they’ll have to be searching for you to be on foot, or unconscious, in the dark.”
For a plan conceived at a full gallop, it seemed sound enough.
Jerin pointed out the one flaw. “But won’t they think you’ve caught up with me, like you have?”
Cira’s shoulder lifted under his chin. “I tried to give the impression that I thought everything was a lost cause, and started out in the opposite direction. Whether they believed any of it, is another thing.”
They went as quickly as they could, crossing open fields in reckless bursts and carefully picking their way through cave-black woodlots and windbreaks. With the gray of predawn came a thick fog, whiting out the land-scape. Steamboat whistles echoed from the distant river like cries of great hunting beasts.
The roan, lathered and winded, couldn’t go any farther. They dismounted and found that Jerin’s ankle was weak, but he could limp.
“We’re almost to Sarahs Bend,” Cira said as she helped Jerin to a hay barn standing like an island in the fog. “It’s just a half mile down the road. The Queens Justice here is corrupt. I think the Hats have the lieutenant in their pocket. Fen might think I pulled wonders getting her and her women free, but all I had to do was mention the Hats and drop a few crowns, and someone forgot to lock their cell door.”
“I’m supposed to believe you’re not one of them after comments like that?” Jerin asked.
The barn was in good repair, with no windows and a door padlocked against passing river trash.
Cira tested the heavy lock with a tug. “Fen was a means to something bigger.”
“And I’m just a means to something bigger too?”
Cira gave him a hurt look and then turned away, studying the barn for another entrance. “I’ve been hunting the Hats for over a year. Fen is getting me closer to knowing who they are.”
“They’re the Porters: Kij and her sisters. We found proof.”
Cira jerked around to face him. “ What?”
Jerin backed away from her. “We found the proof in the husband quarters.”
Cira caught his hand, keeping him from bolting away. “Honey, I’m not angry at you. Just tell me what you found.”
“Kij was sleeping with Keifer, even after he was married.” Jerin slipped out his lockpick and tackled the padlock to distract himself. “Keifer poisoned the princesses’ father. And then, after the princesses’ father was dead, every time Keifer acted angry, it was so he could let Kij into the husband quarters. We didn’t know at first that
Kij was his lover, though, and Ren went to Kij and showed her what we found.“
“Oh, bloody hell.” Cira started to pace. “This all makes sense. They’re after the throne. You’re Prince Alannon’s grandson: marrying you would give them legitimacy.”
“But I have male cousins nearly my age-they could have made an offer…”
“You’re the one who’s been verified by the Queens themselves.”
The padlock clicked open and Jerin unlatched the door.
Cira eyed the lock with surprise. “So that’s how you got free from that bed. An interesting talent for a prince consort.”
Jerin limped inside to collapse onto the fresh hay. Cira led in her roan and tied it outside reach of the hay, so it couldn’t eat itself to death, and then found grain and water for it.
“Three daily packets stop in town,” Cira said as she returned Jerin’s pistol to him. “I think the first packet comes through town before noon. I’ll get tickets so we can board at the last moment and go straight to a cabin. Once we’re on the river, we’ll be safe until we hit Mayfair.”
Somehow sharing a cabin with Cira didn’t seem like a “safe” option. Nor did Jerin like the idea of waiting here, trusting Cira while she could be selling him to the highest bidder.
“And your plan is for me to sit here quietly until you come back?”
“Sweetie, I’ll just be more river trash, but you’re a man, one that the entire Queensland is looking for. If the Queens Justice is in town, they might have drawings of you.” Cira took his hand and clasped it tight.
“And I know you have no reason to trust me, but just because they’re soldiers doesn’t make them infallible.”
As his own family history would attest to.
He sighed and pulled his hand free. “I’ll wait here. Can you bring me something to eat? My stomach is still queasy.”
She gave him a slight smile, pulled her Stetson down low to throw a shadow across her scarred face, and left. He waited as the bells of the nearby town rang five o’clock. Once he was fairly sure she was gone, Jerin unbuckled her saddlebag and carried it to the hay mound to look through it.
On top was a silver flask. He unscrewed its lid, sniffed its contents. Brandy-and fairly expensive if he judged it correctly. He had expected to find corn whiskey, the standard smuggler drink.
He put the flask aside and continued unloading the saddlebag. A turtle shell comb. A bottle of black liquid he couldn’t identify. A small book tied shut with a piece of ribbon.
Untying the ribbon, he found the book was a journal written in code. He worried at his bottom lip. While his grandmothers had taught him code breaking, nevertheless, it could take him hours to crack it and translate the book. He didn’t have hours. He flipped through the pages, checking if anything had not been written in code. Between the back pages, he discovered three newspaper clippings. The first was headlined forty dead in weapon shop fire. The second story looked like it had been torn out instead of clipped; while it was missing the headline, he recognized it as the Herald’s story about the attack on Odelia. In the same handwriting as the journal were names and numbers written in the margin. “ Osprey 6/4 Dusk. Frontier 6/5 Dawn. Enterprise 6/4 Midnight.‘” Ship names and times, he realized. Where had she gone? The “ Osprey” had been underlined, seeming to indicate a need for speed.
The third story had been carefully clipped, neatly folded and refolded, and was well-worn from being handled.
QUEENS SPONSOR PRINCE ALANNON’S GRANDSON
After decades of mystery, the fate of the vanished Prince Alannon has been finally revealed. A report issued from the palace today stated that the prince married Queensland knights Sirs Whistler and retired to their up-country land grant. In an amazing twist of fate, Master Jerin Whistler, the grandson of Prince Alannon, has been named as Princess Ode-lia’s recent savior. As a reward for his selfless bravery, the Queens will be sponsoring Master Whistler for the upcoming Season. Sources close to the crown state that the young man has been installed at the palace and bears a striking resemblance to the beautiful missing prince…
The story would have appeared after he met her on the Mayfair landing-after she kissed him. He supposed it was understandable she would want a keepsake of such an event. Kissing was something only husbands and wives were allowed to do. His sister Summer would keep a newspaper story of a boy she kissed. That Cira was like his sister helped calm his nerves.
He could glean nothing more from the journal. He returned the clippings, closed the book, and tied it shut. He dug deeper into the saddlebag. A can opener. A tin pan with a screw-on handle that could be stored inside the pan. He marveled at the ingeniousness of the pan and then started to set it aside. It struck him then, the quality of the items Cira owned. The journal had not been showy, but was well bound with a stamped leather cover. The tin pan was cunningly made. The saddlebag itself was a sturdy and handsome item. The fine roan horse she rode. Even the brandy in the flask had been quality.
Cira was a rich woman, though she did not show it. It was, in fact, as if she was trying to hide the fact.
&n
bsp; The other women at the shack, though, seemed to be river trash. The shack. The two or three of them he saw. The language that the others used. Dirt-poor and willing-no. needing-to steal to survive.
Cira hadn’t been one of them. Considering the newspaper clipping, it even seemed likely that she had been there only to rescue him. Still, he could not afford to trust her. Trust had led to betrayal too often, too recently.
A short time after the town bells rang six, Cira reappeared.
“There’s no sign of Fen and her women,” she told him as she sat down on the hay beside him. She had two small loaves of fresh bread. “This was all that could be had this early in the morning. I would have brought you ginger if the apothecary was open. Most likely it’s the drugs that Fen gave you that upset your stomach, but it might be because you haven’t eaten for a full day.”
He ate the bread cautiously; it seemed to help settle his queasy stomach.
“The first packet is at nine.” Cira lore her loaf of bread in two and gave him the larger piece. “And the Queens Justice is in town. If I’d had the coin. I’d have bought fresh horses. I don’t like this sitting and waiting, but we don’t have much of a choice.”
She started to unload her pockets, producing a small ceramic crock, rhinestone hair combs, a bright red silk scarf, and a white-feathered boa. “I thought that one way to slip you past the Queens Justice is to hide you in the open.”
“What do you mean?” Jerin opened the crock, hoping for something to eat. It contained a bright red cream. “What is this?”
“That’s lip paint,” Cira said, dipping one finger into red. “Purse your lips and hold still.”
“Makeup?”
Cira blushed, a first for her. “It’s a disguise. Everyone is looking for a man; they might not look twice at a whore.”
He knew some women pleasured others for money, but his mothers and sisters kept him innocent of the details. “Whores are women, aren’t they?”
“In body, but not always in appearance. Many dress as men, the manlier, the better.” Cira glided her fingertip over his lips in a way that was at once intimate and erotic.