by Wen Spencer
“For a visit?”
“No, for good. I got a letter from Eldest.” She patted her pocket, and a paper crinkled under the pat. “My scattered sisters and I have finally accrued enough money to purchase a husband of modest breeding.”
“How wonderful!” Then the implication sank in. “You're not coming back?”
“No.” She grinned widely. “Someone else will have to force basic figures and reading onto willful young minds.”
“My sisters will miss you.” He could think only that Doric would be crushed.
“Some of them. I will miss those ones.”
They had two cabins on the second deck. Jerin would share a cabin with one of his sisters. Captain Tern would sleep in the other cabin. They worked out a schedule where at all times at least two of the women would be awake while the other two slept. One of his sleeping sisters would always be in the bunk under the window while he slept. It was as safe as they could make the trip.
That afternoon he took a stroll on the sundeck with Summer and Corelle. He had stepped out of his room intending to pull down his veil. The unobstructed sight of the sunshine on the water checked him. He climbed the stairs to the sundeck with his sisters trailing him.
Jerin expected Corelle or Summer to say something about his veil being up, but they didn't. Feeling someplace between guilty and free, he walked the sundeck, more interested in the fellow passengers. They gave him wide smiles and nods of greeting, but, with quick looks at his armed sisters, didn't speak to him.
At the stern, over the churning paddle wheel, he met Miss Skinner.
“Tch, Mr. Whistler, what are you doing?” Miss Skinner reached up and tugged down the veil. “There are people on this boat not to be trusted. If they thought you were an ugly thing behind that veil, they might leave you alone. Don't tempt them by showing them how stunningly beautiful you are.”
“I'm not stunningly beautiful.”
“Most women only see a few men in their lives. Their father. Perhaps their grandfather. If they are lucky, a brother and their husband. Any other men they see are always veiled. To them, anything with both eyes and sound teeth is a handsome man. My family are portrait painters. My hand is not as good as my sisters', so I decided to teach instead, to see a bit of the world. Before I left, though, I had seen an extraordinary number of men and paintings of men. You, Mr. Jerin Whistler, are the most stunningly beautiful man I have ever seen.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” She twitched the veil, artfully arranging the fold at his neck. “So don't tempt the scruffy lot on this boat more than your mere presence already does.”
“Yes, Miss Skinner.”
The next morning it was raining. Captain Tern was guarding him while his sisters slept. Miss Skinner came to the door, bearing a gift.
“Here, I have something for you to look at.” It was a large book, almost three feet square. She set it down on the table and opened it to reveal maps done in gorgeous color. “This is an atlas. It has maps of all of the countries of the world.”
“I wish I could have gone to school,” Jerin murmured.
“Tch, I wouldn't have wanted the responsibility of keeping you safe, Mr. Whistler. It would have been too easy for someone to steal you away, and then where would I be? All alone in Heron Landing with the Whistler girls out for my blood.”
“Are you happy about getting married?” Jerin asked.
“To tell the truth, I'm giddy as a girl.”
“Even though you don't know your husband at all?”
“Honestly”—she blushed—“I haven't thought much about him, just the babies. We had a brother, who was killed a year before we would have swapped him for a husband. Maybe if we hadn't grown up so sure we would be married, it wouldn't have mattered so much. Some days, it's all I can think about, having children of our own.”
“Really?”
She nodded unhappily. “The first day of school and the last are always the hardest. The seven-year-olds come in that first day, oh so little and darling. You just want to cuddle them. You try to keep your distance, but at the end of the year, when it's going to be months before you see them again—it just breaks my heart.”
“I'm sorry.”
“It's not your fault,” she scolded.
“I mean—well, I guess I mean that I feel sorry for you.”
“Don't. I'm getting married. We'll have baskets and bushels of babies and get as blase about them as everyone else.”
“Blase?” he asked, unsure what the word meant.
“Casual. Careless.” She defined the word using ones he did know. “Ever been to a social function and watch the mothers with their babies? Oh, you can't hold the little boys—no one but family gets to hold the boys—but they pass the baby girls off like sacks of wheat. Anyone can hold them as long as they want. And they sigh over the fact that the baby girls weren't born boys. You want to scream at them how lucky they are, and how they shouldn't take these healthy babies so lightly. And at least once a week you wonder if you're still young enough to carry a healthy child to term and survive delivering it, or maybe you should avoid all the risk, even though the thought of not being pregnant at least once is like putting a gun to your head and—”
She shuddered to a stop, and wiped tears from her cheeks. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't say things like that to you. I'm happy. I truly am.”
He reached out and covered her hand. “I'm sure things will be fine.”
“Indeed. Holy Mothers are kind.” She sniffed, and forced herself to smile. “Well. I'll leave this with you to study. Eldest can drop it at my cabin later.”
With that, she withdrew.
“She should have gone to a crib,” Raven murmured after Miss Skinner's footsteps had faded away. “Got herself pregnant before this. It's warped her.”
He could not help but feel that she was right. “Are you married, Captain Tern?”
“No. Don't particularly want to be. I don't get along well with my sisters, so I try to stay away from home. Not everyone fits the molds of society.”
“Do you want children?”
Captain Tern considered the question and finally shrugged. “I don't like small children. Their noise—that high-pitched squealing—and energy level grate on my nerves. You can't reason with them. If you try bribing them, then they get spoiled and throw fits. My baby sisters drove me out of my home. I couldn't stand them. I certainly don't have a desire to raise any of my own. Still. I can't imagine not having a family. I send part of my paycheck home every week, and visit when I get lonely.”
The first deck of the steamboat had a dining room. They had avoided it the first night, eating instead from the food hamper. For breakfast and lunch of the next day, one of his sisters carried sandwiches back to their cabins to supplement the dwindling cache. By the second night, the food was gone. Reluctantly, they went down for dinner.
Round tables, with chairs to sit ten, crowded into the space, lit by chandeliers of oil lamps. Eldest chose a table with easy access to the doors. She and Captain Tern sat on either side of Jerin, Summer and Corelle flanking them. Jerin was the only one able to sit and eat in peace.
Most women approaching the unoccupied chairs veered away after one hard look from Captain Tern and Eldest. When they were almost through with dinner, however, a family of four sisters sat down, ignoring the pointed stares.
“We have a hundred crowns,” the oldest-looking of the sisters stated.
“So?” Eldest looked as mystified as Jerin felt.
“We're the Turners,” the oldest Turner said. “We were going to Suttons Ferry. There's supposedly a clean-run crib there. But we heard the talk since you've boarded. Four boys in your family, and you're taking this one to market.”
Captain Tern put down her silverware and slowly slid back her chair, her hands dropping down to her gun belt.
Eldest growled softly. “Shut your mouth! My brother isn't livestock.”
A younger Turner sister leaned in. “What my sister is say
ing is that your family throws lots of boys. We were going to spend ten crown a night for one of us, probably Jolie here, to try for a baby.” She indicated the youngest, a mere teenager. “We're too poor to afford a husband, so we're doing it by tens, as they say.”
“My brother isn't for sale,” Eldest said.
Younger Turner said, “We're offering twice the crib price, twenty crowns, because he's of good lines and sure to be clean!”
“No!” Eldest shouted, drawing looks.
“Jolie is a virgin,” older Turner pressed. “She's clean. It would be a hundred crowns in only five nights!”
“My brother's price is four thousand and not a crown less,” Eldest said through clenched teeth.
Their jaws dropped.
“Four—four thousand?” older Turner finally stuttered, apparently torn between being angry and laughing. “You're insane!”
“We're landed gentry with royal bloodlines and throw boys,” Eldest snapped. “That's worth four thousand to a peer!”
“But you can't be sure,” younger Turner said. “This is money in hand. It's not like you can tell when a man is a virgin or not.”
“No,” Eldest said quietly.
“No one would know,” younger Turner said.
“I would know,” Captain Tern stated.
“And who are you?” older Turner asked.
“Raven Tern, Captain of the Royal Guard, serving as escort to Master Whistler by order of Queens. The Queens are sponsoring Mr. Whistler's coming out and it would reflect poorly on them to present used goods.”
Jolie Turner laughed, which earned her a hard cuff from her older sister.
“They're not joking, Jolie,” older Turner snapped, and stood. “My apologies. Captain. We won't be bothering you again.”
They watched the Turners make their way back out of the dining room.
“We're done eating,” Eldest announced, although Jerin was the only one finished. “Let's go back to the cabins.”
It was Eldest's turn to sleep while Captain Tern guarded the door. Eldest went into the cabin, but Jerin held back, pretending to look out over the railing at the moon shimmering on the water, the star-studded sky, and the black ribbon of shore between the two.
“Captain Tern,” Jerin whispered so Eldest wouldn't hear.
“Call me Raven.” Captain Tern's low voice came out of the darkness that cloaked her.
“Raven, can I ask you a question?”
Beside him, Raven moved, and he took it to be a nod.
Wetting his mouth, he asked quietly, “Do nobles actually pay as much as four thousand crowns for a brother's price?”
“Yes. The princesses paid nearly five thousand for their husband, Lord Keifer.”
He felt as if Raven had thrust a sword into his chest. His throat constricted around that formless blade. “Ren—Princesses Rennsellaer and Odelia are married?”
Raven moved as if startled. “The prince consort was killed six years ago! Enemies of the crown had filled the basement of Durham Theater with gunpowder and set it off while the royal family were attending a play.”
He turned away, ashamed that Raven might see the relief in his face even in the dark. Horrible man, he thought. Her family dead, and you're relieved. You know she's too far above you. You're only landed gentry. Your grandmothers were thieves, spies, common line soldiers, and kidnappers.
“Master Whistler?” Raven touched his shoulder, then quickly took her hand away. “I thought you knew. Half the royal princesses were killed. It was all anyone would talk about for months. It was on the front page of all—” She cut her sentence short as she remembered the normal limits placed on his sex. “As a man, you couldn't have read the papers. I'm sorry. I didn't consider.”
“I was only ten.” Back then all he wanted to read from the newspapers were the serial stories—adventures of steamboat captains, river pirates, and card sharks. “My family might have told me, but it would have mattered little to me. Children are so self-centered.”
“Some adults too,” Raven added quietly. Jerin glanced at her, wondering if she meant him. As if sensing his expression, she said, “No, not you. You strike me as bravely selfless. Your family is putting you in a difficult position, and yet you're not complaining.”
“If I knew they were wrong, I'd complain,” Jerin said.
“Their reasoning, though, seems sound. One of our neighbors might be able to afford a brother's price of two thousand. Surely a noble could afford twice that. One hears how wealthy the nobility are. Their estates encompass over a hundred thousand acres. Their houses contain ballrooms, gaslights, and indoor necessities. They eat fresh fruit in the winter off of plates made of gold.”
Jerin reached out and caught Raven's wrist. “Is it true? Are they that rich? Is there a hope that my family can get the price they want? The price they need?”
“Some noble families are richer than you can ever imagine, little one,” Raven said. “Some are poorer than your family. Some of them will look at you and see what a good, beautiful young man you are. Some will only see you as the grandson of common line soldiers. There will be families where the Eldest is free to choose any man she desires, and in other families the mothers will have to approve of you first.”
“So it's all 'maybe' and 'it depends.' ”
“Yes.”
Jerin let go of her wrist, knowing she told him the truth, wishing she had lied. “A simple 'yes' would have been kinder.”
“No, it wouldn't have,” Raven said. “Much rides on how you and your family present yourself. To get what you want, you can't be careless in your actions.”
“I see.”
They stood in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts, as the dark river murmured far below.
“Tell me,” Raven said after a few minutes, “what does your family mean when they say 'a shining coin'?”
“It's a long story.”
“We have time.”
“My great-great-grandmothers were first-generation line soldiers. We don't know what drove them to enlist. Maybe it was that or starve.”
“For many it is.”
“They won their way into the Order of the Sword, giving them access to the military cribs. Many families chose only one man to father all their children, to maintain the illusion of normalcy, I guess. My great-great-grandmothers hadn't, and it showed. My great-grandmothers were a very motley crew.”
Raven rubbed the Order of the Sword tattoo on the back on her hand. “It sounds like me and my sisters.”
“Their mutt breeding, though, was what saved them. Apparently just looking at them lined up at the court-martial inspired the judges to believe my great-grandmother Elder acted alone when she committed treason.”
Raven laughed softly.
“Still, they were discharged, stripped of pensions, and all their daughters were barred from service. They didn't know anything but soldiering, and they started to starve to death. Grandma Tea ended up in charge of the family, and she managed to force the Sisters of the Night to take them in, train them as thieves, but she wasn't happy. No retirement, no pension, no crib, no future except to dance at the end of a rope.”
“They still tell stories of Tea Whistler. She was a force to be reckoned with.”
“One day, all the luck of the Whistlers changed. Grandma Tea had gone to her Mother Elder's grave and made a bargain with her.”
Raven snorted but said nothing.
“She told her mother that she didn't blame her for what she had done—being a soldier of the line wasn't a wonderful thing. Tea's mothers had no husband of their own, lost sisters to diseases caught in the crib, lost sisters for causes they didn't understand, and lost daughters to the wet and cold and hardship of following the drum. It was a slow and steady grind. Many think it is taking them uphill when it is only wearing them down.”
“Unless a sister makes it to officer grade, yes, the army eats families.”
“Grandmother Tea recognized that her Mother Elder had made a desp
erate gamble to better their lot, and lost—she grabbed for a coin tossed in the air and missed. If she had caught the coin, her sisters and daughters would have praised her. Instead they cursed her name and spit on her memory.
'“So Grandmother Tea made a bargain. She needed an opportunity, that golden moment, where playing loose and wild and reckless, like her Mother Elder had, gave her the slimmest chance to win. She pledged that if her mother gave her the opportunity, just set the coin flying into the air, even if she didn't catch it, they'd honor her memory.”
Raven shook her head. “And she got a shining coin?” Jerin nodded. “The day she was caught while thieving by Wellsbury. She convinced the general that trained thieves would make excellent spies. That led to being knighted and given the farm, and kidnapping Grandpa. Our family hasn't been poor and starving since then.”
Eldest was still awake when he came into their cabin. He should have known that she wouldn't sleep until he was safe in the room. She sat cross-legged on her bed, cleaning her revolvers.
“Be sure to secure the door,” she said without looking up. The shutter on the cabin window was already latched and a piece of lumber wedged in the frame to reinforce the shutter.
Jerin locked the door and then propped the cabin's chair under the door handle. He wondered how much of his conversation with Captain Tern Eldest had heard. He felt vaguely guilty about talking to someone outside the family about his fears—but none of his sisters could have answered his questions about nobility. What Captain Tern told him, however, hadn't settled his fears. He changed into his sleeping shirt, and then sat on his bed, chin on his knees.
Eldest eyed him, reloading her revolvers without looking. “What's wrong, Jerin?”
“I'm worried,” he whispered. “What if we don't get more than two thousand for me? What are we going to do?”
“Don't worry.” She spun the cylinder on each gun, double-checking she had a full load. “If things come to worse, we could sell futures on Doric's brother price.”
“Futures?” Jerin asked.