A Brother's Price

by Wen Spencer

  With a thunder that vibrated to Ren's very core, the forward cannon fired. On a column of smoke and fire, the ball hurtled the gap and struck a glancing blow along the ironclad's stern.

  “We'll have to hit them dead on to punch through their plating!” Raven shouted.

  “Lieutenant!” Ren called to the marines' commander, then paused as grapeshot roared from the other ship. Kij was firing her cannons in series, trying to keep Ren's soldiers from sharp shooting the gunnery crews. “Have your women fire at will!” Ren shouted into the relative silence. “Aim for the gunports!”

  It was a slaughter, her women trying to sharp shoot in the deadly hail, dying before they could get their shots off. The aft gun was useless. As the fore gun was run out to fire, the ironclad turned, forcing them to take another glancing shot. The ball careened off the thick plating. Beside Ren, the pilot fought the fast current to try and close with the ironclad while keeping clear of the boulder-strewn shores. They circled, wary as knife fighters, moving upriver as they cut each other with cannon fire.

  “There's the Portage River mouth!” the pilot shouted. “But I can't get past her! She's forcing us up the Bright River, toward the falls. It runs shallow from here on up! Either we'll run aground or we'll be forced under the falls!”

  Ren swore. The ironclad's steep side offered no purchase for her marines to board, and closing with Kij's ship would only increase the damage that the grapeshot would do. They were running out of river, though, and soon would be at the foot of the falls itself.

  “Do you hear something?” Raven shouted.

  How can you hear anything over this hellish noise? Ren tried anyhow. Over the thunder of the cannons and the endless roar of the waterfall, there was a high-pitched sound, ceaseless, growing louder. A steam whistle, she recognized suddenly, blowing without stop, and coming closer.

  “Where is that coming from?” Ren asked.

  “Look!” A marine on the deck suddenly cried, pointing upriver toward the white curtain of water. “The falls!”

  Half a mile upriver, and hundreds of feet up, the underbelly of a boat speared out over the edge of the falls. It came and came, unending, its steam whistle screaming a death keen that was now being caught and echoed back by the granite cliffs of the gorge. A hundred feet of hull showed before the side wheel appeared at the brink, and the whole mass pivoted on its weight. Sluing sideways, the boat started to fall, and the cannon fire picked out the lettering on its side wheel. Destiny.

  Ren shouted in wordless protest. Jerin! Halley!

  With a curse, the pilot swung the wheel hard, turning suddenly without regard to the ironclad. “'If that hits us after it comes over the falls, it'll take us under!”

  The ironclad too was turning, trying to escape the massive ship now tumbling over the falls.

  “'No!” Ren caught the wheel and jerked it back. “Kij's giving us her broadside! Ram the bitch! End it here! Kill her now!”

  The pilot threw her a panicked look, and then shouted into the tubes, “Full speed ahead! Full speed!”

  The Red Dog leaped forward, its bow arrowing through the dark waters. Ren ducked down low behind the shield, bracing for the impact. They struck with a great splintering crack, the braced bow of the Red Dog cleaving deep into the ironclad. Ren was slammed forward into the shielding, striking her head, eclipsing the world with a flash of dark and pain. Then the fore gun fired, more felt than heard, the muzzle apparently buried in the guts of the ironclad. The ball punctured one of the boiler engines of the ironclad, and the shriek of escaping steam and screaming women joined with the crack of rifles.

  Raven had her by the arm then, and was hefting her up, crying, “It's going to hit us!”

  Ren turned, and saw the shattered decks of the Destiny rolling toward them, out of the night, tumbled by the fast shallow rapids. Her mind only understood flashes of what she saw: a railing here, an open doorway there, a hanging flight of stairs breaking off in mid-tumble.

  Raven dragged her backward, back along the Red Dog's top deck to the stern gun. There Raven pushed Ren down and caught her by the foot. “Strip! Get your boots off! We're going to have to swim for it! The nearest Queens Justice is Annaboro. When you get to shore, stay low. Kij might have backup troops!”

  They went into the dark, fast water then, Ren stripped to only a shirt while Raven was still fully dressed.

  Caught in the icy current, Ren struggled to keep afloat. She looked back. The water was littered with bodies, some thrashing, some still. The wreckage of the Destiny struck where the two ships were joined, and the river forced it up, rearing above the gunboats. Borne down by the weight of its plating and the water filling its bowels, the ironclad sank quickly. The Red Dog, still caught by its ram, rolled as the ironclad sank, the Destiny toppling over its dipping bow.

  Oh, Jerin, love, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I took you away from your mothers' farm where you were safe. I'm sorry I let Kij take you as bait. I'm so very sorry that I've gotten you killed.

  Ren came ashore downriver of the Portage River confluence, teeth chattering from the cold, bone weary and heartsick. Raven had vanished into the waters, and Ren could not remember if her captain even knew how to swim. Two guards kept faithfully to her. The sergeant, Buckley, apparently swam like a fish and had helped Ren keep her bearings as they struggled for shore. The other was a young private whose face Ren could not recall, and in the dark could not see, by the name of Cherry. For miles the fast current had carried them, and they could only keep their heads above water. Then the river turned, and in that bend, the water deepened and slowed and they thrashed ashore.

  The wind had kicked up, tossing the trees and cutting cold as sharp as knives through their wet clothes. Buckley knew approximately where they were, and knew too of a nearby mansion laid to ruin in the last war. It would give cover and shelter well away from the exposed river-bank. Ren wanted only to lie in the mud and grieve, but dragged herself up anyhow. She couldn't give up until she was sure Kij was as dead as her father, her elder sisters, Halley, and Jerin. She had to be sure Kij paid.

  They were past the escarpment, and the land was flat here, smoothed by countless floods. They kept to the cave-black shadows of the windbreaks, hedging fields of freshly cut hay. The night was full of distant cracks of rifles, faint echoes of shouting, and the rolling thunder of racing horses. The gray of false dawn touched the sky as they reached the mansion sitting alone on a hill, the short summer night fleeing before the sun. In the silence before dawn, the dark, broken structure, surrounded by shorn fields, seemed ominous.

  They paused in the windbreak at the foot of the hill, shivering, scanning the fields.

  “How close is Annaboro?” Ren asked.

  “Another ten miles south. Your Highness,” Buckley murmured, then cocked her head, listening intently. “Riders are coming.”

  Ren swore. In their white shirts and red uniform pants, they stood out in the scanty cover of the windbreak. “Let's try for the mansion.”

  They ran. The sharp stems of the cut hay stabbed like a thousand needles in their bare feet as they raced for cover. The riders broke out of a woodlot behind them, and came sweeping toward them. A glance was enough to show the riders weren't the Queens Justice. Even as Ren and the others reached the old front yard of the mansion, the riders cut them off, looping around them in a rough circle of lathered, blowing horses.

  Kij looked worse for wear, at least. Her beautiful face was cut and bruised. Part of her shirt had been torn off, and a bloody bandage showed beneath. But she was alive, damn her soul, when everyone else was dead.

  “Don't you know when to die?” Ren asked her.

  “I could say the same for you. I've been trying to kill you for six years,” Kij growled.

  “So, how did you find me?” Ren asked, wondering how she had ever thought this woman to be her good friend.

  “You washed up where all the dead bodies come to shore.” Kij gave a bitter laugh. “You just don't have the decency to realize you'
re dead.”

  “Give it up, Kij. Killing me will only dig your grave deeper. My sisters know of your crimes. I've blocked all your plots in Mayfair. I've sunk your gunboat and your cannons. The Destiny is gone, and Jerin with her, damn you. Shooting me will get you nothing.”

  “It will make me feel better.” Kij raised her pistol.

  “Don't even think about it!” a woman shouted from high above them.

  Ren glanced over her shoulder, startled.

  From the mansion's second-story balcony, a shooter stood mostly hidden behind a support column, a sniper rifle aimed down at Kij. “Drop your guns!”

  “Who the hell?” Kij shouted.

  “I'm Eldest Whistler!” the woman shouted back. “Unlike you nobles, 'sisters-in-law' means something to us. We Whistlers have an unbreakable rule—you mess with one of us, you mess with us all!”

  Like thorns growing from a rose, the long slender barrels of rifles emerged out of the broken windows of the mansion.

  “Now, put down your guns!” Eldest shouted. “Or we'll be finding out who gets the orphaned estate of Avonar!”

  The moment froze in time, and then Kij made a show of dropping her pistol. “Put them down,” she commanded her sisters. “We'll live to fight another day.”

  Don't count on that, Ren thought savagely, but held her tongue.

  The other Porters threw down their weapons. A lone Whistler came out of the mansion to collect the guns while her sisters covered her. Ren recognized the black hair, and the blue-eyed, steel-jawed look of the woman, but not her individually. The reason why became apparent as the other Whistlers stalked out of the mansion once the weapons were secured. Ren picked out Eldest, Summer, and Corelle easily, then Jerin's other elder and middle sisters too, leaving a whole host of Whistlers she had never seen before. They were, she realized, Jerin's cousins, the Annaboro Whistlers.

  “Your Highness.” Eldest nodded to Ren as she flashed hand signals to her family. “It's mighty hard to hold a wedding when you half drown most of the wedding party.”

  “What?”

  “We spent half the night plucking people out of the river. We would really like it if you took better care with our brother from here on in. He doesn't swim all that well.”

  “You've found Jerin! Alive?”

  Eldest grinned. “Aye. We fished Princess Halley and Captain Tern out too.”

  “They all are all right?”

  Eldest sobered. “We sent Jenn home with my aunts. He's chilled to the bone, addled, and took in lots of water. He should be fine, with bed rest. Captain Tern has a broken leg, else she'd be here. Your sister—we had to all but sit on her to keep her back where things are safer. A hard thing to do with a royal princess.”

  Ren laughed. “And how did you find me?”

  “Oh, we just followed Kij.”

  The Whistlers secured the Porters and then escorted Ren back to the river to wait for a hastily commandeered steamer to pick them up. Halley arrived with a guard of four Whistler cousins. Despite the six months and the night of hardship, Halley looked younger than Ren remembered, bruised but grinning. She had stained her red hair black, but the night in the river had washed much of it out, leaving only her roots dark.

  Ren hugged her hard, glad to finally see her alive and well. Releasing her younger sister, Ren swatted her on the shoulder. “Don't ever do that again!”

  “What, go over Hera's Step? I won't, I promise! Once was enough!”

  Ren blinked at the answer. This was the Halley she remembered from years ago, not the solemn woman who'd haunted the palace for the last six years and sto-len away eight months ago. “I meant disappearing. You're more important to me than petty revenge.”

  “It wasn't just revenge, Ren. It was the fact that everyone kept looking to me to be the Eldest when I wasn't. Six years, and Barnes would still come to me five times out of ten. I thought if I disappeared for a while, people would look to you like they should.”

  Ren felt a flare of anger at all the worry and trouble she had dealt with since Halley had vanished. “Don't you think, as Eldest, I should have decided how to handle it?”

  It was Halley's turn to look startled, and then she grinned. “Well, I don't think eight months ago you would have thought it was your due.”

  Perhaps.

  By unspoken agreement, they turned away from their escort and walked along the river.

  “I've been worried sick about you,” Ren said. “You could have written more often. My nightmares started back up after you vanished.”

  “Ah! Sorry.” Halley stooped to pick up a handful of stones, then hurled one into the river, grunting. “I suspected someone close to us, even the Barneses. I wasn't thinking high enough. I didn't dare write.”

  “They fooled us all.”

  Halley flung another stone and, while watching it skip away, asked, “So, what do we do about Eldie?”

  In all the confusion, Ren had forgotten about her niece. “What do you mean?”

  “We can't let her live.” Halley flung another stone, but it sank on the first skip.

  “What?” Ren felt like she'd been punched.

  “Holy Mothers, Ren.” Halley picked up another handful of stones, avoiding her startled gaze. “We're going to execute her mothers and grandmothers. They killed our father, our sisters, and stole our husband. We can't let them walk away from this.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with killing Eldie?”

  “Face the truth, Ren. She's the incestuous fruit of the man who poisoned the prince consort and the woman who blew up half the royal princesses! Do you think any of even her most remote noble relations are going to take her? Do you think we're going to take her? You would ask our youngest to be raised with her? Her father murdered ours. Do you think our babies would be safe around her once she realized that we executed her mothers and grandmothers?”

  Ren shuddered at the image of a smothered infant, a baby “accidentally” dropped, a killer lurking amid all the dangers a young child narrowly missed, from the fireplace to the fishpond. Still, she recoiled at the thought of executing the golden-haired five-year-old so proud of her missing front teeth. “She's just a child.”

  “Now she's a child. In eleven short years, she'll be the age Keifer was when he killed Papa. Kij and Keifer had no good reason to hate you and me, except for deeds of our grandmothers. Do you really want their child, with better reasons for hating us, anywhere near our children?”

  “Stop it, Halley! This is our niece. This is Eldie!”

  “She isn't our niece,” Halley said coldly. “Keifer didn't father any children on us, thank the gods, and he died before she was born—severing any connection between our families.”

  “I have spent five years thinking of her as my niece, Halley. I can't think of her in any other manner.”

  “If we don't take her, she'll have nowhere to go. She'll have to make her way like the river trash. Do you think that's kinder to a child her age?”

  “We could take her,” someone said behind them.

  Ren and Halley turned, surprised, as Eldest Whistler came out of the darkness.

  “We could take Eldie,” Eldest said. “Our great-grandmother Elder was executed for treason. The judges, though, were merciful. They let the rest of the family live. Our grandmothers could have been bitter, but they had been raised knowing you made your choices and paid for them when you were wrong. Twenty of my thirty grandmothers gave their lives in the War of the False Eldest, fighting for the very people who put their Mother Elder to death. There is redemption for the innocent.”

  “I don't understand why you'd offer.” Ren said, though she was glad for it.

  Eldest shrugged. “You're marrying my brother. That makes us sisters. It sort of makes her our niece. She's not yet six, and since your youngest were her only playmates, the Porters couldn't leak any poison into her heart. She's not even really incestuous fruit—Kij and Keifer had different fathers and mothers, which normally would have made them co
usins at most. It would be a shame to shoulder her with her parents' blame.”

  “You'll raise her like a sister?” Halley asked, obviously surprised.

  “I've got fourteen youngest sisters under the age of ten; what's one more?”

  “What happens when they marry?” Halley pushed. “How could you expect them to share their husband with her?”

  “It will be up to them to decide. After looking at my family records, I suspect that my family started when a group of women banded together and called themselves sisters. We're not ones to worry about bloodlines. If you're willing to run the risk, we'd be willing to raise her.”

  Ren glanced to Halley, saw her willing, and nodded. “Have someone go now, though, and get her away from the Porters. I don't want them to have a chance to plant any murderous thoughts in her before we execute them.”

  Jerin woke in a strange bed, in a strange room, wearing a strange nightgown. He sat upright, panicked. Someone had taken off all his clothes to put new ones on him! Who? What else had they done to him? His head ached; there was a bandage on his head and the flesh underneath felt tender. Snatches of his adventure swam up through his memory, but nothing was complete or sensible. He had been kidnapped, had been on the Destiny, and had been in the river. If he had been on the Destiny, why had he been in the river? Had Kij thrown him overboard? Where was he now?

  He threw back the sheets and swung his bare feet out of the bed. A quick check showed his stash pouch was missing, and so was his derringer. There was a wardrobe beside the bed. He opened it to find men's clothing, good in quality, in his size, and vaguely familiar. He fingered them, then looked about the room again. He knew this place. Relief poured in as he realized where he was. Annaboro. His aunts' house. His cousin Dail's room.

  The door swung open; almost as if summoned by his name, Dail came in, a slightly younger reflection of Jerin, carrying a load of folded towels. “Oh, good, you're up!”

  “Dail!” Jerin caught his cousin in a hard hug. “Oh, merciful Mothers! I didn't know where I was!”