Six years later, a memory, broken free by her nightmares, suddenly surfaced. The moment before the explosion, Halley broke the silence and said with heartfelt spite, “I wish Keifer was dead.”
The murder of their sisters held them all prisoner. Trini wore the scars of Keifer’s cruelty as if they were still fresh. Lylia rushed to be an adult, to fill the void that their sisters’ deaths created. Odelia retreated in the opposite direction, trying to dodge the responsibility that made them targets. Ren resisted all suggestions of marriage—until she met Jerin.
Halley, though, had been consumed. She abandoned everything to find their sisters’ killers. It had mystified them all, the way she devoted herself to the search.
Sitting on the window seat, trying to forget her nightmare, Ren remembered Halley’s last words, and realized the truth. Halley’d wished Keifer dead, and in that instant, he died—and with him, all their sisters.
Halley was searching for someone other than herself to blame.
“You’re thinking of the bombing.” Raven had knocked, and entered at Ren’s call, finding her on the window seat, still stunned by the insight to Halley’s soul.
“Yes. I think I finally realized why Halley vanished.”
“Any idea as to where?”
Ren shook her head. “No, and if I’m going to offer for Jerin, I need to find her soon.”
Raven looked pessimistic. “I have been searching for her, discreetly, not that any of my people could bring her home against her will if they found her.”
Ren snarled a curse, getting up to cross the room to the washbasin. “I can’t offer for Jerin without Halley. I can’t put word out to Halley that I need her back to make an offer; if I did, the world would know.”
“It might be the only thing to make her surface.”
The newspaper story of the attack on Odelia should have brought her running. Ren could think of only one reason why Halley hadn’t reappeared when Odelia was wounded.
“It would add fuel to fire the rumors about her.” Ren splashed cold water onto her face; it dampened old tears that burned anew. She leaned over the bowl, water dripping from her face, blinking away the salt fire in her eyes. “Plus our enemies will then know that she is traveling without royal guard.”
Raven held out the hand towel. “I’ll set more people on finding her. Quietly.”
Ren scrubbed dry her face. “Would it put you short on finding the Prophets?”
“Oh, yes, the cannons. We found the ship they used to transport them from Heron Landing. The Onward. The cannons were unloaded, here in Mayfair, the night before we arrived.”
Ren started to smile, then remembered Raven’s theory on how they could find the ship. “The crew is dead?”
“The thieves included two kegs of ale, heavily laced with arsenic, with their payment. The captain and eight of her sisters are dead. Six more are not expected to live.”
Ren jolted at the name of the poison. “Did any survive to talk?”
“None that interacted with the thieves directly,” Raven said. “Those who did survive told us the captain was hired in Heron Landing to pick up ten heavy crates downriver, and give passage to the gentry family riding herd on the cargo.”
“What made them think the women were gentry?”
“Cut of the clothes they wore, the way they talked. There were eight to ten of them in their late teens and twenties, fair of coloring, average height and weight.”
So the cannons were here nearly ten days ago. Most of the witnesses were dead. Dozens of ships had come and gone during that time.
“So our haystack grows again.”
“They only had a few hours to hide the cannons before my orders to check all incoming and outgoing cargo arrived in Mayfair. There’s hope we can run them to ground. We also have a lead.”
Raven reached into her vest pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a leaf of common foolscap, cheap in quality, the fool grinning at her in the watermark. With a light hand, someone had covered one side of the paper with pencil shading, revealing a series of crude pictures marching across the paper like letters.
“What’s this?”
“A trick I picked up. If someone has written on the top sheet of a pile of papers, the next sheet down retains an impression of the writing. You can capture the impression by shading the page with a graphite pencil.” Raven grinned smugly. “The drawings are written thieves’ cant. Apparently the thieves wanted the cannons elsewhere. During the trip, they tried to talk the captain into changing the scheduled stops and couldn’t. They also tried to hire the ship out once they arrived at Mayfair, but didn’t want to wait for the two-day layover that the Onward had planned. They borrowed paper to write out this note and sent it by runner. A short time later a woman showed up with some roustabouts and wagons to unload the cannons. Lucky for us, the gentry returned the unused paper.”
Ren gazed at the crude drawings. “Can you read it?”
Raven’s mouth gathered into a chagrined smile. “No. I’m trying to track down someone who can read it and yet would be unlikely to be involved in this case. I don’t want to tip off our thieves.”
Ren stripped out of her sleeping shirt and started to dress in the clothes laid out for her. The idea of waiting chafed. The longer they waited, the less chance they had of finding these murderers. She was buttoning her slacks when an idea came to her. “I wonder—do you think the Whistlers still know their thieves’ cant?”
Raven shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
Eldest Whistler nodded through their explanation as she wordlessly studied the paper. When it was clear that they had no more to say, she shook her head. “It isn’t cant. It looks like cant, but it isn’t.”
“Are you sure?” Raven tapped a square with two wheel-like circles at the bottom of it. “This is wagon. Everyone knows that much cant.”
“Yes, that’s wagon.” Eldest went on to name a few other words that even Ren could make out just by the pictures. “There’s lots of commonly known cant in it, but the rest—it’s like someone made up pictures for the words they didn’t know.”
“Are you sure the cant hasn’t changed since your grandmothers knew it?” Ren asked, since it had been over fifty years since the Whistlers were part of the Sisters of the Night.
Eldest shook her head. “The Sisterhood assumes that anyone can learn enough cant to fake a message, so cant has a second level which acts like a security check. There are things like the number of pictures per line, and a certain set of words that have to appear at least once in the message. Sometimes there’s a series of items listed—like five gil, two pistols, and seven quinces—where the items aren’t important, only that all but the last number add up to the last number. Five and two are seven. Written cant started out as a way to communicate with illiterate members of the Sisterhood, but it evolved into a means to do business without having to worry about the authenticity of the message.”
“So someone is throwing suspicion on the Sisters of the Night.”
“Or just stealing a good idea,” Eldest said. “Part of this is a set of directions on where to take the cargo. Mill on Dunning Street. I can’t read the rest, though this part might be a woman’s cant name: Black Hat.”
Eldest Whistler and Corelle volunteered to join Ren in the pursuit of the cannons, reclaiming their weapons with great enthusiasm. As they rode down off the palace’s high bluff, listening to Raven outline her plan to storm the mill, however, their eagerness faded into distaste.
“If it’s not to your satisfaction, Whistler,” Raven finally said in her blunt way, “what would you suggest?”
Eldest shot the captain a cold look, and then shrugged. “You’re doing the best with what you have. Troops, though, are best for fighting big noisy wars on battlefields. Hours before you manage to push those troops through city traffic, the thieves are going to know you’re coming. Not only could this get very messy, but there’s a chance they could slip the cannons out in the confusion.”
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“And?” Raven said with the air of not hearing anything she didn’t know.
Eldest shrugged again. “If you had a smaller force of women, doing what my grandmothers did under Wellsbury, they could move through the West End without notice, scout the mill, and take out the thieves with much less fuss.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have such a force,” Raven said. “Your grandmothers were singular in their training.”
“Not quite. They trained us.”
Ren saw where this was going and started to shake her head. “No, I’m not going to put you at risk! These women have killed everyone who has crossed their path.” Jerin would hate me if I got you two killed.
“And there’s only two of you,” Raven added. “The reports put twenty roustabouts in the employ of ten gentry. You would need a miracle to eliminate that many by yourselves.”
Eldest shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about taking them out. We could scout the mill, find out what your troops will be marching into, and make sure the Prophets aren’t slipped out.”
“Your Highness?” Raven turned to Ren with a clear look of “They will be your sisters-in-law.”
“Whistler honor.” Eldest held up her hand in pledge. “We won’t run unnecessary risks. We’ll be fine.”
How could Ren keep them safe and yet keep them as equals? In truth, she couldn’t do both. And equals they had to be in her eyes or there would be no hope of the Whistlers being considered peers by the nobility. She would release a noblewoman on her word of honor, and so she must let the Whistlers take their risks.
“I seal you to your word—no unnecessary risks.”
Ren worried as they rode to the barracks, gathered the troops, and marched them into the city with the rattle of drums and the incessant call of “Make way! Make way!” The narrow city streets required the column to be four abreast, twenty-five rows stringing out to create a scarlet centipede stamping its way through West End. A narcissistic young lieutenant by the name of Cowley rode at the head of the column on a showy white mare. Raven kept shadow-close to Ren and her guard in the rear.
Many of West End’s streets were meandering tracks, following what once were footpaths through a wood of live oaks. Dunning Street, however, turned out to be a long straightaway, narrowing slowly in degrees, ending at the doors of the mill.
Ren scanned the crowds of onlookers as they made their way down the street, looking for the Whistlers. What had happened to them?
Cowley called for a halt, and the drums rattled and dropped silent. Over the heads of the infantry women, Ren could see Cowley dismount to try the tall, wide mill doors. The lieutenant obviously found them locked as she moved off to one side and motioned the first rank in position to force them open.
Suddenly gunshots, muffled by the walls of the mill and distance, echoed up the street. A single shot, then a score, sounding like a string of firecrackers.
The women in the front line ducked out of habit, but didn’t move to return fire—obviously the shots weren’t aimed at them.
The Whistlers! Ren cursed hotly. “Get the door open! Get inside!”
The shooting continued as Cowley barked out orders and the second line crowded up beside the first, shoulders to the door. The drummer took up a beat to coordinate their efforts.
Come on! Come on!
A long sharp whistle from a nearby rooftop caught Ren’s attention. She glanced up and saw Eldest Whistler crouched beside a chimney. Eldest pointed down the street to the doors, shouting something unheard over the wind and the rattle of the drum. She made a hard chopping motion with her hand, made a fist, and let it fly open, then pointed urgently to the shop door beside Ren. She started to repeat the whole sequence when Ren recognized the first hand signal.
Trap!
But what kind of trap did you lay for an army? Ren gasped as the second signal became clear. Grapeshot! The thieves had the cannons loaded with grapeshot and pointed them down the street.
“Ambush!” Ren shouted, throwing herself off her horse. “Get to cover!”
“Take cover!” Raven repeated, though it wasn’t clear if she had seen Eldest herself or just took up the cry. “Take cover!”
There was a muffled thud and a flash of fire from the mouth of the street. Out of the corner of her eye as she raced for the shop door, Ren saw the mill doors flying outward on a plume of fire, blown off by small explosives set at their hinges. Flame and smoke engulfed Cowley and the front line, as the great doors skipped and jumped down the street on the force of the explosion.
The tableau beyond the blasted doorway stamped itself on Ren’s vision. Two cannons, the cyclopean eyes of their barrels pointed straight down the street, sat in temporary cradles behind a wall of sandbags. Like so many cornered river rats, twenty women in dirty ragged clothes crouched around the cannons, two already lowering the burning wand of a fuse lighter.
“Take cover!” Raven shouted again, somewhere behind Ren.
The cannons roared, spitting out flame and screaming grapeshot.
Ren flung herself through the shop door. She had an instant impression of heat and fresh bread—it was a bakery. Then, through the open door behind her, like a sharp hailstorm of death, the grapeshot blasted up the street, shredding everything in its path. Women shouted in horror and screamed in pain; some of their cries cutting off abruptly. The abandoned horses went down, great bloody slashes laying them open.
And then there was silence.
“Return fire!” Ren shouted, scrambling back to the shop door, hoping that someone was alive to hear her. “Stop the next volley! Return fire!”
The street reeked of blood and viscera. Her troops had tucked themselves into every alcove and doorway. Her yelled commands shook them out of their shell shock, and they returned fire in a thunderous volley.
Where the hell is Raven? Has she been killed?
Half the thieves were reloading the cannons, ignoring the rain of bullets, while the other half kept the royal troops at bay. If they managed to reload and fire, her troops would be cut to ribbons.
“Set bayonets and charge! Engage in hand-to-hand!” Ren shouted, working her way down the street from niche to niche, tearing her voice ragged in an attempt to be heard. “Charge!”
They heard her and obeyed, probably out of fear of facing the cannons once more. More than half her women lay dead in the street, but the remaining ones surged forward. Forty trained soldiers against fewer than twenty river trash. The fight was bloody but quick.
Silence fell again, broken only by the moans of the wounded.
“Take a horse,” Ren said to a private, a young girl who looked barely sixteen. “Return to the barracks. Tell the commander we need wagons for the wounded, and more troops to clean up this mess.”
The girl nodded repeatedly, eyes wide, as if she had seen too much today.
Ren set the remaining survivors to searching for the cannons and thieves. She also gave them descriptions of the Whistlers and instructions that they shouldn’t be harmed. Raven still hadn’t made an appearance, so Ren stumbled back up the street, heartsick, looking for the captain’s body among the dead. Her other bodyguards had been from the palace guard, a rotating handful from nearly two hundred women. Raven, though, had been with her for over ten years, had been there on the night of the explosion, had been her captain since that night. To lose Raven would be like losing a sister.
She made it back to the bakery shop without a sign of her captain.
“Hoy! Princess.”
Ren looked up at the call and found Corelle Whistler, leaning against the doorway of the bakery, splattered with blood, looking pale but smug. “Corelle!” Ren cried. “Where’s Eldest? Have you seen Raven?”
“We found the captain out cold. Eldest is patching her up. I’m afraid that any others you’re missing are dead.”
Ren nodded, too relieved to care now. She’d mourn later. She brushed past Corelle, anxious to see Raven with her own eyes.
“You’re alive,” Elde
st said, glancing up when Ren entered. Raven slumped in a wooden armchair, face pale under a stain of blood, eyes closed, coat off, and blood-soaked shirtsleeve cut away. A strip of white bandaging was wrapped about her temple, a spot of red growing on it as Ren watched with concern. “We thought with so many trigger-happy regulars, we should keep out from underfoot.”
“How is she?” Ren asked, torn between staying out of Eldest’s way and wanting to reassure herself with a touch.
“I’m not sure.” Eldest mummified Raven’s shoulder, her hands and the bandaging blood-tainted from Raven’s wound. “I don’t have my grandmothers’ experience with battle wounds. Head wounds always bleed a lot, and the shoulder looks shallow to me. You’ll want someone who knows what they’re doing to look at her, though.”
“I’m—I’m fine,” Raven muttered, her eyes fluttering open. She eyed the shop as if seeing it for the first time. “Ren, Your Highness, were you hit?”
“No.” Ren reached out to grip Raven’s unhurt shoulder. “I’m fine.” She thought then to inspect the Whistlers. They looked as if they had been dragged down a bloody street behind a wagon, but there were no visible bullet wounds. “Thanks for the warning. Are you two all right? What happened? We heard shots.”
“It’s why we came along.” Eldest shrugged, then looked sheepish. “We had worked our way into the mill. When we realized they were laying a trap for you and tried to pull out, they spotted us. It might have been trickier for us if your people hadn’t started beating on the doors. It kind of spooked them.”
“What happened with the cannons?” Raven asked.
“There were only the two to be seen,” Eldest explained. “But the others might still be in the city. They had coal wagons and buckets of coal. I think they were loading cannons on the wagons, then spreading coal on top of the cannons. It’s an old trick.”