“I’ve spent my whole life learning how to fight,” Eldest stated. “Once in my life, it would be good to actually ride out to battle. I don’t think the chance to ride in the Princesses’ Guard will come around twice.”
Certainly, it would help to have someone who knew the lay of the land to guide them.
“Glad to have you, then,” Ren said, and earned a wide grin from the woman.
They surged out of the house, carried along in a wave of excited, and thankfully now unarmed, children. While saddling their horses, Ren caught sight of Jerin helping his older sisters saddle up. He moved with assurance among the horses, handling the bridles and saddles with ease. As she watched, he kneed a black mare in the middle to make her suck in her stomach. He clinched the saddle girth tight, tied it, and then looked up to meet Ren’s gaze.
He wanted her. She knew the look now, having seen the physical evidence of his desire paired before with his level blue gaze. Just knowing that he wanted her did magic to her body. She dropped her eyes before anyone noticed the exchange. The Whistlers would not be so happy to ride beside her if they knew what she had done with their little brother in the kitchen.
Suddenly the idea of them at her back with rifles did not seem so wise. She glanced at Eldest Whistler, wondering if this was an exercise in revenge.
You’re crazy, Ren told herself as she swung up into her saddle. Eldest just rode in. She wasn’t here to witness anything. You’ve heard everything that everyone had to say to her.
Then she remembered Corelle darting up to her oldest sister, earnestly pouring out some story. Eldest’s flash of anger could have been toward a lax sister making excuses—or at the news their brother had been compromised.
Ren scanned the milling women and children for Corelle. The middle sister stood by the padlock’s gate, holding it open as riders were already trotting through. As if sensing Ren’s gaze, Corelle turned toward her as she rode up to the gate. Cool, calculating resentment filled the girl’s face.
She knows.
Ren kept her face passive as she rode past, and tried to ignore the itch between her shoulder blades. Had Corelle told Eldest? Was she riding into a trap?
If the Whistlers fought the way they rode, it was no wonder they won the war.
Showing little evidence that they had ridden all night, the Whistlers led cross-country, over fences and creeks, with seemingly reckless abandon. When one watched, though, not one horse so much as stumbled. Ren wondered if they were attempting an extremely subtle form of assassination: ride out with the princess and let her break her own neck trying to keep up.
The last mile they cut through rows of shoulder-high corn, the leaves cutting and grabbing at both sides, and came out onto a dirt path. Fresh wagon tracks crushed the grass growing on either side of the path. The path ran along the cornfield and, a half mile farther down, dipped into woods. The river was near enough to smell over the bruised corn and the hot horses.
The Whistlers dismounted, tied off their horses, and went silent as wolves into the woods. Ren wanted to follow, but she knew her own value. Her life wasn’t worth the capture of the cannons. There too was the niggling thought that the small woodlot would be a perfect ambush site by the Whistlers. She signaled to her women to ready weapons, wishing she had told Raven of her indiscretion. Now, on the cusp of battle, would be a foolish time to make her women doubt their allies. On the other hand, letting the captain of her guard ride blindly into an ambush seemed particularly stupid.
She fought her conscience while silence came from the woods and one lone cicada droned loudly.
A Whistler came trotting out of the woods and tugged on her cap bill in salute. “There’s signs that a riverboat tied off and something heavy was loaded. No cannons, but there are a couple of fresh graves.”
“Show me.” Ren dismounted.
A screen of brush in the woods proved to be false, a deliberate attempt to hide the path down to the river. On the high bank some forty feet from the river’s edge, the thieves’ camp showed evidence of being used often. River stone shielded a fire pit from the river. Evergreens hid a corral of sapling stringers. A well-beaten path led down to a spring-fed streamlet, a wooden bucket beside it waiting for the next visit. A secretive camp, but one long-standing, not erected overnight. The corral and fire pit both had seen winter. Thinking of the cornfield she left behind, Ren guessed at the origin of the camp.
Beyond the corral, five of the Whistler sisters worked at digging up the graves. Ren signaled to Raven and her women to help with the unearthing and continued on to where Eldest Whistler crouched beside the fire pit.
“Whiskey runners?” she asked Eldest, meaning the original creators of the campsite. Was it just irony that the thieves used a smuggling camp while stealing cannons meant to fight river smuggling, or had they known what the cannons were going to be used for, and stolen them as a preventive measure?
Eldest shrugged. “Anything taxed going up and down the river. From the number of horses, tents, and footprints, we figure there were about twenty women in all. There are six graves. Heria saw five riders, so that may be them plus one.” She touched the ground and lifted her fingers up to show that they were now tinged red. “This is the killing ground.”
Odelia could have been the plus one. Ren controlled a shiver.
“The killing started here at the fire.” Eldest wiped clean her fingers. “The worst of the blood has been scraped up, probably buried with the victim. There were guns fired.” She tapped a scar of white on a river stone that served as a fireside seat. She pointed out fresh gouges in trees at chest height. “The dead were dragged up there to be buried. Things were cleaned up. That was yesterday, or the night before that. The survivors loaded a riverboat this morning around dawn.” Eldest held her hand out over the white ash in the white pit. “The coals are still warm.”
Ren swore softly. “They had wagons. I can’t imagine them loading them—too noticeable. Can we track those?”
Eldest shook her head, and waved toward the shimmer of water through the trees. “Pushed them in the river and let the current take them.”
“All dead ends.” Ren stalked about the clearing, cursing. They had missed the thieves by a few hours. It was, perhaps, just as well. With her guard and the seven Whistlers they numbered only twenty-one. True, they outnumbered the surviving thieves, but the campsite had hidden defenses. A jumble of boulders, a fallen tree, and another set of rocks came together to form a disguised wall to shield defenders. Three approaches were uphill with the river at the attackers’ backs.
Ren skirted the disguised wall to consider the only downhill attack. A blur of motion was her only warning—Eldest Whistler came over the low wall in a flying tackle. Eldest slammed into Ren’s waist, and they tumbled onto the ground, Ren on the bottom, a shoulder smashing into her gut.
Shit! Ren rolled free, reaching for her pistol, thinking, Stupid! Stupid! Ruin their brother and then let them take you out in the middle of nowhere and separate you from your guard! Her pistol had been knocked free during the tumble, lost in the dead leaves. She jerked free her knife, and scrambled into a fighting crouch in the dead leaves.
Eldest crouched a dozen feet from her, unarmed. Eldest made a stiff motion with her hand, palm downward. “Stay still.” She flashed another hand signal, a quick stiff chop that flicked off to the right. “Traps.”
Ren froze in place. Traps? She was an idiot! Outside the camp and beyond the defense wall, of course there were traps! She glanced back at where she had been walking. A pole tipped with a dozen sharpened stakes pinned her hat to a tree. Eldest hadn’t attacked her—she had saved Ren’s life.
Putting fingers to her mouth, Eldest gave two shrill whistles. “ ’Ware! Traps!” Hearing her warning echoed through the encampment, Eldest turned back to Ren. “Are you all right, Your Highness?”
Ren nodded, sheathing her knife, feeling stupid. “You startled me.”
Eldest grinned. “Did I, now?”
“Yes,
but thank you.”
“Another one there, and behind you.” Eldest pointed out a trip wire to either side of her. “Best just hop the wall.”
Raven was coming down from the graves as they slid over the wall. “You might want to see this,” she said, but her face belied her words. Whatever they found was horrible to see.
“What is it?” Ren did not want to go unprepared to the grave site.
“They’ve killed a man.”
It was not enough warning. Ren gagged at what they showed her. Arms tied behind his back, his trousers down around his ankles to expose scrawny hairy legs, paunchy stomach—no dignity afforded him in death. Blood spotted his privates; his rapists had either been virgins or on their menses. Blood had clotted on his face and nose, had pooled in his eyes, and his ears. Drug vials littered the grave with him, paper labels proclaiming EVERLAST. A crib drug, meant to keep the men passive, willing, and able.
Her women had uncovered the grave, and they stood silent, staring at the body. The younger Whistlers hung back, their fierceness stripped by their shock, unable to even look at the man. Her eyes furious, Eldest knelt beside the corpse and covered his nakedness with her coat.
Ren didn’t want to look at the body, even with it decently covered. She didn’t want to think of a rich Wainwright home now reduced to ash, of the intelligent women who were now burned shells, nor of the handsome husband showed off to visiting royalty. She turned instead to Raven. “It’s Wainwrights’ husband, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Raven said. “His name was Egan, if I remember right.”
“They overdosed him?” Ren guessed. It was a common problem in cribs, and even in a few families where the number of wives was high.
Raven looked bleak and confused. “They cut out his tongue, I suppose to ensure his silence, but botched it completely. Either he choked to death on his own blood, or he bled to death.”
“Holy Mothers!” Ren trembled. “What kind of animals could do this? Rape a man, then maim him so. What if he got you with child? What do you tell your daughter? ‘I tore your father’s tongue out after I raped him’?”
Raven shrugged. “When your family’s been bred out of the cribs, you don’t talk about how you got pregnant. You go into an unlit room, a man half incoherent with drugs ruts on top of you, breaks your hymen—hopefully plants a fertile seed—and you leave. What’s there to say except it was dark, painful, and bloody?”
Ren glanced at the gathered women. The women of her guard—all fathered from cribs—were passive in the face of this horror. The Whistlers, two generations removed from the cribs, looked panic-stricken. Did you have to have a loving father to understand the horror?
“Your Highness.” Eldest struggled to keep fear from her face. “There’s nothing here for us. We need to go! We need to get back to our brothers!”
Jerin! Odelia! Ren nodded even as she glanced to Raven.
“The other five are river trash.” Raven indicated the other five shallow graves holding women in dirty ragged clothing. “The largest is wearing a bandage on her arm.”
“Odelia’s attackers.”
“They’ve been shot, searched, and buried. There’s nothing to identify them with.”
Ren looked out upon the river. The trail ended here, then, at least for her. Summer Court opened in less than a week, and she needed to return home to Mayfair to act as Elder Judge. “There’s nothing here for us. Let’s go.”
With no twenty sisters and one wounded princess to feed, Jerin did not hold dinner. He sent a tray of food up to Odelia with Summer, and the family ate a quiet dinner. He put the leftovers in the warming ovens for the others. Cleanup would have to wait until the others had eaten.
His announcement that it was bath night was greeted with much groaning and moaning. He supervised the water brigade to fill the tanks of the bathhouse boiler, and had the fire built up. As the water heated, he sent the little ones up to their rooms to strip down and to troop back for the cold-water scrub and hot-water communal soak.
He went up to his quarters, undressed, and realized there was a good chance Ren and her women would return before he finished bathing. He couldn’t go out in just a towel as usual. He opened his wedding chest and found his grandfather’s silk bathing gown. It slid on like a cool, soft hand. Just in case Ren saw him, he also put on his only piece of jewelry, a small golden deer encrusted with green stones strung on a gold chain.
Eldest had told Jerin once that most neighboring families found the Whistlers’ bathhouse a source of mystery. Apparently most families bathed less frequently, in laundry tubs set up in the kitchen. It seemed an uncomfortable way of bathing. Mother Elder often told them what her mothers went through trying to build the bathhouse. Grandfather had wanted one, so Grandfather got one, despite the fact his wives were clueless on how to build one. Apparently it was just one more of the many traditions Jerin’s grandmothers had bent themselves into pretzels over for his grandfather’s sake. Grandpa wanted all the menfolk to read and write? They were educated. Grandpa wanted the boys to play alongside their sisters, learning to run, climb, ride, shoot, and defend themselves? They were taught.
Jerin was going to miss the bathhouse. He was going to miss his freedom even more. He continued to soak even as his sisters turned to prunes, got out, and trooped back to the house. How had his grandfather convinced his grandmothers to build the bathhouse? He could not imagine his grandmothers giving in to childish displays of temper. Nor could he imagine his grandfather throwing a fit—he had been a quiet-spoken, dignified man.
Perhaps wives were like sisters. You chose your battles instead of engaging in every skirmish, negotiated terms whenever possible, and fought as cleanly as possible in hopes that the other person would react in kind. He would know soon, whatever the case. Within the next few months, his sisters would choose a betrothal offer that suited them, and he would marry on or shortly after his birthday.
He climbed out of the lukewarm water, finding comfort in being clean and warmed to the core. If nothing else, he would have to insist his wives build him a bathhouse.
It was full night when he stepped out of the bathhouse. Stars studded the sky and the crickets were in full voice.
“I’ve caught you again.” A woman’s voice made him start. Princess Rennsellaer came out of the night.
Jerin pulled the silk wrap tight about him. “How is it, Princess, you keep catching me with next to nothing on?”
“Luck, I guess.” Ren reached out to finger his wrap. “This is beautiful.”
“It was my grandfather’s.” Feeling naked, he stepped back into the shadows of the bathhouse door.
“The kidnapped one during the war?” Ren followed him into the shadows.
“Yes.” He blushed. “It was all he was wearing when my grandmother Tea snatched him.”
Ren laughed, running hands over the silk gown. “I suppose he wasn’t very happy.”
“No, he wasn’t. My grandmothers were common line soldiers, unspeakably low for a prince to marry. After his entire family was put to death for Queen Bea’s murder, though, he became more philosophical about life.”
Ren took a sharp gasp inward. “What? Your grandfather was part of the False Eldest’s family?”
“Prince Alannon. General Wellsbury had slipped my grandmothers into Castle Tastledae to break the siege. Grandmother Tea found Grandpa alone and unguarded, so of course she took him.”
“Of course,” Ren murmured, pulling him out of the shadows to eye the bathing gown closely. “This is the only thing he had?”
Jerin glanced nervously about for his sisters. They wouldn’t be happy about his talking to Ren with next to nothing on. “A necklace. And some hair combs.”
“Does your family still have them?”
Jerin fumbled the green deer out of his gown. “Grandpa gave the necklace to me before he died. Doric has the hair combs. Liam and Kai weren’t born yet. He said we should never forget our blood is royal.”
Ren looked aghast. “C
ommoners can’t marry royals.”
“My grandmothers didn’t marry him until they were knighted.”
Ren laughed, caught between amusement and shock. She cupped the deer in her hand and gazed at it. “Do you know how long my family searched for Prince Alannon?”
“My grandmothers were quite anxious to keep him.”
Ren laughed, then fiddled on her fingers, counting generations. “We share great-great-grandmothers.” She tapped on her index finger, then stepped down to her middle finger. “Your grandfather was cousin to my grandmothers.” She wiggled her ring finger. “Our mothers are first cousins once removed, or second cousins?”
“I’m not sure.” He leaned over to touch her pinkie. “This is us?”
“First cousins twice removed, or second cousins once removed, or third cousins.”
“Are there such things as third cousins?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted.
“Perhaps it’s a good thing we did nothing in my mothers’ kitchen.”
“Pshaw, sharing great-grandmothers means nothing.”
“Are you sure?” Jerin tucked an errant lock of hair behind his ear. “There seems to be a great deal we’re not sure of.”
She pulled him to her, her hands slipping into his gown to stroke his damp bare skin, her mouth warm and sweet on his. Her kiss left him breathless, trembling, and wanting more but not daring to go on, because this time he would not be able to stop. She held him, nuzzling into his hair. “I am sure,” she whispered into his ear, her breath hot, “that you are a beautiful man, in a beautiful silk gown, and I want you.”
“I—I—” He wavered, then steeled himself to pull out of her arms. “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t do it—I can’t betray my family. We’ve come so far from being thieves, but only because twenty of my grandmothers died in war, because Grandmother Tea lucked into finding Grandfather, because my mothers worked until they dropped to make this farm bountiful. I hate being the coin of their future, but—but—”
And he knew, suddenly, that any look, or word, or gesture from her, and his will would go. He fled her, fled his own desire.