A Brother's Price

Chapter 7

They planned on being early to Heron Landing so there’d be no chance of missing the packet that arrived at noon. Three-quarters of a mile from the house, the Whistlers’ lane joined the common road; there, Eldest was able to whip the horses into a smooth trot. Captain Tern rode outrider on her big black, easily keeping pace, her eyes sharp for danger.

While they traveled, they discussed what to buy at the mercantile in town. Mother Elder started the discussion by clucking over the condition of Jerin’s traveling hat, and stated that he couldn’t board the packet without a new one. Summer had promised all those left behind to buy stick candy and send it home with the wagon. Eldest wanted ammo for their pistols, which, in Mayfair, would be their principal weapons. Jerin needed cream for his hands, as they were hopelessly callused and chapped by his chores, but he wouldn’t give Corelle the satisfaction of hearing him say it aloud. Corelle, of course, had no money, so it came as no surprise when she declared that she would stand guard on their luggage with Mother Erica.

By Eldest’s pocket watch, they arrived in town a good two hours before the packet was due. She pulled the wagon up to the mercantile’s hitching post and swung down to tie the horses off. Captain Tern tied her black alongside, then came to give Jerin a hand down. Eldest frowned but said nothing; she was used to him scram-bling up and down on his own, but then normally he wore trousers.

The mercantile was the largest building in town, with twin mullioned bay windows bracing the door. A wooden sidewalk ran the length of the front, and the hitching posts were cast iron. The Picker sisters had run the store for as long as anyone could remember. The tiny old women had frightened Jerin when he was small; compared to his tall, lean grandmothers and mothers, the merchant sisters seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

The bell over the door announced the Whistlers’ entrance. They scattered among the bins and tall shelving: Captain Tern followed Jerin to the hand creams near the back counter, and watched without comment as he studied the selection. Apparently only men used hand cream. The bottles showed simplified pictures of hands, flowers or fruit, and perfect little mounds of cream; one chose by scent.

Lilac. Rose. Jasmine. Apple. Peach. Vanilla. Jerin wondered which scent Rennsellaer liked the most; he wished he had the nerve to ask Captain Tern. Then again, would the captain of the guard even know?

He chose vanilla and took it to Eldest so she could buy it for him. She stood at the back counter, box of ammo in hand, watching with interest as one of the Picker sisters painted a sign. Jerin couldn’t tell the sisters, with their faces wrinkled up like dried-apple dolls, apart; Eldest, who did most of the family purchasing, could.

“What’s this, Meg?” Eldest tapped the painted sign. •‘You’re selling the place?“

“Yup,” the wizened old woman said. “The store, the outbuildings, and all of the goods. We’re getting too old to run the place. Haddie fell and broke her hip last night; she’s the youngest of us Picker girls and we depended on her to do all the heavy work. We’ve talked for years about putting this place on the market. Last night just decided it for us.”

“Your family has been here for ages,” Eldest said.

“One hundred and thirty-three years,” Meg said proudly. “Mothers to daughters for”-the old woman paused to count on her fingers-“five generations. My great-great-grandmothers came upriver with a boatload of goods in 1534 and bought two acres of land from the crown. But we’ve always had bad luck with the menfolk. Not like you Whistlers.”

Another Picker sister had come up the aisle to brush past Jerin. She came only to his chest and stood child-sized next to his sister. She gazed toward Mother Elder with sharp, envious eyes. “Rumor has it that you’ve got another on the way.”

“Don’t jinx us, Wilma Picker,” Eldest growled. “It’s unlucky to talk about a child still in the womb.”

“Gods love the boy children-that’s why they call so many back before they can be born.” Meg used the most popular belief for the cause of miscarriages.

“Our mothers had twenty-six miscarriages,” Wilma sighed. “And Mother Ami had one little boy stillborn, perfect down to his fingernails yet blue and cold as the sky. The grief of it nearly killed her.”

“Hush, you ninnies.” Eldest Picker hobbled out of the back room, hunched nearly double with a widow’s hump, leaning heavily on a cane. She paused to poke threateningly at her younger sisters.

“Decent women don’t talk that way in front of menfolk, especially the young ones.”

The younger Picker sisters skittered away, leaving Eldest Picker frowning in their wake. “Can’t whack them like I used to.”

“I’m sure you can still deliver a good thumping, Picker.” Jerin’s sister nodded in greeting, Eldest to Eldest.

“I can hit just as hard as I used to, Whistler!” Eldest Picker snapped. “It’s them! They break too easy now. I got to pull my hits!”

Eldest Whistler ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek, trying not to grin. “Well, now, that’s a problem.”

“I’m too old to be learning how to curb my temper.” the old woman snapped. “Especially with this pack of ninnies! I swear they’re all getting senile.”

“How much you asking?” Eldest Whistler tapped the For Sale sign again.

“Two thousand crowns,” Picker stated firmly.

Eldest whistled at the price.

“It’s worth it,” Picker snapped, then added softer, “We’re willing to listen to offers, though. We need enough to live on until the last of us die.”

“A shame you don’t have children to take it on,” Eldest said.

“It’s a tasteless stew, but it’s all we have to eat.” The old woman shrugged. “Our mothers mortgaged everything to buy Papa, and he died without giving us a brother. We could have paid the mortgages, or paid for visits to a crib. If we hadn’t paid the mortgages, we’d be out on the street now, so old the first winter storm would put a period to us all.”

Meg returned to fetch wet paintbrushes. “We should have took in a stray or two, adopted them as our own.”

“And broken the laws of gods, Queens, and good common sense?” Picker snapped. “It’s been thirty years, for gods’ sake. Can’t you shut up about that?”

Meg wrinkled up her face more. “We wouldn’t be selling this business to strangers if we had.”

“No, we’d be giving it to them instead!” Picker said. “The prophets say adoption is a hidden evil. It only encourages the idiots to overproduce in vain hopes of a boy. Look at those Brindles. They got the boy sleeping with his mothers in search of another son to sell off. Like someone would buy the inbred monster. Idiots! They’re struggling to feed thirty children and all the while producing more that no one would want their brother to marry. I’m sure, if they thought they could get away with it, they would be littering the countryside with dead girl babies.”

“You shouldn’t slander the customers,” Meg muttered.

“They won’t be mine for much longer!” Picker snapped. “If I could have gotten my hands on good solid stock like the Whistlers here, I would have said yes to you thirty years ago-but people like them don’t give up their little ones. It’s the lazy ones that overbreed because it’s easy to do, pleasant to do. Breed with a man, eat like a pig while increasing, and if the baby is born the wrong sex, just toss it away to start again. I tell you, if we’d adopted your ‘strays,’ we’d be up to our armpits in lazy children. Breeding tells, I say. It tells every time.”

The old woman had wound down as she talked till this last was a slow, soft mutter. She took a deep breath, glanced at Jerin, and frowned fiercely at her sister. “Now, look what you’ve made me do. Talk coarse in front of this pretty little thing. My pardon, Eldest Whistler.”

“No harm done.” Eldest grinned. “I’m pleased to know our neighbors think of us as good solid stock.”

“Aye, we do,” Picker said. “You’re not drunks, wastrels, smugglers, thieves, or idiots. You’re honest in your business, and no one begrudges you thirty-two children when four of them are boys. People wonder that you didn’t try for more.”

Eldest threw a look where Mother Elder was still looking at the hats. “Now is not the time for counting children.”

“Sorry. I forgot.” Eldest Picker reached back without looking and selected a thin cigar and offered it as an apology.

“Thank you.” Eldest put it in her mouth, reached for her matches, and then, glancing to Mother Elder, dropped the matchbox back into her pocket. “Later,” she murmured around the cigar, not adding that the smell would make their pregnant mother nauseous. “Two thousand.” Eldest studied the store with narrowed eyes. “It’s worth it.”

“You thinking of buying?” Jerin asked her, surprised. He didn’t think his family had that much cash.

“Your brother’s price, even without going to Mayfair, could reach two thousand crowns.”

“I thought you wanted a husband.” He tried not to whine. What he left unsaid was I thought you were going to swap me. Swapped families were always closer because cousins sharing both bloodlines were more like sisters than true cousins.

“I do.” Eldest shook her head. “But this is a shining coin, Jerin, and it’s up for grabs now. If we don’t snatch it up, it’s going to be gone.”

“What if I don’t bring two thousand crowns?”

“Don’t underrate yourself, Jerin.” Mother Elder came up holding a wide-brimmed straw hat. She put the hat firmly on his head, then studied him, head cocked in speculation. “Remember who your grandfather was. I think we might be able to do both: buy the shop and afford a husband of good breeding.”

“You’re giving yourself airs. Elder,” Picker said. “I could see two thousand with your family’s breeding record for boys-but three or four?”

“Nobility, they say, pays dearly for good breeding.”

“Mama!” Jerin blushed hotly, partly for their discussing him like a prize stallion, partly for the idea that he could command two or three times the normal amount of a brother’s price.

“Bah!” Picker scoffed.

“The Queens are sponsoring Jerin’s coming out.” Summer said quietly as she came up with the front of her shirt filled with stick candy. She counted the sticks out onto the battered wood counter into two uneven piles. “Thirty-six pieces.” A silver gil joined the candy on the counter.

“The Queens?” Picker humphed, taking the gil and counting Summer her three quince change. With the ease of lifetime practice, she tore a perfect length of brown paper from a bolt, wrapped the larger pile of candy into a neat package, and tied it off with cord. “You want the rest wrapped?”

“Nope.” Summer said, picking up the seven remaining sticks. She held them out to Jerin. “Pick two.”

He took a black anise and a brown maple. Summer offered one each to Mother Elder and Eldest, then, shyly, one to Captain Tern.

“You think the Queens’ goodwill is worth two thousand crowns?” Picker asked.

“Not so much the Queens’ goodwill as the peers’ opinion of their own worth.” Mother Elder explained.

“Downriver, they say if you want a noblewoman to pay for a drink of river water, you say it’s a medical tonic brewed for the Queens and charge her a gil.”

“So.” Picker said dryly, “that’s what your sisters sell in that fancy Annaboro store of theirs? River water?”

Mother Elder scowled at the barb, then controlled her irritation. “We’ll need a length of veiling to go with the hat. White lace, I would think.” She took the hat off of Jerin and measured a length of blue ribbon around the rim. “What a bind. If we wait for Jerin to marry, we have the money without worries.

But by waiting, someone might beat us to the purchase.”

“We’re willing to work with you,” Picker said. “Agree to meet our price and sign a contract, help us run the store until you have the full purchase amount, and we’ll hold the store off the market until your boy’s birthday. If you get your fancy price in Mayfair, then use it to buy the store. If not, you back out of the deal, paying a penalty.”

“We’re leaving within an hour,” Jerin protested, aghast that his family future suddenly hung on the moment.

“What penalty?” Eldest asked.

“Ten percent,” Picker stated.

Jerin gasped. Two hundred crowns just to back out of the deal!

“One percent.” Mother Elder countered.

“Five,” Picker said. “No less.”

“One hundred crowns?” Mother Elder glanced at Eldest Whistler and Summer. “It’s your brother’s price.”

“It’s a shining coin.” Eldest murmured to Summer.

Summer glanced about the store, considering, then nodded. “A wonderful golden shining coin.”

“Deal,” Eldest Whistler said, and shook hands with the old woman. “Let’s go to the Queens’ Witness and have the papers drawn up.”

Mother Elder gave a silver gil to Summer with instructions to buy the hat. the ribbon, and the lace. Eldest added her ammo. Jerin’s cream, and coin for both. With a stern reminder for Summer to guard Jerin. they went off to make the deal permanently legal. Jerin stared after them, slightly stunned. He was not sure how many Picker sisters tended the store, but forty-four Whistlers just had their lives utterly changed. When his sisters split the family, only half would stay on the farm. He would definitely wed on his birthday. If he fetched only two thousand crowns, Eldest and the others would have to wait until Doric was of age to get a husband. Six years would put Eldest into her thirties. If he didn’t fetch two thousand crowns, his family would have to pay one hundred crowns to back out of the deal. A heinous amount of money to throw away, but a small price to pay if the worst happened.

Jerin added extra of the blue ribbon to their purchases; it would be pretty braided in his hair. He would need to look his best at Mayfair to fetch a high brother’s price; his family was counting on him.

At least an hour remained before the packet arrived. Summer, Captain Tern, and Jerin went out to join Mother Erica and Corelle. They moved the wagon down to the village green and set out a light picnic lunch. Jerin got out his sewing kit and tacked the veil to his new hat between bites of his sandwich.

Corelle and Summer were both pleased with the idea of becoming shopkeepers. The older sisters would take the store, they reasoned, because it would need minding right away.

“No more getting up before dawn!” Corelle cried happily. “No more fighting with stock in the middle of snowstorms. No more watering fields during droughts using endless buckets of water. No more plowing, and planting, and seeding.”

Mother Erica laughed at their logic, saying it made more sense for their aging, wiser mothers to mind the store, moving the younger sisters to the city to learn storekeeping as they grew up.

“We at least have worked at our sisters’ store in An-naboro,” Mother Erica reminded them. “Besides, your baby sisters aren’t big enough to take on all that brute work, and your mothers can’t tend the farm alone. You know that it takes at least twenty able bodies to manage planting and harvest.”

Summer frowned. “But there are only eleven of us. How are we going to work this?”

“We’ll manage.” Mother Erica smiled. “There are so few opportunities like this. Unless a family ends like the Pickers, or loses everything in some disaster of bad judgment, farms and businesses just aren’t sold.

Your aunts had to travel to Annaboro to find a business to buy.”

“Look!” Summer stood and pointed upriver. A trail of gray smoke drifted above the treetops. A deep-throated whistle sounded, far off and echoing. “The packet is coming.”

“Eldest will have to eat on the boat,” Mother Erica said, repacking the basket.

The packet rounded the bend as they reached the sloped cobblestone of the landing. It was a triple-decked stern-wheeler with twin smokestacks. Now in sight of the landing, it blasted its whistle again, a deafening howl of near discord. The stevedores caught the mooring ropes and looped them about great pilings set into the stone-work of the levy, tying the stern-wheeler off by bow and stern. The swinging landing stage, fixed with ropes at the bow of the boat, was dropped down to form a gangplank up to the main deck.

The smooth and practiced docking complete, the huge boat was suddenly laid still beside the stone landing, dwarfing all structures in town. Jerin stood in awe, though he had seen it many times before.

What great works woman could create!

Jerin recognized one of the women waiting to board, a small hill of bandboxes and steamer trunks beside her. Miss Abie Skinner taught the one-room schoolhouse that his school-aged sisters attended at the intersection of Whistler, Brindle, Fisher, and Brown land. She had been kind enough over the years to extend the classroom to Jerin and Doric by sending homework back with their sisters. Occasionally, she even came to the house to teach. Reed-thin, she dressed with the same artistic flair of her handwriting.

When Jerin was very young, he had been madly in love with her. He recognized signs of it in Doric now.

Their infatuation came, he decided, as a side effect of her being the only female they closely associated with who wasn’t blood related.

“Miss Skinner.” He greeted her with a smile. “You’re going to be on this boat too?”

His teacher turned in surprise, smiled with pleasure to see him, then frowned. “Master Whistler, you know that a proper young man never starts a conversation with a woman outside of his family when in public.”

Jerin recoiled, hurt. “But I’ve talked to you lots of times.”

“I know, lad, but I shouldn’t have let you. ‘Once’ leads to ‘always.’ You’re leaving Heron Landing, where everyone knows not to mess with your sisters, and your sisters know where they live.”

Jerin nodded. “I know not to talk to strangers, but you’re Miss Skinner.”

Abie Skinner smiled. “Thank you, Master Whistler.”

“So, you’re going to be on this boat?”

She tried not to grin, then shook her head and laughed. “Yes, Master Whistler. I’m going home.”

“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 saying 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,” Jerjn 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, giv-ing 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 desperate 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.

“Like grain futures.” Eldest slid her pistols into their holster, hanging from her headboard. “A lot of farmers sell their crops in the summer at a set price before the harvest. It helps them tide money over, but it’s risky. Basically, it’s a loan, and you put your farm up as collateral on the loan. People that don’t look at it as a loan usually lose the family farm.”

Jerin picked nervously at his sheets. “What if the market price of your crops goes higher than the set price?”

“That’s what the women that bought your crop are hoping for,” Eldest said. “You don’t see the profit; they do. That’s why the Whistlers don’t sell futures. We don’t work to make other people rich.”

“Why don’t you use my brother’s price?” Jerin asked.

Eldest smiled, and hugged him suddenly. “Because I want a husband, silly, not the money.”

Three days later they arrived at Mayfair. The city seemed to go on forever, stunning even his sisters into silence. Eldest took firm hold of his arm with her left hand, keeping her right free to draw a gun, and didn’t let go.

“Stay here.” Raven went down the canted stage to the crowded landing. The ship’s calliope started up, drowning out all normal levels of conversation with bright loud music. Jerin watched the captain’s broad back as she pushed through the milling crowds. Partway to the cobbled street, an odd thing happened. A woman in a wide-brimmed hat coming down the street glanced at Raven as they passed each other. The stranger started as if recognizing the captain, then ducked her face away. Raven, intent on the wagon, seemed not to notice.

“Did you see that?” Jerin shouted at Eldest, standing beside him, as he kept watch on the mystery woman. The woman had turned to watch Raven’s retreating back, and Jerin had a momentary stab of fear for the captain.

“What?”

“The woman. Did you see her?” Jerin pointed at the only figure that seemed to be standing still in the crowd.

“I can’t hear what you’re saying, Jerin! Who do you see?”

He took his eyes away only for a moment, to turn and shout into Eldesfs ear. “That woman is acting oddly.”

“Which one?”

He glanced back, and found her gone. “She’s gone now.”

Eldest scanned the crowd. “Was she armed?”

He shook his head, and shouted back, “I don’t know!”

“Here comes Raven!” Eldest pointed out the captain.

Raven waded back through the crowd, signaling that they were to join her. Eldest took his arm above the elbow to escort him down the stage. Raven met them at the foot.

“I’ve got a hackney hired,” Raven shouted to Eldest. “Take Jerin over and I’ll bring the luggage.”

Eldest nodded, not bothering to shout back. Eldest turned, apparently spotted Corelle and Summer, and flashed hand signals for them to get the gear and follow.

“We’ll get your stuff loaded and go straight up to the palace,” Raven told Jerin, pointing.

Jerin gasped. The city ran back to sandstone cliffs, which leaped skyward in walls of rich tan. Crowning the bluffs, with windows glistening like diamonds, sat an immense building. It was an architectural sprawl of turrets and wings, gables and dormers, slate roofs and copper cladding, gray stone veiled with ivy, and windows- hundreds and thousands of mullioned windows. Too huge, too impressive, too noble to be anything but the royal palace.

“I’ve never seen anything so big,” Jerin breathed.

His words fell in a moment of silence as the calliope paused between songs.

“It’s where you’ll be living for-for the next few weeks.” Raven said, then patted him on the shoulder.

“Go on to the hackney. You can gawk through the window.”

He and Eldest pushed their way through the crowd to the closed carriage. While he climbed into the hackney. Eldest waited outside for Summer and Corelle to catch up. He scooted across the battered horsehair-stuffed seat to stare up at the palace. Ren and Odelia’s home. He remembered Ren, standing in the Whistlers’ kitchen, watching him cook. How poor and lowborn he must have seemed to her.

He was aware of someone staring at him, and he looked down.

The young woman with the wide-brimmed hat stood before him, shielded from Eldest and the others by the hackney. She looked at him with neither envy nor the open speculation that he had grown used to during the trip, that ‘T wish I had him“ or ”Can I get him without being caught?“ She seemed, instead, stunned by some surprising news.

Jerin gazed at her, wondering why she sought him out, what was so surprising about himself. He could find nothing familiar about her face, no hint that he might have known her long ago. True, the silvery line of a scar ran from the corner of her left eye down the line of her chin to the edge of her mouth. The skin lay smooth; the healing had been perfect despite the fact she had nearly lost her left eye with the wound.

The scar, thus, did not disfigure her beyond recognition.

In fact, he would not say it disfigured her at all. At one time, her face had been a harvested field under a winter sky: barren of good features, containing no bad. Plain. Neither beautiful nor ugly. It had existed.

The scar gave her plainness character, like a thick choker, or a large bold earring. It spoke to Jerin of strength and determination.

The woman had tensed when their gazes met. a look like fear going through her eyes. He had thought Raven might be the cause for her alarm, but then the woman didn’t glance to see where the captain was. or what Raven was doing. Instead her eyes widened slightly, and Jerin realized she had been somehow afraid of him, and now she wasn’t.

She stepped forward, reached out, and lifted his veil.

Time stopped.

They froze there. He half leaned out the window of the hired coach. She held the veil up with both hands. Her eyes were green, green and changing as summer wheat, one moment dark as velvet, next light as silk, with long thick dark eyelashes. Gorgeous eyes. How could he have thought her plain with such eyes?

She gasped, as if surprised, and then kissed him.

He hadn’t expected it, and sat stunned during the touch of warm lips, the fleeting exploration of her sweet cinnamon tongue, the brief touch of fingertips on his check.

Then she was gone, his veil drifting down, the calliope blasting forth into the silence that had surrounded them.

The hackney rocked, and Summer climbed in beside him. She leaned against him to look out and up at the palace on the cliff. “To think, after all these years, the Whistlers are going to be guests there.”