A Brother's Price

Chapter 14

It was almost a royal brawl on the landing of Mayfair. Despite Ren’s orders for Odelia, Lylia, and Trini to be escorted back to the palace, they met her on the cobbled landing.

“Look at this!” Lylia cried, thrusting a copy of the Herald at Ren. “Is it true? Is he gone?”

Ren took the paper and scanned it. The Herald, always willing to blare out rumors, hearsay, and outright lies, blasted the story of Jerin’s kidnapping across the front page. The Herald went on to decry the royal security, lamenting that losing an innocent from the palace was a sign of supreme incompetence.

Worse, the story begged someone, anyone, to save the poor royal-blooded boy before it was too late.

Read carefully, it hinted darkly that such saviors could expect to keep their spoils. After such an article, the public would look softer at Kij for keeping Jerin after “rescuing” him from the river trash. Kij was already juggling madly to make her marriage to Jerin respectable. The news of Jerin’s kidnapping must have reached the Herald’s office long before it reached Ren. Or-she gritted her teeth in sudden anger-even before Jerin had even been kidnapped!

“Well?” Trini asked quietly.

“Yes, he’s gone,” Ren admitted, crushing the newspaper, wishing it was Kij’s throat. “They came in through the bolt-hole and kidnapped him, just like the paper says.”

“What are we doing just standing here, then?” Ode-lia cried.

“Raven is securing a boat,‘” Ren told them, beating her palm with the crumpled paper. Jerin’s kidnapping wasn’t an impromptu grab and run. Kij had planned it in greater detail than Ren had initially given her credit for. What other plans were set? Did Kij count on their chasing after her?

Ren uncrumpled the paper and scanned the story. Not surprisingly, there were no mentions of cribs; Kij would want to keep Jerin’s reputation clean of that rumor. Otherwise, though, the text ran close to hysterical over the possible dangers that Jerin faced. Surely, upon reading the story, even the most coldhearted of women would rush after their betrothed. “Where did you get this, Lylia?”

Lylia was standing on tiptoe, looking over their guard’s heads for Raven. “One of the clerks at the courthouse brought it around. She was concerned that we didn’t know what had happened.” Kij was concerned that they didn’t know. “There’s Raven now!”

“Good! We can get moving!” Odelia started toward Raven.

Ren caught Odelia by the elbow and pulled her back. “No. You three aren’t going anywhere.”

“What?” they cried in dismayed chorus.

Lylia recovered first. “I’m going after Jerin!”

“Me too!” Odelia tried to shake loose from Ren’s hold.

“It’s a wife’s duty to guard and protect her husband,” Trini stated firmly. “You can’t stop me from doing so.”

“The Porters are behind this! They killed Eldest and the others. They want the throne,” Ren told them.

She added in what she knew, and then what she only suspected. “Kij wants us to chase after her. She has some trap in store.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting letting them keep Jerin!” Trini growled, her eyes narrowed in anger. “Not after all they have done to us!”

“No!” Ren cried, hurt that they would think her capable of that. “I’m saying that only one of us should go!”

“Kij doesn’t know that we know it’s her!” Odelia pointed out. “We’ll be on our guard!”

Ren shook her head. “She can’t trust her luck that we haven’t guessed. She’s in too deep. She has to be sure that when she strikes this time, she gets us all. She’s taken our husband, printed this damn story, and left a trail to follow. It’s a trap!”

“And we’re supposed to sit back and let you ride off to get killed, and do nothing?” Lylia asked.

“You’re supposed to stay here and make sure our little sisters are safe, or have you forgotten that they’re between the Porters and the throne too?”

Her sisters exchanged guilty looks.

“You think Kij is going to lure us upriver and then attack here?” Trini asked.

“Quite possibly,” Ren said. “Our mothers might be mostly retired, but they’re still a force to fear. If Kij kills us upriver, unless she counterblows here too, against the palace, then she’ll be facing a very angry Queen Mother Elder.”

“Go upriver,” Trini said quietly. “We’ll guard against the Porters here.”

Raven broke her silence. “It would be best if none of you go. I can take a boat and fetch Jerin back.”

Ren shook her head. “Much as we love Jerin, he figures in this only as bait, and as a royal husband for whoever comes out alive. I need to go upriver and nail Kij to the nearest tree.”

“You can’t arrest a duchess on her ducal grounds, Captain,” Trini added. “You don’t have the power.”

Raven’s mouth quirked into a grin. “It might be fun to try, though. She wouldn’t be suspecting it-a common arrest is much below her own sense of self-importance.”

“I don’t want her warned,” Ren said. “I have a feeling that we’ll have only one shot to get her. I want to make the most of it. Raven, take the boat you just comman-deered to Sparrows Point. Get the Red Dog.

Bring it back. I’ll ready a platoon of marines here.”‘

Raven eyes widened. She controlled a grin, and then bowed slightly. “Yes. Your Highness.”

As Raven hurried off, Lylia crowed with delight. “A gunboat? Ren, that’s truly evil! Blow that bitch out of the water!”

Ren grinned, and swatted Odelia with the newspaper. “You! You’re eldest while I’m gone, unless Halley shows her face, which she may once she sees this paper! Kij has done us a favor there. Send troops to the Herald, find Kij’s mole there, and root her out. I don’t want any more articles that smell-ever so mildly-of treason.”

Odelia gulped at the promotion, and nodded, eyes huge.

“Trini, have a fast messenger go on to Annaboro and let Jerin’s family there know what’s happened. I’ll send one on to Heron Landing once I get upriver. Send word to our cousins-Kij might try to eliminate them too. Send out messengers to the Queens Justice for news on Jerin-Kij will be expecting us to do that, and we don’t want to disappoint her.”

Trini nodded solemnly.

Ren turned last to Lylia. “Call in troops; fortify the palace. The youngest aren’t to go out. Keep our mothers in, if you can. Remember that Kij’s favorite weapon is poison.”

Lylia nodded, and then suddenly hugged Ren tight. “Take care of yourself. Get Jerin back!”

Ren blinked back sudden tears. “I will. Go on, now. Kij has her plan in motion. We’ve got to get ours going too.”

Jerin wasn’t aware Cira was following until her big roan muscled beside his. She reached out, caught him by the waist just as he registered her presence, and jerked him sideways onto her horse. Taken by surprise, he was left with the choice of falling between the horses. perhaps to be trampled, or letting her settle him onto the saddle in front of her.

To his shame, his body chose the latter, clinging tightly to her.

“Where the hell did you learn to ride?” Cira growled, reining her horse sharply and turning suddenly down a side track. His horse raced on without him. She held him tight with one arm, and stripped the pistol from his belt. “You certainly have pluck, I have to say that!”

“Let me go!” He swung at her awkwardly with his free hand, but she dodged the blow.

“What a little lion cub.” Cira laughed at him. “Hush! Quiet as you can! Here they come!”

The shack was a torch in the night behind them. She had tucked her horse into a thick grove of sumac, screening them from the road he had been racing along. Horses were coming, a rolling thunder.

Jerin stopped fighting Cira to be quiet. She held him close, stroking his hair. Her heart pounded under his cheek.

The river trash rode past, dark forms moving through night, hooves drumming on the dry earth.

“It’s okay. We’re safe now.” Cira lowered him to the ground but kept hold of his forearm. “Get on behind me. I can get you back to the palace without so much as a blemish on your reputation. It will get all hushed up, no one the wiser.”

He hesitated, not sure what to do. A throbbing pain in his ankle reminded him that running on foot wasn’t an option.

Cira tightened her hold on him. “Alone, you’d be at the mercy of every woman that sees you.”

She was right. If he didn’t run afoul of a family desperate for a husband, then there were the women that would use him to establish a crib. Much as he didn’t trust Cira, his chances were better with her.

He scrambled up behind her. “Where are we?”

“Halfway to Hera’s Step.” Cira clucked to her roan and guided it out of their hiding space. “This is the main road into Sparrows Point. If we stay on it, well be caught between them and the damn hat-wearing bitches that hired them.”

“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

Cira chuckled. “I’ll try not to push my credibility with you. Fen and her women went that way; we’ll go this way. How about that?”

“Will it take us downriver to Mayfair?”

“We can’t go downriver. We have to cut across a dozen fields and get upriver.”

“Why?”

“We’re just north of Snake Run, and it’s all white water and deep fast pools. We can’t ford it. We’ll have to go all the way to Queens Highway for a bridge across. With us riding double, those river rats would catch us before we could get to where we could buy fresh horses.”

“It would have been better if you left me on my horse.”

“I’m hoping they think you were thrown. I don’t know many women that could have kept their seat through that. If they believe you’ve been thrown, they’ll have to be searching for you to be on foot, or unconscious, in the dark.”

For a plan conceived at a full gallop, it seemed sound enough.

Jerin pointed out the one flaw. “But won’t they think you’ve caught up with me, like you have?”

Cira’s shoulder lifted under his chin. “I tried to give the impression that I thought everything was a lost cause, and started out in the opposite direction. Whether they believed any of it, is another thing.”

They went as quickly as they could, crossing open fields in reckless bursts and carefully picking their way through cave-black woodlots and windbreaks. With the gray of predawn came a thick fog, whiting out the land-scape. Steamboat whistles echoed from the distant river like cries of great hunting beasts.

The roan, lathered and winded, couldn’t go any farther. They dismounted and found that Jerin’s ankle was weak, but he could limp.

“We’re almost to Sarahs Bend,” Cira said as she helped Jerin to a hay barn standing like an island in the fog. “It’s just a half mile down the road. The Queens Justice here is corrupt. I think the Hats have the lieutenant in their pocket. Fen might think I pulled wonders getting her and her women free, but all I had to do was mention the Hats and drop a few crowns, and someone forgot to lock their cell door.”

“I’m supposed to believe you’re not one of them after comments like that?” Jerin asked.

The barn was in good repair, with no windows and a door padlocked against passing river trash.

Cira tested the heavy lock with a tug. “Fen was a means to something bigger.”

“And I’m just a means to something bigger too?”

Cira gave him a hurt look and then turned away, studying the barn for another entrance. “I’ve been hunting the Hats for over a year. Fen is getting me closer to knowing who they are.”

“They’re the Porters: Kij and her sisters. We found proof.”

Cira jerked around to face him. “ What?”

Jerin backed away from her. “We found the proof in the husband quarters.”

Cira caught his hand, keeping him from bolting away. “Honey, I’m not angry at you. Just tell me what you found.”

“Kij was sleeping with Keifer, even after he was married.” Jerin slipped out his lockpick and tackled the padlock to distract himself. “Keifer poisoned the princesses’ father. And then, after the princesses’ father was dead, every time Keifer acted angry, it was so he could let Kij into the husband quarters. We didn’t know at first that

Kij was his lover, though, and Ren went to Kij and showed her what we found.“

“Oh, bloody hell.” Cira started to pace. “This all makes sense. They’re after the throne. You’re Prince Alannon’s grandson: marrying you would give them legitimacy.”

“But I have male cousins nearly my age-they could have made an offer…”

“You’re the one who’s been verified by the Queens themselves.”

The padlock clicked open and Jerin unlatched the door.

Cira eyed the lock with surprise. “So that’s how you got free from that bed. An interesting talent for a prince consort.”

Jerin limped inside to collapse onto the fresh hay. Cira led in her roan and tied it outside reach of the hay, so it couldn’t eat itself to death, and then found grain and water for it.

“Three daily packets stop in town,” Cira said as she returned Jerin’s pistol to him. “I think the first packet comes through town before noon. I’ll get tickets so we can board at the last moment and go straight to a cabin. Once we’re on the river, we’ll be safe until we hit Mayfair.”

Somehow sharing a cabin with Cira didn’t seem like a “safe” option. Nor did Jerin like the idea of waiting here, trusting Cira while she could be selling him to the highest bidder.

“And your plan is for me to sit here quietly until you come back?”

“Sweetie, I’ll just be more river trash, but you’re a man, one that the entire Queensland is looking for. If the Queens Justice is in town, they might have drawings of you.” Cira took his hand and clasped it tight.

“And I know you have no reason to trust me, but just because they’re soldiers doesn’t make them infallible.”

As his own family history would attest to.

He sighed and pulled his hand free. “I’ll wait here. Can you bring me something to eat? My stomach is still queasy.”

She gave him a slight smile, pulled her Stetson down low to throw a shadow across her scarred face, and left. He waited as the bells of the nearby town rang five o’clock. Once he was fairly sure she was gone, Jerin unbuckled her saddlebag and carried it to the hay mound to look through it.

On top was a silver flask. He unscrewed its lid, sniffed its contents. Brandy-and fairly expensive if he judged it correctly. He had expected to find corn whiskey, the standard smuggler drink.

He put the flask aside and continued unloading the saddlebag. A turtle shell comb. A bottle of black liquid he couldn’t identify. A small book tied shut with a piece of ribbon.

Untying the ribbon, he found the book was a journal written in code. He worried at his bottom lip. While his grandmothers had taught him code breaking, nevertheless, it could take him hours to crack it and translate the book. He didn’t have hours. He flipped through the pages, checking if anything had not been written in code. Between the back pages, he discovered three newspaper clippings. The first was headlined forty dead in weapon shop fire. The second story looked like it had been torn out instead of clipped; while it was missing the headline, he recognized it as the Herald’s story about the attack on Odelia. In the same handwriting as the journal were names and numbers written in the margin. “ Osprey 6/4 Dusk. Frontier 6/5 Dawn. Enterprise 6/4 Midnight.‘” Ship names and times, he realized. Where had she gone? The “ Osprey” had been underlined, seeming to indicate a need for speed.

The third story had been carefully clipped, neatly folded and refolded, and was well-worn from being handled.

QUEENS SPONSOR PRINCE ALANNON’S GRANDSON

After decades of mystery, the fate of the vanished Prince Alannon has been finally revealed. A report issued from the palace today stated that the prince married Queensland knights Sirs Whistler and retired to their up-country land grant. In an amazing twist of fate, Master Jerin Whistler, the grandson of Prince Alannon, has been named as Princess Ode-lia’s recent savior. As a reward for his selfless bravery, the Queens will be sponsoring Master Whistler for the upcoming Season. Sources close to the crown state that the young man has been installed at the palace and bears a striking resemblance to the beautiful missing prince…

The story would have appeared after he met her on the Mayfair landing-after she kissed him. He supposed it was understandable she would want a keepsake of such an event. Kissing was something only husbands and wives were allowed to do. His sister Summer would keep a newspaper story of a boy she kissed. That Cira was like his sister helped calm his nerves.

He could glean nothing more from the journal. He returned the clippings, closed the book, and tied it shut. He dug deeper into the saddlebag. A can opener. A tin pan with a screw-on handle that could be stored inside the pan. He marveled at the ingeniousness of the pan and then started to set it aside. It struck him then, the quality of the items Cira owned. The journal had not been showy, but was well bound with a stamped leather cover. The tin pan was cunningly made. The saddlebag itself was a sturdy and handsome item. The fine roan horse she rode. Even the brandy in the flask had been quality.

Cira was a rich woman, though she did not show it. It was, in fact, as if she was trying to hide the fact.

The other women at the shack, though, seemed to be river trash. The shack. The two or three of them he saw. The language that the others used. Dirt-poor and willing-no. needing-to steal to survive.

Cira hadn’t been one of them. Considering the newspaper clipping, it even seemed likely that she had been there only to rescue him. Still, he could not afford to trust her. Trust had led to betrayal too often, too recently.

A short time after the town bells rang six, Cira reappeared.

“There’s no sign of Fen and her women,” she told him as she sat down on the hay beside him. She had two small loaves of fresh bread. “This was all that could be had this early in the morning. I would have brought you ginger if the apothecary was open. Most likely it’s the drugs that Fen gave you that upset your stomach, but it might be because you haven’t eaten for a full day.”

He ate the bread cautiously; it seemed to help settle his queasy stomach.

“The first packet is at nine.” Cira lore her loaf of bread in two and gave him the larger piece. “And the Queens Justice is in town. If I’d had the coin. I’d have bought fresh horses. I don’t like this sitting and waiting, but we don’t have much of a choice.”

She started to unload her pockets, producing a small ceramic crock, rhinestone hair combs, a bright red silk scarf, and a white-feathered boa. “I thought that one way to slip you past the Queens Justice is to hide you in the open.”

“What do you mean?” Jerin opened the crock, hoping for something to eat. It contained a bright red cream. “What is this?”

“That’s lip paint,” Cira said, dipping one finger into red. “Purse your lips and hold still.”

“Makeup?”

Cira blushed, a first for her. “It’s a disguise. Everyone is looking for a man; they might not look twice at a whore.”

He knew some women pleasured others for money, but his mothers and sisters kept him innocent of the details. “Whores are women, aren’t they?”

“In body, but not always in appearance. Many dress as men, the manlier, the better.” Cira glided her fingertip over his lips in a way that was at once intimate and erotic.

Jerin scrambled to take his mind away from her fingers. “Don’t they lack certain vital equipment?”

“There are artificial devices.” Cira dipped her finger into the crock again, and rouged his cheeks, her breath on his face as she blended color out. “They call them bones because they’re made out of ivory.

They strap on. Whores carry them sheathed to their leg, here, to look more manly.”

She put her hand on him, and found him excited. She smiled, stroking him gently, her eyes full of lust.

“Wh-wh-why red on the lips?” he asked.

“To advertise they know how to use their mouth.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, moistening them, drawing a slight gasp from him. “It feels very, very good.”

He understood then what she was referring to-his wives claimed he was very good at it. He couldn’t believe he had anything in common with a whore. Maybe she was just repeating a rumor. “You-have you ever- you know-been with a whore?”

“I had a lover, a beautiful young officer, whose mother had been a whore.” Her voice turned bitter as she draped the scarf about his neck, trying to cover his man’s apple. “She should have been a whore herself. She was well suited for it: ambitious, heartless, and very talented. She could make you feel like you were about to turn inside out.”

“What happened to her?”

She caught his hand and pressed it to her scar. “This happened to her. After I was scarred she couldn’t bear to touch me, look me in the face.”

“Why?” He traced the scar on her face. “‘It’s like an exotic piece of jewelry. It becomes you.”

In a sudden angry move, she pulled her shirt off and turned her back to him. revealing a mass of puckered skin and silvery scars. At some point she had been badly burned. “Look at me! I’m repulsive!”

He ran a hand over the wounded skin. His fingertips reported only warm flesh and solid muscle, the ugliness of the burn invisible to the touch. “No. You’re not repulsive.”

She turned-her eyes luminescent with unshed tears- and kissed him. Apples flavored her mouth. He retreated. She advanced. They ended sprawled in the hay, no more room for him to retreat, and she on top of him, her groin pressed against him instead of her hand, rocking suggestively. They fitted together as if molded from one flesh, only her trousers and his walking robe and underclothes between their bare skin.

“Show me,” she whispered against his mouth. “Show me how beautiful I am.”

“No!” He pushed at her shoulders. ‘’You’re taking me back to my wives. You promised. I won’t be unfaithful to them.“

She laughed, seemed about to say something, and then shook her head. “I won’t push you. my love.

This will all be over soon, and you’ll see that you can trust me.”

He snorted as she retreated then, drawing her shirt back on.

“We’ll pad the front of your shirt a little, to make it look like you’re hiding breasts.” Cira glanced at him and laughed. “And we’ll have to put the lip paint back on again too.”

Three hours later, they started into the town of Sarahs Bend. Cira would have liked to wait until they heard the steam whistle of the packet docking at the landing, but was afraid they might miss the boat. A weak sun had burned off part of the fog, revealing the edge of town within rifle shot; Cira still insisted that he ride the big roan while she led it.

Sarahs Bend was much larger than his hometown of Heron Landing. There were several blocks of paved streets flanked with tall, narrow but deep, brick buildings. The first floors were storefronts, while the upper floors were obviously residences of the store owners. Some of the buildings were four stories tall, casting shadows onto the cobblestones. The edges of their roofs sparkled oddly in the sunlight.

“City people hang laundry on their roofs,” Cira explained when Jerin asked about it. “People embed broken bottles into the roof parapets, to discourage husband raids.”

He noticed then that the storefronts also had cast-iron gates that could be padlocked shut at night.

It surprised him how many types of stores there were. Besides two mercantiles, there were stores for apothecaries, books, dry goods, shoes, tailors, watchmakers, and more. Each carried the name of the family that ran it and then symbolic signage for the illiterate; he recognized all but one.

“What do they sell there?” Jerin pointed to a gas lamp with three blue glass globes. The stone building lacked the glass front of the rest; while the front door stood open, heavily armed women guarded the entrance. Customers came and went, but they carried items neither in nor out. “Is it a bank?”

“Hush, don’t point,” Cira murmured, and then clucked the roan to speed them past the store.

“What is it?” Jerin whispered.

“Pay it no mind.”

He’d heard that tone enough in his life to realize it was a crib. He looked back to study the fortresslike building. He never thought such a thing would be on a Main Street corner, its gas lamp bright in the overcast morning so it couldn’t be missed. How many men were inside? A dozen narrow windows cut into the thick stone of the first story. One window per man? Iron bars covered the larger windows of the second story. A short railing lined the roof with sharpened iron points. He knew that they were there to keep out women, but they would work to keep men in. The trickle of women in and out of the building was constant-each representing a forced coupling.

His breakfast churned in his stomach. “Cira, I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Now?” Whatever she saw on his face convinced her. She guided the roan into a narrow alley.

His breakfast came up while Cira kept his hair and clothes out of the way.

“That’s where I’m going to end up.” He moaned. “In a place just like that. Locked in and drugged.”

“That is not going to happen to you. You’re getting home and it will be just like nothing happened.”

“Ren won’t be able to take me back. No one is ever going to believe that nothing happened to me.”

More bread came up, and then his stomach was empty, but his body continued to heave.

Cira rubbed his back soothingly, patiently waiting for him to recover. “Ren will believe you. If she loves you, she will trust you and believe what you tell her to be the truth, even if you were gone for years.”

He shook his head. “Her mothers wouldn’t let her offer for me for weeks-they might force her to give me back to my sisters.”

“Jerin.” Cira straightened him up and wiped his face. “I swear to you, you will never be in a crib. I can guarantee that you’re clean. I might seem like a river trash, but I come from a powerful, old family. The Queens will take my word.”

He thought of all the fine belongings in her saddlebag, everything that indicated that she was much more than what she seemed. “Really?”

“And I am not poor either. If need be, I have the money to pay your brother’s price and marry you.”

“All by yourself?”

“We can start a new trend. One wife per husband.”

He laughed at the ridiculousness of her plan.

The loud roar of the packet’s whistle came from the river.

“Come on. Dry your tears and put on a smile. We’re almost home free. Just a little more, and we’ll be safe on the river.”

It was odd to be among people and not be the center of attention. He and Cira moved through the crowd waiting on the landing without anyone noticing them. Amazingly, the flimsy disguise was working.

Women would glance his direction, see the bright boa that Cira had him wave lazily about, gather in the lack of veil and the painted face, and lose interest in him.

They almost made it.

A few feet from the gangplank, Cira took a sudden deep breath, and hands caught Jerin tight from behind.

“Not a word!” growled a familiar voice. “A single noise, missy, and we’ll pop you where you stand.”

“Ya should pop her anyhow, stealing ‘im away like that!” Dossy whined.

He swung about. They had a revolver tight to Cira’s spine. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

“Or what, little boy?” Bert sneered. “Ya cry?”

“I’ll tell your bosses that you raped me. Oh, it was awful! You dirty, infected crib sleaze took me again and again. They’re paying for clean and untouched. I’ll be sure to convince them you’re pulling a double cross. Selling used goods!”

“Shut ya mouth!” Bert jerked her gun back, swinging the butt around to strike him with it.

“Bert!” Fen snapped, catching her hand. “Don’t you dare, shithead! Unharmed and untouched, they said!”

“So what do we do?” Bert asked.

“Give them both to the bosses. Let them work it out,” Fen said.

Jerin glanced around them. The other women on the landing looked on but made no move to interfere.

Guns were already in the mix. From their faces, he realized that they still saw him as a whore having trouble with river trash. If he appealed to them as a man, once they rescued him, would they try to keep him?

“Come quietly,” Fen said. “Or we will pop Miss High-and-mighty here and now.”

He let himself be dragged to an alley where horses waited. Since none of his counteroffers had worked, he tried a new ploy. The Porters had left no witnesses behind them-surely they wouldn’t allow Fen and her women to live, knowing their darkest secrets.

“The Hats are a noble family planning to marry me to claim the throne,” he told them. “You’ll know as soon as the marriage is announced which noble family is the Hats. You’re the only ones that can testify they’re one and the same. They’ve-”

Fen cocked her hand in warning. “Hush your mouth, or I’ll knock you silly enough you can’t talk, and blame it on Miss High-and-mighty.”

He wanted to stay conscious, so he kept his suspicions to himself.

The side-wheeler Destiny sat waiting for them, tied off to massive oaks on a secluded bend in the river, its stage lowered to the desolate shore.

Kij and her sisters came down to greet them in the woods, six-guns holstered on their hips. Kij smiled at Jerin, then noticed Cira and frowned. “So, you make an appearance, finally.”

“Gods, your soul must be black,” Cira growled.

Kij waved the insult away. “Faith is for the well-to-do. My grandmothers left us too destitute for that nonsense.”

“But Keifer, and your Eldest, and your mothers?” Cira asked.

“Our family doesn’t age well,” Kij said lightly, as if she were talking about spilling cheap wine and not her family’s blood. “Our mothers had long slipped into senility, and babbled family secrets right and left.

They made a useful sacrifice-one last service to the family. Keifer, dearly as I loved him, was an idiot.

He was to get himself to the first-floor bathroom. We picked that theater primarily for a place he could survive the blast. The walls reinforced by the plumbing would have protected him. He never showed.

Eldest went to fetch him, but then- they weren’t supposed to be killed.”

“Ahhh, too bad. So now a husband raid?” Cira asked.

“Oh, we didn’t raid for a husband,” Kij cried, pressing her left hand to her chest, looking wounded.

“The royal guard can testify without influence from us that not a single Porter sister took Jerin from the palace.”

Kij’s right hand flashed downward, drawing her pistol.

Jerin had been watching for the move; he stepped in front of Cira, shielding her. “Kij, no!”

The Porters’ revolvers fired in thunderous rounds. Fen, Bert, little Dossy. and the others went down in a hail of bullets, the Porter sisters emptying their six-guns into the hapless river trash.

Birds startled up out of the trees and winged away as the echoes returned from the far shore. Gun smoke wreathed them. The smell of blood grew as the river trash’s lives poured out into the dirt around them.

“There’s an interesting law that applies here,” Kij calmly explained as she reloaded her pistol. “It’s similar to war plunder. It says that if an unmarried man is kidnapped by party A and rescued by party B, then he belongs to party B. Losers weepers, finders keepers.” She spun the chamber on her pistol. “Step out of the way, Jerin.”

“No.” Jerin was pleased that he sounded more firm than he felt.

“Sisters, please, get our new husband out of harm’s way.”

“If I were you,” Cira called out to Kij from behind him, “I’d think long and hard before you walk down that road.”

“It’s a road we’ve walked before.” Kij raised her revolver. “A few more miles, and Queensland is ours.”

“Kill her and I will never be your husband!” Jerin growled. “You’ll have to keep me chained to a wall, because I’ll escape you every chance I get. I’ll tell anyone I see of the crimes you committed. You’ll have to rape me for my seed! You’ll have to raise our children alone.”

“Jerin, hush.” Cira caught his shoulders and started to push him aside. “Don’t give them cause to hurt you.”

Jerin dug in his heels, refusing to move out of the way. “Let her live, and I marry you willingly. I’ll stay by your side. I’ll pleasure you in bed, and I’ll take joy in our children. My word of honor.”

“She knows too much,” Kij explained to him gently, then made a shooing motion with her gun. “Move aside, Jerin.”

“Kij!” Kij’s sister Meza hissed. “Not in front of him. Frankly, I want a husband with a tongue.”

“Let’s keep our options open,” their sister Alissa added.

Kij stared at him and then lowered her pistol. “You win for now, beloved.” She turned away. “I don’t want him haring off over the countryside again. Search them both, Alissa, and handcuff them in my cabin.

We’ll do a rotating guard on them.”

“Search them both?” Alissa quirked up an eyebrow.

Kij holstered her pistol. “He may be gently born, but his family were knights of valor. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll arm anything that can hold a gun.”

They found his derringer and knife, which made them search up under his robe, teasing and touching him rudely. He covered his face, and hid his fierce attention to which pocket Alissa dropped his stuff into.

When Meza found his stash pouch, Cira winced. Obviously she had hoped he would free himself a second time.

“I can’t believe you’re turning against the Queens,” Jerin said to cover his turning, watching Meza as she frowned at the jumble of items in his pouch and then slipped it into her own pocket.

“You can’t?‘” Kij took his hand, pleading understanding with her eyes. “Did you think we gave a fuck which princess was Eldest? Either one would have been the same to us! So an idiotic war we cared nothing about was waged, and our entire livelihood was blown away!”

“That doesn’t give you the right to murder the royal family!” Jerin cried.

“They destroyed our family!”

Cira gave a bitter laugh. “How do you figure that? No Porter was killed in the war, and you received reparations for the damage to the locks!”

“We received chicken feed! We could only rebuild half the system on what we received, and half is worthless! We had to mortgage everything to scrape up the money, and still it wasn’t enough! So we started smuggling and stealing and murdering to make ends meet. We lost our honor. We lost mothers and sisters overseeing the dangerous construction and smuggling ring. I had to shoot my own sister in the face so she couldn’t be identified! The indignities we’ve suffered-all because the royal family couldn’t settle who would be Eldest. Well, never again. We’re taking the thrones.”

Jerin exaggerated his limp, and as he came off the stage, stumbled against Alissa. She caught him out of reflex, and as she righted him. he dipped his hand down into her coat pocket. His fingers closed on the cold, welcome grip of his derringer. Lightly, he lifted the small pistol out, his heart hammering fit to break, and slipped it into his robe pocket. There was no outcry from her sisters and Alissa smiled as she took the opportunity to grope him. Even Cira, who was watching him with concern, seemed unaware. He limped forward, faked another stumble into Meza Porter, and retrieved his stash pouch. He didn’t even want to try for his knife-it was so awkward a shape he was sure to be caught. Instead he meekly allowed himself to be led to Kij’s cabin.

Kij’s cabin was on the second deck, in the corner farthest from the great churning paddle wheel. Jerin balked at the door, for here was surely a den of seduction. A huge bed dominated the room, covered with a thick feather mattress, sheets of silk, and drapes of brocades and dark green velvets. Cherry paneling and stained glass on the portholes darkened the room. Alissa, entering before him, took a match to the oil lamps, and the warm glow of their flames reflected on gold leaf and brass.

Alissa looked at the bed and then at him, nostrils flaring. “On the bed, love.”

Conscious of the four armed Porter sisters behind him, Jerin limped to the bed and sat on the very edge.

“Chain her to the foot like a dog,” Alissa said, eyes locked on him. “She can watch while I tumble him.”

With a great deal of laughing, they handcuffed Cira to the foot of the bed. Jerin braced himself. Against the five of them, there was nothing he could do except act as if he would honor his vow. Thankfully Alissa made no attempt to undress him. She merely pushed him back onto the bed. He twisted his robe as he fell so his pistol and stash were under him as Alissa sprawled on top of him. She writhed against him as she raped his mouth.

“Really, Alissa,” Cira said in a tone near boredom. “Taking Diva from me hurt me more than anything you can do with him.”

Alissa laughed, tossing her head to flip her gold hair out of her eyes, and slunk up, catlike, until she sat astride Jerin. “She was a delightful little bitch. You had her trained well. Tell me,” she said as she ran her finger over Jerin’s painted lips, “is he as talented with his mouth?”

“Why would you think I would know?” Cira drawled. “You know my tastes. You’ve eaten my leftovers.”

Alissa glared at Cira. eyes narrowing, Jerin all but forgotten below her. “If you are so disinterested, why are you riding herd on him?”

“What better bait for wolves than the sacrificial lamb?”

Alissa made a sound of disgust and climbed off of Jerin. “Leave you to take the fun out of it. Meza, gag the bitch.” She handcuffed Jerin firmly to the headboard. “You’ll have first watch, Meza.”

Meza gagged Cira tightly, settled at the paper-strewn desk, and reached for a pen. “Good, I can get caught up with these invoices.”

I made the right decision. I made the right decision.

Ren clung to the mantra, though as the sun moved across the sky, she sank into utter misery. Runners bringing her updates from her sisters did nothing to shake the soundness of her decision, or give hope that Jerin would be restored to them. The ever-so-polite raid on the Herald ferreted out the Porter mole and a wealth of information. Recent deliveries of cooking goods to the barracks turned up enough poison to lay waste to the Fifth Battalion. Incensed by their close call, the troops marched the street, arresting all loiterers, turning up scores of heavily armed river trash.

The Red Dog steamed into port, low and sleek as a hunter, the late afternoon sun glinting off the crimson-painted wood shields enclosing her decks. As women and supplies were loaded at frantic speed. Raven reported that orders had been sent downriver as far as the mouth for the Red Dog’s sister ships to join in the hunt.

Wait, was Raven’s unvoiced appeal.

Ren shook her head. All afternoon, the image of raped, mutilated, and murdered Egan Wainwright seared through her memory. Gods have mercy, her sweet beautiful Jerin was in the hands of women that had done that to a man! If the Porters meant to marry Jerin for his royal bloodline, then he would be spared that fate. But what if she had been wrong about the Porters? What if they had taken Jerin as disposable bait?

She wouldn’t delay any longer. She signaled that they were to steam out immediately. “What armaments do we have?”

The corner of Raven’s mouth dipped in worried disapproval. “The Red Dog is only lightly armed. Two eight-inch guns, one forward, the other aft, behind iron shutters. True, their twenty-pound balls will put a hole in just about anything, but you’ve got to be pointed in the right direction first. The bow is reinforced as a ram. And we’ve got the marines-a hundred rifles is nothing to sneer at.”

“Hopefully more than what Kij has.”

“One hopes.”