“Ummm, no fingers.” He dipped a spoon into the syrup and handed it to her.
She smiled at him and lapped the spoon with the tip of her tongue, making a show of licking it clean. It recalled her leaning over him, her tongue touching his bare skin. His body responded to the memory. His blush became a complete burn as she noticed his arousal in his trousers.
“It’s sweet.” she murmured, “but not as tasty as you.”
He felt tike flipping a towel over his head and hiding. He felt like running from the room in embarrassment. He felt like leading her upstairs and letting her use her tongue on him again. The last put shudders of desire through him.
He struggled to find a less intimate subject. “How is your sister?”
Amusement fled Princess Ren’s eyes. “She tried to get out of bed and failed. She nearly fainted when she stood up.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ren frowned a moment, then shrugged. “I’m thankful she’s alive.”
Jerin finished slicing down the ham, his hands trembling so much he had trouble controlling the sharp knife. “So,” he said, trying not to seem as anxious as he felt, ‘“you’re going to be staying another night.”
The smile returned to Ren’s face. “If not more.”
He looked at her. wanting her, wondering how he was going to resist her.
“Riders!” came a call from one of the princess’s women, and the kitchen went still.
“It’s Eldest! It’s Eldest and the others!” Leia’s voice followed the call.
There was a general rush for the door to see their seven elder sisters return. Corelle, not surprisingly, ran to meet them, talking low and fast, making sure they heard her side of the story first. They had apparently already heard some version of the news. Their horses were lathered and blowing from a hard riding.
Their rifles sat in saddle holsters, instead of being wrapped well and strapped to the back of their saddles. Eldest gave Corelle a scathing look as she dismounted. She unholstered her rifle, saying, “See to the horses. We’ll talk later.” She threw her reins to Corelle and came on to the house.
Eldest looked first to Jerin. then scanned the children for the other boys. Seeing that the family’s greatest assets were safe, she locked gazes with Princess Ren.
“Your Highness,” Eldest said quietly, handing her rifle to Heria without a glance. “Welcome to the House of Whistler.”
“Thank you. Eldest Whistler.”
Heria ducked away to return the rifle to the gun rack. The other children stood, waiting for orders.
Eldest glanced about the kitchen at the food threatening to burn unattended. “Get breakfast on,” she stated. “We’ll wash up and eat, then talk.”
So this was what little Whistler girls grew up to look like, Ren mused, studying the recently returned elder sisters. If the Whistler family had been a motley crew during the War of the False Eldest, they had weeded out all the variants in the last two generations. Without exception, the Whistler clan was black-haired, blue-eyed, and good-looking. The military heritage that showed in the children as broad strokes became unmistakable in the women. Regulation short haircuts, clothes tailored along the lines of an infantry uniform, rifles in hand, and six-guns riding low in tied-down hip holsters. Beyond the outward appearances, there was the military precision to the way they rode in-handing exhausted horses, damp greatcoats, and weapons to younger sisters-and they settled wordlessly to the breakfast table smelling of horses and lye soap. Food was eaten in tense silence, broken occasionally by a younger sister trying to report a wrong or misadventure. Eldest Whistler silenced the girls with a look.
Unlike the night before, Jerin and the younger boys sat with the family instead of hiding in the kitchen.
Still, Jerin sat at other end of the table, at Eldest’s right hand, with the other boys well barricaded behind their sisters.
Eldest broke the silence, naming a town a day’s travel downriver of Heron Landing. “We were in Greenhaven last evening, when we heard that there had been an attack on the farm. No one knew any details, just that one of our little ones had ridden in for Queens Justice.”
“I went for Queens Justice,” Heria said, “because Corelle and the others weren’t here.”
“Heria!” Corelle cried as if stabbed. “We were just next door.”
“You were supposed to be here!” Heria snapped, to which the nine- and eight-year-olds added their backing.
“Hush.” Eldest Whistler quieted that family dispute with one look and a single even command. “We will talk about that later.”
Ren looked down at her plate to cover a bolt of jealousy. Command of a family came so easy for someone who held her position from her first breath, blessed with the name of Eldest. In their cradles, younger sisters were told, “Listen to Eldest-she’ll be Mother Elder when she’s grown.” even when the sisters were younger only by months or days. Ren wished she had that luxury in her own family, then, chiding herself for being small-hearted, wished instead that her elder sisters hadn’t been killed, making her Eldest over sisters well practiced at disagreeing with her. She had not, in fact, even been the natural leader of the middle sisters. Halley had commanded Odelia, Trini. Lylia, and herself from the time they had left their cradles until the night Ren had become the Eldest.
Halley was younger by only six months. Six months that had never mattered before.
“We don’t air family problems in front of strangers,” Eldest Whistler stated as one who is never argued with. She finished the last bite of her eggs and pushed away the empty plate. “So, Your Highness, what brings you upriver to Heron Landing?”
Her eyes asked, “What troubles do you bring to my home?”
Ren glanced about the table, at the family trained by the best spies that Queensland had ever had. and decided that perhaps it would be best to take them into her confidence. “While we didn’t engage the Imomains in full war, it has been a costly effort to keep them off our shores. Our coffers are low, and we can ill afford the drain on tax revenue that smuggling represents. Worse, smuggling on the rivers has increased tenfold in the last decade. The Queens contracted with a family of gun-makers upriver at North Branch to produce guns to be the teeth in our efforts to bear down on the smugglers. Princess Odelia and I decided to do a surprise inspection.” Actually, Ren had dragged Odelia into duty, determined the younger princess would act her age and rank. “We had interrupted a raid on the armory. While we managed to prevent the theft of six naval guns, all the small arms and a series of cast-iron cannons were taken. The cannons are our main concern now.”
“Cast iron?” Corelle scoffed. “You can’t cast iron barrels uniformly. Under pressure they burst, killing everyone within dozens of feet. No one’s made cast-iron cannons since Deathstriker burst twenty years ago.”
Eldest frowned at her sister’s rudeness, but added, “Bronze is the best metal for cannons.”
Even after two generations of farming, they remained well schooled in the art of war. Until a few months ago, what they said had been true.
“Unless you want to rifle them.” Ren pointed out the true flaw of bronze. “Bronze is too soft of a metal.
The friction wears down the rifling in a short amount of time.”
Jerin had been listening with his amazingly blue eyes open wide. He leaned to his Eldest sister and whispered, “How do you make a cannon a rifle?”
Eldest answered, obviously aiming her answer more to the very youngest of her sisters than to Jerin.
“Rifling is cutting spiral grooves down the bore of the weapon, any weapon. It makes the shot fly straighter, so your aim is truer. Smooth bores, weapons without the grooves, you might as well point in the general direction, pull the trigger, and hope.”
Ren nodded at this patient explanation. “The Wainwrights at North Branch proved they could make a reliable, cast-iron, breech-loaded cannon.”
“Completely reliable?” Eldest asked.
Ren shrugged. “Extremely reliable-I would call nothing ‘completely.’ Apparently the novelty of their method isn’t in the reinforcement of the cast iron forward of the breech-others have tried that and failed-but in the method of attachment.” While his sisters listened passively, Jerin nodded slightly to indicate he followed the explanation. Ren controlled the urge to smile encouragement to him. “A wrought iron band is allowed to cool in place while the gun is rotated, which allows the reinforcement to clamp on uniformly around the circumference of the breech. We ordered eight ten-pounders. The Wainwrights called them the Prophets: Joan, Bonnye, Anna, Judith, Gregor, Larisa, Nane, and Ami.”
