years or more, the area remained fairly bucolic, a royal park reserved for ambles through groves of live oaks and foxhunts over the downs. The sprawling city of Portsmouth was the capital at that time, and the royal family spent three seasons at the badly named winter palace. During the War of the False Eldest, though, Portsmouth proved vulnerable to enemy ships, and swamp fever outbreaks spread from the poor to the noble families. Ren’s mothers were sent to the summer palace when they were young; when they became Queens, they moved the capital to them.
Unfortunately, much of the surrounding land had been sold to finance the war. The groves of live oaks were leveled for sprawling city blocks. Soon factories and mills hugged the riverbanks, gathered to Mayfair by the gravity of power. The irony being, of course, that the capital had been moved to a healthier clime, only to have squalor close in around it.
The royal stern-wheeler had stopped at Annaboro the night before to let off a messenger. Because the river made numerous lazy turns, a woman on a fast horse could reach Mayfair before the ship traveling at night speeds. As the ship docked at Mayfair, the princesses’ court uniforms and royal carriage would be waiting.
The city bells were ringing seven when the royal stern-wheeler steamed up to the landing. As usual, ships jockeyed for the limited docking space. Raven got the princesses’ uniforms onboard somehow, then went off to see to the boat’s docking. Ren dressed quickly; Summer Court would open within the hour.
As she stepped out of her cabin, a large stern-wheeler crawling upriver toward them let out a series of quick, urgent-sounding blasts on its steam whistle.
“Hoy!” the pilot of the stern-wheeler shouted. “Sister!”
Ren tensed until she recognized it as her sisters-in-law’s Destiny . Cotton bales stacked the Destiny’s decks, clear evidence it was returning to Mayfair from the south. The whistle tooted again, and Kij Porter waved from the pilothouse. Seeing that Ren spotted her, she turned the stern-wheeler over to a younger sister and hurried to the railing as the ship came along Ren’s.
Like herself, Kij hadn’t been born Eldest of her family. The blast that killed Ren’s sisters and husband also killed several of Kij’s oldest mothers, and her Eldest. That common point formed a bond of friendship between Ren and the older woman, much stronger than it could have been if their sisters had survived.
Shaggy and rumpled, Kij didn’t look like the Duchess of Avonar. Apparently returning from a long difficult trip, Kij suddenly no longer seemed young, as if she had crossed over to middle age since Ren last saw her. Dark smudges underlined her vivid blue eyes, and her ash-blonde bangs hung down almost to the tip of her nose.
Still, the Porter beauty that had made her brother, Keifer, exquisite remained. Kij leaned her lanky frame over the railing to better show Ren the headlines of the newspaper she held out.
Well, that answered the question of whether the type size was as large as Ren had feared.
“I saw the Herald yesterday!” Kij shouted. “How is Odelia?”
“She’s fine!” Ren shouted back. “She’s with me, getting dressed, late as usual!”
Kij glanced ashore and saw the royal coaches waiting there. “You’re not planning to make the opening of Summer Court after what you’ve been through?”
“Good gods, yes!” Ren said. “If we don’t show, the rumors will have another day to run rampant. Will you be there?”
Ren asked out of courtesy. Any noble house could attend, but usually only those involved in the current case made an appearance.
Kij scrubbed wearily at her face and then shook her head, laughing. “No! No. We aren’t interested in anything scheduled for today. Besides, I’m bone tired. You’ve got more fortitude than I do, sister!”
A flash of gold hair streaked along the rail of Destiny’s top deck, and a moment later little Eldest Porter scrambled up beside Kij. She squealed at the sight of Ren.
“Auntie Ren!”
“Hoy, Eldie,” Ren called to her only niece. The girl was living testament to how badly Kij had taken the loss of her mothers, sister, and brother. In a grief-borne panic, Kij had visited a crib the day after the bombing. Luckily, all she came away with was a child.
Still, it had been enough to ruin an offering months in the planning, and it had been the stated reason for many rejections since then, despite Kij being able to produce medical records proving she was clean.
Ren suspected that the truth was that many families were jockeying for a royal match of their own, and only used Kij’s possible infection as a cruel, convenient snub.
When we marry Jerin, Ren thought, those families will be regretting their heartless rebuffs.
“Auntie Ren!” Eldie shouted again, bouncing up and down on the railing in excitement. “Look, I lost my top teeth!” She grinned, showing off the gap between her canine teeth.
“I see! You’re bigger every time I see you! Look at you. How old are you now? Ten?”
“No, five!” her niece giggled. “I’ll be six at summer’s peak! Auntie Ren, can I come and see the youngest today?”
Kij’s youngest sisters were in their teens, leaving Eldie without anyone to play with except her slightly older aunts. A sad way to grow up; Kij must have been crazy with grief.
“Summer Court opens today!” Ren called back. “Zelie and the others have to attend. Tomorrow?”
“Perhaps.” Kij told them both. “We’re scheduled to continue upriver to home tomorrow-if today goes smoothly.”
Odelia came out of her cabin, wondering whom Ren was shouting at. There were greetings exchanged at full volume, the missing teeth were displayed, and then the two great ships parted. Ren’s tucked in close to the landing, while Kij’s-with Eldie blowing a farewell on the steam whistle-moved on upriver to find a berth.
“We could have missed the morning session and bathed like civilized women at the palace,” Odelia complained as the carriage pulled away from the docks.
Ren glowered, picking up the case binder. “Focus, Odelia, focus.”
Odelia ignored her binder, choosing instead to rest her head, eyes closed, against the padded wall of the carriage. “I’m focused on a hot bath and a meal prepared by Cook.”
Ren shook her head, scanning the cases they were to judge. The first one made her curse, startling her sister. “Raven!” At her call, her captain pulled her horse alongside of the carriage window. “Someone has shuffled the caseload. 1 left instructions that the Wakecliff inheritance wasn’t to be tried until we returned home. We weren’t expected to make this morning, so it shouldn’t be first case up.”
“I’ll look into it while you’re in court.” Raven’s look turned dark.
Ren slumped back in the carriage, raging at this new miscarriage of justice. The opening day’s schedule would have been posted in the Herald a week ago. By the laws protecting civil rights, once made public, a hearing time couldn’t be changed, even by the royal judges. This guaranteed that a hearing couldn’t be moved to a time unknown to the claimants.
The Baroness Wakecliff family had managed the impossible this winter: fifty-eight members, from great- grandmothers down to infant granddaughters, had all died within one season. Not all at once, which actually would have been more understandable, but here and there in escalating tragedy. The first ten or so had been drowned in a midwinter shipwreck. Then a fire ripped through the nursery wing late at night; twenty-three mothers and sisters, all under the age of ten, died in their beds. A half-dozen adults, one of them a beloved newly wedded husband, died of burns and smoke inhalation suffered while trying to reach the children. Rev Wakecliff had died trying to give birth to a dead baby boy. Kareem Wakecliff committed suicide when she learned of all four tragedies in a single day. Eldest Wakecliff took to drinking heavily, and died of alcohol poisoning after a carriage accident, claiming another six Wakecliffs, triggered a binge.
Ren wasn’t sure how the other ten had died. It little mattered; by then all the women of childbearing years and younger had already been killed. The Wakecliff family was dead long before the last member took her final breath. Had any member survived, however. Ren would have been spared trying to determine who received the inheritance today.
While there were no clear heirs to the great Wakecliff fortunes, three powerful families had issued nebulous claims. Ren had planned to carefully study all claims prior to hearing the case. Someone, however, had juggled the docket.
The royal carriage pulled up to the front of the courthouse. They were last to arrive, the normal confusion of coaches already cleared. As usual. Raven entered the building at a stride that was nearly a run. four of Ren’s traveling guard half a pace behind their captain. The rest of the guard stood anxious for a signal that the foyer was
