Still, she couldn’t act without her sisters’ agreement, and she didn’t want to discuss it in front of the assembled nobles. “Have we heard enough?”

Her sisters nodded.

“Well, I haven’t had breakfast.” Ren announced to the courtroom. “Bailiff, recess the court for an early lunch. We’ll announce our decision after lunch.”

“All rise!” the bailiff shouted.

The crowd came to their feet, respectfully silent. Ren led the way to the judges’ chambers. As the door closed behind Lylia, she heard the bailiff shout, “This court is in recess! Court will adjourn in one hour!”

Out of the public eye, Trini and Lylia greeted their sisters with hugs along with cheeky remarks on Lylia’s part. The far hallway door opened, and Raven entered the chambers, escorting the lunch servers.

“I thought you might want to discuss this in private.” The lunch table was wheeled in, and then the servers bowed out. “I hurried the kitchen for you.”

“You’re a true gem,” Ren said, the smell of food making her suddenly ravenous. “Did you find out who tampered with the docket?”

Raven shook her head. “In a few more days, I might be able to question the clerk staff closely enough to crack it, but not in this short time. There are several families serving as clerks, and quite a bit of bickering between them. I’ve got a surplus of suspects.”

“I want whoever took the bribe and made the changes found,” Ren said. “I want them out. I will not have my court manipulated like this.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Raven bowed and left them to deliberate.

“Wow, Ren, that was so queenly,” Lylia breathed.

Odelia grunted, settling down to lunch. “Why is that when I talk like that, people call me bitchy?”

“Because you only talk about your supper and baths in that tone,” Trini chided quietly. “Ren is demanding respect for higher causes.”

Odelia stuck out her tongue, ate a bite of lunch, and then asked, “So, what made you go to point like a bird dog?”

Ren opened her binder and tapped at the property list. “Tuck Landing. It’s part and parcel of Elpern Bank. Wakecliff tore down the watchtower and built their manor with the stone. This is the crown’s chance to get the landing back. Once we recover it, we can build a garrison and a war harbor, and we protect the whole southeast as it was protected for a thousand years.”

They nodded in understanding, and ate in silence, each to her own thoughts.

“How do we do it?” Lylia pushed her empty plate away and leaned against the table.

“The combined inheritance taxes of all the estates are quite sizable.” Trini murmured, eyeing her binder.

“The moneys in escrow will not cover it all. We can declare that the crown has chosen to handle the reckoning. We seize the entire estate, do an accounting of debts and taxes, and deduct Elpern Bank as payment, then release the rest of the estate to the heirs.”

Ren winced. It seemed like a perfect plan, except the numbers would not balance. “I doubt if the taxes are that sizable.”

Trini shrugged. “We can figure a reasonable price for the sale of Elpern to the crown. Deduct the taxes from the sale price, and add the difference to the estate.”

“They’re not going to like it,” Odelia half sang. “El-pern’s yearly income, in the long run, would outstrip any price you set on it. They’d probably rather pay the tax from their pocket than have it taken out beforehand in the form of prime land.”

“None of them have clear right to the land,” Ren growled. “Holy Mothers, the Wakecliffs didn’t have clear right to it if you look closely. Ezra Wakecliff was supposed to deliver the title deeds of twelve crown properties to the church during the Prinmae War for safekeeping, and she delivered eleven. The bitch stole it. and because her brother was married to our great-great-grandmothers, she was never called on it. We have as much a right to it as any of those women out there.”

“She stole it?” Lylia asked.

Odelia nodded. “That’s what the whole children’s rhyme is about, the ‘Wakecliff in the corner, eyeing queenly pies.’ The title deeds were inside pies, to disguise them in case Wakecliff was stopped by the enemy.” Odelia made a rolling motion with her hand, indicating that the rhyme continued to be quite literal. “The ‘plum’ was a plum piece of property.”

“ ‘You know in whose bed her brother lies,’ ” Lylia finished. “Oh, I see. Her brother was prince consort.”

“Well, it’s time for us to take back what is ours.” Ren rapped for a vote. “Agree.”

“Agree,” Lylia said, eyes glowing.

“Agree,” Trini murmured.

“Agree,” Odelia said.

“Once we separate Elpern Bank from the rest of the estate, we’ll decide who gets the rest.”

“I have found a young man who delights me.” Ren had rehearsed the speech for hours and days. She now faced her Mother Elder, alone at last, in the privacy of the queen’s wing-weak-kneed for the first time in years. “He is warm, loving, intelligent, strong of character yet biddable, chaste, and very beautiful.

I wish to marry him.”

After a moment of pleased surprise, the Queen

Mother Elder put aside the book she had been reading with a slight, worried frown. “Yet you say nothing of breeding. After the adventure you’ve told us, I doubt you’ve met anyone of acceptable breeding.”

“His breeding is odd.” Ren wished she could leave the whole of it out, but knew eventually her mother would dig out the truth, then hold it against her for omitting it. “His grandmothers were conceived in the Order of the Sword’s cribs. Blacklisted from the army due to their Mother Elder’s crimes, they joined the Sisterhood of the Night. Wellsbury employed them in the war as spies. They won the Queen Elder Cross of Victory, were knighted, and retired to a land grant.”

“That would make him the very lowest of landed gentry I’ve heard tale of, Rennsellaer.”

“During the siege of Tastledae, his grandmothers kidnapped Prince Alannon, and after they were knighted, they married him.”

The clock ticked off the silence between them. In one of the many specimen jars that lined her mother’s desk, a cotton weevil scratched on the glass wall of its prison. Ren felt a sudden sympathy with it.

“Yes, odd breeding,” Queen Elder finally murmured. “Are you sure of their claims?”

“He wears the Emerald Hart.”

“Which has been faked in the past.”

“I believe their claim.” Ren handed her mother the copy of Wellsbury’s memoirs. “Wellsbury herself reports sending the Whistlers into Castle Tastledae during the time that Prince Alannon vanished. Trained thieves, desperate for a husband, and a missing prince-I don’t know why no one has ever connected the two before now.”

Her mother opened the book where Ren had placed a marker, scanned the page, and caught where Ren had underlined the name of Whistler, then skipped on to a passage Ren had purposely not underlined. “

‘As I hoped,’ ” she read, “ ‘the Whistlers have found ways to come and go unobserved into the castle.

Their intelligence indicates that we will not be able to take the castle by honorable siege, but will have to resort to mayhem. Fortunately, the Whistlers excel at mayhem.’ ”

Ren had chosen to ignore the passage. Acknowledging it could only make things worse. “I visited the wall of sorrow this morning. The Whistlers all bear a striking resemblance to Prince Alannon.”

“I see.” Her mother set the memoirs down beside her own book. It was titled, Ren noticed now, Breeding for the Success of Pest Resistance – a Study in Genetics. Had her mother picked up this passion for breeding before or after the princesses’ marriage to Keifer? Most likely before-whatever her mother thought of Keifer, she couldn’t fault his breeding. “I suppose one could argue that knighthood and a royal husband eliminate all black marks against a family.”

Ren struggled to find the thread of the argument she had hammered out over the last five days. “His family has maintained the status of landed gentry since the war. Their farm is well ordered and bountiful.”

“No crimes, lapses into thievery, or joining the army?”

Ren was not sure if this was a truthful question or a sarcastic comment on the Whistlers’ background.

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