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.
