grandmothers hadn’t, and it showed. My great-grandmothers were a very motley crew.”
Raven rubbed the Order of the Sword tattoo on the back on her hand. “It sounds like me and my sisters.”
“Their mutt breeding, though, was what saved them. Apparently just looking at them lined up at the court- martial inspired the judges to believe my great-grandmother Elder acted alone when she committed treason.”
Raven laughed softly.
“Still, they were discharged, stripped of pensions, and all their daughters were barred from service. They didn’t know anything but soldiering, and they started to starve to death. Grandma Tea ended up in charge of the family, and she managed to force the Sisters of the Night to take them in, train them as thieves, but she wasn’t happy. No retirement, no pension, no crib, no future except to dance at the end of a rope.”
“They still tell stories of Tea Whistler. She was a force to be reckoned with.”
“One day, all the luck of the Whistlers changed. Grandma Tea had gone to her Mother Elder’s grave and made a bargain with her.”
Raven snorted but said nothing.
“She told her mother that she didn’t blame her for what she had done-being a soldier of the line wasn’t a wonderful thing. Tea’s mothers had no husband of their own, lost sisters to diseases caught in the crib, lost sisters for causes they didn’t understand, and lost daughters to the wet and cold and hardship of following the drum. It was a slow and steady grind. Many think it is taking them uphill when it is only wearing them down.”
“Unless a sister makes it to officer grade, yes, the army eats families.”
“Grandmother Tea recognized that her Mother Elder had made a desperate gamble to better their lot, and lost-she grabbed for a coin tossed in the air and missed. If she had caught the coin, her sisters and daughters would have praised her. Instead they cursed her name and spit on her memory.
‘“So Grandmother Tea made a bargain. She needed an opportunity, that golden moment, where playing loose and wild and reckless, like her Mother Elder had, gave her the slimmest chance to win. She pledged that if her mother gave her the opportunity, just set the coin flying into the air, even if she didn’t catch it, they’d honor her memory.”
Raven shook her head. “And she got a shining coin?” Jerin nodded. “The day she was caught while thieving by Wellsbury. She convinced the general that trained thieves would make excellent spies. That led to being knighted and given the farm, and kidnapping Grandpa. Our family hasn’t been poor and starving since then.”
Eldest was still awake when he came into their cabin. He should have known that she wouldn’t sleep until he was safe in the room. She sat cross-legged on her bed, cleaning her revolvers.
“Be sure to secure the door,” she said without looking up. The shutter on the cabin window was already latched and a piece of lumber wedged in the frame to reinforce the shutter.
Jerin locked the door and then propped the cabin’s chair under the door handle. He wondered how much of his conversation with Captain Tern Eldest had heard. He felt vaguely guilty about talking to someone outside the family about his fears-but none of his sisters could have answered his questions about nobility. What Captain Tern told him, however, hadn’t settled his fears. He changed into his sleeping shirt, and then sat on his bed, chin on his knees.
Eldest eyed him, reloading her revolvers without looking. “What’s wrong, Jerin?”
“I’m worried,” he whispered. “What if we don’t get more than two thousand for me? What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry.” She spun the cylinder on each gun, double-checking she had a full load. “If things come to worse, we could sell futures on Doric’s brother price.”
“Futures?” Jerin asked.
“Like grain futures.” Eldest slid her pistols into their holster, hanging from her headboard. “A lot of farmers sell their crops in the summer at a set price before the harvest. It helps them tide money over, but it’s risky. Basically, it’s a loan, and you put your farm up as collateral on the loan. People that don’t look at it as a loan usually lose the family farm.”
Jerin picked nervously at his sheets. “What if the market price of your crops goes higher than the set price?”
“That’s what the women that bought your crop are hoping for,” Eldest said. “You don’t see the profit; they do. That’s why the Whistlers don’t sell futures. We don’t work to make other people rich.”
“Why don’t you use my brother’s price?” Jerin asked.
Eldest smiled, and hugged him suddenly. “Because I want a husband, silly, not the money.”
Three days later they arrived at Mayfair. The city seemed to go on forever, stunning even his sisters into silence. Eldest took firm hold of his arm with her left hand, keeping her right free to draw a gun, and didn’t let go.
“Stay here.” Raven went down the canted stage to the crowded landing. The ship’s calliope started up, drowning out all normal levels of conversation with bright loud music. Jerin watched the captain’s broad back as she pushed through the milling crowds. Partway to the cobbled street, an odd thing happened. A woman in a wide- brimmed hat coming down the street glanced at Raven as they passed each other. The stranger started as if recognizing the captain, then ducked her face away. Raven, intent on the wagon, seemed not to notice.
“Did you see that?” Jerin shouted at Eldest, standing beside him, as he kept watch on the mystery woman. The woman had turned to watch Raven’s retreating back, and Jerin had a momentary stab of fear for the captain.
“What?”
“The woman. Did you see her?” Jerin pointed at the only figure that seemed to be standing still in the crowd.
“I can’t hear what you’re saying, Jerin! Who do you see?”
He took his eyes away only for a moment, to turn and shout into Eldesfs ear. “That woman is acting oddly.”
“Which one?”
He glanced back, and found her gone. “She’s gone now.”
Eldest scanned the crowd. “Was she armed?”
He shook his head, and shouted back, “I don’t know!”
“Here comes Raven!” Eldest pointed out the captain.
Raven waded back through the crowd, signaling that they were to join her. Eldest took his arm above the elbow to escort him down the stage. Raven met them at the foot.
“I’ve got a hackney hired,” Raven shouted to Eldest. “Take Jerin over and I’ll bring the luggage.”
Eldest nodded, not bothering to shout back. Eldest turned, apparently spotted Corelle and Summer, and flashed hand signals for them to get the gear and follow.
“We’ll get your stuff loaded and go straight up to the palace,” Raven told Jerin, pointing.
Jerin gasped. The city ran back to sandstone cliffs, which leaped skyward in walls of rich tan. Crowning the bluffs, with windows glistening like diamonds, sat an immense building. It was an architectural sprawl of turrets and wings, gables and dormers, slate roofs and copper cladding, gray stone veiled with ivy, and windows- hundreds and thousands of mullioned windows. Too huge, too impressive, too noble to be anything but the royal palace.
“I’ve never seen anything so big,” Jerin breathed.
His words fell in a moment of silence as the calliope paused between songs.
“It’s where you’ll be living for-for the next few weeks.” Raven said, then patted him on the shoulder.
“Go on to the hackney. You can gawk through the window.”
He and Eldest pushed their way through the crowd to the closed carriage. While he climbed into the hackney. Eldest waited outside for Summer and Corelle to catch up. He scooted across the battered horsehair-stuffed seat to stare up at the palace. Ren and Odelia’s home. He remembered Ren, standing in the Whistlers’ kitchen, watching him cook. How poor and lowborn he must have seemed to her.
He was aware of someone staring at him, and he looked down.
The young woman with the wide-brimmed hat stood before him, shielded from Eldest and the others by the hackney. She looked at him with neither envy nor the open speculation that he had grown used to during the trip, that ‘T wish I had him“ or ”Can I get him without being caught?“ She seemed, instead, stunned by some surprising news.
