There would be, Jerin reflected, a profound lack of things to do in his new life. True, they had slept in after a late night dancing, but after brunch, as rain started to drizzle down, there was nothing to do. No dishes to clean up. No dinner to get ready. No clothes to wash. No knitting or mending to be done. No children to keep entertained.
The suite had several musical instruments, none of which they played. It was also devoid of reading materials, except the newspaper and a score of books on profoundly dry subjects such as Land Improvement via Introduction of Fertilizer, and Primer of Livestock Breeding Practices. Either the royal family didn’t know about the existence of novels, or had formed an undeservedly high opinion of the Whistlers’ intelligence level.
The siblings took turns swapping newspaper pages between them, occasionally murmuring, “Did you see here that it says…?” and getting their fingers black from the ink. One by one, they finished the newspaper and then hunted through the loose pages, hoping for something they’d missed, something more to read.
Jerin was beginning to understand why Cullen had been so bored.
They had hunted out writing paper to play code breaker, devising quick cryptograms and handing them off to the next person to break. Corelle had just won the first round, as usual, when a knock at the door provided a welcome distraction. It proved even more welcome when it turned out to be Cullen and Lylia.
“We’re bored,” Jerin told them. “We just read the Herald to death.”
“Yes, yes, that’s a dead newspaper.” Lylia nudged a rumpled page aside with her foot. “You can read?
How wonderful. I’ve tried to teach Cullen in the past, but he refuses to learn.”
“You’re a lousy teacher.” Cullen pouted. “Besides, what’s the point? My wives probably won’t let me read.”
“Why not?” Eldest asked. “Whistler men all read- doesn’t make them cross-eyed or sterile or anything.”
Lylia shrugged. “I guess it’s like the poor who don’t want their daughters going to school. The girls make more money by working alongside their mothers.”
“Oh, like you see noblemen out weeding fields every day,” Cullen said.
“I didn’t say it made sense,” Lylia murmured, tweaking him gently with her thumb and forefinger. She turned back to the Whistlers and gave them a bright smile. “How about a tour of the palace?”
The palace proved to be more rambling than Jerin had imagined. The tour ended in a suite of rooms that his youngest sisters would kill for. Called the nursery, it held a room of fanciful beds, a well-stocked schoolroom, and a playroom. One wall of the playroom contained windows, and the rest of the walls had shelves to the high ceiling, filled with toys. Baby toys were put up, and the floor was now littered with toy soldiers. Tiny cannons, a fleet of warships on a blue painted river, even supply wagons, accompanied the soldiers to war. The five red-haired, youngest princesses, Zelie, Quin, Selina, Nora, and Mira, were just settling down to battle.
Lylia introduced Jerin to the five, and then went off to chaperone Cullen in the schoolroom with Jerin’s sisters.
Zelie was the leader of the youngest princesses. With a regality that fitted her position, she announced,
“We’re reenacting the battle of Nettle’s Run.”
Jerin smiled. The soldiers might be tin instead of wood, the cannons might articulate and fire, but it was one of the same battles his sisters engaged in on long winter afternoons. He glanced over the troops.
“Where’s Peatfield?”
“What do you know about playing with soldiers?” Mira, the obvious baby of the sisters, asked.
“My grandmothers were under Wellsbury,” Jerin explained, pointing to the mounted general flanked by her younger sisters. “My sisters and I have re-created this battle, just like this.”
“But you’re a boy,”‘ Princess Zelie said with puzzlement tinged with contempt.
“Yes. I find it depressing sometimes,” Jerin admitted.
“Why?” Quin, or perhaps Nora, asked. The two looked very similar and all the girls had shifted since he’d been introduced to them.
“There’s lots of things I would like to do that I’m not allowed,” Jerin said.
“Do you want to play?” the other of the two asked.
“We’ve already picked troops,” Zelie reminded the others.
“You don’t have Peatfield,” Jerin pointed out. “She was held in reserve for most of the battle. I could play her troops.”
They consented after a quick check with their history books to confirm Peatfield’s existence and the strength of her troops. Almost seventy-five thousand women clashed in the woods alongside the Bright River, leaving nearly ten thousand dead or wounded. It was attributed as a brilliant win for Wellsbury. but luck had played a large part in the victory-Smythe’s misunderstanding her orders and withdrawing just as Wellsbury attacked, for instance. Though in truth, the garbled message she received hadn’t been the true orders issued. Peatfield’s orders too had been waylaid, and thus her reserve troops never entered the battle.
When played without the sleet, the exhaustion, the lack of food, the poor visibility, the sniper attacks, and the Whistlers confusing enemy orders, the outcome favored the False Eldest’s forces. It surprised him, thus, that the royal sisters kept to the same attacks and retreats of the original battle.
After watching for several minutes, he faked a retreat up Granny Creek, crossed over Blue Knob, and took out the overextended left flank of Wellsbury’s force. Zelie shrieked with dismay and literally had the army fly to protect her tin general.
“No, no, no, you can’t do that.” Jerin laughed as he caught a tin soldier that was flying miles across the landscape to land in his path.
“Yes, I can.‘” Zelie pushed his hand away to thump the soldier down. “I just did!”
“No. you can’t.” Jerin struggled to stop laughing. “That’s against the rules.”
“You can’t talk to me that way!”
“Good heavens, why not?”
“I am a princess of the realm,” Zelie explained in perfect princess tones.
Jerin covered his mouth to hold in a crow of laughter. She was so delightful using the adult deadpan.
“Your Highness, the point of the rules is to mimic battle, so you can learn how to fight one without getting everyone killed on your first charge. Your tin soldiers can only do what real soldiers do, because you must learn what your real armies can do. If you cheat, then you’re not only cheating on me; you’re cheating yourself out of a chance to learn, and you’re risking the life of every woman you’ll ever command.”
“But you cheated!” Zelie cried.
“Oh, there is cheating and then there’s cheating. What I did, real soldiers could do, that is, pretend to run away and then attack elsewhere. Real soldiers, however, cannot fly across the battle, willy-nilly.”
Five serious faces considered him. “So it’s all right to cheat sometimes?”
Oh, dear, Ren probably wouldn’t be happy if he perverted her youngest sisters. Still, Whistlers never found a little cheating to be harmful.
“My mothers always said,” Jerin said carefully, “that those who are completely forthright are often at the disadvantage of those who are corrupt. Here.” He picked up three of the earthen cups that held the cannonballs, passed the cannonballs out to the princesses, and turned the cups upside down. He picked up a marble and showed it to them. “‘We’re going to pretend your cannonballs are coins. I’m going to put this marble under one of the cups, and shuffle them around. You bet your ’coins’ on which cup that you think the marble is under. If the marble is under the cup, then I’ll match the number of ”coins’ you bet. If the marble isn’t under the cup, then I get to keep the ‘coins’ you bet.“
He made a show of placing the marble, palmed it, and allowed them to win the first pass by palming it under the cup they chose. After that, he left the marble pocketed and began winning all their cannonballs.
Eventually, one of them remembered what had started the game.
“Wait!” Selina squealed with surprise and dismay. “You’re cheating! Aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes. See?” He overturned all the cups. “The marble isn’t under any of them. There’s no way you can win.”
“How did you do that?” Zelie asked, chewing on one long lock of hair. “We saw you put it under one of them.”
So he showed how he could palm the marble, using misdirection and sleight of hand. “The point is, you could have lost all your money, because you thought I was being honest, and you were playing fair. The more you know
