Guns were already in the mix. From their faces, he realized that they still saw him as a whore having trouble with river trash. If he appealed to them as a man, once they rescued him, would they try to keep him?
“Come quietly,” Fen said. “Or we will pop Miss High-and-mighty here and now.”
He let himself be dragged to an alley where horses waited. Since none of his counteroffers had worked, he tried a new ploy. The Porters had left no witnesses behind them-surely they wouldn’t allow Fen and her women to live, knowing their darkest secrets.
“The Hats are a noble family planning to marry me to claim the throne,” he told them. “You’ll know as soon as the marriage is announced which noble family is the Hats. You’re the only ones that can testify they’re one and the same. They’ve-”
Fen cocked her hand in warning. “Hush your mouth, or I’ll knock you silly enough you can’t talk, and blame it on Miss High-and-mighty.”
He wanted to stay conscious, so he kept his suspicions to himself.
The side-wheeler Destiny sat waiting for them, tied off to massive oaks on a secluded bend in the river, its stage lowered to the desolate shore.
Kij and her sisters came down to greet them in the woods, six-guns holstered on their hips. Kij smiled at Jerin, then noticed Cira and frowned. “So, you make an appearance, finally.”
“Gods, your soul must be black,” Cira growled.
Kij waved the insult away. “Faith is for the well-to-do. My grandmothers left us too destitute for that nonsense.”
“But Keifer, and your Eldest, and your mothers?” Cira asked.
“Our family doesn’t age well,” Kij said lightly, as if she were talking about spilling cheap wine and not her family’s blood. “Our mothers had long slipped into senility, and babbled family secrets right and left.
They made a useful sacrifice-one last service to the family. Keifer, dearly as I loved him, was an idiot.
He was to get himself to the first-floor bathroom. We picked that theater primarily for a place he could survive the blast. The walls reinforced by the plumbing would have protected him. He never showed.
Eldest went to fetch him, but then- they weren’t supposed to be killed.”
“Ahhh, too bad. So now a husband raid?” Cira asked.
“Oh, we didn’t raid for a husband,” Kij cried, pressing her left hand to her chest, looking wounded.
“The royal guard can testify without influence from us that not a single Porter sister took Jerin from the palace.”
Kij’s right hand flashed downward, drawing her pistol.
Jerin had been watching for the move; he stepped in front of Cira, shielding her. “Kij, no!”
The Porters’ revolvers fired in thunderous rounds. Fen, Bert, little Dossy. and the others went down in a hail of bullets, the Porter sisters emptying their six-guns into the hapless river trash.
Birds startled up out of the trees and winged away as the echoes returned from the far shore. Gun smoke wreathed them. The smell of blood grew as the river trash’s lives poured out into the dirt around them.
“There’s an interesting law that applies here,” Kij calmly explained as she reloaded her pistol. “It’s similar to war plunder. It says that if an unmarried man is kidnapped by party A and rescued by party B, then he belongs to party B. Losers weepers, finders keepers.” She spun the chamber on her pistol. “Step out of the way, Jerin.”
“No.” Jerin was pleased that he sounded more firm than he felt.
“Sisters, please, get our new husband out of harm’s way.”
“If I were you,” Cira called out to Kij from behind him, “I’d think long and hard before you walk down that road.”
“It’s a road we’ve walked before.” Kij raised her revolver. “A few more miles, and Queensland is ours.”
“Kill her and I will never be your husband!” Jerin growled. “You’ll have to keep me chained to a wall, because I’ll escape you every chance I get. I’ll tell anyone I see of the crimes you committed. You’ll have to rape me for my seed! You’ll have to raise our children alone.”
“Jerin, hush.” Cira caught his shoulders and started to push him aside. “Don’t give them cause to hurt you.”
Jerin dug in his heels, refusing to move out of the way. “Let her live, and I marry you willingly. I’ll stay by your side. I’ll pleasure you in bed, and I’ll take joy in our children. My word of honor.”
“She knows too much,” Kij explained to him gently, then made a shooing motion with her gun. “Move aside, Jerin.”
“Kij!” Kij’s sister Meza hissed. “Not in front of him. Frankly, I want a husband with a tongue.”
“Let’s keep our options open,” their sister Alissa added.
Kij stared at him and then lowered her pistol. “You win for now, beloved.” She turned away. “I don’t want him haring off over the countryside again. Search them both, Alissa, and handcuff them in my cabin.
We’ll do a rotating guard on them.”
“Search them both?” Alissa quirked up an eyebrow.
Kij holstered her pistol. “He may be gently born, but his family were knights of valor. Unless I miss my guess, they’ll arm anything that can hold a gun.”
They found his derringer and knife, which made them search up under his robe, teasing and touching him rudely. He covered his face, and hid his fierce attention to which pocket Alissa dropped his stuff into.
When Meza found his stash pouch, Cira winced. Obviously she had hoped he would free himself a second time.
“I can’t believe you’re turning against the Queens,” Jerin said to cover his turning, watching Meza as she frowned at the jumble of items in his pouch and then slipped it into her own pocket.
“You can’t?‘” Kij took his hand, pleading understanding with her eyes. “Did you think we gave a fuck which princess was Eldest? Either one would have been the same to us! So an idiotic war we cared nothing about was waged, and our entire livelihood was blown away!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to murder the royal family!” Jerin cried.
“They destroyed our family!”
Cira gave a bitter laugh. “How do you figure that? No Porter was killed in the war, and you received reparations for the damage to the locks!”
“We received chicken feed! We could only rebuild half the system on what we received, and half is worthless! We had to mortgage everything to scrape up the money, and still it wasn’t enough! So we started smuggling and stealing and murdering to make ends meet. We lost our honor. We lost mothers and sisters overseeing the dangerous construction and smuggling ring. I had to shoot my own sister in the face so she couldn’t be identified! The indignities we’ve suffered-all because the royal family couldn’t settle who would be Eldest. Well, never again. We’re taking the thrones.”
Jerin exaggerated his limp, and as he came off the stage, stumbled against Alissa. She caught him out of reflex, and as she righted him. he dipped his hand down into her coat pocket. His fingers closed on the cold, welcome grip of his derringer. Lightly, he lifted the small pistol out, his heart hammering fit to break, and slipped it into his robe pocket. There was no outcry from her sisters and Alissa smiled as she took the opportunity to grope him. Even Cira, who was watching him with concern, seemed unaware. He limped forward, faked another stumble into Meza Porter, and retrieved his stash pouch. He didn’t even want to try for his knife-it was so awkward a shape he was sure to be caught. Instead he meekly allowed himself to be led to Kij’s cabin.
Kij’s cabin was on the second deck, in the corner farthest from the great churning paddle wheel. Jerin balked at the door, for here was surely a den of seduction. A huge bed dominated the room, covered with a thick feather mattress, sheets of silk, and drapes of brocades and dark green velvets. Cherry paneling and stained glass on the portholes darkened the room. Alissa, entering before him, took a match to the oil lamps, and the warm glow of their flames reflected on gold leaf and brass.
Alissa looked at the bed and then at him, nostrils flaring. “On the bed, love.”
Conscious of the four armed Porter sisters behind him, Jerin limped to the bed and sat on the very edge.
“Chain her to the foot like a dog,” Alissa said, eyes locked on him. “She can watch while I tumble him.”
With a great deal of laughing, they handcuffed Cira to the foot of the bed. Jerin braced himself. Against the five of them, there was nothing he could do except act as if he would honor his vow. Thankfully Alissa made no attempt to undress him. She merely pushed him back onto the bed. He twisted his robe as he fell so his pistol and stash were under him as Alissa sprawled on top of him. She writhed against him as she raped his mouth.
