by Wen Spencer
A call took Eldest away. Jerin continued since the subject seemed safe.
“Our mothers take our bloodstock down every summer to sell. Sometimes they take us along, so we stay close to our cousins. In the winter, when trading is slow, our aunts, uncles, and cousins come to visit us.”
“I see,” Ren murmured. “What do your sisters plan with their wealth of brothers?”
The question made his stomach drop. “We might split the family again: eleven older sisters, seventeen younger. With the four of us boys, my sisters could swap two brothers for husbands, and sell the other two. Eldest is already twenty-eight; she and the others want a husband soon. I'll—I'll probably be swapped for a husband.” He closed his eyes to force himself to say in a neutral voice, “Maybe with the neighbors. Doric will be of age in six years, but none of the youngest sisters will be quite old enough then, so they might sell him. Liam and Kai—sell one, swap the other.”
“It sounds so cold.”
“Actually it isn't that bad. With four boys, there is no pressure to accept the first offer.”
Ren reached out to clasp his hands. “Keep safe.”
With the royal party departed, the farm seemed emptier than two days previous when Eldest and the others were still gone. This being a laundry day. Jerin washed out the trousers he'd rescued Odelia in, and the sheets soiled by dreams of Ren. Her perfume clung to his nightshirt and he stood smelling it, wishing now that they had finished the deed. Finally, he added it to the soapy water, saying to himself, “Silly, silly boy.”
When Corelle appeared, wanting to make sure he wasn't ruining his hands with the hot wash water, he threw a bucket of dirty soap water at her. Corelle leaped at him, fist upraised, and vanished under a pile of screaming, flailing girls. The youngest dragged Corelle down by sheer volume as she punched and kicked. Jerin cursed and started snatching the littlest ones out of the fight before they could get seriously hurt.
“Stop it! Stop it!” he yelled, plucking Violet out of the fray. The four-year-old had a bloody nose already. “Damn it. Corelle, you're going to hurt someone!”
“Good!” she roared.
Heria appeared suddenly, summoned by the fighting. “Corelle, do you want to be thrown out of the family? Stop it now, or I'll see it done!”
It shocked all the girls into stillness.
“Who do you think you are?” Corelle growled, wiping blood from a split lip.
“Eldest is pissed enough for you going off and leaving the boys unguarded, Corelle. You shouldn't be fighting with the little ones, and if you hit Jerin, I'll tell. Eldest will throw you out for sure.”
“I'll tell! I'll tell!” Corelle whined and shoved Heria hard, knocking her to the ground. “Oh, shut up!”
Corelle stormed away, leaving behind little girls too angry to cry. Worse, they still had to carry the heavy baskets of wet linens down to the clotheslines and hang up the sheets. In the end, they pinned up only forty of the sixty sheets, creating walls of white that rippled in the wind. Blood from dripping noses, cut hands, and bloody lips splattered the rest of the sheets and they needed to be rewashed.
At dinnertime Eldest announced Corelle's punishment for leaving the farm unguarded: her personal items, with the exception of weapons and work clothes, would be divided out to the youngest sisters and she would be given no more pocket money for the rest of the year. Hinting at a day spent inventorying Corelle's belongings. Eldest read the list to be parceled out: Corelle's flashy buckskin mare, her fine-tooled saddle bought at last year's fair, her gold money clip, her two silk shirts, her tooled leather belts with silver buckles, her silver currycomb, and even her coveted keepsake box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. To give the youngest sisters credit, the greed in their eyes dimmed to pity as the list continued until only guns and knives were left to Corelle.
“That's not fair!” Corelle yelped.
“I could throw in a horsewhipping too, if you like,” Eldest snapped.
“What about the others?” Corelle indicated Kira beside her. Eva and Summer across the table.
“You were left in charge.” Eldest jabbed a finger at Corelle. “You decided to go to the Brindles”. You will pay for this.“
“No!”
“Yes.” Eldest calmly stated. “You left four brothers' prices, our entire future, the only hope we have to buy a husband and have children to care for us when we're old—all of that—unguarded when you had been specifically told not to leave the farm.”
“Fine!” Corelle stood up. “There's nothing I want.” she said, and then paused to run her tongue over her lips in a manner that made Jerin recall Ren delighting him, “that I can't get for free.”
Eldest caught Corelle by the hair and muscled her down into her chair. “First, you have let your hair grow too long. I suspect Balin Brindle to be the cause, but you will cut it shorter. Secondly, you're acting a little too knowledgeable for someone your age. Again, I suspect Balin Brindle to be the cause, and that better not be the case. That's how syphilis enters a family—one sister dallying outside of wedlock.”
“He's clean, he promised me!” Corelle protested, indignant.
Eldest slapped her hard. “You do not put your family's lives on the line with a promise from an outsider. Tomorrow we will take you to a doctor and see what she says about how clean you are. I warn you: if you've gotten yourself infected with something, you will not be wife to our husband. If we have to, we will throw you out of the house.”
“No!” Corelle cried. “I haven't done anything wrong!”
“You'd have us be like the Treesdales? Ignore the situation so our husband gets infected? Have him pass it to all of us, and then all the youngest sisters as they come of age? Do you want the whole family to die a hard, slow death? Do you remember how the Treesdales suffered? The pain? The babies born dead, born twisted? They're gone, Corelle! The whole family gone, because Zera Treesdale got the itch to try out a crib.”
Corelle hunched down, ducked her head, and pouted. “He's not in a crib, and we're going to marry him anyhow.”
“No, we aren't!” Eldest stated, then forestalled an argument by explaining, “They approached us. We listened. That was all. That is not an agreement for marriage. Frankly, Corelle, we can do better than them. We have land, money, and breeding. We've got Queens' blood in us, and don't you forget that. You're acting like a cat in heat, presenting yourself to anything that might want to service you.”
“At least I'm not servicing women on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night!” Corelle hissed.
Jerin clapped hands to his mouth to trap in a cry of protest. Corelle witnessed him and Ren? Eldest turned toward him, saw his face, and went white.
“Corelle, go to your room,” Eldest said.
“I'm not a child!” Corelle whined. “I have a right to hear—”
“Now!”
Corelle flinched backward from Eldest, shot an angry glare at Jerin, and then bolted from the room. Her footsteps thundered up the stairs and her door slammed shut with a bang.
Jerin sat frozen, hands still over his mouth.
“The rest of you too.” Eldest indicated the youngest sisters, and they filed out.
“Who was it?” Eldest asked quietly, emotionlessly, when he was alone with his middle and oldest sisters.
His voice would only come out as a whisper. “Princess Rennsellaer.” Unbearable silence followed. He had to break it. “She didn't mount me.” The silence continued. “She was sitting in the dark when I came down for something to eat. I didn't see her until she had me in her arms, and—and—I tried to resist. I asked her please not to—and she pushed me against the hearth and kissed me. She didn't mount me—we didn't go that far. Father told me ways to make a woman happy, and that satisfied her.”
“The bitch!” Eldest muttered finally. “Come to our home, eat our food, sleep in our beds, and then rape our little brother!”
Jerin wrung his hands, feeling guilty for not confessing that he had done nothing he hadn't want
ed to, that it wasn't truly rape. He was afraid, though, of his sisters' fury, and the cold disapproval he would have to live with until he married well, proving he wasn't ruined by the incident. His life would be bearable only by claiming the part of wronged innocence.
Still, it galled to leave the dangerous word floating there, uncountered. “I'm still a virgin, technically. In the end, when I said that going farther would ruin me, she let me go off to bed alone.”
The level of anger in the room lessened slightly. He rocked slightly in his chair, chiding himself for being a coward. Should he tell them how he surrendered to the seduction, enjoyed giving pleasure to the princess, and received ecstasy beyond description? Who was the true hussy in this family?
“Do you think,” Summer said quietly into the stunned silence, “he did enough to catch any diseases she might have?”
“She's a princess!” Jerin cried.
“She's a rapist,” Eldest snapped.
“She didn't rape me. She didn't try to use any crib drugs on me. I'm still a virgin.”
“She took you. Maybe not completely, but still she took you against your will.”
Was it rape? He didn't know. Certainly if she had let him go when he first asked, he would have fled back to his bed, remaining chaste in his lips, his hands, and his memories. Now only parts of him were virgin. He wavered in the belief of his virginity. Maybe being a virgin was like planting a garden—you could turn the earth and rake down the soil all you wanted, but until you pushed a seed into the dirt, you hadn't created a garden. Or was being a virgin like a frosted cake, where once someone stole a slice, you couldn't proudly serve it to visitors?
He realized that while he debated his virginity, his sisters were discussing the issue of diseases. It would be too soon, they had decided, to tell if he had caught something. They would take him to a doctor, but one far away, so his reputation would not suffer.
He remembered with sudden, sickening clarity how experienced Princess Ren had seemed, how sure her touch, how skilled her kisses. If she could have any man that she wanted, then what was to say that she hadn't already taken them all? What was to say she wasn't diseased? Had they been intimate enough for him to catch something from her? God, they could barely have been more intimate!
If he was diseased, who would take him as husband?
The answer was obvious. The Brindles would take him.
The thought made him cover his eyes and weep.
Eldest pulled him into a hug, murmuring, “Hush, honey, hush,” as the rest of the family fled or were shooed away.
“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” Jerin sobbed.
“We don't blame you, honey,” Eldest murmured.
“I could have fought.”
“She's a princess. All her life people have obeyed her commands. You're a boy. All your life you have listened to others. It was up to her to stop at any no you gave, even if it was whispered.”
“Please don't hate me, but I didn't say no. I protested some, but I didn't say no, not until the very end, and she listened to it.” He could not look at Eldest when he admitted, in a whisper, “I liked what we did, only I was afraid to do more.”
When silence was the only answer, he peeped at her. Eldest gazed unseeing across the room. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were sad. “I don't hate you. Truly, it is easier to know you gave in to passion. It hurt to think you had been pinned and taken against your will in our very kitchen. I'm still angry with her. Making advances on you is akin to dangling candy before a child.”
“I'm not a child. In a few months, I'm going to be a married man.”
“That's not what I meant. Jerin, have you not noticed how we are with Doric compared to Heria? Boys are cuddled by everyone from the day they are born. Heria, we discipline sternly. We've taught her how to protect what belongs to us. Doric would think nothing of a stranger wanting to cuddle with him. Heria would look for knives.”
Sell one, swap the other.
Jerin's last words rolled about in Ren's head during the ride to Heron Landing. Strange how two days could change one's perspective. She had presided over countless marriage cases—all those bitter battles over money and men as if one were interchangeable with the other. Every season for the last six years, she had attended the society functions designed to bring prospective wives and the sisters of unmarried brothers together—buyers and sellers. When she was sixteen, she had even married a man her older sisters had bought.
It seemed as if she had stood on the moon and watched the process from that emotional distance. Now, gods have mercy on her, she saw with her heart engaged.
Sell one, swap the other.
Gods, how cold, like they were horses or pieces of furniture. But the man in question wasn't either. The man was Jerin. Beautiful, sweet Jerin, who had asked for nothing but her own safekeeping.
Sold to strangers. Given to strangers.
She tried not to think of horror stories she had judged. True, humans could inflict terrible cruelty upon one another, regardless of sex. Men, though, had no legal protection or recourse. They were their wives' property. She could not even count the times she had heard of men committing suicide to escape impossible situations.
Surely Jerin had the right of it—with four brothers his sisters could refuse offers. Eldest Whistler impressed her as an intelligent, reasonable woman. Ren trusted that Eldest would choose good wives for her brother.
I'll probably be swapped for a husband… maybe with the neighbors.
Ren remembered with a start that Corelle and the younger sisters had been off courting the neighbor boy. She wondered what kind of women these neighbors were.
Queens Justice met the royal party at Heron Landing. Ren greeted Lieutenant Bounder with a nod. The officer had been out to the campsite to ensure that the river trash received proper burial and that the body of Egan Wainwright was sent north to be buried with his wives.
Raven took out her portable desk and scratched out orders onto a piece of stationery. “If you find anything else out, report to me.”
“Keep an eye on the Whistlers,” Ren commanded. “It's unlikely they'll be bothered for their part in this—but one can't be sure.”
“The Whistlers can probably fend for themselves better than I can look out for them,” Bounder said.
“Perhaps,” Ren allowed, then pressed on. “I don't want a repeat of last time, the menfolk and the youngest alone, the older sisters out courting the neighbor, and death nearly at the doorstep.” Ren tried to remain casual as she finally asked, “What do you know about these neighbors?”
Bounder snorted. “Not as much as I would like.”
“Meaning?”
“The Brindle women are lazy brutes that like to pick fights. They're horrible farmers, but they still manage to build new barns and outbuildings. I suspect they might be one of the families that smuggle in my area, but so far I haven't caught them at anything. Just a matter of time.”
Ren felt like she had been struck. If the Whistlers swapped brothers with their neighbors, and the Brindles were then arrested for smuggling, the weight of the law would fall on Jerin. Since men were considered property, they could be taken as part of the heavy fines against smuggling. Such men usually went to cribs belonging to the Order of the Sword, which serviced the army, or were sold to private cribs. Her Jerin in a crib?
Her Jerin, indeed! She scoffed at herself. As if she could marry mere landed gentry.
Yet—yet—was he not the grandson of royalty? And was she not to be the Queen Mother Elder?
She found herself smiling. Her Jerin, indeed.
The Bright River lazed through the rolling hills of upland country, down to the great falls at Hera's Step. Each bend was the same as the last—high banks scoured by the winter ice and spring flooding, a fringe of trees lacing the uncertain flood zone, and, beyond, fields and sprawling farmhouses. Women and children in the fields would unbend from their work to wave at the passing paddle wheel. The pilot followed river traditions
and blasted the great, ear-deafening steam whistle to each group of wavers.
Rennsellaer paced the decks, watching fields, workers, and countless little towns appear before them and slip along their sides to vanish behind the ship. It grated that someone had killed her people, taken her weapons, attacked her sister, and vanished without a trace. She wanted to hound the thieves to their lair and see them punished. Leave the tilling of the fields to the farmer's mule, as her Mother Elder would say. As future Queen Mother Elder, she should be dealing with the entire army and not just eight missing cannons. Stopping at every town to personally conduct the search would be pointless. Raven had already sent orders to every garrison downriver, and the Queens Justice was scouring the countryside for the cannons.
The plain truth would be easier to cope with if she weren't stuck with nothing to do but watch changeless scenery glide past.
Besides, she and Odelia needed to attend Summer Court. If Halley did not reappear, only Trini and Lylia remained at Mayfair. Ren had no fears that Trini could act as Elder Judge; her sister was quietly stubborn—no one would be able to bully Trini into a decision. Lylia? Lylia had turned sixteen at the beginning of the year and was eager to speak her mind. Unfortunately, her mind was filled with odd notions and sweeping reforms, some of them far from practical. It would be best if Ren and Odelia were on hand to dilute Lylia's presence.
Denied the release of seeking out the cannons, Ren struggled instead with the perfect set of arguments to convince her mothers to allow a marriage with the Whistlers. She well remembered the declaration of undying love her older sisters gave for their first husband, Keifer. As disappointing as that marriage was, no passionate pleas would work for her. Her only hope, it seemed, lay with establishing that the Whistlers' grandmothers had, beyond a doubt, kidnapped and married Prince Alannon after they had been knighted. The date of their knighting would be a simple matter of checking the Book of Knights. Hopefully they had properly recorded the marriage, although she couldn't see how they had managed to keep it quiet when the prince's disappearance had been so widely publicized. Then again, if their claim was valid, they had managed to spirit him out of a castle under siege by the entire royal army, through half of Tastledae, and then across the channel.
