by Wen Spencer
“If there is anything you don't like, we can have it changed,” Ren stated, unlocking the door to the balcony. It was deceiving, that door. Wrought iron twisting and curling, painted white, backed by glass. It looked bright and open, but it could keep out an army.
The sunbaked balcony of dressed stone looked out over the cliffs—in essence, protected by the sheer drop. Below, the sprawling city, the glittering river, and then the green roll of fields went out as far as the eye could see. He stared out, feeling suddenly small and lost.
Ren sensed his distress, and touched his shoulder, concern in her eyes. He reached out for comfort and she came into his arms.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered for his ears alone. “I know it's confining after the freedom of your farm, but it's to keep us all safe.”
“When we were little,” Odelia called, oblivious to his distress, skipping and hopping on the wide paving stone, “we ate breakfast with Papa out here, and then played hopscotch. This is the best place for hopscotch in the whole palace.”
Jerin turned his back on the open sky and found the vast room transformed by the very presence of his new family. The Queen Mothers had followed them into the room, but stopped midway, taking up residence on the settees. His child brides darted about the room, exploring, laughing, and calling to one another. The huge room contained them comfortably, keeping them together without making them feel in each other's way.
Ren gave him a sad smile, so he hugged her.
“Was this a good place when your father was alive?” Jerin asked.
“It was my favorite part of the palace.”
“I'll have to work on making it so again.”
The husbands' quarters were very much a place of history. The rooms had been cleaned and aired, but layers and layers of the generations remained. A cabinet of board games. A jeweled collection of kaleidoscopes. A sewing stand filled with musty supplies. A knitting basket with a half-finished baby blanket. A collection of music boxes. Even the massive wardrobes in the dressing room brimmed with clothes.
“After our husband was killed,” Queen Mother Elder said with slight bitterness, “Keifer wanted some of his nicer clothes. Then, after the explosion, none of us could stand the thought of dealing with them. We should have removed them before today.”
Jerin lifted down one floral dressing gown, the silk floating in his hands. “It seems a shame. They're beautiful.”
“Many of them have memories attached,”' Ren said, taking the gown from him. “Not all of them good.”
Even the good ones, Jerin reflected, could be painful. “What will you do with them?”
“Sell them to a ragpicker,” Odelia said.
“I'd rather see them burned,” Ren said, “than to have strangers going over Papa's things.”
An idea occurred to Jerin, and he started to speak without thinking it through. “We could—” And then the thought reached its logical end. He was about to suggest sending the clothes to Cullen; his sisters could never provide such a rich wardrobe. Then he remembered the fate of the fine clothes the Queens had provided to his sisters; they were to be sold on the racks of his sisters' new store. He winced at the realization that his sisters would be equal to ragpickers.
“We could what?” Ren asked.
He considered saying, “Nothing,” but in truth, he couldn't be sure that his sisters would sell them at the store. “We could send them to Cullen. My sisters could never afford the type of clothes he is used to.”
Odelia laughed. “Cullen is probably withholding sexual services until he's allowed to ride horses. These are barely clothes you could wear outside.”
“You could make holiday shirts for the little ones out of these,” Jerin pointed out. “Or curtains, or slipcovers for chairs.”
Odelia and Lylia laughed.
Trini frowned at them. “Jerin's right. It would be a horrible waste to burn them. There's hundreds of crowns here in silk. The cost of one outfit probably could feed a poor family for a month.”
More likely a year, but Jerin didn't correct her. He smiled instead at the stray thought that one obscure corner of Queensland was going to be suddenly much more gaily dressed.
“We'll pack them up and send them,” Ren said.
“Really?” Jerin asked.
Ren touched his face softly. “For another smile like that last one, I'd send my clothes too.”
He could do naught but kiss her. Odelia and Lylia then claimed their share of his affection, so it was quite a while before they moved on. The bed, dressed in goose down and layers of softest linen, proved to be able to hold them all at once—blushing husband, affectionate wives, and giggling child brides. The Queen Mothers looked on, smiling indulgently, while the youngest princesses romped innocently on the bed. Jerin wondered what the Queens were thinking. Did they recall a similar moment from their marriage on the same bed? Or were they remembering how these laughing girls were conceived between these sheets? Or were they looking forward to grandchildren yet to be born?
The dinner gong tumbled them out of the bed. The youngest claimed him first, all but dragging him away, until Trini rescued him. She freed him, shooed the girls on, then shyly took his hand.
“Betrothed.”
The single word shot a bolt of happiness through him. He smiled, giving her hand a squeeze. “Betrothed,” he said.
He's charmed Trini. Ren nearly cheered. She put a hand over her mouth to cover the huge grin on her face. Her mothers had noticed the exchange; Mother Elder waited to walk with her down to dinner.
“What do you say now?” Ren struggled not to be smug.
Mother Elder tilted her head, considering. “He'll be good for this family. Eldest.”
Eldest. The title sobered Ren. There seemed to be something implied in the straightforward comment. “But?”
“The common people barely grasp how this family suffered since your father died; Keifer wreaked such damage, alive and dead. With Jerin's background, perhaps it will be wise to educate them.”
Let the tarnished truth be known. Ren nodded, feeling guilty for agreeing. It seemed a betrayal to let the world know how badly Eldest had chosen their first husband. Surely she had chosen more wisely than her older sister, or was she just as blinded by love? No, Mother Elder agreed that Jerin was a better man. But if Ren questioned her own judgment, then there could be no doubt that others would question it too.
It would be a delicate path to walk.
Later that night, Ren realized that she had forgotten about the bolt-hole. She was so used to Raven handling security issues that the secret hiding space and passage out of the palace had slipped her mind. The husbands' quarters, however, were off-limits to the entire palace staff, Raven included. It was up to Ren, as Eldest wife, to make sure the passage was clear, the doors worked, and that Jerin and her adult sisters knew all its finer points.
If by showing Jerin his secret escape route, she also received some late-night cuddling, then all the better. She stripped off her shirt, did a sketchy sponge bath, changed into a clean shirt, and tried for a casual stroll down the hall to the husbands' quarters. The door guard came to attention as she walked up, but kept their faces carefully emotionless as she nodded to them and rapped on the door.
The second rap got a “Who is it?” muffled by the iron-reinforced door.
“It's Rennsellaer, Jerin. Let me in.”
With various clicks and clangs, the door was unlocked and Jerin cracked it open to peer at her, his eyes stunningly blue.
“Should you be here?” he asked.
“Yes.” She slipped into the room and locked the door behind her.
“I need to show you the bolt-hole. I didn't show you while the little ones were here this afternoon; they don't know not to talk about such things. When they're older, we'll tell them.”
He smiled shyly. “I like the sound of 'we.' ”
So did she. He wore a sheer nightshirt, a deep blue that caught the color of his eyes, the silky fabric warm with his
heat. After several minutes of bliss she managed to restrain herself and lead him to the dressing room.
“It's in here so that both bedrooms have access to it,” she explained.
“I didn't notice the smaller bedroom this afternoon. It surprised me when I found it tonight. Was it Keifer's room?”
“While Papa was alive. Keifer moved into the larger bedroom after Papa was killed.”
She saw his curiosity and his reluctance to ask. Because it seemed unfair to keep him ignorant of what even the baby sisters knew, because his reluctance reflected his hesitancy to hurt her, because she loved him, she opened herself to the pain that talking about her father's death always brought. “Papa was poisoned about six months before the explosion. It was a beautiful summer day, and we decided to take carriages out into the country for a picnic.” Keifer decided, and they were already learning it was easier to give in than to fight with him. Easier. Deadlier. “Papa was barely thirty-five at the time. The five youngest were learning to walk, and he was so happy. Later than night, when Mother Elder came to him for services, he was vomiting, dizzy, and weak. Within minutes, he collapsed into a coma and died. They say he died of arsenic poisoning—but we don't know what the poison had been in.”
“I'm sorry,” Jerin whispered, hugging her, wrapping her in his warm comfort.
She held him, finding peace within his arms. “At the time, we were so bitter about his death that we never thought how lucky we were that he was the only one killed. The explosion at the theater taught us to count the small blessings.”
They stood for a while, hugged close. Finally, she resolutely set him aside. He had to know how to keep himself safe. She showed him how the dressing room doors bolted. The locks were simple bolts, but disguised within elaborate woodcarvings to hide the function of the room.
“Keep the doorways clear of clothing or chairs.” She recalled the instructions her sister had given her six years ago when she was judged old enough to know the family secrets. “You might want to keep the smaller bedroom's door bolted at all times. This is the bolt-hole's door here, behind this wood paneling, so you want to keep this clear too.” She showed him the catch hidden in the carved trim, and had him trigger it himself.
The door creaked open; the chamber beyond was musty from disuse. “The dressing room doors give you time to get here and shut this door after you. There's a lamp here with a box of matches.” She grimaced as the cobwebs on the lamp clung to her hand when she set the glass chimney aside. “Don't waste time lighting them until you've got the door barred solid. There's a light well here, so during the day you'll see even with the door closed and locked.”
He nodded, so solemn. Locks of hair were escaping his braid, spilling onto his face, and he brushed them back absently. Distracted by him, she dropped the matchbox after lighting the lamp.
“Oops!” She bent down, lantern in hand, to scan the floor for the box. It sat on a pile of burned discards. She frowned at the blackened matchsticks, picked up the matchbox, and glanced into it. Five lone matches rattled about the box, while their spent sisters lay on the floor, covered with dust. The lamp, she noticed now, was almost empty too, the chimney black with soot, the wick badly trimmed.
She, Halley, and Odelia had been shown the bolt-hole shortly before her father's death. Eldest made them spend the day taking care of the secret route—a rite of passage, Eldest called it. Together, they secretly cleared the outside door, swept the floor clean, counted the crowns in the emergency purse, and replaced the unused matches and lamp with new. Trini would have been the next to do maintenance on the passage, but by the time she turned sixteen. Keifer was dead.
There had been no attacks on the palace. No attempted kidnappings. The lamp should be clean and full. The matches unused.
Keifer had used the bolt-hole.
Cursing, barely aware of Jerin now, she hurried down the secret passageway. A straight shot back, down a tight flight of stairs, and through a series of sharp turns, she hit the end.
The door was bolted, but dropping down with the lamp, she could read old evidence of a betrayal that went beyond words. Tracked in from a muddy garden, dusted now with six years of disuse, footprints of various sizes led in toward the sanctity of the husband quarters.
“Oh. Gods, how could he have done this?” she moaned, sick, sick. She fumbled with the door, stumbled out and threw up in the sweet, sharp profusion of roses. Jerin followed her out, held her head as she was sick.
“What is it? What's wrong?”
“Keifer! Gods damn the crib bait slut! He was bringing women into our husbands' quarters! Oh, gods, night after night, he turned us out, refusing us sexual services while he was whoring himself with someone else.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.” She thought of all the spent match-sticks, far outnumbering the number normally found in a box of that size. “Perhaps half the guard by the count I can figure.”
He nodded, then glanced about the garden. “We should go in, before we give away the door.”
The door is given away, she almost snapped, but swallowed it. He was right. She followed him back inside and bolted the exit carefully shut. Jerin was silent the whole trip back. It wasn't until they were in the dressing room that she realized he was holding something back from her.
“What is it?”
He refused to look at her. “Ren, you were with Keifer, weren't you?”
“Yes.” She was puzzled.
“Odelia too?”
“Yes.”
He whispered so softly, she almost didn't hear him. “Ren, you two should be checked, before the marriage, so if Keifer passed—if Keifer had—who knows if his lovers were clean? We should be sure. For the youngest's sake, for Lylia's sake, we should be sure.”
“Ren! What's wrong?” Queen Mother Elder asked as Ren stumbled into her room and collapsed into the chair before the fire.
“Keifer betrayed us.” Ren gazed numbly at the fire. Had Keifer died instantly in the explosion, or had he been pinned and burned alive? “When he was refusing Eldest and others services, he was servicing strangers he brought in through the bolt-hole. Jerin—Jerin thinks it would be wise if Odelia and I were checked, since we can't be sure we're clean.”
“Oh, dear gods in the heavens,” Mother Elder whispered.
“Halley will have to be checked, if we ever run her to earth. And Trini—sweet Mothers—he could have infected her too.” She pressed a trembling hand to her eyes as she realized the true depth of the danger. “I don't know about these diseases. Mother, how intimate you need to be to pass them. I might have already infected Jerin. There was no joining, but otherwise, we were extremely intimate.”
Ren stared numbly at the fire, trying not to think of all the horrible ramifications. Keifer had died six years ago. Surely, if they were infected, at least one of them would have fallen sick by now.
Gods, she hoped Keifer hadn't been killed immediately by the explosion. She hoped he burned slowly.
The doctor was a thin, old woman, part of a family that had treated Ren through sore throats and broken arms. She examined Ren with dry, cold, dispassionate fingers, then asked a myriad of questions, reminding Ren often to think carefully and to hold nothing back. With a growing sense of relief, Ren could truthfully say that she never had a sore on her vagina or rectum. She had never lost patches of hair. Her eyebrows had never thinned. She never had rashes on her body, and especially not on the bottoms of her feet or the palms of her hands.
“You know if you're lying, you'll give any child you conceive this awful disease while it's still in the womb. It will be born dead, or so damaged you'll wish it had been.”
“No. I'm not lying. It would be stupid to lie,” Ren said.
“Yes, but it never seems to stop people from doing it,” the doctor said. “It would be helpful to have Princess Halley here as well, but so far, I see no sign of disease. Recently, they've developed a test. A device has been invented that allows one to see things so small they
're invisible. We actually have small organisms living in our blood.”
“I know. I've worked with a microscope.”
“Oh. Well, they couldn't see syphilis for a while.
Turns out it's white. On a normal slide, you can't see it. Recently, they found a way to examine things on a black background. The syphilis shows up. It still isn't very accurate in the early stages of the disease, but if you were exposed six years ago, it should be fairly simple to spot.“
“How soon can we have it done?”
“I'll come back in an hour or so with equipment to take your blood and have it tested.”
Jerin attacked the mystery of Keifer's lovers. Surely, somewhere in the husband quarters, well secured and untouched these last six years, there had to be clues. No one outside the family, not even the Barneses, were allowed into the husband quarters. Once Ren's father died, Keifer could have kept lovers' mementos with no fear of discovery. Since Keifer died suddenly, any damning evidence should have remained.
Jerin tore through the accumulation of the ages. He carried armfuls of objects out to the balcony, examining each piece carefully before setting it aside. When shelves, dressers, and closets were empty, and the balcony was overflowing, he attacked the furniture itself.
The massive bed in his bedroom yielded up an earring, a bold hoop of gold, with strands of golden hair caught fast in it. Had the earring been Keifer's? Certainly the rest of the Porters were blond. He checked the well-stocked jewelry boxes and found no mate; in fact there were no earrings at all. Keifer, it seemed, didn't follow the recent fashion of men's piercing their ears. Jerin placed the earring carefully in the center of a piece of paper, and then tackled the smaller bedroom.
Tucked up under the support boards of the bed, he found a box wedged onto the shelf made by the bracing. He pulled it out. It was six inches square, and locked.
Resisting the urge to beat it open, he got his lockpicks and sat tailor-fashion, amid the wreckage he'd caused, to tweak it open. At first his find seemed disappointing, a handmade book, containing hundreds of small yet in-credibly detailed pictures. The first pictures were portraits of the Queens, then women that must have been Ren's older sisters, and finally Ren and the others, the surviving sisters, almost unrecognizable in their youth. Detailed drawings of palace rooms followed. As he reached abstract pictures—a dining table set for dinner, a ballroom filled with dancers, a theater with actors on the stage and a crowd of people watching—he noticed the cant. Beside each detailed drawing was a small cant symbol. The dining table was represented by a circle in a rectangle, crude knife, fork, and spoon. Two stick figures with a line joining them indicated a ball. Jerin flipped back to the beginning. A crown and a counter marked the Queens. A crown under a bar and a counter ticked off princesses.
