by Wen Spencer
“Let me go!” He swung at her awkwardly with his free hand, but she dodged the blow.
“What a little lion cub.” Cira laughed at him. “Hush! Quiet as you can! Here they come!”
The shack was a torch in the night behind them. She had tucked her horse into a thick grove of sumac, screening them from the road he had been racing along. Horses were coming, a rolling thunder.
Jerin stopped fighting Cira to be quiet. She held him close, stroking his hair. Her heart pounded under his cheek.
The river trash rode past, dark forms moving through night, hooves drumming on the dry earth.
“It's okay. We're safe now.” Cira lowered him to the ground but kept hold of his forearm. “Get on behind me. I can get you back to the palace without so much as a blemish on your reputation. It will get all hushed up, no one the wiser.”
He hesitated, not sure what to do. A throbbing pain in his ankle reminded him that running on foot wasn't an option.
Cira tightened her hold on him. “Alone, you'd be at the mercy of every woman that sees you.”
She was right. If he didn't run afoul of a family desperate for a husband, then there were the women that would use him to establish a crib. Much as he didn't trust Cira, his chances were better with her.
He scrambled up behind her. “Where are we?”
“Halfway to Hera's Step.” Cira clucked to her roan and guided it out of their hiding space. “This is the main road into Sparrows Point. If we stay on it, well be caught between them and the damn hat-wearing bitches that hired them.”
“How do I know you're not lying to me?”
Cira chuckled. “I'll try not to push my credibility with you. Fen and her women went that way; we'll go this way. How about that?”
“Will it take us downriver to Mayfair?”
“We can't go downriver. We have to cut across a dozen fields and get upriver.”
“Why?”
“We're just north of Snake Run, and it's all white water and deep fast pools. We can't ford it. We'll have to go all the way to Queens Highway for a bridge across. With us riding double, those river rats would catch us before we could get to where we could buy fresh horses.”
“It would have been better if you left me on my horse.”
“I'm hoping they think you were thrown. I don't know many women that could have kept their seat through that. If they believe you've been thrown, they'll have to be searching for you to be on foot, or unconscious, in the dark.”
For a plan conceived at a full gallop, it seemed sound enough.
Jerin pointed out the one flaw. “But won't they think you've caught up with me, like you have?”
Cira's shoulder lifted under his chin. “I tried to give the impression that I thought everything was a lost cause, and started out in the opposite direction. Whether they believed any of it, is another thing.”
They went as quickly as they could, crossing open fields in reckless bursts and carefully picking their way through cave-black woodlots and windbreaks. With the gray of predawn came a thick fog, whiting out the land-scape. Steamboat whistles echoed from the distant river like cries of great hunting beasts.
The roan, lathered and winded, couldn't go any farther. They dismounted and found that Jerin's ankle was weak, but he could limp.
“We're almost to Sarahs Bend,” Cira said as she helped Jerin to a hay barn standing like an island in the fog. “It's just a half mile down the road. The Queens Justice here is corrupt. I think the Hats have the lieutenant in their pocket. Fen might think I pulled wonders getting her and her women free, but all I had to do was mention the Hats and drop a few crowns, and someone forgot to lock their cell door.”
“I'm supposed to believe you're not one of them after comments like that?” Jerin asked.
The barn was in good repair, with no windows and a door padlocked against passing river trash.
Cira tested the heavy lock with a tug. “Fen was a means to something bigger.”
“And I'm just a means to something bigger too?”
Cira gave him a hurt look and then turned away, studying the barn for another entrance. “I've been hunting the Hats for over a year. Fen is getting me closer to knowing who they are.”
“They're the Porters: Kij and her sisters. We found proof.”
Cira jerked around to face him. “What?”
Jerin backed away from her. “We found the proof in the husband quarters.”
Cira caught his hand, keeping him from bolting away. “Honey, I'm not angry at you. Just tell me what you found.”
“Kij was sleeping with Keifer, even after he was married.” Jerin slipped out his lockpick and tackled the padlock to distract himself. “Keifer poisoned the princesses' father. And then, after the princesses' father was dead, every time Keifer acted angry, it was so he could let Kij into the husband quarters. We didn't know at first that Kij was his lover, though, and Ren went to Kij and showed her what we found.”
“Oh, bloody hell.” Cira started to pace. “This all makes sense. They're after the throne. You're Prince Alannon's grandson: marrying you would give them legitimacy.”
“But I have male cousins nearly my age—they could have made an offer…”
“You're the one who's been verified by the Queens themselves.”
The padlock clicked open and Jerin unlatched the door.
Cira eyed the lock with surprise. “So that's how you got free from that bed. An interesting talent for a prince consort.”
Jerin limped inside to collapse onto the fresh hay. Cira led in her roan and tied it outside reach of the hay, so it couldn't eat itself to death, and then found grain and water for it.
“Three daily packets stop in town,” Cira said as she returned Jerin's pistol to him. “I think the first packet comes through town before noon. I'll get tickets so we can board at the last moment and go straight to a cabin. Once we're on the river, we'll be safe until we hit Mayfair.”
Somehow sharing a cabin with Cira didn't seem like a “safe” option. Nor did Jerin like the idea of waiting here, trusting Cira while she could be selling him to the highest bidder.
“And your plan is for me to sit here quietly until you come back?”
“Sweetie, I'll just be more river trash, but you're a man, one that the entire Queensland is looking for. If the Queens Justice is in town, they might have drawings of you.” Cira took his hand and clasped it tight. “And I know you have no reason to trust me, but just because they're soldiers doesn't make them infallible.”
As his own family history would attest to.
He sighed and pulled his hand free. “I'll wait here. Can you bring me something to eat? My stomach is still queasy.”
She gave him a slight smile, pulled her Stetson down low to throw a shadow across her scarred face, and left. He waited as the bells of the nearby town rang five o'clock. Once he was fairly sure she was gone, Jerin unbuckled her saddlebag and carried it to the hay mound to look through it.
On top was a silver flask. He unscrewed its lid, sniffed its contents. Brandy—and fairly expensive if he judged it correctly. He had expected to find corn whiskey, the standard smuggler drink.
He put the flask aside and continued unloading the saddlebag. A turtle shell comb. A bottle of black liquid he couldn't identify. A small book tied shut with a piece of ribbon.
Untying the ribbon, he found the book was a journal written in code. He worried at his bottom lip. While his grandmothers had taught him code breaking, nevertheless, it could take him hours to crack it and translate the book. He didn't have hours. He flipped through the pages, checking if anything had not been written in code. Between the back pages, he discovered three newspaper clippings. The first was headlined forty dead in weapon shop fire. The second story looked like it had been torn out instead of clipped; while it was missing the headline, he recognized it as the Herald's story about the attack on Odelia. In the same handwriting as the journal were names and numbers written in the margin. “Osprey 6/4 Dusk. Fro
ntier 6/5 Dawn. Enterprise 6/4 Midnight.'” Ship names and times, he realized. Where had she gone? The “Osprey” had been underlined, seeming to indicate a need for speed.
The third story had been carefully clipped, neatly folded and refolded, and was well-worn from being handled.
QUEENS SPONSOR PRINCE ALANNON'S GRANDSON
After decades of mystery, the fate of the vanished Prince Alannon has been finally revealed. A report issued from the palace today stated that the prince married Queensland knights Sirs Whistler and retired to their up-country land grant. In an amazing twist of fate, Master Jerin Whistler, the grandson of Prince Alannon, has been named as Princess Ode-lia's recent savior. As a reward for his selfless bravery, the Queens will be sponsoring Master Whistler for the upcoming Season. Sources close to the crown state that the young man has been installed at the palace and bears a striking resemblance to the beautiful missing prince…
The story would have appeared after he met her on the Mayfair landing—after she kissed him. He supposed it was understandable she would want a keepsake of such an event. Kissing was something only husbands and wives were allowed to do. His sister Summer would keep a newspaper story of a boy she kissed. That Cira was like his sister helped calm his nerves.
He could glean nothing more from the journal. He returned the clippings, closed the book, and tied it shut. He dug deeper into the saddlebag. A can opener. A tin pan with a screw-on handle that could be stored inside the pan. He marveled at the ingeniousness of the pan and then started to set it aside. It struck him then, the quality of the items Cira owned. The journal had not been showy, but was well bound with a stamped leather cover. The tin pan was cunningly made. The saddlebag itself was a sturdy and handsome item. The fine roan horse she rode. Even the brandy in the flask had been quality.
Cira was a rich woman, though she did not show it. It was, in fact, as if she was trying to hide the fact.
The other women at the shack, though, seemed to be river trash. The shack. The two or three of them he saw. The language that the others used. Dirt-poor and willing—no, needing—to steal to survive.
Cira hadn't been one of them. Considering the newspaper clipping, it even seemed likely that she had been there only to rescue him. Still, he could not afford to trust her. Trust had led to betrayal too often, too recently.
A short time after the town bells rang six, Cira reappeared.
“There's no sign of Fen and her women,” she told him as she sat down on the hay beside him. She had two small loaves of fresh bread. “This was all that could be had this early in the morning. I would have brought you ginger if the apothecary was open. Most likely it's the drugs that Fen gave you that upset your stomach, but it might be because you haven't eaten for a full day.”
He ate the bread cautiously; it seemed to help settle his queasy stomach.
“The first packet is at nine.” Cira lore her loaf of bread in two and gave him the larger piece. “And the Queens Justice is in town. If I'd had the coin. I'd have bought fresh horses. I don't like this sitting and waiting, but we don't have much of a choice.”
She started to unload her pockets, producing a small ceramic crock, rhinestone hair combs, a bright red silk scarf, and a white-feathered boa. “I thought that one way to slip you past the Queens Justice is to hide you in the open.”
“What do you mean?” Jerin opened the crock, hoping for something to eat. It contained a bright red cream. “What is this?”
“That's lip paint,” Cira said, dipping one finger into red. “Purse your lips and hold still.”
“Makeup?”
Cira blushed, a first for her. “It's a disguise. Everyone is looking for a man; they might not look twice at a whore.”
He knew some women pleasured others for money, but his mothers and sisters kept him innocent of the details. “Whores are women, aren't they?”
“In body, but not always in appearance. Many dress as men, the manlier, the better.” Cira glided her fingertip over his lips in a way that was at once intimate and erotic.
Jerin scrambled to take his mind away from her fingers. “Don't they lack certain vital equipment?”
“There are artificial devices.” Cira dipped her finger into the crock again, and rouged his cheeks, her breath on his face as she blended color out. “They call them bones because they're made out of ivory. They strap on. Whores carry them sheathed to their leg, here, to look more manly.”
She put her hand on him, and found him excited. She smiled, stroking him gently, her eyes full of lust.
“Wh-wh-why red on the lips?” he asked.
“To advertise they know how to use their mouth.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, moistening them, drawing a slight gasp from him. “It feels very, very good.”
He understood then what she was referring to—his wives claimed he was very good at it. He couldn't believe he had anything in common with a whore. Maybe she was just repeating a rumor. “You—have you ever—you know—been with a whore?”
“I had a lover, a beautiful young officer, whose mother had been a whore.” Her voice turned bitter as she draped the scarf about his neck, trying to cover his man's apple. “She should have been a whore herself. She was well suited for it: ambitious, heartless, and very talented. She could make you feel like you were about to turn inside out.”
“What happened to her?”
She caught his hand and pressed it to her scar. “This happened to her. After I was scarred she couldn't bear to touch me, look me in the face.”
“Why?” He traced the scar on her face. “'It's like an exotic piece of jewelry. It becomes you.”
In a sudden angry move, she pulled her shirt off and turned her back to him, revealing a mass of puckered skin and silvery scars. At some point she had been badly burned. “Look at me! I'm repulsive!”
He ran a hand over the wounded skin. His fingertips reported only warm flesh and solid muscle, the ugliness of the burn invisible to the touch. “No. You're not repulsive.”
She turned—her eyes luminescent with unshed tears—and kissed him. Apples flavored her mouth. He retreated. She advanced. They ended sprawled in the hay, no more room for him to retreat, and she on top of him, her groin pressed against him instead of her hand, rocking suggestively. They fitted together as if molded from one flesh, only her trousers and his walking robe and underclothes between their bare skin.
“Show me,” she whispered against his mouth. “Show me how beautiful I am.”
“No!” He pushed at her shoulders. “You're taking me back to my wives. You promised. I won't be unfaithful to them.”
She laughed, seemed about to say something, and then shook her head. “I won't push you, my love. This will all be over soon, and you'll see that you can trust me.”
He snorted as she retreated then, drawing her shirt back on.
“We'll pad the front of your shirt a little, to make it look like you're hiding breasts.” Cira glanced at him and laughed. “And we'll have to put the lip paint back on again too.”
Three hours later, they started into the town of Sarahs Bend. Cira would have liked to wait until they heard the steam whistle of the packet docking at the landing, but was afraid they might miss the boat. A weak sun had burned off part of the fog, revealing the edge of town within rifle shot; Cira still insisted that he ride the big roan while she led it.
Sarahs Bend was much larger than his hometown of Heron Landing. There were several blocks of paved streets flanked with tall, narrow but deep, brick buildings. The first floors were storefronts, while the upper floors were obviously residences of the store owners. Some of the buildings were four stories tall, casting shadows onto the cobblestones. The edges of their roofs sparkled oddly in the sunlight.
“City people hang laundry on their roofs,” Cira explained when Jerin asked about it. “People embed broken bottles into the roof parapets, to discourage husband raids.”
He noticed then that the storefronts also had cast-iron gates that could be
padlocked shut at night.
It surprised him how many types of stores there were. Besides two mercantiles, there were stores for apothecaries, books, dry goods, shoes, tailors, watchmakers, and more. Each carried the name of the family that ran it and then symbolic signage for the illiterate; he recognized all but one.
“What do they sell there?” Jerin pointed to a gas lamp with three blue glass globes. The stone building lacked the glass front of the rest; while the front door stood open, heavily armed women guarded the entrance. Customers came and went, but they carried items neither in nor out. “Is it a bank?”
“Hush, don't point,” Cira murmured, and then clucked the roan to speed them past the store.
“What is it?” Jerin whispered.
“Pay it no mind.”
He'd heard that tone enough in his life to realize it was a crib. He looked back to study the fortresslike building. He never thought such a thing would be on a Main Street corner, its gas lamp bright in the overcast morning so it couldn't be missed. How many men were inside? A dozen narrow windows cut into the thick stone of the first story. One window per man? Iron bars covered the larger windows of the second story. A short railing lined the roof with sharpened iron points. He knew that they were there to keep out women, but they would work to keep men in. The trickle of women in and out of the building was constant—each representing a forced coupling.
His breakfast churned in his stomach. “Cira, I think I'm going to be sick.”
“Now?” Whatever she saw on his face convinced her. She guided the roan into a narrow alley.
His breakfast came up while Cira kept his hair and clothes out of the way.
“That's where I'm going to end up.” He moaned. “In a place just like that. Locked in and drugged.”
“That is not going to happen to you. You're getting home and it will be just like nothing happened.”
“Ren won't be able to take me back. No one is ever going to believe that nothing happened to me.”
