Cadis had been regaling them with an improvised tale of Rusila, the Maid Marauder, something about winning a race to a treasure by lashing her ship to the back of a sea dragon. Only Suki had been listening, as she lay on her back in the middle of the giant table, throwing an iron ring up to the vaulted ceiling between the segments of the chandeliers and catching it on her feet.
Iren and Marta sat together on the far side. Before them were several sheets of stained glass. Iren used a long steel cutter that looked like a fountain pen, with a diamond tip, to cut intricate shapes into the glass. Marta used Iren’s nippers to snap the cut pieces out of the sheets.
At first blush, it looked like she was making an elaborate set of wind chimes in the old Corentine style. The spires of her home were famous for decorative glasswork, situated as they were in the windy mountains, above the cloud line. The Corentines admired the elegant and delicate work. Many of the balconies of the Academy spires were hued of colored glass.
When Rhea and Endrit entered from the bedroom, everyone stopped—the storytelling, the juggling, the glasswork.
In that short instant, as Rhea weighed all the disappointment in the room, she couldn’t help but feel hurt. Hers was not malicious. She just wanted more time with Endrit. Why shouldn’t she? But theirs, well, their disappointment was because they wanted to spend less time with her.
Marta stood up when she saw Endrit bleeding. The pliers in her hand fell to the table. Just as quickly Marta controlled herself, as she always did. She wouldn’t embarrass him by doting over it. But for the slightest of moments—every time one of them injured her son—they would see the shadow of outrage pass over her.
“What happened?” said Marta in a controlled voice.
Only then did Rhea realize she was in bigger trouble than she’d thought. She had summoned Endrit to her chamber after-hours. She had continued to train at full contact, though they all knew that Marta forbade training the day before the Revels, to give them time to mentally prepare. And she had cut a bleeding gash into her son’s shoulder.
Rhea’s answer caught in her throat.
To her eternal gratitude, Endrit stepped forward. “This? This is nothing,” he said.
“How did it happen?” said Marta.
“Game of checkers,” said Endrit, grinning brighter than a three-tiered candelabrum. “You should teach these girls how to lose gracefully.”
The ludicrousness of the excuse, and the sheer confidence it took to expect the others to believe it, made Marta finally crack a smile. Endrit glanced back at Rhea and winked.
“You will address them as ‘queen,’ or ‘highness,’ or ‘princess,’ ” said Marta as she sat, but the bite in her tone was already gone.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Endrit.
Suki rolled over, sprang off the table, and walked with Endrit toward a hutch in the corner. At fifteen, she was one year younger than Rhea and two years younger than Cadis and Iren. Somehow the divide seemed even wider. She still wore her hair in two pigtails.
“Hey, Endrit!” she chirped.
Endrit guided her over to his right side so he could put his good arm around her shoulder. “Hey, Susu. How’s my favorite acrobat?” he said.
Even from behind, Rhea could tell that Suki was blushing.
She couldn’t help but envy his easy air and his ability to make friends with them all. How can any one person like four such different girls? And how do they all like him?
It was a mystery to Rhea. She suspected the world outside of Meridan Keep, outside of the Protectorate, had plenty of easygoing friends, whereas the four queens could never be so casual and could never escape the fact that they were in constant competition.
For instance, in the competition for Endrit’s attention, Suki had clearly just won. She took him to the hutch, grabbed several bandages, and was already helping him tend to the wound. Meanwhile, Rhea was standing in the space between her door and the table, with nothing for her arms to do but dangle.
“How was the game of . . . checkers?” asked Iren, as she cut a long line across an azure sheet. The glass sang a high, grating pitch.
“Uh, good,” said Rhea. She sidled into a high-back chair at the table. Marta’s disapproval soured the air.
Iren, of course, didn’t notice, or pretended not to.
She has such slender fingers, thought Rhea as she watched Iren inlay a razor-thin shard of glass onto a tableau. Iren’s exhibition last year was an obscure juniper tea ceremony from the Corentine dale country. The year before that, she’d played her harp—all thousand veils of the Falconer’s Dream by PilanPilan.
It was as if Iren wanted to prove how advanced the Corentines were, how cultured, how smug.
Rhea’s father didn’t mind it as much as he did Cadis with her athletic exploits. Hiram lapped it up as if it were the first time anyone had played PilanPilan in Meridan Keep. Though to be fair, it might have been.
Rhea couldn’t keep her eyes off of Endrit and Suki in the corner. Endrit’s rakish grin was all she could see and Suki’s obvious tittering all she could hear.
“We were just saying it should be nice weather tomorrow,” said Cadis.
Rhea doubted that they were sitting together and discussing some almanac. She recognized halfhearted court conversation when she heard it.
“Oh?” she said. “Should we switch to plate leather?”
Marta looked up from her study of Iren’s glasswork. “Of course not. Full armor if you plan to go full speed.”
Rhea knew it. She just had nothing else to say. It was getting harder and harder to be around them. To force herself where she was obviously not wanted. Where she halted all sisterly conversation and sucked the warmth from the room. Rhea was about to excuse herself back to her bedroom when she heard the unmistakable scraping of a shinhound’s paws on castle stone.
When they all turned to the outer door, Rhea used the opportunity to steal a gaze at Cadis. She had tied her long blond hair into many thin braids that became dreadlocks—the common tradition of the Findish marauding parties. Bits of shell, coin, and other precious stones where woven into each braid and clinked musically when she turned her head. The green and gold sash that wrapped the braids back accentuated her resolute jawline and sharp-hewn nose. She was a queen already—although of a different sort from Iren. She was a war general, a queen by no right other than that she was stronger, more charismatic, and deadlier that anyone else.
Rhea made sure to look away before anyone caught her staring—“stewing in her own jealousy” as Suki had put it once. Rhea swore she wasn’t jealous. What was she to be jealous of? Meridan had beaten Findain. No, she preferred to think of their relationship as an early distancing of Meridan and its subjects.
The truth was that she and Cadis had been avoiding each other ever since the last Revels, their last match, a full year ago.
Marta wouldn’t allow them to spar anymore. “Not until you can stand as sisters again,” she’d said. Rhea wasn’t sure they had ever been sisters.
The shinhound scrabbled into the hall—a welcome distraction for everyone but Suki. Without looking up from her glasswork, Iren reached out a finger, pointed to a square of marble on the floor, and said, “Ismata, sit!”
The massive beast lowered its head, marched directly to the square, and sat awaiting further orders.
Cadis exclaimed with surprise, “Ha!” No one had ever dared order a shinhound before.
“You can tell them what to do?” said Endrit.
“And you named him Ismata?” added Suki.
Iren continued to work, but she smiled and nodded. After making them wait a moment, she said, “I’m counter-training them.”
“Without Hiram’s knowledge?” said Marta, scandalized by such an impertinent idea.
“I had to name them so my commands could override his. Come here, Ismata.” The shinhound bounded forward and let Iren scratch him under the chin. To Iren, this was just another project. But if Hiram found out, the magister would put the en
tire kennel to the sword.
Iren reached into her sleeve, drew out a strip of salted beef, and held it out. The shinhound snapped it up.
“Now you’re showing off,” said Cadis.
“Wouldn’t you?” said Iren.
“Oh, of course,” said Cadis. “I’d teach the dog your tea ceremony and present him at the Revels wearing laces and a petticoat.”
Endrit laughed.
Marta sucked her teeth. For such an embarrassment, the magister would kill the dogs and burn the stadium with all the revelers still in it.
“I think it’s hilarious,” said Suki, eyeing Endrit to make sure he agreed.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” said Marta as she approached the hound and pulled the rolled parchment from the holster around its neck.
The beast, even while sitting, was nearly as tall as she was and twice as thick. Rhea imagined her teacher during the Battle of Epiphany Rising, fending off war dogs with a long-handled bident, which the soldiers called “shin guards.”
Marta never talked about the bite marks on her forearms, just as she never discussed the war.
She unrolled the parchment and read, “By the word of good King Declan, Protector and Preserver of the Pax Regina.”
Rhea let go of the lock of hair she had been nervously twirling around her finger. She tried not to tense in front of the others, but rarely did her father speak to them through the magister’s hands.
Marta continued. “Regarding the Revels, tenth of their kind. In light of the ever-present threat of attacks and subterfuge by Findish radicals—”
Rhea knew what would happen next. Marta paused, as if to give Cadis time to act righteously indignant. Cadis stood erect and jutted her chin to take the insult with public dignity. To Rhea, the show was overwrought. Her father had expressly written “radicals.” No one was saying the perfect princess had anything to do with it. But that didn’t matter to Cadis. She wore her victimhood proudly.
“Go on,” said Rhea.
“—to protect against such treason against the four crowns, the midnight ball will be reserved to the noble families of Meridan, royal guests, and guardian hands of the high court.”
“That’s not fair,” said Suki.
“None others shall be permitted into Meridan Keep,” said Marta, finishing the message. “So spake the king.”
Rhea held her breathing. Of course her father would be cautious. He was the only one with the burden of protecting the Keep from attack. Hiram’s spies must have uncovered a plot of some kind. But none of the girls were interested in spycraft. They just knew Endrit and the other performers couldn’t come to the celebratory dance. After all his work.
Rhea was heartbroken too. But she knew the others would blame her for the whole thing.
And she had the least to complain about. She’d be dancing with Endrit anyway, at the exhibitions. Even so, she had hoped to dance with him later, when fewer eyes would be upon them and they weren’t trying to kill each other, when—maybe—she could close her eyes, feel warm hands about her, and calm her anxious thoughts for just a short while. Rhea bemoaned the loss quietly, to herself.
“It’ll be just us and a bunch of inbred nobles?” said Suki with a pout.
“They don’t inbreed in Meridan,” said Iren.
“Then why are they so scrawny and weird?” said Suki.
“Because they’re pampered and boring,” said Iren.
“Well, I’m not touching any of them,” said Suki. Sometimes she still sounded like the five-year-old brat who had been spoiled rotten back in the court of Tasan. The high emperor had five children. The sycophant Tasanese nobles treated all of them like a pantheon of insolent gods.
As soon as Rhea rolled her eyes, she regretted it. Suki—of course—had been watching Rhea as she insulted Meridan, to measure the success of her needling.
“I hope there is a Findish revolt. Then we can finally go home.”
“Suki!” said Marta. Rhea bit back the obvious retort, as she always did with their baby sister. If Findain instigated all-out war, the last thing the girls would be doing was going home. But if Rhea said it—even though Iren and Cadis already knew—it would destroy the last vestige of their relationship. They stabbed and stabbed the dragon, but if Rhea ever breathed her fire, they would act shocked and claim they always knew dragons to be so vicious.
“What?” said Suki. “How long do we have to do this? I have my own little siblings to condescend to.” She cast unsubtle glances at Rhea as she spoke.
Is she foolish or delusional? Even if she returns after ten years, which of her siblings would even recognize her? In such a formal court, would they ever bow to a Meridan-raised queen, even if she is the oldest now?
For a tense moment only the shinhound made any noise, chomping on some other treat that Iren must have given from a hidden fold in her sleeve.
Endrit—thank the gods for him—finally broke the silence by giving Suki exactly what she seemed to be mewling for. He reached out, put a hand on her waist, and pulled her back from her battlefield. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders—so obviously as a big brother would, though Suki wouldn’t know it—and said, “There won’t be anything so exciting as a revolt. The Findish have their future queen to fight for them at court.”
The stable hand is no diplomat, thought Rhea. Cadis had no sway in the Meridan court. It would only make them feel like hostages. But Rhea was tired of caring how her sisters felt all the time.
“Come on, girls,” said Marta. “To bed. You’ll be up all night tomorrow.”
“Not if those Findish radicals attack,” said Cadis bitterly. The barb wasn’t as funny as she might have expected.
“And not if I have to dance with nobles,” said Suki.
Rhea felt them all avoid her gaze. They blamed her, though they would never say it. She was the daughter of the man who’d conceived of the Protectorate—the nature of their entire relationship. Their captor—if they wanted to think of it so ungenerously. Rhea was certain that Cadis felt so. She had a seafarer’s wanderlust, always consulting maps and travelers’ accounts of the wider world. She was the one already fit to rule—the only one among them rightly called a woman. But here she sat. Of all of them, Cadis seemed the most shackled, the most caged. Rhea would happily open the cage, if she could, and wish good riddance of her so-called sister.
At least she would not be treated as their constant villain, even though she was their sister and friend and advocate.
“I could speak to the king,” offered Rhea. “Maybe we can bring guests.”
Suki scoffed, “If I wanted your dad to listen to someone, I would have asked Cadis.” It was Rhea’s mistake to ever hold out an olive branch.
“Has anyone considered that maybe I’m not so keen on dancing with a bunch of termagants who do nothing but abuse and boss me around?” said Endrit.
“Endrit!” said Marta, the only one still horrified by his familiarity with the queens.
Suki laughed, turned around, and slapped Endrit’s shoulder where she had just bandaged his cut.
“Are we toilsome prey compared to your handmaidens?” said Cadis. The look she received from Endrit, which both Rhea and Suki observed, was a raised brow, an impressed smirk, and a mischievous sparkle of the eye.
The shinhound shuffled nervously and barked to remind Marta that the parchment needed to be returned.
“Oh, they’re not maidens,” said Endrit. “Does the captain of Findain not approve?”
Cadis made a playful show of turning her back to him. Rhea always suspected that Cadis could have him if she wanted.
“All right. To bed with all of you,” said Marta, clapping her hands.
Iren continued to gather her glasswork into the oilcloth, and that was signal enough for all of them to disperse. Suki griped and demanded a kiss on the cheek from Endrit, who obliged.
Cadis marched straight to her room. The precaution for their personal safety was still a personal insult, apparently.
/> Endrit slung his arm around his mother as if she were another sister and leaned down to kiss her sincerely on the temple. As he walked Marta out, he said over his shoulder, “Good night, my queens,” as a jester might say it, with too much gravitas, to make it sound foolish.
Suki chirped, “Good night!” and ran off, leaving Rhea and Iren sitting across from each other at the oaken round table.
Iren collected her glass-cutting tools in silence. Rhea sat for a short while, listening to her heart, still pounding from her training.
Rhea suddenly felt the overwhelming desire for a sister—a true sister—in whom she could confide, one whose only loyalty was to her, and not the others. She wished she could tell Iren about her training and ask if Iren felt as she did about Endrit in moments of such intense and terrifying desire that she imagined herself pinning him down, kissing him, pressing herself to him, but found herself at a loss for what to do after.
The image would turn murky and dreamlike. Rhea would feel embarrassed, as if Endrit could tell that she was childlike and ill versed in the details of love.
When they were younger, Iren had showed them an illuminated page from the poems of the ribald monk Hakan. In the corner, a couple sat entwined, one kissing the other’s nape, the other openmouthed like a baby bird, begging the gods to transfix them, just as they were, onto the parchment of a book, so that they could remain in their embrace forever.
The girls had giggled at the lewd painting and teased one another.
Cadis had elbowed Suki and said, “That’ll be you and Cooky Cogburn,” the greasy old kitchen master.
“No! Akh. I wanna be the girl who rides the gryphon across the sea,” she’d said, pointing to another illuminated page.
That was a particularly nice memory for Rhea, a time when they were four sisters sneaking together—not three and the king’s daughter.
“Something wrong?” said Iren.
Daughters of Ruin Page 4
