A Brother's Price

they struggled for shore. The other was a young private whose face Ren could not recall, and in the dark could not see, by the name of Cherry. For miles the fast current had carried them, and they could only keep their heads above water. Then the river turned, and in that bend, the water deepened and slowed and they thrashed ashore.
    The wind had kicked up, tossing the trees and cutting cold as sharp as knives through their wet clothes. Buckley knew approximately where they were, and knew too of a nearby mansion laid to ruin in the last war. It would give cover and shelter well away from the exposed river-bank. Ren wanted only to lie in the mud and grieve, but dragged herself up anyhow. She couldn’t give up until she was sure Kij was as dead as her father, her elder sisters, Halley, and Jerin. She had to be sure Kij paid.
    They were past the escarpment, and the land was flat here, smoothed by countless floods. They kept to the cave-black shadows of the windbreaks, hedging fields of freshly cut hay. The night was full of distant cracks of rifles, faint echoes of shouting, and the rolling thunder of racing horses. The gray of false dawn touched the sky as they reached the mansion sitting alone on a hill, the short summer night fleeing before the sun. In the silence before dawn, the dark, broken structure, surrounded by shorn fields, seemed ominous.
    They paused in the windbreak at the foot of the hill, shivering, scanning the fields.
    “How close is Annaboro?” Ren asked.
    “Another ten miles south. Your Highness,” Buckley murmured, then cocked her head, listening intently. “Riders are coming.”
    Ren swore. In their white shirts and red uniform pants, they stood out in the scanty cover of the windbreak. “Let’s try for the mansion.”
    They ran. The sharp stems of the cut hay stabbed like a thousand needles in their bare feet as they raced for cover. The riders broke out of a woodlot behind them, and came sweeping toward them. A glance was enough to show the riders weren’t the Queens Justice. Even as Ren and the others reached the old front yard of the mansion, the riders cut them off. looping around them in a rough circle of lathered, blowing horses.
    Kij looked worse for wear, at least. Her beautiful face was cut and bruised. Part of her shirt had been torn off, and a bloody bandage showed beneath. But she was alive, damn her soul, when everyone else was dead.
    “Don’t you know when to die?” Ren asked her.
    “I could say the same for you. I’ve been trying to kill you for six years,” Kij growled.
    “So, how did you find me?” Ren asked, wondering how she had ever thought this woman to be her good friend.
    “You washed up where all the dead bodies come to shore.” Kij gave a bitter laugh. “You just don’t have the decency to realize you’re dead.”
    “Give it up, Kij. Killing me will only dig your grave deeper. My sisters know of your crimes. I’ve blocked all your plots in Mayfair. I’ve sunk your gunboat and your cannons. The Destiny is gone, and Jerin with her, damn you. Shooting me will get you nothing.”
    “It will make me feel better.” Kij raised her pistol.
    “Don’t even think about it!” a woman shouted from high above them.
    Ren glanced over her shoulder, startled.
    From the mansion’s second-story balcony, a shooter stood mostly hidden behind a support column, a sniper rifle aimed down at Kij. “Drop your guns!”
    “Who the hell?” Kij shouted.
    “I’m Eldest Whistler!” the woman shouted back. “Unlike you nobles, ‘sisters-in-law’ means something to us. We Whistlers have an unbreakable rule—you mess with one of us, you mess with us all!”
    Like thorns growing from a rose, the long slender barrels of rifles emerged out of the broken windows of the mansion.
    “Now, put down your guns!” Eldest shouted. “Or we’ll be finding out who gets the orphaned estate of Avonar!”
    The moment froze in time, and then Kij made a show of dropping her pistol. “Put them down,” she commanded her sisters. “We’ll live to fight another day.”
    Don’t count on that , Ren thought savagely, but held her tongue.
    The other Porters threw down their weapons. A lone Whistler came out of the mansion to collect the guns while her sisters covered her. Ren recognized the black hair, and the blue-eyed, steel-jawed look of the woman, but not her individually. The reason why became apparent as the other Whistlers stalked out of the mansion once the weapons were