A Brother's Price

defense wall, of course there were traps! She glanced back at where she had been walking. A pole tipped with a dozen sharpened stakes pinned her hat to a tree. Eldest hadn’t attacked her— she had saved Ren’s life.
    Putting fingers to her mouth. Eldest gave two shrill whistles. ‘“Ware! Traps!” Hearing her warning echoed through the encampment, Eldest turned back to Ren. “Are you all right, Your Highness?”
    Ren nodded, sheathing her knife, feeling stupid. “You startled me.”
    Eldest grinned. “Did I, now?”
    “Yes, but thank you.”
    “Another one there, and behind you.” Eldest pointed out a trip wire to either side of her. “Best just hop the wall.”
    Raven was coming down from the graves as they slid over the wall. “You might want to see this,” she said, but her face belied her words. Whatever they found was horrible to see.
    “What is it?” Ren did not want to go unprepared to the grave site.
    “They’ve killed a man.”
    It was not enough warning. Ren gagged at what they showed her. Arms tied behind his back, his trousers down around his ankles to expose scrawny hairy legs, paunchy stomach—no dignity afforded him in death. Blood spotted his privates; his rapists had either been virgins or on their menses. Blood had clotted on his face and nose, had pooled in his eyes, and his ears. Drug vials littered the grave with him, paper labels proclaiming everlast. A crib drug, meant to keep the men passive, willing, and able.
    Her women had uncovered the grave, and they stood silent, staring at the body. The younger Whistlers hung back, their fierceness stripped by their shock, unable to even look at the man. Her eyes furious, Eldest knelt beside the corpse and covered his nakedness with her coat.
    Ren didn’t want to look at the body, even with it decently covered. She didn’t want to think of a rich Wainwright home now reduced to ash, of the intelligent women who were now burned shells, nor of the handsome husband showed off to visiting royalty. She turned instead to Raven. “It’s Wainwrights’ husband, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.” Raven said. “His name was Egan, if I remember right.”
    “They overdosed him?” Ren guessed. It was a common problem in cribs, and even in a few families where the number of wives was high.
    Raven looked bleak and confused. “They cut out his tongue, I suppose to ensure his silence, but botched it completely. Either he choked to death on his own blood, or he bled to death.”
    “Holy Mothers!” Ren trembled. “What kind of animals could do this? Rape a man, then maim him so. What if he got you with child? What do you tell your daughter? I tore your father’s tongue out after I raped him‘?’”
    Raven shrugged. “When your family’s been bred out of the cribs, you don’t talk about how you got pregnant. You go into an unlit room, a man half incoherent with drugs ruts on top of you, breaks your hymen—hopefully plants a fertile seed—and you leave. What’s there to say except it was dark, painful, and bloody?”
    Ren glanced at the gathered women. The women of her guard—all fathered from cribs—were passive in the face of this horror. The Whistlers, two generations removed from the cribs, looked panic-stricken. Did you have to have a loving father to understand the horror?
    “Your Highness.” Eldest struggled to keep fear from her face. “There’s nothing here for us. We need to go! We need to get back to our brothers!”
    Jerin! Odelia! Ren nodded even as she glanced to Raven.
    “The other five are river trash.” Raven indicated the other five shallow graves holding women in dirty ragged clothing. “The largest is wearing a bandage on her arm.”
    “Odelia’s attackers.”
    “They’ve been shot, searched, and buried. There’s nothing to identify them with.”
    Ren looked out upon the river. The trail ended here, then, at least for her. Summer Court opened in less than a week, and she needed to return home to Mayfair to act as Elder Judge. “There’s nothing here for us. Let’s go.”
     
    With no twenty sisters and one wounded princess to feed, Jerin did not hold dinner. He sent a tray of food up to Odelia with Summer, and the family ate a quiet dinner. He put the leftovers in the warming ovens for the others. Cleanup would have to wait until the others had eaten.
    His announcement that it was bath night was greeted with much groaning and moaning. He supervised the water brigade to fill the tanks of the bathhouse