A Brother's Price

the Queens Justice was scouring the countryside for the cannons.
    The plain truth would be easier to cope with if she weren’t stuck with nothing to do but watch changeless scenery glide past.
    Besides, she and Odelia needed to attend Summer Court. If Halley did not reappear, only Trini and Lylia remained at Mayfair. Ren had no fears that Trini could act as Elder Judge; her sister was quietly stubborn—no one would be able to bully Trini into a decision. Lylia? Lylia had turned sixteen at the beginning of the year and was eager to speak her mind. Unfortunately, her mind was filled with odd notions and sweeping reforms, some of them far from practical. It would be best if Ren and Odelia were on hand to dilute Lylia’s presence.
    Denied the release of seeking out the cannons, Ren struggled instead with the perfect set of arguments to convince her mothers to allow a marriage with the Whistlers. She well remembered the declaration of undying love her older sisters gave for their first husband, Keifer. As disappointing as that marriage was, no passionate pleas would work for her. Her only hope, it seemed, lay with establishing that the Whistlers’ grandmothers had, beyond a doubt, kidnapped and married Prince Alannon after they had been knighted. The date of their knighting would be a simple matter of checking the Book of Knights. Hopefully they had properly recorded the marriage, although she couldn’t see how they had managed to keep it quiet when the prince’s disappearance had been so widely publicized. Then again, if their claim was valid, they had managed to spirit him out of a castle under siege by the entire royal army, through half of Tastledae, and then across the channel.
    Their success at secrecy could be the undoing of her hopes.
    Still, if she could show they had reasonable access to the castle on the date of the prince’s disappearance, it would be a start. Wellsbury’s memoir recorded the war in minute detail, so getting a copy of her book would be the place to begin.
    At Hera’s Step, a queue formed of boats waiting to pass through the lock, bypassing the massive waterfalls. The royal stern-wheeler docked to wait their turn through the locks and take on coal. Normally Ren would ride out to perform devotions at the temple wreathed by the omnipresent spray, overlooking the mile-wide curve of the falls. This time Odelia, with a contingent of their guard, would have to uphold the family obligations. Ren went with her own guard to a small bookstore located at the heart of town. If she found a copy of Wellsbury’s memoir, she could use the rest of the trip scanning it for references to the Whistlers.
    Raven accompanied neither princess, going instead with their pilot to the lock offices. She wanted to check the logbooks. Careful records were kept on the lockage fees; not even a rowboat could bypass the waterfalls unrecorded.
    Raven later found Ren at the bookstore, gathering startled looks and curious stares from the regular patrons. Between the “royal red” of Ren’s hair and the royal guards, everyone knew she was one of the five adult princesses. From their whispers, it was clear the patrons were mistaking her for Halley.
    “I’ve got a list of ships that passed through the locks since the barge ran aground.” Raven said, pulling out a small tablet that she carried, the sharpened nub of a teeth-worried pencil tucked between the pages. Ren noted the pencil with chagrin; recent events were crack-ing Raven’s legendary poise. “There are approximately a dozen ships a day of the tonnage needed to haul the cannons.”
    Ren glanced over the list and shook her head. “The haystack is growing quickly.”
    “Did you see this?”
    “This” being a newspaper folded and tucked under Raven’s arm. When Ren shook her head, Raven unfolded it to reveal the front page.
    It was the Mayfair daily newspaper, the Herald . Dated only two days before, its headline exclaimed in huge dark print, PRINCESS ODELIA STRUCK DOWN!
    “Oh, damn.” Ren snatched the paper out of Raven’s hand, FATE OF PRINCESS UNKNOWN, read the second headline in only slightly smaller print. The article took up the entire front page but contained very little real information. Rumors gleaned from crews of ships passing through Heron Landing made up the bones of the story. Snippets of reports from the Queens Justice fleshed it out. It accurately recorded that Odelia had been attacked, left for dead in a stream, and found by local,