A Brother's Price

a hearing time couldn’t be changed, even by the royal judges. This guaranteed that a hearing couldn’t be moved to a time unknown to the claimants.
    The Baroness Wakecliff family had managed the impossible this winter: fifty-eight members, from great-grandmothers down to infant granddaughters, had all died within one season. Not all at once, which actually would have been more understandable, but here and there in escalating tragedy. The first ten or so had been drowned in a midwinter shipwreck. Then a fire ripped through the nursery wing late at night; twenty-three mothers and sisters, all under the age of ten, died in their beds. A half-dozen adults, one of them a beloved newly wedded husband, died of burns and smoke inhalation suffered while trying to reach the children. Rev Wakecliff had died trying to give birth to a dead baby boy. Kareem Wakecliff committed suicide when she learned of all four tragedies in a single day. Eldest Wakecliff took to drinking heavily, and died of alcohol poisoning after a carriage accident, claiming another six Wakecliffs, triggered a binge.
    Ren wasn’t sure how the other ten had died. It little mattered; by then all the women of childbearing years and younger had already been killed. The Wakecliff family was dead long before the last member took her final breath. Had any member survived, however. Ren would have been spared trying to determine who received the inheritance today.
    While there were no clear heirs to the great Wakecliff fortunes, three powerful families had issued nebulous claims. Ren had planned to carefully study all claims prior to hearing the case. Someone, however, had juggled the docket.
    The royal carriage pulled up to the front of the courthouse. They were last to arrive, the normal confusion of coaches already cleared. As usual. Raven entered the building at a stride that was nearly a run. four of Ren’s traveling guard half a pace behind their captain. The rest of the guard stood anxious for a signal that the foyer was clear, and then opened the carriage door.
    They swept into the courthouse, flanked all around by the guards, through the foyers. Raven was at the courtroom doors, waiting. Just as Ren and Odelia reached them. Raven swung open the double doors.
    Normally the room seemed to be built on too ponderous a scale, as if the plan of the architect had been to crush the handful of participants by sheer height and breadth of marble. This was the first time Ren had seen a sea of humanity reduce the room to almost claustrophobic size. Almost every noble house—Mother Elder, Eldest, elder sisters—sat in attendance, completely screening the massive marble columns and walls.
    Trini sat in Elder Judge position, her mouth moving, but her voice, which barely carried to the back of the room when it was empty, couldn’t be heard. Lylia perched on the edge of her throne beside Trim’s, eyes eager. In the royal box overlooking the judges’ thrones and the speaker’s floor, their youngest sisters, Zelie, Quin, Nora, Mira, and Selina, watched over what someday would be their duty to uphold.
    Trini spoke again, whatever she was saying lost in the surflike roar of voices.
    Lylia nearly quivered with the tension in her, and then shouted, “Silence! The court is now in session! Bailiff! Call the first case!”
    “That’s it, Lylia,” Odelia murmured fondly as silence fell. “Give them hell.”
    The bailiff came from her alcove to the center of the speaker’s floor. She cleared her throat, opened her mouth to call the first case, and then caught sight of Ren and Odelia.
    “All rise for Their Royal Highnesses, Princess Renn-sellaer and Princess Odelia!”
    They started forward into stunned silence. Then with a renewed roar, the observers came to their feet, clapping.
    Clap , Ren thought, but some of you bitches are very unhappy to see us .
    Trini and Lylia stood too, not applauding, but their relief plain to read. Trini sidestepped to her normal position and Ren took the throne of the Elder Judge. She made no signal to silence the crowd, taking the opportunity to scan the gathered nobles, wondering which of them had changed the docket and why.
    There were three noble families, all baronesses with massive estates of their own, who had semivalid claims: Dunwood, Lethridge, and Stonevale. The network of marriages, however, extended those three by five- or sixfold, evidenced by the number of women crammed into the courtroom. Whichever family snared the vast