A Brother's Price

years.”
    They nodded in understanding, and ate in silence, each to her own thoughts.
    “How do we do it?” Lylia pushed her empty plate away and leaned against the table.
    “The combined inheritance taxes of all the estates are quite sizable.” Trini murmured, eyeing her binder. “The moneys in escrow will not cover it all. We can declare that the crown has chosen to handle the reckoning. We seize the entire estate, do an accounting of debts and taxes, and deduct Elpern Bank as payment, then release the rest of the estate to the heirs.”
    Ren winced. It seemed like a perfect plan, except the numbers would not balance. “I doubt if the taxes are that sizable.”
    Trini shrugged. “We can figure a reasonable price for the sale of Elpern to the crown. Deduct the taxes from the sale price, and add the difference to the estate.”
    “They’re not going to like it,” Odelia half sang. “El-pern’s yearly income, in the long run, would outstrip any price you set on it. They’d probably rather pay the tax from their pocket than have it taken out beforehand in the form of prime land.”
    “None of them have clear right to the land,” Ren growled. “Holy Mothers, the Wakecliffs didn’t have clear right to it if you look closely. Ezra Wakecliff was supposed to deliver the title deeds of twelve crown properties to the church during the Prinmae War for safekeeping, and she delivered eleven. The bitch stole it. and because her brother was married to our great-great-grandmothers, she was never called on it. We have as much a right to it as any of those women out there.”
    “She stole it?” Lylia asked.
    Odelia nodded. “That’s what the whole children’s rhyme is about, the ‘Wakecliff in the corner, eyeing queenly pies.’ The title deeds were inside pies, to disguise them in case Wakecliff was stopped by the enemy.” Odelia made a rolling motion with her hand, indicating that the rhyme continued to be quite literal. “The ‘plum’ was a plum piece of property.”
    “ ‘You know in whose bed her brother lies,’ ” Lylia finished. “Oh, I see. Her brother was prince consort.”
    “Well, it’s time for us to take back what is ours.” Ren rapped for a vote. “Agree.”
    “Agree,” Lylia said, eyes glowing.
    “Agree,” Trini murmured.
    “Agree,” Odelia said.
    “Once we separate Elpern Bank from the rest of the estate, we’ll decide who gets the rest.”
     
    “I have found a young man who delights me.” Ren had rehearsed the speech for hours and days. She now faced her Mother Elder, alone at last, in the privacy of the queen’s wing—weak-kneed for the first time in years. “He is warm, loving, intelligent, strong of character yet biddable, chaste, and very beautiful. I wish to marry him.”
    After a moment of pleased surprise, the Queen
    Mother Elder put aside the book she had been reading with a slight, worried frown. “Yet you say nothing of breeding. After the adventure you’ve told us, I doubt you’ve met anyone of acceptable breeding.”
    “His breeding is odd.” Ren wished she could leave the whole of it out, but knew eventually her mother would dig out the truth, then hold it against her for omitting it. “His grandmothers were conceived in the Order of the Sword’s cribs. Blacklisted from the army due to their Mother Elder’s crimes, they joined the Sisterhood of the Night. Wellsbury employed them in the war as spies. They won the Queen Elder Cross of Victory, were knighted, and retired to a land grant.”
    “That would make him the very lowest of landed gentry I’ve heard tale of, Rennsellaer.”
    “During the siege of Tastledae, his grandmothers kidnapped Prince Alannon, and after they were knighted, they married him.”
    The clock ticked off the silence between them. In one of the many specimen jars that lined her mother’s desk, a cotton weevil scratched on the glass wall of its prison. Ren felt a sudden sympathy with it.
    “Yes, odd breeding,” Queen Elder finally murmured. “Are you sure of their claims?”
    “He wears the Emerald Hart.”
    “Which has been faked in the past.”
    “I believe their claim.” Ren handed her mother the copy of Wellsbury’s memoirs. “Wellsbury herself reports sending the Whistlers into Castle Tastledae during the time that Prince Alannon vanished. Trained thieves, desperate for a husband, and a missing prince—I don’t know why no one has ever connected the two before now.”
    Her mother opened the book where Ren