A Brother's Price

Captain Tern rode outrider on her big black, easily keeping pace, her eyes sharp for danger.
    While they traveled, they discussed what to buy at the mercantile in town. Mother Elder started the discussion by clucking over the condition of Jerin’s traveling hat, and stated that he couldn’t board the packet without a new one. Summer had promised all those left behind to buy stick candy and send it home with the wagon. Eldest wanted ammo for their pistols, which, in Mayfair, would be their principal weapons. Jerin needed cream for his hands, as they were hopelessly callused and chapped by his chores, but he wouldn’t give Corelle the satisfaction of hearing him say it aloud. Corelle, of course, had no money, so it came as no surprise when she declared that she would stand guard on their luggage with Mother Erica.
    By Eldest’s pocket watch, they arrived in town a good two hours before the packet was due. She pulled the wagon up to the mercantile’s hitching post and swung down to tie the horses off. Captain Tern tied her black alongside, then came to give Jerin a hand down. Eldest frowned but said nothing; she was used to him scram-bling up and down on his own, but then normally he wore trousers.
    The mercantile was the largest building in town, with twin mullioned bay windows bracing the door. A wooden sidewalk ran the length of the front, and the hitching posts were cast iron. The Picker sisters had run the store for as long as anyone could remember. The tiny old women had frightened Jerin when he was small; compared to his tall, lean grandmothers and mothers, the merchant sisters seemed like something out of a fairy tale.
    The bell over the door announced the Whistlers’ entrance. They scattered among the bins and tall shelving: Captain Tern followed Jerin to the hand creams near the back counter, and watched without comment as he studied the selection. Apparently only men used hand cream. The bottles showed simplified pictures of hands, flowers or fruit, and perfect little mounds of cream; one chose by scent. Lilac. Rose. Jasmine. Apple. Peach. Vanilla. Jerin wondered which scent Rennsellaer liked the most; he wished he had the nerve to ask Captain Tern. Then again, would the captain of the guard even know?
    He chose vanilla and took it to Eldest so she could buy it for him. She stood at the back counter, box of ammo in hand, watching with interest as one of the Picker sisters painted a sign. Jerin couldn’t tell the sisters, with their faces wrinkled up like dried-apple dolls, apart; Eldest, who did most of the family purchasing, could.
    “What’s this, Meg?” Eldest tapped the painted sign. •‘You’re selling the place?“
    “Yup,” the wizened old woman said. “The store, the outbuildings, and all of the goods. We’re getting too old to run the place. Haddie fell and broke her hip last night; she’s the youngest of us Picker girls and we depended on her to do all the heavy work. We’ve talked for years about putting this place on the market. Last night just decided it for us.”
    “Your family has been here for ages,” Eldest said.
    “One hundred and thirty-three years,” Meg said proudly. “Mothers to daughters for”—the old woman paused to count on her fingers—“five generations. My great-great-grandmothers came upriver with a boatload of goods in 1534 and bought two acres of land from the crown. But we’ve always had bad luck with the menfolk. Not like you Whistlers.”
    Another Picker sister had come up the aisle to brush past Jerin. She came only to his chest and stood child-sized next to his sister. She gazed toward Mother Elder with sharp, envious eyes. “Rumor has it that you’ve got another on the way.”
    “Don’t jinx us, Wilma Picker,” Eldest growled. “It’s unlucky to talk about a child still in the womb.”
    “Gods love the boy children—that’s why they call so many back before they can be born.” Meg used the most popular belief for the cause of miscarriages.
    “Our mothers had twenty-six miscarriages,” Wilma sighed. “And Mother Ami had one little boy stillborn, perfect down to his fingernails yet blue and cold as the sky. The grief of it nearly killed her.”
    “Hush, you ninnies.” Eldest Picker hobbled out of the back room, hunched nearly double with a widow’s hump, leaning heavily on a cane. She paused to poke threateningly at her younger sisters. “Decent women don’t talk that way in front of menfolk, especially the young