A Brother's Price

need?”
    “Some noble families are richer than you can ever imagine, little one,” Raven said. “Some are poorer than your family. Some of them will look at you and see what a good, beautiful young man you are. Some will only see you as the grandson of common line soldiers. There will be families where the Eldest is free to choose any man she desires, and in other families the mothers will have to approve of you first.”
    “So it’s all ‘maybe’ and ‘it depends.’ ”
    “Yes.”
    Jerin let go of her wrist, knowing she told him the truth, wishing she had lied. “A simple ‘yes’ would have been kinder.”
    “No, it wouldn’t have,” Raven said. “Much rides on how you and your family present yourself. To get what you want, you can’t be careless in your actions.”
    “I see.”
    They stood in silence, absorbed in their own thoughts, as the dark river murmured far below.
    “Tell me,” Raven said after a few minutes, “what does your family mean when they say ‘a shining coin’?”
    “It’s a long story.”
    “We have time.”
    “My great-great-grandmothers were first-generation line soldiers. We don’t know what drove them to enlist. Maybe it was that or starve.”
    “For many it is.”
    “They won their way into the Order of the Sword, giv-ing them access to the military cribs. Many families chose only one man to father all their children, to maintain the illusion of normalcy, I guess. My great-great-grandmothers hadn’t, and it showed. My great-grandmothers were a very motley crew.”
    Raven rubbed the Order of the Sword tattoo on the back on her hand. “It sounds like me and my sisters.”
    “Their mutt breeding, though, was what saved them. Apparently just looking at them lined up at the court-martial inspired the judges to believe my great-grandmother Elder acted alone when she committed treason.”
    Raven laughed softly.
    “Still, they were discharged, stripped of pensions, and all their daughters were barred from service. They didn’t know anything but soldiering, and they started to starve to death. Grandma Tea ended up in charge of the family, and she managed to force the Sisters of the Night to take them in, train them as thieves, but she wasn’t happy. No retirement, no pension, no crib, no future except to dance at the end of a rope.”
    “They still tell stories of Tea Whistler. She was a force to be reckoned with.”
    “One day, all the luck of the Whistlers changed. Grandma Tea had gone to her Mother Elder’s grave and made a bargain with her.”
    Raven snorted but said nothing.
    “She told her mother that she didn’t blame her for what she had done—being a soldier of the line wasn’t a wonderful thing. Tea’s mothers had no husband of their own, lost sisters to diseases caught in the crib, lost sisters for causes they didn’t understand, and lost daughters to the wet and cold and hardship of following the drum. It was a slow and steady grind. Many think it is taking them uphill when it is only wearing them down.”
    “Unless a sister makes it to officer grade, yes, the army eats families.”
    “Grandmother Tea recognized that her Mother Elder had made a desperate gamble to better their lot, and lost—she grabbed for a coin tossed in the air and missed. If she had caught the coin, her sisters and daughters would have praised her. Instead they cursed her name and spit on her memory.
    ‘“So Grandmother Tea made a bargain. She needed an opportunity, that golden moment, where playing loose and wild and reckless, like her Mother Elder had, gave her the slimmest chance to win. She pledged that if her mother gave her the opportunity, just set the coin flying into the air, even if she didn’t catch it, they’d honor her memory.”
    Raven shook her head. “And she got a shining coin?” Jerin nodded. “The day she was caught while thieving by Wellsbury. She convinced the general that trained thieves would make excellent spies. That led to being knighted and given the farm, and kidnapping Grandpa. Our family hasn’t been poor and starving since then.”
     
    Eldest was still awake when he came into their cabin. He should have known that she wouldn’t sleep until he was safe in the room. She sat cross-legged on her bed, cleaning her revolvers.
    “Be sure to secure the door,” she said without looking up. The shutter on the cabin window was already latched and a piece of lumber wedged in the frame to reinforce the shutter.
    Jerin locked the door and