A Brother's Price

rows stringing out to create a scarlet centipede stamping its way through West End. A narcissistic young lieutenant by the name of Cowley rode at the head of the column on a showy white mare. Raven kept shadow-close to Ren and her guard in the rear.
    Many of West End’s streets were meandering tracks, following what once were footpaths through a wood of live oaks. Dunning Street, however, turned out to be a long straightaway, narrowing slowly in degrees, ending at the doors of the mill.
    Ren scanned the crowds of onlookers as they made their way down the street, looking for the Whistlers. What had happened to them?
    Cowley called for a halt, and the drums rattled and dropped silent. Over the heads of the infantry women, Ren could see Cowley dismount to try the tall, wide mill doors. The lieutenant obviously found them locked as she moved off to one side and motioned the first rank in position to force them open.
    Suddenly gunshots, muffled by the walls of the mill and distance, echoed up the street. A single shot, then a score, sounding like a string of firecrackers.
    The women in the front line ducked out of habit, but didn’t move to return fire—obviously the shots weren’t aimed at them.
    The Whistlers ! Ren cursed hotly. “Get the door open! Get inside!”
    The shooting continued as Cowley barked out orders and the second line crowded up beside the first, shoulders to the door. The drummer took up a beat to coordinate their efforts.
    Come on! Come on!
    A long sharp whistle from a nearby rooftop caught Ren’s attention. She glanced up and saw Eldest Whistler crouched beside a chimney. Eldest pointed down the street to the doors, shouting something unheard over the wind and the rattle of the drum. She made a hard chopping motion with her hand, made a fist, and let it fly open, then pointed urgently to the shop door beside Ren. She started to repeat the whole sequence when Ren recognized the first hand signal.
    Trap!
    But what kind of trap did you lay for an army? Ren gasped as the second signal became clear. Grapeshot! The thieves had the cannons loaded with grapeshot and pointed them down the street.
    “Ambush!” Ren shouted, throwing herself off her horse. “Get to cover!”
    “Take cover!” Raven repeated, though it wasn’t clear if she had seen Eldest herself or just took up the cry. “Take cover!”
    There was a muffled thud and a flash of fire from the mouth of the street. Out of the corner of her eye as she raced for the shop door, Ren saw the mill doors flying outward on a plume of fire, blown off by small explosives set at their hinges. Flame and smoke engulfed Cow-ley and the front line, as the great doors skipped and jumped down the street on the force of the explosion.
    The tableau beyond the blasted doorway stamped itself on Ren’s vision. Two cannons, the cyclopean eyes of their barrels pointed straight down the street, sat in temporary cradles behind a wall of sandbags. Like so many cornered river rats, twenty women in dirty ragged clothes crouched around the cannons, two already lowering the burning wand of a fuse lighter.
    “Take cover!” Raven shouted again, somewhere behind Ren.
    The cannons roared, spitting out flame and screaming grapeshot.
    Ren flung herself through the shop door. She had an instant impression of heat and fresh bread—it was a bakery. Then, through the open door behind her, like a sharp hailstorm of death, the grapeshot blasted up the street, shredding everything in its path. Women shouted in horror and screamed in pain; some of their cries cutting off abruptly. The abandoned horses went down, great bloody slashes laying them open.
    And then there was silence.
    “Return fire!” Ren shouted, scrambling back to the shop door, hoping that someone was alive to hear her. “Stop the next volley! Return fire!”
    The street reeked of blood and viscera. Her troops had tucked themselves into every alcove and doorway. Her yelled commands shook them out of their shell shock, and they returned fire in a thunderous volley.
    Where the hell is Raven? Has she been killed?
    Half the thieves were reloading the cannons, ignoring the rain of bullets, while the other half kept the royal troops at bay. If they managed to reload and fire, her troops would be cut to ribbons.
    “Set bayonets and charge! Engage in hand-to-hand!” Ren shouted, working her way down the street from niche to niche, tearing her voice ragged in an attempt to be heard. “Charge!”
    They heard her and