A Brother's Price

secured. Ren picked out Eldest, Summer, and Corelle easily, then Jerin’s other elder and middle sisters too, leaving a whole host of Whistlers she had never seen before. They were, she realized, Jerin’s cousins, the Annaboro Whistlers.
    “Your Highness.” Eldest nodded to Ren as she flashed hand signals to her family. “It’s mighty hard to hold a wedding when you half drown most of the wedding party.”
    “What?”
    “We spent half the night plucking people out of the river. We would really like it if you took better care with our brother from here on in. He doesn’t swim all that well.”
    “You’ve found Jerin! Alive?”
    Eldest grinned. “Aye. We fished Princess Halley and Captain Tern out too.”
    “They all are all right?”
    Eldest sobered. “We sent Jenn home with my aunts. He’s chilled to the bone, addled, and took in lots of water. He should be fine, with bed rest. Captain Tern has a broken leg, else she’d be here. Your sister—we had to all but sit on her to keep her back where things are safer. A hard thing to do with a royal princess.”
    Ren laughed. “And how did you find me?”
    “Oh, we just followed Kij.”
     
    The Whistlers secured the Porters and then escorted Ren back to the river to wait for a hastily commandeered steamer to pick them up. Halley arrived with a guard of four Whistler cousins. Despite the six months and the night of hardship, Halley looked younger than Ren remembered, bruised but grinning. She had stained her red hair black, but the night in the river had washed much of it out, leaving only her roots dark.
    Ren hugged her hard, glad to finally see her alive and well. Releasing her younger sister, Ren swatted her on the shoulder. “Don’t ever do that again!”
    “What, go over Hera’s Step? I won’t, I promise! Once was enough!”
    Ren blinked at the answer. This was the Halley she remembered from years ago, not the solemn woman who’d haunted the palace for the last six years and sto-len away eight months ago. “I meant disappearing. You’re more important to me than petty revenge.”
    “It wasn’t just revenge, Ren. It was the fact that everyone kept looking to me to be the Eldest when I wasn’t. Six years, and Barnes would still come to me five times out of ten. I thought if I disappeared for a while, people would look to you like they should.”
    Ren felt a flare of anger at all the worry and trouble she had dealt with since Halley had vanished. “Don’t you think, as Eldest, I should have decided how to handle it?”
    It was Halley’s turn to look startled, and then she grinned. “Well, I don’t think eight months ago you would have thought it was your due.”
    Perhaps.
    By unspoken agreement, they turned away from their escort and walked along the river.
    “I’ve been worried sick about you,” Ren said. “You could have written more often. My nightmares started back up after you vanished.”
    “Ah! Sorry.” Halley stooped to pick up a handful of stones, then hurled one into the river, grunting. “I suspected someone close to us, even the Barneses. I wasn’t thinking high enough. I didn’t dare write.”
    “They fooled us all.”
    Halley flung another stone and, while watching it skip away, asked, “So, what do we do about Eldie?”
    In all the confusion, Ren had forgotten about her niece. “What do you mean?”
    “We can’t let her live.” Halley flung another stone, but it sank on the first skip.
    “What?” Ren felt like she’d been punched.
    “Holy Mothers, Ren.” Halley picked up another handful of stones, avoiding her startled gaze. “We’re going to execute her mothers and grandmothers. They killed our father, our sisters, and stole our husband. We can’t let them walk away from this.”
    “What the hell does that have to do with killing Eldie?”
    “Face the truth, Ren. She’s the incestuous fruit of the man who poisoned the prince consort and the woman who blew up half the royal princesses! Do you think any of even her most remote noble relations are going to take her? Do you think we’re going to take her? You would ask our youngest to be raised with her? Her father murdered ours. Do you think our babies would be safe around her once she realized that we executed her mothers and grandmothers?”
    Ren shuddered at the image of a smothered infant, a baby “accidentally” dropped, a killer lurking amid all the dangers a young child narrowly missed, from the fireplace to the fishpond. Still, she