A Brother's Price

recoiled at the thought of executing the golden-haired five-year-old so proud of her missing front teeth. “She’s just a child.”
    “Now she’s a child. In eleven short years, she’ll be the age Keifer was when he killed Papa. Kij and Keifer had no good reason to hate you and me, except for deeds of our grandmothers. Do you really want their child, with better reasons for hating us, anywhere near our children?”
    “Stop it, Halley! This is our niece. This is Eldie!”
    “She isn’t our niece,” Halley said coldly. “Keifer didn’t father any children on us, thank the gods, and he died before she was born—severing any connection between our families.”
    “I have spent five years thinking of her as my niece, Halley. I can’t think of her in any other manner.”
    “If we don’t take her, she’ll have nowhere to go. She’ll have to make her way like the river trash. Do you think that’s kinder to a child her age?”
    “We could take her,” someone said behind them.
    Ren and Halley turned, surprised, as Eldest Whistler came out of the darkness.
    “We could take Eldie,” Eldest said. “Our great-grandmother Elder was executed for treason. The judges, though, were merciful. They let the rest of the family live. Our grandmothers could have been bitter, but they had been raised knowing you made your choices and paid for them when you were wrong. Twenty of my thirty grandmothers gave their lives in the War of the False Eldest, fighting for the very people who put their Mother Elder to death. There is redemption for the innocent.”
    ■‘I don’t understand why you’d offer.“ Ren said, though she was glad for it.
    Eldest shrugged. “You’re marrying my brother. That makes us sisters. It sort of makes her our niece. She’s not yet six, and since your youngest were her only playmates, the Porters couldn’t leak any poison into her heart. She’s not even really incestuous fruit—Kij and Keifer had different fathers and mothers, which normally would have made them cousins at most. It would be a shame to shoulder her with her parents’ blame.”
    “You’ll raise her like a sister?” Halley asked, obviously surprised.
    “I’ve got fourteen youngest sisters under the age of ten; what’s one more?”
    “What happens when they marry?” Halley pushed. “How could you expect them to share their husband with her?”
    “It will be up to them to decide. After looking at my family records, I suspect that my family started when a group of women banded together and called themselves sisters. We’re not ones to worry about bloodlines. If you’re willing to run the risk, we’d be willing to raise her.”
    Ren glanced to Halley, saw her willing, and nodded. “Have someone go now, though, and get her away from the Porters. I don’t want them to have a chance to plant any murderous thoughts in her before we execute them.”
    Jerin woke in a strange bed. in a strange room, wearing a strange nightgown. He sat upright, panicked. Someone had taken off all his clothes to put new ones on him! Who? What else had they done to him? His head ached; there was a bandage on his head and the flesh underneath felt tender. Snatches of his adventure swam up through his memory, but nothing was complete or sensible. He had been kidnapped, had been on the Destiny , and had been in the river. If he had been on the Destiny , why had he been in the river? Had Kij thrown him overboard? Where was he now?
    He threw back the sheets and swung his bare feet out of the bed. A quick check showed his stash pouch was missing, and so was his derringer. There was a wardrobe beside the bed. He opened it to find men’s clothing, good in quality, in his size, and vaguely familiar. He fingered them, then looked about the room again. He knew this place. Relief poured in as he realized where he was. Annaboro. His aunts’ house. His cousin Dail’s room.
    The door swung open; almost as if summoned by his name, Dail came in, a slightly younger reflection of Jerin, carrying a load of folded towels. “Oh, good, you’re up!”
    “Dail!” Jerin caught his cousin in a hard hug. “Oh, merciful Mothers! I didn’t know where 1 was!”
    Dail laughed, patting him on the back. “You’re safe! Mothers brought you home last night, looking like a drowned cat. Eeeew, you still stink like river water. I’ll have to change my sheets before tonight.”
    “What happened? How did I get here?”
    Dail shrugged, nonchalant. “I don’t know. No