Daughters of Ruin

Dedicated to anyone looking for the reliable truth, especially the truth in their own lives.

Three little queens went riding into Meridan

Three little queens who won't ride out

The price of war makes a strange inheritance

Four little puppets all pretty and proud.

—Children's nursery rhyme

THE KINGDOM OF MERIDAN,

TWO YEARS PAST THE TREATY OF SISTER QUEENS

T
he royal carriage tilted on two wheels as it careened onto the dirt path behind a pair of panic-stricken horses. Flames blew out from the suitcases tied to the back of the coach and ruffled in the wind like torn skirts.

The driver was long gone—thrown to the ground by the two bandits sitting in his seat.

One of them—the one missing both of his ears—leaned over the harnesses, trying to reach the reins, which were dragging at the horses' feet. The other bandit had a permanently broken nose. He held his partner's belt to keep him from falling.

Doors on either side of the carriage flapped open and shut.

A five-year-old girl with pigtails sat on the floor of the coach and cried. She held a dagger with two hands and whacked it at the cushioned seats for no reason. Suki.

Three older girls waited for the carriage to topple back onto four wheels, then began climbing out.

The bandits didn't notice at first.

A girl with blond hair pulled back by a green and black sash—the colors of Findain—climbed out first, holding her dagger in her teeth. She was athletic and nimble, as if she had experience moving on a lurching vessel. Cadis.

On the opposite side of the coach, another girl exited. This one had short black hair cropped in the Corentine style and held her dagger backward along her forearm, in the way of assassins. She was lithe and made the least noise as she scrambled to the forward section of the carriage. Iren.

The earless bandit cursed as the reins dangled just out of reach. The broken-nosed bandit, holding him by the belt, looked back and shouted, “Hey! Get inside!”

The girls didn't listen.

As Cadis reached the luggage racks on top of the carriage, the last girl followed tentatively behind her, staying a bit too close. Like the others, she wore the light leather vest and vambrace of dragoon scouts made especially for one so small. Her chestpiece bore the royal seal of Meridan. Rhea. Her eyes flitted in too many directions. Her long curls flew in her face. The hand that should have held her weapon was used to keep the locks out of her eyes. The knife remained strapped to her calf.

The horses crashed through a hedge.

The carriage ramped over it.

For a second everyone was airborne.

The flames licked at the bags on the top rack.

The carriage landed with a crunch on the rear axle.

Cadis of Findain, with the green and black sash, landed on her stomach atop the coach. Iren of Corent had disappeared by climbing down the side of the coach to the undercarriage.

Rhea of Meridan lost her footing and held on to the top rack. Below her, the dirt lot sped past. If she fell it would scrape for bone and mangle what it found.

The broken-nosed bandit let go of his partner and grabbed the driver's whip.

“Back now,” he said. He whipped at Cadis. She kept her knife in her mouth and held up a forearm. The vambrace took the lashes with no harm.

“Get back!”

The horses raced madly toward a rounded wall.

Cadis ground her teeth on the dagger and coiled her body, ready to lunge at the bandit.

He whipped at her arm again.

The back wheel of the carriage wobbled.

Its axle broke.

The Findainer planted her feet, just as the wagon jerked.

She heard a scream coming from behind her. Someone shouting her name, “Cadis!” but she paid no attention.

She had stepped on fingers as she launched herself at the broken-nosed bandit.

The two of them tumbled from the carriage and smashed into the dirt—the bandit taking the brunt of the fall.

Rhea wrenched back her crunched hand and fell. She hit the ground and curled in a ball as she skidded across the lot.

The one inside the coach, little Suki, had been strapped to the seats. She kept crying and slapping the sideboards with the flat side of her dagger.

The horses continued the blind stampede to the wall.

The earless bandit finally grabbed the reins.

Before he could straighten himself and yank the reins to stop the horses, a face appeared right below his.

“Hello,” she said.

Iren of Corent had climbed the undercarriage and now lay upside down, a foot above the dirt lot and even less distance from the pounding hooves of the horses. She held herself like a plank, her feet wedged on the front axle braces.

The bandit yelped in surprise.

The girl smiled. In one backhand motion, she swung the dagger and cut the reins. There would be no stopping. Iren closed her eyes and let herself fall. The carriage sailed over her. She hit the ground flat and spread her arms and legs to scatter the impact. When the horses noticed the impending wall, they whinnied and twisted a sharp turn to the right, planting the broken rear axle into the dirt.

The flaming carriage toppled over.

The little one shrieked from inside the coach.

The earless bandit lost his footing, and the carriage's motion sent him flying.

The horses wailed and fell sideways.

Burning satchels bounced in every direction.

A cloud of dirt poured over the crash like a yellow fog.

As the dust settled in the Royal Coliseum, the five-year-old from Tasan sat on the dirt floor, where she had landed after falling from the coach, and continued to cry. The other three princesses circled around her, swinging their daggers at one another's faces.

No elegance. No showmanship. Not even the prudence to stab the blades at the exposed wrists, where any damage would cripple further attack. No love for the craft.

Just the pure hate of children forced to live together.

Hiram Kinmegistus watched from the conductor's trench, unamused and overheated in his academy robes. His shinhound sat beside him, licking a paw.

The tutor, Marta, shouted instructions to the girls.

“Suki, get up! It's okay, darling. No need to cry.”

“Rhea, close your position.”

“Like Iren. Look at her lead foot. Her
left
one.”

“Her
other
left one.”

“Too aggressive, Cadis.”

“Suki, for the love of anything holy, please get up.”

The girls only ever seemed to aim for the eyes, but had no sense of the length of the blades, or even their arms. They flailed at one another like flustered geese.

Near them, a broken carriage lay on its side, one wheel spinning in the breeze. Two horses, still attached by the harnesses, struggled to free themselves. Two men lay dead beside them.

The tutor glanced at Hiram, the king's man, standing in the trench with his arms crossed under his magisterial robes. He would report back to King Declan—from the look on his face, it wouldn't be positive.

The servants preparing the stadium for the upcoming Revels—washing the seats and hanging banners—quietly watched the princesses from the grandstands.

Marta shouted, “Suki, please, stop crying.”

Perhaps it was unjust to pick on Suki, the youngest, when she and Cadis and Iren were taken from their parents only six months ago. They were driven—each from their homes, their own families, their own countries—to Meridan as “wards” of King Declan. Suki was five now, while the others were on either side of seven. They were to be raised as sisters, equal to Declan's own flesh-and-blood daughter, Rhea, as if such a thing were possible.

Half the court of Meridan couldn't tell if the Sisterhood of Queens was a gesture of ludicrous optimism, or a cruel joke that only Declan appreciated.

Six months ago, when Hiram Kinmegistus had appeared at Marta's garden fence and hired her to instruct the young queens, she had asked him exactly that. “Is this a political farce, Magister? Am I a tutor or a prison guard?”

The magister loomed above her tomato plants like the specter of a reaping angel and smiled crookedly. “If you'd ever attended the Corentine Academy, Marta, you would know they are roughly the same job.”

Rhea was the one to pull the first knife. Even before the wheels stopped turning on the wrecked carriage, she screamed, “You did it on purpose!” And she charged Cadis. “You crushed my hand on purpose!”

Cadis was tallest and strongest already. She had sailed on ships back in Findain, with pirates. She blocked Rhea's downward swing easily with her own knife and slashed quickly to counter.