Daughters of Ruin (2 page)

“Ow! You cut me, you
bestiola
!” Rhea dropped her blade and grabbed the bleeding slash on her forearm, just above the vambrace.

“Yeah,” said Cadis. “That was the
point
.”

“Actually, I don't think that was the point of this exercise,” said Iren, tossing her knife aside, uninterested in explaining herself.

“Besides, my boots slipped,” muttered Rhea. She let the words die off, disgusted with her own excuse.

Cadis didn't even bother to reply. She turned to Iren instead. “Do you think they just want us to make her look good?”

Iren shrugged. She nodded at the king's adviser in the conductor's trench. “I think they want us to show off, to dance in front of them, make them feel safe.”

Cadis held her knife in her teeth as she adjusted the green and black sash that held back her blond hair.

As Marta approached the girls, she waved at her son. “Endrit, go free those poor horses.” The boy dashed from the far end of the grounds, where he had been using the maze of balance beams while the little queens didn't need them. “And be careful,” said Marta.

The horses scuffed with rising panic.

“Now,” said Marta, “what was that?” She put her arms on her hip guards, a gesture common in drill sergeants. As an aside she said, “At ease, gentlemen.”

The two previously dead men, lying beside the carriage, sat up, dusted themselves, and stood at attention.

The girls were none too eager to explain.

“Suki, please shut up,” said Rhea.

“No!” said Suki, kicking dust.

“Don't worry about her,” said Cadis.

“Don't tell me what to do,” snapped Rhea. “You're not the leader.”

“None of you is the leader,” said Marta, commanding their silence. From the corner of her vision, she spotted Hiram climbing out of the trench and marching toward them. She cursed under her breath. “Now stop bickering and tell me what happened.”

“Cadis cut me,” said Rhea. She glared at the three girls who had been thrust into her life. Marta drew up Rhea's arm. She gently pulled Rhea's hand off the wound and examined it. Rhea winced.

“What did I tell you about that left foot?”

Rhea didn't answer.

“It was too far forward, throwing off her balance and hampering her ability to lunge or dodge tactically,” said Iren without any hint of reproach, just stating facts. They didn't know her very well, but the other girls suspected that Iren spoke like a magister just to show off. She claimed she had an entire library back home in Corent. She'd read twice as many books as Rhea, which was about ten times as many as Cadis. They didn't know if Suki could even read—all she ever did was slap the books away.

“Very good, Iren,” said Marta.

“Cadis was too aggressive,” said Rhea.

“Only if my opponent could punish me for it,” said Cadis. “So I'd say I was exactly aggressive enough.”

In the silent moment, as Rhea boiled in her own resentment, they could hear only Suki's droning wail, the cleaning crews in the stands, and Hiram's footfalls as he approached. His hound had no leash or bell and made very little noise as it trotted behind the magister.

Just before he arrived, Marta whispered, “Please, children. Behave.”

The three older princesses turned and acknowledged the king's man with the customary half bow required of minors. Cadis was unaccustomed to the gesture. In Findain, the ruling earl was considered first among equals. A bow would be laughably formal to the ship captains and merchant lords of her father's court.

She bowed anyway.

Hiram's gaze was fixed on Cadis, perhaps for that exact reason, to see if the Findish—daughter of nothing better than a “gold noble”—would ever civilize herself.

“Our queens,” said Hiram. He bowed only to Rhea, which made Rhea beam and straighten her pose. “I see Marta is preparing quite a show for the Revels.”

“Yes, sir,” they muttered, finally embarrassed of their performance.

“Go away!” shouted Suki. She grabbed a fistful of dirt and threw it in his general direction. Rhea kicked Suki's foot, which only punctuated her sobs.

“Marta, would you care to tell me your aim with this particular . . . endeavor?”

Marta cleared her throat but remained stiff in her formal stance and salute.

“Ah. I always forget,” said Hiram, grinning. “A good old soldier. At ease.”

Marta widened her stance and put her hands behind her back. She had been a decorated officer of Meridan's old wars, before Declan's rise and conquest, but the king's man still outranked her by several titles. He hadn't won any of them on the battlefield, but Marta was trained too well to show any disdain.

“You may speak, soldier,” said Hiram, waving with the back of his hand.

“Sir, we thought it would be appropriate to show the girls working together as sister queens.”

“So you threw them from a moving carriage?”

Marta's mouth made a straight line. “Not exactly, sir,” she said through gritted teeth.

Hiram was a man in his prime—too young for the magister robes. Underneath he carried a baton, which he knew how to wield in lethal combat, but which he used to instruct the dogs in his kennel. In the inner linings of the robes were dozens of pockets, where the young magister carried rolled parchments.

As Marta waited to explain herself, Hiram pulled out one of the parchments and checked to make sure it carried the note he intended. “Go on,” he said.

“The king said he wanted something grand that showed unity among the queens.”

Hiram raised an eyebrow. He knelt down and tucked the rolled sheaf into a canister hanging around the shinhound's neck.

“I don't know where the fire came from,” said Marta.

Hiram whispered something into the hound's ear and sent it running toward the coliseum gate.

When he returned to his feet, he was no longer interested in anything Marta had to say. “You two. Soldiers, attend.”

The broken-nosed and earless soldiers scrabbled forward and struck sloppy salutes.

“What've you got to say?” said Hiram.

The soldiers remained silent. Rage coiled in Hiram's brow. Were these men refusing to speak? Declan's army was always hunting for new insults to throw at Hiram behind his back. He could sense the cleaning crew, pretending to work as they watched his every action. “Very well,” he said, ready to dismiss them both. “Latrine duty, now.”

“WHAT'S THAT, SIR?” shouted the earless soldier.

Hiram stepped in front of the soldier and peered down his nose. “Could you hear me the first time?”

“SORRY, SIR. WAR WOUND AND ALL THAT.” The soldier pointed to one of his missing ears. Hiram couldn't tell if this was a jab at his own war record. He glanced at the broken-nosed soldier, who was still staring into the distance.

“And what about him? Why didn't he answer me?”

“HE'S A LOWLANDER, SIR, BEGGIN' YER PARDON. HE DON'T EVEN SPEAK DOG.”

“Does he know what a latrine is?” said Hiram.

“YESSIR,” said Earless, “BUT IN THE LOWLANDS I THINK THEY CALL 'EM HOME SWEET HOME.”

The broken-nosed soldier betrayed himself with a knowing smile. Hiram caught a glimpse of it before the soldier could go back to pretending he didn't speak the language. Hiram didn't have the time to wrestle respect out of two lowly footmen.

“Latrine duty, both of you, go.”

Both soldiers knocked their heels, turned, and marched off to dig out the coliseum cesspits in time for the Revels.

Hiram sighed. He'd have to speak to the girls.

He entered their loose circle and cleared his throat. “Your highness queens, tell me, what—” Hiram stopped himself. He refused to shout over the din of a wailing child.

Cadis knelt beside Suki and tried to console her with a story. “Suki, hey, Susu. Listen. Wanna hear about Miss Rusila? I'll tell you a story if you stop crying.” Suki usually begged for Cadis's tales of Rusila, the Maid Marauder—one of the great pirate legends of Findain. This time she shook her head and wailed even louder.

Rhea stood with her arms crossed, exasperated.

She was suddenly plagued by sisters and felt as pleased by it as a dog with drill-nose ticks.

Iren observed, as she always did, as if the other girls were behind a museum glass.

Hiram Kinmegistus waved Cadis away with a reassuring nod and lowered himself to be eye-to-eye with the five-year-old Suki. The three older girls backed away. Aside from Rhea, none of them had ever spoken with the magister. And even Rhea had always been in her father's court, where the palace guards made her feel safe.

When he had enough space to whisper something that only Suki could hear, Hiram said, “Now, little one, tell me why you're crying.”

Suki had already swallowed her louder sobs. She trembled.

“Did you hurt yourself in the crash?”

Suki shook her head, her chin tucked into her chest.

“No? Well, that's good. It's good, isn't it?”

Suki nodded. She even smiled a little at the man's obvious question.

Hiram looked around, then caught Suki's eye again. This time, he spoke in Tasanese, a language Suki hadn't heard since the day her parents sent her away. It filled her with such comfort, as if she'd caught the scent of her own mother.

“Do you remember those two soldiers I sent away? The one with missing ears and the one with the broken nose?”

Suki nodded again.

“What if I told you I'm a misfit, too? Look.” The magister opened his mouth wide and poked a finger back to a space where the last tooth should have been on either side.

Suki giggled at the absurdity of the king's man shoving his giant hand into his own mouth. Hiram pretended to gag, and Suki laughed even harder. He had a warm smile. “And what if I told you,” he said, “that I was starting a collection of misfits, and now I need a little girl, hopefully with swollen cheeks from crying all the time?”

Suki's eyes went wide.

“And that all the misfits get latrine duty or my job, and you'd probably rather the latrines?”

Suki thought about it for a moment. “I'll stop crying,” she said.

Hiram wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “That's a shame,” he said. “We could have used your small hands for the really grimy crevices.” Suki squished her face in grossed-out amusement.

Hiram stood up and faced them all once again. Marta had joined the other girls. Hiram reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out a blank roll of parchment and a sharpened piece of graphite. “So then, let's begin at the moment in the exercise when our expertly trained soldiers, acting as common rogues, take over the carriage and somehow manage to snap the breaking lever, to drop the reins, and spook the horses.”

Cadis and Rhea looked at their boots, unwilling to start. Iren finally spoke. “They didn't spook the horses. The fire in the baggage rack did, which we started.”

“Why?” said Hiram.

“To spook the horses,” said Iren, as if it were obvious.

“So your plan was to create havoc and hope that it would all come to rights?”

“We didn't
have
a plan,” said Rhea.

“Yes, we did,” said Cadis. “
We
did.” She gestured at herself and Iren. “
You
wouldn't listen.”

“Why should I listen?” shouted Rhea, shrugging off Marta's hand from her shoulder. “You keep acting like the boss, and you're not. You're a cheating Findainer.”

“Rhea!” shouted the tutor.

But Rhea was already weeping. She whirled back on Marta, a whole world of confusion and pain darkening her expression. “Why are you defending her? She threw me from the carriage.”

“Wait, what?” said Cadis.

“Don't lie! You stomped on my fingers.”

“I didn't,” said Cadis. “I swear.”

“And you cut me!”

She held up her forearm, covered in a blood-soaked bandage.

“But you attacked me first,” said Cadis to no avail.

Nothing would stem Rhea's fury when she felt small and weak. Even if they believed her, Rhea knew her father would say she was begging for pity.

Hiram scribbled notes onto the sheet of parchment in the palm of his hand. Marta reached out to calm Rhea, but the young queen pulled her arm away. “Don't,” she grumbled. “We all know what the dirty Findish did.”

For the first time that morning, Cadis's composure broke, her face reddened, and she took a step toward Rhea. Iren, who had been shaving the fine hairs on her arm with her exhibition dagger, snapped a hand out and held Cadis back with the flat of the blade.

From the ground came Suki's entreaty. “
I
don't know what the dirty Findish did.”

Hiram looked down at the queen sitting at his feet, fiddling with his bootlaces, and smiled. “Very well,” he said. “You're old enough for the truth.”

He reached down and picked up Suki so she'd pay attention and so she wouldn't cut herself on the pincer sheathed in his boot.

“The war began when the treacherous Findish assassinated our own good King Kendrick and Queen Valda.”

“Of Meridan,” corrected Suki.

“Yes, the king and queen of Meridan.
Our
king and queen.”

“I'm a queen too,” said Suki.

“Of course, and we'll get to that,” said Hiram. “King Kendrick was my friend. He was a good man. And those gold nobles, jumped-up merchants, had him slaughtered for commercial gain.”

“That's not true!” said Cadis, her whole body trembling.

“I'm sorry, but I was there,” said Hiram. He seemed genuinely torn at the idea and took no joy in hurting Cadis. All the wounds were fresh for everyone. Perhaps it was still too early for such ugly history.

“Fighting alongside the traitors were the Tasanese.”