But not enough to turn away her money. Or stop antagonizing her.
I take a step back, grinning sharply. Her eyes narrow. “We don’t dock until the confluence the day after tomorrow,” I say.
One of her hands darts, and the coin sails end over end, a flash of gold in the sun. I catch it deftly, enjoying my own triumph and her poorly disguised disdain.
“A pleasure having you on board, Princess,” I call over my shoulder as I walk away.
The sunset turns the river bloodred, lengthening every shadow until we seem to swim through darkness. At the prow, Gill keeps watch for errant logs or drifting sandbars. Crickets on the bank and frogs in the shallows sing. It’s a quiet night on the Ohius, an easy current drawing us farther southeast. I hope, when it’s my time, I die on a night like this.
When Big Ean doles out supper, I expect the Silver to balk at the quality of our food. It’s not terrible, but our provisions certainly aren’t up to the standards a princess would be used to. Instead she takes what she’s given without a word, then eats quietly by herself on her bench. Salt jerky and hard biscuits seem to go down as easily as the finest desserts in Piedmont.
The rest of us gather on the deck, circled up on crates or the deck itself to eat. The pair of kids, Melly and her older brother, whose name I’ve learned is Simon, are already asleep against their mothers, their bellies full. The parents, named Daria and Jem, split their provisions evenly before offering some to us.
Riette waves them off before anyone else can, her gap-toothed grin wide. In the soft electric light of the keel, she looks worn, her scars of the river more pronounced. She’s ten years my elder, but new to the keel life. Barely a year on my deck. She’s Freeland born, raised without allegiance or obedience to any crown. Same as me, same as Hallow. We have a different way about us, the Freeland Reds.
“Long road?” Riette says kindly to the mothers, pointing with a biscuit at the kids.
The darker woman, Jem, her hair and eyes black as gunpowder, nods. “Yes,” she says. One hand absentmindedly strokes Melly’s curls. “But Melly and Simon have been warriors through it. It’s taken a long while to reach the Disputed Lands.” Disputed. That’s what Crownlanders call us. As if we are something for the Silvers to fight over, and not a country unto ourselves, free of their rule. “We’ve come all the way from Archeon.”
In my mind’s eye, a map unfurls. Archeon is hundreds of miles away. I speak around a bite of jerky. “Servants.”
“We were,” Jem replies. “When the rebels attacked the king’s wedding, it was easy to slip away in the confusion, escape the palace, flee the city.”
News travels well along the river, and we heard about the Nortan king and his ill-fated wedding a month ago. The king lived, but the Silvers certainly felt the sting of the Scarlet Guard and the Montfort troops. Things have only deteriorated since, we hear—civil war in Norta, a Scarlet Guard insurgency, Montfort moving steadily east. And news of it all finds its way downriver eventually, carried on the war current.
From outside our circle, a voice sounds.
“You served Maven?” the princess asks. She stares at Jem, her face inscrutable in the weak light of the keel.
Jem doesn’t quail under her gaze. She tightens her jaw. “Daria worked in the kitchens. I was a lady’s maid. We had little to do with the king.”
The Silver is undeterred, her supper forgotten. “Then his wife. The Lakelander princess.”
“She had her own servants from her country to serve her directly.” Jem shrugs. “I was a queen’s servant, though, and in the absence of a queen, I served the prisoner. Not directly, of course—no Red was allowed near her—but I carried her linens, her food, that sort of thing.”
Big Ean brushes biscuit crumbs from his short beard, dusting his crossed legs. “The prisoner?” he says, eyes narrowed in confusion.
The princess’s voice is stern. “You’re talking about Mare Barrow.”
This only deepens Big Ean’s bewilderment. He glances at Riette for an explanation. “Who’s she?”
She sighs loudly, rolling her eyes at him. “The Scarlet Guard girl.”
“Oh right,” Big Ean replies. “The one who ran off with that prince.”
Another cluck of annoyance escapes Riette. She swats him. “No, idiot, the one with an ability. Lightning. Like a Silver but not. How could you forget her?”
Big Ean just shrugs his massive shoulders. “Dunno. Red running off with a prince sounded more interesting.”
“They’re the same person,” I grumble, shutting them both up.
Just because we get news doesn’t mean we get it properly, in order, or entirely true. Some Rivermen and Freelanders spend their days sorting out what’s going on outside our borders, in the chaos that rules the Crownlands. Personally, I don’t bother with the rumors and just wait to see what solidifies into truth. Hallow cares more about any of it than I do, and tells me what I need to know.
“And Barrow isn’t a prisoner,” I add. I saw one of her broadcasts myself when I was far upriver, when the Red girl decried the Scarlet Guard and their agenda. She wore jewels and silk and spoke of the king’s kindness and mercy. “She joined up with the Nortan king willingly.”
On her bench, the Piedmont princess laughs sharply into her cup of water.
I cut a glance at her, only to find her already sneering. “Something funny about that?”
To my surprise, it’s Jem who answers. “The girl certainly was a prisoner, sir. No doubt about that.” Next to her, Daria bobs her head solemnly. “She spent most days locked in a room, guarded and chained, brought out only when that conniving little boy wanted to toy with her or use her voice to sow dissent.”
The rebuke is soft, but my stomach churns uncomfortably. If that’s true, then that’s a punishment I can’t imagine. I try to picture more of the lightning girl in my head. I remember the broadcast, her voice, but her face is obscure. I’ve seen it before, I know it. Brown hair, sharp eyes. But that’s all that comes. I can say the same of the monarchs ruling the Crownlands. A teenage boy rules Norta, the bejeweled Prince Bracken holds sway in Piedmont, a nymph king and queen control the Lakelands.
Jem’s gaze is still sharp on me, and I feel scolded in the lightning girl’s name. It’s my own fault. I try to stay out of things, try to keep my focus on what’s right in front of me. I don’t bother with great and terrible people of the world. I only know what I must of them to stay alive, stay ahead, and nothing more. And even that, it seems, is flawed.
I return to my meal in silence.
“Did you know any of them?” Jem asks, bold enough to address the princess with such a question.
I don’t expect her to answer. There are many Silvers in this world, but not all are so highborn or important. Especially those in the Freelands. They don’t know the distant names shaping the world behind us. But she continues to surprise me.
One corner of her mouth lifts in a grim smile. “I’ve met Maven, and his exiled brother. Long ago, when we were children of allied kingdoms. I can’t say I know Iris of the Lakelands.” Something in her voice sharpens. “But I know her family well enough.”
As with her coat, she tosses the rest of her water into the river, watching it splash overboard, swallowed into darkness. And she speaks no more.