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