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