Wen Spencer - Brothers Price

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A Brother's Price

By

Wen Spencer

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Praise for the Ukiah Oregon novels

Dog Warrior

“Readers looking for a nice jolt of the supernatural-sleuth variety need look no further. Wen Spencer’s

got you covered.”

—The Agony Column

Bitter Waters

“An engrossing, thrill-filled adventure, full of fascinating alien—and human—weirdness.”

—Locus

“The series is worth the price.”

—VOYA

“Wen Spencer’s Ukiah Oregon stories owe more to the Detective genre than to Science Fiction, which

is what makes them so compelling. Oh, sure Ukiah is half alien, a hundred or so years old, once lived as

an Indian, ran with wolves and can’t be killed short of incineration, but every PI has baggage… The SF

aspects of it are fun… But take away the alien parts and you’ve still got a great action/detective story,

which is why you should pick up Wen Spencer’s trail wherever her literary muse takes her next.”

—SFRevu

“The rocketing pace… had me glued to the pages.”

—SF Site

“An exciting science fiction thriller that stars a vulnerable and powerful hero who is impossible not to

cherish… a must read.”

—BookBrowser

“[Spencer] has blended in private investigation, science fiction, and fantasy into a rip-roaring tale…

More books like this would probably expand the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre’s readership… A

book that keeps going from strength to strength, the action just won’t stop, and it will appeal to fans of a

wide spectrum of fiction.”

—The Alien Online

“The continual character development adds another dimension to the story… The tension builds nicely…

An exciting chapter to the continuing adventures of Ukiah Oregon.”

—Rambles

“Ms. Spencer has a mighty fine imagination.”‘

—Science Fiction Romance

continued…

Tainted Trail

“Spencer continues to amaze, cranking up both suspense and wonder.”

—Julie E. Czerneda

“A fun read, definitely worth checking out.”

—Locus

“Spencer’s skillful characterizations, vividly drawn settings, and comic exploitations of Ukiah’s

deceptively youthful, highly buff looks make the romp high light entertainment.”

—Booklist

“A unique and highly entertaining reading experience.”

—Midwest Book Review

Alien Taste

“Each and every character is fascinating, extraordinarily well-developed, and gets right under your skin.

A terrific, memorable story.”

—Julie E. Czerneda

“Revelations ranging from surprising to funny to wonderfully inventive. A delightful new SF mystery with

a fun protagonist.”

—Locus

“Spencer has written an intriguing contemporary science fiction tale. Her characters come alive on the

page and their uniqueness will grab and hold you.”

—Talebones

“The characters are fully developed and understandable. This novel is keeper shelf material.”

—BookBrowser

“Spencer takes readers on a fast-paced journey into disbelief. [Her] timing is impeccable and the

denouement stunning.”

—Romantic Times (4 star review)

“A fabulous mix of science fiction, suspense, romance, and the nature of wolves, in a story like none

you’ve ever seen.”

—Science Fiction Romance

ROC

Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3. Canada (a

division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL. England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Cambenvell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of

Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a

division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South

Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, July 2005

REGISTERED TRADEMARK -MARCA REGISTRADA

Printed in the United States of America

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or

third-party Web sites or their content.

To Ann Cecil and June Drexler Robertson

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Ann Cecil, W. Randy Hoffman, John Schmid, and Linda Sprinkle for all their help.

Chapter 1

There were a few advantages to being a boy in a society dominated by women. One. Jerin Whistler

thought, was that you could throttle your older sister, and everyone would say, “She was one of

twenty-eight girls—a middle sister—and a troublemaker too, and he—he’s a boy,” and that would be

the end of it.

Certainly if a sister deserved to be strangled, it was Corelle. She was idly flipping through a magazine

showing the latest in men’s fashions while he tried to stuff a thirty-pound goose, comfort a youngest sister

with a boo-boo knee, and feed their baby brother. Since their mothers and elder sisters had left the

middle sisters in charge of the farm, Corelle strutted about, with her six-guns tied low and the brim of her

Stetson pulled down so far it was amazing she could see. Worse, she started to criticize everything he

did, with an eye toward his coming of age—when he would be sold into a marriage of his sisters’

choosing.

She had previously complained that he chapped his hands in hot wash water, that trying to read at night

would give him a squint, and that he should add scents to his bathwater. This morning it was his clothes.

“Men’s fashion magazines are a joke,” Jerin growled, trying to keep the goose from scooting across the

table as he shoved sage dressing into its cavity. If he hadn’t spent years diapering his seventeen youngest

sisters and three little brothers, the goose might have gotten away from him. The massive, fat-covered

goose, however, was nothing compared with a determined Whistler baby. “No one but family ever sees

their menfolk! How do these editors know what men are wearing?”

“Things are different with nobility,” Corelle countered, and held out the magazine. “It’s the whole point

to a Season: to be seen! Here. This is the pair I want you to make for yourself.”

Instead of good honest broadcloth trousers, the fashion plate showed kid-glove-tight pants with a

groin-hugging patch of bright colored fabric. Labeled underneath was Return of the codpiece: it allows

the future wives to see what they are buying.

Jerin wrestled the goose into their largest roasting pan. “Don’t even think it, Corelle. I won’t wear them.”

“I’d like seeing you say that to Eldest.”

“Eldest knows better than to waste money on clothes no one will see.” Jerin worked the kitchen pump

to wash the goose fat from his hands. Much as he hated to admit it, Corelle’s aim was dead-on—he

wouldn’t be able to face Eldest and say no. Two could play that game, though. “Eldest is going to be

pissed that you went to town and got that magazine. She told you to stay at the farm, close to the house.”

“I didn’t go to town, so there.” Corelle, nonetheless, closed the magazine up, realizing it was evidence of

a crime.

So where did she get it? Jerin swung the crying little girl holding on to his knees up onto the counter

beside the goose. It was Pansy, when he had thought it was Violet all this time. “Hey, hey, big girls don’t

cry. Let me see the boo-boo. Corelle, at least feed Kai.”

Corelle eyed the sloppy baby playing in his oatmeal. “Why don’t you call Doric? It’s boys’ work. He

should be learning all this from you before you get married. Your birthday is only a few months

away—and then you’ll be gone.”

Luckily Pansy was crying too hard to notice that comment.

“Doric is churning butter and can’t stop,” Jerin lied. “If you want to spell him, I’m sure he’d rather be

feeding Kai instead.”

Corelle shot him a dirty look but picked up the spoon and redirected some of the oatmeal into Kai’s

mouth. “All I’m saying is that the—that certain families are making noises that they want to come courting

and see you decked out in something other than a walking robe and hat. Hell, you might as well be

stuffed in a gunny-sack when you’re out in public—at least as far as a woman knowing if you’re worth

looking at or not.”

“That’s the point, Corelle.” Jerin had gotten the mud and crusted blood off of Pansy’s knee and

discovered a nasty cut. He washed it well with hot water and soap, put three small stitches in to hold the

flesh together, and then, knowing his little sisters, bandaged it heavily to keep the dirt out. He ordered

firmly, “Now, don’t take it off,” and unlatched the lower half of the back door to scoot Pansy outside.

In the protected play yard between the house and the barns, the other sixteen youngest sisters were

playing reconnaissance. Apparently Leia was General Wellsbury; she was shouting, “Great Hera’s teat,

you Whistlers call this an intelligence report?” According to their grandmothers, this was the phrase

uttered most often by the famous general after their spying missions. Accurate, it might be—but too foul

to be repeated in front of the three- through ten-year-olds.

Jerin shouted, “Watch your mouth, Wellsbury!” and went back to the goose. At least the goose had

nothing annoying to say.

The same, unfortunately, could not be said of Corelle. “You need some nice clothes so we can show

you off and make a good match. People are saying you’re not as fetching as rumored.”

As if anyone cares what I look like, as long as I’m fertile. Jerin made a rude noise and seasoned the

goose’s skin. “Who said that?”

“People.”

Then it all clicked together. The criticism, the magazine, the clothes, and a certain family annoyed that the

Whistlers were landed gentry—despite their common line soldiers’ roots—making them a step above

their neighbors. “You’re talking about the Brindles!”

“Am not!” she snapped, and then frowned, realizing that she had tipped her hand. “Besides, they have a

right to see what they’re getting before the papers are signed. None of them has ever laid eyes on you

outside of a fair or a barn raising—which is hardly seeing you at all.”

“You better not be thinking of bringing them here while Eldest is gone. She’ll have your hide tacked to

the barn! She doesn’t want them past the east boundary fence unless the whole family is here.”

“Nay neighborly of ‘er,” Corelle retorted with such an up-country drawl that it could have been straight

out of a Brindle mouth.

“Not neighborly of her.” Jerin heaved the goose up into the oven and slammed shut the oven door. “You

sound like a river rat, half drunk on moonshine.”

“What does it matter, how we talk?” Corelle deemed herself finished with Kai, now that his bowl was

empty. She drifted away from the high chair, leaving the mess for Jerin to clean up. “The Brindles think

we’re putting on airs, paying so much attention to speaking correct Queens’ diction. All we’re doing is

annoying our neighbors.”

Jerin worked the kitchen pump to wet a towel to wash up Kai. “Who cares if we annoy the Brindles?

None of our other neighbors are bothered by how we talk. And you know why we speak this way, even

if the Brindles don’t. Our grandmothers paid with their lives to buy us a better lot in life—for their sake,

we don’t give up an inch of what they won us.”

Corelle made a great show of rolling her eyes. “No one is going to marry you for your diction. They’re

going to marry you for your die—”

Jerin twirled the damp towel into a rattail and snapped it like a whip, catching her on the exposed skin of

her wrist.

She yelped, more out of surprise than pain. Anger flashed across her face, and she started toward him,

hands closing into fists.

He backed away from her, twirling up the towel again, heart pounding. When they were little, only

Corelle would risk Eldest’s wrath to hit him. and now their older sisters were far from home. There was

the sudden, tiny, fearful knowledge that Corelle was wearing her pistols. “Don’t make me get the spoon!”

She checked and they glared at one another across the cocked and ready towel.

“You be civil, Corelle,” he finally managed. “You have no need or place to talk low to me. Eldest will

decide what I wear, whom I see, and whom I marry, so there’s no call for you to be fussing at me over

it.”

Corelle pursed her lips together as if to keep in bitter words, her blue eyes cold as winter sky.

In the high chair behind Corelle. Kai started indignant squawking.

“Take care of the baby,” Corelle snapped, to give herself the last words of the fight, and stalked out of

the kitchen.

Jerin had just put Kai down to sleep when he heard the first rifle shot. He froze beside the cradle,

listening to the sharp crack echoing up the hollow.

Maybe it was just thunder, he rationalized, because he didn’t want it to be gunfire. He replayed the

sound in his mind. No, the sound definitely came from a rifle.

Who would be shooting in their woods? Damn her, had Corelle gone out hunting? Eldest had told all

four of the middle sisters to keep at the house, to forgo even fence mending, while their mothers and

elder sisters were gone.

Another shot rang out from the creek bottom, then a third, close after the second. The back door

banged open. His younger siblings spilled into the house like a covey of quail, the littlest sister running in

first, the older ones doing a slower rear guard, scanning over their shoulders for lost siblings or strangers.

Blush, second oldest of the youngest sisters, stationed herself at the door, tapping shoulders to keep

count. “Drill teams! Prepare for attack! Shutter the windows, bar the doors, and get down the rifles.

Fifteen! Sixteen!” Blush snapped, and tagged Jerin. “Three.” Then pointed to the cradle. “Four?”

“Four boys,” Jerin said automatically, although stunned. Sixteen? There should be seventeen youngest,

and the four middle sisters.

Blush dropped the bars on the upper and lower halves of the back door. First downstairs, then upstairs,

the shutters banged shut and their bars rattled into place. Little girls moved through the shutter slats of

sunlight, working in teams of mixed ages to load two rifles and guard every window.

“What’s going on?” Jerin asked. “Who’s shooting? Where are Corelle and the others?”

Blush gave a look of disgust that only a twelve-year-old could manage. “Corelle, Summer, Eva, and

Kira went over to the Brindles‘. courting Balin Brindle. Heria said she thought she heard riders in the

woods. She took her rifle and went out to have a look-see.”

“Heria!” The fourteen-year-old oldest of his youngest sisters had more courage than sense. “Holy

Mothers above!”

“Eldest is going to skin Corelle alive,” one of the youngest whispered.

There was a ripple of agreement.

“Watch the windows!” Blush barked.

Too precious to risk in a fight, the boys were left with nothing to do but whisper. Liam complained about

his blocks, left outside in the sudden retreat. Doric speculated that it was only Corelle in the woods,

doing a bit of hunting while coming home from courting. Jerin would have liked to believe that—but

Corelle knew perfectly well there was no need for fresh meat with the elder half of the family gone and a

thirty-pound goose in the oven. Most of the youngest still ate like birds.

“What do we do?” a youngest asked Blush after several minutes of silence.

Blush clutched one of the family’s carbine rifles. “We stand guard until Corelle comes back.”

A thunderous pounding at the back door stopped them cold.

Blush scurried to Jerin’s side, the soldier training that had been carrying her vanished, leaving only a

frightened twelve-year-old. “Jerin?”

Jerin swallowed his fear and whispered, “Identify the enemy and establish numbers.”

Blush nodded rapidly, her eyes wide and rounded with fear. Still, she managed to shout, “Identify

yourself!”

The pounding stopped. “Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!”

A sigh of relief went through the room.

“It’s Heria!” Doric cried and was immediately hushed.

“Everyone, get to posts.” Blush struggled to return to their training. “What’s the password, Heria?”

“I don’t remember!” Heria wailed beyond the door. “Lemme in!”

Blush looked at Jerin, unsure what to do.

“Use the spyhole.” Jerin gave Blush a slight push toward the kitchen door. “Make sure she’s alone. Then

let her in, but only open the bottom half of the door.”

Blush had to fetch a stool to reach the spyhole. She covered the delay by calling out, “You know we

can’t let you in without a password, Heria!”

There came a minute of cursing that would have made their father blush and their grandmothers proud.

Finally,

Heria remembered the week’s password. “Teacup! It’s ‘teacup’!”

“Well, the whole county knows it now!” Blush complained. “She’s alone! Let her in.”

Heria pushed her rifle and ammunition pouch in first. then scrambled in on hands and knees. Once inside,

she remained crouched on the flagstones, panting, as the door was bolted shut again. The red stain of

blood on her shirt made Jerin forget to stay out of the way. He dropped down beside her.

“Are you hurt?” He tried to get her up so he could see where she bled. “Did someone shoot you?”

Heria shook her head, squeezing his shoulder comfortingly, and gasped. “Not my blood.” She

swallowed hard. “The—they didn’t have guns, only clubs and sabers. There’s a soldier—in the creek!”

“Did you shoot her?” Jealous admiration tinted Blush’s question.

Heria shook her head. “No. Riders chased her down out of the woods by the bend. They knocked her

off her horse, into the creek. I thought they were going to kill her. and we’d get blamed, so I shot at

them. The first shot just startled them.” Which meant she probably missed, and they hadn’t realized how

lucky they had been. “They didn’t start to run until the second shot. 1 winged one of them.”

This got a murmur of admiration from the others.

Jerin hushed them. His youngest sisters might not see the danger remaining with the riders gone. “But

they didn’t kill the soldier?”

“She’s got a big bruise on her forehead and she’s out cold in the creek.”

“In it?” Jerin cried. “Oh, Heria, you didn’t leave her to drown, did you?”

“No, of course not,” Heria said, which earned her a few dark looks from her sisters. “I got her sat up,

put some rocks behind her, then laid her back down. It was the best I could do because I couldn’t move

her otherwise. She’s Corelle’s size and all dead weight.” Which meant the soldier was nearly as tall as

Jerin. “I didn’t know what else to do. She’s out of the water, and I’ve got her pinned so if she only half

wakes, she’s not going to roll in and drown.”

“Good!” Jerin said. He was relieved that the entire younger half of the family was all accounted for,

sound and secured. Now if only the older half were here, armed and ready!

“What about the riders?” Blush pressed Heria. “How many were there? Did they look like a raiding

party? Are they coming back?”

“I saw five women. They didn’t look like sisters, didn’t act like sisters. They looked like river trash.

Dirty. Ragged. Poor. I winged the biggest.”

As she spoke, Jerin glanced about the kitchen at the girls clustered around him. Most barely came to his

chest and only Heria weighed more than a hundred pounds. Three or four of the older girls combined

could get the soldier out of the creek and to the house. But that would leave girls under ten to guard the

boys.

“I’m going down to the creek and getting the soldier,” he announced, standing up.

“What?” all his little sisters shouted.

“If she’s alive, we can’t let her die on Whistler land,” he said.

“Damn right we can!” Blush snapped. There was a roar of agreement.

“We can’t!” Heria shouted. “Jerin’s right. It’s the law. We have to lend aid to travelers in distress.”

“Who would know?” Leia, the third to oldest, argued. “We just say that we never found her until after

she died.”

“Her attackers would know,” Jerin pointed out. “They probably know that the soldier is alive, and that

at least one of us knows it, because a Whistler shot at them.”

“Who would they tell?” Blush asked. “It would be stupid for them to tell anyone. They’ll be admitting to

beating the soldier up.”

“Better than being blamed for murder,” Heria snapped. “What do you think they’ll say if the Queens

Justice catches them? ‘Yes, we killed her,’ or ‘Oh, no, she was still alive when we got chased off?”

Silence fell as his sisters recognized the truth of Heria’s argument.

Wen Spencer - Brothers Price

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