8. Ratter

RATTER

O n Solstice Eve, I let Verity exchange the passwords when it was time for the party at the new safe house. She and I had come first, with Dev, Augusta, and Peony about ten minutes behind us. The boys had agreed to come an hour later, to give the girls who might not be able to handle being around strange males time to get a meal, and get used to the idea. Baby, Smith, and King were all young enough to still look like children, but Trevor and Robert were full-grown men, though only Robert was an Alpha so far. They both stood around six feet tall, and were muscular from years of practice fighting with our dads.

Robert knew how the women reacted around Alphas, and had volunteered to stay with the royal tots, but I’d made a deal with two of Vilkurn’s spies who were in Turino for the holiday. They would take his shift so he could join us. He needed to be here; he was one of the only Alphas I trusted entirely.

And the women needed to learn to trust him. Robert was a born protector, and would make sure no one messed with them.

Gertie opened the door, the four separate locks sliding smoothly, until her small face poked out. “Ratter! What’s all that?”

“Cabbage, I’m afraid,” I replied with a grin. Rolling her eyes, she widened the door to let us in. My arms were filled with bags full of candies and an enormous basket of fresh, still-warm cinnamon rolls that Haven had made that day, no questions asked.

Well, she’d asked how many to make, when I’d told her I was going to have a farewell party with some friends. I’d said four dozen, but judging by the weight of the basket, she’d made twice that. Papa Niko had gently reminded me that Haven baked when she was under stress. “Saying goodbye to her eldest daughter? We might need to open a bakery on the side of the school just to get rid of all the excess cakes,” he’d teased.

I entered with Verity, shocked at how quickly the women had transformed the glassworks into a home. The hallway just inside was still bare, but once we went through the second door into the main room, we entered a scene straight out of a Solstice play. One of the glass firing ovens had been lit, and was filled with a blazing coal fire that heated the entire space. They’d hung boughs of evergreen in all the corners, and heaped them high on the long wooden tables that ran the length of the room, along with holly branches. Besides the oven, torches and candles lit the room. My jaw dropped, taking it all in, and I hardly noticed when a pair of hands plucked the basket from my grip.

There was so much food. Side tables were piled with dishes and platters loaded down with all kinds of foods. Tureens of soups and stews, rolls shaped like small animals, cakes, pies, and so much more.

“How?” I gasped.

Verity passed me with a grin, grabbed some plates, and began to put them out. I wasn’t certain where they’d gotten all the chairs from; there hadn’t been this many before. “Surprise! We’ve been here all day while you packed and met with the street rats. We did the shopping this morning, as part of our farewell present. The whole crew helped.”

“It’s more than enough, from all of you,” I said, placing the enormous bag of candies on the massive chair that bore a paper crown and a sign with my name, obviously written by a child. I ran my hand on the velvet-cushioned back of the chair that was almost a throne. Wait. Half the chairs were normal ladder-backed kitchen chairs like Haven had around our table at home. But the others… “Aren’t these the same kind of chairs King Rigol has in his study?”

“Had, maybe,” Verity muttered, her focus on setting the table perfectly. “Always thought that room was cramped with so much furniture.”

I sighed. “Please tell me you didn’t rob the castle for this party.” My crew had sworn to stop stealing from the castle, ever since a six-year-old Baby sent all of the queen’s consorts into a panic by nicking a box of taffies off the table in her room.

During one of her annual heats.

I cringed, remembering how angry her Alphas had been when Vali had gone into a weird Omega rage at the foreign scent in her room.

Now that I thought about it, the hams warming in the oven were in large pans that had the royal crest on the ends. “Verity. You stole from the king?”

Verity’s eyebrows flew high as she rounded on me. “Absolutely not!” I’d almost relaxed, when she finished, “I’m a princess, remember? King Rigol said it himself. It’s not stealing if you already own it.”

Amused, but trying to hide it, I sat on the big velvet chair just as a group of girls burst through the door, giggling and carrying wrapped packages. They approached shyly and placed them in front of me. “What’s all this?” Behind them came Peony, Dev and Augusta, all three of them pretending exhaustion and slumping down in chairs when they got to the table.

“This is your feast,” Dev said with a smile, though I noticed a suspicious wetness in her eyes. “The girls declared you their Solstice Queen. Put on the crown, Your Majesty.”

The room filled in minutes, the girls eating and everyone laughing, until Winna entered, with the younger boys of the crew right behind her. They looked like they’d been in a fight, their clothing rumpled and scrapes on their faces. “Is there room at the table for these miscreants?” Winna asked the room.

The women all smiled at King and Baby, as did most of the girls. One or two backed away, until Baby wandered over with a sticky handful of flowers, handing it to one of the girls. She was one of the most traumatized in the group. Her father, an Alpha, had intentionally burned her with hot oil when she was four to punish her mother for dying on him and leaving him to care for the children alone. Seven years later, her skin remained rippled and puckered all along her left side, and she hadn’t been able to speak to a male since.

Baby’s cheeks were bright as he spoke to her softly. “Hiya, Heather. Remember how I told ya your name was a flower? I brought you some. It’s heather.”

She reached out with one trembling hand, touching the purple-red flowers with a gentle finger. “Th-thank you, Baby.”

He blushed even deeper, and I realized that he was close to twelve now. Old enough to be thinking about girls, maybe? “Can I get you to help me do something, Heather?” She nodded timidly. “I need a new name. Baby isn’t… Well, I need a name other than Baby.”

I blinked back tears. His name was the only thing he had from his birth mother. Haven and I had wondered if he’d want to change it someday, but hadn’t pressed him to do so.

To the shock of everyone in the room, Heather reached out with her burned hand and took his, leading him to the side table. “Can I still call you that, though?” she asked. “I like Baby.”

He blinked, swallowed hard, and then dropped his gaze, suddenly fascinated with the floor. “I, ah, I wouldn’t mind being Baby to you.” Everyone forced their eyes away, though my crew all had expressions of wonder and surprise that they tried to mask before Baby noticed.

“What happened on the way over?” I asked King as he perched on the chair next to me.

In answer, he dropped a fancy velvet bag on my lap. “Had to get your Solstice gift.”

I opened the bag, and a bunch of Verdanian coins spilled out. “You stole it?” I guessed.

He scoffed. “I wouldn’t steal your Solstice gift, unlike some.” He squinted at Verity and made a face. “I won it in a dice game, fair and square. They got angry at losing to a ‘lad’ and came after me.”

“Fair and square?” Peony teased. “You’ve never played a fair game of dice in your short life, King.”

“I barely cheated at all!” he protested. When she asked if they might ask around and find out who’d cheated them, he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll just lay low until after the Solstice. They’ll be gone the day after tomorrow, anyway. I heard them talking about it.”

I sighed. “You robbed the Verdanian trade ambassadors I’m going to be traveling with?”

He shrugged. “Where else was I going to get you some walking-around money for Verdan? It’s not like I can make my own. Although, maybe… if I could get just enough gold to cover the outside of a penny’s worth of iron, Smith could help with the design…”

The room went silent as he screwed up his face in thought, dreaming of a counterfeit operation, then exploded into laughter. We were all still laughing when Winna appeared at the doorway and announced, “Ladies? We have two young men who would like to share our early Solstice meal. May I bring them in?”

Four of the women jumped to their feet and scurried out the back door. The rest stood, poised for flight. But when my two oldest brothers appeared in the doorway, Robert dressed as the Solstice King in blue and white velvet with a wide belt and tall black boots, and Trevor as his horse loaded down with dozens of bags, the tension vanished like a snowflake over a flame.

“Who here would like an early Solstice gift?” Robert said in his deep voice. “I’m afraid my bags are too full and heavy, and carrying it for much longer may tire out my trusty steed, Winter. Is there anyone here willing to help me empty it, for his sake?” Trevor, wearing a yarn mane and tail, brown felt covers over his hands and feet for hooves, and a cloth horse’s head mask with two holes that showed his mischievous blue eyes, gave a convincing, tired whinny.

The girls who had been frightened before melted into a chorus of giggles, and descended on him like a swarm of bees, pulling the bags away. The chorus turned into shrieks of delight as the ones among them who knew how to read well enough recognized their names on the bags.

Gertie’s eyes welled over, and she buried her face in Winna’s skirts. “The Solstice King brought us presents, Mama Winna. He ‘membered us.” When Trevor ambled over and gave a whinny that sounded like her name, Winna took the last two bags off his shoulder, hers and Gertie’s.

The little girl opened hers at the table, pulling out a new dress and a set of books with the myths of the Goddess as well as pictures. Haven had read these same books to us years before.

“She knows?” I whispered to Robert as he came close.

He shrugged. “She set a stack of books out this morning, asking me to find somewhere to donate them. She must suspect something.”

Winna had set her own bag aside to help Gertie with hers, but when I nudged her, she opened it, taking out a half-dozen skeins of the softest gray wool I’d been able to find, and then the things the rest of the crew had tucked inside. Soon the table was piled high with all the gifts: sweets, combs and soft hairbrushes, feather quills and rolls of parchment, small bags of spices, fancy threads and squares for quilting, and more.

The girls kept running over to Robert to thank the “Solstice King” for everything, and by the end of the hour, I caught him wiping his own eyes more than once.

When I heard Gertie whisper to Heather, “I never knew the Solstice King was an Alpha. Maybe Ratter’s right. Maybe there’s a few good ‘uns,” I knew I had to leave, or I’d be a sobbing mess.

When I stood, though, the crew stopped me, with Smith and King calling out, “Time for your gifts, Ratter!”

“What gifts?” I asked, just as a small hand pulled me over to a side table covered in wrapped packages that I’d assumed were for the girls. But then I saw the fabric these presents were wrapped in had been hand painted with small rats. I opened them carefully, folding the cloth as I uncovered each one.

Winna had knitted me a soft scarf just one shade darker than my cloak, and the other women had made socks, mittens, and even long stockings. There were eight drawings of me doing all sorts of ridiculous things: fighting a dragon, flying on golden wings and battling some sort of sea monster, climbing up onto a tree that looked weirdly like a man, jumping into an enormous fire with knives in both hands, and… I almost choked.

For some reason, someone had done a gorgeous picture of me, wrapped in my cloak, sitting in the middle of a nest made of blankets, pillows, and hundreds of gemstones. They’d even found some sort of mica-flecked paint to make the stones shimmer. This one hadn’t been done by a child; it was every bit as good as the portraits I’d seen hanging in the castle.My face blazing, I hastily tucked the pictures away.

Winna covered her mouth to mask her laughter. “Sorry about that. Zara was the one helping the girls with their gifts before she, ah…” She nodded in the direction of the far side of the factory, where Zara and her mate were still holed up for her heat. “She was inspired.” Winna wiggled her eyebrows, and I stuck out my tongue.

“Come on, Ratter, we have to get back home now,” Verity said softly, then raised her voice. “And the Solstice King and his mount need to take gifts to some others in the city.”

Everyone groaned, but I knew she was right. Tomorrow, we would have our family Solstice party, and the next morning, I would have to be on the road before dawn.

Standing, she retrieved one last gift from the table. I took the slim package she handed me, and opened the bag. “Oh, Verity! It’s beautiful!”

It was the most exquisite knife sheath I’d ever seen. Hand-tooled black leather had been pressed with the Rimholtian royal crest, rats, and the moon and sun symbols of the Goddess all around the edges. The hardware was all brass, but shone like gold. I unbuckled my belt and slid it on, placing one of my plain knives inside. The blade was a little too small, and the fit was loose, but I could stuff some fabric inside, or get a longer knife. In Verdan, probably.

Baby nudged me. “It was made for your old dagger. We tried to get it back. The jeweler wouldn’t sell it to us for what we had.”

Augusta grumbled, “And when we went back in to lift it, it was already gone! We thought it’d been stolen; the shop was tossed. But he said he had the money for it in his lockbox, and he wouldn’t spill who bought it.”

“The buyer tossed the shop?”

She shrugged. “Broke a chair, and some glass. More threw a tantrum, it looked like. Nothin’ else was nicked.”

Huh. That was odd. “He was all right?” They nodded. “Well, whoever bought it won’t have the world’s best knife sheath to go with it.” I smiled at them all. “Thank you, crew. Thank you, Winna, and everyone. You know how much you mean to me. If you ever need me, truly, I’ll come if you send word.”

They buried me in a hug, my crew hanging back while the women and girls all whispered their goodbyes and gratitude for the years of safety. There were far too many tears for comfort, so the crew moved us out toward the main room again, doing a few acrobatic tricks to lighten the mood. Gertie ran up and placed the paper queen’s crown back on my head, while Trevor got down on all fours and whinnied for me to mount up. I did, and the others bowed and curtsied as we made our way to the door, me waving with a cupped hand like I’d seen a stuck-up Mirrenese princess do from her carriage.

As they walked me to the door, I noticed Heather holding hands with Baby, and two of the older girls giving Robert and Trevor considering looks. Verity’s eyes met mine, and she nodded. Things were changing in our city, for the better.

And even if I wasn’t here to watch all those changes happen, my crew would be.