Read Online A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith - Free Book Online

galloped to the finish line right after,
and then more appeared, all riding at the same speed. When they
finished, they were laughing and calling mock-insults at one
another as they brought their sweaty, blowing mounts round to the
small knot of people gathered—the cold wind tugging and snapping
their clothes and hair—to watch the stragglers finish up the race.
Lios was at the center of the crowd.
    Lios joked with his friends. Rhis didn’t know
any of the people any more than she knew their past experiences.
Feeling closed out, she left the garden and trudged back against
the wind to the palace.
    With her tousled hair redone and warm, dry
clothes on, she rejoined the party, which was gathered on the
windowed terrace adjacent to the garden. They were still talking
about the race, mostly teasing the losers.
    Iardith and her admirers crowded around Lios,
of course, and around pale Jarvas of Damatras, who had won. But
Taniva, who had nearly beat Jarvas, wasn’t included. She stood at a
window alone at the other end of the terrace, staring out at the
rain.
    As everyone wandered about, talking or
helping themselves to the trays of hot snacks the servants brought
in, Rhis gathered her courage and made her way to the tall princess
in the bright vest, layered skirts, and crimson blouse. Vest,
blouse, and the top layer of her skirt were edged with tiny chimes;
in her black sash she wore a spectacularly handsome knife with a
black and silver hilt. The sheath was studded with brilliant blue
gems.
    “Very fine riding today, Taniva,” she
said.
    The princess turned her head and studied Rhis
for a long moment. She had long, slightly slanted greenish gray
eyes, broad cheeks, and a flat nose. Her skin was more pale in
color than the lowlanders’ and Rhis’s, with a yellowish cast. It
was a better color, Rhis secretly thought, than Jarvas’s pinkish
pale. Taniva’s clothes tinkled faintly when she moved.
    “I do not know you?” Taniva asked. Her accent
was strong.
    “I’m Rhis. Of Nym. Southern mountains,” Rhis
added awkwardly.
    Taniva smiled, and her face was transformed.
“Ah, mountains! Then you too must feel this place a cage.
Pest! I wish to go home. But I promised to come. So I stay.”
    “You don’t enjoy it here?” Rhis asked.
    “Maybe I do, if . . .” Taniva shook her head.
“No. To complain is to whine like a zeem-bug. No one wants them
around. You are not afraid to be seen talking to me?” Her lips
curled.
    “Why should I be? Do you kick people?”
    “No. Nor do I stab, with the words,” Taniva
added.
    Now Rhis knew what the princess was talking
about. And probably who.
    “You’re too good with a sword,” Rhis said,
grinning as she remembered her conversation the night before.
    “Have to be—” Just then Taniva gave a stiff
nod.
    Rhis turned. The blond Jarvas, still
surrounded by Iardith’s crowd, raked his pale gaze down Taniva. His
eyes narrowed when they stopped at Taniva’s jeweled knife. He gave
a slow nod, unsmiling, over the short red-haired girl’s head. Then
he turned back to the beautiful Iardith.
    “There is an enemy,” Taniva said, waving a
callus-palmed hand toward Jarvas, then placed it on the blue-hilted
knife in her sash. “Our people are enemies. We know it, but we
understand one another. That Iardith, now, I do not
understand.”
    Rhis remembered the two or three times her
eyes had met Iardith’s. Each time the Princess had turned away
dismissively. Rhis had assumed it was just because Rhis was a
stranger, hadn’t been introduced. Now she wondered if it was
because she was younger, and plain, from a small kingdom.
    “I’ve never spoken to her,” Rhis
admitted.
    “You have not enough importance,” Taniva
said. Her tone was too matter-of-fact to be insulting. She was
making an observation, and Rhis ducked her chin in acknowledgement,
not particularly happy to find her thoughts corroborated. But it
was probably right.
    Taniva gave the garden view a brooding
glower. She