Deadweather and Sunrise by Geoff Rodkey

again.
    “How come… you and your mother…?”
    “Why is she such a hectoring shrew? Is that what you’re asking?”
    “She doesn’t seem like a shrew.”
    “Because you’re not her daughter.”
    “No, but… I mean, she doesn’t even smack you—”
    “Like to see her try.” Then Millicent sat up and turned in her chair, leaning in toward me like she was telling a secret.
    “Know what her problem is? She’s insanely jealous. Because I’m going to run Daddy’s business one day—he already lets me sit in on meetings, and he tells me absolutely EVERYTHING aboutwhat’s going on. Things he’d never tell her, because she doesn’t understand business in the slightest. And it drives her mad with envy, and all she wants to do is keep me from it.
    “But of course she can’t contradict Daddy, so she crosses her arms and clucks like a hen, and makes silly comments, like”—Millicent’s voice rose to a mimicking, high-pitched whine, which didn’t actually sound like her mother at all—“‘Dah-ling, you don’t know WHAT you’re getting yourself into!’ Or ‘I just want you to be happy, sweetheart.’ Like she even knows what’d make me happy! Sometimes, she even convinces Daddy to keep me out of his meetings. He has to shoo me out of his office, and when I complain, he says, ‘Love to have you, princess, but we don’t want to upset your mother.’ And then of course, when I confront her, she denies the whole thing. Pfft!” She let out a little huff of disgust.
    “What WOULD make you happy?” I asked.
    “Running Daddy’s empire! Certainly not skulking off to Rovia to marry some boring old twit and live in some moldy castle like SHE wants for me.”
    “I thought only kingdoms had empires.”
    “Oh, Egg…” Millicent looked at me with a sort of amused impatience. “Daddy IS the kingdom around here. He runs EVERYTHING.”
    “Doesn’t the governor do that?”
    “Who, Burns? That sorry old man? He’s just a puppet.”
    “What’s a puppet?”
    “You know.” She raised a hand and fluttered her fingers, like she was operating a marionette. “He moves whichever way Daddy tells him to. It’s the same way with the soldiers.”
    “What, is your dad a general or something?”
    “He doesn’t have to be—he pays all their salaries. Right down to the garrison commander.”
    “And he runs the silver mine, too?” I’d gathered that much just from overhearing Mr. Pembroke’s conversations in the entrance hall with the men who were continually coming to visit him in his office.
    “He doesn’t just run it—he
owns
it. It was all his idea, you know. The mine didn’t even exist before Daddy. And he’s got plans to expand way beyond it. In fact, he’s working on something now that he says will make the silver mine look like a street meat shack.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s business—you wouldn’t understand,” she said, more than a little haughty. Which annoyed me, because I got the impression she didn’t really understand, either. I was about to tell her as much when she lowered her voice and said, “He controls the pirates, too.”
    That was so preposterous that I had to laugh. “No one controls the pirates!”
    “That’s what they want people to think. But it’s not true—or anyway, Daddy’s got an understanding with them. Nothing happens on the Blue Sea without his say-so.”
    She looked so sure of herself I couldn’t quite muster the confidence to tell her she was crazy.
    “So that’ll be you someday—ordering pirates around, telling the governor what to do?”
    I meant it as a joke, but I had to admit it was surprisingly easy to imagine Millicent at the big mahogany desk in her father’s study, yelling at the governor to do her bidding.
    “Don’t tease me, Egg. I’ll have you killed. I could do it, too.”
    “I’ll be sure not to beat you at croquet, then.” I’d almost won a game the day before, and she’d gotten so mad she broke a mallet and wouldn’t