“None. The only time they have met was at a reception, where I was present personally.”
“And he brought nothing back from Khandar?”
“Only two of his officers,” Orlanko said. “And we’re keeping track of them.”
“Then whatever he discovered must be with the rest of the regiment. They’re still aboard ship?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.” Orlanko frowned. “You’re still assuming he found something.”
“The agent we provided had spoken one of the Greater Names. The demon she hosted should have been a match for anything Vhalnich could do.” The pontifex sounded annoyed, though Orlanko was never certain how much faith to place in communication by this strange channel. “The fact that she has not returned means that he discovered something in Khandar of considerable power.”
“So you’ve said,” Orlanko said. Privately, he thought that the pontifex placed too much faith in his precious Ignahta. Magic or not, anyone could be killed, or even suborned. “Do you have any idea what it was?”
“A demon, of course. A powerful one. The question is whether he called it himself or trusted it to some ally. And what else he may have found.”
“My agents have already told us a great deal. When the Colonials land, they will provide a full report. They should have ample opportunity to gather information during the crossing.”
“Good. We have worked too long for this to risk it at this stage. How fares the king?”
“Poorly. Doctor-Professor Indergast says it is a matter of weeks, at best.”
“Then proceed as planned. And find out what Vhalnich is up to, and what his connection is with the princess.”
“It could be a coincidence,” said Orlanko.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” said the pontifex.
There was another moment of gulping silence, and then the girl said, “He’s gone, Your Grace.”
“Thank you.” The duke picked up the lantern. “Please inform Brother Nikolai if you require anything, and we will provide it.”
“Thank you, Your Grace, but I am content.”
Brother Nikolai closed the cell door and the grate behind him as he left, heavy iron bolts clacking home in their brackets. Orlanko’s mind was otherwise occupied. In spite of what he’d said, he didn’t believe in coincidence, either. Something had happened in Khandar, something supernatural, and Vhalnich’s return mere weeks before Raesinia’s coronation had to be deliberate. The mysterious colonel was planning something, and the princess was part of it.
Somewhere there was a weak link, a loose thread that would tell him what Vhalnich was up to. Sooner or later, Andreas or one of the others would find it.
And then, Orlanko thought, I’ll make Vhalnich regret the trouble he’s caused me.
CHAPTER SIX
WINTER
“The thing you hafta understand about the Docks,” Jane said, “is that the people here don’t want t’ fight.”
Winter smiled to herself. She’d listened to Jane’s accent shift as they came down out of the apartment tower, thickening into a good approximation of the dockworkers’ dialect. Even her gait was different, widening into the rolling swagger affected by boatmen and those around them. Winter wondered if Jane was even aware of the changes. She always had a talent for fitting in, when she cared to.
“’Cept for a few fucking loonies,” Jane went on, “everybody just wants to do their thing in peace and quiet, make enough to eat, maybe get drunk now an’ then. But none of ’em want to get fucked over, not by each other and not by the fucking tax farmers. So they work themselves up to a brawl now and then, but they don’t really mean it. Not like those bastards from Oldtown, who only do a bit of work when they can’t find something to steal.”
Jane’s band of young women lived in a dilapidated four-story building, which had once been the offices of a defunct shipping company. Jane had claimed it, according to Abby, by driving out the gangs of squatters and vagrants who had been living there previously. Abby had given Winter a little tour, and Winter had been surprised both by how orderly the whole thing was and by how many people were living there. There had to be several hundred girls at least, ranging in age from Jane and herself down to children of ten or twelve. Winter, amazed, had asked where they had all come from, but Abby had been evasive.
Now they were out on what Jane called her “rounds.” Winter had been allowed to descend without a bag over her head, which she supposed meant that she was now at least an honorary member of the gang. So far, so good, at least as far as her mission from Janus was concerned.
Janus. Winter gritted her teeth at the thought. He had to know. He had to. This whole project, sending Winter to infiltrate a gang of women dockworkers, made no sense unless he’d known. Janus was a good enough judge of talent to know that Winter was no spy—witness the way she’d made a hash of things. Sending her here was futile, unless Janus already knew that Jane was at the heart of these Leatherbacks.
And if he knew, why didn’t he tell me? She couldn’t decide if it had been a shrewd move on his part, given her probable reaction, or else had been the colonel’s twisted idea of a joke. Janus did have a decidedly odd sense of humor at times. Either way, I owe him a solid kick in the arse. She glanced at Jane. Or else my abject gratitude. One or the other. Maybe both.
It was still a little hard for Winter to believe that Jane was here, that the girl who had figured so prominently in her dreams for three years was actually standing beside her. With her long hair gone, dressed in trousers and dockworkers’ homespun, it sometimes felt like this profanity-spewing young woman was someone else entirely. Then something would catch Winter’s eye—her face in profile, that wicked smile, a certain cast of the eyes—and her heart would give a sickening lurch, and she’d be ready to break down in tears all over again.
Jane’s rounds, it turned out, consisted of walking an irregular circuit of the streets around her base. This took considerably longer than it might have, since everyone they met on the street seemed to know her, and every third person stopped her to exchange a few words. Jane introduced Winter whenever she had the chance, but to Winter the dockmen and their names quickly became a blur. They had a certain sameness about them—big, weathered men, tan and wiry from years of heavy work in the sun. They had names like Bentback Jim, Reggie’s Teeth, Bob the Swine, and Walnut.
This last was a true giant of a man, bigger even than Winter’s Corporal Folsom, with wrinkled skin tanned dark as leather and a grin that showed shockingly white teeth. He was called Walnut, Jane explained, because he liked to eat the nuts, and, more important, because he could crush them in his fists. Walnut, hearing this, laughed delightedly and demonstrated with a couple of nuts from a nearby bowl. He tightened his grip until they broke, with a crack like a pistol shot.
“’Ave you seen Crooked Sal this morning?” Walnut said, picking the meat from the bits of shell in his palm with surprising delicacy.
“Not yet,” Jane said. “Why?”
“He was gettin’ pretty hot last night,” Walnut said. “Something about his daughter and George the Gut.”
“Fuckin’—” Jane loosed a string of profanity that Winter couldn’t follow, which made even Walnut raise an eyebrow. “Is he still going on about that?”
“Said he was going to go over there and slit George open to see what his gut was made of,” Walnut said. “Course, he was sopping drunk at the time. But it sounded like he meant it.”
“I’ll sort him out.” Jane turned on her heel and stalked away, and Winter had to hurry to keep up.
—
“Fucking Sal and his fucking daughter,” Jane muttered.
“I take it you know them?” Winter said. “You seem to know everybody.”
“Sal’s an ass. And his daughter’s a little idiot who likes to make trouble. I mean, why else would she move in with George the Gut? It’s not like
he’s anything to look at.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“Find Sal and talk some sense into him. His girl’s seventeen already. If she wants to spend her time fucking ugly eel fishers, that’s her own business.” Jane paused. “You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. Sal’s not really dangerous, but if he’s started working himself up to something, he may be half-drunk already.” She glanced at Winter and looked away, almost bashful. “All this . . . fighting and so on. You’re not—”
Winter almost laughed but restrained herself. She hadn’t told Jane her story yet, and so Jane’s image of her was still the proper little girl from Mrs. Wilmore’s, who had to be painstakingly cajoled into the slightest disobedience.
“I can take care of myself,” Winter said. “Or at least manage to stay out of the way.”
Jane gave her an odd look but didn’t protest. They set off down the rambling Docks alleys at a more rapid pace, and Jane acknowledged the shouts of greeting from the people they passed with only a grunt and a wave. Their course tended generally downhill, and every now and then one of the straighter streets gave Winter a view of the river, glittering in the sunlight and aswarm with small boats. A few large cargo galleys were tied up to piers or making their way slowly upriver, like languid whales among schools of smaller fish.
When they were a few hundred yards from the waterfront, Jane turned into a narrow alley that passed between two stout brick warehouses and then into a back-lot no-man’s-land full of small wooden dwellings. Jane headed for the closest on the left-hand side, a shaky-looking two-story construction that looked as though it had grown like a mushroom rather than been built to any plan. The windows had rag curtains instead of glass, tied up in bundles to admit any passing breeze, and the door was wide open in the summer heat. Jane took advantage of this to walk right in, with Winter following somewhat diffidently behind her.
The bottom floor of the house was one large room, arranged around a firepit. A big, solid table stood beside it, smelling distinctly of fish, with a heavy carving knife embedded in it point-down as if it were a butcher’s block. A fat yellow cat, lazing in a patch of sunlight, rolled over and hissed at Jane, fur bristling.
The young man standing at the table had very nearly the same reaction. He looked to be about sixteen, thin and gangly, with a peach-fuzz mustache and a few stray wisps of beard.
“Your da upstairs?” Jane said, without preamble.
The boy puffed out his chest, though he’d retreated to put the table between himself and the intruder. “What if he is?”
“Don’t be a fool, Junior. Do I look like the fucking Armsmen to you? Go and fetch him.”
He deflated a little. After pausing for a few moments, just to show that he didn’t have to do what Jane told him, he ran to the rickety staircase at the back of the house and clomped halfway up it. “Da?”
“’M busy,” came a voice from above, like a drunken saint speaking from on high. “Tell ’im to go away.”
“Da, it’s Mad Jane!”
“Mad” Jane? Winter caught Jane’s eye with a questioning look. Jane gave her best mad smile and waggled her eyebrow conspiratorially. The shared, instantaneous understanding was so powerfully familiar that it made Winter wobble, weak at the knees. Right. She kept her hysterical giggles to herself. Mad Jane. I’m surprised we never called her that at Mrs. Wilmore’s.
The boy scurried out of the way as someone much heavier clumped down the stairs. This, presumably, was Crooked Sal, a man in his forties with only a fringe of stiff gray hair remaining around a bald, shiny pate. For once, no explanation of his sobriquet was necessary; Sal’s nose looked as though it had been broken at least a dozen times, and it zigzagged like a wandering stream. He wore a leather vest that left his arms and hairy chest bare, and smelled of old fish. Behind him, perching halfway up the staircase, was a boy of twelve or thirteen.
“You here to stick your nose in my business?” Sal roared.
“That’s right,” Jane said.
“Not a good habit,” he growled. “You keep putting that nose where it don’t belong and it’ll end up looking like mine.”
“Fortunately, nobody can bear to damage my good looks,” Jane said. “Now, what is this bullshit about you and George the Gut?”
“Fuckin’ George the pus-ridden Gut is havin’ his way with my virgin daughter!” Sal said. “I’ve got every right to show him the color of his kidneys!”
Jane scratched the side of her nose. “Iffie’s a nice girl, but you’re going a bit far there, aren’t you? The way I heard it, Iffie climbed through his window in the middle of the night.”
“She’s still my daughter,” Sal said. “An’ he shouldn’t have put his grubby hands all over her.”
“I’m hardly an expert on daughters,” Jane said. “But did you ever think this is what she wants? Getting a rise out of you? Remember what happened with Tim the Lad? Or Steve Shake Eye? Or that Hamveltai sailor you chased off?”
Sal’s face twisted. That had touched a sore point, obviously, and he fell back on good old-fashioned rage. “Get out, you stupid bitch! Take your big mouth out of my house before I break your pretty face for you!”
“Not until you promise me you’re not going to run off and try to carve up poor George.”
“I know who I’m going to carve up!”
Sal reached across the table and wrapped his hand around the handle of the carving knife. Before he could jerk it out of the wood, Jane did her knife trick again, blade flashing into her hand as though she had summoned it into being. In the same motion she reached out, lazily, and laid the edge of the blade against the apple of Sal’s throat. Sal froze.
“I would think real fucking hard before you do that,” Jane said. Her eyes moved. “And you, Junior, I would think even harder.”
The older boy had been edging toward the confrontation. He paused, and Winter passed unnoticed behind him. There was a heavy iron poker by the stairs, and she edged in that direction, ready to grab it if Jane lost control of the situation. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the younger boy fumbling with something—there was a click, menacingly familiar—
Winter reacted instinctively. She grabbed the poker in one hand, spun, and swung it around into the barrel of the pistol the kid had just cocked. He pulled the trigger just before the metallic clang of the impact, and she saw the flash of the powder in the pan, followed by the shatteringly loud report of the gun going off. By that time, her blow had knocked it well away from its intended target, and the ball pocked into a wall, throwing off splinters.
Sal was so surprised he let go of the knife and bulled forward, and Jane had to retreat hastily to keep him from cutting his own throat. He whirled to face the stairs, where the younger boy was cowering and clutching his stinging hand.
“Jim!” he roared. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“She was going to hurt you, Da!” Jim screeched. “She had a knife, and—”
“I am going to give you such a fucking thrash—”
Sal took a couple of steps toward the stairs and his cowering son, then stopped, because Jane had grabbed his arm from behind. He started to turn but halted when he felt the prick of her knife between his shoulder blades.
“You’re more of a fucking moron than I thought, Sal,” said Jane. “Were you planning to bring that thing to George’s?”
Sal had the grace to looked embarrassed. “George has got three sons. They might’ve been armed.”
“And if they had been? You’d have killed one of ’em? What for?”
“I just thought—”
“Thinking is the last thing you were doing. Now, you listen to me, Salmon Bellows. I have had enough of this, do you hear? When Iffie comes back—and she will come back, once she figures out you’re not going to pick a fight with George—I want you to have a nice long talk with her. A talk.
If I hear that she’s walking around with bruises, I’m going to come back, and you and me will have a talk. You understand?” She nodded at the boy on the stairs. “That goes for him, too. It’s your own damned fault for leaving a loaded pistol lying about. You get all that?”
“I—” Sal began, but Jane did something to his arm, and he moaned. “I get it. I get it!”
“Good.” Jane backed off a step and made the knife disappear again. “Hell, tell Iffie that if she really likes George so much, she ought to marry him. That ought to bring her running back right away.”
Sal, to Winter’s amazement, laughed and shook his head. His sons laughed with him, timidly, and at this reminder he turned on them with another roar.
“And as for you, Jim, I’m—”
Jane cleared her throat pointedly, and Sal paused.
“I’m going to have a talk with you,” he finished. “A long talk. Now go to your room and stay there.”
Jane took her leave, and Winter followed her back out into the alley. They said nothing until they’d gone round a bend and out of sight of the little shack. Jane sighed and rubbed her temples.
“Goddamn that kid. Scared the piss out of me.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, took a deep breath, then looked up at Winter. “Are you all right?”
Winter flexed her hand, which still tingled from the transmitted impact of the poker. “Nothing serious. I’ll be fine.”
“Fucking kid. Could have killed someone.”
“I think he wanted to kill you, actually.”
Jane chuckled. “I gathered that. Nice swing with the poker, by the way. Have I thanked you yet?”
“Not as such.”
“Thanks.” Jane ran a hand through her hair, mussing it further. “Sorry. It’s not every day a kid a head shorter than me tries to fucking shoot me in the back.”
“You could have fooled me,” Winter said, honestly. “I figured this was all in a day’s work for Mad Jane.”
“Don’t you start,” Jane muttered. “It’s bad enough that Sal and the rest started calling me that.” Catching Winter’s smirk, she changed the subject. “What about you, anyway? What happened to the girl who was too afraid to throw a bucket of shit at Mary Ellen Todd? Did you take lessons in swinging a poker?”
The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns Page 14
