The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns

by Wexler, Django

  “I know.” Winter let out a long breath. “There’s one bit of good news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If Captain d’Ivoire is in charge in there, then Abby and the others are all right.”

  Jane tried not to show it, but there was relief in her face. “You think so?”

  “If they made it here in one piece, he’ll have made sure they stayed that way. The colonel once told me that when it comes to women, Captain d’Ivoire missed his calling as a knight-errant.”

  Jane laughed out loud. “I suppose that is good news.”

  If he is in charge. Winter bit her lip. There had been men in black coats as well as Armsmen green on the battlements.

  This line of thought was interrupted by the arrival of a young woman wearing one of the aprons that served the Leatherbacks as impromptu uniforms. Winter didn’t recognize her from Jane’s councils—a number of the wives and daughters of the dockmen had invited themselves along on the march, following the example of Jane’s hellions. Jane, pragmatic as ever, had deputized them and put them to work.

  “Sir—that is—ma’am—Jane!” The girl was doubled over and out of breath, hands gripping her thighs. “I’ve got—a—”

  “Give it a moment,” Jane said.

  “Yes, sir.” The attempt at military airs made Winter smile; she wondered if this girl had read some of the same books she had, before fleeing Mrs. Wilmore’s. When she’d gotten her breath back, the messenger straightened up. “There’s more people arriving in the street! Hundreds of them!”

  Winter whistled. “I wouldn’t have thought there was anyone left in the Docks.”

  “They’re not from the Docks,” the girl said. “Not our people. A lot of ’em look like nobs, though they don’t all dress like it. Viera said she thought they were from the University. They came down over Saint Hastoph Bridge.”

  “Did they say what they wanted?” Jane said.

  “They said they were here to help. A lot of ’em are talking about Danton.”

  Danton. Winter knew Jane had never had much use for the demagogue, but he had a considerable following among the dockmen. And apparently on the Northside as well.

  “Well,” Jane said, “I suppose we can always use more hands.” She glanced at Winter. “Maybe if we put a few respectable citizens in the front line, the Armsmen will be less likely to fire.”

  “Beg your pardon, si—ma’am,” the girl interrupted, “but there were a bunch of them asking to see whoever was in charge here. One of ’em dressed real nice, too. I think he must be a count.”

  “Well.” Jane straightened up, and a look passed between her and Winter. “We can’t keep nobility waiting, now, can we?”

  RAESINIA

  Alfred Peddoc sur Volmire had lost his reluctance about the march shortly after it began. It transpired that he had spent a couple of years at the War College before deciding a soldier’s career wasn’t for him, and that extensive martial training now apparently qualified him for leadership of what he persisted in referring to as “our campaign.” He’d even acquired a sword from somewhere, which he slashed through the air as he walked as if cutting his way through imaginary enemies.

  He’d gathered around him a knot of others who had some pretensions to military expertise, or who had read a lot of books on the subject, or merely had become enthralled with the idea. They’d almost immediately started to argue about what to do next, but fortunately they weren’t so much leading the mob from the Dregs as they were being carried along by it, like a bubble on a stream. Everyone knew where they were going, after all, and the angled towers of the Vendre were clearly visible once they’d cleared the final row of houses flanking Bridge Street.

  Maurisk and Dumorre walked nearby, deeply engaged in an argument over whether a republic would serve its people better than a monarchy, and under which set of assumptions about human nature. Raesinia found herself walking with Faro, who had stuck to her like a shadow since they met outside the Gold Sovereign, and Cyte, the woman who with Dumorre represented the Radicals. Ahead, behind, and all around them, a flowing mass of humanity packed the road. The houses they passed were boarded up tight, the inhabitants either fled or cowering within. No Armsmen were in evidence.

  Eventually Raesinia said, “Cytomandiclea?”

  “Yes?” said Cyte. She’d been sweating, and the dark makeup around her eyes was starting to run, leaving streaky black lines on her cheeks where she’d wiped them.

  “I mean, why? I’m assuming you picked the name.”

  Cyte looked at her suspiciously, not sure if she was being made fun of.

  “She was a queen of the Mithradacii,” Cyte said. “When all the other chiefs wanted to submit to the Vanadii, she fought them one after another in single combat and killed them all. Then she led her people against the Vanadii, men and women both. This was about a thousand years BK.”

  “What happened?”

  Cyte shrugged. “They were slaughtered. One of the Vanadii chiefs stabbed her and then they rode their chariots over her, again and again, until there was nothing left but bloody mud. All the Mithradacii men were executed, and the women and children were taken by the Vanadii as thralls. We’re all descended from them, you know. They say if you have blue eyes, you have Mithradacii blood in you somewhere.”

  “That’s . . . quite a namesake. Do you ever wonder if the other chiefs might have been right to want to give in?”

  Cyte shrugged again, looking a little uncomfortable. “It’s just a story. She might not even have really existed.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  Her eyes flashed fire. “That is my real name.”

  “Sorry. I’m just curious.” Raesinia looked up ahead. The head of the crowd, with Peddoc at the tip, was just passing over the bridge to the Island. “I’m named after the princess, of course. Boring. I always wish I had a better story to tell.”

  “The original Raesinia was a great woman,” Cyte said. “She was the older sister of the last pagan king of Vordan. They say she could heal the sick and know by magic if someone was lying to her, and her brother made her the chief judge for the whole country.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Cyte sighed. “After the Conversion, she was executed as a sorceress by the Priests of the Black. After Farus IV threw out the Sworn Church, the Orboans decided she was a heroine and revived the name. They claim to be descended on one side from the old pagan kings.”

  “I’d never heard that.”

  “They don’t talk about it as much these days.” Cyte glanced sidelong at Raesinia, a slight flush showing on her cheeks. “Sorry to rattle on. Ancient history is my field.”

  “You’re at the University?”

  She nodded. “This is the end of my first year. And probably my last, if my father hears about this. But after hearing Danton speak, I couldn’t just sit in the library anymore.” She waved at the mass of people. “Look at this. This is happening now. It’s not some theoretical debate on the nature of government.” Her eyes flicked to Dumorre. “This is real. This is history, before it is history.” She smiled, and for a moment both her youth and the basic prettiness of her face under the severe hairstyle and smudged makeup showed through. “It’s like if Cytomandiclea decided to have her battle right outside my window, I couldn’t live with myself if I just stayed inside because I was afraid of getting hit by a stray arrow.”

  Raesinia looked at her and wondered how she would feel if she knew that Danton was an illiterate with the brains of a child, and that every word of those speeches had been written by a few part-time conspirators in a back room of the Blue Mask. Or if she knew that Raesinia was deliberately fomenting this revolt against the government that she would—very soon now—be the nominal head of. Or if she knew that Raesinia wasn’t even alive, technically, but an abomination born of a demon’s magic, created by an alliance betwe
en the Last Duke and the Priests of the Black. Or—

  She felt as though the layers of lies were dark water, rising all around her, thick and sludgy as syrup. It wouldn’t be long before they rose so high they closed over her head.

  But then, I don’t really need to breathe, do I?

  “Are you all right?”

  “What?” Raesinia realized she’d been staring into space. “Oh yes. Sorry. Just thinking.”

  “I’m sorry that your lover died. I don’t know if I had the chance to say that before.”

  “Excuse me? You mean Ben?” Raesinia felt her own cheeks color. “He wasn’t—we didn’t . . . get that far. But thank you.”

  “We’ll make the Last Duke pay for every—”

  She stopped as Faro came over to them. They were at the footing of the bridge now, just a short walk from the Island. Saint Hastoph Street ran directly in front of the Vendre’s walls, and from this vantage Raesinia could see that it was already full of people. For a moment she wondered how the head of the column had gotten over so quickly; then the reality of the situation dawned.

  Faro opened his mouth, but Raesinia pointed before he could speak. “Who are those people?”

  “A mob from the Docks,” he said, after taking a moment to regain his composure. “And more, I think. Someone named Mad Jane led them here after the news got out that Danton was taken, and they’ve been laying siege to the Vendre.”

  Cyte gave a shout of delighted surprise, and Raesinia felt a little weight lifting from her heart for the first time since she’d held Ben’s corpse in her arms. The whole city is rising. It might actually work, in spite of the blown timing and the ruined plans. And then he won’t have died for nothing.

  Faro didn’t look nearly so excited. “Peddoc started giving orders as soon as he arrived, and they aren’t very happy about it. Someone went to get this Jane and arrange a meeting. We need to get down there before he makes a complete ass of himself.”

  Cyte shot Raesinia a conspiratorial glance and rolled her eyes.

  “I strongly suspect,” Raesinia said, “that we may be too late.”

  —

  She was right. Before they arrived—indeed, before Faro had even gotten there with the news—Peddoc had managed to make an ass of himself, and by the time Raesinia and the others had shoved their way across the bridge and through the crowded streets to the outskirts of the prison, he’d contrived to turn what ought to have been a friendly meeting into something just a hair short of a brawl.

  At the top of Saint Hastoph Street, where the bridge touched ground on the Island and the wall of the Vendre began, the column had come to a halt. This news had been slow to reach the rear of the mass, and so people were packing tighter and tighter onto the bridge to try to see the obstacle. Raesinia and Faro had to push their way through, and Cyte, Maurisk, and Dumorre followed in their wake.

  When they finally reached the head of the group, they found a narrow clear space separating the marchers from a crowd of dockmen and angry-looking young women, packed shoulder to shoulder across the street like a line of battle. In the space between the two sides, Peddoc and his coterie of militaristic admirers faced off against a huge man in a leather apron.

  The confrontation was happening in plain view of the wall of the prison. Raesinia looked nervously to the parapet, and was reassured to see it was lined with more Docks rebels. The two lines were yelling incoherently at each other, and it was only once she broke free of the crowd and approached Peddoc that she could hear what was going on.

  “—I don’t mean to be rude,” Peddoc was saying, “but there is a proper way to conduct a siege, which you would know if you’d had military training as I have. It’s only natural that we follow the plan—”

  “Who’s this lot, then?” said the big man, catching sight of Raesinia and the others.

  “Ah.” Peddoc straightened up and looked unhappy. “These are my”—he caught a furious glare from Maurisk and Dumorre—“colleagues. The other members of our council. Though, as a trained military man, I have taken the lead on the actual direction of our campaign.”

  “Well, I’m Walnut,” the man said. “Jane’s on her way. Does anybody want to tell me what the hell you all are doing here without going on about lines of circumcision?”

  “Lines of circumvallation,” Peddoc said. “It’s a basic military concept for sieges—”

  “We’re here for Danton,” Cyte said, which drew looks from both Maurisk and Dumorre.

  “Not just Danton,” Maurisk said. “We’re here to take back the Crown for the people.”

  “To give the Crown to the people,” Dumorre said, “returning government to its proper—”

  Raesinia fished out her copy of their Declaration and held it aloft. The others lapsed into a sullen silence.

  “We’re here to free the prisoners,” she said. “And to ask the king to acknowledge the Deputies-General, at which these other points will be debated.”

  “All well and good,” Peddoc said. “But as the problem for the moment is a military one—”

  There was a shuffle in the ranks of the dockmen, and after a moment two women emerged from the crowd. One was tall, with disheveled red hair and green eyes aglow with manic energy. The other, plain-faced with white-blond hair cut almost military short, stayed a step or two behind. It was easy for Raesinia to guess which one was “Mad Jane,” but she named herself anyway.

  “I’m Jane,” she said. “And this is Winter. Walnut, who are these people?”

  “They seem to be in charge,” Walnut said.

  “All of them at once?”

  “As best I can tell.”

  “We’re a council,” Peddoc said. “And I—”

  “We didn’t agree to be a council,” Maurisk interrupted. “That implies that we have equal votes.”

  “Voting should be proportional to representation,” Dumorre said. “Which means nobody should be listening to Peddoc.”

  “I think you’ll find,” Maurisk said, “that support for the reasonable center—”

  “We’d have to carry out a census,” Dumorre interrupted.

  “It’s not a matter of votes!” Peddoc said. “I have the experience—”

  Raesinia stepped forward as they fell to arguing, and silently handed the declaration to Jane. She and Winter scanned it briefly, then looked up at her.

  “And who are you?” Jane said.

  “Raesinia,” Raesinia said. “I’m here because one of my friends was shot dead by a Concordat assassin last night, and because I think more of them are being held in there.”

  “And the Deputies-General?” Jane said.

  Raesinia jerked her head at the bickering council behind them. The corner of Jane’s lip quirked.

  “In other words,” Jane said, louder, “you’re here to help.”

  “Exactly!” said Peddoc. “Listen. You’ve obviously been doing quite well, for amateurs, but if we’re going to take the Vendre, then a siege on modern scientific principles is obviously called for. The first step is the establishment of a line of circumvallation to prevent outside assistance from reaching the invested position. We can start by digging a trench across—”

  “Contravallation,” said Winter.

  Peddoc and Jane both looked at her. She shrugged uncomfortably.

  “Lines of contravallation protect the besiegers from attack by outside forces. Lines of circumvallation guard against sorties of the garrison. You’ve got them backward.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I always got those confused on exams,” said someone in the back of Peddoc’s retinue. “Cost me a few points with old Wertingham.”

  “Well,” Peddoc said, trying to recover his momentum, “we’ll need both, obviously. And—”

  “And you’re proposing that we dig a trench?” Winter said. “Here?”
/>   She stomped her foot, and everyone looked down. Like all the streets on the Island, this one was cobbled.

  “Well,” Peddoc said again, more weakly, “obviously—”

  “There’s also the fact that the Vendre sticks out into the river,” Winter went on. “So your lines are going to be underwater for about two-thirds of the length. But I was more concerned about another point. When you say you want to conduct a scientific siege, you mean by the Kleinvort method, I assume?”

  “I . . . I think so,” Peddoc said. “It’s been some time—”

  “That calls for a series of parallels to allow the attackers to reach close range, which seems superfluous in this case as we can already walk up and touch the walls without difficulty. More to the point, though, once the final parallel is established, the attackers must establish a breaching battery and effect a breach before making the final assault. Is that correct?”

  Peddoc, mesmerized, simply nodded.

  “Have you brought a siege battery?” Winter looked at Walnut. “You’re taller than I am. Do you see any guns?”

  Walnut shaded his eyes, theatrically, and stared out over the bridge.

  “What my companion is trying to say,” said Jane dryly, “is that we may be a bit beyond the textbooks here.” She raised her voice. “And as for the rest of you! I want you to know that I could give a damn about this”—she shook the Declaration—“or your Deputies-General. But”—and now she looked down at Raesinia—“my friends are in there, and I intend to get them out. Anyone who wants to help with that is welcome. What you do afterward is your own business.”

  There was a long pause. Then, all at once, the council erupted with a hundred shouted arguments. Through the tumult, Raesinia caught Cyte’s eye and smiled.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MARCUS

  “What about the river?” Marcus said.

  “I took a look at the docks this morning,” Giforte said. He sounded gloomy. “There’s one small pier and a couple of boats.”