The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns

by Wexler, Django

“Help her.” Jane’s voice sounded distant and tinny through the blood thumping in Winter’s ears.

  “Are you all right?” Winter rolled her over, roughly. There was blood everywhere, but she couldn’t see an actual injury. “Jane! Can you hear me?”

  “Fine.” Jane spit a spray of blood. “I’m fine, damn it. Help her.”

  Winter looked at the other girl for the first time. It was Min, lying on her back with one arm over her stomach and the other flung wide. The shot had gone through her neck, tearing a huge chunk of it clean away. She was still breathing, fast and shallow, but each gasp only bubbled blood in her ruined throat. Her eyes were very wide.

  That there was nothing to be done was obvious, even to Winter. She turned back to Jane, who was trying to sit up.

  “Help her,” Jane said. “She’s bleeding. Winter—”

  “Lie still for a minute.” Winter pressed Jane’s shoulders to the ground.

  “She pushed me away,” Jane said. “When she heard you shouting.”

  Min made a gurgling sound, one hand clutching convulsively at the dirt. Finally, mercifully, she was silent.

  “She . . .” Jane couldn’t see Min, but her eyes were locked on Winter’s.

  “She’s gone,” Winter said. “We have to get you out of here. They might try again.”

  “Abby,” Jane said. “Where’s Abby?”

  “I’m here.” Abby knelt down beside them, grabbing Jane’s hand. Winter took her other arm, and together they got her on her feet. The rest of the Leatherbacks closed in again, a shield of flesh and bone. Winter glanced up at the parapet. Walnut’s men were still firing, but there were no figures visible.

  Jane was looking down at Min’s corpse. Her hand, sticky with blood, closed tight on Winter’s arm.

  “Get the ram,” she said, very quietly.

  “If we go in there,” Winter said, low and fast, “more people are going to die. A lot more. We might be able to—”

  Jane raised her voice to a shout that echoed across the square. “Get the goddamned ram!”

  A thousand pairs of eyes took in her bloodstained features, and a roar rose as one from a thousand throats. The mob surged onward.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MARCUS

  The house burned from the outside in, flame leaping across from the old, dry wood of the stable and around the front door, crawling along the walls and up onto the roof. Inside, the soft carpet in the front hall ignited with a whoomph, and the layers of gauzy window hangings Marcus’ mother had loved floated up as they burned, like spiderwebs.

  He knew it was a dream, but it didn’t help. Marcus walked through the gap where the front door had been and down the hall. Fire raced along the old wallpaper, so he was moving down a corridor of flames.

  People were running, shouting. Servants in livery or bedclothes rushed back and forth, trying to push through to the exit and falling back, defeated by the flames. Something near the back of the house collapsed with a rumble, and he heard screams.

  All the faces were in shadow. Marcus hardly remembered them. He passed through the crowd like a ghost.

  Another scream, from upstairs. This one was high-pitched and shrill, a little girl’s wail of fear.

  Ellie. Marcus started to run, in the strange, floating way of dreams, legs working but only making slow progress. He made it to the main staircase in time to see his little sister, dressed in a white nightshift, standing on the landing and staring wide-eyed at the spreading fire. The air was getting thick with smoke.

  “Ellie!” The roar of the fire drowned Marcus’ voice in his own ears. If Ellie heard, she gave no sign. She turned away from him and ran, back up the stairs.

  He went after her, feet skidding on the landing, one hand grabbing the ball-shaped finial for balance as he had done a thousand times. When he reached the upstairs hall, he could just see her darting into her bedroom, white-blond hair flying out from under her cap. He went after her, passing his own room, the door still scarred around the baseboard where he always kicked it closed with his boots.

  Ellie’s room was a firetrap, thick with bed hangings, carpet, and velvet toys. Smoke already formed a thick blanket against the ceiling, tendrils creeping down the walls. Ellie, coughing, ran straight to the corner, where an enormous wardrobe painted in jolly greens and blues was standing.

  “No!” Marcus said. “Ellie, don’t—”

  But she wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear him—he hadn’t been there, after all. She opened the wardrobe, climbed in, and pulled the door closed behind her, hiding from the flames and the choking, deadly smoke. Marcus crossed the room—it seemed to take an age, carpet pulling at his feet like taffy—and fumbled with the doorknob. When he pulled, something pulled back, so he had to lean away and use his full weight to prize the wardrobe open.

  When it gave way, all at once, he fell backward. There were flames all around him now, the stuffed bears and rabbits burning like tiny torches, runners of fire streaking across the carpet. Marcus scrambled forward on hands and knees, pulling the wardrobe doors open wide—

  There was nothing inside but ash. Fine, dark ash, slipping through his fingers like smoke and smudging gray against his skin.

  For a long moment, Marcus stared at it, listening to the savage roar of the flames and the creaks and crunches of collapsing timbers. Finally, he got to his feet, and walked back to the stairs. The run that had taken an age passed in an instant, and a few steps had him back in the hall, wrapped in fire, looking out the front door into a square of darkness beyond.

  There was a man standing there. Like the others, his face was a blank, anonymous shadow, but he wore a long, heavy coat, black leather flapping around him like dark wings.

  Concordat.

  —

  Marcus opened his eyes. He sat in total darkness, wedged into a corner, stone flagstones beneath him and stone walls behind. All he could see was the faint vertical line of a gun slit, shining with faint, occluded starlight.

  He felt as though someone had punched him in the gut, driving all the breath from his body. It was how he remembered feeling on that day, eighteen years ago, when they’d handed him the news. No survivors.

  He hadn’t been there, of course. A dream was just a dream. But that figure in the long black coat—

  Orlanko. Something seemed to have come free in his mind during the night. It had to be Orlanko. He had no evidence, nothing he could take to a magistrate, but the pattern he’d seen in the old Armsmen files didn’t make sense any other way. A powerful count could have leaned on the vice captain of Armsmen, or a criminal connection, or even a foreign spy, but Marcus hadn’t found any evidence that Giforte’s mysterious friend had ever wanted him to do anything. Just, every so often, to lose something in the shuffle, to stonewall an investigation until everyone forgot about it. Whenever the Concordat wanted something to disappear.

  As far as he knew, his family had never meddled in politics, never done anything that might incur the Last Duke’s wrath. But the rumors that swirled in Orlanko’s wake said that it might not matter. Men had disappeared, it was said, for being opposed in business ventures to the duke’s Borelgai backers, for owning too much of the king’s debt, or simply for being witness to something better left unseen.

  Something like that . . . Marcus felt a dull rage burning at the pit of his stomach. Stupid, really. Would it be better if there was a good reason? But the image of the Last Duke casually snuffing out lives on the shallowest pretext made him want to clench his hands into fists and batter a way through the wall.

  The cold, impervious wall. Rage vanished, replaced by a sudden rush of despair.

  His shoulders ached where they were jammed against the stone, and his neck had developed a crick. It was easiest not to move at all, but there was a pressure in his bladder that would not be put off, and eventually he was forced to lever himself to his feet. R
oss hadn’t dared take him down to the dungeons—that would involve going past too many Armsmen—so he’d improvised a cell from an empty room in the tower. It was an empty wedge-shaped stone space with a single door and a gun slit looking out over the river, lacking even the most basic prison amenities, like a hole to piss in.

  He sighed. Is it me, I wonder? Am I so incompetent a commander that my men have to keep locking me up? He remembered sitting in a darkened tent, watched by Adrecht’s cronies. At least I’m not tied up this time.

  Marcus selected the corner farthest from where he’d been sitting and relieved himself, then made his way back and tried to ignore the smell. His eyes were adapting, and he could see faint lights through the gun slit. Putting his eye against it, he found that he had a narrow view of a slice of the river and, in the distance, the North Bank. Elaborate spires rose against the starlit sky: the strip of noble estates known as the Fairy Castles, each building more fanciful and less practical than the last. There were only a few lights showing at the windows tonight, and Marcus wondered how many nobles had already shown the better part of valor and retired to the country.

  He was just contemplating whether he could piss out the gun slit when something blocked his view. He had a brief glimpse of a long, flowing black cloth, and then a sliver of face was looking in at him, heavily shadowed. Marcus took an involuntary step back, then stopped, feeling foolish.

  “Captain d’Ivoire? Is that you?” It was a woman’s voice.

  Marcus didn’t see any point in denying it. “It is. Are you . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head. Whoever it was was somehow suspended at least fifty feet over the jagged rocks at the base of the fortress wall, clinging to a sheer stone surface. He couldn’t think of anything to say to someone in that situation.

  “I wanted a word with you, Captain, but Captain Ross seems determined to prevent it.”

  “Well.” Marcus gestured around the empty room. “I have a busy schedule, but I’ll try to fit you in. Who are you?”

  “You can call me Rose, if you like.”

  “Rose, then. And what did you want with me?”

  “I heard,” Rose said, “that Captain Ross has locked you up because you planned to surrender the fortress. Is that true?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I wanted to come to terms.”

  “Why?”

  “I swore an oath to protect the king and people of Vordan,” Marcus said. “I didn’t like the idea of firing grapeshot into a crowd of those people on behalf of the Last Duke.”

  “It would be fair to say, then, that you’re not an ally of Orlanko’s?”

  Marcus spread his hands. “I’m locked in here, aren’t I?”

  Rose seemed to consider this. Marcus blinked, and surreptitiously pinched his arm to make certain he wasn’t still dreaming.

  “Ross hasn’t told your men that he’s had you arrested,” she said. “Do you think they’d break you out, if they knew?”

  “I doubt it,” Marcus said. “Ross has more men, and better weapons.”

  “Would they surrender, if you gave the order?”

  “Probably. It would be better if it came from Vice Captain Giforte.” Marcus hesitated. “Do you know—”

  “Ross shot someone out in the courtyard. I don’t know who, but they’re awfully angry about it. They’re bringing up the ram now.”

  Marcus closed his eyes. “If they break down the door, it’ll be a massacre.”

  “I know.” Rose paused. “If there was a way to stop it, and it meant surrendering the fortress to the mob, would you be willing to help?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said, without hesitation. “But I’m not sure what I can do from in here.”

  “We’ll break you out, and you’ll order your men to lay down their arms.”

  “Gladly,” Marcus said. “If you can assure me that my men won’t be harmed.”

  “I think I can manage that.” Rose paused a moment longer, thinking. “All right. Sit tight, Captain. I’ll be back.”

  Her face vanished. Marcus tried to get a look at how she was climbing the wall, but the narrow gun slit blocked any view but straight ahead. He gave up and shook his head.

  “All right,” he said, to the darkened room. “It’s not as though I have any choice.”

  RAESINIA

  “Raes?” It was Faro. “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah.”

  This was one of those times that Raesinia wished she could sleep. The binding drained the weariness from her body, like any other injury, but she missed the refreshing feeling of waking up from a real sleep.

  Or she thought she did, anyway. It had been so long since she’d died that she wasn’t sure she really remembered. She wondered what it would be like fifty years from now, or a hundred, trying to recall that increasingly tiny slice of her existence when she’d been a human being like all the rest.

  I’ll find out. As far as she could tell, she didn’t have any alternative.

  Her makeshift shelter was just a triangular lean-to of carpet tied to a protruding window frame and weighed down with stray bricks. It provided her with a place to get away from the crowd, which had gotten increasingly violent since the shooting in the courtyard. The carnival atmosphere of the evening had evaporated, and the mob had separated into armed camps, clustered around their bonfires. Jane’s Leatherbacks, the closest thing the Dockside contingent had to leaders, had already had to break up several fights between their people and the council followers.

  The carpet twitched open, and Faro slipped in on his hands and knees. There was enough spare fabric to cushion the cobbled street, and Raesinia had found a torn feather pillow and a lantern somewhere. He looked around approvingly.

  “Very cozy.”

  “Thanks.” Raesinia sat up and yawned, for effect. “Did you talk to Abby?”

  “It took a while to pry her away from Jane and Winter, but yes.”

  “And?”

  “She hasn’t seen Cora.” Raes’ disappointment must have shown on her face, because he added, “She said the women and children were kept in a bunch of separate cells, though. And she said that the Concordat troops were pretty rough on them, initially, but that Captain d’Ivoire stepped in and put Armsmen guards in place before anyone got seriously hurt.”

  “Captain d’Ivoire.” The bluff, bearded officer she’d met with Vhalnich. Raesinia pursed her lips thoughtfully. “All right. That’s something. What do you make of Mad Jane?”

  “She doesn’t seem all that mad to me. Her people have really taken charge. I think most of the crowd came here looking for Danton, but with him locked up Jane has been organizing everything. She’s got a bunch of young women and dockmen working for her directly, and the rest seem to have a lot of respect for her.”

  “Any idea what her goals are?”

  “No more than she told us: to get the prisoners out. Maurisk and Dumorre have been trying to explain to the Dockside people how it’s their manifest destiny to throw off the ancient chains of servitude and assume their proper role in the running of the state, but it’s an uphill battle. It sounds good when Danton’s saying it, but coming out of those two . . .”

  “Danton.” Raesinia shook her head. That was another problem. “God only knows what they’ve made of him in there.”

  “They can’t have really figured him out,” Faro said. “Otherwise they’d have bribed him with a beer and sent him out to tell everyone to go home.”

  “We have to get him back.” Raesinia ran a hand through her hair distractedly and winced as her fingers caught in the knots. Pure reflex, of course—she didn’t feel the pain anymore. “We’re running out of time. We got away because Orlanko has more important things to deal with, but Ohnlei can’t let this go on forever. Sooner or later they’ll send in the real troops.”

  She could only imagine the panic at the palace and the ministries. She wondered
if her father was still alive, if Indergast’s operation had saved him, or if he was dead and Orlanko was simply keeping the fact from the outside world. She wondered if she’d been missed yet—how long could one continue to be in hysterics? That may be the least of our worries. If Orlanko has decided to bring the knives out for good and all . . .

  She needed to be in five places at once, and none of them was here, waiting outside this fortress. But Cora was in there, and Danton, and probably Sarton as well. I can’t leave them.

  “We won’t have long to wait,” Faro said. “Peddoc was arguing strategy with Jane, but they’re bringing up the ram. Once they have the gate down they’ll storm the place.”

  “Saints and martyrs. If the guards open fire—” Everyone had been so sure they’d surrender, but that had been before the rifleman had tried to kill Jane in the courtyard.

  “It’s a death trap,” Faro said. “But they haven’t got enough men to keep us out.”

  “And then it’ll be a massacre on both sides.”

  Faro nodded. “They’re already shouting, ‘No quarter’ in the courtyard.”

  “This isn’t going to work. What if the guards start killing the prisoners? Hell, what if they decide to blow the magazine?” There was a gloomy thought. Raesinia imagined sitting up, alone, her skin a blistered ruin, amid the wreckage of half the Island and thousands of corpses.

  “I know. But what else can we do? As you said, we’re running out of time. If we wait around until they send in the army, things will be even worse.”

  “I need to talk to Jane. Can you set that up?”

  “I can try,” Faro said.

  “Tell her . . . tell her I have a plan.”

  Faro blinked. “You have a plan?”

  “No.” Raesinia sighed. “But I might think of something by then. We have to do something. This is our fault, Faro, even if we didn’t want it to end up like this. We wrote every word Danton said. I’m not going to let this turn into a bloodbath.”

  “All right,” Faro said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  He turned around and crawled out of the little shelter. Raesinia held the carpet up for a moment after he went, looking out at the fire-studded darkness.