The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns

by Wexler, Django

  “Who’s invited?” Raesinia said.

  “Everyone from the old council, plus you, ‘Mad Jane’ and some of her people, Captain d’Ivoire, and some representatives of the merchants and traders. All sorts have been turning up, and everyone’s demanding a place at the table.” Sothe paused. “They’re going to want Danton to make a speech.”

  “That can be arranged,” Raesinia said. “I’ll need some time to work out what we want him to say.”

  “Before that,” Sothe said, “there’s something else we need to talk about.”

  “Oh?”

  “All of us.” Sothe’s expression was grim. “The cabal. Alone.”

  —

  The sun was coming up, but the morning light had revealed the hovering clouds to be heavy black thunderheads. They swept across the city like a conquering army, plunging it into shadow. It was still hot and dry, but the wind that whipped across the Vendre’s parapet was thick with the scent of rain. Distant, warning grumbles echoed across the river like the coughing of far-off cannon.

  Raesinia sat on the stone parapet, her back to a crenellation, one leg dangling over the long drop to the rocks and the river below. Cora stood beside her, when she managed to stand still. Mostly she paced, arms crossed over her chest, hugging herself tighter when the wind gusted. Sothe, expressionless and impassive, waited between them.

  One by one, the other conspirators made their appearance. Maurisk’s eyes were dark with fatigue, but his expression was triumphant. Faro had found time to change clothes, and was now back in his fashionable courtier’s outfit, complete with dress rapier. Unlike Maurisk, he seemed to be full of nervous energy, and glanced from Sothe to Raesinia and back again. Last to arrive was Sarton, who seemed none the worse for wear from his captivity.

  “Raes, what’s going on?” Maurisk said, breaking the silence. “I’ve got work to do. They’re holding the council meeting this evening.”

  “And who is this?” Faro said, indicating Sothe.

  “This,” Raesinia said, “is Sothe. She’s what you might call an adjunct member of the cabal.”

  Faro blinked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I work for Raesinia, but I don’t make myself known to any of you,” Sothe said. “I help keep the Concordat looking in the wrong direction.”

  Maurisk’s face clouded. “Then you’ve been doing a bang-up job, I must say.”

  “I don’t like this,” Faro said. “You should have told us, Raes. Letting her in on the secret put all of us at risk. We have a right to know what you’re doing.”

  “I trust her,” Raesinia said. “I’ve known her for longer than I’ve known any of you.”

  “But I haven’t,” Maurisk said. “Faro’s right. Why not let us know?”

  “Because,” Sothe said, “I work for Raesinia. My job is to keep her safe. That includes keeping her safe from any of you.”

  That hung in the air for a long moment. Cora turned away, walking to the inner edge of the parapet and looking down at the still-thronged courtyard. Sarton was still staring at the sky, but Raesinia, Maurisk, and Faro exchanged glances.

  “Now I really don’t like this,” Maurisk said. He stepped forward to stand directly in front of Sothe. “What are you implying?”

  “And,” Faro said, coming up behind him, “why should we believe you?”

  Thunder growled.

  “There!” Sarton said. “Lightning!” He looked down at the others. “I’m sorry. You know how it is when you get your teeth in a p . . . problem. I’ve been spending some time looking at the arrangements here, and I think . . .”

  He trailed off as he absorbed the tense atmosphere. Sothe cleared her throat.

  “I imply nothing,” she said. “I asked you all here because, by the night before last, I had become reasonably certain one of you was leaking information to the Concordat.”

  Maurisk snorted. “If one of us had been Concordat from the beginning, do you really think we would have gotten this far?”

  “I didn’t say the informant was leaking from the beginning. It began quite recently, probably after the Second Pennysworth riots. That was when Danton really became a problem, and I can only assume the Last Duke went looking for answers and found someone he could squeeze.”

  Faro was glaring at her, one hand on his rapier. “And you didn’t think to mention this at the time?” He looked at Raesinia. “Ben’s dead because we didn’t know the Concordat was onto us. If we believe what she’s saying—”

  “It’s a fair question, Sothe,” Raesinia said. You might have at least told me.

  “I said nothing because I wasn’t certain,” Sothe said. “Trust is paramount in a small group like this one. The mere accusation would have destroyed you, and I didn’t want to risk that without knowing for sure who the informant was.” Her eyes shifted, fractionally, toward Raesinia. “If that makes me guilty of Ben’s death, I accept it.”

  “I don’t believe a word of this,” Maurisk said. He turned his back on Sothe and stalked away a few steps, then rounded on her. “The Last Duke would like nothing better than for us to turn on one another now. For all we know—”

  “Sothe doesn’t work for Orlanko,” Raesinia said. “I’m certain of that, if nothing else.”

  “So you say,” said Faro. He was still almost face-to-face with Sothe. “But you kept her secret in the first place. Why should we believe you?”

  Sarton coughed politely. “If you kept silent because you didn’t know for c . . . certain, the fact that you’ve told us now logically imp . . . plies that you are sure.” Another rumble from the heavens nearly drowned out his soft, stuttering voice. “What happened?”

  “The commander of the Concordat forces at the Vendre was Captain James Ross,” Sothe said. “His files were well organized. Like many Concordat field agents, however, he failed to take seriously the regulations concerning the practice of keeping books of ciphers in physical proximity to encoded communications.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about Concordat procedures—” Faro began, but Maurisk cut him off.

  “You can read Ross’ files?”

  “Not all of them, but enough to know that I was right.”

  Maurisk’s voice trembled. “And the identity of the informant?”

  “Yes. The duke wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be swept up in the purges.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Faro, “that you’re taking this seriously—”

  Steel zinged as his rapier came out of its scabbard, faster than Raesinia would have given him credit for. Quick as he was, though, Sothe was faster. Her hand shot out and grabbed his, fingers interlocking like lovers’ on a promenade, and something fast and painful happened. Faro let go of his sword and spun away from her, only to be brought up short when she kept her grip on his hand. Sothe’s left hand had emerged from her waistband holding a long, thin dagger.

  “Now,” she said, “I hope—”

  “Sothe,” Raesinia said quietly.

  There was a click. Even as he’d lost his sword, Faro’s off hand had gone to his pocket and come out with a nasty-looking short-barreled pistol. He thumbed back the hammer and brought the barrel up to aim squarely between Raesinia’s eyes.

  “Your job is to protect her, isn’t it?” Faro said, his voice tight with pain. “Isn’t it? Then let go of me!”

  Sothe locked eyes with Raesinia, just for a moment. Raesinia raised her eyebrows emphatically and nodded.

  Better he point that thing at me than anyone else. Part of her was trying to process what was unfolding—that Faro had as good as signed Ben’s death warrant—but the rest was still planning as calmly as ever. All I need to do is make him pull the trigger. He’d never get the chance to reload. Raesinia had watched Sothe split leaves with a knife at twenty yards, and she never had less than a half dozen blades on her person. Come o
n, come on . . .

  Slowly, Sothe released Faro’s hand. He stepped away from her, weapon still trained on Raesinia, and circled around until his back was against the waist-high parapet stone.

  “You’ll never get out of here alive,” Raesinia said, conversationally. She heard a hiss of breath from Maurisk and a startled squeak from Cora, somewhere behind her. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “The hell I won’t.” Faro grabbed Raesinia by the arm and pressed the barrel of the pistol against the back of her skull. “Come on. Over to the trapdoor.”

  He pushed her, painfully, but she didn’t move. “Then what?”

  “Then I leave you all up here, bar the door, and get off the Island before anybody comes up here to let you out.” He tugged again, and when she didn’t move his voice turned almost plaintive. “Come on, Raes. Nobody needs to get killed.”

  “Ben,” Raesinia said. “Ben got killed. Because you told Orlanko where to find us.”

  “I didn’t know they were going to kill him! Everyone would have been fine if you’d just come along quietly.”

  “Raes . . . ,” Maurisk said. “He’s right. We’ll catch up with this bastard later. It’s not worth getting your head blown off.”

  “Please, Raes!” Cora’s voice was high and scared.

  “Answer me this, Faro,” Raesinia said, implacably. “How much did it cost to buy you? A new pair of boots? One of those fancy swords you like so much?”

  “Shut up. Move, damn it!” Faro tried to pull her after him, but Raesinia let her legs sag and ended up leaning against the parapet, facing outward, with Faro pressed up close behind her. Her knees pressed against the stone, and she felt a tingle in the soles of her feet as her balance shifted dangerously.

  “Raes!” Cora shrieked.

  Raesinia put her free hand on the parapet. “How much, Faro?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Faro took a step back, spun Raesinia around so they were face-to-face, then pushed her back against the wall, his hand still tight on her wrist. The pistol was pressed tight against her forehead. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  More or less. Raesinia smiled. “How much?”

  “They had my family,” Faro hissed through clenched teeth. He pressed harder, levering her out dangerously over the edge. “My parents. My sisters. He told me he’d send them to me in pieces if I didn’t go along. What in the name of the Savior was I supposed to do?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, blinking away tears. It was as good an opportunity as Raesinia thought she was likely to get.

  She brought her free hand up and wrapped it around his wrist, feeling their shared center of balance rock against the parapet. At the same time, her knee came up, fast and hard, between his legs. The blow to his groin would curl him up, and she’d be able to force the pistol away from her head before he could fire.

  That was the theory, anyway. Something felt wrong as soon as she started to move. Her knee got tangled against something hard between his thighs—the damned scabbard, it got twisted when he turned around—

  The wooden sheath absorbed the force of her blow with a splintering crack. She got her hand on his wrist, but the pistol was jammed hard against her forehead, and she didn’t have the leverage to shift it. She saw his eyes open and blink again, as slowly as if in a dream, and his finger jerked on the trigger. The hammer fell, sparking into the pan, and then—

  Raesinia had never been shot in the head before. She felt a violent tug, as though someone had grabbed hold of her hair and yanked backward hard. In the same instant, her whole body went numb and all her limbs tried to pull inward at once, like a child instinctively clapping a hand over a skinned knee. With her knee between Faro’s legs, caught on his scabbard, and one of his wrists in her hand, this had the effect of pulling him practically on top of her.

  Something scraped against the small of her back. There was a high, thin scream—Cora—and Raesinia saw a dizzy, spinning view of the darkening sky. Something dropped out of the pit of her stomach, and then she was falling.

  It was a long way to the rocky riverfront below. She had time to let go of Faro and push him away. Raesinia hoped, in the muzzy-headed way of one whose brain had largely been converted into a cloud of flying gore and splinters, that she’d gotten enough momentum to get away from the wall and hit the water, but as she spun the ground came into view and it became clear she wasn’t going to make it. The base of the wall was a jumble of rocks, rounded off by the river at the waterline but still jagged above it.

  Oh dear. This is going to hurt.

  —

  It turned out Raesinia could lose consciousness. All it took was driving a pistol ball through her brain, then smashing it to a red paste in a hundred-foot fall onto unforgiving stone.

  She’d always wanted to have one of those out-of-body experiences sometimes described by seamen who’d been rescued from drowning, hovering above her corporeal form while a celestial chorus beckoned. It would have answered certain key questions raised by her postmortal state. But either those poor sailors had been telling stories or there was no choir of angels waiting for Raesinia. No army of demons, either, though. Just . . . nothing, a blank in her memory from the moment she’d hit the rocks. It was a little like waking suddenly from a deep sleep, but with none of the refreshed feeling from having rested.

  The binding was still working furiously, pulling wounds closed and regrowing flesh to replace what was lost. It went about this process with a blind, idiot determination that reminded Raesinia of a swarm of ants, doggedly building and rebuilding their anthill every time some curious child kicked it over. There was no intention there, no thought, just the mindless response of an animal.

  It couldn’t understand, for example, when circumstances were unfavorable. As best Raesinia could tell, she was stuck on the edge of the skirt of rocks at the bottom of the Vendre’s walls, with her head and shoulder underwater and her legs sticking up in a most unladylike fashion. Her lungs were full of muddy river water, and her heart was limp and still in her chest. But the binding had straightened the fractured bones of her arms, and she could move, after a fashion. When she brought her hands up to explore her face, she found a coin-sized patch on her forehead of smooth, freshly knitted bone, surrounded by a slowly closing knot of regenerated skin.

  The most urgent problem was what she was stuck on. Her eyes weren’t in working order yet, but she explored it with her hands. A splintery column of rock, freshly exposed by some underwater cracking, had driven itself some distance into her abdomen and caught there, leaving her hanging like a speared fish. As the gentle currents of the river moved her, she could feel it grate against her bottom ribs. The binding worked feverishly to repair the damaged flesh around the intrusion but could do nothing to push her off it.

  Well. I suppose it’s up to me, then. Raesinia flailed her legs for a few moments until she determined to her satisfaction that nothing could be accomplished with them. Her hands could reach the offending spike, but it was slippery and offered little purchase, and the angle was bad. Scrabbling and pushing at it earned her only torn skin on her palms, which the binding went to work repairing with—she liked to imagine—an exasperated sigh.

  All right. Now what? She couldn’t just hang here forever. There were people who went about picking up corpses, weren’t there? Eventually someone would notice the upside-down body under the walls of the Vendre and send a boat out. They would discover the Princess Royal of Vordan, her arse in the air, impaled on a spiky rock. She wondered if whoever did it would die of shock on the spot.

  A moot point, though. Sothe will get here first.

  She hung motionless awhile longer. Her eyes were beginning to clear, but there wasn’t much to see, just the dark waters of the Vor. Her hair settled in long spiderweb patterns around her head, twitching this way and that in the weak currents. She felt a tug at her leg through a rent in he
r trousers. A scavenger, she assumed, and kicked her feet to indicate that she wasn’t dead yet. Or . . . well, whatever.

  Something splashed into the water nearby. Raesinia turned her head, but all she could see was a dark shadow in the murk, making its way along the rocks. A moment later it was beside her, a pair of hands groping gently along her body until they found the protruding chunk of stone. Whoever it was took hold of her, above and below the intrusion, and lifted. Dirty water flooded into the wound, and thick, dark blood flowed out. Raesinia pictured the binding sighing again, this time with relief, as it went to work knitting up the torn skein of her intestines.

  Whoever it was pushed her away from the rocks, and someone else took hold of her hands and pulled. Between the two of them they managed to roll Raesinia over the low gunwale of a boat, to lie dripping and motionless on the bottom. She felt the boat rock as the figure who’d been in the water pulled itself back in.

  This left Raesinia in something of a quandary. She could pretend to be dead for only so long. It might be Sothe, but it might not, and she dared not open her eyes to check. She opted to lie still, feeling her insides rebuilding themselves, and hoped that whoever they were, they would say something.

  There was a long silence, in fact, broken by the splash of oars as the boat cleared off from the rocky walls of the Vendre and moved out into the slow, calm waters of the Vor. Eventually, though, the rowing sounds stopped, and strong hands took Raesinia by the shoulders and rolled her onto her back, letting her look up at her rescuers.

  “I must say, Your Highness,” said Janus bet Vhalnich, “you’ve looked better.”

  Raesinia sat up, her clothes squishing damply, and looked around. They were in a tiny rowboat, really too small for three. In the back was Sothe, an oar in each hand, resolutely refusing to meet Raesinia’s eyes. In the front, Janus was stripped to a white shirt and trousers, sopping wet.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but all that emerged was a thin stream of river water. Raesinia held up a finger to indicate he should wait, and Janus nodded gravely. She leaned over the edge of the boat and vomited up a mix of water and blood that went on for far longer than she’d expected. Then, feeling quite a bit lighter, she turned back to Janus and took an experimental breath. The binding tingled across her lungs, repairing the damage done by hours of immersion. Her heart started with a jerk, then settled reluctantly into its familiar rhythm, like an ancient machine squealing along a rusty track.