The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns

by Wexler, Django

  Inside, shouts and occasional bursts of violent applause indicated the Deputies-General was already in session. The entrance hall was crowded, deputies in their sashes mixing with spectators and supplicants. More Patriot Guards lined the walls, and another pair—one Green and one Red, of course—guarded the double doors leading into the great hall itself. Winter threaded her way through the crowd and, under the cover of a particularly loud burst of shouting, pushed the doors open and slipped inside.

  The great hall of the cathedral was not really very well suited to be used for an assembly like this one. It was long and rectangular, arranged so that a single priest could stand at the altar at one end and look out over the rows of worshippers. At first the deputies had planned to put their speaker’s rostrum in front of the altar, but some of the radicals had objected to the way this separated the speaker from the rest of the body—and thus, symbolically, from the body politic, beginning the process that could only end in the exaltation of an individual over the community—

  And so on. In the end, in a pattern Winter was beginning to recognize, a compromise was reached that was clearly inefficient and pleased no one. Wooden bleachers were erected along one long edge of the rectangle, displacing various Sworn Church paraphernalia. The benches curved around when they reached the far end of the room, thus cutting off the altar from sight. The speaker was placed against the other long wall, a curiously lopsided arrangement that left him only a short distance from some of his audience and a long way from others. But he was very definitely below them, and in any case by the time the seats had actually been built it was too late to go back and redo everything.

  In front of the altar, on the far right of the speaker’s rostrum, the curved section of seats called the Bend was occupied by the Monarchists. They consisted of Peddoc and his ilk, offspring of powerful noble families, backed up by representatives of the larger merchants, Vordanai bankers, and other wealthy men. Opposite them, on the extreme left-hand side of the benches, were the Radicals, now a haphazard coalition of student revolutionaries, lowborn advocates of violent reform, and a few noble sons who had come under the seductive spell of Voulenne. Directly in front of the speaker was a large group variously called the Conservatives (by the Radicals), the Republicans (by the Monarchists), or simply the Center. This was not a cohesive group, but merely a collection of those who for whatever reason felt uncomfortable joining one extreme or the other, and was itself separated into subgroups based on class, shared interest, or simple association or friendship. Winter’s own spot was with Cyte, Cora, and a few of Cyte’s student friends who hadn’t joined the Radicals.

  Why she should be a deputy at all was something Winter had often wondered. The grounds for membership were poorly defined. Everyone who had been present on the day of Danton’s assassination was invited, and a few more representatives had forced their way in by virtue of money or influence. Winter was theoretically there to represent Jane and the Leatherbacks, but Jane had given her no advice about what she was supposed to be doing.

  In fact, she’d had only the briefest conversation with Jane since the assassination. They’d both attended the first meeting of the deputies after the queen’s surrender, but a few hours of discussion, punctuated by shouting and the occasional hurled inkwell, had been enough for Jane. She’d retreated to the safety of her headquarters on the other side of the river. Winter spent those few hours sitting beside her in silence, with Abby hanging between them like a curtain. When Jane left, Winter had mumbled something about needing to keep a watch on things here. The uncomprehending pain in Jane’s eyes made Winter want to vomit.

  Since then, she’d felt duty-bound to attend these meetings, though increasingly that was because she had nothing else to do. Winter felt like she was drifting, alone and rudderless. Every day that passed was making matters worse with Jane, but she couldn’t face the pain of ripping open the wound so that it might begin to heal. Her only other attachment was to Janus and Marcus, and they were languishing in the Vendre with other officers of the Armsmen and the Royal Grenadiers, while the deputies tried to figure out what to do with them. All that Winter had left was her tenuous friendship with Cyte, and a vague sense of guilt that forced her to sit through these noisy, tedious sessions.

  Cyte mouthed a greeting when she caught Winter’s eye, her actual words lost in the clamor of the deputies’ debate. Winter awkwardly crab-walked along the rows of benches until she reached her friend’s side and sat down between her and Cora.

  “What’s going on?” she said, into Cyte’s ear.

  “Same as yesterday,” Cyte said. “They’re trying to formalize the procedures for the final Deputies-General. Right now they’re stuck on the veto. The Monarchists want the queen to have the right to veto legislation. The Radicals know they don’t want a veto, but they can’t seem to decide what they want the queen’s role to be.”

  “What do you think?”

  Cyte shrugged. “Gareth proposed a veto, overridable by a two-thirds vote in the Deputies. It seemed like a good compromise, but neither side was listening. I just wish they would get on with it.” She sighed as there was a rustle in the Monarchist ranks. “And here’s Peddoc to make his daily petition.”

  “Again?”

  A shout of “Quiet!” came from the rostrum, and heavy thuds echoed through the chambers as the Patriot Guards on either side slammed the butts of their muskets against the floor. This eventually got the noise down to a level where a man could make himself heard, and Johann Maurisk, president of the assembly, laid his hands flat on his podium and cleared his throat.

  How Maurisk had gotten himself elected president was another thing that was not clear to Winter. It had been in the first couple of days, when the heady mood of victory was still strong—if not for that, the deputies would still be arguing about whether they even needed a president. Maurisk’s background was with the student radicals, but his well-known association with the martyr Danton gave him enough cachet with the Center to get his nomination through.

  It certainly wasn’t a job she would have signed up for, at any price. Maurisk seemed at home with the debates, though, which often ended up with president and deputy standing inches apart, shouting at full volume, spittle flying into each other’s faces. While the Patriot Guards were nominally charged with defending the assembly, keeping the deputies from coming to blows had become an important secondary duty.

  “The floor recognizes Deputy Peddoc,” Maurisk said, in the resigned tones of someone who knows what is coming next.

  Peddoc, dressed more colorfully and expensively than ever, got to his feet from his seat in the front row of the Monarchists. He raised his chin and extended one hand in the declamatory posture taught to rhetoric students at the University, in spite of the snickers and catcalls this provoked from the less educated members of the other parties.

  “Brothers of the Deputies-General,” he said, “we have won the city. But we cannot simply rest easy on our victory!”

  “‘Our’ victory?” Cyte said under her breath. “I don’t recall that he had much part in it.”

  Winter snickered. Peddoc continued.

  “The villain Orlanko waits, only a few days’ march to the north! Our scouts tell us the troops at Midvale are preparing to march. If we hope to retain what we have won, we must strike first! I propose that this assembly set aside all other business and call for volunteers for the Patriot Guard, for the purpose of moving immediately on the Last Duke’s camp!”

  The Monarchists were clapping and cheering before Peddoc had finished, and there was a little bit of applause from the Center, but the Radicals listened in stony silence. Their leader, a young man named Dumorre, got to his feet and heaved an exaggerated sigh.

  “We’ve heard this story before, Deputy Peddoc,” he said. “If Orlanko was going to march on Vordan City, don’t you think he would have done it by now?”

  That was a fair enough point
, Winter thought. The deputies had sent scouts to Midvale, and while their amateur reporting was a bit garbled, the general picture was of a great deal of activity but no actual marching. Peddoc had been demanding action for four days now, and it was quickly descending to the level of farce. Like a lot of other things around here.

  “Besides,” Dumorre went on, “I think you know by now the main objection to your proposal. Who will command this force you want to assemble? And, once Orlanko is beaten, what is to prevent this commander from turning his men on the city?”

  “I object to the insinuation that I would do any such thing!” Peddoc thundered.

  “So you admit that you have yourself in mind for command?”

  “Of course.” Peddoc drew himself up. “May I remind you that I commanded the force that took the Vendre?”

  That set both sides off, and the chamber erupted in a roar of claims and counterclaims. The Patriot Guards started slamming their muskets against the floor for quiet, but the Greens on the right were soon trying to outslam the Reds on the left, and they only added to the cacophony.

  The Patriot Guard was emblematic of the deputies’ problems. It had been formed in the immediate aftermath of the queen’s surrender, when it became clear that someone had to maintain law and order. The Armsmen officers had been placed under lock and key, but many of the rankers were sympathetic to the revolutionaries, and they’d formed a growing corps of volunteers to keep the peace. In place of the Armsmen’s traditional green uniforms, the Guards wore green armbands to denote their status.

  Before long, though, other deputies had objected. The former Armsmen were too tied to the Monarchists and the Crown, and their loyalty was suspect. They’d formed their own guard, wearing red armbands, to protect the deputies from any attempt at coercion. The two groups had come to blows in front of the cathedral over who would have the honor of guarding the assembly, until the deputies had agreed to the creation of a Patriot Guard that would include both factions and answer to the body as a whole. Instead of armbands, they were to wear blue and silver sashes, the colors of Vordan.

  That had lasted until some bright spark had added a thin strip of green to his sash. By the following day, every member of the Guard wore a similar patch of color denoting his allegiance, and Maurisk had been forced to decree that Greens and Reds would have exactly equal representation throughout the cathedral.

  “I’d be almost tempted to let him go,” Winter said, “if he could get any idiots to follow him. At least we’d be rid of them.”

  “It may come to that,” Cyte said. “There’s talk among the Monarchists that Peddoc means to march with anyone who’s willing, resolution or no resolution. They say the Greens have a big cache of weapons they captured at Ohnlei.”

  “Oh.” Winter wished she hadn’t been quite so flippant. If Peddoc did march, anyone who followed him was liable to get killed. Going up against regular Royal Army troops with this rabble would be madness.

  “Hell.” Cyte ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head. “They’re going to be at this all day.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m going to find something more useful to do with my time,” Cyte said. “Like trying to empty the river with a spoon. You coming?”

  Winter shook her head. “I should stay. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on this for Jane.”

  Cyte gave her an odd look, then shrugged. “As you like.”

  Winter sat through four or five more hours of debate before hunger forced her to venture out of the great hall. The square in front of the cathedral was thick with hawkers selling food and drink, but once she’d found something to eat, she couldn’t bring herself to go back inside. They’d be at it for the rest of the day, and possibly into the night as well; sometimes it wasn’t until one or two in the morning that the last arguing pair finally collapsed with exhaustion.

  Instead she turned her steps toward home. Or at least what passed for home, in this strange world. She felt as though she’d stepped through a magic door into some kind of shadow-Vordan, where everything was upside down. Though if it really was magic, Infernivore would have warned me by now. Deputies had been assigned apartments on the Island; a large number of nobles and foreigners, especially Borelgai, had fled, leaving a surplus of vacancies. Winter’s quarters were on the third floor of a narrow stone-faced building, whose monthly rent was probably higher than a year’s salary for an army lieutenant. It had been lightly looted before she got to it, but they’d left a bed, table, and chairs behind, and that was enough for her purposes.

  She trudged up the front staircase and paused in front of her front door. There was an envelope on the floor, labeled WINTER in a clear, careful hand. The post hadn’t worked in days—the Post Office was technically an arm of the Ministry of Information—so someone must have hand-delivered it. Winter picked it up, curiously, and broke the plain wax seal on the back.

  The note inside read:

  Winter,

  Please come. I need your help.

  Jane

  Under the signature was another line, which had been heavily scratched out. Below that, just the words “I love you.”

  “Fuck,” Winter said, with considerable feeling.

  —

  An hour later, having shed the black deputy’s sash, she was on her way to Dockside. A few adventurous cabbies were in the streets, but Winter had decided to walk, in the hopes that it would help her clear her head. It hadn’t worked. All she could think about was Jane: Jane’s smile, her soft red hair, her body pressed against Abby, her lips softly parting as Abby’s hands curved over her breasts. Winter touched the note, a crumpled ball in her pocket, and bit her lip.

  She passed through Farus’ Triumph, still littered with filth and debris from the riots, and over the Grand Span to the South Bank. Lost as she was in her own thoughts, it wasn’t until she got within a few blocks of Jane’s building that she became aware of the change that had come over the streets. When Jane had made her rounds, every street had been alive with people and noisy with chatter, alleys crisscrossed by washing lines and swarming with children at play. Now they were empty. Only the occasional pedestrian crossed her path, head down and moving quickly, and there were no children about at all. In the distance, she saw a squad of a half dozen Patriot Guards swagger around a corner, muskets slung over their shoulders.

  Winter’s steps quickened. She wasn’t as familiar with the streets around here as she might have liked. After the second wrong turn, staring at another street she didn’t recognize, she stopped and ground her teeth. She hadn’t been worried about getting lost, because anyone in the street could point her to Mad Jane’s headquarters, but now . . .

  A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. Winter spun away, instinctively, but another hand shot out and grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. Her off hand went to her belt, searching for a knife that wasn’t there, but a moment later she recognized the tall figure and sighed with relief.

  “Walnut,” she said. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t want you running off.” He let go of her arm. “Jane wants to see you.”

  “I was just trying to find her.” Winter gave an embarrassed shrug. “But I think I’m lost.”

  “Come on. It’s this way.”

  He walked by her side the rest of the way, which made Winter feel uncomfortably like a prisoner being escorted. There was something in the big man’s attitude she didn’t like; his expression was grimmer than she remembered, and he responded to her attempts at conversation with grunts. Winter was glad to see the familiar shape of Jane’s old building when they turned a corner.

  When Walnut knocked on the front door, it was opened by a very nervous teenage girl with a heavy wooden cudgel. She looked relieved to see Walnut, and her eyes went very wide when she caught sight of Winter. As they passed inside, Winter saw three more girls, similarly armed, all of
them now whispering excitedly.

  “I, um,” the first girl said, “I’ll go and get . . . somebody. Stay here.”

  She dashed off. Winter, Walnut, and the guards waited in silence for a few minutes. Somewhere nearby, a baby wailed.

  A baby?

  “Winter!”

  It was Abby, naturally. Winter steeled herself and put on a neutral face. “Um. Hello. Jane asked me to come.”

  “I know. Thanks, Walnut. I’ll take her upstairs.”

  Walnut nodded and let himself out. Abby beckoned Winter to follow and led her back through the building to the creaky old stairwell. When Winter had last been here, these lower halls had been dusty and seldom used, with the girls housed on the upper stories. Now the walls were lined with bedrolls, blankets, and makeshift mattresses, and all the people who were absent from the streets outside seemed to have made their way here. They were mostly young women, not the cheerful, well-fed girls Winter remembered but dirty, scared-looking things. A few boys were with them, too, and small clusters of old men and women, wrapped in blankets. All conversation stopped as Abby and Winter passed by, and all eyes followed them down the hall until they passed out of sight.

  “Abby,” Winter whispered, “what the hell is going on?”

  Abby shook her head. “Jane can explain.”

  Reaching the stairwell, they climbed four stories to the top of the building and went into the old study Jane used as her war room. Jane was gathered around her table with Chris, Becca, and Winn, but when Abby and Winter entered she straightened up and made a shooing gesture. They all piled out, wide-eyed, leaving Winter alone with Abby and Jane.

  “Jane—” Winter began.

  “Walnut picked her up in the street,” Abby said. “She was alone.”

  Jane paled and set her jaw. “Winter,” she said carefully, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”