The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns

by Wexler, Django

  “I don’t know.” Winter fought the urge to curl into a ball. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Hell, I could be killed, or—”

  “Don’t talk like that. Please. If something happened to you, I don’t . . . I don’t think I could stand it. I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “I’m sorry.” Winter didn’t know what else to say.

  “You’re always apologizing to me.” Jane tried to smile, but even by moonlight Winter could tell it was paper-thin. “Have you ever thought that you should stop doing things that you need to apologize for, instead?”

  “I don’t . . .” Winter shook her head. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Of course you have a fucking choice! Everyone has a choice. You can stay here, and when Vhalnich comes looking for you we’ll shove a musket up his arse and send him running. If anyone tries to take you, I’d—”

  “You know it isn’t like that. I have a responsibility to—”

  “But not to me?”

  “Jane.” The tears were leaking out now, in spite of Winter’s best efforts to stop them. “Don’t do this. Please.”

  Jane rolled out of bed with a growl. Winter could hear her stalking through the room, floorboards creaking underfoot. There was a splash of water in the basin, and then the sound of shattering crockery.

  Winter rolled over, facedown, burying her tears in the pillow. The bed underneath her was warm from Jane’s body.

  Time passed, imperceptibly. Winter stayed with her face pressed against the tear-soaked pillow. She must have dozed, because she didn’t hear the floorboards announce Jane’s return, only felt the delicate touch of a finger at the small of her back, tracing a shivery trail up her spine.

  “Don’t say anything,” Jane said. Winter felt the bed creak as she sat down beside her. “It’s my turn to apologize.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to work out like this,” Winter tried to say.

  “I didn’t catch a word of that,” Jane said. “You’re talking into the pillow.”

  Winter rolled over. “I didn’t—”

  She didn’t get to say it this time, either, because of something Jane did with her fingers. She gave a little yelp instead, and Jane laughed.

  “It’s all right. I’ve worked it out.” Her smile turned wicked. “But I hope you weren’t planning on getting any sleep.”

  —

  In fact, Winter slept better than she had any right to. The sun was well up by the time she opened her eyes and stretched, savoring the pleasant ache in her body and the unaccustomed sensation of the bedsheets against bare skin. The bed was empty except for her. She could hear a distant clatter and clamor of voices that was presumably the girls fixing breakfast. Jane would be down there, presiding.

  If we win . . .

  Winter shook her head. She just didn’t know. Janus had said the Black Priests would come after her, for bearing a demon. But if Orlanko’s beaten, they won’t have any allies in the city. Would Janus still need me?

  She sat up, got out of bed, and found a fresh basin of water waiting on the table to replace the one Jane had smashed the night before. Her clothes were there, too, in a rumpled pile. She splashed some water on her face in an effort to bring herself a bit more fully out of sleep, and dressed in yesterday’s creased, sweaty outfit, wrinkling her nose a bit before doing up the buttons.

  How quickly we forget. In Khandar she’d worn the same uniform and even the same underclothes for days at a time, and counted herself lucky if she had enough water to drink, let alone wash with. Too much city living is making me soft. She ran her hands through her hair, shook her head, and went down to see if there was anything left of breakfast.

  On the way she saw a couple of girls, idling unconvincingly in the corridors, who hurried ahead of her and out of sight as she approached. Other than that, the corridors were empty, and Winter frowned as she came closer to the dining room. Is that a drum? What the hell’s going on?

  She opened the door to find that the tables—and all the debris of the previous evening—had been pushed to the edges of the hall, leaving a broad clear space in the center. In that space, lined up in nearly even ranks, were Jane’s girls. There were about two hundred of them, Winter guessed, in a ten-deep formation, with one young woman on the end holding a child’s drum. When she caught sight of Winter, she beat a simple pattern, and every one of the girls straightened up and saluted. They had obviously been practicing this, and while they didn’t quite have the parade-ground snap, Winter had to admit they did a better job than most of the Patriot Guard.

  Jane stood by one side of this formation, grinning in a way that Winter didn’t like at all.

  “Good, aren’t they?” she said, catching Winter’s slack-jawed expression. “I thought we should get in a little practice before heading down to the Triumph.”

  “What?” Winter shook her head. “Jane, what in Karis’ name are you doing?”

  “We’re going to volunteer.” She looked over her shoulder. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir!” the girls said, in a soprano chorus. Clearly they’d practiced that as well.

  “You’re going to volunteer,” Winter repeated, feeling sandbagged.

  “To fight,” Jane explained patiently. “Vhalnich said he needs every man he can get to carry a musket. So I thought, why not us?”

  Winter crossed the room, grabbed Jane’s arm, and dragged her without a word toward the door. Jane came along willingly enough, shouting over her shoulder as she went, “Chris! Get them to practice the salute a few more times!”

  Once the door had closed behind them, Winter pushed Jane against the wall and looked her in the eye. “Have you gone totally out of your mind?”

  Jane, still grinning, shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why would you put them up to this?” Winter glared. “Is it supposed to be a joke? If so—”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Then you really want to take them to a battle? Some of those girls should still be playing with dolls, and you want to give them muskets?” Winter took a step back and shook her head. “I think you have gone mad.”

  “They wouldn’t all fight, obviously.” Jane straightened her shirt and brushed herself off. “Just like with the Leatherbacks. But the younger ones could still make themselves useful somehow.”

  “You’re really serious about this.” Winter drew in a long breath. “God above, where do I start?”

  “I don’t see why you’re so shocked. We’ve been fighting Orlanko’s tax farmers for years.”

  “This is not the same thing. A little brawl in an alley is one thing, but these are Royal Army troops. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “You did it, didn’t you? Why can’t they?”

  Winter paused, temporarily thrown by this line of reasoning.

  Jane crossed her arms. “Besides, your colonel seems to be taking any men who are willing. My girls may not be soldiers, but they’ll do a better job than some of the boys I’ve seen going to sign up.”

  “But—” Winter gritted her teeth. “This is about me, isn’t it? You want to follow me.”

  “That’s what it was, at first—”

  “You can’t be serious. I don’t care how you feel—marching two hundred people into harm’s way just so you can be near me is wrong. It’s wrong, Jane.”

  “I said at first.” Jane took a deep breath. “Listen. Last night I thought, all right, Winter ran away and joined the army, so why don’t I? I’ll just go after her and keep her safe. I got up early so I could make sure everything was arranged here for the next few days. But when I came downstairs, Chris told me she’d caught four of the younger girls trying to sneak out, because they wanted to try the same thing.”

  “I would have thought you’d put a stop to that,” Winter grated.

  “I was about to,” Ja
ne said. “But I thought, I can’t tell them not to do what I was about to do myself, can I? And by then news had gotten around, and some of the others said they wanted to go as well. They want to help, Winter. They hate the tax farmers, and they hate Orlanko, and they want to help defend this city.”

  “I don’t—they’re not thinking straight, then. None of them know what it’s like, either.”

  “And the men who’re signing up do? You’re fine with every butcher’s boy and apprentice fisherman in the city carrying a musket in the ranks, but not us?”

  “It’s . . .” Winter stopped. She wanted to say, “It’s not the same.” But it is the same, isn’t it? She remembered watching the recruits at Fort Valor, thinking how young they were. Raw boys, enticed into the king’s service by the promises of recruiting sergeants, and thrown willy-nilly across thousands of miles of ocean to fight people they’d never heard of. These are girls—people—who want to defend their own home. “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. But I didn’t think that was good enough to tell them they had to stop.”

  Winter lowered her voice. “Even if it means some of them won’t come back? Because that is what it means. Even if we win.”

  “You don’t think they know that?” Jane shook her head. “Our battles may be just ‘little brawls’ to you, but the tax farmers and their thugs aren’t fighting with cushions. Everyone in there knows what it’s like to lose someone.”

  “But . . .” Winter paused, still not quite believing she was being talked into this. “Look. Even if I agreed with you, Janus would never allow it. There’s no way we could sneak them all in as boys. Even getting you in”—Winter glanced at Jane’s chest, and blushed slightly—“might be difficult. If we tried it with more than a few, someone would give the game away.”

  “You’re right,” Jane said.

  “Then you don’t think we should do it?”

  “I don’t think we should do it in disguise.”

  “You want to just . . . what? Walk up to the colonel with two hundred girls, and say you want to sign up to fight?”

  Jane nodded. “Exactly.”

  “He’ll think you’re mad.”

  “Everyone already calls me Mad Jane.”

  “But he’ll never agree to that!”

  “He might,” Jane said, “if you were the one asking.”

  —

  An hour later, crossing Saint Vallax Bridge to the North Bank, Winter could still hardly believe what she was doing.

  “Remember the deal,” she said to Jane, under her breath. “If Janus says no, that’s the end of it. For all of you.”

  “I remember,” Jane said. She looked over her shoulder. “Jess! Keep ’em moving!”

  The girls had started out in a column, and even tried to keep in step, but by the end of the first street they’d devolved into a mob. They’d passed over the Island like a gang of tourists, pointing at the grand buildings and laughing with one another. For most of them, this was the first time they’d been over the bridges from Southside, and they were as new to the city as country children, for all that they lived only a few miles away.

  Jane’s lieutenants kept the group together and in motion. They still drew stares as they passed by, and the occasional shout. Some of these were obscene, and were answered cheerfully in kind, but most people just wanted to know where they were going. Every time this happened, one of the girls would sing out, “We’re going to join the army!” and everyone around them would start laughing.

  Once they crossed Bridge Street, Winter quickly located the Twin Turrets by its distinctive silhouette and the squad of Mierantai guards outside. Two of these trotted over as soon as they saw the small army of young women coming, which led to a tricky situation. Winter didn’t want to reveal her male persona, not here, but the Mierantai sergeant was equally reluctant to let the troop onto the grounds. Eventually Jane convinced the guards to send someone to tell Janus that Winter Bailey was here with Mad Jane, and a few minutes later the reply came back. The Mierantai escorted the girls out to the back lawn and sent Winter and Jane up to the house itself.

  “The colonel,” Jane whispered, as they passed through the elegantly appointed hall and climbed the main stairs. “He knows who you really are, right?”

  Winter nodded. “He knows everything. And I mean everything. Don’t try to lie to him.”

  For a moment, she felt a pang of conscience. She’d told Jane about her history with the army, but not that her original task had been to spy on the Leatherbacks. It didn’t matter, she told herself sternly, because she’d never actually done any spying to speak of, or made any reports.

  “He must really be something,” Jane said. Her tone was dismissive. “The whole city seems to have gone mad for him.”

  “He’s . . . you’ll see.”

  They reached the oak-paneled door to a study. Another guard stood outside it, and he exchanged salutes with their escort, then knocked politely.

  “Yes?” Janus said.

  “It’s the . . . young women I mentioned, sir,” said the sergeant, with a gravelly mountain accent. “You said you’d see them.”

  “Of course. Let them in.”

  The Mierantai opened the door. The study was neatly furnished but obviously unused. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of volumes with neatly matched bindings. A desk stood in front of a window, empty except for an inkpot. In the center of the room was a large table, and here Janus had spread out a pair of maps: a large-scale one of the city, and a smaller one showing the surrounding area. He was looking down at them as the two women entered, making notes on a scrap of paper and occasionally picking up a pair of steel dividers to measure a distance.

  Winter closed the door behind them, straightened to attention, and saluted. Janus looked up.

  “Lieutenant Ihernglass. It’s good to see you again.” He laid his pen carefully aside where it wouldn’t drip on the maps. “I understand I have you to thank for the recent events in the Deputies.”

  Winter felt herself flush. “No, sir. At least, not only me.” She gestured Jane forward. “This is Jane Verity.” As you well know. “Sometimes known on the streets as Mad Jane. She’s been of enormous assistance throughout.”

  “Of course. My thanks to you as well, Miss Verity. I understand that you have something to talk to me about?” He cocked his head toward the window, gray eyes gleaming. “Presumably something to do with the company of young women who are currently engaged in defoliating my back garden.”

  Winter winced. “Sorry about that, sir.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. Making the house our headquarters ensured that we would have soldiers tramping all over the grounds, and the gardens were bound to be casualties. Better that the flowers be picked before they’re stomped into the mud. So why have you brought me these young ladies?”

  “They want to volunteer, sir.” Winter took a deep breath. “They’re Jane’s people.” The group you sent me to “infiltrate.” “The Leatherbacks.”

  “I see.” Janus smiled. “I’m certain we can find work for them. In the medical services, or transport—”

  Jane cut in. “No, sir. We want to fight.”

  Janus’ smile faded slowly. He looked from Jane to Winter, and Winter found herself shrinking before that cool gray gaze. Then, abruptly, he turned away from both of them and went to the window. He looked down, and said nothing for a long moment.

  “We’ve been fighting Orlanko’s tax farmers since before you arrived,” Jane said, nervously, eager to fill the silence. “Some of my girls even know how to handle a musket. We’ve been protecting ourselves in the Docks since—”

  “I have three conditions,” Janus said, turning back from the window.

  “What?” said Jane.

  “What?” said Winter.

  “The first is that your people will be evaluated by their commander
, once they’ve had some training. Anyone that commander judges as not strong enough to use a weapon properly, or not fit to stand in a firing line, will remain behind, without argument.”

  “Fine,” Jane said. “Provided you promise that your commander will give us a fair chance.”

  Janus nodded. “Second, you will form a unit of your own, both in camp and in the field. You will take responsibility for keeping your people apart, and keeping others away.” He paused. “I will not have a unit in my command becoming a glorified brothel, understood?”

  “A brothel?” Jane’s lip twisted. “If you knew what we’ve been through in the Docks—”

  “I don’t know,” Janus said. “In fact, I know nothing about you, save for what Lieutenant Ihernglass has told me. Her recommendation counts for a great deal, which is why I’m willing to agree to this . . . experiment. That, and the fact that we are going to need all the help we can get.” He shrugged. “Primarily, this condition is for your protection. Whatever the moral qualities of your young ladies, you can be certain that there will be those who will assume they intend to provide that kind of service. And some among them will be willing to take by force what is not offered freely. Keeping you together will help, but you must be prepared to set watches and guard yourselves closely.”

  Jane still looked unhappy, but she nodded slowly. “I understand.”

  “You will be mocked. Laughed at. Then, when it becomes clear you really mean to go through with it, you will be insulted, slandered, attacked from all sides. You understand what this means? To all of you?”

  “Yes.” Jane faced Janus’ piercing stare head-on.

  “And then there are the risks of the battlefield. Your ‘girls’ will be shot. Some of them will die. Others will make it back to the cutters, and have their limbs taken off with bone saws.”

  “Just like all those boys you’re rounding up.”

  “Some of them may be captured by the enemy,” Janus continued remorselessly. “In which case I doubt they will be accorded the usual status of prisoners under the rules of civilized war.”