The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (23 page)

“What about Orlanko? I thought he was supposed to know everything.”

Abby’s steps slowed slightly. “That’s . . . more complicated. The head man in the Concordat for this part of the Docks is named Phineas Kalb. He and Jane have an arrangement.” Abby looked at Winter and sighed. “He makes sure we don’t turn up in the reports, and every couple of weeks he comes by and some of the girls . . . entertain him.”

That took a moment to sink in, like a bomb with a slow-burning fuse, but when she caught the meaning, Winter exploded.
“What?”

She said it louder than she meant to, and the girls passing them in the corridor looked over curiously. Abby grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her into the nearest open doorway, which led to a storeroom half-full of sacks of potatoes. Winter rounded on her.

“You’re telling me Jane
sends
girls off to . . . to
pleasure
some secret policeman?” Winter was practically vibrating with rage, though she couldn’t have said at whom.
At Abby? At Jane? After what happened to
her
, I can’t believe it.
“I
don’t
believe that.”

“Jane told me you wouldn’t understand,” Abby said. “The girls
volunteer
to do it.”

“Sure,” Winter said. “They volunteer if they want to keep getting fed. I’ve heard this story before.”
No better than goddamned Mrs. Wilmore.

“No,”
Abby said. “Winter, listen to me. Before we all found out about this, Jane was doing it herself. We practically had to hold her down to let someone else go in her place. She’s . . . still angry about that.”

Winter paused in mid-rage, uncertain. Abby took the opportunity to kick the door to the storeroom closed, then rounded on Winter.

“Listen.” There was a catch in her voice, and her eyes glittered with unshed
tears. “I know you and Jane go back a long way. God, if I’ve heard her talk about you once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. But you haven’t been here for the past year, all right? You look at this now”—she thumped the wall, quite hard—“and it all looks so neat and tidy, and you don’t see what it took to make it this way. What we
all
had to do, but Jane more than anyone. So if she wants to move you in like a long-lost . . . sister, that’s fine, that’s her choice. But don’t you
fucking
dare think you can sit in judgment of her.”

There was a long pause. Winter had faced down many things—Feor’s enormous
fin-katar
, a horde of screaming Redeemer cavalry, the leering face of Sergeant Davis that still featured in her nightmares—and by those standards this skinny teenager, hands balled into fists, eyes red and gleaming, was not much of a threat. But . . .

She’s right.
Winter closed her eyes.
I wasn’t here. I didn’t come back for her. Jane did what she had to do, not just for herself but for all these people, while I ran away and hid in a hole until someone came and dragged me out.
She let out a long, shaky breath.

“I’m sorry.” Winter opened her eyes to find Abby wiping her face on her sleeve, still trembling. “Abby. I’m really sorry. I . . . wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right.” Abby blinked away a few stray tears and managed a smile. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you. I haven’t been myself lately.”

—

To Winter’s surprise, the scene in Jane’s room looked like a conference she might have found in Janus’ tent outside Ashe-Katarion, albeit only if all the officers had been in drag. Jane sat at her big table, which was half-covered by a hand-drawn map of the Docks, each crooked alley surrounded by carefully penciled notes and annotations. Becca and Winn sat on one side of the table, Min and Chris on the other. There were two conspicuously empty seats, one to either side of Jane.

“Took you long enough,” Jane grumbled.

“Sorry,” Abby said. No trace of her rancor remained, except for a slight reddening of the eyes. “We had to finish up at breakfast.”

She took a seat at Jane’s left hand, and Winter slid into the chair that was obviously meant for her, feeling uncomfortable all over again. Apart from Abby, she’d barely exchanged a word with any of Jane’s lieutenants. For the most part they kept their eyes on Jane, but Winter found herself the subject of the occasional sideways glance.
Not hostile so much as curious,
she decided.
I can hardly blame them. I don’t have any right to be here, really.

“We have problems,” Jane announced, once everyone was seated. “More
accurately, one problem, and his name is the Most Honorable Sir Cecil fucking Volstrod.”

“Bloody Cecil,” said Winn. She was a tall, skinny woman, her well-muscled arms crosshatched with thin white scars.

“A tax farmer,” Abby said to Winter. “One of the worst.”

“I take it you filled her in?” Jane said.

“More or less.” Abby and Winter exchanged a look.

“Bloody Cecil kept our peace for a while,” Jane said, “but he was never happy about it. We all remember what happened last time he tried to throw his weight around.”

Winter was about to say that
she
didn’t, but from the way everyone around the table looked down, she thought she probably didn’t want to know.

“Unfortunately,” Jane said, “Bloody fucking Cecil has apparently been playing the markets with company money, in the hopes of raking off a bit more for himself.” She tapped a folded note in front of her. “Or so we are led to believe, anyway. Thanks to Danton and his pack of idiots, Cecil is in something of a bad spot right now, and he doesn’t have long to get out of it. That means he’s coming to the Docks, tonight, for a bit of impromptu smash-and-grab, and he’s bringing every hired leg-breaker he can get his hands on.”

“You’re not kidding there,” said Min, reading another note. Her role seemed to be managing papers and organization. Winter found it hard to imagine her fighting. “Jenny in the Flesh Market says he’s got nearly a hundred men already.”

There was a low murmur around the table. Jane frowned.

“I don’t care if he has
two
hundred,” she said. “If we sit this one out, it means we can’t protect the people here when push really comes to shove. Fuckers like Cecil will be all over us. We have to stop him.”

“If we call in every favor we can manage, I doubt we could come up with more than sixty men willing to stand up to Cecil,” Abby said. “That’s not going to be enough.”

“We’ve got a few muskets,” Chris said, hesitantly. “If we set some of the girls up on the rooftops, we could—”

“No muskets,” Jane said. “A little brawling is one thing. If word gets out that tax farmers and dockmen are fucking shooting at each other, the Armsmen will be all over us.”

There was a long, depressed silence. Winter cleared her throat. “Do you know the route they’ll be taking?”

Jane cocked her head. “More or less. They’ll have wagons, so they won’t be able to get through the alleys.”

“And do you think Cecil himself will be coming with them?”

“Definitely. If he can’t come up with some quick coin, he’s fucked. He’ll be here.”

Winter wondered whether this was what Janus had had in mind when he’d sent her here. Somehow she suspected not.
Though, with Janus, who knows?

“Then,” Winter said, “I have a suggestion . . .”

—

The street was alive with flickering shadows, swinging to and fro with the motions of the torch-wielding men and the rocking of the lanterns on the wagons. It looked as though an army of dark spirits were walking to either side of the tax farmers’ thugs, projected against the fronts of the buildings, slipping in and out of view but always keeping in step.

Aside from Bloody Cecil’s men, the street was deserted. Jane had made sure that news of the incursion got around. Winter only hoped that their own preparations had not also become common knowledge. The convoy was three empty wagons drawn by four-horse teams, to carry the booty, followed by a single two-horse coach with dark-uniformed footmen on the running boards. Around the vehicles, the mercenaries maintained a loose guard, walking in small groups clustered around the torchbearers. Snatches of conversation drifted past her, and occasional coarse laughter.

She was forcibly reminded of a little fishing village beside the Tsel, and a column of brown-uniformed Khandarai marching in good order into a hellish cross fire. These hirelings had nothing like the discipline of the Auxiliaries, though, and were armed with truncheons and staves instead of Royal Army–issue muskets. On the other hand, Winter’s own allies were similarly poorly equipped.
At the Tsel we didn’t have any girls in the company, though. Aside from me, of course. And Bobby, come to think of it.

Not all of the Dockside fighters were escapees from Mrs. Wilmore’s Prison, though. A crowd of rough-looking men in long, front-and-back leather aprons had turned up in response to Jane’s call. Walnut was among them, and to Winter’s surprise so was Crooked Sal, equipped with a pair of thick oak truncheons and apparently looking forward to having his nose broken one more time. Jane’s contingent included twenty or so of the girls from her building, among them Chris, Becca, and Winn. They looked tougher and more professional than Winter had expected.

“I don’t like it,” Jane muttered.

“Don’t like the plan?” Winter said. “It’s a little late to say so now.”

“Not the plan. Abby. She should have been back by now.”

Abby had gone off with Molly, Nel, Becks, Andy, and a small cohort of younger girls to see Danton’s speech in Farus’ Triumph. Jane had agreed to the expedition, with misgivings and a firm injunction that they be back before nightfall. The sun was now well down, and there had been no word from them.

“We’ll be fine,” Winter said. “All the barricade crew has to do is make a lot of noise, then keep their heads down.”

“That’s all right for
us
, but what about her?” Jane cursed and shook her head. “I shouldn’t have let them go.”

Winter put a hand on her shoulder. “She’ll be fine, too. Let’s stick to what’s in front of us, shall we?”

Jane forced a smile. “Right.” Her face softened with some genuine humor. “You and me, waiting to put one over on some officious prat. Just like the old days, eh?”

“Given how most of those adventures ended, I hope not.”

“We didn’t
always
get caught.”

“It just hurt like blazes when we did,” Winter said. “I think I still have marks on my arse.”

“I’ll have to check some time,” Jane said. Before Winter could do more than sputter, she peered around the corner. “Nearly there. Should be seeing us any minute now . . .”

“Brass Balls of the Beast! What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?” The swearing came from the front of the convoy. The light of lanterns had revealed that the street was blocked by a shoulder-high barricade of wooden junk—torn-up carts, tipped-over tables, planks from fishermen’s stalls, even an upside-down boat that for Winter brought back further memories of Khandar. Behind this barrier, a few dozen men waved their makeshift weapons at the tax farmers.

Winter and Jane were in an alley down the street from the roadblock, which put them behind the carriage that brought up the rear of the convoy. From that vantage, they could get only glimpses of what was happening through the press of shouting, angry mercenaries, but the sounds made it clear enough. A torch rose briefly, then fell in a descending arc, accompanied by a hoarse shout of pain. Winter guessed someone had tried to mount the barricade and gotten a bash on the head for his troubles. The general racket increased as both sides began shouting at each other.

One of the thugs ran to the carriage and rapped at the door. The footman opened it, just a crack, letting the orange light of another lamp fall on the man’s face.

“Boss, there’s some locals in the street. They don’t want to let us through.”

The voice from inside cracked like a whip with the weight of hereditary privilege, beneath a heavy, rasping Borelgai accent. “Of course they don’t want to let us through! Why do you think I brought so many of you lads along, for the company?”

“Yeah,” the mercenary said, dubiously. “But they don’t look like they’re going to move.”

“Then fucking move them! I want these wagons rolling again in ten minutes.”

“Right.”

The door closed. The mercenary drew his truncheon from his belt and slapped it against his palm a couple of times, testing the weight. Winter didn’t blame him for hesitating. Hundred men or no hundred men, climbing over a barricade against an enemy who knew you were coming was not going to be a pleasant experience, especially for whoever was first in line.

“Right!” he said, louder. “Boss wants this shit out of the way double quick! Form up. We’ll go over all at once!”

Very good,
Winter thought.
Stick to nice, obvious tactics. Just charge on ahead. Nothing up my sleeves . . .

She felt, oddly, at home. Almost at peace. This was a battlefield, of sorts, and there was going to be a battle. Admittedly, a battle between a couple of hundred sweaty, shoving men armed with clubs, but still a battle, even if it went as she hoped and produced no serious casualties. She’d never thought she could miss such a thing, but being here now felt
right
, in a way that nothing had since she’d taken ship in Khandar.

I wish I had the Seventh here with me, though.
She imagined Bobby, Graff, and Folsom shouting orders, and a hundred musket barrels swinging into line to bear on this rabble of leg-breakers for hire, bayonets gleaming in the lantern light.
They’d piss their britches.

“Time?” said Jane.

When did I get to be in charge?
She’d proposed the plan, but it was still Jane’s army. Winter peered at the milling thugs. “Almost. Wait until they make their first rush.”

A few seconds later, a wave of shouts indicated that the attack had begun. Splintery crashes, curses, and screams of pain quickly followed.

“Now,” Winter said.

Jane put two fingers in her mouth and produced a sharp, piercing whistle, which was answered by shouts from the deeply shadowed alleys all around them. Packs of men and girls burst out, weapons raised, all heading for the carriage at the rear of the column. No sooner had the sound died away than Jane joined the rush, and Winter scrambled after her. She glanced dubiously at the club they’d given her, which looked suspiciously like a table leg, and wished she’d brought her sword.