The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (25 page)

“
I
didn’t do anything!” Cecil said, his Borelgai accent getting harsher as he grew terrified. “I didn’t—
bhosh midviki
—you can’t blame
me
for what some
ghalian
Vordanai thugs did!” He drew in a deep breath. “You know the kind of people I have to work with. They’re the scum of the earth. I don’t have a choice!”

“They wouldn’t have
been
there if you hadn’t sent them,” Jane snapped. “If you’d been reasonable like all the other fucking tax farmers.”

“And your Sarah wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for
you
,” Cecil said. The blood was rising in his face. “
Blani
Mad Jane. You run around the Docks like you’re some sort of hero from a fairy tale, and these idiot girls just follow your example. Have you ever thought they might be better off if you’d left well enough alone?”

“I
help
them.”

“Like you helped Sarah? Instead of staying in her father’s house minding her own business like a young woman should be doing, she was out trying to fight grown men with a stick! And look what happened to her.” Cecil’s thin face twisted into a snarl. “
Blani ga taerbon midviki.
You’re going to kill me, I can see it. But I won’t let you pretend to be a saint while you do it.”

“You’re right about one thing,” Jane said. “I’m going to kill you—”

“Jane!” Winter said.

Jane paused, the knife half-raised, as though she’d forgotten Winter was there. Without looking round, she said, “I let you come because I thought you ought to know why I was doing this. But I shouldn’t have. Go back, Winter. You don’t have to live with this.”

Too late for that.
“You can’t kill him.”

“Why not? Are you going to stop me?”

“If I have to.”

Jane turned around, finally, the knife still held in front of her. She’d unconsciously dropped into a fighter’s crouch. “You don’t mean that. Just go.”

“I won’t.” Winter spread her hands. “You know that killing him won’t help anyone.”

“It’ll help Sarah.”

“Sarah’s dead. Come on, Jane. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

Jane stared at Winter, eyes as wide as a hunted animal’s, searching for a way out. “He deserves it.”

“
You
don’t.”

“You don’t understand. I . . .” Jane shook her head savagely. “And who are you to tell me what to do? Did you never have to hurt anybody in—”

Winter cut her off hurriedly. “I did,
in battles
. I’ve killed . . . I don’t know how many. But they were armed, and trying to kill me. He’s a
prisoner
.”

“Does that matter?”

“It has to!” Winter bit her lip. “Besides, he’s wrong. You
know
he’s wrong.”

“Of course he’s fucking wrong. What does that have to do—”

“Sarah volunteered. Abby told me that. Everyone who helps you, who does what you do, they all
choose
to do it. Do you think they didn’t know they might get hurt in the process?”

“I . . .”

“You don’t need to kill him to prove your point. You
don’t
, Jane. Please.” Winter took a cautious step forward and grabbed Jane’s arm, easing around the quivering point of the knife.

Jane said something too low for Winter to hear. Then, before Winter could ask her to repeat it, she spun around, breaking Winter’s loose grip, and planted a kick solidly in Cecil’s midsection. The Borelgai coughed and toppled backward, sprawling on the end of the pier. A further kick from Jane encouraged him to roll over, and he dropped six inches with a
thud
to the bottom of one of the little boats. The momentum set the craft bobbing out into the river, restrained by a single taut line. Jane sawed at this with the knife for a few moments until it broke with a
snap
, then put her foot on the gunwale and shoved the boat out into the river.

“If I ever see you in the Docks again,” she said, “I will kill you. Slowly. You understand? Find yourself a ship and go back to fucking Borel, or jump off a bridge for all I care. But your work in Vordan is
over
.”

Cecil responded with a stream of Borelgai profanity as the boat drifted farther from shore, out into the sluggish current. “
Blani fi’midviki!
How am I supposed to go
anywhere
with my hands tied behind my fucking back?”

Jane wound up, paused to judge the distance, and sent the knife whirling end over end toward the boat that was rapidly vanishing into the river darkness. There was a
thok
as the blade bit into wood, and a screech from Cecil.

“And I’m sending you a bill for the fucking boat!” Jane called after him, as he disappeared.

She stood staring after him for a long moment, hands clenched and vibrating with tension. Winter stepped up behind her, uncertainly, and tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but Jane spun away from her touch and stalked back up the pier. She sat down on a post and crossed her arms, curling up as though she wanted to withdraw inside herself.

“I’m sorry,” Winter said.

Jane muttered something indistinct.

Winter paused. “Jane?”

“I said go fuck yourself.” Jane raised her head. “You should leave. Go home. Back to wherever you came from. Just leave me here with the rest of the scum and
go
.”

“No,” Winter said. Her heart hammered double time, and tears stung her eyes.

“Just
go
.”

“I won’t. Never again.”

“Fuck,” Jane said quietly, and curled up again. “Nobody fucking listens to me.”

Winter sat down beside her, on the soggy wood of the pier, and waited. Even back at Mrs. Wilmore’s, Jane had suffered from foul moods. Winter had learned that the only remedy was silence. She always resurfaced, eventually.

The city was quiet at this time of night. The ever-present sounds of distant crowds and thousands of plodding horses and rattling cartwheels were absent. Instead Winter could hear the quiet lapping of the river, and the slow creaks and groans from the tied-up fishing fleet. A distant whistle sounded, where an Armsman needed assistance. Somewhere, a dog barked.

“She was one of mine,” Jane said. “She followed me because she believed what I told her, that I could keep her safe. I
told
her that. And I brought her here, and she . . . she died.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Jane snapped. “You don’t understand what it’s like. I have a
responsibility
, and I . . .”

Winter eased closer. When Jane didn’t flinch away, she slipped an arm, gently, around her shoulders.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “I
do
understand. I may be the only one here who does.”

Winter thought about the ambush by the river, the charge up the hill with Auxiliary cannonballs coming down all around them, the long march through the wasteland of the Great Desol. And, deep in her heart where she hardly dared acknowledge it was real, the last desperate square in the darkness under the temple, with green-eyed corpses clawing at them from every side.
And the looks on the men’s faces when I turned up. The
relief
, as though now that I was there everything was somehow taken care of.
Just the memory of it slammed her like a fist in the gut. She’d gotten them out, in the end, but . . .

. . . but not all of them.

Something else twitched, down in the depths of her mind. A flick of the tail, a tiny gleam of light on ivory fangs, something to remind her that the viper was still coiled comfortably in its hole. The other thing she’d acquired that night, aside from nightmares.
Infernivore.

Jane had relaxed, letting her arms fall to her side and her head rest on Winter’s shoulder. They stayed like that a long time.

“We should get back,” Winter said, eventually. “The others will be wondering what happened to us.”

“And coming to all the wrong conclusions, no doubt,” Jane said. Her grin was back, mad and infectious. She bounced up from the post, grabbing Winter’s hand and pulling her to her feet through an elegant twirl. When the turn brought their faces close, Jane leaned in and planted a kiss, light and fast.

“Come on,” she said. “It must be nearly dawn.”

They expected to find Motley’s tavern nearly deserted, as the sun was indeed making its presence known on the eastern horizon by the time they made their way back. Instead it was packed, both with Leatherbacks and those of Jane’s girls who had not returned home. They looked as though they had assembled in haste; one of the girls had obviously been rousted out of bed and was wearing nothing but a bedsheet, coiled round her like a winding shroud.

All attention was focused on one younger girl at the center of the crowd. Winter recognized Nel, her spectacles askew, her clothes dirty with soot and torn in places. She looked close to tears, but her eyes lit up the moment Jane came in.

“Jane!”

The whole crowd turned to look at them, their collective stare freezing Winter and Jane in their tracks. Jane blinked.

“What? What in the hells is going on?”

“They took her,” Nel said, fighting back sobs. “They took all of them. I
tried to help, but all I could do was hide. Then the Armsmen had closed the bridges, and I couldn’t find a way through. I tried . . .”

She broke off, snuffling.

Jane stepped forward. “Calm down. Who took who?”

“They took
Abby
. And Molly and Becks and the others.”

Crooked Sal spoke up. “The Armsmen have arrested Danton, and the Concordat are rounding up everybody who might have had anything to do with him. I heard they took nearly a hundred people from the big speech, and now they’re all over the place taking people for who knows what. Everybody’s locking themselves in and barring the doors.”

“They took them to the
Vendre
,” Nel wailed. “Everyone said so.”

Jane stood stock-still, trying to process this. Winter stepped up beside her.

“They can’t just arrest people for listening to speeches,” she said, then looked around at a ring of worried faces. “Can they?”

“The Last goddamned Duke can do anything he wants,” said Chris, and spit on the floor. “With the king dying, who’s to stop him?”

“Everyone knows no one who goes into the Vendre comes out again,” Winn said.

“Except at night,” said Becca. “In pieces.”

“The king is ill,” said Walnut, “and the princess is a child, and sickly besides. The duke is in charge, if anyone is. And the duke works for the Borels and their Sworn Church. After what Danton did, I’m sure his masters have applied the whip. No wonder he reacts like this.”

Winter bit her lip. A thought had occurred to her, but she didn’t like it.
If anyone can help Abby and the others, it’s Janus.
He was Minister of Justice, after all, and an enemy of Orlanko’s.
But he might not be able to. Or he might not
want
to.
God alone knew what Janus would decide. And if he
did
help, that meant revealing to Jane and the others that she’d been sent here as a spy.

“Winter,” Jane said. “Come on.”

She turned on her heel, heading for the door. Winter, distracted, took a moment to catch up.

“Wait!” Sal called after her. “Where are you going?”

Jane turned, her eyes glowing dangerously in the firelight. “Where the
fuck
do you think I’m going?”

Walnut stood up, unfolding himself to his full, massive height like a collapsible easel setting up. “Then I am coming with you. It’s not only your girls who have been taken.”

Jane looked from him to Winter and back again, then gave a curt nod. This time, when she started for the door, everyone in the tavern scrambled to follow.

MARCUS

“Hello, Captain,” Ionkovo said. “That is you, I take it?”

Only a single candle burned in the cell under the Guardhouse, casting a weak pool of golden light and throwing the long, angular shadows of the bars across the far wall. Adam Ionkovo lay on his pallet in a pool of darkness, only his eyes marked by the faint, shivering reflection of the flame.

Marcus stood in the doorway, half wanting to slam the door and stalk away. Instead he slipped inside and shut it behind him.

It had been hours since Giforte left with a strong escort of Guardsmen, hours with no word as the sky slipped from blue into a deep, bruised purple. He’d spent as long as he could stand reading through the files, rubbing at his eyes as he read, cross-referenced, and investigated. Looking for
something
, some clue that he was increasingly convinced wasn’t there. Giforte was too careful; the reports were too vague. Maybe Janus would have been able to make something of the stack of oddities and exceptions, some brilliant leap of logical deduction, but it was beyond Marcus.

When he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d locked the files in his cabinet and started wandering the halls. The big old building was nearly empty, the clerks and scribes on a skeleton crew for the night shift and most of the on-duty men out in the city. Marcus had circled the top floor without meeting anyone, peering out through blurry old glass windows. A brilliant sunset blazed in the west, but when he looked to the east the sky was blotted out by dark, heavy clouds, spreading like a stain as they approached.

In the end, he’d found himself here, in the one place he shouldn’t be, speaking to the man he’d been forbidden to talk to. The man who knew—
maybe!
—what he needed so badly to hear.

“It’s me,” Marcus said.

“I keep expecting a visit from your Colonel Vhalnich,” Ionkovo said. “So far he has disappointed me.”

“He’s a busy man these days,” Marcus said. “The king’s made him Minister of Justice. I’m afraid he hasn’t got time for you.”

“Or you?” Ionkovo said. He sat up, angular face coming into the half-light.

He’s just needling.
There was no way the prisoner could know what was going on outside. “I came to ask if you’re willing to talk.”

“I’m happy to
chat
, Captain, but if you mean am I willing to tell you what you want to know . . .” He shrugged. “My offer still stands.”

“I’m not going to take your
bargain
,” Marcus said.