The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (37 page)

She pulled the trigger. The weapon went off with an earsplitting
bang
, and she saw the man’s coat flutter, as though a passerby had given it a tug. But the ball missed his body, cracking wildly off the stone wall beyond, and before Winter could reach for her other pistol he was up the stairs and out of sight.

“Balls of the Beast,” Winter said. She turned back to Cyte. “There’s going to be more of them in a minute. Come on, back to the landing.”

“I . . .” Cyte gestured weakly at her sword, which was still embedded in the Concordat soldier. His hands scrabbled wildly at the air, and blood bubbled in his mouth.

Winter grabbed the hilt, planted her foot on the man’s side, and yanked the weapon free as he shuddered and died. She handed the thin blade back to Cyte, still slick and red, and pulled another pistol and a pouch of ammunition from the body. Then she grabbed the girl’s free hand and pulled her down the steps to the landing, where there would at least be flat ground to fight on.

Her own victim was there, head cracked and leaking blood from his tumble down the unyielding stone stairs. She pushed him aside and turned to Cyte.

“Are you all right?” Winter said.

“Fine.” Cyte was staring at the sword in her hand as though she didn’t know how it had gotten there. “I’m fine. I just . . .”

“I know,” Winter said. “But you have to focus.”

Winter hated having to act so
hard
. It made her feel like Davis, someone who could cut men down and laugh about it later in his cups.
But there’s no
time
.
The man she’d shot at would make it back up to the others on the ground floor, and surely they’d send a larger force—

“Cyte. Cytomandiclea.” The sound of her assumed name seemed to bring the girl back to herself a little. “Do you know how to load a pistol?”

“N . . . not really. I’ve never . . .”

“Shit.” Winter went to the door and hammered on it. “Giforte? Are you in there? They’re on their way down!”

There was no response. Winter cocked an ear at the steps and fancied she could hear the pounding of many feet. She grabbed Cyte and pulled her up against the inner wall of the spiral.

“Stay here until they get close,” Winter said. “You don’t want to give them a target if they decide to shoot at us. And stay on the landing, away from the stairs. It’s no good giving them high ground to fight from.”

“But . . .” Cyte’s mind was catching up with events at last. “There’s too many! They’ll kill us.”

A rational debater would have told her that this was, after all, what she’d volunteered for. Davis would have just screamed at her. Winter shrugged, patted the girl on the shoulder in what she hoped was a reassuring manner, and went for the dead soldier’s musket. This
was
loaded, and wonder of wonders, the fall had not knocked open the pan and spilled the powder. Winter cocked it, went to one knee at the bottom of the stairs, and settled down to wait.

She didn’t have to be patient long. A clatter of boots preceded the arrival of the Concordat troops, coming down the stairway two by two. Winter took aim before their heads came into view, tracked their motion for a moment, and fired. The musket’s report was even louder than the pistol’s, and the weapon delivered its familiar kick to her shoulder. This time her aim was better, and one of the leading black-coats was punched off his feet to sprawl bonelessly on the steps.

Winter tossed the musket aside and threw herself flat. As she’d expected, the keyed-up soldiers returned fire, filling the stairway with a deafening cacophony of thunder, broken by the
zip
and
zing
of ricocheting balls. Smoke billowed from the barrels and locks of their weapons, puffing around them like a localized thundercloud. It hung motionless in the still air, and the men came charging through it with tendrils of gray clinging to their coats, brandishing their bayonetted muskets like spears.

All that kept Winter alive through the next few moments was the fact that the bayonet, so impressive in glittering ranks on an open field, was far from an
ideal weapon for close-quarters combat in a stairway. She pushed herself to her feet as they pounded toward her, and faded to the left as the first pair closed. The man on that side came at her at a run, stumbling slightly as he leapt off the last stair and hit the landing, intending to run her through like a lancer. Winter’s parry caught the musket barrel behind the bayonet with a
clang
of steel on iron, forcing his arm wide. His momentum carried him into her, and she brought the curved hilt of her weapon around and slammed the pommel into his face with all the force of his running start behind it, bowling him over as if he’d run into a clothesline at a gallop.

The second man, more cautious, checked his run and thrust his bayonet at her as she stepped clear of the falling body. Winter twisted away from the point and slashed wildly at him, but the length of his weapon kept him at a safe distance. He backed up and tried again, and this time she barely caught the wicked point of the weapon with her saber and battered it aside. Her clumsy return stroke cut only air. She backpedaled, acutely aware that there were only a few steps of flat ground behind her before the downward stairway resumed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another Concordat soldier vault the body of the first and try to cut around to her right. He’d overlooked Cyte, who’d been pressed tight against the wall on that side. She brought her rapier up and lunged, this time with perfect form, as though on a fencing strip. The tapered point went through the soldier’s leather coat, into the small of his back, and emerged somewhere in the vicinity of his navel.

He screamed, which made Winter’s opponent look aside for a split second. Winter half turned to get past the point of his bayonet and grabbed the barrel of the musket with her free hand, yanking it out of his distracted grip. He looked back just in time to see the downward saber slash that opened him from sternum to hip.

Four men were down in the space of as many seconds. Winter let the musket fall and raised her eyes, expecting another charging musketeer. Instead she found herself staring into the barrel of a pistol.

Oh.
Logical, under the circumstances, especially if you were willing to let your comrades charge forward into the fray while you lined up your shot. Time seemed to telescope, on and on. She could see the two-day stubble on the man’s face, the glint of a captain’s bars on his chest where his coat hung open. She could see the open pan of his weapon, ready for the descending flint to strike a spark.

There was always a chance. Pistols loaded in haste misfired, or failed to fire
at all. A malformed ball might emerge at an odd angle, caroming harmlessly away. Springs broke, clamps failed, flints went spinning off instead of properly sparking. Even at close range, it was easy to miss a target, especially for an inexperienced marksman. But Winter had a sudden certainty that none of those other chances were going to break her way this time. The man’s finger tightened on the trigger—

Then his eyes crossed, as though puzzled, and he toppled forward. The pistol went off, ball zinging off the steps, but the Concordat captain kept going, beginning a boneless tumble down the stairs that ended with him sprawled facedown at Winter’s feet. A heavy knife—almost a cleaver—was embedded at an angle in the back of his skull as though it were a butcher’s block.

Rose, farther up the stairs, was straightening up from her throw. She caught Winter’s eye and smiled.

—

Behind Rose came Raes and an older man Winter didn’t recognize. She assumed this was Danton, although nothing about him suggested the charismatic leader. His shirt was stained with sweat, and his hair was wild and unkempt from days in captivity. His expression was one of beatific satisfaction, however, and one of his hands gripped one of Raes’. Winter wondered if there was something between the two of them.
It would explain her insistence on coming along.

“Is that all of them?” Rose said, stepping carefully among the bodies on the landing. She knelt beside the man Winter had laid out with the pommel of her sword, produced a knife from somewhere, and stuck it almost gently into the side of his head, just forward of his ear. He shuddered and died without a sound.

“A . . . all.” Winter shook her head, trying to banish the vision of the pistol trained on her head and the certainty that she was about to die. Her heart hammered wildly, and something unpleasant roiled in her stomach.
Now is not the time, damn it.
“Yes. That’s all the ones who came downstairs. But I was expecting more of them.”

“It turns out there were a few Armsmen locked up next to the captain,” Rose said. “They’ve got the next group pinned down at the ground floor landing for the moment.”

“Not for long,” said another voice, accompanied by the rapid clatter of boots. Captain d’Ivoire came into view, looking odd in the unfamiliar green Armsman uniform, a musket in one hand. “We don’t have enough men to really stop them, but after the first volley they’ve gotten cautious. We’re going to have to fall back if they make a serious push.”

Somehow Winter had not thought this far ahead. She stood on the landing, bloody saber in hand, and felt the captain’s eyes tracking toward her with the same feeling of awful premonition that she’d felt watching the pistol come to bear. If he recognized her—
more to the point, if he recognizes me as a
woman
—

Then what? The fear of discovery, ground in over long years, made Winter’s blood sing.
But who would it actually harm? I could stay with Jane and the others. Tell Janus to find someone else to fight his damned battles.

It would never work, of course. If nothing else, she could never rid herself of the Infernivore; as Janus had pointed out to her, what felt like a lifetime ago, that meant she was involved whether she liked it or not.
Besides,
another part of her mind insisted, flooding her with guilt,
there’s Bobby to think of. And Feor, and Graff and Folsom, and everyone else in the Seventh.

All this flashed past her mind’s eye in the instant between when the captain started down the stairs and when he met her gaze. Their eyes met, just for a moment, and she thought she saw something change in Marcus’ expression. It was gone an instant later, though, and he was moving on, pushing past Raes and Danton toward the door to the cells.

Energy flowed out of Winter like water out of a barrel with the bottom knocked off. She wiped her saber roughly on a fold of Concordat uniform and returned it to its sheath, legs wobbling like a drunk’s. She found Cyte still standing by the man she’d killed. She’d managed to keep her rapier in hand, this time, but she was staring at the bloodied weapon as though she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“Are you all right?” Winter said. This time, it took only a moment for Cyte’s eyes to clear.
It gets easier every time, doesn’t it?

“I . . . I think so.” She looked down at herself, astonished to be intact. “Did we win?”

“Not yet.”

“What happens now?”

Winter struggled to remember the plan Raes had outlined. It had been a bit vague on that point, but . . .

“I think,” she said, “that’s up to Danton.”

—

The anteroom on the prison level was crowded to capacity and beyond. The guards’ table had been dragged against the outer door as a stage and impromptu barricade, with Winter, Raesinia, Danton, and the others standing in the doorway and Giforte and the rest of the Armsmen making a thin line on the other side.
Beyond them were the prisoners. Captain d’Ivoire had ordered the cells thrown open, and the liberated abductees filled the room and backed up out into the corridors. The angriest among them, mostly from the male contingent but including a number of women as well, had pushed to the front of the crowd and were engaged in a shouting match with the captain, who stood on the table trying to argue with them.

“Look,” he said, his voice already going hoarse with the effort of trying to make himself heard over the babble. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me. But my men are going to be with you. Some of them are fighting upstairs right now to give us this time to argue!
I
am going to be with you. And if we don’t disarm those Concordat soldiers, hundreds of your fellow citizens are going to be gunned down!”

“We should start by stringing you up!” someone shouted.

“Bloody Armsmen!”

“If we fight Orlanko’s men, they’ll just kill
us
instead!”

“I heard it’s a bunch of dockmen at the gates,” said someone with a Northside accent. “Are we supposed to sacrifice ourselves for a gang of lazy stevedores?”

Winter badly wanted to punch this person. From the sound of it the sentiment was shared by many in the crowd, and the ensuing scuffle threatened to engulf the entire room in chaos. Marcus shouted for order. The air was thick and close with the scent of too many unwashed bodies.

At Winter’s side, Raesinia was speaking quietly to Danton. The orator sat cross-legged with the same stupid smile on his face, nodding absently as the girl read to him from what looked like prepared notes. He reminded Winter of nothing so much as a little boy not paying attention to a lecture from a parent.

She stepped away from the table, into the cooler air of the corridor, where Cyte stood with her back to the stone. Her eyes were closed, and her face was flushed under the smears of black makeup.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“The captain is trying to argue them into taking the Concordat positions from behind. I don’t think it’s going as well as they’d hoped.”

“What about Danton?”

“Raes is still coaching him.” Winter shook her head. “He’s not what I expected.”

There was a long pause. Marcus’ pleading was drowned out by an angry roar from the crowd.

“This wasn’t . . . what I expected,” Cyte said.

“No?”

“More blood, for one thing.” She gave a little shudder. “I always pictured . . .”

“I know,” Winter said. “Like in an opera. You swing the sword, someone falls over. Maybe a little stage blood on your hands.” She looked down. They’d moved the Concordat corpses out of the way, but the flagstones were still stained red and brown. “No matter how much you imagine, it’s never enough.”