Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

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.”