Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“Is something wrong?” she said.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” he said flatly. “Raesinia Smith . It was you all along. I got a look at you on the bridge, and I thought. . But I wasn’t sure.”

Raesinia put a hand on the table to steady herself, and said nothing.

“I can see how you thought no one would notice,” Maurisk said. He started to pace, as he had done a thousand times in the back room of the Mask. “After all, who actually meets the princess? Only courtiers at Ohnlei. So you sneak out in the middle of the night for-what, a bit of fun?”

“Fun?” Raesinia’s cheeks colored. “You think I did this for fun ?”

“Why, then?”

“For all the reasons I told you! Because if someone didn’t stop him, Duke Orlanko was going to take the throne and end up selling the country to the Borels. Because my father was dying and there was nobody at Ohnlei I could trust.” Except Sothe, she added silently, and felt her throat thicken. Sothe, where are you?

“But you couldn’t trust us with who you really were?” He shook his head. “No, of course not. You never really trusted us. If you’d let us in on your plans, things might have gone differently.”

“I did the best I could.”

Maurisk laughed mirthlessly. “The world’s most popular epitaph.”

Raesinia glared at him, her fingers tightening on the tabletop. Maurisk reached the wall, turned around, and started back toward her.

“What happened, that night on the wall?” He stopped just in front of her and brushed the hair back from her temple. “I saw Faro shoot you. I know I did. And yet-”

“I had a. . double.” Raesinia had had plenty of time to think about her story. “Lauren. A girl who looked like me. We used her at court, sometimes, when I needed to get away. That last night, when Rose planned to unmask Faro, she told me I should stay behind and Lauren should go in my place. I didn’t want to, but. .”

“I guessed it would be something like that,” Maurisk said. “So it’s just another body to lay at your door. Along with Ben, and Faro, and poor, stupid Danton.”

“We did what we needed to do. You know that.” Raesinia waved a hand at the door and the Patriot Guard beyond. “All this was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe that is why it vexes me,” Maurisk said. “You. . you used us. But, in the end, it came out right.”

“Perhaps God has a sense of irony.”

“Perhaps.” Maurisk put his hand in his pocket, and she heard the crinkle of paper. “Or perhaps not. Orlanko is on his way back, you see, with seven thousand Royal Army regulars. A group of our men went off to try to stop them, and we’ve just heard the results of the battle.” He shook his head. “If you can call it a battle. The deputies are terrified.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I have no idea.” He sighed. “That’s why I came to see you. Tomorrow morning the deputies will meet, perhaps for the last time. They may want you to come out and take charge of the city yourself. Or they may decide we ought to hand you over to Orlanko and save our skins. Either way, I thought this might be our last chance to. . talk.”

“What do you want from me?” Raesinia said. “An apology?”

“You know, I have no idea. I thought I would come here, confront you, force you to break down and admit the truth. After that. .” He shrugged.

“Are you going to tell everyone, now that you’ve got it?”

“I suppose I can’t, can I? What good would it do now?” Maurisk stalked back and forth. “You ought to pay for treating people like they were. . like they were game pieces , but the truth is we still need you for our game.”

“Will you tell me something?”

He turned, eyes burning. “What?”

“Are the others all right? I know Danton died at the cathedral. What about Sarton, and Cora?”

Maurisk snorted. “You expect me to believe that you care?”

“Please,” Raesinia said, quietly.

He paused, then shook his head. “They’re all right. Sarton is working with the Guard on some secret project. Cora sits in the Deputies and doesn’t say much.” He scowled. “She loved you like you were her own sister, you know. If I told her what you’d done. .”

Raesinia privately thought that Cora would be happy she was alive, rather than angry at being fooled. But for Maurisk, finding out that Raesinia had been putting up a false front all this time was only one more example of the base treachery of the people in power. Out of all the cabal, he had burned the hottest with the ideological fire of rebellion.

“Thank you,” she said.

He gave a curt nod. “As you say. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

MARCUS

Marcus guessed their plan was working when his guards delivered a freshly laundered uniform, soap, and a razor. He spent an hour making himself as presentable as he could with a basin and a hand mirror, stripping off his old, sweaty things with considerable relief. The new uniform-that of a captain in the army, not the green of the Armsmen-didn’t quite fit, but it was close, and when Marcus looked in the mirror and saw a neatly trimmed beard and white stripes on his shoulders, he felt closer to being himself than he had in a long time.

Not long after, a polite young Patriot Guardsman came to fetch him. Accompanied by a squad of a half dozen men, they left the Vendre and made their way to the cathedral. But not directly, Marcus noticed. That would have taken them through Farus’ Triumph and Cathedral Square. Instead they circled around via Water Street and approached the cathedral from the rear, slipping in through an entrance to the long-disused kitchens. Marcus thought he could hear the roar of a mob, somewhere nearby, and he smiled.

The Deputies-General reminded him of his visit with the Prince of Khandar at Fort Valor-a desperate attempt to recreate the trappings of something important, but assembled in such haste that it was little more than a lick of whitewash over rotten wood. They clustered on half-built bleachers, carrying on a dozen arguments at once, while overhead crude blue-and-silver banners covered up the Sworn Church emblems carved into the walls. The altar was screened behind a curtain.

No one seemed to take any notice of him until the man at the rostrum called for silence. The guards on either side of him beat their muskets against the floor until everyone quieted down, but that only made the shouts of the crowd audible. They were muffled by the walls, but he could make out a rhythmic chant, repeated by thousands of voices.

“Captain d’Ivoire,” said the president, a hollow-faced young man Marcus remembered vaguely from the fall of the Vendre. “I’m glad you could join us, and I apologize for the circumstances, and for your own confinement. I hope you understand.”

“Of course.” Marcus inclined his head. “I am always prepared to serve Vordan.”

He scanned the rows of anxious faces on the bleachers until he found Ihernglass. He was still in his feminine disguise-honestly, Marcus thought it wasn’t terribly convincing, but he hadn’t had the heart to say so-wearing a dark coat and the black sash of a deputy. When he caught Marcus’ eye, he nodded, very slightly. Marcus worked hard to keep a straight face.

“It is good to see such loyalty in a military man,” the president said. “I regret to say that many of your colleagues have chosen to betray this assembly, proclaimed by the queen herself and chosen by the people. You may have heard that several regiments of the Royal Army are on their way to the city as we speak.”

“I have heard that,” Marcus admitted.

“One of our own, the valiant Deputy Peddoc, took it on his own initiative to try to stop them. This assembly did not give its approval”-here the president glared at a cluster of deputies on the left-“and his actions were therefore illegal, but no one can question his courage, or that of those who marched with him. Unfortunately, it appears that they have been. .” He searched for a word.