Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

Jane’s building looked like a castle just after the siege is lifted. The front doors were open, and people streamed in and out. Some of the injured were leaving, in the company of family and friends, and Winter witnessed a couple of emotional family reunions. A few Leatherbacks and some of Jane’s girls were about, but they weren’t going armed anymore.

Winter headed up to the big dining room, following the roars of laughter and the smell of food. A feast was in progress, and she entered to find the room in pandemonium. There were easily twice as many girls crammed into the hall as could actually fit around the tables, and all the chairs had been pushed out of the way. The guests ate with their fingers from a vast bounty: huge loaves of bread, roast chickens, hams and gravy, bowls of apples and berries. Nothing complicated, Winter noted with a faint smile. Nellie tries her best.

Jane sat at the high table like a king in a medieval court, surrounded by her lieutenants, exchanging shouted jokes with girls at other tables and roaring with laughter. Rather than fight her way across the room, Winter slipped around the edge, finding a table in the corner where the press of young women was not quite so solid. There was even an empty chair. She sat down and leaned back, just watching Jane, drinking in the sheer laughing wild life of her. Her hair was growing out, Winter thought, red spikes changing into a tousled mop that hung forward over her eyes and made her look younger.

No one took any notice of her, which was fine. She helped herself to an apple and half a roast chicken, pulling the bird apart with her fingers and licking them clean of the grease. She was vaguely aware of a conversation going on across the table from her, but it was only after she recognized Becks that she started to pay attention.

“-Jane would never let us!” Becks was saying.

“Not us ,” Molly said. “The older girls would go.”

“What use is that?” said Andy. “ I want to go. Able Tom says he’s going to go, and he’s only fifteen. I lifted a water barrel when he couldn’t do it, and I beat him in a race.”

“Vhalnich won’t want the likes of Able Tom, either,” Nell said. “He wants men , he said. Little boys don’t carry muskets, and neither do girls.”

“I could, I bet,” Andy said. “And Becks wants to.”

“I never said I wanted to,” Becks said. “I just said we ought to. Nobody wants to go fight, but it’s our duty as Vordanai.”

“Do you think Jane will go?” Molly said. “Vhalnich would have to take her .”

“He’d be stupid not to,” Andy said. “Or Jess or Nina, or any of the older girls. They fought the tax farmers for a year. I’m sure they could fight Duke Orlanko.”

“The other soldiers would never put up with it,” Nell said, a bit huffily. “Girls can’t be soldiers, I told you.”

“Why not?” said Andy.

“They just can’t!”

They just can’t. Winter shook her head. That ought to be a good enough answer for anybody. It ought to be a good enough answer for me.

Big clay mugs of beer were circling, for anyone who wanted a swallow. Winter took a few gulps of the warm, thin stuff and sent it on its way. More girls scurried in, bringing more food and clearing away the remains. The air was hot and thick with the mixed smells of cooking and hundreds of unwashed bodies, leavened with smoke from the torches. It ought to have been choking and claustrophobic, but Winter felt comforted instead, as though the laughter and smell were wrapped around her like a warm blanket on a cold night. Someone was playing a fiddle, very badly.

“Winter, can I talk to you for a minute?”

She looked up. Abby was standing beside her table, shoulders hunched, arms crossed over her chest. She looked pale in the torchlight. Winter was still not entirely comfortable in Abby’s company, but the room was too crowded to escape. She forced a smile and looked up with a noncommittal shrug. “Go ahead.”

“Somewhere a little quieter.”

With a last glance at Jane, Winter sighed and got to her feet. She followed Abby through the crowd and out into the corridor. Abby ducked through the first open doorway, which led into a small room with a half dozen bedrolls spread out on the floor. They were all empty now, and the candles were out. Only a little of the distant light from the torches in the main hall seeped in to break up the shadows.

“What were you doing there?” Abby said.

“Getting something to eat,” Winter said, defensively. “Nobody stopped me.”

“Not that,” Abby said. She hugged herself tighter. “She’s been waiting for you all night. Why haven’t you gone to see her?”

“She looked happy. I didn’t want to intrude.”

“She won’t really be happy unless you’re there.” Abby sighed. “Sometimes I’m not sure you understand how much you mean to her.”

“I do,” Winter said. I think I do. “Abby, what’s wrong?”

“I haven’t heard from my father,” Abby said. “He’s not at the house. He probably left the city after the queen surrendered, or went to stay with a friend, but. . I don’t know.”

“If you’re worried about him, find Captain d’Ivoire,” Winter said. “He may know where to look.”

Abby nodded. She was barely a shadowed outline in the dark, her eyes invisible. “But I can’t leave. Not yet. I need to look after Jane.”

“You need to start trusting her a little more,” Winter said. “Jane can take care of herself, if anyone can.”

“You saw her the other day,” Abby said quietly. “She can take care of herself . The problem is that she tries to take care of everyone else, too.”

“I know.” Winter shook her head. “I’ll look out for Jane.”

“You won’t let her do anything. .”

“Stupid?”

Abby gave a weak chuckle.

“I’ll do my best,” Winter said. “Go and find your father. Or better yet, get some sleep. I only met your father briefly, but he struck me as being able to take care of himself, too.”

“Thank you.” Abby paused. “And thank you for helping Jane. I don’t know all of what the two of you did, but all this. .”

Winter held up her hands. “I only gave her a bit of advice. Jane and Janus did the rest.”

Abby nodded, tiredly. She took a step toward the door, then halted. “What happens if we win?”

“What?”

“Suppose Vhalnich beats Orlanko. Then what? What happens to Jane and the rest of us here?”

“Why should anything happen?”

“I don’t know,” Abby said. “But I feel like it can’t go back to normal, after this. What are you going to do?”

Winter shrugged uncomfortably. Damned if I know. “I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

Abby regarded her for a moment, a tiny gleam of light reflecting in her eyes. Then she swept out, leaving Winter alone in the darkness.

Winter didn’t want to fight her way through the frantic, happy crowd in the hall, but she remembered seeing girls come in with fresh dishes from a door just behind where Jane had been sitting. She went in search of the kitchens and eventually found them by following the clatter of crockery. A half dozen girls were giggling together over an open bottle of wine. They looked up as Winter came in, but she ignored them. She found the door she wanted and eased it open.

The bad fiddler had been joined by a bad piper, who from the sound of it was playing an instrument she’d carved herself. The crowd clapped its hands to keep the beat, and as Winter came forward she saw that Chris had led some of the girls up on the tables and started to dance, heedless of the occasional chicken or bowl of berries that got kicked out of the way. Jane stood between Becca and Winn, clapping as loudly as anyone, and nearly doubling over with laughter when Chris stepped right off the end of the table and toppled into a sea of welcoming hands.