Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

Winter closed her eyes and said nothing. Her throat felt as if it had fused into a solid mass, blocking her breath.

“There’s another thing,” Janus said. “Before we left Khandar, you asked me for a favor. Locating an old friend of yours, I think.”

“Jane.” Winter’s eyes opened. “Have you found her?”

“Not just yet. But I suspect we’re on the right track.”

“She’s alive? She’s not-”

“As far as we know.” He held up a hand. “It may take some time. I just wanted you to know that I hadn’t forgotten the matter.”

Winter stared at the colonel’s face, so apparently guileless, wearing a half smile that never touched his bottomless gray eyes. He would never stoop to anything so straightforward as an obvious quid pro quo, but the implication was clear enough. Remember, he was saying, what I can do for you, when you think about what you will do for me.

In the end, Winter reflected, not without some bitterness, what choice did she have? She’d saved Janus’ life in Khandar twice over, but in doing so she’d placed herself at his mercy. There was nothing for it but to go along, and hope like hell he knew what he was doing.

“I can. . try,” Winter said, around the knot in her throat. “I still don’t think they’ll accept me, but if you want me to, I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask, of course,” Janus murmured.

CHAPTER THREE

RAESINIA

One advantage of the palace’s state of premourning was that it was considered normal for the princess not to emerge from her tower for long periods. Overcome with grief, obviously. Or so Raesinia had managed to convince Sothe, in any case. While her maid hurried back to Ohnlei to tell visitors that the princess was feeling unwell, Raesinia was able to walk the city in daylight for the first time in months. Sothe worried about leaving her alone, but as Raesinia pointed out, what could really happen to her?

Besides, she was spending the day in the company of Ben Cooper, and it was hard to imagine anything bad befalling her with him around. Ben was a tall young man with sandy hair, broad shoulders, and a lantern jaw, who looked a bit like a classical depiction of one of the more muscular saints who spent their time smiting the unrighteous. In addition to these physical attributes, nature had blessed him with a sunny, honest disposition and a strong sense of justice, which as far as Raesinia was concerned was about as good as hanging a giant “Kick Me” sign around his neck. Spending too much time around him made her feel intensely guilty, both because she had to lie about who she really was and from the puppy-dog eyes he directed at her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

Her other companion was cut from a different cloth. Doctor-Scholar George Sarton looked as though he had been born to skulk under rocks. He was actually nearly as tall as Ben, but he made himself seem short by hunching his shoulders, walking with a strange, crabwise gait, and cringing whenever someone looked directly at him. He spoke with a helpless stammer that practically invited mockery. It was Ben who had recruited him, of course, recognizing in the miserable-looking medical student a remarkable mind waiting to be put to good use.

Faro completed their party, dressed in his usual gray and black and wearing a rapier as current fashion dictated. Raesinia wondered idly if he knew how to use the thing, or if there was even a blade inside the elegant chased-silver scabbard.

“And you still can’t tell me what we’re going to see?” Raesinia said to Ben.

“Don’t want to prejudice you,” Ben said. “I need to know if you see the same thing I do.”

Raesinia shrugged. Truth be told, she was simply enjoying the freedom from the stuffy corridors of the palace. They were walking across Saint Parfeld Bridge, newest of the many spans over the Vor. It was a bright summer day, and the bridge offered expansive views in both directions, as well as a river breeze that cut through the July heat. Upstream, to Raesinia’s left, she could see the spires of the University loom above its wooded hillsides on the north bank, and the low bulk of Thieves’ Island lurking around a slight bend in the river like a smuggler’s ship. Downstream were the enormous marble-faced arches of the Grand Span, and beyond that the endless fields of warehouses and brick tenements that faced the docks. The river was crowded with traffic in both direction, little water taxis driven by two or four burly oarsmen darting among the big, flat-bottomed cargo boats.

They had just walked through the Exchange, where the day’s business was beginning to heat up. Ahead of them was Newtown, a perfectly regular grid of paved streets and imposing four-story brick cubes, whose original Rationalist design was now barely visible under the accumulated debris and damage of nearly a century of habitation. The broad, easy-to-traverse streets had been turned into a maze by a profusion of vendors, spontaneous outdoor cafés, and simple accumulations of trash. Something as simple as a stuck wagon could start the process-leave one in the street, and before the week was out, someone would be using it as a platform to sell oranges, while another enterprising merchant put up a cloth lean-to from the side to start a fortune-telling business and a poor mother tried to raise two children underneath. The looming facades of the apartment buildings were pitted and torn, half the facing bricks looted for building material or washed out in the rain, and plastered over with posters, notices, and painted slogans.

“This place gives me the creeps,” said Faro. “It’s the grid. It makes me feel like everyone has set up shop in a graveyard.”

“It’s l. . l. . logical,” Sarton said. He was nearly always referred to as “Sarton” or “the doctor,” but never “George.” “Or it ought to be, if it were p. . p. . properly organized.”

“Come on,” Ben said. He led the way down the granite steps at the Newtown end of the bridge and into the chaotic swirl of traffic.

The first to accost them were the sellers of papers, pamphlets, and other ephemeral publications. These were mostly boys of eight or nine, who rushed about in enormous flocks toward whoever looked as though they had money and knew how to read. Densely printed sheets of newsprint, folded and emblazoned in one corner with a little caricature of the author for easy identification, could be had for a penny.

Raesinia passed by the Weeping Man, the Shouting Man, and the Kneeling Man, but much to Faro’s annoyance she stopped and bought a copy of the Blacksmith’s latest and one from the Hanged Man, who was always good for a laugh. The sight of her purse brought a new flood of pamphleteers, all shouting at the top of their lungs about the superiority of their product. She doubted any of the ragged street children could read what they were carrying, but it was a moot point, because she couldn’t understand any of them in the cacophony.

Ben bought a couple of papers that were written by friends of his, and Sarton took a pamphlet full of new woodcuts of interesting vivisections. Faro, meanwhile, swatted any of the youngsters who got close to him, which provoked a whole gang of them to start tugging his clothes and trying to pinch him. They only veered off when some sharp-eyed scout spotted a two-horse coach coming over the bridge, and the others ran after him like a wheeling flock of starlings.

“Newspapers,” Faro said bitterly. “Why they bother to print them is beyond me. Does anyone actually read the things?”

“You ought to be kinder,” Ben said. “Most of them are on our side, after all.”

“So they claim. I think they’re just a pack of cowards.”

Raesinia opened the Hanged Man’s paper. A quarter of the sheet was a woodcut cartoon, entitled “Life at Ohnlei.” On one side a Hamveltai doctor-recognizable as such by a ridiculously tiny short-brimmed hat-worked on a crowned, bedridden figure amid flying sprays of blood. At a table in the foreground was the instantly identifiable Duke Orlanko, short and round with huge spectacles, sitting in front of a plate of tiny, starved corpses with protruding ribs. He had one of them on his fork, inspecting it distastefully. Beside him stood Rackhil Grieg, angular and vulpine, with the caption HAVE TWO, YOUR GRACE. THEY’RE SO SMALL THESE DAYS.