Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

In the background a rotund Borelgai with a fat drunkard’s nose and a bristly beard had his pants around his ankles and was having his way with a weeping young woman in a circlet, who Raesinia supposed was meant to represent herself. It was not, she thought, a very good likeness. She passed the paper to Ben without comment, and he showed it to Faro.

“I’m not sure I’d call that cowardice,” Ben said.

“It’s easy enough to talk big when you’re hiding in some basement and paying kids to sell this drivel in the streets,” Faro said. “That’s the kind of person who takes one smart step to the rear when the time comes to actually do something.”

“Orlanko has sent publishers to the Vendre before,” Ben said.

“When one of them does something so stupid he can’t pretend to ignore it,” Faro said. “The Last Duke is no fool. The easiest way to get people to pay attention to someone is to lock him up.”

It’s true, Raesinia reflected. Orlanko was no fool. He only drags people off to the Vendre to make a statement. If one of these papers made him angry, there would just be an. . accident. Late night, wet bricks, another body floating in the river. Or else-and this was the possibility that gnawed at her-a man would go out for a walk and never come back. He’d end up in the Vendre, all right, but not in a tower cell where anybody would ever see him again. The dungeons under Vordan’s most notorious prison were rumored to be both noisome and extensive. The thought of Concordat thugs in black leather cloaks turning up at the Blue Mask and dragging them away-dragging Cora away-made it hard for Raesinia to affect Ben’s casual confidence, or Faro’s studied nonchalance.

“Ben,” she said, interrupting their argument, “what was it you wanted us to see?”

“Oh! This way.” He pointed. “I only hope they’re in the same place.”

They walked along the grid, two streets down and one street over. Ben gently guided Sarton whenever they made a turn, since the medical student had become absorbed in his new reading material. Finally, they reached a place where two large streets crossed and made a little square, in the center of which a flat-bedded wagon had been parked to make an impromptu stage. It was surrounded by a crowd, mostly Newtowners in their ragged cotton trousers and coarse brown linen. There was a man on the stage in a black evening coat and three-cornered hat, cutting a dashing if somewhat antiquated figure. The people in the front rank of the crowd were shouting something at him, but Raesinia couldn’t make it out from her position at the rear.

“So, what are we looking at?” said Faro.

Ben pointed. A sign on the edge of the stage read BARON DE BORNAIS’ POTENT CURE-ALL, followed by a lot of smaller type listing the many afflictions this product was supposed to address. Faro followed Ben’s gaze and rolled his eyes.

“Something wrong with you that you haven’t told us about?” Faro said. “I think you might as well drink bathwater and call it a magic potion.”

“Forget the potion,” Ben said. “Listen to the sales pitch.”

“It doesn’t look like anything much so far,” Faro said. “I hope you aren’t suggesting we invest in this fellow. No offense, old buddy, but you should leave the market games to Cora-”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, followed by a respectful silence as the man on the stage-presumably de Bornais-began to speak. This in itself was odd, since in Raesinia’s experience it was not in the nature of a crowd of Vordanai to listen quietly to anyone who wasn’t actually a priest. De Bornais’ presentation seemed to be pandering of a quite ordinary sort, which made it hard to explain the rapt attention.

“Ben. .,” she said.

“Wait,” Ben said. “This isn’t it, not yet.”

“-how many of you are sick?” de Bornais said. There was a wave of muttering from the crowd. “How many of you are afflicted? How many of you have the doctors given up on? How many of you can’t afford to even visit the damned bloodsuckers?”

This last drew a louder rumble than the others, and de Bornais went with the theme. “I’m taking an awful risk coming here, ladies and gentlemen. They don’t want you to hear about this, oh no. All those Borel cutters and the fancy robes up at the University”-he mimed a swishing, effeminate gait-“they would just about shit their britches if they heard about me. Might want to shut me up, I wouldn’t wonder. Because what I have here. .” He paused, smiled, revealing a glittering gold tooth. “But I don’t expect you to take my word for it.”

The crowd let out a collective sigh. De Bornais bowed and stepped aside as another man climbed up from behind the stage. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a shock of wild black hair and an enormous bristling beard. He was dressed in leather trousers and a vest that hung open to the waist, making it obvious that he was well muscled and apparently in rude health.

“My name,” he said, “is Danton Aurenne. And I was not always the man you see before you.”

Raesinia blinked. He had a fine, carrying voice, but it was more than that. It cracked like a whip across the crowd, commanding attention, locking every eye to his face.

He spoke at some length, starting with his childhood on the streets of Newtown, his mother’s struggles, and his diseased and generally malformed state at young adulthood, with particular attention paid to the more horrifying symptoms. From there he recounted his near starvation, unfit for one job after another, finally washing up in a church hostel for the dying. Where, of course, he met de Bornais, and his amazing tonic-

It was an absurd story. Ridiculous. It wasn’t even a masterpiece of the spoken word; it sounded as though it had been written by someone with only a middling command of Vordanai and very little imagination. And yet-and yet-

The words didn’t seem to matter . The rolling power of that voice put the audience into a trance by the force of its delivery alone. Every man, woman, and child in the crowd was rapt. Raesinia found that she could barely even remember what had been said, moments after he’d said it. All that mattered was the plight of poor Danton, and his rescue by the astonishing philanthropy of the brilliant de Bornais, and the fact that she was being invited, exhorted to purchase a vial of this miracle elixir at the incredible price of only one eagle and fifty pence. It was practically giving away the secrets of life, which only showed you the kind of person de Bornais was.

She felt something inside her twitch. The binding perked up, very slightly, one predator raising an eyebrow at the sight of another stalking quietly across the plains.

Raesinia blinked.

“Good, isn’t he?” said Ben, grinning.

“God Almighty.” Faro shook his head, as though he felt drunk. “What the hell was that?”

“He’s got his symptoms all m. . m. . mixed up,” said Sarton. He’d looked up from his pamphlet only when Danton started talking. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if he had an early case of the red wind. In childhood-”

Ben cut him off. “You see why I brought you here, right?”

“Just because the man can sell snake oil,” Faro said, shaking off the effects, “doesn’t mean he’s going to be any use to us .”

Raesinia shook her head. She was still watching the stage, where de Bornais had reappeared with a crate full of glass vials. Coins were flying out of the crowd and landing on the stage with a noise like hail.

“Do you see the girl at the edge of the stage?” she said quietly. “The one with the twisted leg.”

“Nervasia,” Sarton said. “Caused b. . b. . by deficiencies in the diet in infancy.”