Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“It’s. . all right,” Winter said. “I didn’t hurt you very badly, did I?”

“Busted my lip pretty good, but I’ve had worse.” Jane shook her head, eyes locked on Winter’s face. Winter took her sleeve in one hand and dabbed at her eyes, suddenly self-conscious. “I am awake, right? You’re really here? This isn’t some goddamned dream?”

“Apparently not,” Winter said. “Though I think I may still be in shock.”

“Goddamn. God damn .” Jane shook her head. “They told me they’d brought in someone called Winter, and I thought. . no. That’s not the way the world fucking works.” She swallowed, and her voice got very quiet. “I thought you were dead.”

That caught Winter off guard. “What? Why?”

“I went looking for you. You weren’t at Mrs. Wilmore’s, and nobody knew where you’d gone. There was this rumor that you’d escaped, run away, and become a soldier or a bandit chief, but I never believed it. I thought for sure that you’d died somehow, and that withered bitch was covering it up. Did you really get away?”

Winter nodded. “I thought. .”

“How? What happened?” Jane caught Winter’s expression, and the eager tone in her voice fell away. “What’s wrong?”

Three years of nightmares. Winter bit her lip. “I never thought I’d see you again. I didn’t think you’d. . want to find me.”

“What?” Jane took a half step forward, then checked herself. Her cheeks flushed, and her hands gripped the edges of her trousers and twisted the fabric. “Winter. Why would you say that?”

“It. . it was. .”

Winter’s throat was blocked again. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wiped at them angrily with her sleeve. Jane swore under her breath, and after a moment Winter felt her standing close, inches away. She hovered, halfway to gathering Winter to her chest.

There was a long pause. Winter stepped forward, pressing her face against Jane’s shoulder, and Jane’s arms surrounded her with a tangible feeling of tension released. After a moment, Winter felt Jane’s cheek resting on the top of her head.

“I like the short hair,” Jane whispered, after a brief eternity. She rubbed her cheek back and forth. “It tickles.”

Winter smiled shakily, face pressed into the leather of Jane’s vest. I have to say it. She wanted to stay here, in the circle of Jane’s arms, and never leave. But if I don’t say it, none of this is real.

“It was my fault,” Winter said, barely audible. “I was supposed to get you out. That night, when Ganhide. . visited you. I was. . I couldn’t do it.” That was the night that had haunted her dreams for years. The night she’d been supposed to escape with Jane, only to find that the brutish Ganhide had gotten to her first.

“You’ve been worried about that ?” Jane squeezed Winter a little tighter. “Balls of the Beast. Winter, I was crazy . You know that, right? I mean, I told you to kill him if you ran into him.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“No shit you couldn’t do it. You were what, seventeen? And if you had done it we’d probably both be hanged by now.” Jane rubbed Winter’s shoulder. “Come on. I was a teenager, too, and scared out of my wits. That ‘plan’ would have gotten us killed.”

“I got all the way to the door,” Winter said. The lump in her throat was melting. “I had the knife. Ganhide was right there . I almost. .”

“Karis Almighty. Really?” Jane rocked her, gently, back and forth. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“But. .” Winter rubbed her face against Jane’s vest one more time, then looked up. “I left you for him. I just left you there. How can that. . how can you say that was all right? He took you away and-”

“Married me?”

Winter nodded, lower lip trembling.

“That was the plan all along, remember? One of my better plans, from when I was a little more in my right mind. I told you it would be easier to get away from some idiot husband than from Mrs. Wilmore and her crew of dried-up old cunts. I was out of Ganhide’s place in less than a month.”

She smiled, and that almost made Winter start crying all over again. It was the same Jane smile, crooked at one side, alive with intelligence and mischief. Winter let out a breath, and something else escaped with it, something she’d been holding in the pit of her stomach for three years. Her body felt light, as if she’d just shed a sixty-pound pack, and her limbs were as wobbly as after a long day’s march. She shifted, to unpin her arms from her sides, and nearly fell over. Jane linked her hands at the small of Winter’s back to keep her upright, and Winter let her own hands rest on Jane’s shoulders.

“You really don’t. . hate me? You’re not angry?” Can you be haunted by someone who isn’t dead?

“Winter, listen to me.” Jane matched her stare, eyes locked on each other. “I should apologize to you . I never should have asked you to do that. Hell, I wouldn’t have done it myself. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Winter said. “I think we’ve both apologized enough.”

Jane’s smile returned. They held perfectly still for a long moment, still staring. Winter felt as though they were breathing in unison, as though animated by a single bellows. Jane licked her lips nervously.

“You have no idea how much I want to kiss you,” she said, in a whisper.

“It’s all right.”

“You’re sure? What I did before-I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t-”

“It’s all right.”

Winter smiled, and when Jane hesitated a moment longer, she pulled herself up and kissed her instead. She still tasted of mint, and very slightly of blood from where she’d cut her lip. Winter’s hand slid across Jane’s back, up the nape of her neck, and twisted itself in her hair.

“Your hair looks nice short, too,” Winter said, when they finally came up for air. Their faces were only inches apart, noses almost touching. “But I’m going to miss wrapping it around my fingers.”

“You know what’s strange? I miss brushing it. It was always such a chore, but it made me feel calm, sometimes.” She shook her head. “It was that fucker Ganhide who made me cut it, you know. He said it only got in the way. Maybe I ought to grow it out again.”

“You really just ran away from him?”

“More or less.” There was an odd look in Jane’s eyes, as though she was seeing something she preferred not to remember. She blinked rapidly, and it was gone. “But what happened to you ? I couldn’t find anything but rumors. It was like you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

Winter closed her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. “That,” she said, “is a long story.”

MARCUS

Vice Captain Giforte came into Marcus’ office and dropped a stack of pamphlets on his desk, beside the piles of reports and cleaning rotas.

“This is becoming a real problem,” he said.

“Good morning, Vice Captain,” Marcus said mildly.

He sipped from his cup of coffee and made a face. For five years in Khandar, he’d put up with drinking coffee because there wasn’t a decent cup of tea to be had in Ashe-Katarion for love or money. The supply of dried leaves Janus had brought along had been almost as much a boost to Marcus’ morale as the two thousand extra troops. But now that he was back in Vordan, where the best tea in the world could be had on any street corner for a couple of pennies, he found himself missing the thick, dark coffee of Khandar. A Khandarai would have confused what the Vordanai called coffee with river water. Marcus set the cup down, regretfully.