Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

And if he knew , why didn’t he tell me? She couldn’t decide if it had been a shrewd move on his part, given her probable reaction, or else had been the colonel’s twisted idea of a joke. Janus did have a decidedly odd sense of humor at times. Either way, I owe him a solid kick in the arse. She glanced at Jane. Or else my abject gratitude. One or the other. Maybe both.

It was still a little hard for Winter to believe that Jane was here , that the girl who had figured so prominently in her dreams for three years was actually standing beside her. With her long hair gone, dressed in trousers and dockworkers’ homespun, it sometimes felt like this profanity-spewing young woman was someone else entirely. Then something would catch Winter’s eye-her face in profile, that wicked smile, a certain cast of the eyes-and her heart would give a sickening lurch, and she’d be ready to break down in tears all over again.

Jane’s rounds, it turned out, consisted of walking an irregular circuit of the streets around her base. This took considerably longer than it might have, since everyone they met on the street seemed to know her, and every third person stopped her to exchange a few words. Jane introduced Winter whenever she had the chance, but to Winter the dockmen and their names quickly became a blur. They had a certain sameness about them-big, weathered men, tan and wiry from years of heavy work in the sun. They had names like Bentback Jim, Reggie’s Teeth, Bob the Swine, and Walnut.

This last was a true giant of a man, bigger even than Winter’s Corporal Folsom, with wrinkled skin tanned dark as leather and a grin that showed shockingly white teeth. He was called Walnut, Jane explained, because he liked to eat the nuts, and, more important, because he could crush them in his fists. Walnut, hearing this, laughed delightedly and demonstrated with a couple of nuts from a nearby bowl. He tightened his grip until they broke, with a crack like a pistol shot.

“’Ave you seen Crooked Sal this morning?” Walnut said, picking the meat from the bits of shell in his palm with surprising delicacy.

“Not yet,” Jane said. “Why?”

“He was gettin’ pretty hot last night,” Walnut said. “Something about his daughter and George the Gut.”

“Fuckin’-” Jane loosed a string of profanity that Winter couldn’t follow, which made even Walnut raise an eyebrow. “Is he still going on about that?”

“Said he was going to go over there and slit George open to see what his gut was made of,” Walnut said. “Course, he was sopping drunk at the time. But it sounded like he meant it.”

“I’ll sort him out.” Jane turned on her heel and stalked away, and Winter had to hurry to keep up.

“Fucking Sal and his fucking daughter,” Jane muttered.

“I take it you know them?” Winter said. “You seem to know everybody.”

“Sal’s an ass. And his daughter’s a little idiot who likes to make trouble. I mean, why else would she move in with George the Gut? It’s not like he’s anything to look at.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Find Sal and talk some sense into him. His girl’s seventeen already. If she wants to spend her time fucking ugly eel fishers, that’s her own business.” Jane paused. “You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. Sal’s not really dangerous, but if he’s started working himself up to something, he may be half-drunk already.” She glanced at Winter and looked away, almost bashful. “All this. . fighting and so on. You’re not-”

Winter almost laughed but restrained herself. She hadn’t told Jane her story yet, and so Jane’s image of her was still the proper little girl from Mrs. Wilmore’s, who had to be painstakingly cajoled into the slightest disobedience.

“I can take care of myself,” Winter said. “Or at least manage to stay out of the way.”

Jane gave her an odd look but didn’t protest. They set off down the rambling Docks alleys at a more rapid pace, and Jane acknowledged the shouts of greeting from the people they passed with only a grunt and a wave. Their course tended generally downhill, and every now and then one of the straighter streets gave Winter a view of the river, glittering in the sunlight and aswarm with small boats. A few large cargo galleys were tied up to piers or making their way slowly upriver, like languid whales among schools of smaller fish.

When they were a few hundred yards from the waterfront, Jane turned into a narrow alley that passed between two stout brick warehouses and then into a back-lot no-man’s-land full of small wooden dwellings. Jane headed for the closest on the left-hand side, a shaky-looking two-story construction that looked as though it had grown like a mushroom rather than been built to any plan. The windows had rag curtains instead of glass, tied up in bundles to admit any passing breeze, and the door was wide open in the summer heat. Jane took advantage of this to walk right in, with Winter following somewhat diffidently behind her.

The bottom floor of the house was one large room, arranged around a firepit. A big, solid table stood beside it, smelling distinctly of fish, with a heavy carving knife embedded in it point-down as if it were a butcher’s block. A fat yellow cat, lazing in a patch of sunlight, rolled over and hissed at Jane, fur bristling.

The young man standing at the table had very nearly the same reaction. He looked to be about sixteen, thin and gangly, with a peach-fuzz mustache and a few stray wisps of beard.

“Your da upstairs?” Jane said, without preamble.

The boy puffed out his chest, though he’d retreated to put the table between himself and the intruder. “What if he is?”

“Don’t be a fool, Junior. Do I look like the fucking Armsmen to you? Go and fetch him.”

He deflated a little. After pausing for a few moments, just to show that he didn’t have to do what Jane told him, he ran to the rickety staircase at the back of the house and clomped halfway up it. “Da?”

“’M busy,” came a voice from above, like a drunken saint speaking from on high. “Tell ’im to go away.”

“Da, it’s Mad Jane!”

“Mad” Jane? Winter caught Jane’s eye with a questioning look. Jane gave her best mad smile and waggled her eyebrow conspiratorially. The shared, instantaneous understanding was so powerfully familiar that it made Winter wobble, weak at the knees. Right . She kept her hysterical giggles to herself. Mad Jane. I’m surprised we never called her that at Mrs. Wilmore’s.

The boy scurried out of the way as someone much heavier clumped down the stairs. This, presumably, was Crooked Sal, a man in his forties with only a fringe of stiff gray hair remaining around a bald, shiny pate. For once, no explanation of his sobriquet was necessary; Sal’s nose looked as though it had been broken at least a dozen times, and it zigzagged like a wandering stream. He wore a leather vest that left his arms and hairy chest bare, and smelled of old fish. Behind him, perching halfway up the staircase, was a boy of twelve or thirteen.

“You here to stick your nose in my business?” Sal roared.

“That’s right,” Jane said.

“Not a good habit,” he growled. “You keep putting that nose where it don’t belong and it’ll end up looking like mine.”

“Fortunately, nobody can bear to damage my good looks,” Jane said. “Now, what is this bullshit about you and George the Gut?”

“Fuckin’ George the pus-ridden Gut is havin’ his way with my virgin daughter!” Sal said. “I’ve got every right to show him the color of his kidneys!”

Jane scratched the side of her nose. “Iffie’s a nice girl, but you’re going a bit far there, aren’t you? The way I heard it, Iffie climbed through his window in the middle of the night.”