Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“Maurisk and Sarton are camped out at the Exchange. I think Maurisk is still sulking because you took out that piece explaining the essential inequity of fractional-reserve lending.”

“He means well.” Raesinia sighed. A flash of movement caught her eye. “Here comes Cora.”

The teenager was visibly excited, bouncing across the flagstones as though she might be ready to take flight with any step, though bags under her eyes told of a night without sleep. Raesinia didn’t know whether the rest of the cabal ever wondered how she herself was able to stay up nights, sometimes for days at a time, with no ill effects. Maybe they think I’m a vampire.

“I think it’s going to work!” Cora said, too loudly. Raesinia winced, but the noise of the crowd would probably cover any casual conversation. “Look at all these people. It’s got to work!”

“No way to tell, until Danton does his thing,” Raesinia said. “Are you all right?”

“Just a little tired,” Cora said, flopping into a chair. “After this is over I think I’m going to sleep for a week.”

“After this is over,” Ben said, “I intend to get very, very drunk.”

“ If we get away with it,” Raesinia said. “I don’t think they allow liquor in the Vendre.”

“We should get closer,” Cora said, bouncing back up from her chair and peering at the fountain. “Don’t you think we should get closer? We won’t be able to hear anything.”

Raesinia glanced at Ben. “I think it would be appropriate to join the crowd at this point, don’t you?”

He nodded. The inner circle of onlookers, those who’d known what was going to happen this morning, was now surrounded by a much larger crowd that had seen the gathering and wandered over out of simple curiosity. All around the square, people were leaving the cafés and heading inward, so as to be close enough to catch a glimpse of whatever had attracted the attention of so many people. The conspirators did the same, Raesinia and Ben strolling casually while Cora raced ahead.

They found a spot near the outer edge of the throng with a decent view of the central column, and Raesinia took a moment to assess the character of the crowd. The air was abuzz with the expectation of something , but there was less anger than she’d expected. Nearer the center, the mass of people were mostly poor workers, students, women, and vagabonds, but on the outskirts there were a fair number of middle- or upper-class types who wanted to see what the spectacle was about.

That was good, in Raesinia’s book. Anything that decreased the risk of outright violence. The specter of a riot, with the inevitable casualties and arrests, still haunted her. Not to mention that if the Armsmen have to shut down the Exchange, this will all have been for nothing.

A flurry of shouting and scattered cheers at the front of the crowd told them something was happening. Eventually a solitary figure emerged onto Farus V’s rostrum, dressed in a dark, sober coat and a respectable hat. Faro had done wonders with Danton-he’d trimmed the wild beard and slicked back his hair, then taken him on a round of the Island’s best tailors and haberdashers until he looked every inch the reputable man of business. He was almost handsome, in a rough sort of way, as long as you didn’t spend a minute talking to him to discover he had the mind of a five-year-old.

“My friends,” he said, spreading his arms wide to encompass the crowd.

Even though she knew what was coming, Raesinia couldn’t help shivering as that voice rolled over her. It echoed across the square with effortless power, slicing through the buzz of a thousand conversations and silencing them midsentence. It rang with stentorian authority off the cobbles and made the shopwindows rattle in their frames. It wasn’t the voice of a rabble-rouser or the shrill screech of a fanatic, or even the rolling, practiced tone of a veteran preacher. It was the calm, knowledgeable voice of a man of the world, sharing a few facts of life with a beloved but impetuous companion. Raesinia half expected to feel an avuncular hand patting her firmly on the shoulder.

“My friends,” Danton repeated, as the murmur of the crowd died away. “Some of you know me. Some of you have no doubt heard my name in the paper. To those who are strangers, I will begin by saying that I am Danton Aurenne, and a little bit about why I have been compelled to speak.”

“Compelled” was a nice touch, Raesinia thought, as the speech rolled onward. She’d written it, apart from a few of the more technical flourishes, but seeing it in her own hand on an ink-splattered page and hearing it ring out across a mob of thousands in the middle of the Triumph were very different matters. Raesinia’s heart beat faster as Danton picked up the pace. He seemed to have an instinctive feel for the material- God knows he doesn’t understand it -and gradually let his slow, measured delivery take on more emotion and power as he went along.

Banking, he said, was an old and honorable tradition. There had been bankers in Vordan as long as there had been a Vordan, helping people through bad times with loans, providing safe haven for surpluses in good years, showing restraint and compassion to debtors whose luck had gone sour. Danton’s father-an imaginary figure, of course-had instructed him in that way of doing business, and when he’d come to manhood he’d fully intended to follow that ideal.

When Danton paused, the whole square was hushed, as though everyone present were holding their breath at once.

“But things are different now, aren’t they?” he said.

An incoherent mass of shouts and cheers answered him, until he cut it off with a gesture. Then he explained just how things were different. The bankers had changed, and the banks had changed with them. They were foreigners now, outside the community of which they had once been pillars. Interested only in how much profit-how much of the sweat and toil of good, honest people-they could drain out of Vordan entirely. Parasites, sucking the lifeblood of a country like a gang of swamp-bound leeches. The bankers and the tax farmers-Raesinia was proud of how she’d slipped that conflation in-were to blame for all the ills of Vordan. If not for them, there would be work for everyone. Bread would be an eagle a loaf again.

“One eagle!” someone shouted, and it quickly became a chant. “One eagle and the Deputies-General! One eagle and the Deputies-General!”

“The Deputies-General,” Danton mused, as though it had just been suggested to him.

It would be the answer. Representatives of the people, working together in confraternity to solve the people’s problems, under the august blessing of the Crown. But it wouldn’t happen unless they made it happen.

“But,” Danton said, “we must hit them where it stings. ‘Burn down the banks,’ they tell me. ‘Burn down the Exchange.’ But what’s the use in that? The workers in the bank are Vordanai like you or me, and they’d be thrown out of work. The farmers who sell their food on the Exchange are Vordanai, like you or me. The Armsmen are Vordanai. Would you force them to arrest their own brothers? No. Our enemies are not things , not mere assemblies of iron and stone, vaults and marble floors. Our enemies are ideas .

“So, what can we do?”

He reached inside his coat and drew out a slip of paper. When he unfolded it, gilt lettering flashed in the sun.

“This is a bill on the Second Pennysworth Bank. It represents a promise to pay the bearer one hundred eagles. A promise-that’s all a bank really is, in the end. Promises.” He held the paper out at arm’s length, between two fingers, as though it were a stinking dead fish. “So we can do this. ”