Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“But. . the people listening. What did they think it meant?”

“People like stories. They like to shout, but it’s good shouting.”

Raesinia’s binding, the demon in the pit of her soul, gave an odd little twist, as though it were turning over in its sleep. Probably getting rid of the last of the alcohol, she thought regretfully. It would have been nice to let her consciousness dissolve in bubbly white wine for a while, like the rest of the cabal. Or even to be able to put my head down and take a nap.

“I’ll see if Faro brought any beer,” she said.

“Thank you, Princess!”

She’d only opened the door a fraction when she heard the knocking. Someone was rapping at the outer door of the suite, only a few feet away. But nobody is supposed to know we’re here.

Probably just the hotel staff. She fought off incipient panic and smiled at Danton. “I’ll be right back. You just stay here and. . think, all right?”

“All right!”

He settled himself on the bed, and Raesinia went back into the hall and shut the door behind her. Loud voices were coming from the sitting room, where Ben and Faro were still at their gaming. She didn’t think anyone else had heard the knocking.

The outer door had no convenient peephole, as a lower-class hotel might have. Raesinia frowned, then settled her weight against the door, bracing her legs against any attempt to force it open.

“Yes?” she said, barely loud enough to be audible. “Who is it?”

“Raesinia? Is that you?”

“Sothe?” Her maidservant/bodyguard had been adamant about keeping herself hidden from the other members of the cabal. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you alone?”

“For the moment. Everyone’s out by the balcony.”

“Good. Open the door.”

Raesinia took her weight off the door and thumbed the latch, letting it open a few inches. She kept her boot wedged against the base so that a sudden push from the outside wouldn’t throw it wide open. Sothe was visible through the resulting crack, and Raesinia relaxed and opened the door the rest of the way.

“Good,” Sothe said. “Voices are easy to fake. Now help me with her.”

The open door revealed that Sothe was standing beside a young woman in the smart gray-and-black livery of the hotel. The woman’s head was resting on Sothe’s shoulder, and it was obvious that Sothe’s arm around her waist was the only thing keeping her up. At first Raesinia thought she was stumbling drunk, but as Sothe shuffled into the suite her limp, dangling limbs made it clear she was completely unconscious.

Raesinia stood aside and pressed the door closed behind them.

Sothe, surveying the suite, nodded toward the bedrooms. “Are those empty?”

“Danton’s in one of them.”

Sothe’s expression tightened into a frown.

“The other one should be.”

“Good. Get her legs.”

Raesinia grabbed the mystery woman about the ankles and lifted her feet off the floor. Together they manhandled her into the second bedroom, and Sothe maneuvered her onto the bed and let her fall. Her head thumped heavily onto the covers.

“Sothe,” Raesinia said, “who is this? And what’s wrong with her?”

Sothe glanced back out into the suite and shut the door behind them. “What’s wrong with her is that she’s dead.” She indicated a detail Raesinia had missed: the leather-wrapped hilt of a long-bladed stiletto, sticking out of the woman’s left side just below her armpit. “As for who she was, I can’t tell you precisely”-Sothe made another knife appear in her hand, as if by magic-“but she was definitely Concordat.”

Raesinia was silent for a moment. Sothe immediately set to work, sawing through the waistband of the dead woman’s skirt and then slitting it in two down the length of her leg, peeling her clothes off like a University savant removing the skin from a new specimen.

“You’re sure she was-” Raesinia began.

Sothe sighed. She tore the skirt aside with a rip of fabric, revealing a leather strap around the corpse’s thigh, which held several thin blades in cunningly designed sheathes. Sothe pulled one of these out and sent it humming across the room to bury itself in the wall with a tick a few inches from Raesinia’s ear.

“Throwing knives are not a common accessory for hotel maids, even in Oldtown,” Sothe said, “much less maids at the Grand. She was Concordat.”

“All right,” Raesinia said. The knife in the wall was still buzzing slightly. “Did you kill her?”

“Of course I killed her.”

“Can I ask why you’re stripping her naked?” Sothe had started slitting the woman’s blouse up toward her collar.

“Because I’m looking for something, and we don’t have a lot of time.” Sothe jerked the dead woman’s undershirt up like an impatient lover, pawed at her breasts, and grinned in triumph. “Got you. Some things never change.”

“Sothe. .”

Sothe held up a hand, bending over the body. She came up with a long, thin, flat paper, curved where it had been pressed against the woman’s skin.

“Pockets are too risky,” Sothe said. “And you have to keep it on you. Some of the men used to keep it up their arseholes, but I always preferred sticking it on somewhere intimate with spirit gum.” She frowned down at the body. “I wonder who’s teaching them that trick now.”

“What is it?”

“Cipher. One-use, good for a couple of hundred words. The only other copy is with some clerk under the Cobweb.” Sothe unfolded the packet into a small square of onionskin paper, then folded it back up and tucked it away. “It’s how she was going to report in.”

“Ah. So you’re going to send in her reports?”

“Just one report. They burn the cipher after use. Keeps it secure.” Sothe shook her head. “I’ll try to salvage something out of this.”

“Salvage something? Have you seen the crowd outside?” Raesinia felt a little of her excitement returning. “Sothe, it worked . We brought down a bank. That will hit the Borels where it hurts-”

“I don’t mean the banks. You brought Danton here . Do you know how many people are following him right now, after the speech he gave? Now they know he came to a hotel room, and they’re going to ask who else was there. That’s all they’ll need.” Sothe shook her head bitterly. “How many times did I tell you to keep away from him ? We can’t afford to let Orlanko tie the two of you together.”

“Faro brought him,” Raesinia said defensively. “He didn’t have anywhere else to stash him. I should have realized they couldn’t go back to the Royal. We could have made other plans-”

“We can worry about fixing the blame later. Right now we have to get you out of here.”

Raesinia nodded, trying to focus. “Does Orlanko have anyone else watching the place?”

“There’s two men in grooms’ uniforms stuffed into a hayrick in the stables,” Sothe said grimly. “I think we’re clear for the moment, but that won’t last. You have to come with me.”

“What about the others?”

“Warn them if you like,” Sothe said. “Just don’t take too long about it. After that, they’re on their own. We need to split up anyway.”

“If the Concordat ties them to Danton-”

“If Orlanko figures out that you aren’t the wilting dove he’s been led to believe you are, he’ll clap you in irons until your father is dead and he’s got you safely married off, and this whole project is for nothing,” Sothe said. “Now come on. I’ve got to get you away before I can clean up here.”

“All right,” Raesinia muttered. She looked down at the body. “Don’t you think you should. . cover her, or something?”