Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“Am I what?” Winter said.

“Are you Winter the Soldier?” said Andy. “From the story.”

That rang a very tiny bell with Winter. Bobby had talked about it, hadn’t she? The story that went around after I left. .

“Are you four from Mrs. Wilmore’s?” Winter said.

Three of them nodded. Becks, who was small with stringy, mouse brown hair, was taking the opportunity to study the papers.

“Everyone told stories about Winter,” Andy said. “How she ran away from the Prison and joined the army.”

Molly looked at her crossly. “Jane doesn’t like people telling that story.”

“Because she couldn’t find her when she went back,” Nel said. “After the fire.”

Fire? Winter opened her mouth to ask, but they’d moved on.

“But if she’s here ,” Molly said, “then she has found her again, hasn’t she?”

“If it’s the same Winter,” Andy said. “There are a lot of Winters around.”

“I don’t really know the story,” Winter said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s completely wrong. I am the same Winter who was at Mrs. Wilmore’s with Jane, though.”

There was a collective indrawing of breath.

“Then you didn’t escape and join the army?” Andy said.

“I escaped,” Winter said. “But no, not the rest.” Best to start thinking up a cover story. .

“I always liked the one where she became a bandit queen,” Nel said. “Did you become a bandit queen?”

Winter laughed. “No, I didn’t do that, either.”

“Listen,” said Becks, looking up. She had spectacles on, with one wire arm broken off and replaced with a bit of wood and string. “It says Danton is going to give another speech today! In Farus’ Triumph, like before.”

Winter immediately lost her place as the most fascinating thing at the table, which was all right with her. Abby returned a few moments later with a pair of plates and glasses. The plates were loaded with potatoes, sliced and fried in pork dripping, with a pair of fat, greasy sausages guarding the flanks. It was the kind of serious food that Winter would have happily killed for while on the march in Khandar, and it temporarily absorbed her full attention. In the background, she was vaguely aware of the girls debating the merits of Danton’s platform, whether a mandated price for bread would work and if the Deputies-General could really accomplish anything.

“We ought to go,” Becks said, as Winter was scrubbing the last of the grease from her plate with a slice of potato. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Absolutely,” said Nel.

Molly looked uncertain. “You think it’ll be safe?”

“Oh, come on,” said Nel. “It’s the Island in the afternoon, not the Bottoms at midnight. And with this”-she tapped the paper-“there’ll be Armsmen all over the place.”

“There was nearly a riot in the Exchange,” Molly said. “This time people might get angrier.”

“That was only because they weren’t getting their money back from the bank,” Becks said. “We don’t have to go anywhere near the Exchange.”

Andy decided to appeal to a higher authority. “Abby, what do you think? Is it safe to go and see him?”

Abby, in the middle of cleaning off her own plate, took a thoughtful moment to chew and swallow. “Probably,” she said. “Let me talk to Jane. I may want to come along, too.”

As though the name had been an invocation, another girl appeared behind them, short of breath. “I’ve got,” she gulped, “a message. Jane wants to see you.”

“Me?” Abby said.

“You and Winter,” said the messenger. “Upstairs.” She hesitated. “She sounded mad.”

Mad Jane. Winter suppressed a chuckle. Even her own people were half in terror of her.

“Well.” Abby pushed her plate back. “It looks like Jane has decided to bring you into the fold. Come on. I’ll explain on the way.”

“And you’ll ask about seeing Danton?” Andy said.

“I’ll ask.”

“Do you know anything about the tax farmers?” Abby said, as they navigated through the tide of late arrivers to breakfast.

“No,” Winter said. Her cover story had mentioned one, but the colonel’s briefing hadn’t had any details. “Except that Danton seems to be against them.”

“Everyone’s against them. See, back before the war, everyone knew where they stood with taxes. Each district had a royal customs officer to collect duties, and if you didn’t want to pay you just had to bribe him or sneak your stuff through in the middle of the night. It worked for everybody.”

“Except, presumably, the Treasury,” Winter said dryly.

Abby shrugged, as if this was of no great importance. “After the war, the Crown needed money to pay off the debts to the Borels, and Orlanko put Grieg in charge. Instead of appointing some dullard count to do the job, he had the bright idea to sell the warrant to collect taxes in a particular district to the Borels in lieu of cash up front on the debt.”

“And the Borels don’t take bribes?”

“That’s not the half of it. The old royals didn’t get to keep what they taxed out of people. They just got a stipend from the Crown in exchange for turning over the lot. So they were never very enthusiastic about their jobs. But the tax farmers need to make enough money to cover what they spent on the warrant, plus profits to satisfy their investors.”

“Investors?”

“Oh yes,” Abby said bitterly. “I hear shares of tax farm companies are the hot thing on the Viadre markets. Some of them even trade on the Exchange. They don’t care if they leave people enough to eat, or how many heads they have to break to get what they want. People here tried to fight back, but the farmers just sent bullyboys with their collectors and made sure the Armsmen weren’t going to listen to any complaints.” She rubbed two fingers together suggestively.

“I think I get the picture. What does that have to do with you, though?”

“This was before I got here, but they say Jane was drinking in one of the river taverns, listening to the fishermen bitch and moan. They’re hit the worst, you know. They’re supposed to pay a tax on every load, see, and in a good day a boat might take five loads. So the tax farmer says, you owe for five loads. And if the fisherman says he only took three, the farmer says, well, then you must be trying to smuggle the other two, so you owe for five. So if you have a bad day, or you have to stay home because your kids have the flu, or anything -”

Abby caught Winter’s eye and took a deep breath.

“Sorry,” she said. “It just makes me angry. That’s how I ended up here in the first place. Anyway, the fishermen were complaining, and Jane asked them why they didn’t do something about it. To make a long story short, they had a few more drinks, and then the whole pub went down to the nearest tax farm office and torched the place.” Abby smiled. “That was when the tax farmers found out the Armsmen are happy to take bribes to stay out of the Docks, but it’s much more expensive to get them to come in .”

“So Jane started fighting the tax farmers?”

“Not all by herself,” Abby said. “She got people organized, like a general. After a while things settled down. We let them take enough to get by, they don’t get greedy, and nobody’s head gets broken. And the locals, uh, express their gratitude.” She waved back toward the dining room. “That’s where most of this comes from.”

“These are the Leatherbacks I heard so much about, then,” Winter said.

“Yeah. I don’t know how the name got started, but the fishermen wear those leather aprons, and eventually we started wearing them, too.”