Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“Jane!” Winter said.

Jane paused, the knife half-raised, as though she’d forgotten Winter was there. Without looking round, she said, “I let you come because I thought you ought to know why I was doing this. But I shouldn’t have. Go back, Winter. You don’t have to live with this.”

Too late for that. “You can’t kill him.”

“Why not? Are you going to stop me?”

“If I have to.”

Jane turned around, finally, the knife still held in front of her. She’d unconsciously dropped into a fighter’s crouch. “You don’t mean that. Just go.”

“I won’t.” Winter spread her hands. “You know that killing him won’t help anyone.”

“It’ll help Sarah.”

“Sarah’s dead. Come on, Jane. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

Jane stared at Winter, eyes as wide as a hunted animal’s, searching for a way out. “He deserves it.”

“ You don’t.”

“You don’t understand. I. .” Jane shook her head savagely. “And who are you to tell me what to do? Did you never have to hurt anybody in-”

Winter cut her off hurriedly. “I did, in battles . I’ve killed. . I don’t know how many. But they were armed, and trying to kill me. He’s a prisoner .”

“Does that matter?”

“It has to!” Winter bit her lip. “Besides, he’s wrong. You know he’s wrong.”

“Of course he’s fucking wrong. What does that have to do-”

“Sarah volunteered. Abby told me that. Everyone who helps you, who does what you do, they all choose to do it. Do you think they didn’t know they might get hurt in the process?”

“I. .”

“You don’t need to kill him to prove your point. You don’t , Jane. Please.” Winter took a cautious step forward and grabbed Jane’s arm, easing around the quivering point of the knife.

Jane said something too low for Winter to hear. Then, before Winter could ask her to repeat it, she spun around, breaking Winter’s loose grip, and planted a kick solidly in Cecil’s midsection. The Borelgai coughed and toppled backward, sprawling on the end of the pier. A further kick from Jane encouraged him to roll over, and he dropped six inches with a thud to the bottom of one of the little boats. The momentum set the craft bobbing out into the river, restrained by a single taut line. Jane sawed at this with the knife for a few moments until it broke with a snap , then put her foot on the gunwale and shoved the boat out into the river.

“If I ever see you in the Docks again,” she said, “I will kill you. Slowly. You understand? Find yourself a ship and go back to fucking Borel, or jump off a bridge for all I care. But your work in Vordan is over .”

Cecil responded with a stream of Borelgai profanity as the boat drifted farther from shore, out into the sluggish current. “ Blani fi’midviki! How am I supposed to go anywhere with my hands tied behind my fucking back?”

Jane wound up, paused to judge the distance, and sent the knife whirling end over end toward the boat that was rapidly vanishing into the river darkness. There was a thok as the blade bit into wood, and a screech from Cecil.

“And I’m sending you a bill for the fucking boat!” Jane called after him, as he disappeared.

She stood staring after him for a long moment, hands clenched and vibrating with tension. Winter stepped up behind her, uncertainly, and tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but Jane spun away from her touch and stalked back up the pier. She sat down on a post and crossed her arms, curling up as though she wanted to withdraw inside herself.

“I’m sorry,” Winter said.

Jane muttered something indistinct.

Winter paused. “Jane?”

“I said go fuck yourself.” Jane raised her head. “You should leave. Go home. Back to wherever you came from. Just leave me here with the rest of the scum and go .”

“No,” Winter said. Her heart hammered double time, and tears stung her eyes.

“Just go .”

“I won’t. Never again.”

“Fuck,” Jane said quietly, and curled up again. “Nobody fucking listens to me.”

Winter sat down beside her, on the soggy wood of the pier, and waited. Even back at Mrs. Wilmore’s, Jane had suffered from foul moods. Winter had learned that the only remedy was silence. She always resurfaced, eventually.

The city was quiet at this time of night. The ever-present sounds of distant crowds and thousands of plodding horses and rattling cartwheels were absent. Instead Winter could hear the quiet lapping of the river, and the slow creaks and groans from the tied-up fishing fleet. A distant whistle sounded, where an Armsman needed assistance. Somewhere, a dog barked.

“She was one of mine,” Jane said. “She followed me because she believed what I told her, that I could keep her safe. I told her that. And I brought her here, and she. . she died.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Jane snapped. “You don’t understand what it’s like. I have a responsibility , and I. .”

Winter eased closer. When Jane didn’t flinch away, she slipped an arm, gently, around her shoulders.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “I do understand. I may be the only one here who does.”

Winter thought about the ambush by the river, the charge up the hill with Auxiliary cannonballs coming down all around them, the long march through the wasteland of the Great Desol. And, deep in her heart where she hardly dared acknowledge it was real, the last desperate square in the darkness under the temple, with green-eyed corpses clawing at them from every side. And the looks on the men’s faces when I turned up. The relief , as though now that I was there everything was somehow taken care of. Just the memory of it slammed her like a fist in the gut. She’d gotten them out, in the end, but. .

. . but not all of them.

Something else twitched, down in the depths of her mind. A flick of the tail, a tiny gleam of light on ivory fangs, something to remind her that the viper was still coiled comfortably in its hole. The other thing she’d acquired that night, aside from nightmares. Infernivore.

Jane had relaxed, letting her arms fall to her side and her head rest on Winter’s shoulder. They stayed like that a long time.

“We should get back,” Winter said, eventually. “The others will be wondering what happened to us.”

“And coming to all the wrong conclusions, no doubt,” Jane said. Her grin was back, mad and infectious. She bounced up from the post, grabbing Winter’s hand and pulling her to her feet through an elegant twirl. When the turn brought their faces close, Jane leaned in and planted a kiss, light and fast.

“Come on,” she said. “It must be nearly dawn.”

They expected to find Motley’s tavern nearly deserted, as the sun was indeed making its presence known on the eastern horizon by the time they made their way back. Instead it was packed, both with Leatherbacks and those of Jane’s girls who had not returned home. They looked as though they had assembled in haste; one of the girls had obviously been rousted out of bed and was wearing nothing but a bedsheet, coiled round her like a winding shroud.

All attention was focused on one younger girl at the center of the crowd. Winter recognized Nel, her spectacles askew, her clothes dirty with soot and torn in places. She looked close to tears, but her eyes lit up the moment Jane came in.

“Jane!”

The whole crowd turned to look at them, their collective stare freezing Winter and Jane in their tracks. Jane blinked.

“What? What in the hells is going on?”

“They took her,” Nel said, fighting back sobs. “They took all of them. I tried to help, but all I could do was hide. Then the Armsmen had closed the bridges, and I couldn’t find a way through. I tried. .”