Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

Then, when the king died-which Orlanko’s analysts assured him would happen tonight or tomorrow, Indergast’s best efforts to the contrary-there would be a new ruler. The one thing he’d been missing for his whole career, the capstone of his power. A tame head to wear the crown, a queen who would do what she was told. Once she was in place, Vhalnich could be dismissed from his post and all the prisoners released, to transform the public’s wrath to joy. Danton would moderate his message, or else he, too, could be replaced in time. Orlanko would take great pleasure in delivering a lesson to Rackhil Grieg on the nature of loyalty .

And Vhalnich, some dark night, would vanish. He would be trussed up like a lamb for slaughter and delivered to the Priests of the Black. That would satisfy the pontifex and, Orlanko thought, be a suitably satisfying way of disposing of the man.

There was a way through the passage; he could see it. It was narrow and lined with roaring breakers, but it was there, sure enough. At the other end, the queen and the city would praise his name, as the man who held Vordan together in its moment of crisis.

A slow smile spread across his face as he contemplated the prospect.

For tonight, then, let the city burn.

If there had been a real eagle overhead that night, as opposed to a heraldic one, it might have been forgiven for thinking that Vordan was burning.

The air had the hot, muggy quality of a laundry, the moisture a nearly perceptible fog that felt like breathing soup. The heat kept people from their beds, robbed them of their good humor, made tempers fray. Children stripped down and played by the riverbanks, jumping into the water from the docks or, for the more adventurous, from the bridges. In Farus’ Triumph, thousands had gathered for Danton’s speech. Fights were already breaking out when the Armsmen arrived, with Orlanko’s snatch squads close on their heels.

All over the city, streets emptied in panic at the sight of phalanxes of men in dark leather coats, marching to doorway after ill-fated doorway. Children screamed as the black-coats broke down doors with sledgehammers, and women shrieked as their homes were ransacked. Trouble began almost immediately. A printer of seditious pamphlets attempted to flee rather than go to the Vendre, and fell out a second-story window to his death. A man accused of nothing more substantial than speaking against the tax farmers in a tavern fired a pistol at the Concordat agents sent to round him up; he missed, but the enraged secret policemen stabbed him a dozen times and left him to bleed on his own doorstep. Women were forced out of bed and paraded through the streets in their nightshirts. Dark, armored wagons shuttled back and forth, hauling their sobbing cargo to the prison.

Most of the city was dark, at first, as fearful Vordanai doused their lamps and candles in the hopes that the Concordat’s wrath would pass them by. Here and there, though, sparks of light remained. The Dregs, outside the University, were a ribbon of light. There, in taverns and wine sinks under a hundred colored flags, students and intellectuals of every stripe shouted and cursed, drank and hurled glasses against the walls.

They grew more heated as the news trickled in of fresh atrocities, real and imagined. A dozen women raped in Oldtown. Twenty Free Church priests mutilated for speaking blasphemy in the eyes of Elysium. Fifty men shot down in cold blood in a Bottoms shantytown. Hundreds more Concordat men on the way-no, they were Borelgai mercenaries, hired by the banks, smuggled into the country by the Last Duke to secure his position and dressed up in Concordat coats. No, they were Murnskai , Black Priests sent to cull the heretics at last.

At the other end of the city, in the Docks, another knot of lights glowed. It was faint at first, but like a coal feeling the breath of the bellows, it grew brighter by the moment. It spread, tracing the mazy paths of the streets and back alleys around the fish shops and warehouses, outlining the river and filling the squares. Torches, hundreds of torches, and candles, tapers, flaming brands, and bull’s-eye lanterns. It was a river of flame, and it began to flow, slowly but inexorably, draining toward the River Road and east along the bank to the base of the Grand Span.

Once across the river, the flaming river met with other tributaries-from Newtown and Oldtown, from the Dregs, even from the prosperous and orderly districts of Northside. The torches swirled, eddied uncertainly, and finally turned decisively west, to break like a wave outside the craggy black walls of the Vendre.

RAESINIA

By the time she got away from Ohnlei, Raesinia was nearly frantic.

Things were happening, out in the city; the streets had taken fire. But she’d been stuck in her room in the palace until nearly dawn, greeting a steady stream of high-ranking messengers sent from her father’s sickroom, all coming to assure her that no news had yet emerged. They all knew he was going to die, of course, and all of these counts and other scions of nobility were eager to get their foot in the door with the new center of power. Raesinia greeted each one less courteously than the last, until she finally couldn’t stand it any longer. Sothe had put it about that the princess had gone into hysterics and been put to bed with a sleeping draught, and the two of them had escaped.

It was hard, not staying with her father. But Indergast wouldn’t let her be in the room with him, and in any case she thought that if he knew the whole story, he would approve. The good of the country and the Crown came first, even before family. Raesinia closed her eyes in a brief, silent prayer. One more day, Father. I know you’re in pain. Please, just give me one more day. Even the thought made her feel guilty.

The first light of day was just showing in the east, but torches and lanterns were still burning up and down the Dregs. All the cafés were packed, colored flags hanging limp in the hot, dead air, and armbands, sashes, and other proclamations of allegiance seemed to adorn everyone who passed the windows of her carriage. Raesinia put the string in her pocket and fingered the blue-green-gold butterfly pinned to her shoulder. She hadn’t seen anyone in those colors so far, and she was beginning to worry.

There were broadsheets and pamphlets everywhere, their smudgy ink still wet. Every hack writer and handpress in the city seemed to have sprung into action, and the boys who usually sold papers for a penny were giving away stacks of them to anyone who wanted to read. Anything more than an hour old was tossed aside in favor of the latest news, so the carriage wheels rattled and crunched down a street paved with discarded paper. Raesinia wondered how much paper there was in the warehouses of Vordan, and what would happen when it ran out.

She caught sight of the sign of the Blue Mask, but the density of the crowd increased, slowing the carriage’s pace to a crawl. Frustrated, she kicked the door open and hopped down into a swirl of excited, arguing young men. She edged around a contested space, where a wild knot of Utopians were arguing with a Rationalist sub-sub-subcommittee, and managed to make it to the edge of the street, up against the windows of a café. From here, she could see the blue-green-gold flag of the Mask, hanging in a long row with all the others.

Sothe materialized at her side. One nice thing about Sothe, Raesinia reflected. You never had to worry about waiting for her to catch up.

“This is a madhouse,” Raesinia said. “Half the University must be out here.”

“And more besides.” Sothe sounded grim. “This isn’t safe. We should go back.”

“We created this, Sothe. We can’t go back now. Besides, we’d never get the carriage turned around.” Raesinia tried to force a note of cheer into her voice, though she had to shout to be heard over the tumult. “Come on. Let’s see if the others are still here.”