Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“There’s a council,” someone offered. “At the Gold Sovereign.”

“They’re not really in charge,” someone else said. “They just like to argue.”

“The notion of someone being in ‘charge’ is fundamentally illegitimate,” said a third, “and indeed emblematic of a failed notion of the management of human affairs-”

“Take me there,” Raesinia said. When this failed to produce an effect, she swung her arm, spattering the first rank with thickening drops of Ben’s blood. “Now!”

They took her to the council. First, though, she consented to an offer from a stout middle-aged woman who turned out to be a proprietress of a nearby boardinghouse, and went for a quick sluice-down and a change of clothes. She emerged, not exactly clean-her hair was a fright, in spite of several washes-but not looking as if she’d just stepped out of a slaughterhouse. The only clothes the woman had been able to find to fit her was a young girl’s sundress, pale green linen with foaming lace sleeves that Raesinia had torn off and thrown away. She kept the three-color butterfly pin, now filmed with crusty red.

The Gold Sovereign was an ostentatiously expensive café on the corner of the Old Road and Second Avenue, done up in a faux-baroque style complete with gilded plaster columns in the facade. Its blue-red-silver flag proclaimed it a bastion of the Monarchists, and Raesinia knew by reputation that it played host to gatherings of those University students who moved in the most elevated social circles-the children of counts and other noble relatives, with a leavening of families who had been wealthy long enough to merit a kind of quasi-nobility. Even in the current state of emergency, the place had maintained an air of reserve, and two footmen in long coats and white gloves stood beside its door, to keep out the rabble.

Faro was also standing by the door, tapping his foot and fiddling nervously with the grip of his dress sword. The crowd was thinner here, and he saw Raesinia coming up the street and hurried to meet her.

“My God,” he said. “Raes, are you all right? They told me something happened-”

“Who else is here?” Raesinia said.

“Maurisk is inside. I heard a rumor that Sarton was picked up outside his apartment, but no one seems to know for certain. I haven’t seen him. And you know they arrested Danton yesterday.”

“They snatched Cora from the Mask,” Raesinia said, her voice carefully controlled. “And Ben is dead.”

“Oh no. You’re certain?”

She wanted to scream at him, I practically took a bath in his fucking blood-of course I’m certain! With an effort, she kept her tone level. “I was with him. We went into the Mask to see if anyone was still there, and Orlanko’s people were waiting for us. He helped me get away, and got shot in the process.”

“Balls of the Beast,” Faro swore quietly.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“What the hell do we do now? They obviously know who we are. Maybe if we got out of the city-”

That seemed a little cold to Raesinia, but Faro had never been one to worry about others when his own skin was endangered. For all that, Raesinia felt sorry for him. In spite of his protests that he was just as serious about the cause as any of the others, he’d always treated the conspiracy like a game, and now things were in deadly earnest.

“Don’t fool yourself,” Raesinia said. “You can’t get far enough, fast enough that Orlanko won’t find you.”

“Then we might as well turn ourselves in now and save him the trouble,” Faro said. “Once all this dies down-”

“We can’t let it,” Raesinia said. “I know we planned on having more time, but this is it , Faro. If we can’t pull it off now, we never will.”

“But. .” He gaped at her. “We’re not ready. We’ve barely even started ! We were going to arrange the Deputies, and contact the Armsmen, and get Danton to talk about. . I mean. .”

“We’re out of time .” Raesinia took a deep breath. “The king is dying. Soon. Tonight, maybe.”

“Saints and martyrs. If that girl gets on the throne, it’s all over. Orlanko might as well put the crown on himself.”

“I think she’ll listen to us,” Raesinia said dryly. “ If we can show her that the people won’t stand for Orlanko and his Borelgai allies running things. That means today, while they’re still angry. I don’t know what the duke thinks he’s doing with all these arrests, but he’s got half the city up in arms.”

“There’s a rumor it’s the new Minister of Justice’s doing. Apparently Orlanko didn’t want Danton arrested, but this Count Mieran overruled him.”

“That has to be a lie,” Raesinia said. Father said I could trust him. “I mean, from what I’ve heard of Count Mieran, he and Orlanko hate each other. And it was definitely a Concordat team waiting for us at the Mask.”

Faro shrugged. “I’ve heard more stories tonight than I care to count. It doesn’t really matter one way or the other, though, does it? What are we actually going to do ? We haven’t got anything prepared. We don’t even have any way to get to our money without Cora. What does that leave? Send Maurisk in to argue politics with the duke?”

“We need them .” Raesinia waved a hand at the street, now outlined in the soft light of the rising sun. The crowd had only grown larger since daybreak, a new wave of early risers mixing with those who’d been unable to sleep. “This mob is in the wrong place. If we could get them over to the Vendre-”

“What? We’d storm the walls?”

“We could threaten to. Pressure them into letting Danton go.”

“That’s pretty thin, Raes.”

“Look at it from their point of view. How are they going to get rid of us?”

“Canister,” Faro said promptly. “Double load at thirty paces. There’ll be arms and legs all over the square.”

“Even Orlanko wouldn’t dare. The whole city would turn on him.”

“Are you certain enough that you’d be first in line?”

“I would.”

Easy for me to say. Though she had to admit she’d never been dismembered. She wondered what would happen. Would my arms and legs grow back, or would I have to go around and collect them?

Faro threw up his hands. “What’s the use in talking about it? You haven’t been listening to them argue in there. I don’t think you could get this lot to agree that the sun rises in the east, and that happened not ten minutes ago.” He shook his head. “I want to help Cora, too. But we’re not going to do it by climbing the walls of the Vendre.”

“Danton could get them to do it.”

“Danton could talk them into forming a human pyramid so he could drive over the walls in a cart,” Faro said. “But we haven’t got Danton. That’s the whole problem.”

“Let me talk to them.”

She brushed past him, and Faro fell in behind her. He waved to the footmen, and they held the door of the Gold Sovereign open to admit her.

“Raes,” Faro said.

“What?”

“Ben. He’s. . really dead?”

She closed her eyes. Her lips still tasted faintly of blood. “He’s dead.”

“Damn.” He repeated it under his breath, like a mantra. “Damn, damn, damn. .”

The common room of the Gold Sovereign looked as if it belonged in a castle somewhere. The walls were covered with embroidered heraldry, dominated by the Orboan eagle, interspersed with polished swords, axes, and other weapons, each of which presumably boasted a storied history. There was even a suit of armor, complete with halberd, standing sentry by the stairs in the back. A huge fireplace filled one wall, dark and cold now in the summer heat, and high-backed chairs in the old medieval style were arranged in loose circles around polished marble tables. The general impression was that one had stepped into a duke’s sitting room from four hundred years ago, and the only concessions to commerce were the discreet bar in one corner hosting assorted liquor and the coffee-making paraphernalia.