Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

Ellie’s room was a firetrap, thick with bed hangings, carpet, and velvet toys. Smoke already formed a thick blanket against the ceiling, tendrils creeping down the walls. Ellie, coughing, ran straight to the corner, where an enormous wardrobe painted in jolly greens and blues was standing.

“No!” Marcus said. “Ellie, don’t-”

But she wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear him-he hadn’t been there, after all. She opened the wardrobe, climbed in, and pulled the door closed behind her, hiding from the flames and the choking, deadly smoke. Marcus crossed the room-it seemed to take an age, carpet pulling at his feet like taffy-and fumbled with the doorknob. When he pulled, something pulled back, so he had to lean away and use his full weight to prize the wardrobe open.

When it gave way, all at once, he fell backward. There were flames all around him now, the stuffed bears and rabbits burning like tiny torches, runners of fire streaking across the carpet. Marcus scrambled forward on hands and knees, pulling the wardrobe doors open wide-

There was nothing inside but ash. Fine, dark ash, slipping through his fingers like smoke and smudging gray against his skin.

For a long moment, Marcus stared at it, listening to the savage roar of the flames and the creaks and crunches of collapsing timbers. Finally, he got to his feet, and walked back to the stairs. The run that had taken an age passed in an instant, and a few steps had him back in the hall, wrapped in fire, looking out the front door into a square of darkness beyond.

There was a man standing there. Like the others, his face was a blank, anonymous shadow, but he wore a long, heavy coat, black leather flapping around him like dark wings.

Concordat.

Marcus opened his eyes. He sat in total darkness, wedged into a corner, stone flagstones beneath him and stone walls behind. All he could see was the faint vertical line of a gun slit, shining with faint, occluded starlight.

He felt as though someone had punched him in the gut, driving all the breath from his body. It was how he remembered feeling on that day, eighteen years ago, when they’d handed him the news. No survivors.

He hadn’t been there, of course. A dream was just a dream. But that figure in the long black coat-

Orlanko. Something seemed to have come free in his mind during the night. It had to be Orlanko. He had no evidence, nothing he could take to a magistrate, but the pattern he’d seen in the old Armsmen files didn’t make sense any other way. A powerful count could have leaned on the vice captain of Armsmen, or a criminal connection, or even a foreign spy, but Marcus hadn’t found any evidence that Giforte’s mysterious friend had ever wanted him to do anything. Just, every so often, to lose something in the shuffle, to stonewall an investigation until everyone forgot about it. Whenever the Concordat wanted something to disappear.

As far as he knew, his family had never meddled in politics, never done anything that might incur the Last Duke’s wrath. But the rumors that swirled in Orlanko’s wake said that it might not matter. Men had disappeared, it was said, for being opposed in business ventures to the duke’s Borelgai backers, for owning too much of the king’s debt, or simply for being witness to something better left unseen.

Something like that. . Marcus felt a dull rage burning at the pit of his stomach. Stupid, really. Would it be better if there was a good reason? But the image of the Last Duke casually snuffing out lives on the shallowest pretext made him want to clench his hands into fists and batter a way through the wall.

The cold, impervious wall. Rage vanished, replaced by a sudden rush of despair.

His shoulders ached where they were jammed against the stone, and his neck had developed a crick. It was easiest not to move at all, but there was a pressure in his bladder that would not be put off, and eventually he was forced to lever himself to his feet. Ross hadn’t dared take him down to the dungeons-that would involve going past too many Armsmen-so he’d improvised a cell from an empty room in the tower. It was an empty wedge-shaped stone space with a single door and a gun slit looking out over the river, lacking even the most basic prison amenities, like a hole to piss in.

He sighed. Is it me, I wonder? Am I so incompetent a commander that my men have to keep locking me up? He remembered sitting in a darkened tent, watched by Adrecht’s cronies. At least I’m not tied up this time.

Marcus selected the corner farthest from where he’d been sitting and relieved himself, then made his way back and tried to ignore the smell. His eyes were adapting, and he could see faint lights through the gun slit. Putting his eye against it, he found that he had a narrow view of a slice of the river and, in the distance, the North Bank. Elaborate spires rose against the starlit sky: the strip of noble estates known as the Fairy Castles, each building more fanciful and less practical than the last. There were only a few lights showing at the windows tonight, and Marcus wondered how many nobles had already shown the better part of valor and retired to the country.

He was just contemplating whether he could piss out the gun slit when something blocked his view. He had a brief glimpse of a long, flowing black cloth, and then a sliver of face was looking in at him, heavily shadowed. Marcus took an involuntary step back, then stopped, feeling foolish.

“Captain d’Ivoire? Is that you?” It was a woman’s voice.

Marcus didn’t see any point in denying it. “It is. Are you. .” He trailed off, shaking his head. Whoever it was was somehow suspended at least fifty feet over the jagged rocks at the base of the fortress wall, clinging to a sheer stone surface. He couldn’t think of anything to say to someone in that situation.

“I wanted a word with you, Captain, but Captain Ross seems determined to prevent it.”

“Well.” Marcus gestured around the empty room. “I have a busy schedule, but I’ll try to fit you in. Who are you?”

“You can call me Rose, if you like.”

“Rose, then. And what did you want with me?”

“I heard,” Rose said, “that Captain Ross has locked you up because you planned to surrender the fortress. Is that true?”

Marcus shrugged. “I wanted to come to terms.”

“Why?”

“I swore an oath to protect the king and people of Vordan,” Marcus said. “I didn’t like the idea of firing grapeshot into a crowd of those people on behalf of the Last Duke.”

“It would be fair to say, then, that you’re not an ally of Orlanko’s?”

Marcus spread his hands. “I’m locked in here, aren’t I?”

Rose seemed to consider this. Marcus blinked, and surreptitiously pinched his arm to make certain he wasn’t still dreaming.

“Ross hasn’t told your men that he’s had you arrested,” she said. “Do you think they’d break you out, if they knew?”

“I doubt it,” Marcus said. “Ross has more men, and better weapons.”

“Would they surrender, if you gave the order?”

“Probably. It would be better if it came from Vice Captain Giforte.” Marcus hesitated. “Do you know-”

“Ross shot someone out in the courtyard. I don’t know who, but they’re awfully angry about it. They’re bringing up the ram now.”

Marcus closed his eyes. “If they break down the door, it’ll be a massacre.”

“I know.” Rose paused. “If there was a way to stop it, and it meant surrendering the fortress to the mob, would you be willing to help?”

“Yes,” Marcus said, without hesitation. “But I’m not sure what I can do from in here.”

“We’ll break you out, and you’ll order your men to lay down their arms.”