Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

Winter nodded, and shook it. Or nearly shook it. As their fingers came together, something leapt between them, like a spark of static electricity. Raesinia felt the binding come to sudden, thrashing life within her, emerging from its torpor and winding itself tight around the core of her soul. Her whole body hummed with the energy of it, ready to fight, run, or do anything in between. She’d never felt anything like it, not even remotely, and from Winter’s widening eyes she’d gotten some echo of the same sensation.

The binding couldn’t control Raesinia’s actions, but in a dim and distant way it could make its wishes known. It wanted her to back off, to run, to take a swing at Winter with the nearest available weapon, and most of all on no account did it want to touch her. If Raesinia hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the damned thing was terrified.

WINTER

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Cyte said.

“Fine,” Winter muttered. “I just. . thought of something.”

In truth she wasn’t sure what that had been. Sometimes it was easy to forget the spell she’d carried since that night in the temple; that she would carry, if Janus was to be believed, until her death. Obv-scar-iot , the Infernivore, the demon that feeds on its own kind. For the most part it was not a demanding passenger, and Winter felt only its occasional twitch and rumble deep in her being, like a trickle of smoke from a cave that betrayed the presence of a fire-breathing dragon.

As she’d reached to shake Raesinia’s hand, the Infernivore had awoken. She’d felt it reaching out, straining at the leash, pulling taut whatever arcane lashings bound it to Winter. Winter felt the sudden conviction that if she’d touched the girl and exerted her will, obv-scar-iot would have surged across the gap between their souls and devoured whatever magic hid inside Raesinia, leaving her comatose like Jen Alhundt, or worse.

But that means she has some spell to devour. Where had a teenage revolutionary gotten her hands on such a thing? According to Janus, the only remaining sorcerers in the civilized world were those in the service of the Priests of the Black, who had set themselves the task of exterminating all others. He’d mentioned that there was such a thing as a rogue talent, someone who enchanted himself without outside intervention, but the colonel had not been forthcoming with the details. So Raesinia is either one of those or an enemy agent.

Either way, Janus would have to be told. That was for later, though. Assuming we survive. A proper agent might have dropped everything to report this surprising intelligence to her master, but Winter was not about to abandon Jane and the others. If I die, Janus will just have to take his chances.

“I’m fine,” Winter repeated, aware that she’d spent too long staring into space. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Cyte met her eyes only briefly, then returned her gaze to the cobbles when she saw Winter looking back.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” Winter said. “You’re Cyte, I think? I’m Winter.”

“It’s Cytomandiclea, really,” Cyte said. “But Cyte is fine.”

“After the ancient queen?”

Cyte looked up, blinking. “You’ve heard of her?”

“I used to read a lot of history.” History, particularly ancient history, was one of the few subjects on which Mrs. Wilmore’s expurgated library had had plenty of materials. Winter and Jane had spent a lot of time there, hiding from the proctors, and she’d acquired quite a broad, if patchy and uneven, education. “Jane always loved her. She has a thing for noble last stands.”

“Really?” Cyte shook her head. “I thought I was the only one in the world who bothered with that stuff. At the University, only third-raters go into pre-Karis history.”

“You’re a third-rater, then?” Winter smiled, to show it was a joke, but Cyte’s face went dark.

“I’m a girl,” she said. “Girls are automatically third-rate, at best.”

There was a pause, and then Cyte relaxed a fraction, running a hand through her dark hair.

“Sorry,” she said. “Old wounds, you know?”

Winter nodded and pointed the way down to the riverbank. “We’d better see if we can find those boats.”

The crowd thinned out as they got farther away from the gate, but here and there small groups congregated around a fire or sent dancing shadows out from a swinging lantern. As the Vendre passed out of view behind a line of town houses, the deadly serious air of the riot dissipated somewhat, and some of the previous sense of revelry returned. Here, the doors had been smashed open and the houses ransacked, sometimes for valuables but mostly for liquor, and groups of younger dockmen were passing these finds around. Some of them were even singing, though rarely in the same key. None of the student-revolutionaries from Cyte’s group seemed to have made their way this far south.

“How old are you?” Winter asked, abruptly.

“Twenty.” Cyte looked at her curiously. “Why?”

Twenty. Winter felt as though her time in Khandar had aged her by a decade. She was only two calendar years older than Cyte, but for all that the University student felt like a girl to her, which made Winter the adult. It was an echo of what she’d felt for the men of her company, back when Captain d’Ivoire had first put her in command. Though most of them were younger than Cyte.

“I just. .” Winter shook her head. “You don’t have to do this. I know how you feel, but-”

“I doubt it,” Cyte said darkly. “And I know I don’t have to. I volunteered, same as you.”

“I’m not sure you know what you’re getting into, is all,” Winter said. “Have you ever been in a fight?”

“Once or twice.”

“A real fight, with someone trying to kill you? And you trying to kill them?”

Cyte pursed her lips, silently.

“Do you know how to use a weapon?”

“I’ve studied with the rapier,” Cyte said stiffly. “Four years now.”

“With padded tips and paper targets,” Winter said.

“I see,” Cyte grated. “And I suppose you’ve killed a dozen men?”

“Not a dozen,” Winter said, “but one or two.” Or three, or four. She tried to count but couldn’t keep track. Do green-eyed corpses count? “I’m not saying you’re-”

“I don’t care what you’re saying,” Cyte said. “I volunteered. I’m going. I can take care of myself.”

“I didn’t say you-”

“Here’s a dock,” Cyte said. She vaulted a rope and walked carefully out onto the stone quay. “Do you think these boats will do? Or do we need something bigger?”

Winter put her hands in her pockets, gave a little inward sigh, and went after her.

WINTER

Clouds were rolling in from the east. That was good and bad; it would hide them from any watchers on the parapets, but it made even finding the dock under the Vendre’s walls far from a sure thing. Fortunately, Rose’s sense of direction was apparently not hampered by either the darkness or the current. She and Winter rowed in tandem, as gently as they could manage, pushing the little boat closer and closer to where the fortress blotted out the sky. Behind them sat Cyte and Raesinia, with Vice Captain Giforte huddled uncomfortably in the rear.

The wind was a bare breath on her cheek, and the gray surface of the Vor was glassy smooth. The sheer walls of the prison rose above them like a cliff, darkness broken here and there by the faintest lines of light, reflections of firelight through the gun slits. Winter held her breath as they came close. Here even Rose’s instincts were not enough to guide them, and she was forced to let a trickle of light out of her hooded lantern. By its faint gleam, she saw piles of jumbled rocks where the wall met the river, worn smooth by centuries of wind-driven swells. And, so small that she would have missed it from any farther away, a narrow passage between them, leading to a low, vaulted passage under the wall.