Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

All this flashed past her mind’s eye in the instant between when the captain started down the stairs and when he met her gaze. Their eyes met, just for a moment, and she thought she saw something change in Marcus’ expression. It was gone an instant later, though, and he was moving on, pushing past Raes and Danton toward the door to the cells.

Energy flowed out of Winter like water out of a barrel with the bottom knocked off. She wiped her saber roughly on a fold of Concordat uniform and returned it to its sheath, legs wobbling like a drunk’s. She found Cyte still standing by the man she’d killed. She’d managed to keep her rapier in hand, this time, but she was staring at the bloodied weapon as though she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“Are you all right?” Winter said. This time, it took only a moment for Cyte’s eyes to clear. It gets easier every time, doesn’t it?

“I. . I think so.” She looked down at herself, astonished to be intact. “Did we win?”

“Not yet.”

“What happens now?”

Winter struggled to remember the plan Raes had outlined. It had been a bit vague on that point, but. .

“I think,” she said, “that’s up to Danton.”

The anteroom on the prison level was crowded to capacity and beyond. The guards’ table had been dragged against the outer door as a stage and impromptu barricade, with Winter, Raesinia, Danton, and the others standing in the doorway and Giforte and the rest of the Armsmen making a thin line on the other side. Beyond them were the prisoners. Captain d’Ivoire had ordered the cells thrown open, and the liberated abductees filled the room and backed up out into the corridors. The angriest among them, mostly from the male contingent but including a number of women as well, had pushed to the front of the crowd and were engaged in a shouting match with the captain, who stood on the table trying to argue with them.

“Look,” he said, his voice already going hoarse with the effort of trying to make himself heard over the babble. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me. But my men are going to be with you. Some of them are fighting upstairs right now to give us this time to argue! I am going to be with you. And if we don’t disarm those Concordat soldiers, hundreds of your fellow citizens are going to be gunned down!”

“We should start by stringing you up!” someone shouted.

“Bloody Armsmen!”

“If we fight Orlanko’s men, they’ll just kill us instead!”

“I heard it’s a bunch of dockmen at the gates,” said someone with a Northside accent. “Are we supposed to sacrifice ourselves for a gang of lazy stevedores?”

Winter badly wanted to punch this person. From the sound of it the sentiment was shared by many in the crowd, and the ensuing scuffle threatened to engulf the entire room in chaos. Marcus shouted for order. The air was thick and close with the scent of too many unwashed bodies.

At Winter’s side, Raesinia was speaking quietly to Danton. The orator sat cross-legged with the same stupid smile on his face, nodding absently as the girl read to him from what looked like prepared notes. He reminded Winter of nothing so much as a little boy not paying attention to a lecture from a parent.

She stepped away from the table, into the cooler air of the corridor, where Cyte stood with her back to the stone. Her eyes were closed, and her face was flushed under the smears of black makeup.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“The captain is trying to argue them into taking the Concordat positions from behind. I don’t think it’s going as well as they’d hoped.”

“What about Danton?”

“Raes is still coaching him.” Winter shook her head. “He’s not what I expected.”

There was a long pause. Marcus’ pleading was drowned out by an angry roar from the crowd.

“This wasn’t. . what I expected,” Cyte said.

“No?”

“More blood, for one thing.” She gave a little shudder. “I always pictured. .”

“I know,” Winter said. “Like in an opera. You swing the sword, someone falls over. Maybe a little stage blood on your hands.” She looked down. They’d moved the Concordat corpses out of the way, but the flagstones were still stained red and brown. “No matter how much you imagine, it’s never enough.”

“I thought it would be harder, to kill somebody.”

“I know.”

“You tried to talk me out of coming.” Cyte opened her eyes. “Thank you.”

“It didn’t work.”

Cyte gave a weary shrug. “The effort has to be worth something.”

“All right!” said Raesinia, behind them. “You’ve got all that?”

“I’ve got it, Princess,” Danton said. “Afterward-”

“Afterward you can have whatever you like, Danton,” Raesinia said, with a glance at Winter and Cyte. “But those people are waiting to hear your story.”

“Okay.”

Danton got to his feet. Raesinia smoothed the front of his ruined shirt and tugged on his cuffs for a moment, then gave up.

And then Danton-changed.

It was astonishing to watch. He straightened up, altered his stance, ran a hand casually through his hair. A moment earlier he had given every appearance of amiable dullness-on the verge of idiocy, Winter would have said. Now his eyes were full of fire, and he moved with an obvious sense of purpose. Captain d’Ivoire stepped aside and the orator mounted the table and raised his hands for silence. To Winter’s amazement, he got it, or as close to silence as a crowd of that size could manage. The shouts and arguments snuffed out like candles in the wind as he cast his gaze about the room.

“You might want to move down the stairs a bit,” Raesinia said to Winter. “There are going to be a lot of people coming this way in a minute.”

Winter and Cyte stepped away from the doorway, and Raesinia came to stand with them. Rose, so still and quiet Winter had forgotten she was there, came with her.

“You really think he can convince them?” Winter said in a low voice.

“Call it a hunch,” Raesinia said.

“Brothers!” Danton began. “And here, in this pit, we are truly brothers. I say to you. .”

–

The crowd of roaring, cheering men surged up the stairway like water bursting from a broken dam. They passed the tiny group of Armsmen fighting a rearguard action and hit the Concordat troops opposing them with the force of a tidal wave. The soldiers who had loaded muskets fired them, and here and there in the mass a man went down, but these were pinpricks on the flanks of the great beast that was the mob. The black-coats were bowled over, disarmed, grabbed by many hands, and borne in triumph down to the cells, while the rest of the crowd pushed on toward the front gates.

With the death of Captain Ross and the roar of the mob outside, the Concordat soldiers manning the barricade were in a fragile state of mind. The firefight at the stairs had put them on edge, and the swelling chorus of shouts coming up the corridors only heightened their anxiety. Some of them turned around to see what was coming, and a few had the presence of mind to fire. No one thought to try to wheel the great mortar around, with its massive load of canister, until it was far too late. The enraged crowd was on them.

Squads of women sat on the soldiers to keep them down until they could be safely detained, and the older children scurried about picking up the fallen muskets. A gang of men set to work heaving the huge iron bar away from the door. It opened to reveal the astonished besiegers clustered around their ram, huddled together with weapons raised in expectation of a trick or sortie.

A few minutes later, the crowd inside had dissolved into the crowd outside. Cheers spread from the gate like ripples on the surface of a pond radiating out from a dropped stone, until the entire island seemed to ring with hoarse shouts of joy and triumph, peppered by the pop, pop of muskets fired jubilantly into the air.