Django Wexler - The Shadow Throne

“As safe as I can make us,” Janus said. “Miss Sothe has looked over my arrangements.”

Sothe nodded. “Unless Orlanko has gotten a lot smarter since I left, I think we should be secure.”

“Good.” Raesinia paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “Then how about the two of you tell me what the hell is going on ?” She glared at Sothe. “You never mentioned a word about knowing Count Mieran.”

She was surprised how much that stung. Sothe was the one person Raesinia had placed her full trust in, unreservedly, and finding out that she’d been keeping secrets hurt badly. I should have expected it, though. Sothe came from a world of secrets.

“I assure you,” Janus said, “our acquaintance is recent. After I heard about your. . fall, I contacted her to offer my assistance.”

“Then you knew-” Raesinia blinked. Everything. “How?”

“It would be best,” Janus said, “if I began at the beginning. Please, have a seat.”

He gestured. They were in the cottage hall, and beyond was an entertaining room with a sofa and chairs. Raesinia followed the count’s gesture and sat down, carefully, on the sofa, the black dress folding and crinkling around her. Janus took the chair opposite, and Sothe remained standing.

“I would offer some refreshment, after what has been a very long night,” he said. “But in Your Majesty’s case, I gather that there would not be much point, and in any event I have banished the servants so we may speak in secrecy even from my own people.”

Raesinia gave a curt nod. “Thank you. Now-”

“What the hell is going on?” Janus leaned back and smiled, just for a moment. “A fair question. For the sake of brevity, I will leave aside my own history and simply state that I am a scholar of the arcane and the occult. The dark arts, as some would have it. Demonology. Magic.”

“That’s a dangerous line of work,” Raesinia said, determined not to let any surprise show on her face.

“Indeed. There are places where it flourishes, however. In the eastern League cities, chiefly, where the grip of Elysium is at its weakest. It was there that I went to further my studies, and it was there, three years ago, that your father’s agents found me.”

“My father’s agents? Do you mean the Concordat?”

“Emphatically not. While the duke was, of course, a part of His Majesty’s government, in this matter the king and the Minister of Information had. . differing views. The man who contacted me had been well paid, through a very indirect route, to seek out someone with knowledge of the arcane arts and bring them before the king. Enormous precautions were taken to ensure that the Last Duke remained in ignorance.”

“Why? What would my father want with a magician?” As far as Raesinia knew, her father had never believed in magic, like any sensible person of the modern age. If not for her own unique experiences, Raesinia doubted she would have believed in it, either.

“His Majesty wished to consult me on a very delicate matter.” Janus coughed. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but he wanted to talk about you.”

“About me ? That doesn’t make-” Raesinia shook her head, then froze. Her voice came out as a whisper. “He knew ?”

“He did.”

Raesinia’s chest felt tight, as though the black dress had suddenly shrunk several sizes. He knew.

She had always been afraid of what would happen, should her father find out the truth of what had happened to her. She’d even constructed scenes in her mind, usually in the dead of night when her inability to sleep grated the worst. She pictured him having her dragged away in chains, to be imprisoned in some dark oubliette. Even executed, if he could figure out how. Burned at the stake. After all, his daughter is dead. I’m something else. A demon.

She swallowed hard. “He wanted you to. . get rid of me?”

Janus shook his head. “He wanted a. . cure, for lack of a better word. A way to reverse what Orlanko had done to you. In such a way that you remained alive afterward, of course.”

Raesinia felt tears sting her eyes. She let her head fall forward into her hands, elbows on her knees.

He knew. She didn’t want to sob in front of Janus. That was easy enough; she just stopped breathing. He knew all along, and he wanted to help me. Oh God. Father. I thought. . how could I have thought. .

He tried to tell me. “Count Mieran is more than he seems. You’ll need all the allies you can get.” He couldn’t come out and say it, not with Concordat spies everywhere, but now the meaning was clear. Oh, Father. .

“Your Majesty,” Janus said, after a long silence. “If you like, perhaps we could-”

Raesinia squeezed her eyes shut, banishing the tears, and sucked in a long breath. The binding tingled across her, repairing the damage from her brief asphyxiation. She raised her head. “My apologies. Please continue.”

Janus regarded her carefully for a moment, then nodded. “As you say. For some time, His Majesty and I carried on a correspondence, and I regret to say I was not able to be of much assistance. The Priests of the Black have been astonishingly effective at removing all traces of magic wherever their writ runs, and what remains is a pitiful remnant of what was once known. If the knowledge to do what His Majesty wanted existed, I told him, it was locked in the dungeons under Elysium.” He steepled his fingers. “Then a bit of unexpected news opened up a new possibility.”

Raesinia was starting to put the pieces together. “The rebellion in Khandar.”

“Indeed. There have always been legends of the Demon King, who fled across the sea with his treasure trove, but nothing concrete. When I discovered that the Black Priests had tried several times to actually retrieve something from Khandar, though, I started to dig deeper. I became convinced that the treasure actually existed. The names-the bindings-of all the creatures captured by the Demon King. The Thousand Names of legend.”

“And my father sent you there to find it.”

“His Majesty took some convincing, as did his advisers,” Janus said, with another flash of a smile. “The duke, for one, was deeply suspicious. But ultimately, yes.”

“And?”

“The Names are real. We found them.” Janus tossed the statement off, as though it were of no great importance. “By the time we did, however, we received word that the situation here had become critical. So I hurried back as soon as I could, and His Majesty named me to the empty seat on the Cabinet to assist you as best I could. I am honored to say that I believe he had come to trust me.”

And will the Names work? Raesinia wanted to scream. Janus caught her expression and gave a little shrug.

“I do not know, yet, whether we’ll be able to do anything for your condition. The Names must be deciphered and studied to see if something useful to you is among their powers, and I only had the chance to make a cursory inspection before I left Khandar. Once our current crisis is resolved, I will devote myself to it. But for the moment. .”

Raesinia nodded. Somewhere deep in her chest, though, something had taken hold. A tiny mote of hope , that there might, somehow, be a way out. Back to a normal life.

“All right,” Raesinia said. “I follow you so far. How did you end up talking to Sothe?”

“There’s not much to tell,” Janus said. “After your father gave me Justice, I began looking into the disturbances in the city. I got descriptions of all the potential leaders, and once I saw yours it wasn’t hard to put the facts together.”

There had to be more to it than that -the all-knowing Concordat hadn’t been able to find her, after all! — but Raesinia didn’t care about the details. “And Sothe?”