The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (12 page)

“It might not be safe!” Chris protested.

“Don’t tell
me
that. Come on. We can wait outside.”

“But—”

“Chris.” This was a third voice, an older woman.
The boss?
Something about it tickled the back of Winter’s mind. “Get out of the way, would you?”

Chris opened the door, reluctantly, and stepped outside. Winter struggled to her feet, staggering a little, and waited.

Another woman came into the room and closed the door behind her. Winter’s eyes went very wide.

That is not possible.

The boss of the Leatherbacks looked a year or two older than Winter herself, tall and buxom, dressed in the trousers and leather vest that seemed to be a uniform. Unlike the others, she left her hair unbound, cut man-short like Winter’s own and clumped by sweat into a spiky mess—

—dark red hair, soft as silk, sliding through her fingers like liquid fire—

—green eyes that sparkled like emeralds in the sun—

—that lip-quirking smile, alive with mischief.

Not
possible
.

Jane took one step closer, then another, cocking her head as she examined Winter’s trembling face. Winter felt frozen in time, like a mouse staring into the golden eyes of a cat, her whole body locked rigid. Her hands were still tied behind her, and she could feel her fingers curling over the cords and digging into her palms. Something thick blocked her throat.

Not possible . . .

Jane crossed the rest of the distance between them in two quick steps, grabbed her by both shoulders, and kissed her. Winter felt as if she were frozen in a block of ice, a marble statue. Jane’s lips were soft and sweet, tasting faintly of mint, and the smell of her sweat catapulted Winter across time and space to a hedgerow behind the Nursery. Sweat, and mud, and a tentative touch—

Winter’s reaction was instinctive. It couldn’t have been anything else—her conscious mind was still too stunned to contribute, but the instincts built up over two years in hiding, terrified of this very scenario, did her thinking for her. Her hands were still bound, but by twisting her body she could get some leverage, and she pushed back against Jane’s grip and drove her shoulder into the other girl’s chin. Jane’s teeth came together with a
clack
, and she staggered backward. Winter hooked one of her ankles with her own and turned the
stumble into a fall, and Jane hit the threadbare carpet with a muffled
oof
. Winter backed up until she felt a wall against her shoulders, heart pounding as though it meant to explode.

I’m sorry.
She couldn’t get the words out. Couldn’t get anything out. Couldn’t even breathe. Her eyes filled with tears.

Jane rolled over and climbed to her knees, a trickle of blood smeared at the corner of her mouth. She fixed Winter with an unreadable look—
those green eyes
—and got silently to her feet.

Jane! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .
But her traitor throat was still locked closed. Jane turned and walked to the door, wobbling a little. It shut behind her with a slam that shook dust from the plaster, and Winter’s legs gave way underneath her. She rolled onto her side and curled up on the carpet, unable to get her arms up to stanch the flow of tears.

—

Winter had no idea how much time passed. It could have been weeks. Something in her chest felt as though it had broken loose, a steel shard that drifted through her innards, tearing great ragged holes with every breath and every heartbeat. Her face was wet with tears, and her arms ached and were cramping.

There was a knock at the door. It took her a moment to realize that there was no one in the room but her, so she must be meant to answer.

“Yes?” she tried to say. It came out as a cough. She rolled off her side to a sitting position, spit a glob of phlegm onto the carpet, and tried again. “What?”

“It’s me.” Jane’s voice.

“Oh.”

“May I come in?”

Winter swallowed hard. She tried and failed to wipe her snotty nose on the shoulder of her blouse, and blinked tears out of her eyes. “Y . . . yes.”

The door opened, slowly. Winter got a brief glimpse of Abby waiting anxiously in the corridor before Jane closed it again.

They stared at each other for a long moment. There was still a smear of blood on Jane’s cheek, and a corner of her lip was already swelling.

“I—” Winter swallowed again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I—”

“I should be the one apologizing,” Jane said. Her eyes were bloodshot, Winter noted, as if she’d also been crying. “Coming at you like a horny sailor. You had every right.”

“It’s just . . .” Winter tried to gesture, but her hand only tugged weakly at the cord behind her back. “Do you think you could untie me?”

“Oh!” Jane’s eyes went wide. “Goddamn. I didn’t even think about that. Just a minute.”

A knife appeared in her hand, so fast that Winter didn’t see where she’d gotten it from. She put her other hand on Winter’s shoulder, a tentative touch with fingers extended, and Winter obligingly turned round. The cord fell away, and Winter winced as sensation flooded back into her fingers and filled with pricking needles. Jane stepped back, formally, as though they were fencers at a duel, and made the knife disappear again.

“I had this . . . idea,” Jane said, as Winter cautiously worked her fingers and felt her shoulders pop. “A fucking fantasy, more like. One day I’d be walking along, and I’d turn a corner, and you’d just be . . . right there. And I’d grab you, and kiss you, and then everything would . . . be all right. Just a dream, right? When I opened the door, I wasn’t sure I was awake.” She ran her hand through her spiky hair and gave an exasperated sigh. “That sounds like I’m making excuses. Fuck. No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s . . . all right,” Winter said. “I didn’t hurt you very badly, did I?”

“Busted my lip pretty good, but I’ve had worse.” Jane shook her head, eyes locked on Winter’s face. Winter took her sleeve in one hand and dabbed at her eyes, suddenly self-conscious. “I am awake, right? You’re really here? This isn’t some goddamned dream?”

“Apparently not,” Winter said. “Though I think I may still be in shock.”

“Goddamn. God
damn
.” Jane shook her head. “They told me they’d brought in someone called Winter, and I thought . . . no. That’s
not
the way the world fucking works.” She swallowed, and her voice got very quiet. “I thought you were dead.”

That caught Winter off guard. “What? Why?”

“I went looking for you. You weren’t at Mrs. Wilmore’s, and nobody knew where you’d gone. There was this rumor that you’d escaped, run away, and become a soldier or a bandit chief, but I never believed it. I thought for sure that you’d died somehow, and that withered bitch was covering it up. Did you really get away?”

Winter nodded. “I thought . . .”

“How? What happened?” Jane caught Winter’s expression, and the eager tone in her voice fell away. “What’s wrong?”

Three years of nightmares.
Winter bit her lip. “I never thought I’d see you again. I didn’t think you’d . . . want to find me.”

“What?”
Jane took a half step forward, then checked herself. Her cheeks
flushed, and her hands gripped the edges of her trousers and twisted the fabric. “Winter. Why would you say that?”

“It . . . it was . . .”

Winter’s throat was blocked again. Her eyes filled with tears, and she wiped at them angrily with her sleeve. Jane swore under her breath, and after a moment Winter felt her standing close, inches away. She hovered, halfway to gathering Winter to her chest.

There was a long pause. Winter stepped forward, pressing her face against Jane’s shoulder, and Jane’s arms surrounded her with a tangible feeling of tension released. After a moment, Winter felt Jane’s cheek resting on the top of her head.

“I like the short hair,” Jane whispered, after a brief eternity. She rubbed her cheek back and forth. “It tickles.”

Winter smiled shakily, face pressed into the leather of Jane’s vest.
I have to say it.
She wanted to stay here, in the circle of Jane’s arms, and never leave.
But if I don’t say it, none of this is
real
.

“It was my fault,” Winter said, barely audible. “I was supposed to get you out. That night, when Ganhide . . . visited you. I was . . . I couldn’t do it.” That was the night that had haunted her dreams for years. The night she’d been supposed to escape with Jane, only to find that the brutish Ganhide had gotten to her first.

“You’ve been worried about
that
?” Jane squeezed Winter a little tighter. “Balls of the Beast. Winter, I was
crazy
. You know that, right? I mean, I told you to
kill
him if you ran into him.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“No shit you couldn’t do it. You were what, seventeen? And if you
had
done it we’d probably both be hanged by now.” Jane rubbed Winter’s shoulder. “Come on. I was a teenager, too, and scared out of my wits. That ‘plan’ would have gotten us killed.”

“I got all the way to the door,” Winter said. The lump in her throat was melting. “I had the knife. Ganhide was
right there
. I almost . . .”

“Karis Almighty. Really?” Jane rocked her, gently, back and forth. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

“But . . .” Winter rubbed her face against Jane’s vest one more time, then looked up. “I left you for him. I just
left
you there. How can that . . . how can you say that was all right? He took you away and—”

“Married me?”

Winter nodded, lower lip trembling.

“That was the plan all along, remember? One of my better plans, from when I was a little more in my right mind. I told you it would be easier to get away from some idiot husband than from Mrs. Wilmore and her crew of dried-up old cunts. I was out of Ganhide’s place in less than a month.”

She smiled, and that almost made Winter start crying all over again. It was the same Jane smile, crooked at one side, alive with intelligence and mischief. Winter let out a breath, and something else escaped with it, something she’d been holding in the pit of her stomach for three years. Her body felt light, as if she’d just shed a sixty-pound pack, and her limbs were as wobbly as after a long day’s march. She shifted, to unpin her arms from her sides, and nearly fell over. Jane linked her hands at the small of Winter’s back to keep her upright, and Winter let her own hands rest on Jane’s shoulders.

“You really don’t . . . hate me? You’re not angry?”
Can you be haunted by someone who isn’t dead?

“Winter, listen to me.” Jane matched her stare, eyes locked on each other. “I should apologize to
you
. I never should have asked you to do that. Hell, I wouldn’t have done it myself. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Winter said. “I think we’ve both apologized enough.”

Jane’s smile returned. They held perfectly still for a long moment, still staring. Winter felt as though they were breathing in unison, as though animated by a single bellows. Jane licked her lips nervously.

“You have no idea how much I want to kiss you,” she said, in a whisper.

“It’s all right.”

“You’re sure? What I did before—I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t—”

“It’s all right.”

Winter smiled, and when Jane hesitated a moment longer, she pulled herself up and kissed her instead. She still tasted of mint, and very slightly of blood from where she’d cut her lip. Winter’s hand slid across Jane’s back, up the nape of her neck, and twisted itself in her hair.

“Your hair looks nice short, too,” Winter said, when they finally came up for air. Their faces were only inches apart, noses almost touching. “But I’m going to miss wrapping it around my fingers.”

“You know what’s strange? I miss brushing it. It was always such a chore,
but it made me feel calm, sometimes.” She shook her head. “It was that fucker Ganhide who made me cut it, you know. He said it only got in the way. Maybe I ought to grow it out again.”

“You really just ran away from him?”

“More or less.” There was an odd look in Jane’s eyes, as though she was seeing something she preferred not to remember. She blinked rapidly, and it was gone. “But what happened to
you
? I couldn’t find anything but rumors. It was like you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

Winter closed her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. “That,” she said, “is a
long
story.”

MARCUS

Vice Captain Giforte came into Marcus’ office and dropped a stack of pamphlets on his desk, beside the piles of reports and cleaning rotas.

“This is becoming a real problem,” he said.

“Good morning, Vice Captain,” Marcus said mildly.

He sipped from his cup of coffee and made a face. For five years in Khandar, he’d put up with drinking coffee because there wasn’t a decent cup of tea to be had in Ashe-Katarion for love or money. The supply of dried leaves Janus had brought along had been almost as much a boost to Marcus’ morale as the two thousand extra troops. But now that he was back in Vordan, where the best tea in the world could be had on any street corner for a couple of pennies, he found himself missing the thick, dark coffee of Khandar. A Khandarai would have confused what the Vordanai called coffee with river water. Marcus set the cup down, regretfully.

“Good morning, Captain,” Giforte said.

“You’re fully recovered?”

“Yes, sir. It was only bruises.”

“And you’ve made arrangements for . . .” Marcus realized, with a guilty pang, that he’d already forgotten the names of the Armsman who had died. He cleared his throat. “You’ve made arrangements?”

“Yes, sir. By the grace of His Majesty, families of men who fall in the line of duty are well provided for.”

“Good.” That was a new wrinkle. None of the men Marcus had commanded in the Colonials had had any family to speak of. “And Eisen?”

“He should recover fully, sir. He expressed a desire to be back on duty as soon as possible. I believe he wanted to thank you for saving his life.”

“Let him take as much time as he needs.” Marcus scratched his cheek. “Now. What are these?”