The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (16 page)

“In a way,” Jane said. She scratched the back of her head and reddened slightly. “More like a revolution, actually.”

“A revolution? But how did you keep from getting caught?”

“I didn’t.” Jane swallowed the rest of her drink with sudden decision. “When
I first got there, I was hiding in the hedges and so forth, but the more I watched the more I thought . . . why bother? I mean, you were there. It’s not as though Mrs. Wilmore had a fucking battalion of guards on the premises.”

“But . . .”

“I know.” Jane shook her head. “When I first went back, I was so frightened. I spent days trying to figure out how to get in without the proctors seeing me. It all went to shit when I tried it, of course. I practically walked into one after five minutes. I was ready to run for it, and she was shouting, and suddenly I thought—she’s nothing! Just a little girl with a sash! She probably wasn’t fifteen, a little stick of a thing. I just pushed her out of the way and kept going.”

“Didn’t she fetch the mistresses?”

“Of course. But by that time I had a little while to talk to the girls in the dorms. So on one side there were five old women with willow switches, and on the other a couple of hundred angry girls.” Jane grinned. “They took one look at us and locked themselves in their offices.”

Winter couldn’t help laughing. It was true, when you thought about it that way. Mrs. Wilmore’s moral authority had always been so overpowering she’d seemed like a deity from antiquity, living on a mountaintop somewhere and dispensing favor or thunderbolts according to her whims. But, of course, she was human like anyone else.
Just a bitter old woman.
Even at Winter’s distant remove, it was a tremendously liberating thought.

“And you just walked out,” Winter said.

Jane nodded. “We just walked out. I told the girls I would take care of anyone who wanted to come with me. Some of them stayed behind, some of them just bolted and disappeared, and the rest . . .” She waved a hand at the building below them.

This must have been after Bobby escaped.
The corporal had been closemouthed about her time in Mrs. Wilmore’s institution, but she surely would have mentioned
this
.

“You had all this ready for them?” Winter said.

“What? Oh no. God, it was fucking awful for a while. We spent a week sleeping in the swamps past the Bottoms, staying up half the night with torches and cudgels to keep the thieves and rapers away. I had no idea what I was doing. All this came later.”

Winter laughed again. That was Jane all over—do something bold, brilliant, beautiful, and have absolutely no idea how to handle the consequences.
Dive in first and worry about how deep the water is later.
She drained her own glass,
looking around for the bottle, and it was a moment before she realized Jane had gone silent.

“Jane?”

She was staring at her hands, rolling the empty glass from one to the other. A single crimson droplet spiraled round and round just short of the rim, never quite escaping.

“Sorry,” Winter said. “I shouldn’t have laughed. It must have been terrible.”

“What? Oh.” Jane shook her head. “It’s all right. It is pretty fucking funny, when you think about it. I was just—running, from one thing to the next, trying to stay one step ahead of the Armsmen and the thieves and just plain starvation. With a couple of hundred people suddenly looking to me to keep them safe and figure out where their next meal was coming from.”

Winter winced in sympathy. Her thoughts went back to her first mission with the Seventh Company, d’Vries’ idiot scout, and the sudden crashing realization that everything had descended on
her
shoulders. Screams and powder smoke, the crash of muskets and thrashing, terrified horses . . .

“I nearly left them,” Jane said, very quietly. “In the swamp. I was standing guard, and I thought, I could just
leave
. Then none of this would be my problem anymore.”

“You didn’t, though.”

“I wanted to. I wanted to, so badly. Or else to just wander out into the bog, get lost, step in some sinkhole, and just let it swallow me. It didn’t seem
worth
it.”

There was a long silence. Jane turned the glass round and round. Tentatively—it had been a
long
time since she’d touched another human being of her own free will—Winter extended a hand and let it rest on Jane’s shoulder.

“You did it, though. You won.” Winter patted her in a way she hoped was reassuring. “You beat Ganhide, and Mrs. Wilmore, and all the rest. I mean, look at this place!”

“You don’t understand,” Jane said. “I didn’t—I thought—”

She swallowed hard. Winter, uncertain, said nothing.

“I wasn’t looking to start a revolution at Mrs. Wilmore’s,” Jane said. “Not really. I was looking for
you
.”

Oh.
Winter blinked.

“Every day, after I ran away from Ganhide, I thought about you stuck in that place and . . . what they would do to you, eventually. I
had
to go back. But it took so long—I needed to hide, and then . . .”

“I was gone by the time you got there,” Winter said.

Her throat clenched under a sudden, crushing wave of
guilt
. All this time, she’d felt like a traitor for her failure to set Jane free on that last night. She’d cursed herself as a coward.
But what happened afterward is
worse
. I ran away to Khandar like all the demons of all the hells were after me. I never even
considered
going back to look for Jane, helping her get away from Ganhide, or all the other girls I left behind. I just ran until I found somewhere I thought no one would ever find me.

“It’s good that you ran away,” Jane said, still staring at her glass and oblivious of Winter’s moral crisis. “I wouldn’t have wished you another minute in that fucking place. When I got back there, though, and they told me that you were gone, and
no one
had any idea to where . . .” Her grip tightened on the glass, as though she meant to shatter it against her palm.

“I’m sorry,” Winter said, in a whisper.

“No. I told you, I don’t blame you for anything. You did what you had to do.”

“I’m sorry.” It felt like all Winter could do was repeat it. “Jane, I’m—”

“Would you stop apologizing?”

“But—”

Jane turned, grabbed both of Winter’s shoulders, and jerked her close. Winter shut her eyes and cringed, in automatic expectation of a blow, but received a kiss instead.

It went on for a long time. She could taste the wine, smell the sweat on Jane’s skin, feel a tickle where a tear had run down Jane’s cheek and ended up hanging from the tip of Winter’s nose. Jane’s hands slid down to the small of her back, drawing them together, and Winter could sense the warmth of her through layers of leather and linen.

Jane finally pulled away, breathing hard, but she kept her arms wrapped tight. Winter’s whole body tingled, and her head swam as though she’d had considerably more than one glass of wine.

“It’s all right,” Jane said. “You’re here. That’s all that matters now.”

Winter, staring into those hypnotic green eyes, nodded.

Eventually the moment ended, as all moments do. A muscle in Winter’s leg, weary from the long day of walking around the city, chose that moment to register its complaint with a vicious cramp, and Winter stumbled and nearly fell. Jane took her weight and swung her toward the mattress, where Winter sat with a thump. Jane flopped down beside her, stretching her arms above her head and arching her back like a cat.

“God,” she said. “Just talking about it makes me feel better, you know?”

“I should . . .” Winter shook her head, still dizzy. The softness of the mattress was suddenly unbelievably attractive. “Sleep, I think. It’s been a long day. I don’t suppose you could spare a bunk for me?”

Jane looked at her sidewise. “I can have them make up a room. There’s plenty of space.”

“Thank you.”

“Or,” Jane said, “you could stay here.”

“Here?” There was a long, stupid moment while Winter cast about the room to see if there was another bedroll tucked away somewhere. Then, belatedly, she understood. “Oh. Here, with you.”

Jane smiled again. “Here, as you say, with me.”

Some part of Winter wanted to. Her body fairly ached where Jane had been pressed tight against her, in ways that had nothing to do with hours of walking around town. But she couldn’t stop the panicky feeling that welled up when she thought about it, the ground-in need to
flee
from even the possibility of contact.

“I . . . can’t,” she said, after a moment.

Jane nodded levelly. Winter searched her face.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Winter said. “I do. I mean, with you. Just not . . . now. It’s hard. I’m sor—”

“I told you to stop apologizing,” Jane said. “It’s all right, really.”

“I’m just . . . tired.” Winter took a deep breath and got a grip on herself. “Just give me some time to get used to things.”

“Of course.” Jane stood up and extended a hand. “Come on. We’ll find you a room.”

Winter took her hand, tentatively, and allowed herself to be led out into the hall, wobbling like a drunk on her way home from the tavern.

She barely remembered the room they’d put her in, or undressing. It might have been the best night’s sleep she’d ever had, dark and silent and blessedly free of dreams.

MARCUS

The heavy Armsmen carriage rumbled down Fourth Avenue, toward the intersection with Saint Dromin Street. Marcus twitched aside the curtain to look at the houses going by and wondered what the hell he was doing.

Here, at least, he didn’t require an armed escort. This was the far north of Northside; too far from Bridge Street and the Island to be truly fashionable, but well insulated from the teeming crowds of Southside and the poverty of Oldtown. It was a neighborhood of big, low houses with well-landscaped grounds, with flower gardens and small groves of birch and willow. The buildings were set back from the street, behind screening trees and gravel drives flanked by stables and carriage-houses. The people who lived here were moderately well-to-do merchants, as Marcus’ father had been, or the upper crust of well-payed artisans and professionals.

Marcus was accompanied only by his driver and Staff Eisen, fresh from the cutters’ care. The young man looked only a little the worse for their attentions, with his left arm neatly trussed in a linen sling and swathed in bandages. Looking at him reminded Marcus of Adrecht, who’d lost an arm to a similar wound at Weltae-en-Tselika. He suppressed a shudder.

“You’re certain you want to take up your duties so soon, Eisen?” Marcus said. “If it’s a matter of money, I can make sure—”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, I am, and it’s not about money. I don’t like sitting around, sir.” He touched his bound arm. “The cutter told me it wouldn’t be a problem. No bones broken. Not much of a wound at all, really. I oughtn’t to have passed out.”

“Just shock,” Marcus said. “It happens, if you’ve never been shot before. Not your fault. And you still didn’t have to come all the way out here with me.”

“Vice Captain Giforte assigned me to look after you, sir,” Eisen said, as though that explained everything.

Marcus wondered if the Staff’s enthusiasm was genuine, or if he was simply buttering up the new captain. He’d never been good at telling the difference. Another new problem—nobody had bothered to cozy up to him in Khandar. He shook his head and looked out the window again.

“Did you grow up in the city, Eisen?”

“Yes, sir,” the Staff said. “Not so far from here, as a matter of fact.”

“Really?” Marcus glanced at him. A position in the Armsmen, especially starting from the bottom, was an odd choice of career for the son of a wealthy family.

Eisen cleared his throat. “Servant’s boy, sir. My mother was a housemaid; my dad was a coachman. I used to help out with the dogs until I got sick of it and signed up to wear the green.”

“I see.” Marcus paused. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three, sir.”

That would have made him four at the time of the fire. Just about Ellie’s age.
The carriage lurched as it turned the corner onto Saint Dromin Street, revealing—

History.
The street unrolled in front of him like a memory, as though it had been days instead of years. The landmarks of his childhood flashed past the windows—the beech he’d fallen out of when he was ten and nearly cracked his head open, the raspberry bushes where he’d found a mother cat watching her kittens, the stretch of cobbled street where he’d first learned to ride—

He rapped on the wall, and the carriage slowed to a halt. Before he was quite aware of what he was doing, he’d hopped down, with Eisen following awkwardly behind him.

It even
smelled
the same. Marcus took a deep breath, inhaling the mixed scents of cut grass from the lawn and fresh dung from the horses in the street. Carriages rattled past, giving the Armsmen vehicle a wide berth, and a few pedestrians looked at him curiously. Marcus ignored them.

“A long time since you’ve been home, sir?” Eisen said, at his shoulder.

“Nineteen years,” Marcus said. “Give or take.”

Eisen gave a low whistle. “Think you can still find your way around?”

“Of course.” Marcus pointed. “Our place was just up this way, past those beeches.”

There were three of the trees instead of four, and they were a bit larger, but there was no mistaking them. They’d belonged to the Wainwrights, whose children had played with Marcus nearly every day in the precious few hours between lessons and dinner. Veronica Wainwright had been the first girl he’d ever kissed, in the darkness behind her father’s woodshed, the day before he left for the College at sixteen. There had been tears in her eyes, and he’d promised he’d come back and marry her when he finished his training and became an officer.

He hadn’t thought about that in years. Hadn’t thought about
any
of it, in truth. After the fire, he’d walled off that whole section of his memories, shut them away and thrown away the key, hoping to keep out the pain. Coming back here had opened it all up again, and he was surprised to find that it didn’t hurt as badly as he remembered.