The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (52 page)

Winter bit her lip. “Janus.”

“Janus,” Marcus said.

“Janus, as in Count Mieran?” Jane said. “The Minister of Justice?”

“He beat thirty thousand Khandarai with one regiment of infantry,” Marcus said. “If you’re looking for someone to put in charge, he’s your man.”

“I don’t doubt that he’s a genius,” Jane said, in a tone that implied she doubted it very much. “But can we
trust
him? He’s a noble, after all, and obviously he was close to the old king.”

Winter and Marcus exchanged a look. Winter could tell the captain was thinking along the same lines she was, about the temple in the desert and the Thousand Names.

Can we trust him?

“I can’t speak for the long run,” Winter said, slowly. “But I know for certain that he hates Orlanko and the Borels.”

Marcus nodded. “His head is on the block, too, if Orlanko returns.”

“But I don’t think the deputies would agree,” Winter went on. “Janus is too popular with the mob.”

“Even after he ordered Danton’s arrest?” Marcus asked.

“In the streets they’re blaming that on the Last Duke,” Jane said. “Janus is still ‘the conqueror of Khandar.’ That counts for a lot right now.”

“All right, he’s a hero. So much the better, I would think,” Marcus said.

“It means the deputies won’t trust him,” Jane said.

Winter nodded. “They were terrified of handing over leadership, even to someone like Peddoc, for fear that he would turn the Guard against them. As
far as they’re concerned, someone with Janus’ reputation might try to set himself up as king.”

“We need him,” Marcus said. “Even if you could convince the deputies to put me in command, I wouldn’t take it. Better to surrender than to fight and give Orlanko an excuse for brutality. If we had Janus . . .” He shrugged. “I would fight, if he thought it could be done.”

“Maybe if we had him address the deputies?” Winter said. “He’s not Danton, but he can speak when he needs to.” She was thinking of the mutiny in the desert, and by his wince Marcus was, too. “But—”

“You’re going at it backward,” Jane said.

Winter and Marcus both turned to her.

“You’re thinking of the deputies like a kind of collective king,” she said. “But it’s different. They have only as much power as the people are willing to give them. We don’t have to
argue
them into it. We just have to convince them.”

—

The commotion had calmed down by the time Winter and Jane left the Vendre. Those Guards who were going to join Peddoc had gone, leaving mostly Reds with a scattering of unconvinced Greens. A few of these had regained enough alertness to give odd looks to the two young women strolling out of the prison, and Winter smiled at them serenely.

As they passed out through the main gate, Jane said suddenly, “Do you really think this will work?”

Winter blinked. “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“Not that part. Once Janus is in command, do you really think he can stop Orlanko?”

“If he can’t, no one can.”

Jane shook her head. “That’s not good enough. Captain d’Ivoire was right. We
could
surrender.”

“Assuming Peddoc loses . . .”

Jane snorted.

“If we surrender, Orlanko will certainly round up any traitors he can catch. That means you and me.”

“We could get away.” Jane grinned wickedly. “You escaped from Mrs. Wilmore. How much harder could it be to get away from the Last Duke?”

“And leave everyone behind? The Leatherbacks, your girls?” Winter hesitated only slightly. “Abby?”

“If we don’t surrender, they’ll fight, and maybe die. And if we lose, you know what Orlanko would do to the city.”

It was all too easy to picture. Blue-uniformed soldiers in the streets, and black-coats smashing down doors, dragging people into the night . . .

“I don’t want to pull everyone into that,” Jane said, “just to save
our
skins. Not if you don’t think we can win.”

Winter thought about this for a long moment. “I’ll give Janus this much. If
he
thinks we can win, then it’s possible. And if he doesn’t think so, he’d say it. I think the best we can do is put him in charge, one way or another.”

“All right.” Jane stretched and cracked her knuckles over her head, the old wicked smile creeping across her face. “Let’s see what we can do.”

RAESINIA

T
he setting sun painted a pale crimson line through the gun slit in Raesinia’s chamber on the top floor of the Vendre. It was a spacious room, and some effort had been made in the way of hangings and furniture to make it into a fit habitation for a queen. No amount of carpets or tapestries could conceal the thickness of the stone walls, though, or the fact that the door was locked from the outside and watched by the Patriot Guard day and night. The gun slit was not large enough to squeeze through, even for a prisoner like Raesinia who was willing to chance the four-story fall.

It was from just above here, after all, that she’d fallen with Faro.

She wondered if she could have avoided that, somehow. Was there some point on the twisting path where she could have taken a different turn, so that Ben wouldn’t have been killed, Faro wouldn’t have turned traitor? So that it wouldn’t have come to
this
, waiting in a cell barely a week after her father’s death.
Some history the reign of Queen Raesinia will make.

Still. Better the Deputies-General than Orlanko. Better the mob than the Church and its demons.
It was a small comfort, but it was all she had. If that
wasn’t
true, if the people weren’t better off, then everything she’d done was both monumentally selfish and ultimately pointless, given how it had ended up. She wasn’t sure she could live with that.

Not that I have a choice in the matter.

There was a knock at the door. Raesinia sat up in bed. Servants came and went all the time, but they didn’t knock. She’d had no other visitors.

“Yes?”

“I wonder if you have a moment to see me, Your Majesty,” came a voice from outside. It took Raesinia a moment to recognize it as Maurisk’s. He sounded hoarse.

“Of course,” she said. “Come in.”

She stood up and crossed to the table as he entered. There was a crystal pitcher of water there, and a bowl of fruit.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer much in the way of hospitality,” she said. “But help yourself.”

Maurisk didn’t smile. His thin face didn’t seem made for smiles, and since she’d last seen him it had grown even less cheerful. His eyes were sunken and dark, almost bruised, and his cheekbones stood out sharply through his thin, pale flesh.

He was dressed more respectably than in their Blue Mask days, complete with the black sash of a deputy, trimmed with a band of cloth-of-gold. One hand tugged at the sash constantly, adjusting it this way and that. His lips were tight and cold.

He said nothing while the guard shut the door behind him, only stared hard at Raesinia’s face. She felt herself flush under the scrutiny, and put on her haughtiest expression.

“Is something wrong?” she said.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” he said flatly. “Raesinia
Smith
. It was you all along. I got a look at you on the bridge, and I thought . . . But I wasn’t sure.”

Raesinia put a hand on the table to steady herself, and said nothing.

“I can see how you thought no one would notice,” Maurisk said. He started to pace, as he had done a thousand times in the back room of the Mask. “After all, who actually meets the princess? Only courtiers at Ohnlei. So you sneak out in the middle of the night for—what, a bit of fun?”

“Fun?” Raesinia’s cheeks colored. “You think I did this for
fun
?”

“Why, then?”

“For all the reasons I told you! Because if
someone
didn’t stop him, Duke Orlanko was going to take the throne and end up selling the country to the Borels. Because my father was dying and there was nobody at Ohnlei I could trust.”
Except Sothe,
she added silently, and felt her throat thicken.
Sothe, where are you?

“But you couldn’t trust us with who you really were?” He shook his head. “No, of course not. You never really trusted us. If you’d let us in on your plans, things might have gone differently.”

“I did the best I could.”

Maurisk laughed mirthlessly. “The world’s most popular epitaph.”

Raesinia glared at him, her fingers tightening on the tabletop. Maurisk reached the wall, turned around, and started back toward her.

“What happened, that night on the wall?” He stopped just in front of her and brushed the hair back from her temple. “I saw Faro shoot you. I
know
I did. And yet—”

“I had a . . . double.” Raesinia had had plenty of time to think about her story. “Lauren. A girl who looked like me. We used her at court, sometimes, when I needed to get away. That last night, when Rose planned to unmask Faro, she told me I should stay behind and Lauren should go in my place. I didn’t want to, but . . .”

“I guessed it would be something like that,” Maurisk said. “So it’s just another body to lay at your door. Along with Ben, and Faro, and poor, stupid Danton.”

“We did what we needed to do.
You
know that.” Raesinia waved a hand at the door and the Patriot Guard beyond. “All this was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe that is why it vexes me,” Maurisk said. “You . . . you
used
us. But, in the end, it came out right.”

“Perhaps God has a sense of irony.”

“Perhaps.” Maurisk put his hand in his pocket, and she heard the crinkle of paper. “Or perhaps not. Orlanko is on his way back, you see, with seven thousand Royal Army regulars. A group of our men went off to try to stop them, and we’ve just heard the results of the battle.” He shook his head. “If you can call it a battle. The deputies are terrified.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I have no idea.” He sighed. “That’s why I came to see you. Tomorrow morning the deputies will meet, perhaps for the last time. They may want you to come out and take charge of the city yourself. Or they may decide we ought to hand you over to Orlanko and save our skins. Either way, I thought this might be our last chance to . . . talk.”

“What do you want from me?” Raesinia said. “An apology?”

“You know, I have no idea. I thought I would come here, confront you, force you to break down and admit the truth. After that . . .” He shrugged.

“Are you going to tell everyone, now that you’ve got it?”

“I suppose I can’t, can I? What good would it do now?” Maurisk stalked back and forth. “You ought to
pay
for treating people like they were . . . like they were
game pieces
, but the truth is we still need
you
for our game.”

“Will you tell me something?”

He turned, eyes burning. “What?”

“Are the others all right? I know Danton died at the cathedral. What about Sarton, and Cora?”

Maurisk snorted. “You expect me to believe that you care?”

“Please,” Raesinia said, quietly.

He paused, then shook his head. “They’re all right. Sarton is working with the Guard on some secret project. Cora sits in the Deputies and doesn’t say much.” He scowled. “She loved you like you were her own sister, you know. If I told her what you’d done . . .”

Raesinia privately thought that Cora would be happy she was alive, rather than angry at being fooled. But for Maurisk, finding out that Raesinia had been putting up a false front all this time was only one more example of the base treachery of the people in power. Out of all the cabal, he had burned the hottest with the ideological fire of rebellion.

“Thank you,” she said.

He gave a curt nod. “As you say. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

MARCUS

Marcus guessed their plan was working when his guards delivered a freshly laundered uniform, soap, and a razor. He spent an hour making himself as presentable as he could with a basin and a hand mirror, stripping off his old, sweaty things with considerable relief. The new uniform—that of a captain in the army, not the green of the Armsmen—didn’t quite fit, but it was close, and when Marcus looked in the mirror and saw a neatly trimmed beard and white stripes on his shoulders, he felt closer to being himself than he had in a long time.

Not long after, a polite young Patriot Guardsman came to fetch him. Accompanied by a squad of a half dozen men, they left the Vendre and made their way to the cathedral. But not directly, Marcus noticed. That would have taken them through Farus’ Triumph and Cathedral Square. Instead they circled around via Water Street and approached the cathedral from the rear, slipping in through an entrance to the long-disused kitchens. Marcus thought he could hear the roar of a mob, somewhere nearby, and he smiled.

The Deputies-General reminded him of his visit with the Prince of Khandar at Fort Valor—a desperate attempt to recreate the trappings of something
important, but assembled in such haste that it was little more than a lick of whitewash over rotten wood. They clustered on half-built bleachers, carrying on a dozen arguments at once, while overhead crude blue-and-silver banners covered up the Sworn Church emblems carved into the walls. The altar was screened behind a curtain.

No one seemed to take any notice of him until the man at the rostrum called for silence. The guards on either side of him beat their muskets against the floor until everyone quieted down, but that only made the shouts of the crowd audible. They were muffled by the walls, but he could make out a rhythmic chant, repeated by thousands of voices.

“Captain d’Ivoire,” said the president, a hollow-faced young man Marcus remembered vaguely from the fall of the Vendre. “I’m glad you could join us, and I apologize for the circumstances, and for your own confinement. I hope you understand.”

“Of course.” Marcus inclined his head. “I am always prepared to serve Vordan.”

He scanned the rows of anxious faces on the bleachers until he found Ihernglass. He was still in his feminine disguise—honestly, Marcus thought it wasn’t terribly convincing, but he hadn’t had the heart to say so—wearing a dark coat and the black sash of a deputy. When he caught Marcus’ eye, he nodded, very slightly. Marcus worked hard to keep a straight face.

“It is good to see such loyalty in a military man,” the president said. “I regret to say that many of your colleagues have chosen to betray this assembly, proclaimed by the queen herself and chosen by the people. You may have heard that several regiments of the Royal Army are on their way to the city as we speak.”

“I have heard that,” Marcus admitted.

“One of our own, the valiant Deputy Peddoc, took it on his own initiative to try to stop them. This assembly did not give its approval”—here the president glared at a cluster of deputies on the left—“and his actions were therefore illegal, but no one can question his courage, or that of those who marched with him. Unfortunately, it appears that they have been . . .” He searched for a word.

“Crushed?” Marcus said. The president winced but nodded. Marcus shrugged. “I’m not surprised. As a
military
man, I could have told you that taking an untrained militia into the field against heavy cavalry was foolish in the extreme. I imagine they broke at the first charge of the cuirassiers.”

“So it would seem,” the president said. “Captain, I hope you can see our dilemma. It is our charge to protect the people of this country, this city, against
the foreigners who would usurp the throne and impose their taxes and religion on us. Those most capable of doing this are obviously the officers of Her Majesty’s Royal Army. And yet—”

“You don’t trust us,” Marcus said.

“I would rather say—”

“Say what you mean. I don’t fault you, because you’re right. When it comes down to it, I suspect most officers would obey an order from the Minister of War over one from a self-appointed ‘assembly’ holding the queen hostage.”

Someone stood up on the right side of the bleachers. “Her Majesty is
not
a hostage!”

“Is she free to leave, then?” Marcus said.

“She will be,” the deputy said, “once our new constitution is written and the status of the deputies is confirmed. But ‘hostage’ implies that we might bring her harm, and I for one would resign from this assembly if that were even suggested!”

“That’s how we can get rid of you, then!” said a voice from the left, followed by chuckles and shouts of disapproval.

“The status of the queen,” the president cut in, “has yet to be determined. But I remind you that she
sanctioned
the deputies, voluntarily ceding power to the representatives of the people—”

“You can explain that to the colonels of those regiments, then,” Marcus said. “I’m sure the Last Duke won’t mind.”

More laughter. The Guards slammed their muskets for quiet.

“And what about you, Captain d’Ivoire?” said the president, once the tumult had calmed. “Where do your loyalties lie?”

“With the queen and the nation, of course,” Marcus said. “And the men under my command.”

“That’s a nicely elliptical response.”

“Look,” Marcus said. “We all know that’s not the question you brought me here to answer. Why don’t you come out and ask it?”

The president snorted. “As you wish. The suggestion has been put to this assembly that there is an officer of exceptional ability in the city, and that we ought to place our defense in his hands.”

“And?”

“You served with him, I understand. In your opinion, is he all he is said to be?”

“That, and more,” Marcus said. “I haven’t read everything that’s been
written on the Khandarai campaign, but what I’ve seen in the papers if anything understates the case. Anyone who was there could tell you.”

“People who were there are hard to come by,” the president said dryly. “So you think he would be up to the task?”

“I would be willing to try it, under him,” Marcus said. “And that’s more than I can say for anyone else.”

“But the more important question, Captain, is can we
trust
him?” The president waved toward the main doors. “He is . . . a hero. Beloved of the people. Will he accept the authority of the deputies? Or would he be another Orlanko, and seize power for himself?”

“I believe he is loyal to his queen and his country.”

“That’s not good enough!” said a deputy from the right.

“If he serves only the queen,” said one from the left, “she might have the power to overturn everything we’ve accomplished—”