The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (39 page)

“Then I leave you all up here, bar the door, and get off the Island before anybody comes up here to let you out.” He tugged again, and when she didn’t move his voice turned almost plaintive. “Come
on
, Raes. Nobody needs to get killed.”

“Ben,” Raesinia said. “Ben got killed. Because
you
told Orlanko where to find us.”

“I didn’t know they were going to kill him! Everyone would have been fine if you’d just come along quietly.”

“Raes . . . ,” Maurisk said. “He’s right. We’ll catch up with this
bastard
later. It’s not worth getting your head blown off.”

“Please, Raes!” Cora’s voice was high and scared.

“Answer me this, Faro,” Raesinia said, implacably. “How much did it cost to buy you? A new pair of boots? One of those fancy swords you like so much?”

“Shut
up
. Move, damn it!” Faro tried to pull her after him, but Raesinia let her legs sag and ended up leaning against the parapet, facing outward, with Faro pressed up close behind her. Her knees pressed against the stone, and she felt a tingle in the soles of her feet as her balance shifted dangerously.

“Raes!”
Cora shrieked.

Raesinia put her free hand on the parapet. “How much, Faro?”

“What the
fuck
is wrong with you?” Faro took a step back, spun Raesinia around so they were face-to-face, then pushed her back against the wall, his hand still tight on her wrist. The pistol was pressed tight against her forehead. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

More or less.
Raesinia smiled. “How much?”

“They had my
family
,” Faro hissed through clenched teeth. He pressed harder, levering her out dangerously over the edge. “My parents. My sisters. He told me he’d send them to me in pieces if I didn’t go along. What in the name of the Savior was I supposed to do?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, blinking away tears. It was as good an opportunity as Raesinia thought she was likely to get.

She brought her free hand up and wrapped it around his wrist, feeling their shared center of balance rock against the parapet. At the same time, her knee came up, fast and hard, between his legs. The blow to his groin would curl him up, and she’d be able to force the pistol away from her head before he could fire.

That was the theory, anyway. Something felt wrong as soon as she started to move. Her knee got tangled against something hard between his thighs—
the damned
scabbard
, it got twisted when he turned around—

The wooden sheath absorbed the force of her blow with a splintering crack. She got her hand on his wrist, but the pistol was jammed hard against her forehead, and she didn’t have the leverage to shift it. She saw his eyes open and blink again, as slowly as if in a dream, and his finger jerked on the trigger. The hammer fell, sparking into the pan, and then—

Raesinia had never been shot in the head before. She felt a violent tug, as though someone had grabbed hold of her hair and yanked backward hard. In the same instant, her whole body went numb and all her limbs tried to pull inward at once, like a child instinctively clapping a hand over a skinned knee. With her knee between Faro’s legs, caught on his scabbard, and one of his wrists in her hand, this had the effect of pulling him practically on top of her.

Something scraped against the small of her back. There was a high, thin scream—
Cora
—and Raesinia saw a dizzy, spinning view of the darkening sky. Something dropped out of the pit of her stomach, and then she was falling.

It was a long way to the rocky riverfront below. She had time to let go of Faro and push him away. Raesinia hoped, in the muzzy-headed way of one whose brain had largely been converted into a cloud of flying gore and splinters, that she’d gotten enough momentum to get away from the wall and hit the water, but as she spun the ground came into view and it became clear she wasn’t going to make it. The base of the wall was a jumble of rocks, rounded off by the river at the waterline but still jagged above it.

Oh dear. This is going to hurt.

—

It turned out Raesinia
could
lose consciousness. All it took was driving a pistol ball through her brain, then smashing it to a red paste in a hundred-foot fall onto unforgiving stone.

She’d always wanted to have one of those out-of-body experiences sometimes described by seamen who’d been rescued from drowning, hovering above
her corporeal form while a celestial chorus beckoned. It would have answered certain key questions raised by her postmortal state. But either those poor sailors had been telling stories or there was no choir of angels waiting for Raesinia. No army of demons, either, though. Just . . . nothing, a blank in her memory from the moment she’d hit the rocks. It was a little like waking suddenly from a deep sleep, but with none of the refreshed feeling from having rested.

The binding was still working furiously, pulling wounds closed and regrowing flesh to replace what was lost. It went about this process with a blind, idiot determination that reminded Raesinia of a swarm of ants, doggedly building and rebuilding their anthill every time some curious child kicked it over. There was no
intention
there, no thought, just the mindless response of an animal.

It couldn’t understand, for example, when circumstances were unfavorable. As best Raesinia could tell, she was stuck on the edge of the skirt of rocks at the bottom of the Vendre’s walls, with her head and shoulder underwater and her legs sticking up in a most unladylike fashion. Her lungs were full of muddy river water, and her heart was limp and still in her chest. But the binding had straightened the fractured bones of her arms, and she could move, after a fashion. When she brought her hands up to explore her face, she found a coin-sized patch on her forehead of smooth, freshly knitted bone, surrounded by a slowly closing knot of regenerated skin.

The most urgent problem was what she was stuck
on
. Her eyes weren’t in working order yet, but she explored it with her hands. A splintery column of rock, freshly exposed by some underwater cracking, had driven itself some distance into her abdomen and caught there, leaving her hanging like a speared fish. As the gentle currents of the river moved her, she could feel it grate against her bottom ribs. The binding worked feverishly to repair the damaged flesh around the intrusion but could do nothing to push her off it.

Well. I suppose it’s up to me, then.
Raesinia flailed her legs for a few moments until she determined to her satisfaction that nothing could be accomplished with them. Her hands could reach the offending spike, but it was slippery and offered little purchase, and the angle was bad. Scrabbling and pushing at it earned her only torn skin on her palms, which the binding went to work repairing with—she liked to imagine—an exasperated sigh.

All right. Now what?
She couldn’t just hang here
forever
. There were people who went about picking up corpses, weren’t there? Eventually someone would notice the upside-down body under the walls of the Vendre and send a boat out.
They would discover the Princess Royal of Vordan, her arse in the air, impaled on a spiky rock. She wondered if whoever did it would die of shock on the spot.

A moot point, though.
Sothe will get here first.

She hung motionless awhile longer. Her eyes were beginning to clear, but there wasn’t much to see, just the dark waters of the Vor. Her hair settled in long spiderweb patterns around her head, twitching this way and that in the weak currents. She felt a tug at her leg through a rent in her trousers. A scavenger, she assumed, and kicked her feet to indicate that she wasn’t dead yet.
Or . . . well, whatever.

Something splashed into the water nearby. Raesinia turned her head, but all she could see was a dark shadow in the murk, making its way along the rocks. A moment later it was beside her, a pair of hands groping gently along her body until they found the protruding chunk of stone. Whoever it was took hold of her, above and below the intrusion, and lifted. Dirty water flooded into the wound, and thick, dark blood flowed out. Raesinia pictured the binding sighing again, this time with relief, as it went to work knitting up the torn skein of her intestines.

Whoever it was pushed her away from the rocks, and someone else took hold of her hands and pulled. Between the two of them they managed to roll Raesinia over the low gunwale of a boat, to lie dripping and motionless on the bottom. She felt the boat rock as the figure who’d been in the water pulled itself back in.

This left Raesinia in something of a quandary. She could pretend to be dead for only so long. It might be Sothe, but it might not, and she dared not open her eyes to check. She opted to lie still, feeling her insides rebuilding themselves, and hoped that whoever they were, they would say something.

There was a long silence, in fact, broken by the splash of oars as the boat cleared off from the rocky walls of the Vendre and moved out into the slow, calm waters of the Vor. Eventually, though, the rowing sounds stopped, and strong hands took Raesinia by the shoulders and rolled her onto her back, letting her look up at her rescuers.

“I must say, Your Highness,” said Janus bet Vhalnich, “you’ve looked better.”

Raesinia sat up, her clothes squishing damply, and looked around. They were in a tiny rowboat, really too small for three. In the back was Sothe, an oar in each hand, resolutely refusing to meet Raesinia’s eyes. In the front, Janus was stripped to a white shirt and trousers, sopping wet.

She opened her mouth to say something, but all that emerged was a thin stream of river water. Raesinia held up a finger to indicate he should wait, and Janus nodded gravely. She leaned over the edge of the boat and vomited up a mix of water and blood that went on for far longer than she’d expected. Then, feeling quite a bit lighter, she turned back to Janus and took an experimental breath. The binding tingled across her lungs, repairing the damage done by hours of immersion. Her heart started with a jerk, then settled reluctantly into its familiar rhythm, like an ancient machine squealing along a rusty track.

“I have,” she said, and paused to cough a bit more water over the side. “I have been better. Considerably better.”

“I trust that you’ll recover?”

“I expect so.” Raesinia felt a little giddy, either as a result of her rescue or because the binding hadn’t created enough blood to replace all she’d lost. She looked down at her torn, bedraggled shirt, and sighed. “I think these clothes have about had it, though.”

A smile flickered across Janus’ face. He looked up at Sothe. “Back to the North Shore docks, then.”

“Wait,” Raesinia said, as the oars started to cut the water again. “I have to go back. The others—”

“Think you’re dead,” Janus interrupted. “Miss Sothe has been good enough to inform me of what happened. Your reappearance now might provoke suspicion, to say the least.”

“She has?” Raesinia caught Sothe’s eye and got a look that said,
I’ll explain later.
She shook her head. “I could . . . think of something. Some miracle. It doesn’t matter. I need to—”

“You
do not
,” Janus said. “Matters have not proceeded
quite
according to plan, but the result seems satisfactory. Your presence here is no longer necessary.”

Who the hell are you to tell me that?
Raesinia’s brain felt as though it still wasn’t functioning properly.
He knows about me, obviously. How? How much has Sothe told him?

“Besides,” Janus continued, “you are urgently required at Ohnlei. The next act of the drama has already begun.”

There was a long silence. Raesinia swallowed, tasting blood and river water. There was only one thing
that
could mean.

“My father?”

“I’m very sorry to tell you that the king is dead. Doctor-Professor Indergast
did his utmost, but His Majesty’s constitution was simply too frail to recover from the surgery, as he had in the past. He passed away in the small hours of the morning.”

“I see,” Raesinia said. It was news she’d been expecting on a daily basis for months, but it still felt like a steel-gauntleted punch to her gut.
He’s dead. He’s really . . .
“Is this widely known?”

“Not yet. The duke has been containing the information as best he can. But it will not stay quiet for long.”

Raesinia nodded, trying to think. It felt as if her mind were in a fog.

Janus bowed his head, as low as he could. “As a noble of Vordan, as I once swore my loyalty to your father, I now offer it to you. I, Janus bet Vhalnich, the eighth Count Mieran, do swear to serve and protect Queen Raesinia of Vordan, though it means my life.”

It was a standard oath, one she’d heard her father accept hundreds of times. Here and now, though, there was a strange solemnity to it, and Raesinia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze or her soaked clothing.
Though it means my life.
It had already meant Ben’s, and Faro’s, and God knew how many others.
And more, before we’re done.

“You’re right.” Raesinia shook her head. She saw Maurisk’s scowl, Sarton lost in his books, Cora sobbing, Ben gasping out his unrequited love with his last breath. “Back to Ohnlei.”
And you are going to have a great deal of explaining to do.

Thunder rolled overhead. A moment later, the rain began.

ORLANKO

T
he grand bishop of the Sworn Church of Vordan was a big, soft man, made bigger by the fantastical crimson robes that hung in complicated folds around him, secured by jeweled clasps and tricks of embroidery. He looked like a flower, Duke Orlanko thought, an enormous, poisonous flower of the sort that grew in southern jungles and smelled of rotten meat. He spoke with a trace of a Murnskai accent, mostly audible in the way he attacked his hard
K
’s as if he meant to spit.

“The cathedral is full to bursting with my frightened flock,” he said. “They have fled the rioting, and they bring most terrible, terrible stories. Sworn Churches pulled down, gold plate looted, icons used for firewood. Sworn Priests beaten to death and their corpses abused and hung from lampposts. Gently born women taken in the street like dogs, by gangs of a dozen men or more . . .”

The grand bishop’s face was as red as his outfit, and he looked as though he were about to faint. The Borelgai ambassador, Ihannes Pulwer-Monsangton, sweating in his heavy furs, started up in his place. “I, too, have heard these stories. And now we hear that the Vendre itself has fallen, with the captain of Armsmen inside? The archdemagogue Danton and his followers have been freed, and bands of his men roam the city at will.”

Orlanko looked around the Cabinet table. Count Torahn looked as though he were in shock, and Rackhil Grieg was staring at Ihannes like a starving man at a side of beef. The chair for State was unoccupied, as always, and in place of
the Minister of Justice sat a pudgy man in the green uniform of an Armsman lieutenant, looking very uncomfortable.

It was this last that worried the duke.
Where the hell is Vhalnich?
It was too much to hope that the man had gotten caught up in the rioting and been himself killed, though the captain who’d been taken prisoner at the Vendre had been one of his creatures.
No, he’s out there causing trouble.
And Orlanko would need to make his move soon; rumors of the king’s death were already spreading, in spite of all his precautions. There were too many servants in the palace for even the Concordat to keep anything quiet for long.

“Before he, uh, left,” the lieutenant said, “the captain instructed me to make every effort to secure the cathedral and the eastern half of the Island. We also have men in place on all the North Shore bridges.”

“My analysts put the number of rioters at more than twenty
thousand
,” Orlanko said, not without a hint of contempt. “If they were to storm the bridges, do you really expect your men to stop them?”

“My men will do their best, Your Grace,” the lieutenant said. “Until we receive further instructions from the captain or my lord Mieran.”

“No offense to our boys in green,” Torahn said, “but the Armsmen are clearly inadequate for this crisis. We must summon the regiments.”

Those words hung in the air for a long moment. Orlanko looked around the room—at his fellow Cabinet members, at the two foreigners, and at the small queue of courtiers behind them, waiting to present their grievances. Nearly everyone, he guessed, was thinking the same thing.

It had been nearly a hundred years since royal troops had entered the city, following a tradition upheld through the reign of four kings. The last time, when Farus IV had marched his triumphant legions across the Old Ford, had been the beginning of a civil war and the Great Purge. Every one of the carefully tended family trees in the room had branches that had been pruned during those tumultuous years, great-uncles and cousins who had died on one side or the other, or were simply caught in between. And there were more ancient families that had been extinguished by the vengeful king for their insurrection, including four of the five great ducal lines dating back before the time of Karis.

All but Orlanko’s, who’d chosen the right side. One by one, every face in the room turned to him. The Last Duke cleared his throat.

“Do you think,” he said carefully, “troops could arrive in time?”

Torahn nodded emphatically. “I smelled something in the wind when all this started, so I sent to the camp at Midvale to be ready to march on three
hours’ notice. That’s a good forty miles from here, but the post can get there in a day’s ride. There’s a good road all the way. If I put a messenger on a horse within the hour, we can have eight hundred cuirassiers here by tomorrow evening, and six thousand infantry a day or two after that. Three at most, if the damned rain keeps up.”

Ihannes caught Orlanko’s gaze. “Eight hundred heavy horses would go a long way toward assuring His Supremely Honorable Majesty that the Vordanai Crown intends to do what is necessary to safeguard Borelgai interests.”

There were mutterings of assent from the courtiers.

“It would be a momentous step,” Orlanko said. “But if the sacrifice of our brave captain of Armsmen has accomplished nothing else, it has alerted us to the gravity of the situation. And yet . . .” He paused, as though consulting a mental document. “Only the king or a regent can order the Royal Army into action, I seem to recall?”

“If the king could speak,” Torahn said, “he would tell us not to let the particulars of the law bind us at such a crucial moment.”

“On the contrary,” Orlanko said. “It is at such moments the niceties must be precisely observed, lest any hint of illegality taint our actions. Remember, my lord, we will be judged by history.”

Another silence. Orlanko scrupulously did not look at Rackhil Grieg, who had been briefed at length in the Cobweb for just this moment. He would heal, eventually, but the duke trusted he would not forget again where his interest lay. And, indeed, he spoke up right on cue.

“The answer seems simple enough, my lords,” Grieg said. “The king is incapacitated, and the princess has taken to her rooms. The Cabinet must propose a regent for the duration of the emergency. I nominate His Grace the duke.”

Torahn shot Grieg a sharp look, then turned slowly to Orlanko. “A regency?”

“It honestly had not occurred to me,” Orlanko drawled. “But if the Cabinet requires it, I shall of course be pleased to serve in that capacity, until the king recovers from his illness, or—”

“The king is dead,” came a voice from the back of the room, among the crowd of courtiers.

Amid the sudden explosion of whispering, a wedge of green uniforms became visible, pushing their way through the crowd. Orlanko got to his feet, though with his small stature this did not assist him much.

“What’s going on?” he said, loud enough to be heard over the growing babble. “Who’s that?”

“Make way,” bawled an Armsmen sergeant. “Make way for the Minister of Justice!”

Vhalnich.
Orlanko forced a smile onto his face and sat back down.
Damn him. I should have been warned.
Concordat spies were in place all over Ohnlei, with instructions to report his movements, but apparently the man had evaded them somehow. His own Mierantai guard had established a cordon around his residence, and the backcountry soldiers had proven to be both competent and irritatingly unbribable.

Inside the flying wedge of Armsmen, Vhalnich walked beside another man, stoop-shouldered and fragile-looking. Orlanko’s breath caught as he recognized Doctor-Professor Indergast.
How the hell did he get out of the king’s bedchamber?

“My lord Mieran,” Orlanko said aloud. “I’m glad you could join us.”

“I’m sorry to be late,” Vhalnich said. “As you can imagine, the Ministry is in a bit of an uproar.”

“And you have brought us the good doctor-professor,” Orlanko said. “Who, I’m sure—”

“What you said about the king,” Torahn snapped, interrupting. “Is it true?”

Indergast bowed his head, and the room went quiet as he spoke, everyone straining to hear the quavering words.

“It is. My lords, Your Grace, I regret to say that my skills have failed His Majesty in his last trial. I was able to remove the diseased mass, but the loss of blood and other strains overcame him. He is with the Savior now, until the end of time.”

“I see,” Orlanko said. He matched gazes with Vhalnich, whose wide gray eyes reflected the duke’s spectacle-obscured stare. “The nation will mourn.”

“It does not change the point at hand,” said Torahn.

“Which is?” Vhalnich said, settling into his chair after helping the doctor-professor to a stool.

“We must have troops to put down the riots,” the Minister of War said. “For that, we require a regent. The Minister of Finance has proposed His Grace the duke. Do you have any objection?”

“I am confused,” Vhalnich said. “The king is dead, but we now have a queen, who is of age to rule in her own right. What need for a regent?”

“The princess,” Orlanko said, “that is, the princess who was, and the queen who is, is clearly overcome by grief and the terrors of the moment. She has confined herself to her room these past three days. In time, perhaps, she will grow into her responsibilities, but for the moment—”

Vhalnich cut him off with a wave. The queue of courtiers was parting, of their own accord this time, like the bow wave preceding a ship. Leather creaked and silk rustled as they bowed.

Damn, damn,
damn
Vhalnich! He planned this from the start.
Orlanko, no stranger to political theater, recognized the hand of an expert. None of it should have been possible, of course.
If the princess left her rooms, I should have been alerted immediately.
But he’d clearly underestimated Vhalnich’s influence.

The duke forced a grave expression onto his face and sat calmly as a quartet of Noreldrai Grays trooped into the room and took up stations beside the door. For now, he had to ride out this farce.

Raesinia seemed even smaller and frailer than usual, swaddled in a tissue of gray silk and black lace, with fringes of pearls that clacked rhythmically as she walked. She was doing her best to look the queen, but her young appearance betrayed her.

He suppressed a smile.
Go ahead and put on your play. Let’s not forget who has the upper hand here.
The people of Vordan would not long tolerate a queen who had made congress with a demon, and it would not be hard to arrange a public demonstration, should it become necessary.

“Orlanko,” she said, with a nod. “Ministers. Honored guests. It is painful that we must interrupt this time of mourning with affairs of state, but the crisis will brook no delay.”

“Indeed, Your Majesty.” Orlanko inclined his head. “We were just discussing what measures to take. Count Torahn had offered the army’s assistance in suppressing the rebellion.”

“No.” The single word rang out clearly, and a silence fell across the whispering courtiers.

Count Torahn cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, I believe there is no other way to restore order.”

“Vordan City has gone four generations without feeling the tread of a soldier’s boot,” Raesinia said curtly. “I would not have the first act of my reign be to break that honored compact.”

“Besides which,” Vhalnich murmured, “the Royal Army is, by and large,
recruited from the same unfortunates who have taken to the streets. Who’s to say they would not simply join the mob?”

Torahn shot to his feet. “The loyalty of my soldiers is not in question! And as an officer yourself, you should be ashamed to make such an assertion—”

“Please.” Raesinia raised a hand. “What Count Mieran meant was only this. These are not foreigners in the streets, or heretics, or even rebels. They are good citizens of Vordan, with legitimate grievances. Any man might hesitate to stand against them, without any implications to his loyalty to the Crown.”

“They are a weak-willed mob,” Grieg said, “in the sway of a demagogue.”

“And what are their demands?” Raesinia said.

Vhalnich made a show of consulting a paper he took from his pocket. “To convene the Deputies-General to discuss the problems afflicting the nation.”

“A call for the august body that conferred the crown on my respected ancestor in the first place can hardly be treason,” Raesinia said. “I am inclined to grant their request. That will resolve the problem without the need for troops.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty, but it will not,” Torahn said. He was sweating. “The deputies of Farus the Great’s time were the nobles and lords of the land, men who understood the order of things. Any body convened from this
rabble
will only impose impossible demands on the Crown, demands that will be all the harder to refuse once given royal sanction—”

Orlanko got to his feet. “Your Majesty. If you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the latest reports from the Ministry.”

“Of course,” Raesinia said. She didn’t take her eyes from Torahn, but Vhalnich met Orlanko’s gaze. A smile flickered across the Minister of Justice’s face, just for an instant.

It wasn’t until he was back in the safe, well-ordered domain of the Cobweb that the duke once again began to feel secure.

Torahn might bluster and argue, but he would ultimately do nothing. And the princess—the
queen
—had obviously planned the whole affair with Vhalnich from the beginning. Orlanko had no illusions about what the “demands” of the Deputies-General would be. The mob was already tearing down Sworn Churches and hanging Borelgai from the lampposts, and who was more closely associated with the Borels and the Sworn Church than the despised Last Duke and his vicious Concordat?

It was a power play, nothing more and nothing less. Either Raesinia was smarter than he’d given her credit for, or else she was completely in Vhalnich’s
pocket. Whichever it was, the two of them planned to use the backing of the mob to push him out of the Cabinet and away from the throne.

Vhalnich. It has to be Vhalnich.
Orlanko’s fall might mean war with the Borelgai, a war Vordan could not hope to win, but such a sacrifice of life would not trouble a man like the Minister of Justice.

A thought struck him. Could Vhalnich himself bear a demon? The Pontifex of the Black had implied as much, in their last communication. At the time Orlanko had thought it unlikely. But if he really had found the Thousand Names, and invited one of the horrors into his own body . . .