The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns (45 page)

She hurried back to where Cyte and the girls were waiting. Curious eyes followed her as she grabbed Cyte and dragged her away again, out of earshot of the rest.

“What?” Cyte said. “What’s going on? Was that a message from Jane?”

Winter shook her head. Impulsively, she tore a strip off the bottom of the note, removing the signature, and handed the rest to Cyte.

“Who’s this from?” Cyte said, glancing at the scrap in Winter’s palm. Winter crushed it into a ball.

“Someone I trust,” she said.
I think.

“Then you really believe—”

“Yes.”

“But that’s insane. The queen invited the deputies here. It’s
treason
.”

“Be sure to mention that to the duke when you see him!” Winter snapped.

Cyte was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t
know
. Give me a minute.” She glanced at the pack of girls, all of whom were now watching Winter and Cyte instead of the dull proceedings on the floor. “Let’s see if we can get them out of here, to start with. Once we’re downstairs I’ll try to find Giforte. There’s Armsmen here—maybe we can organize a barricade.”
And he owes me a favor.

“Okay.” Cyte blew out a deep breath. “I don’t suppose you’re armed?”

Winter shook her head again. “I didn’t think I’d need it.”

“Me, either. Saints and fucking martyrs.” Cyte swallowed hard and straightened up. “Let’s go.”

—

Corralling the girls and convincing them that they needed to leave—and never mind why, lest someone scream and spark a panic—took longer than Winter would have liked. They got them moving in the end, though, and nothing untoward seemed to be happening as they trooped along the unsteady gallery, past other curious onlookers.

The main stairs to the gallery were at the bend of the horseshoe, near the
rear of the main hall. On the far side, at the very end of the right-hand stretch, a small walkway led to a stone door letting on to the cathedral’s warren of second- and third-floor rooms. Winter led her charges toward the stairs, letting Cyte watch the girls while she stayed a couple of strides ahead.

The stairway was a long switchback, and when they got there it was shaking under the tread of many feet. No one was descending from the gallery, though, which meant that a crowd of people was coming
up
.
Either some big group downstairs decided they want a better view, or else—

Four men came around the switchback, standing shoulder to shoulder to block the stairway. They weren’t immediately recognizable as Concordat—no black coats or shiny insignia, just plain homespun and worn tradesmen’s overcoats—but all four wore swords, and something about their purposeful formation shouted trouble to Winter. She backpedaled up the steps, only to collide with Cyte and Molly coming in the other direction. The rest of the girls pressed them forward, still chatting obliviously.

“Back,” Winter said. “Up the stairs. Go—”

Someone down below barked an order. Each of the four drew a pistol from under his coat.

One of the girls screamed. At the same time, shouts rose from the main floor, then cut off all at once at the sharp report of a pistol.

“I am Captain Richard Brack,” boomed a voice, carrying beautifully through the high-vaulted chamber. “Of the Ministry of Information, Special Branch. And everyone in this room is under arrest!”

“Everybody on the floor!” drawled one of the four ahead of them. “All you girls, get down
now
!”

“Get
back
!” Winter shouted, pushing the screaming Becks up the stairs. The other girls needed little encouragement to flee, stairs creaking under their panicked footsteps. “Cyte! Go
that way
!” She gestured frantically to the right.

“I said
stop
!” one of the men repeated, stepping forward of the line and lowering his pistol to point directly at Winter. “We’re with the Special Branch. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Winter met his gaze, and there was a moment of contemplation. He held the pistol awkwardly, and his sword belt looked brand-new and poorly fitted. And there was something in his eyes—a bit of
fear
, she thought. This wasn’t one of Orlanko’s trained killers, Winter was certain. She doubted he’d ever fired the weapon he held.

Special Branch must mean the reserves.
Not the regular Concordat agents, but
some cadre of thugs and mercenaries summoned into service for emergencies. Men who were more used to bullying helpless civilians than to actual combat, who expected to command respect simply by virtue of
having
a weapon, without having to use it . . .

If she’d been facing an experienced soldier, what she did next would have been suicidal. But an experienced soldier would never have stepped so close to her in the first place. Winter’s left hand shot out and grabbed the pistol around the hammer. The Special Branch man gulped and pulled the trigger, convulsively, but he’d hesitated too long, and the flint slammed down hard on the back of Winter’s hand. This hurt like hell but produced no sparks. The thug’s eyes broadened in comical surprise, and Winter brought her right hand up and delivered a hard blow to his wrist. His fingers opened automatically, and she plucked the weapon from his grasp. Before his companions realized what was happening, she reversed it, clicked the hammer back, and leveled it at his forehead. He froze.

“Fucking Beast,” one of the others said, and three other pistols swung to bear on her.

“Don’t be stupid.”

Winter stepped back, carefully maintaining her aim, and climbed toward the shaky wooden walk. She desperately wanted to look over her shoulder, but if she took her eyes off the Special Branch men, the fragile moment could shatter.
Five steps? Four? Three?

“There’s no way out,” said the man whose weapon she had taken. “We’ve got the building surrounded.”

“No reason for
you
to get shot, then,” Winter said.

That seemed to be the general opinion. They held their aim but didn’t fire, and she kept backing up. Something creaked beneath her, and her groping foot couldn’t find the next stair, throwing her dangerously off balance. Before she could trip, though, someone caught her from behind, and she heard Cyte’s soft grunt. Winter steadied herself on the top step.

“The first head that comes up those stairs,” she said, “gets a lead ball through the ears. Got it?”

Without waiting for an answer, she ducked around the corner, dragging Cyte with her. Jane’s girls waited in a huddle against the wall. Down below on the main floor, she could see more of the Special Branch men moving through the crowd with weapons drawn.

“Come on,” Winter said, shivering all over with released tension. She
gestured with the pistol at the second-floor exit. “We may be able to get out that way. There has to be a back staircase.” When none of Jane’s girls moved at once, she let a touch of army sergeant into her voice. “Move!”

Floorboards creaked behind her as the Special Branch men came up the stairs. If she fired, they’d know she was unarmed and rush her; she closed the lock on the pistol, thrust it into her waistband, and ran for it. Cyte ran beside her, and together they chivvied the girls down the length of the Widow’s Gallery like dogs herding a flock of geese.

The motion attracted some notice from the Special Branch men on the ground floor, but they had their hands full for the moment with the unruly crowd. Winter could hear several deputies competing to shout the loudest denunciation of Orlanko’s “illegal and treasonous” actions.

They’re brave,
Winter thought.
Stupid, but brave.
Brack barked an order, and his thugs closed in around the offenders. Whatever reluctance they might have had to use their pistols did not apply to their fists, and the opposition was soon silenced.

By then Winter had reached the doorway at the end of the walk, stepping off the creaky wood onto the solid stone floor of the cathedral’s upper stories. A corridor ran in both directions, with several doorways leading through it into dimly lit spaces, and Winter wasn’t sure which way to go.

“Out, out, out,” she muttered. “Which way is out?”

“Toward the back,” Cyte said. “I know there’s a door by the old kitchens, but they’ll be watching it.”

“Maybe we can get the drop on them.” Winter gestured the girls to clear the doorway, and looked back down the walk. The four Special Branch men were following, but cautiously.

Someone tugged at her sleeve. It was Becks, red-faced but looking determined.

“I’m sorry I screamed,” she said. “I was just surprised.”

“It’s fine—”

“But we can’t leave! Not yet.” Becks looked at her companions and got a round of nods. “We have to help Danton first.”

“Help
Danton
?” Winter blinked. “Why?”

“He’s up this way.” Molly, standing behind Becks, pointed down the corridor. “We have to get him out of here.”

“Orlanko let him get away once,” Becks said, with a fifteen-year-old’s certainty. “If they catch him this time, they’ll kill him.”

“Danton can take care of himself,” Winter said. “I—”

“She’s right,” Cyte said. She met Winter’s eye.

“You said yourself he’s just a symbol,” Winter said, quietly.

“Symbols can be important,” Cyte said. “If we can get him out of the cathedral, Orlanko hasn’t won yet.”

The Special Branch men were getting closer. Winter hesitated a moment, then sighed. “All right. Stay close. They may have sent someone up from the back.”

—

“I can see two of them,” Cyte whispered.

“It sounds like there’s at least one more inside,” Winter said. “Maybe two.”

“Three or four, then.”

“Yeah.”

Cyte swallowed. “We dealt with four at once in the Vendre.”

“We were lucky.” Winter looked down at the pistol in her hand.
One shot. No way to reload, even if I had time.
“And we were armed.”

They stood in a narrow stone corridor, outside the entrance to a suite of rooms that had once served as some priest’s living quarters. A couple of mismatched chairs and a folding table stood in the outer room, and a single lantern hung from a wall bracket. Another doorway led deeper into the suite, flanked by two men—not the Special Branch thugs, but real Concordat black-coats. As Becks had guessed, Orlanko was taking no chances with Danton. Beyond that doorway, some kind of altercation was taking place, and Winter could hear a muffled female voice shouting.

“We might be able to take one of them,” Molly said. She and Becks had followed Winter and Cyte to peek into the suite, while the rest of the girls waited at the end of the corridor to watch for the Special Branch. “We could work together.”

She sounded uncertain, and Winter didn’t blame her. She doubted Molly and Becks put together outweighed one of the guards. Some of Jane’s Leatherbacks were fighters, but those were mostly older girls, and these two were not among them.

Winter shook her head. “Stay here. If it goes wrong, run for it.”

“But—” Molly began. Becks grabbed her arm and she fell silent.

“I’ll take the one on the left,” Winter said to Cyte. “You’ve got to keep the other one busy until I can get ahold of a sword.”

“Okay.” Cyte ran her fingers through her hair and blew out a long breath. “Let’s go.”

Winter drew back the hammer on her pistol, reflexively checked the powder in the pan, and stepped around the corner. The two Concordat guards took a moment to register her presence, absorbed in what was happening in the next room, and in the time this provided her Winter took a long step forward and shot the one on the left.

At least, she pointed the pistol in his direction and pulled the trigger. The powder in the pan flashed, but instead of a
bang
and a gout of smoke, the barrel emitted a noise more like
phut
and coughed a thin trickle of blue-gray vapor. Too late, Winter recalled the old pistoleer’s maxim: The more critical the shot, the more likely it was to misfire.

Cyte was already coming around the corner, running at the man on the right. He started to shout something as she cannoned into him, wrapping her arms around him to trap his hands at his sides. Her momentum slammed him back against the wall with an
oof
, knocking the breath out of him.

Winter’s own target clawed for his sword. She reversed the pistol and held it by the barrel like a club, hoping to get a blow in before he was ready, but he managed to get his blade out and drove her backward with a horizontal slash. She circled left, grabbed one of the wooden chairs, and sent it tumbling toward him, but he kicked it out of the way and pressed forward, forcing her to backpedal until she felt the wall against her shoulder blades. She tried for his head with the pistol, but he caught her wrist with his off hand, pinning her in place for a thrust.

Behind him, she could see Cyte’s victim trying to break free, trapped arms straining. He lurched forward and managed to get his knee up into her stomach. She doubled over, and he slipped one hand free of her grip and tangled it in her black hair. Cyte screamed.

Molly’s charge hit Winter’s opponent in the small of the back, pushing his thrust wide to strike sparks off the stone wall to Winter’s left. He let go of Winter and whirled around, sword humming dangerously through the air. Molly dropped flat, whimpering. Becks, coming up behind her, made a grab for the soldier’s sword arm and missed, and his backhand cut opened a long gash on her arm and flicked a spray of blood onto the wall.

The two girls had distracted him long enough, though. Winter gripped the pistol in both hands and brought the iron-heeled butt down on his head as hard as she could. Something
crunched
, and he dropped bonelessly, sword slipping out of his grip to clatter on the floor. Winter scrambled to scoop it up, nearly cutting herself in the process, and came up just in time to see Cyte’s opponent
shake her off and send her crashing into a table. He turned round, saw Winter, and reached for his sword, but her lunge caught him in the stomach and he folded up with a groan.

“Saints and
fucking
martyrs,” someone said, from the doorway. Winter spun to see two more Concordat soldiers. Behind them was a solid-looking door that they had apparently been trying to break down. Both went for their swords. Winter caught the one in the lead with a low cut as his blade came out of its scabbard, opening a bloody gash on his leg and sending him stumbling to the floor. The other one got his weapon out but backed away cautiously, toward the door he’d been pounding on. His fallen comrade had dropped his blade to clutch the wound on his leg, and Winter edged past him, coming almost into range of the fourth man. They stood, sword tip to sword tip, for a long moment.