The Shadow Throne

CHAPTER SIX

WINTER

“The thing you hafta understand about the Docks,” Jane said, “is that the people here don’t want t’ fight.”

Winter smiled to herself. She’d listened to Jane’s accent shift as they came down out of the apartment tower, thickening into a good approximation of the dockworkers’ dialect. Even her gait was different, widening into the rolling swagger affected by boatmen and those around them. Winter wondered if Jane was even aware of the changes. She always had a talent for fitting in, when she cared to.

“’Cept for a few fucking loonies,” Jane went on, “everybody just wants to do their thing in peace and quiet, make enough to eat, maybe get drunk now an’ then. But none of ’em want to get fucked over, not by each other and not by the fucking tax farmers. So they work themselves up to a brawl now and then, but they don’t really mean it. Not like those bastards from Oldtown, who only do a bit of work when they can’t find something to steal.”

Jane’s band of young women lived in a dilapidated four-story building, which had once been the offices of a defunct shipping company. Jane had claimed it, according to Abby, by driving out the gangs of squatters and vagrants who had been living there previously. Abby had given Winter a little tour, and Winter had been surprised both by how orderly the whole thing was and by how many people were living there. There had to be several hundred girls at least, ranging in age from Jane and herself down to children of ten or twelve. Winter, amazed, had asked where they had all come from, but Abby had been evasive.

Now they were out on what Jane called her “rounds.” Winter had been allowed to descend without a bag over her head, which she supposed meant that she was now at least an honorary member of the gang. So far, so good, at least as far as her mission from Janus was concerned.

Janus. Winter gritted her teeth at the thought. He had to know. He had to. This whole project, sending Winter to infiltrate a gang of women dockworkers, made no sense unless he’d known. Janus was a good enough judge of talent to know that Winter was no spy-witness the way she’d made a hash of things. Sending her here was futile, unless Janus already knew that Jane was at the heart of these Leatherbacks.

And if he knew, why didn’t he tell me? She couldn’t decide if it had been a shrewd move on his part, given her probable reaction, or else had been the colonel’s twisted idea of a joke. Janus did have a decidedly odd sense of humor at times. Either way, I owe him a solid kick in the arse. She glanced at Jane. Or else my abject gratitude. One or the other. Maybe both.

It was still a little hard for Winter to believe that Jane was here, that the girl who had figured so prominently in her dreams for three years was actually standing beside her. With her long hair gone, dressed in trousers and dockworkers’ homespun, it sometimes felt like this profanity-spewing young woman was someone else entirely. Then something would catch Winter’s eye-her face in profile, that wicked smile, a certain cast of the eyes-and her heart would give a sickening lurch, and she’d be ready to break down in tears all over again.

Jane’s rounds, it turned out, consisted of walking an irregular circuit of the streets around her base. This took considerably longer than it might have, since everyone they met on the street seemed to know her, and every third person stopped her to exchange a few words. Jane introduced Winter whenever she had the chance, but to Winter the dockmen and their names quickly became a blur. They had a certain sameness about them-big, weathered men, tan and wiry from years of heavy work in the sun. They had names like Bentback Jim, Reggie’s Teeth, Bob the Swine, and Walnut.

This last was a true giant of a man, bigger even than Winter’s Corporal Folsom, with wrinkled skin tanned dark as leather and a grin that showed shockingly white teeth. He was called Walnut, Jane explained, because he liked to eat the nuts, and, more important, because he could crush them in his fists. Walnut, hearing this, laughed delightedly and demonstrated with a couple of nuts from a nearby bowl. He tightened his grip until they broke, with a crack like a pistol shot.

“’Ave you seen Crooked Sal this morning?” Walnut said, picking the meat from the bits of shell in his palm with surprising delicacy.

“Not yet,” Jane said. “Why?”

“He was gettin’ pretty hot last night,” Walnut said. “Something about his daughter and George the Gut.”

“Fuckin’-” Jane loosed a string of profanity that Winter couldn’t follow, which made even Walnut raise an eyebrow. “Is he still going on about that?”

“Said he was going to go over there and slit George open to see what his gut was made of,” Walnut said. “Course, he was sopping drunk at the time. But it sounded like he meant it.”

“I’ll sort him out.” Jane turned on her heel and stalked away, and Winter had to hurry to keep up.

“Fucking Sal and his fucking daughter,” Jane muttered.

“I take it you know them?” Winter said. “You seem to know everybody.”

“Sal’s an ass. And his daughter’s a little idiot who likes to make trouble. I mean, why else would she move in with George the Gut? It’s not like he’s anything to look at.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Find Sal and talk some sense into him. His girl’s seventeen already. If she wants to spend her time fucking ugly eel fishers, that’s her own business.” Jane paused. “You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. Sal’s not really dangerous, but if he’s started working himself up to something, he may be half-drunk already.” She glanced at Winter and looked away, almost bashful. “All this. . fighting and so on. You’re not-”

Winter almost laughed but restrained herself. She hadn’t told Jane her story yet, and so Jane’s image of her was still the proper little girl from Mrs. Wilmore’s, who had to be painstakingly cajoled into the slightest disobedience.

“I can take care of myself,” Winter said. “Or at least manage to stay out of the way.”

Jane gave her an odd look but didn’t protest. They set off down the rambling Docks alleys at a more rapid pace, and Jane acknowledged the shouts of greeting from the people they passed with only a grunt and a wave. Their course tended generally downhill, and every now and then one of the straighter streets gave Winter a view of the river, glittering in the sunlight and aswarm with small boats. A few large cargo galleys were tied up to piers or making their way slowly upriver, like languid whales among schools of smaller fish.

When they were a few hundred yards from the waterfront, Jane turned into a narrow alley that passed between two stout brick warehouses and then into a back-lot no-man’s-land full of small wooden dwellings. Jane headed for the closest on the left-hand side, a shaky-looking two-story construction that looked as though it had grown like a mushroom rather than been built to any plan. The windows had rag curtains instead of glass, tied up in bundles to admit any passing breeze, and the door was wide open in the summer heat. Jane took advantage of this to walk right in, with Winter following somewhat diffidently behind her.

The bottom floor of the house was one large room, arranged around a firepit. A big, solid table stood beside it, smelling distinctly of fish, with a heavy carving knife embedded in it point-down as if it were a butcher’s block. A fat yellow cat, lazing in a patch of sunlight, rolled over and hissed at Jane, fur bristling.

The young man standing at the table had very nearly the same reaction. He looked to be about sixteen, thin and gangly, with a peach-fuzz mustache and a few stray wisps of beard.

“Your da upstairs?” Jane said, without preamble.

The boy puffed out his chest, though he’d retreated to put the table between himself and the intruder. “What if he is?”

“Don’t be a fool, Junior. Do I look like the fucking Armsmen to you? Go and fetch him.”

He deflated a little. After pausing for a few moments, just to show that he didn’t have to do what Jane told him, he ran to the rickety staircase at the back of the house and clomped halfway up it. “Da?”

“’M busy,” came a voice from above, like a drunken saint speaking from on high. “Tell ’im to go away.”

“Da, it’s Mad Jane!”

“Mad” Jane? Winter caught Jane’s eye with a questioning look. Jane gave her best mad smile and waggled her eyebrow conspiratorially. The shared, instantaneous understanding was so powerfully familiar that it made Winter wobble, weak at the knees. Right. She kept her hysterical giggles to herself. Mad Jane. I’m surprised we never called her that at Mrs. Wilmore’s.

The boy scurried out of the way as someone much heavier clumped down the stairs. This, presumably, was Crooked Sal, a man in his forties with only a fringe of stiff gray hair remaining around a bald, shiny pate. For once, no explanation of his sobriquet was necessary; Sal’s nose looked as though it had been broken at least a dozen times, and it zigzagged like a wandering stream. He wore a leather vest that left his arms and hairy chest bare, and smelled of old fish. Behind him, perching halfway up the staircase, was a boy of twelve or thirteen.

“You here to stick your nose in my business?” Sal roared.

“That’s right,” Jane said.

“Not a good habit,” he growled. “You keep putting that nose where it don’t belong and it’ll end up looking like mine.”

“Fortunately, nobody can bear to damage my good looks,” Jane said. “Now, what is this bullshit about you and George the Gut?”

“Fuckin’ George the pus-ridden Gut is havin’ his way with my virgin daughter!” Sal said. “I’ve got every right to show him the color of his kidneys!”

Jane scratched the side of her nose. “Iffie’s a nice girl, but you’re going a bit far there, aren’t you? The way I heard it, Iffie climbed through his window in the middle of the night.”

“She’s still my daughter,” Sal said. “An’ he shouldn’t have put his grubby hands all over her.”

“I’m hardly an expert on daughters,” Jane said. “But did you ever think this is what she wants? Getting a rise out of you? Remember what happened with Tim the Lad? Or Steve Shake Eye? Or that Hamveltai sailor you chased off?”

Sal’s face twisted. That had touched a sore point, obviously, and he fell back on good old-fashioned rage. “Get out, you stupid bitch! Take your big mouth out of my house before I break your pretty face for you!”

“Not until you promise me you’re not going to run off and try to carve up poor George.”

“I know who I’m going to carve up!”

Sal reached across the table and wrapped his hand around the handle of the carving knife. Before he could jerk it out of the wood, Jane did her knife trick again, blade flashing into her hand as though she had summoned it into being. In the same motion she reached out, lazily, and laid the edge of the blade against the apple of Sal’s throat. Sal froze.

“I would think real fucking hard before you do that,” Jane said. Her eyes moved. “And you, Junior, I would think even harder.”

The older boy had been edging toward the confrontation. He paused, and Winter passed unnoticed behind him. There was a heavy iron poker by the stairs, and she edged in that direction, ready to grab it if Jane lost control of the situation. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the younger boy fumbling with something-there was a click, menacingly familiar-

Winter reacted instinctively. She grabbed the poker in one hand, spun, and swung it around into the barrel of the pistol the kid had just cocked. He pulled the trigger just before the metallic clang of the impact, and she saw the flash of the powder in the pan, followed by the shatteringly loud report of the gun going off. By that time, her blow had knocked it well away from its intended target, and the ball pocked into a wall, throwing off splinters.

Sal was so surprised he let go of the knife and bulled forward, and Jane had to retreat hastily to keep him from cutting his own throat. He whirled to face the stairs, where the younger boy was cowering and clutching his stinging hand.

“Jim!” he roared. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“She was going to hurt you, Da!” Jim screeched. “She had a knife, and-”

“I am going to give you such a fucking thrash-”

Sal took a couple of steps toward the stairs and his cowering son, then stopped, because Jane had grabbed his arm from behind. He started to turn but halted when he felt the prick of her knife between his shoulder blades.

“You’re more of a fucking moron than I thought, Sal,” said Jane. “Were you planning to bring that thing to George’s?”

Sal had the grace to looked embarrassed. “George has got three sons. They might’ve been armed.”

“And if they had been? You’d have killed one of ’em? What for?”

“I just thought-”

“Thinking is the last thing you were doing. Now, you listen to me, Salmon Bellows. I have had enough of this, do you hear? When Iffie comes back-and she will come back, once she figures out you’re not going to pick a fight with George-I want you to have a nice long talk with her. A talk. If I hear that she’s walking around with bruises, I’m going to come back, and you and me will have a talk. You understand?” She nodded at the boy on the stairs. “That goes for him, too. It’s your own damned fault for leaving a loaded pistol lying about. You get all that?”

“I-” Sal began, but Jane did something to his arm, and he moaned. “I get it. I get it!”

“Good.” Jane backed off a step and made the knife disappear again. “Hell, tell Iffie that if she really likes George so much, she ought to marry him. That ought to bring her running back right away.”

Sal, to Winter’s amazement, laughed and shook his head. His sons laughed with him, timidly, and at this reminder he turned on them with another roar.

“And as for you, Jim, I’m-”

Jane cleared her throat pointedly, and Sal paused.

“I’m going to have a talk with you,” he finished. “A long talk. Now go to your room and stay there.”

Jane took her leave, and Winter followed her back out into the alley. They said nothing until they’d gone round a bend and out of sight of the little shack. Jane sighed and rubbed her temples.

“Goddamn that kid. Scared the piss out of me.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, took a deep breath, then looked up at Winter. “Are you all right?”

Winter flexed her hand, which still tingled from the transmitted impact of the poker. “Nothing serious. I’ll be fine.”

“Fucking kid. Could have killed someone.”

“I think he wanted to kill you, actually.”

Jane chuckled. “I gathered that. Nice swing with the poker, by the way. Have I thanked you yet?”

“Not as such.”

“Thanks.” Jane ran a hand through her hair, mussing it further. “Sorry. It’s not every day a kid a head shorter than me tries to fucking shoot me in the back.”

“You could have fooled me,” Winter said, honestly. “I figured this was all in a day’s work for Mad Jane.”

“Don’t you start,” Jane muttered. “It’s bad enough that Sal and the rest started calling me that.” Catching Winter’s smirk, she changed the subject. “What about you, anyway? What happened to the girl who was too afraid to throw a bucket of shit at Mary Ellen Todd? Did you take lessons in swinging a poker?”

“Not. . exactly,” Winter said.

“You said it was a long story.”

“It is.”

“Well,” Jane said, “we’ve got a ways to go yet.”

By the time they made it back to Jane’s building, late in the afternoon, Winter had gone through most of the last three years. It had been a halting narrative, punctuated by Jane’s conversations with various merchants, fishwives, and other Dockside inhabitants along her route. A few times she’d had to stop while Jane was called on to solve some minor issue, such as one house’s tendency to lean onto another’s property and what that should mean for rents, or the matter of some rancid fish that somehow got packed into a shipment. Each time, the participants seemed to look to Jane for judgment as a matter of course, and accepted her ruling with more grace than Sal had done.

These gaps helped Winter keep her story straight. She told the truth, more or less, but left her personal involvement in events deliberately vague, and omitted any mention of Feor, Bobby’s healing, or that last awful night in the temple under the Great Desol. After a short internal struggle, she also decided to say nothing about what Janus had sent her to do. I still need to figure that out myself. I can always fill Jane in later.

Jane listened, her eyes going wider and wider, until by the end of the trip she was ignoring the friendly greetings that met her at every corner to concentrate entirely on Winter. When they stopped outside the barred gate of her building, she stopped and glared.

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Jane said. “You ran away from Mrs. Wilmore’s and joined the army, like some girl out of a ballad?”

Winter nodded.

“And then you served in fucking Khandar with Vhalnich?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Winter said. “I went to Khandar because I thought it would be a good place to hide. It’s not my fault they decided to have a revolution right after I got there.”

“You really did it,” Jane said. “I do not fucking believe it!”

With a happy shout, she grabbed Winter and hugged her roughly, and after a stunned moment Winter hugged her back.

“God,” Jane said, “and here I was pretending I was the tough one, when you’ve been marching around fucking Khandar and eating monkey brains.”

“No monkeys in Khandar,” Winter said, a bit muffled. “Beetles, though. They like to eat beetles. And there’s these sort of snakes that live in the canals. They pack them in mud and bake them-”

“Please stop,” Jane said. “I’ve just worked up a healthy appetite and I’d hate to ruin it. Does your diet still extend to cows and pigs?”

“Not often enough,” Winter said. “Mostly we ate mutton. I never want to see another sheep as long as I live, alive or boiled.”

“Come on, then. You can sample the unique Vordanai delicacy I call ‘pork roast pretty rare on one side and fucking black on the other,’ because Nellie in the kitchen is still learning and tries her best.” Jane shook her head. “I can’t wait to tell the girls you were in Khandar. They’re going to have fits.”

“No!”

The word came out of Winter with such force that it surprised both of them. Jane went quiet.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Winter said, only now becoming aware of the risk she was taking. If word gets out that there’s a girl-in-boy’s-clothing in the Colonials, I’ll never be able to go back. The thought of wearing dresses for the rest of her life brought her close to the edge of panic, and her collar suddenly felt tight and hot. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she might not be able to trust Jane. “Please.” The word was all she could manage.

There was another strained silence. Jane coughed.

“Well,” she said. “It’s your story.”

“Thank you.” Winter felt her throat unclench. “I’m sorry. I should have. . said something. I’ll explain-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jane said. “In here we don’t ask about what happened to anybody if they don’t want to talk about it. Saves a lot of tears.” She smiled. “I guess we’ll have to entertain the girls with the story of how you saved my life from little Jim Bellows.”

Winter’s smile was weak, but grateful. “I don’t know if he could have hit you, to be honest. Except maybe by accident.”

“You’re probably right,” Jane said. “But we don’t have to tell them that.”

Supper was a drawn-out affair in Jane’s- Apartments? Barracks? Commune? Winter wasn’t really sure what to call it. The knocked-together kitchen and dining room weren’t big enough to hold all the girls at once, so they turned up in shifts, while a relay of cooks came and went in the kitchen under the uncertain supervision of Nellie-who-tries-her-best.

The dining room-fashioned from several adjacent offices by knocking down any inconvenient walls-was a churning flock of eating, talking, laughing young women, dressed in a bewildering variety of clothes that had all come from the bottom of someone’s ragbag. They ate off a menagerie of clay and wooden crockery, with flatware gathered from a thousand junk shops and rubbish bins. As far as Winter could tell, small groups turned up whenever they liked and ate their fill, then left to make room for others.

Jane presided over it all like a medieval baron, sitting at an especially tall table with a small group of the older girls. Winter had a seat to one side of her, which got her a few uncomfortable looks from some of the others, but Jane immediately launched into the story of what had happened at Crooked Sal’s, and that broke the ice. Abby, who seemed to serve as a kind of second-in-command, sat on Jane’s other side. Among the others, Winter recognized Becca and Chris from when she’d been captured, and was introduced to a short, soft-spoken girl named Min and a ramrod-thin woman closer to her own age called Winnie. These four, with Abby, seemed to serve as Jane’s lieutenants, and Winter’s presence at the high table apparently meant that she’d been added to their number.

The food was everything Jane had promised or threatened. It was plain and plentiful, with more meat and fish than Winter had seen in her years at Mrs. Wilmore’s or her time in the army. There was plenty of bread, too, great piles of steaming round loaves.

Winter ate her fill, and more. Her army time had taught her that the availability of food was always touch-and-go, so it was always best to stock up when one had the chance. Jane also attacked her plate with gusto, though she carried on a whispered conversation with Abby throughout the meal. Winter restrained her curiosity, though she couldn’t help noticing that Abby left in the middle of dinner, leaving behind a half-full plate.

Once she’d taken the edge off her hunger, certain questions presented themselves irresistibly to Winter. Jane was fully occupied in her role as master of the house, shouting across the room to this girl or that and occasionally roaring with laughter at the responses. Min reported on the day’s activities-her responsibilities seemed to focus on the care and feeding of the younger girls-and Jane listened and gave occasional instructions.

Where does it all come from? These girls ate better than she ever had in the army, and the food was certainly better than the gray slop produced by Mrs. Wilmore’s kitchen. How does she pay for all this? For that matter, where had the girls themselves come from? Abby said she’d been taking in orphans and strays, but that can’t be all of them.

As supper wore on, Winter started to worry. Janus sent me here for a reason, after all, and he’s Minister of Justice now. Maybe Jane’s running a gang of thieves. A gang of thieves that included a cadre of chattering, happy twelve-year-olds seemed unlikely, but Winter’s experience was limited. The feral children of Ashe-Katarion had certainly included their share of thieves, but she couldn’t picture them sitting around a table like this.

Another thought occurred to her, and Winter bit her lip. There was always one way for a group of young women to earn a living, after all. Surely not. Jane would never be involved in something like that. Her friend’s morality had always been a bit selective, but surely there were some lines she would never cross. Never.

By the end of the meal, she was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. The conversation flowed all around her, but she was no part of it, like a rock sticking out of a smoothly flowing stream. It felt all too much like being back in Davis’ company, as the “Saint,” collecting her meager ration and wolfing it down in silence while the men around her joked and boasted about their drinking and whoring. The jokes were different, of course, but the feeling of camaraderie-from which she was excluded-was the same. She poked morosely at the congealing bits of fat and vegetable left on her plate.

A hand descended on her shoulder, and she looked up to find Jane smiling down at her.

“I’m about done,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“I’ve got-” Winter began.

“Some questions.” Jane gave a little sigh, and her smile faded. “I know.”

Jane’s room was on the top floor, in one corner of the building, where windows caught the sun from two sides. They arrived to find Abby tugging the door closed with one finger, awkward because she was carrying a thick wad of clothing in her arms.

“Sorry,” she said, edging to the side of the passage to let them pass.

Winter got the feeling that Jane’s room had been enlarged from its original state in the same way the dining room had, by pulling out interior walls, but here some effort had been made to disguise the fact. A half dozen rugs of different fabrics and vintages overlapped on the floor, and a heavy oak table in one corner was strewn with papers. The walls were hung with colorful fabric to disguise the crumbling plaster. A couple of heavy trunks, lids open, comprised Jane’s wardrobe, and an enormous mattress meant for a four-poster bed simply lay on the floor, covered by a clean but threadbare sheet.

“My palace,” Jane said, spreading her hands. “Do you like it?”

“I spent two years living in a tent,” Winter said, closing the door behind her. “Just sleeping indoors feels like a luxury to me.” She hesitated. “Nobody’s going to-”

“Sit with a glass pressed against the door? Don’t worry.”

Winter relaxed a little. “How long have you been here?”

“Just over a year,” Jane said. “It seems like longer.”

“You’ve certainly made yourself comfortable.”

“I’m good at that.” Jane winked, and went to a small cupboard standing on its own beside the big table. She withdrew a corked bottle and two slightly dusty glasses and waggled them suggestively at Winter. “Drink?”

Winter nodded. While Jane poured, she went to the window and twitched the curtain aside. Summer’s late evening sun was just setting, staining the muddy, sooty streets of the Docks with a pattern of red and black. Candles and torches burned here and there, but not many. The view was to the north, and Jane’s building was taller than those around it, and so Winter could see all the way to the river and beyond. The Island was a blaze of light in the distance, like an enormous ship.

Jane stepped up behind her, quietly, and pressed a glass into her hand. Winter sipped without looking, and was pleasantly surprised. Of course, any Vordanai wine would taste good next to that Khandarai stuff. She made a face at the memory.

“No good?” Jane sipped from her own glass. “Not the best vintage, I’ll grant you, but-”

“It’s fine.” Winter turned. “I have to ask. What are you doing here? Where did all these people come from? How do you manage to feed them all?”

“It is a bit odd, when I come to think about it.” Jane turned her glass back and forth, staring at it. Winter noted, absently, that much of the swearing had dropped out of her vocabulary now that they were alone. “It’s. . like yours. A long story.”

“I think we have time,” Winter said.

“I suppose so.” Jane took a deep breath. “Most of the girls are from Mrs. Wilmore’s, like us.”

“What?”

“I went back, after I ran away from Ganhide,” Jane said. “I had to hide for a while, until they gave up looking for me, and I sort of got to thinking. I’d got away, all right, but there were all those girls still there, and the same thing was just going to happen to them-they’d be married off to the first brute of a farmer who came asking.”

“So you went back.”

“I went back.”

“And staged an. . escape?” There had to be three hundred people in the building. Winter tried to imagine them all sneaking out of Mrs. Wilmore’s, one at a time, hiding from the proctors and the mistresses. .

“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.

Marcus hurried down the street, past the beeches, until what had been the d’Ivoire estate came into view. Two visions of it competed in his mind. One was the real thing, as he’d last seen it, with ivy creeping up the stone walls and the ancient leaded glass his father preferred to the modern kind. The other was something he’d constructed in his mind over the intervening years, a blackened ruin of scorched beams and tumbled stone.

Instead he found himself looking at another house entirely. It was squarer, larger, higher-ceilinged than his old estate, with big single-pane windows and a high, arched doorway. The grounds were the same-even the ancient oak, its limbs spreading above the roof-but someone had replaced the house itself with an imposter. Marcus stared at it for a moment, blinking.

Of course it’s different. He’d been stupid. The old place had burned, but prime land in Vordan City never went idle for long. Someone else had bought the property, cleared the ruin, and put up their own house. He’d had the vague idea that he could poke around, discover something in the wreckage that everyone else had missed, but of course that was ridiculous. After this long, it’s not even wreckage anymore.

Ionkovo told me to come here. Why? The Black Priest agent might have just been having a laugh at Marcus’ expense, of course. But he doesn’t seem the type. He wanted me to find something.

“So what the hell am I doing here?” Marcus said.

“Sir?”

He shook his head and looked at Eisen, embarrassed to have spoken aloud. “Nothing. I thought there might be something left, but that was stupid.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It must be difficult.”

Marcus turned, scanning the surrounding houses. “I can’t imagine many people still remember much of the fire, either.” So what’s the point? He felt like going back into the cell and throttling the smirk off Ionkovo’s face. He knows something, but all he’ll give me is riddles.

“Are you looking for information on what happened, sir?”

“I suppose.” Marcus shrugged, feeling defeated. “I’m just not sure there’s anything to find.”

“I think,” Eisen said, “I may have an idea.”

The Fiddler occupied a dignified space at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Saint Dromin Street. It was not a tavern or a wine shop but a true public house of the old school, less a business establishment than a club for the respectable men of the neighborhood. The building was old brick, patchy with overlapping repairs, and twined here and there with climbing ivy. The front door was open, but Eisen, leading the way, stopped beside it and pointed with his good hand.

“You see, sir?”

Marcus peered closer. A small brass plaque, much tarnished, read 17TH ROYAL VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY, HEADQUARTERS. EST. 1130 YHG.

“My uncle was in the Twenty-fourth Company,” Eisen said, “over by the Dregs. He always said it was mainly an excuse to spend evenings away from the family. Not as many fires as there used to be, north of the river. But he told me every company has one old bastard who’s been a member for fifty years and can tell you every house that ever burned down on his watch.”

“Worth a try,” Marcus said, though privately he thought it was a bit of a thin reed to hang any hope on. “Let’s see if we can find them.”

Eisen led the way into the common room. It was a long way from the Khandarai taverns Marcus was used to, with a feel closer to a family sitting room-big, solid tables, polished to a blinding sheen, and genuine carpet underfoot instead of boards and sawdust. Marcus paused, embarrassed, and backtracked a step or two to make use of the boot scraper by the door.

It was midafternoon, and only a few of the tables were occupied, mostly by small groups of older men who looked as though they never left. Eisen went to the bar, a vast expanse of scarred wood dark with resin and polish, and talked for a moment with the bespectacled gentleman behind it. When he came back, he was smiling.

“We’re in luck, sir. He knew exactly who I wanted to talk to. Come on.”

They went through a doorway into another room, lined with bookshelves bearing weather-beaten, mismatched volumes. There were more tables here, but only one was occupied, three men sitting at a big round table much too large for them. Another small plaque marked it as reserved for the Seventeenth Company.

Two of the men were younger than Marcus, in their twenties, but the third matched Eisen’s description almost exactly. He was bent over a tall pint glass, head bowed as though his neck didn’t want to support its weight, and the fingers that curled around the drink were stick-thin and mottled with liver spots. The dome of his head rose through a crown of snow-white hair, like a mountain pushing up past the tree line. When Marcus stood in front of the table and cleared his throat, the old man looked up, and his deep-sunken eyes were dark and intelligent.

“You’re the Seventeenth Fire Company?” Marcus said, feeling awkward.

The old man pursed his lips but said nothing. One of the younger men got to his feet, taking in Marcus’ uniform, and nodded respectfully.

“We are, though we’re not on duty at the moment,” he said. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m not here officially,” Marcus said. “I was just hoping I could have a word about an. . incident. Something that happened quite a while back.”

The young man looked at his older companion, who caught Marcus’ eyes and held them for a moment. When his voice emerged, it was surprisingly deep and smooth, as though polished by the years.

“You’re the new captain of Armsmen, then? D’Ivoire.”

Marcus nodded. The two young men exchanged a look-they obviously hadn’t recognized his rank.

“I wondered if you might come around,” the old man said. “You may as well sit down.”

“Staff Eisen,” Marcus said, “would you please buy these gentlemen a drink?”

“Of course, sir.” Eisen extended a hand, and with a last look at Marcus the two young men followed him. Marcus pulled back one of the heavy chairs and sank into the ancient, cracking leather.

“Marcus d’Ivoire,” he said.

“Hank,” the old man said. “Or Henry, if you’re feeling formal. Henry Matthew.”

“You said you were expecting me?”

“Just a thought.” The old man shrugged. “I saw your name in the broadsheets, and I figured you might come looking. It’s been a long time.”

“I’ve been away,” Marcus said. “Khandar.”

Hank nodded. “And it’s not like there was much left for you to come back to. It was a terrible business.”

“You were there?”

“I was. That was back when I went out on calls. Now I sit here and let the young’uns buy me drinks, and tell stories.” He tapped his half-empty glass, and gave Marcus a crinkly smile. “Not a bad life, to be honest. But yes, I was there.”

“What happened?”

“Didn’t they tell you about it?”

“Not much. Only that it was an accident, and that nobody. . got out.” Marcus’ voice hitched. He swallowed hard, irritated.

Hank peered at him kindly. “You want a drink?”

“No, thank you. Just tell me what happened.”

“Well. It’s not easy to say. When a house burns, ’less everyone’s asleep, usually somebody notices. They run from the flames and come out the other side, you see? Sometimes if a place is a real tinder trap, it’ll go up all suddenlike, and sometimes there’s no other way out and people get trapped. That’s bad luck.”

Marcus remembered the Ashe-Katarion fire, the swarms of determined people pressing tighter and tighter to get through the gates into the inner city, or throwing themselves into the river to drown instead of burn. He swallowed again. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“The d’Ivoire place-your place-it was old, but it wasn’t a tinder trap. It took time to burn. And there were plenty of doors. So how come nobody got out?”

Marcus shook his head. He didn’t even know if the fire had been during the day or at night, he realized. No one had volunteered any information, and he’d been just as happy to avoid the details.

“When we got there,” Hank went on, “it was obvious there was no saving the place. I led my boys in as soon as we could, but that fire burned hot. We never found more than bits and pieces of the folk who lived there.” He caught Marcus’ eye and shook his head. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said it like that. What I mean is the fire was odd.”

“What do you mean, odd?”

“As best we could tell, it started in three places at once. Oil lamp by the front door, fireplace near the back door, spark in the straw by the stable door. Three doors, three fires. That’s real bad luck.”

There was a long silence.

“You’re sure about that?” Marcus said, voice dull.

“There’s no sure, with fires. But I had a look, and I talked to the people who were around. I’d been at this twenty years, even then.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I did.” Hank’s wrinkled face was a mask. “Went to the Armsmen, said I thought it was passing strange. They bounced me around for a while, and finally somebody told me they didn’t want to hear it, and they didn’t want anybody else hearing it, either. I got the message.”

“You’re telling me,” Marcus pointed out.

“It never sat right with me,” Hank said. “And they were your people.” He smiled slyly. “Besides, him that told me to shut my mouth, you outrank him now. I reckon it’s your right to know, don’t you think?”

“Outrank-” Marcus stopped, abruptly. “I see.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Marcus murmured, his mind a whirl. “You’ve been. . very helpful.”

Giforte. It had to be Giforte. The vice captain had been effectively running the Armsmen since well before the time of the fire. Captains came and went, but Giforte stayed on, bending to the winds of politics and keeping the ship running.

Hank told him the fire wasn’t an accident. Couldn’t have been an accident. Someone killed them. His mother. His father. Ellie. Ellie!

Marcus realized he was holding his breath, hands clenched tight. He forced himself to relax.

It wasn’t an accident. The thought ran around and around in his head. Not an accident. Murder. Three doors, three fires. Cold-blooded murder.

Someone had murdered his little sister, barely four years old. He wanted to scream.

Who?

Giforte knew. Or at least he knew something. But he had no reason to tell Marcus anything. There was nothing like proof, just the ramblings of one old man. The vice captain’s position was secure; the Armsmen couldn’t run without him, and he knew it. No wonder he’s been so cagey around me. I thought it was just about the politics, but he must have been wondering if I’d found out.

There was another option. Ionkovo’s “trade.” The Black Priests’ agent obviously knew enough to send Marcus here, and he might know the rest. But he would want something in exchange. Which is obviously why he sent me here in the first place. The very fact that he wanted to know so badly what had happened in Khandar implied that telling him was dangerous.

I could ask Janus. . There was a certain comfort in the thought of appealing to the colonel. But that would mean revealing that he’d talked to Ionkovo in the first place, and Marcus wasn’t sure how Janus would react to that.

Hell. Anger squirreled around inside him, searching for a target, finding nothing. He tasted bile.

“Sir?” Staff Eisen said.

Marcus blinked and came back to himself. He was standing outside the Fiddler, facing the ivy-covered brick wall, one hand pressed flat against it. When he let it fall, bits of grimy mortar clung to his palm.

“It’s all right,” Marcus said. “I’m all right.”

“Did you find out what you wanted, sir?” Eisen said.

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. I have no idea.