The Shadow Throne

CHAPTER FOUR

MARCUS

Marcus had never really understood the point of inspections by senior officers. It certainly made sense for a sergeant to turn out his men now and again to make sure everyone’s kit was in order, but the deficiencies of individual rankers were generally beneath the notice of a captain. At the War College, he’d known some officers who liked to play the martinet, find some tiny deficiency and fly into a frothing rage to show that they weren’t to be trifled with, but Marcus had privately considered such performances to be more trouble than they were worth.

He would gladly have dispensed with the whole ritual, but the men seemed to expect it, and so he found himself walking along a line of well-turned-out Armsmen an hour or so after officially taking over his new command. At his side was Vice Captain Alek Giforte, who’d served as acting commander since the dismissal of the previous Minister of War. The vice captain seemed to know the name and service record of every man in the unit, and he kept up a running commentary as Marcus went along the lines, accepting stiff salutes and dispensing nods and smiles.

“That’s Staff Gallows, sir.” “Staff” was apparently a position in the Armsmen equivalent to “ranker,” named for the tall wooden staves they carried that served as both weapon and badge of office. The man the vice captain had pointed out was tall and broad-shouldered, standing at rigid attention, a pair of unfamiliar decorations glittering on his chest. “He won the Blue Order for his bravery in breaking up a riot in the Flesh Market in ’oh-five.”

Gallows pulled himself up even straighter, and Marcus felt that something was expected of him. He cleared his throat.

“Well done,” he said. When that didn’t seem to be enough, he added, “Glad to have men like that on the rolls.”

“Yes, sir,” Giforte said, guiding Marcus down the line. “This is Sergeant Mourn, the longest-serving sergeant in. .”

And so on. The unfamiliar green uniforms gave Marcus the odd feeling of being in a foreign land, a visiting dignitary inspecting the local honor guard. He kept adjusting his own uniform, which was uncomfortably tight and encrusted with gilt buttons and bits of dangling gold braid. At least it had a loop for a proper sword so he could wear his familiar cavalry saber.

When, at last, they reached the end of the line, Marcus let Giforte dismiss the men. They trooped out in single file, leaving the two officers alone.

“Thank you, Vice Captain,” Marcus said. “That was very. . informative.”

“Of course, sir.” Giforte stood with his hands behind his back, the picture of alertness. He was an older man, with gray at his temples and shot through his neatly trimmed beard, and his face had the lined, leathery look of a man who’d spent most of his life outdoors. Marcus was still trying to figure out what to make of him.

“So,” Marcus said, when Giforte didn’t seem inclined to offer anything further. “Do I have. . an office, or something like that?”

“Of course, sir,” the vice captain said. “This way.”

They were in the Guardhouse, a rambling ruin of a building on the grounds of the Old Palace. Farus II, son of the Conqueror, had built his stronghold just outside Vordan City, the better to keep his eye on his fractious nobles. His great-grandson, Farus V, had desired something grander and more detached from city life, and had moved the court and the center of government to the manicured gardens of Ohnlei. The Old Palace had been stripped of anything valuable and allowed to fall into disrepair, but the Guardhouse-once the headquarters of the king’s personal guard-had proven a convenient base for the Armsmen.

Marcus’ new office turned out to be on the top floor, with an excellent view of the overgrown hedges and scrub that had once been the palace grounds. Giforte stepped in front of him to open the door, putting his shoulder against it and pressing hard.

“There’s sort of a trick to it,” he explained as it groaned open. “It sticks in the summer, so you’ve got to press it and lift a bit.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Marcus said, going in. The office was cleaner than he’d imagined for a place that hadn’t been used in months. There was a desk, an enormous oak thing dark with layers of polish that had to be a hundred years old. On its gleaming surface were several neat stacks of paper, thick with ribbons and seals. Otherwise, the room was empty, without even a bookcase. It didn’t look like a place anyone had spent any amount of time in.

Giforte stood beside the door, hands behind his back. Marcus walked over to the desk, pulled out the ancient chair with a squeal of rusty casters, and sat down. He looked at the papers, fighting a mounting sense of déjà vu.

“What’s all this?” he said.

“Documents for the captain’s approval,” Giforte said. “Duty rosters, punishment details, reports from each of the subcaptains, incident summaries-”

“I get the picture.”

Marcus took the top document off the pile. It was a warrant for the arrest of a Vincent Coalie, on charges of housebreaking and theft. At the bottom right was the seal of the Armsmen, a hooded eagle pressed into green wax. Below it was a signature that Marcus could just about make out as Giforte’s.

He flipped through the next few pages. Giforte’s name was on most of them.

Marcus looked up at the vice captain, who was still standing in rigid silence. “And I need to read all these?”

“If you like, sir,” Giforte said.

“And. . approve them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What if I find something I don’t approve of?”

Was that just the tiniest hint of a smile at the corner of Giforte’s lips? “You can inform me, of course, and I will investigate the matter at once.”

“I see.” Marcus paused. “May I ask you a personal question, Vice Captain?”

“Of course, sir.”

“How long have you been with the Armsmen?”

“Nearly twenty-three years now, sir.”

“And how many captains have you served under?”

Giforte paused, as though calculating. After a moment, he shrugged. “Fifteen, I think. But I may be forgetting one or two.”

Marcus thought he’d finally gotten a handle on what was happening here. It was an old, old army game called Manage the Officer, discovered by subordinates everywhere when called on to deal with a superior who was in over his head.

At first, he’d wondered if Giforte’s stiff attitude was concealing bitterness that he himself had been passed over for the top job. Looking at the stacks of papers, though, Marcus understood that Giforte was exactly where he wanted to be. Captain of Armsmen was a political appointment, made and dismissed at the whim of the king or the Minister of Justice. Fifteen in twenty-three years. With such frequent changes, it was no wonder that the vice captain, a solid, dependable lifer, had accumulated all the actual authority.

He expects me turn up for the inspection, glance through all of this, and then scurry back to Ohnlei to get on with my life. Marcus gave a rueful smile. More fool him. He doesn’t know I haven’t got a life. And if Janus was correct, Giforte’s carefully tended organization was going to be turned upside down. Marcus felt sorry for the man.

“All right,” he said aloud. “I’ll take a look. I’m sure you have better things to do than stand there and watch me read.”

“As you wish, sir,” Giforte said. “Staff Eisen will be posted outside the door, should you require anything.”

After three hours, the notion of scurrying back to Ohnlei was definitely starting to look more attractive, especially since green-vested scribes had already come in twice to add new piles before Marcus had even finished the first one. He ran his finger along the lines of an incident report, frowning at the cramped handwriting and twisted grammar of someone as uncomfortable with the written word as himself.

“-a small crowd having gathered to hear the speech of the orator Danton, a band of pickpockets belonging to the Red Snip crew claimed the right to work in the area. This being the case, the Gnasher crew took offense, saying it was their territory, and the two groups commenced to fighting. Staves Popper and Torlo restored order, and the following injuries were reported-”

Marcus shook his head and flipped the page onto the finished pile. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly, only that he didn’t intend to command the Armsmen and not know what they were doing. He had to admit, though, that the task was daunting. He pictured something like the period when command of the Colonials had been forced on him-after all, the Colonials mustered more than four thousand fighting men, while the Armsmen had only a bit over three thousand. But the Colonials had mostly kept together, doing one or two things at a time, and thus didn’t require much in the way of complex administration. The Armsmen, by contrast, were spread all over the city in a complicated web of patrols, stations, and details, each of which generated a stream of paper that flowed up the chain of command. He guessed there were probably as many scribes copying out reports and signing off on expenses as there were Staves on the streets.

There was a knock at his office door. Another scribe, he guessed, with another load of paper. There must be some way to get Giforte to sort this stuff. But the vice captain obviously wanted to see Marcus snowed under. Marcus gritted his teeth and shouted, “Come in!”

Staff Eisen, a pleasant young man with a scruffy beard and dirty blond hair, opened the door and saluted briskly. He brandished an envelope.

“Got a message for you, sir,” he said. “From His Excellency. One of his men delivered it personally.”

Marcus found his heart leaping at the prospect. A good excuse to get out from behind the desk and away from the mountain of papers would be welcome. He accepted the envelope from Eisen and broke the seal, finding two scraps of notepaper inside.

One read:

Captain-the inquiries I mentioned earlier have borne some fruit. I believe this to be the location of a cell to which our sleeping friend reported. I suggest you take an armed guard when you investigate, and be very careful with any prisoners you take. Good luck.-J

The other had an address that Marcus didn’t recognize. He folded the note and put it in his pocket, then looked up at Eisen. “Could you fetch the vice captain, please?”

It was a few minutes before Giforte came in. His features were composed-if he was irritated at being called in, he didn’t show it. He must be used to a new captain making a show of being busy for a few days.

“You called, sir?”

“Yes.” Marcus handed him the note with the address. “Do you know where this is?”

Giforte frowned slightly. “Yes, sir. It’s in Oldtown, a couple of blocks from the ford. Why do you ask?”

“I’m going there on an investigation. Orders from His Excellency the minister. Could you lend me a couple of men who know the way?”

“The Armsmen are at your disposal, Captain.” Giforte saluted. “With your permission, I’ll accompany you myself. Let me put together an escort. A dozen men should be sufficient.”

“I don’t need to stand on ceremony, Vice Captain. Just yourself and Staff Eisen will be sufficient.”

“Ah,” Eisen said. “I’m not sure. .”

“What Staff Eisen means to say, sir,” Giforte said, and Marcus recognized the patient tone he’d gotten so often from Fitz, “is that standing orders are not to go into Oldtown in groups smaller than six. And it would be best to take a carriage.”

Marcus looked between them and sighed.

The carriage was a big one, painted in Armsmen green with the hooded-eagle crest on the sides. Marcus and Giforte sat inside, while Eisen and a pair of Armsmen waited on the roof, and another squad of eight Staves followed behind. Marcus hadn’t asked for stealth, but he’d hoped at least for subtlety. This was about as subtle as a bullhorn.

Rather than splash through the muddy ford, Giforte directed the carriage to take the Grand Span to the South Bank and then follow the River Road east to Oldtown. The driver, another Armsman, didn’t require any further directions, which left Marcus and Giforte sitting awkwardly in silence as the carriage rattled down cobbled streets and clacked over flagstones.

“So.” After five years in Khandar, living in the tight circle of the Colonials, Marcus found his small-talk reflexes a little rusty. “Tell me a bit about yourself, Vice Captain.”

“What would you like to know, sir?” Giforte said.

“Are you a family man?”

“Widower, sir.”

Marcus winced. “Any children?”

“A daughter.” A hint of real emotion was visible for a moment in the vice captain’s face, but it was quickly suppressed. “We’ve lost touch.”

“Ah.” And that, Marcus thought, was the end of that. Hardly my fault if he doesn’t want to hold up his end of the conversation.

Probably Giforte thought it wasn’t worth getting too chummy with a captain who might be gone with the next cabinet shake-up. Actually, it might be downright dangerous. Marcus looked at the vice captain’s bland smile, and wondered how much he knew about affairs at Ohnlei. If he knows that Janus and the duke are enemies, then he may expect me to be gone sooner rather than later.

He pushed aside the curtain and looked out the window as the carriage bumped down off the bridge and turned onto the packed dirt of the River Road. The chaotic sprawl of the Docks soon gave way to the grid of symmetrical towers that was Newtown, stained and blackened by smoke and weather. The River Road was kept reasonably clear of obstructions-he remembered a duty rota assigning squads to the job-but the side of it was lined by carts, stalls, and tents, with vendors shouting at the top of their lungs to draw people out of the stream of traffic. The combination of obvious poverty and manic entrepreneurial energy reminded Marcus of Ashe-Katarion before the Redemption.

A flash of green drew his attention, and he saw a small crowd gathered some distance up the street. Two crowds, really. In the center, a man in a white robe was speaking to a small group. Surrounding this inner circle was a ring of Armsmen, staves held sideways to hold back a much larger and dirtier crowd that watched the proceedings with a sullen air, shouting unintelligible abuse. Another pair of Armsmen patrolled inside the ring, watching for any attempt to force through the line or throw things at the speaker. When one man raised a rotting cabbage high, they pounced and clubbed him to the ground.

The speaker held something out at arm’s length, and the inner crowd fell to their knees. Marcus caught the glint of gold. The jeers of the outer crowd increased.

Marcus drew Giforte’s attention to the scene as the carriage went past, and the vice captain glanced at the window and grimaced. He shook his head.

“Sworn Priest,” he said. “Borelgai, by the beard. They’re always preaching down here.”

“Why does he have a whole squad protecting him?”

“His Majesty’s orders are that the Sworn Priests should be free to offer their teachings unmolested. We’re charged with enforcing that.” He watched Marcus for a moment, considering, then added, “It was part of the peace treaty. After Vansfeldt.”

A hundred and fifty years ago, Farus IV had thrown in his lot with the League cities in their rebellion against the Sworn Church of Elysium. The subsequent war, waged simultaneously against the Murnskai legions and a cabal of his own horrified nobles, had come close to costing Farus his crown. The last bloody flames of that revolution had taken a generation to die out, and atrocities committed on both sides had given the Vordanai people an abiding distaste for the power of the Sworn Church. The Great Cathedral of Vordan had been sacked and left in ruins to guarantee that none of the new Free Church parishes that were rising from the ashes could lay claim to leadership of the others.

The Borelgai had been having their own civil war at the same time, with opposite results. Their king had lost his head for heresy at the hands of an ecclesiastical court sent from Elysium, and since then the interests of the Borelgai throne and the Sworn Church had been tightly entwined. Fifteen decades had served to cool the hatred enough that the Sworn were no longer officially banned from Vordan, but they had never been allowed to preach in the streets, much less with an official Armsmen escort.

After the war. That would have been just about the time Marcus was leaving for Khandar, at the conclusion of the War of the Princes. He’d gone straight from the disastrous Vansfeldt campaign back to the War College in Grent, two hundred miles from the capital, and he hadn’t paid much attention to politics in those days in any case.

“He didn’t look like he was having much success,” Marcus said.

“There’s always a few Sworn around. Foreigners, mostly, and some of the very poorest.” Again, Giforte gave him an evaluating glance, deciding how much he should say. “All I know is it’s a headache for us. They’re always stirring up trouble.”

Marcus nodded. What Janus had told him about fighting in the streets seemed a bit more plausible now. The Crown’s debt to the Borels was one thing; only merchants cared about that. But foreign priests by the side of the road, with Armsmen protecting them. .

“It’s getting worse, too, now that this Danton is telling everyone the Borelgai are the source of all their problems.”

“Danton?” Marcus said. That name had come up a few times in the reports.

Giforte waved a hand. “Just a rabble-rouser. He’s been making waves since last week, but he isn’t saying anything we haven’t heard before. We keep an eye on that sort to make sure they don’t try anything stupid.”

“What does he want?”

“The usual. Down with the Last Duke, Vordan for the Vordanai, that sort of thing.” Giforte, watching Marcus’ expression, carefully did not express his own opinion. Marcus suppressed a smile. He really does have this down to a science, doesn’t he?

Glancing out the window again, Marcus saw they had left the towers of Newtown behind and entered Oldtown, the most ancient of Vordan City’s districts. The architect Gerhardt Alcor’s grand project to rebuild the city along rational lines had ended with his death, leaving a stark divide in the middle of what had once been a uniform rat’s warren of mazy, twisting streets and tumbledown half-timber houses. Nowadays the boundary was called the Cut, a street running south from the Old Ford as straight as a knife wound. On the Newtown side, Alcor’s perfect grid of cobbled roads stretched out until it met the Docks; across the way, there were only medieval cowpaths and meandering lanes. Here and there a stone-walled church loomed amid the sea of flaking plaster and whitewash like a bastion.

Farus V had sponsored Alcor on the theory that a rational city would breed a better class of citizen, but Marcus could see no evidence of this. The residents of Oldtown were hard to distinguish from those of Newtown, perhaps a little bit more frayed in their attire and more desperate in their poverty. When the Armsmen carriage turned off the River Road and began threading its way into the depths of the maze, the streets cleared as if by magic, and every window was covered by a curtain. Here and there a group of young men made a point of not moving, glaring at the vehicle and its escort with undisguised hostility.

“They’re not fond of us, are they?” Marcus murmured.

“Don’t take it personally, sir,” Giforte said. “Take it from someone who’s been at this for a long time. Whenever times get bad, we become very unpopular.” He pointed up the street. “There’s your address, sir.”

It was a two-story house in the old style, plaster rotting and flaking from around the timber frame. The narrow windows were boarded up, but a small curl of smoke rising from the chimney indicated that someone was in residence.

“Did His Excellency indicate what we were likely to find here?” Giforte said. “Anything dangerous?”

“I’m not sure.” If they had someone like Jen in there, a dozen men weren’t going to be nearly enough. Janus wouldn’t have sent me here if he thought that likely, though. “Get someone around the back. I don’t want anyone sneaking out.”

Giforte nodded. As the carriage came to a halt, he opened the door and stepped out, already shouting orders. Their escort fanned out, two men slipping around either side of the house. Eisen hopped down from the carriage roof and hurried over, eager to impress.

“Want me to go in first, sir?” he said.

“I’ll go first,” Marcus said. “Eisen, take five men and follow me. The rest of you, make sure nobody gets past us.”

“I’ll join you,” Giforte said.

“Vice Captain-”

“No offense intended, sir, but it would be an embarrassment to lose my new commanding officer on his first day on the job.” Giforte’s expression told Marcus it would be pointless to argue.

The small contingent of Armsmen edged up to the door, a slab of ancient, scarred pine with several peeling layers of whitewash. The latch was broken, and the door hung a half inch open, so Marcus simply prodded it with his foot. It swung inward, creaking, revealing a single shadowy room with a table, a few chairs, and a fire barely glowing in the hearth. Rickety-looking steps in the rear led up to the second story.

“Hello?” Marcus said, stepping over the threshold. Giforte was close behind him, followed by Eisen and another Staff. “I’d like to have a word.”

A wooden groan and clatter gave him a half second’s warning. He caught something huge in motion to his left, and reflex drove him into a dive, pulling Giforte with him. The thing-a wardrobe, one of the ancient oak constructions that was taller than Marcus and weighed as much as four men-toppled across the doorway, catching the door and pushing it closed as it came down. Eisen had the presence of mind to dive forward alongside his superiors, but the second Staff tried to jump the other way and didn’t make it before the door slammed. The wardrobe hammered him to the floor, his surprised shout ending in a nasty crunch.

Marcus pushed himself up at once, clawing for his sword. By the light of the dying fire, he could see a man standing on a wooden crate, recovering from the shove he’d given the wardrobe. He was tall, and impressively bearded, dressed in crude homespun and rags, with a cutlass and a pistol thrust into the scrap of rope he used as a belt. Marcus didn’t want to give the man time to use either, so he rushed him, dragging the heavy cavalry saber out of its scabbard.

The bearded man drew his pistol, but Marcus thrust at his face as he pulled the trigger, making him jerk back. The weapon went off with an earsplitting crack and splinters rained down from the ceiling. Before his opponent could draw his cutlass, Marcus aimed a kick at the corner of the crate he was standing on, rocking it backward and spilling the man to the floor.

“Sir!” Giforte said. “Down!”

Marcus spun. Giforte was standing beside the dresser, trying to shift it, while Eisen had retrieved his staff and moved to help Marcus. Another man had appeared on the stairs, bare-chested and hairy, holding a pistol in each hand. Marcus dove for the rickety table, catching Eisen around the knees and dragging him down as well. The first shot caught the young Staff in the forearm, spraying blood against the dresser, and the attacker dropped the empty weapon and shifted the other to his right hand. Giforte grabbed Eisen’s staff dropped by the dead Armsman, moving surprisingly quickly for a man of his age, and ducked as the second pistol went off. The ball pinged off the dresser and ricocheted up to punch into the ceiling, producing a shower of plaster.

“Behind you, sir,” Giforte snapped, popping back up and charging toward the stairway, staff in hand. Marcus rolled and regained his feet in time to block a downward cut from the bearded man’s cutlass. Steel rang against steel, the blade of the cutlass sliding down to catch on the saber’s guard. The man shoved, grunting, trying to force both blades into Marcus’ face. He was big and broad-shouldered, and Marcus quickly realized he wasn’t going to win a contest of strength.

Instead he faded sideways, pulling his sword away and letting his opponent’s force carry him forward. The bearded man turned it into a spin, cutlass whipping around at head height, but Marcus had anticipated the move. He ducked, his own weapon swinging low and catching his assailant below the knee with bone-cracking force. The man screamed, his leg buckling, and as he fell Marcus delivered an upward stroke across his chest that left him lying on the floor in a spreading pool of blood.

Marcus turned, looking for Giforte. The bare-chested man had met his charge head-on, grabbing the staff before the vice captain could swing and using it as a bar to push Giforte into the wall. He was of a similar size to his late companion, and Giforte’s face had gone white with the effort of keeping the staff from being pressed against his throat. Marcus ran at them, arm drawn back for a brutal downward cut, which the man only noticed at the last moment. He half turned, taking the blade at the base of his neck, a blow hard enough to break bones. When he staggered backward, the saber came free, and blood exploded from the wound. The bare-chested man took one more step backward, groaning, then collapsed to the floor.

Silence fell, and Marcus could hear his own rapid, ragged breaths. Giforte still held the staff in front of his face, unmoving. His eyes were closed, and his throat worked rapidly.

“Vice Captain?” Marcus said. “Are you all right?”

There was a long pause before Giforte opened his eyes, blowing out a deep breath. “I’m fine,” he said. “Eisen? Jones?”

“I’m all right, sir,” Eisen said, voice a little shaky. “Right through my arm. But I think Jones is dead.”

A moment’s investigation showed that he was right. Marcus tried to shift the huge wooden thing off Jones, the other Armsman, but found that he couldn’t even budge it. Opening the wardrobe door, he found the whole thing was stuffed with sacks of bricks. It must weigh a ton.

He indicated the bricks to Giforte.

“They were waiting for us,” the vice captain said.

“Or waiting for someone,” Marcus said. “There might be a lookout upstairs.”

They looked at each other, sharing the image of a man with a pistol trained on the stairs, just waiting for someone to ascend. Marcus took a deep breath.

“I’ll take a look,” he said. “See if you can get this door open.”

“Sir-”

Marcus was already crossing the room, bloody saber still in hand. The right move would have been to wait until the others could get inside, but one man was dead already; he couldn’t stomach the idea of sending another into what might be a trap. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Light flickered against the flaking plaster of the roof. Someone has a fire lit.

He paused, considering his options, then raised his saber and took the stairs at a run, hoping to startle anyone who might be waiting into a hasty shot. The wood creaked alarmingly under his boots, but he cleared the last step and immediately threw himself sideways, out of the line of fire, landing in a crouch.

The second floor was another large room, this one unfurnished except for three dingy straw pallets. At one end of the room was a heavy iron cauldron, with a merry firelight coming from inside it. Standing next to it was a young man in worn leathers, in the act of dropping a small bound notebook into the flames.

“Don’t move!” Marcus growled, hurrying over. The young man raised his hands, no surprise evident in his features, and stepped back. A glance into the cauldron confirmed Marcus’ fears. It was a mass of glowing paper. Those bastards downstairs were buying time.

“You’re under arrest,” he said, awkwardly aware that there was probably a proper way for an Armsman to arrest someone, and that he didn’t know it. “Keep your hands up and don’t try anything.”

The young man smiled. He had a thin, expressive face, with a neat beard on his chin but smooth cheeks. When he spoke, Marcus could hear just a trace of a gravelly Murnskai accent.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, and smiled a little wider. “It’s good to meet you, Captain d’Ivoire.”