The Shadow Throne

PART THREE

ORLANKO

The Cobweb was always brightly lit on the inside, but tonight even the facade was ablaze with lights.

The Last Duke had put out the word, and the army of shadows sallied forth. Alone or in groups, on horseback or riding in great armored wagons, each according to his particular assignment, they formed a river of lanterns, glittering steel, and dark, flapping coats stretching from Ohnlei toward the city.

It was another advantage, the duke reflected, of the uniform, the black coat that was so embedded in popular imagination. The Concordat employed two scribes and bean counters for every spy and assassin, and on a night like tonight manpower was in very short supply. And yet take the lowliest junior analyst, a half-addled boy who’d never been trusted with anything more than adding up columns of figures; swaddle him in that sinister black leather, and he was suddenly Concordat, a terrifying instrument of the will of the all-knowing and all-powerful Orlanko. Never mind that if you gave him a sword, all he’d be able to do was cut himself. People came along quietly, goaded by the phantoms in their own minds. It was remarkable.

Of course, there were some assignments that couldn’t be trusted to dressed-up scriveners. Orlanko paged through the first of the reports that were already flooding into his office, and looked up expectantly as Andreas entered.

“Sir. You summoned me.”

“I did. Your report says that you have identified Danton’s backers.”

“Only in part, sir. I have a source in the group, but his information is limited.”

“But you know where they meet.”

“I believe so, sir.”

“And you think they’ll be meeting tonight?”

“Almost certainly, sir. The minister’s arrest of Danton has set the city buzzing.”

“Vhalnich,” Orlanko said bitterly. “He was supposed to be taken care of in Khandar.”

“Yes, sir.” Andreas’ voice was neutral.

“In your report,” the duke said, “you recommend not taking immediate action against this. . cabal.”

“Yes, sir. I believe there is another layer, to which only the senior members have access. My source claims their funding was obtained via speculative investments, which is obviously nonsense. There must be another entity, with deep pockets, standing behind them. If we let them have free rein for a while, we will eventually discover it.”

Orlanko tapped his fingers on the desk. That was certainly the conventional procedure. Once you had a hook in the prey, it was always best to let them have their head for a time, especially once they became aware the forces of authority were breathing down their neck. It was always interesting to see where they bolted.

But this was hardly a normal time. The ship is close to the breakers, the duke thought. If we can navigate the narrow passage, then it will be clear sailing, and there will be plenty of time to run down any rats.

“Take them,” he said. “Tonight. Use as many men as you need. I want as many as possible alive for interrogation. Bring the source in as well, and keep him with the others. You never know what he might hear.”

Andreas bowed slightly. “Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “There may be a complication.”

“Oh?”

“You know several of the agents following the group were found dead, the day of the bank run.”

“Obviously they became careless. These are desperate men and women.”

“Yes, sir. I received a final report from one of those agents, with a promising lead that turned out to be a dead end. When our people analyzed the report, there were irregularities in the text. I now believe it to be the work of-”

“The Gray Rose,” Orlanko said, not bothering to keep the weariness out of his voice. “This has become an obsession with you, Andreas.”

“It is the only logical explanation, sir. And the consequences are alarming. If our ciphers have been compromised-”

“I designed our ciphers myself,” the duke said. “Part of that design ensures that any individual cipher falling into enemy hands does not affect the security of the whole.”

“I know that, sir. But if it is the Gray Rose, her knowledge of our procedures makes us vulnerable. I think-”

“It makes no difference one way or the other,” the duke snapped. “You know where this cabal is meeting. Go and take them. If the Gray Rose shows herself, you have my permission to kill her.”

Andreas looked, for a moment, as though he wanted to argue, but his face quickly returned to its customary blank mask. He bowed deeply, worn leather coat flapping about his ankles. “As you say, sir. I will proceed directly.”

As Andreas padded out, the duke looked back at the report he’d been reading, fighting a rising sense of irritation and, most annoyingly, nervousness. Things really were coming to a head, in more ways than one. Vhalnich. It all turns on Vhalnich.

Vhalnich had decided to arrest Danton, a move guaranteed to send the streets into convulsions. Orlanko didn’t understand what the new Minister of Justice was playing at, which for the master of the Concordat was an uncommon and distinctly unwelcome feeling. There hadn’t been time to stop him, so Orlanko had done the next best thing.

If Vhalnich wants the city brought to a simmer, we’ll see how he likes it when the pot boils over. The Concordat agents fanning out through the city were bringing in every agitator, every troublemaker, every printer of libelous broadsheets or licentious pamphlets. They’d begun at sundown and were working until dawn, gangs of black-coated men riding through the streets, breaking down doors, hauling terrified men and women in nightshirts out of their homes and off to the black, hulking walls of the Vendre.

There would be clashes, even deaths. It would only enhance the effect.

The streets will burn. There will be riots, looting, disorder. Afterward, it would be easy to put the blame on Vhalnich. After all, his arrest of Danton had been the spark that ignited the powder magazine. Besides, the maintenance of public order was the responsibility of the Armsmen and the Ministry of Justice. They needed the goodwill of the public. All the Concordat needed was fear.

Then, when the king died-which Orlanko’s analysts assured him would happen tonight or tomorrow, Indergast’s best efforts to the contrary-there would be a new ruler. The one thing he’d been missing for his whole career, the capstone of his power. A tame head to wear the crown, a queen who would do what she was told. Once she was in place, Vhalnich could be dismissed from his post and all the prisoners released, to transform the public’s wrath to joy. Danton would moderate his message, or else he, too, could be replaced in time. Orlanko would take great pleasure in delivering a lesson to Rackhil Grieg on the nature of loyalty.

And Vhalnich, some dark night, would vanish. He would be trussed up like a lamb for slaughter and delivered to the Priests of the Black. That would satisfy the pontifex and, Orlanko thought, be a suitably satisfying way of disposing of the man.

There was a way through the passage; he could see it. It was narrow and lined with roaring breakers, but it was there, sure enough. At the other end, the queen and the city would praise his name, as the man who held Vordan together in its moment of crisis.

A slow smile spread across his face as he contemplated the prospect.

For tonight, then, let the city burn.

If there had been a real eagle overhead that night, as opposed to a heraldic one, it might have been forgiven for thinking that Vordan was burning.

The air had the hot, muggy quality of a laundry, the moisture a nearly perceptible fog that felt like breathing soup. The heat kept people from their beds, robbed them of their good humor, made tempers fray. Children stripped down and played by the riverbanks, jumping into the water from the docks or, for the more adventurous, from the bridges. In Farus’ Triumph, thousands had gathered for Danton’s speech. Fights were already breaking out when the Armsmen arrived, with Orlanko’s snatch squads close on their heels.

All over the city, streets emptied in panic at the sight of phalanxes of men in dark leather coats, marching to doorway after ill-fated doorway. Children screamed as the black-coats broke down doors with sledgehammers, and women shrieked as their homes were ransacked. Trouble began almost immediately. A printer of seditious pamphlets attempted to flee rather than go to the Vendre, and fell out a second-story window to his death. A man accused of nothing more substantial than speaking against the tax farmers in a tavern fired a pistol at the Concordat agents sent to round him up; he missed, but the enraged secret policemen stabbed him a dozen times and left him to bleed on his own doorstep. Women were forced out of bed and paraded through the streets in their nightshirts. Dark, armored wagons shuttled back and forth, hauling their sobbing cargo to the prison.

Most of the city was dark, at first, as fearful Vordanai doused their lamps and candles in the hopes that the Concordat’s wrath would pass them by. Here and there, though, sparks of light remained. The Dregs, outside the University, were a ribbon of light. There, in taverns and wine sinks under a hundred colored flags, students and intellectuals of every stripe shouted and cursed, drank and hurled glasses against the walls.

They grew more heated as the news trickled in of fresh atrocities, real and imagined. A dozen women raped in Oldtown. Twenty Free Church priests mutilated for speaking blasphemy in the eyes of Elysium. Fifty men shot down in cold blood in a Bottoms shantytown. Hundreds more Concordat men on the way-no, they were Borelgai mercenaries, hired by the banks, smuggled into the country by the Last Duke to secure his position and dressed up in Concordat coats. No, they were Murnskai, Black Priests sent to cull the heretics at last.

At the other end of the city, in the Docks, another knot of lights glowed. It was faint at first, but like a coal feeling the breath of the bellows, it grew brighter by the moment. It spread, tracing the mazy paths of the streets and back alleys around the fish shops and warehouses, outlining the river and filling the squares. Torches, hundreds of torches, and candles, tapers, flaming brands, and bull’s-eye lanterns. It was a river of flame, and it began to flow, slowly but inexorably, draining toward the River Road and east along the bank to the base of the Grand Span.

Once across the river, the flaming river met with other tributaries-from Newtown and Oldtown, from the Dregs, even from the prosperous and orderly districts of Northside. The torches swirled, eddied uncertainly, and finally turned decisively west, to break like a wave outside the craggy black walls of the Vendre.