The Shadow Throne

PART ONE

RAESINIA

The mirrored halls of the Royal Palace at Ohnlei were dark and quiet.

Not silent, for the thousands of footmen, maids, gardeners, guards, cook and candle boys who made the great palace run could never really stop moving, any more than a heart could stop pumping. But they moved cautiously, avoiding loud footfalls on the marble floors and talking in low voices, and only a few candles flickered in the enormous braziers. The great black velvet drapes and carpets had not been hung, for the king had not yet died, but in a hundred cellars and storerooms they had been unrolled, aired out, and checked for wear.

Raesinia and her party clattered through the hush like a wild stallion in a glazier’s. First came the princess’ hard-soled shoes, tak-tak-tak, and then the heavy, flat-footed tromp of the trio of Noreldrai Grays who provided her escort. It gave everyone plenty of warning to form up and clear the way, so that her progress was marked by a bow wave of dipping heads from staff lined up on either side of the corridor. The occasional courtier sparkled like a precious stone among the pale blue of the Royal livery. Ordinarily, politeness would have obliged her to stop and exchange a few pleasant words with anyone of sufficient rank, but under the circumstances the nobles merely bowed their heads and let her by. No doubt they began whispering as soon as she turned the corner, but Raesinia was used to that.

The ground-floor apartments of the king were reached through a broad marble arch, carved with a frieze depicting King Farus VI in the act of smiting some armored foe. Raesinia’s great-grandfather was everywhere at Ohnlei. He’d died decades before she was born, but she’d seen his narrow-cheeked, pointy-bearded countenance on so many statues, bas-reliefs, and portraits that he was as familiar to her as any of her living family. This one was actually not a particularly good likeness, she’d always suspected. The sculptor had given the king a squint, and he looked out at the viewer rather than keeping his eyes on the business at hand, as though to say, “Who are you, and what are you doing at my battle?”

Beyond the arch was a grassy courtyard, roofed over with great sliding panes of glass that could be opened to let the air in when the weather was good. Here the king, in better days, would receive guests or dine with his favorites. It was surrounded by a colonnade and a terrace floored with marble, from which a dozen oak-and-gilt doors led to the king’s private chambers and the residences of his servants and guards. A dozen of the latter were scattered around the courtyard, not just the somber-uniformed Noreldrai Grays but Armsmen in their forest green coats and white trousers and Royal Army grenadiers in Vordanai blue and polished brass. Guarding the king was a great honor, and none of the three services was willing to leave it to the others.

In the middle of the lawn, looking a bit incongruous, was a polished oak dining table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Raesinia had eaten there many times with her father, in the company of the mightiest nobles of the land, surrounded by a veritable swarm of servants and flunkies. Now the long, mirror-smooth surface was nearly empty. At the far end sat a gray-haired man, back hunched from a lifetime of bending over the beds of his patients. He got painfully to his feet as Raesinia approached, in spite of her urgent gesture.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” he said, with as much of a bow as his stiff back could muster. “I hope you are well?”

He had a Hamveltai accent, which turned “well” into “vell.” Raesinia nodded.

“As well as ever, Doctor-Professor Indergast,” she said.

He peered at her over the top of thin-rimmed half-moon spectacles. “I ought to have a look at your diet,” he said. “Some days it seems to me that you are not growing up properly. Your mother was nearly as tall as I when she was nineteen, you know.”

Raesinia, who had to look up slightly to meet the stoop-shouldered doctor’s gaze, gave a careful shrug. “Perhaps, someday. But we have more important things to worry about at the moment. I got a message to come at once-is he all right?”

“His condition has not changed, Your Highness,” Indergast said. “I am sorry to have worried you. It is only that he is awake, and asked to see you.”

Raesinia’s heart gave a weak flop. Her father slept more than he was awake, these days, and sometimes he was delirious with pain and fever. She’d spent many hours at his bedside, holding his hand, but he hadn’t often known she was there.

“I’d better go and see him, then,” she said, “before he falls asleep again.”

“Of course, Your Highness. Pay no mind to me.” He gestured at a huge book, which lay open on the table where he’d been sitting. “I was only paging through a volume of Acheleos that the Grand Bishop was kind enough to lend me, to see if he had anything useful to tell us.”

“And does he?”

“Alas, no. Like all the ancients, he has many theories but very little practical advice.”

“You’ll figure something out. You always have.”

Doctor-Professor Indergast ran one gnarled hand through his wispy hair. He had been personal physician to her father since before Raesinia had been born. Some at the court wondered why the king needed a foreign doctor to attend him, but Raesinia had come to love the old man. He’d pulled the king back from the brink more than once, when no other doctor at the University would have dared even make the attempt.

“I’m honored by your trust, Your Highness,” he said, but his expression was grave. “I beg you, though, not to place too much faith in my poor skills.” He paused, then added quietly, “Miracles are the department of His Grace the Grand Bishop.”

Raesinia set her lips but said nothing. She gave the old man a nod and swept past him, toward her father’s bedchamber.

“The Grand Bishop is with him now,” Indergast said from behind her. “As is His Grace the duke and the rest of the cabinet.”

She faltered but didn’t break stride. This wasn’t a matter of an ailing man wanting to see his daughter, then. If the king had summoned his ministers, then he had something official to say. Raesinia breathed a silent thanks to Indergast for the warning, told her bodyguards to wait outside with the rest of the king’s protectors, and slipped in the door.

The king’s bedchamber was small by the standards of Ohnlei, which meant that it wasn’t quite large enough to host a tennis match. The royal bed was enormous, though, its four oak posts practically trembling under the weight of silks and velvet hangings. In the center of it, drowning in a sea of covers and embroidered cushions, the king was visible only as a disembodied head surrounded by expensive fabric.

A group of well-dressed men stood at the end of the bed, huddled together for mutual support. The Grand Bishop of Vordan, prevented from huddling by the voluminous folds of his crimson robes of office, affected an ecclesiastical aloofness a little ways off.

It was apparent to Raesinia that she had walked into the middle of an argument, though one that might not have been obvious to anyone who hadn’t spent their lives at Ohnlei. It was the kind of roundabout, exquisitely polite disagreement carried on by men who are aware that their opponent could, technically, have them executed.

“I’m certain Your Majesty has considered the matter carefully,” said a large, thick-bearded man at the front of the huddle. This was Count Torahn, the Minister of War, his soldier’s physique running to fat beneath the careful tailoring of his court uniform. His normally florid complexion was practically aglow now. “But I wonder if you have given a thought to the situation from my position. We are speaking of a young and talented officer, showing great promise, and to remove him to what is, after all, an interior post. .”

“So promising that you sent him to Khandar?” said the king. It made Raesinia’s heart break just to hear him, his voice reduced from the confident baritone she remembered to a wheezy, petulant rasp.

“Where he has achieved great things,” Torahn said smoothly. “And, in due time, if his career is not interrupted-”

“I’ll leave that to his judgment,” the king said. “He may choose to decline the post.”

“But he will not, Your Majesty.” This was from the Minister of Finance, Rackhil Grieg. He had always reminded Raesinia of a ferret, with a narrow face and beady, wary eyes, an effect that was not helped by his unfortunate choice to wear his ratty brown hair long at the back. Torahn shot him an ugly look when he spoke up. Grieg was a commoner, unique on the cabinet, and the others resented him for it. He owed his advancement entirely to the patronage of the Last Duke, and was therefore widely considered to be Orlanko’s creature.

“After all,” Grieg went on, “an offer from Your Majesty is an honor not to be lightly refused. Even if it went against his judgment of what was best for the service, would he not feel obligated to accept so as not to dishonor Your Majesty with his refusal?”

“That’s true,” Torahn said, recognizing a good line of attack like a proper soldier. “For any officer of the Royal Army, Your Majesty’s wishes must be placed above any doubts or personal concerns.”

“Does that include you, Torahn?” the king snapped, with a little of his old vigor.

The Minister of War bowed deeply. “I am only attempting to bring to Your Majesty’s attention aspects of the matter that may have escaped your notice. We will, of course, abide by Your Majesty’s ultimate decision.”

Even from across the room, Raesinia could read the expression on her father’s face. She decided the time had come for an interruption.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” Raesinia bobbed her head in the direction of the ministers, then curtsied deeply toward the bed. “Your Majesty, you sent for me?”

“I did,” the king said. “The rest of you, out. I would speak to my daughter alone.”

Raesinia stepped aside so the assembled notables could file past her. The Grand Bishop murmured something sympathetic in his heavy Murnskai accent as he went by, and Torahn dismissed her with a glance and a perfunctory nod.

Only the last one to leave caught her eye. He was a short man, no taller than Raesinia, and his bulging waistcoat made him look very nearly round. The crown of his head was bald, but a wild ruff of hair behind his ears and around the back of his skull made up for it, giving him the look of a classical philosopher. The most remarkable thing about his appearance, though, was his spectacles. They were enormous, each lens almost a handsbreadth in diameter, and so thick and curved that they provided only the most distorted vision of the face behind them. Strange, twisted blobs of nose- and cheek-tinted color moved and twisted as he turned his head, but when he looked straight at you, as he looked at Raesinia now, his eyes would suddenly appear magnified disconcertingly to five times their normal size.

It would be easy to dismiss this funny little man, and many had done so, always to their sorrow. His Grace Duke Mallus Kengire Orlanko, Minister of Information and master of the Concordat, was always ready to embrace any advantage, even that offered by his own innocuous appearance. Raesinia was not fooled. The Last Duke was widely agreed to be the most dangerous man in Vordan, and she had spent enough time at the palace to know that this was, if anything, an understatement. She wasn’t certain there was a more dangerous man in all the world.

Today he favored her with only a brief smile and a little bow before continuing on his way, shutting the bedroom door behind him. Raesinia went to the bed, which was so big she was forced to climb up onto it to reach her father. He extracted one hand from the constricting comforters and reached out to her, and she took it between both of hers. It was thin and light, like a songbird in her palm. His bones seemed as brittle as twigs, and his skin was papery-dry.

He turned his head in her direction and blinked watery eyes. “Raesinia?”

“I’m here, Father.” She gripped his hand a little tighter. “It’s good to see you awake.”

“For a change.” He coughed. “Every time I wake up, I think of a thousand things to do, in case this time is the last. But I’m always exhausted before I can get through one or two.” He closed his eyes and let out a rattling breath. “I’m sorry, Raesinia.”

“Don’t speak that way, Father,” Raesinia said. “This may be the beginning of an improvement. Doctor-Professor Indergast-”

“Doctor-Professor Indergast is honest with me,” he interrupted. “Unlike the rest of the fools and flatterers, or that great whale in red.”

“He is very skilled,” Raesinia insisted. “Better than any other doctor in Vordan.”

“Some things are beyond skill.” The king squeezed her hand and opened his eyes. “But I did not call you here to argue.”

Raesinia ducked her head, and there was a moment of silence while the king composed his thoughts. Finally, he said, “Do you know Count Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran?”

“Only in passing,” Raesinia said, blinking in surprise. “He was at court three years ago, I think. We spoke briefly.”

“You do not know much about him, then?”

“Just that he went to Khandar to suppress the rebellion, and that he’s been doing well. Why?”

“His mission to Khandar has been a success. A complete success, in fact, beyond anyone’s expectations. Even our good Minister of Information seemed surprised, and you know how rare an event that is.” He gave a dry chuckle, which turned into another cough. “I’ve summoned him back to Vordan. He’s on his way as we speak. When he gets here, I’m going to make him the Minister of Justice.”

Raesinia was quiet. Plans rearranged themselves at the back of her mind, new information slotting into place. She kept her expression neutral.

“I’m sure he’ll do well there,” she said, after a moment. “But-”

“But what does this have to do with you?” The king sighed. “I have to look ahead, Raesinia. Think about what you’ll be left with after I’m gone. Orlanko has too much influence on the cabinet already. Grieg is in his pocket, and Torahn is heading in that direction. Count Almire has made a career of avoiding politics. If Orlanko puts one of his own in Justice as well, he’ll be king in all but name.”

“If you don’t trust Orlanko, get rid of him,” Raesinia said, unable to keep a bit of heat out of her voice. “Better yet, have him executed.”

“If only it were that simple. The Borels would never allow it. And, like it or not, Orlanko may be all that has kept us afloat since. .”

He trailed off, eyes losing focus and staring away past the ceiling. But Raesinia could finish the thought on her own. She’d been only thirteen at the time of Vansfeldt, the battle that had cost Vordan its war with Borel and its crown prince in one disastrous afternoon. Her father had been sick then as well, too sick to go to the front as he felt he ought, and though his illness had waxed and waned since then, she wasn’t sure his spirit had ever recovered.

The king blinked and shook his head weakly. “Tired. I’m so tired, Raesinia.”

“Rest, then. I can come back later.”

“Not just yet. Listen to me. Count Mieran is. . more than he seems. I had hoped. .” He swallowed. “I had plans. But I am running out of time. I think. . I think you can trust him. At the very least, he is no friend of our Last Duke. He will help you, Raesinia.” Tears glistened in the royal eyes. “You will need all the allies you can get.”

“I understand, Father.”

“It will be hard for you. I never meant for this to happen.” His voice softened, as if he were drifting away. “None of this. You were supposed to have. . something else. Not this. But. .”

“It’s all right, Father.” Raesinia leaned over him and kissed him, gently, on the cheek. His attendants had bathed him in rosewater, but the perfume was unable to cover the sick-sweet scent of rot wafting from the royal flesh. “Everything will be all right. Now rest.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, eyes slowly closing. “My little girl. . I’m sorry. .”

Raesinia’s own quarters were in a faux-medieval tower named, inelegantly, the Prince’s Turret. Most of its rooms had been shut since the death of her brother, Dominic, and Raesinia preferred to live simply in a few chambers on the ground floor. She had the keys to the whole place, however, and it was easy enough to unlock the servants’ stairs and slip up, past silent sitting rooms and parlors with furniture covered in dust sheets, and emerge on the roof.

Strictly speaking, she did not have to be naked to accomplish what she was about to do. There was no point in ruining a perfectly good dress, though, and it appealed to her sense of melodrama. Raesinia had decided long ago that this was a defect in her character, that in the same way a coward lacked moral foundation and a drunkard strength of will, there was something in the pit of her soul that gave her an unhealthy weakness for sappy gestures and romantic poetry. Alas, the acknowledgment of this flaw did little to help excise it, and periodically it got the better of her.

The sun had set behind the forests to the west, but dark crimson light still stained the sky in that direction, painting the scattered clouds the color of blood. All around her were the lights of Ohnlei, neat rows of lanterns marking the avenues and byways, clusters of more distant lamps picking out the dark hulks of the Ministry buildings. Most of these had gone dark already as the clerks retired for the evening, but as always the Cobweb was a blaze of light, and smoke puffed merrily from its many chimneys. The Ministry of Information ran in overlapping shifts, it was said, like a coal mine, and there were clerks in the deep basements who had never seen the sun.

Farther to the south, across the intervening belt of royal parks and carefully tended wilderness, a deeper, ruddier glow marked the edges of the city of Vordan. Raesinia stared for a long time in that direction, as the wind whipped around her and raised goose bumps on her bare skin. It was a warm July night, but four stories up the breeze still carried a chill.

Only a single lantern burned atop the Prince’s Turret, and no guards waited there. It was just a circular expanse of slate surrounded by an irregular raised lip meant to suggest a real castle’s crenellations. In better times, the prince might have used it to breakfast in the sun, but Raesinia was certain no one but she had been up there in years. The pigeons that infested Ohnlei like lice on a beggar had stained the stones white and gray.

For her purposes, the important feature of the roof was what it overlooked. The Prince’s Turret formed the northeasternmost corner of the great rambling palace, and it was well away from any of the heavily trafficked areas. Looking down, Raesinia could see a raked gravel path four stories below, and beyond that a low stone wall marking the edge of the gardens. The only windows that looked onto it were her own, and she kept the curtains drawn. Squads of Noreldrai Grays patrolled the perimeter in a slow procession, but they only passed at twenty- or thirty-minute intervals, and the torches they carried made them visible from a long way off.

One of these squads had just passed out of sight, and Raesinia gave them a count of two hundred to get safely around the corner of the vast, irregular building. She stepped up onto the lip of stone, staring out over the darkened trees beyond the edge of the grounds, and forced herself to stand straight, with her arms at her sides.

She felt as though she ought to say something, to mark the occasion, although there was no one to hear.

“I wish,” she said, “that there was a better way.”

Raesinia extended one foot, let it hang tingling for a moment in midair, then tumbled forward off the wall and into darkness.

She’d always pictured the few seconds of fall telescoping into an eternity, time stretching like taffy as the wall of the tower rushed past and the wind whipped across her bare skin. In fact, she was barely aware of it, a single blurred moment of weightless, involuntary terror before the crashing pain of impact. Her shoulder hit the ground first, shattering the bone instantly, and an instant later her skull impacted so hard on the gravel it shattered like an egg. The princess’ body twitched once, feet pushing weakly at the gravel, then lay still and broken in the gathering twilight.

Deep inside, in the darkest pit of her being, she felt something stir.

Raesinia wished she could faint. Some of the ladies at court were given to fainting, and she had always considered it a useless affectation in that setting, but she had lately come to appreciate that it was simply the body’s way of trying to spare its occupant some grief in a difficult time. Unfortunately, in her current state, she seemed to have lost the knack, and so she could feel the grinding of bone against fragmented bone in her shoulder, the slow seep from the cracks in her skull, and the drip of blood from where innumerable bits of sharp gravel had driven themselves into her back.

She had become somewhat indifferent to pain over the years. Repeated demonstrations had made her acutely aware that there was her body, currently lying in a broken heap in the gravel, and herself, somewhere else entirely, and that pain and all sensations of that kind were simply signals from one to the other, as one ship might warn another of a dangerous reef via semaphore flags. Still, she couldn’t quite banish her discomfort, and she directed a silent, metaphorical glare at the magical binding and demanded that it quit lazing about and do its job.

It emerged languidly from the depths of her soul, yawning like a sleepy tiger coming out of his cave. Raesinia imagined it casting about to see what she’d done to herself now, heaving a sigh at the extent of the damage, and reluctantly setting to work. She knew it was ridiculous to anthropomorphize it so-it was simply a process, after all, no different from that which consumed wood and phlogiston to make fire, or turned exposed iron into rust. But after living-if that was the word-for four years with the thing wrapped around her soul, she couldn’t help feeling as if it had moods and feelings of its own. She imagined it looking in her direction with hooded, reproachful eyes before it set to work.

Her skull shifted, as though under invisible fingers. Chips and fragments of bone reassembled themselves like a jigsaw puzzle, knitting back together into a seamless whole. The rents in her skin drew closed, like someone stitching up a seam. Her shoulder was next, torn muscles reknitting, arm straightening as the bones snapped into place. She felt an unpleasant stirring along her back, and as soon as she was able she heaved herself up onto her knees and listened to the quiet click-click as bits of rock that had been forced deep beneath her skin dug themselves out again and clattered to the ground.

Within a few minutes, she could stand. The binding had restored her to the state she had been in before she stepped off the roof, plus or minus a layer of grime and a few pints of blood smeared on her skin or soaking into the turf. As best she could see it was the state she would be in until the long-postponed Day of Judgment finally came to pass. The same state, in other words, that she’d been in four years ago, before she had died the first time.

–

Sothe appeared out of the darkness. She had a way of moving that was so quiet she seemed to materialize from nothing, like a ghost, with equally terrifying effect. In this case, her aura of menance was diminished by the fact that she wore the long blue dress and gray apron of a palace lady’s maid, and was carrying a fluffy towel. Even in this attire, though, she had a formidable air, tall and slim as a blade, dark hair cut short as a boy’s, and sharp, aquiline features.

As far as the world was concerned, Sothe was Raesinia’s maid and personal attendant. That was true, but her duties went considerably further than that. Raesinia knew that before entering her service Sothe had been highly placed in Duke Orlanko’s Concordat, though she was closemouthed about what exactly had prompted her depature.

“There has to be a better way,” Raesinia said. “I mean, this is ridiculous.”

It was easy enough to get into or out of the palace during the day, when a steady stream of delivery carts arrived to feed its vast appetite. Unfortunately, during the day the princess royal needed to be seen. By night, the grounds were closed off and patrolled, which had forced Raesinia to devise this somewhat unorthodox method of escaping unseen.

“It has the virtue of being unexpected,” Sothe said.

“We should knock out those ridiculous leaded glass windows and put in something I can open. Or at the very least get the gardeners to put a planter here. Fill it with dirt and grow something soft. Lavender, maybe. Then I wouldn’t come out of it smelling like blood and brains.”

“The gardeners might wonder,” Sothe said, “why it looked like something had fallen on their plants from a great height.”

As she spoke, she dragged one foot back and forth across the gravel where Raesinia had landed, erasing the small crater and burying the bloodstains. Raesinia sighed and rolled her shoulders, feeling a few errant splinters of bone click back into place. She wiped the worst of the blood off her skin and handed the towel back to Sothe, who accepted it without comment and offered Raesinia a folded silk robe. Thus at least minimally attired, the princess led the way away from the house and out into the woods, Sothe ghosting along behind her.

“Any trouble tonight?” Raesinia said, pushing aside an overhanging branch.

“None at all.” Sothe frowned. “The man Orlanko has assigned to you is. . inattentive. I ought to write him a reprimand.”

“I hope you’ll refrain, for both our sakes.”

“I don’t know,” Sothe said. “I might enjoy a bit more of a challenge.”

Raesinia looked over her shoulder at her maid, but her expression was unreadable. That was the trouble with Sothe-she never smiled, and it was almost impossible to tell when she was joking. Raesinia was fairly sure this was one of those times, but not completely certain. Sothe did occasionally complain that soft living was taking the edge off her skills, and she’d been known to take extreme measures to stay in practice.

The forest they were traversing was as much a work of artifice as the manicured gardens of the palace. It had been carefully tended and sculpted by generations of gardeners into the very epitome of what a forest ought to be, with tall, healthy trees spreading leafy branches, and no irritating undergrowth or unexpected deadfalls that might tangle the footing of an unsuspecting courtier. It was therefore easy going, even with bare feet and by moonlight, and before long they’d reached one of the many little lanes of packed earth that wound through the woods. Here a carriage was waiting, a battered one-horse cab. An elderly gray mare waited in the traces, munching contentedly from a feed bag.

Sothe attended to the horse while Raesinia climbed inside. Gathered on the battered wooden seat, with Sothe’s usual attention to detail, were her necessaries: more towels and a jug of water for a more thorough cleaning, pins for her hair, and clothes and shoes for the evening. As the carriage lurched into motion, Raesinia set about effecting her transformation.

By the time the regular clicking of the wheels over cobblestones indicated that they’d reached the city proper, she was ready. No one from the palace would have recognized her, which was of course the idea. Her normally shoulder-length hair was pinned up and tucked under a short-brimmed slouch cap, and she’d traded the silk robe for cotton trousers and a gray blouse. It was a boyish outfit, although she doubted anyone would mistake her for a boy. That wasn’t the point. Rather, it was the kind of thing a girl student of the University might wear-comfortable and casually defiant of custom. In the taverns and eateries of the Dregs, it was as good as a uniform.

She’d originally wanted to change her name, but Sothe had advised against it. Responding properly to a false name took a good deal of training, and there was always the chance of slipups. Besides, there were thousands of girls named Raesinia in the city, all roughly her age, products of a brief fashion for naming children in honor of the newborn princess. So she became Raesinia Smith, a good solid Vordanai name. Raesinia had spent a few interminable court sessions daydreaming an elaborate backstory for her alter ego, complete with parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, family tragedies, and bittersweet young loves, but somewhat to her disappointment no one had ever asked.

The clicking slowed and stopped. Raesinia checked herself over in the hand mirror Sothe had thoughtfully provided, found nothing out of the place, and opened the carriage door to step out into the Dregs.

She was immediately assaulted by a blast of heat and a blaze of light. It was well past sunset, but the streets were as crowded as if it were noon, and nearly as bright. The torches and braziers burning in front of every open establishment were traditional, as were the lanterns carried by some passersby, but Professor Roetig’s new-pattern gas lamps outshone them all with a steady, unceasing radiance, standing tall atop their high steel sconces. They gave an oddly manic cast to the whole scene, as though the scurrying nighttime revelers were flouting some celestial law.

Carriages were rare in that part of town, and those that were visible were all hired cabs. The three or four miles of Old Street that ran across the front of the University were mostly fronted by shops and drinking establishments catering to the student body, but above and behind these places of business were innumerable second- and third-floor rooms and tumbledown tenements. Here lived those scholars not wealthy enough to secure living space on University grounds, alongside the hawkers, publicans, and prostitutes who worked on and around the nearby streets.

Raesinia loved the Dregs because it was a contradiction in terms. It was on the north side of the river-that was to say, the correct or fashionable side-and only a stone’s throw from the respectable brick-fronted town houses of Saint Uriah Street. And, in theory, the students of the University were mostly the scions of gentle families, or else the very best and brightest the lower orders had to offer. On the other hand, that student body consisted almost exclusively of young men, and wherever young men gather together with money in their pockets, an industry will arise, as if by magic, to provide them with what they need in terms of wine, women, and song. The paradox gave the whole area a kind of reputable disreputability that attracted exactly the sort of person Raesinia was looking for.

Most of the taverns and restaurants had signboards displaying their names and painted crests for the benefit of the illiterate, in accordance with ancient tradition, but in more modern times some bright storekeeper had come up with the idea of erecting a flagpole, cantilevered diagonally out over the heads of the pedestrians, to fly the banner of his establishment. Like any good idea, this had been rapidly copied, and so the gaslights shone on rows of hundreds of triangular flags, now hanging limp in the hot, windless air. Tradition had grown up surprisingly quickly here as well, giving the flags a uniform shape and design-three simple bars of horizontal color, different combinations marking the various shops to the eyes of the cognoscenti.

A trained observer could gather quite a bit from those colors. In a crowded market, the wine sellers had specialized, and by now their particular combination of colors marked them as surely as a count’s heraldry. The top bar usually represented the political affiliation of the clientele, or at least the primary language spoken within. The University drew its students from half the continent, and so while the majority of the flags Raesinia could see were topped by solid Vordanai blue, she could also spot the muddy red of Borel, the yellow of Hamvelt, the dove gray of Noreld, and even a few spots of white for lonely Murnskai scholars, hundreds of miles from home.

Nor were the triple-striped emblems confined to the flags. Quite a few of the young people on the street wore armbands blazoned with the symbol of their preferred establishment. Others showed the colors as a band around their hats, or, in the case of the more well-heeled students, in jeweled pins on their breasts or at their collar. Thus one could tell at a glance who was who, since where someone drank conveyed a great deal about his views and affiliations, and Raesinia’s practiced eye automatically sorted the crowd into Republicans, Utopians, Redemptionists, and a hundred other factions, sects, and splinter groups.

The pin she wore at her own collar was a delicate butterfly wrought in silver, its wings colored in blue, green, and gold. She sought out the flag that matched it, and found it floating lazily over the warm updraft from a torch stand. The windows of the Blue Mask blazed with light, and as she walked toward it she could smell the familiar cocktail of sawdust, charring meat, and cheap liquor. Raesinia looked over her shoulder at Sothe.

“You can come in, you know,” she said. “You don’t need to follow me out in the dark like some kind of voyeur.”

“Safer not to,” Sothe said. “You know I’ll be nearby if you need assistance.”

“Suit yourself.” Privately, Raesinia thought Sothe simply preferred lurking alone in shadowy corners to sitting with friends by the fire, but it wasn’t worth the argument. She squared her shoulders, pushed aside the curtain that blocked the doorway-the door was wedged open to admit the summer air-and went inside.

The common room of the Blue Mask was a miasma of wood smoke, tobacco fumes, and delicious-smelling steam wafting from a couple of big cauldrons over the fire. The tables were crowded tonight, and the pair of serving maids were having difficulty threading their way past the tight-packed patrons. In other taverns, in other places, there might have been games of dice or cards, discussions of merchant shipping or criminal enterprise, even poetry and literary criticism. Here at the Blue Mask, the overriding obsession was politics. Raesinia could hear a half dozen arguments in progress, overlapping and occasionally interrupting one another in a nonstop babble of voices.

“-the natural rights of man demand-”

“-you can’t just assume equity. You’ve got to-”

“-don’t give me ‘natural rights.’ I-”

“-Voulenne says-”

“-the parliament in Hamvelt resolved to do something about-”

“-Voulenne can suck my cock, and so can you-”

Raesinia breathed this atmosphere in with the air of a creature returning to its natural environment, or a man surfacing after a long dive. A few patrons noticed her, and waved or shouted inaudibly in her direction. She waved back and threw herself into the throng, working her way past the crowded tables and stepping nimbly out of the way of wildly gesticulating limbs.

Here and there a catcall followed her, but she was used to that. Barely one in a hundred University students was female, and while the ratio was somewhat redressed by visitors who didn’t actually attend the school, Old Street still felt like the eye of a raging storm of indiscriminate masculine humors. When she first came here, Raesinia had taken such things personally, but she’d since come to understand they were more of an automatic reaction, like dogs barking at one another when they meet in the park.

At the rear of the common room was a flimsy door, leading to a short corridor off which there were a number of dining rooms where one could talk with at least the illusion of privacy. Raesinia headed for these and knocked twice on the second door along. Inside, a barely audible conversation was suddenly silenced.

“Who is it?” someone said, a bit muffled.

“It’s me.”

The door opened, slowly.

“We ought to have a secret knock,” someone said from inside. “It’s not a proper conspiracy without a secret knock. I feel stupid just shouting, ‘Who is it?’”

“You and your secret knocks,” someone else said. “And codes and signals with dark lanterns and God knows what else. If you had your way we’d spend all day memorizing the damned things and never have time to get anything done.”

“I just think it adds tone, is all. You wouldn’t catch Orlanko’s people just shouting, ‘Who’s there?’ through the damned door-”

“Raes!”

Something small and fast-moving hit Raesinia around the midriff, and a pair of arms locked behind her and made a spirited effort to squeeze the air from her lungs. For Raesinia this was actually not much of a handicap, but she staggered under the impact of the ballistic hug and had to throw an arm against the doorway for support. She hoped that Sothe, no doubt watching from somewhere, would not conclude that she was under attack and charge in with guns blazing.

“You did it!” her assailant squealed. “You did it, you did it, you did it! It worked!”

“Did I?” Raesinia managed, in a croak.

“Cora,” someone said, “I think Raes might be in a better state to appreciate the news if you let her breathe.”

“Sorry.”

Cora detached herself reluctantly, like a barnacle peeling away from a ship’s hull. She still had to look up to meet Raesinia’s eyes, but only just. Cora was fourteen, with the gangly, broad-shouldered frame of a girl still growing like a weed. She had straw-colored hair bound back in a thick ponytail and a face that looked like the site of a pitched battle between freckles and acne. She had a tendency to bounce on the balls of her feet when she was excited, and she was bouncing now, her green eyes blazing.

“And close the door,” Faro said, from the direction of the sofa. “Unless you want to share our secrets with everybody in the common room. Honestly, you’d think that none of you had ever been part of a cabal before.”

The back room was a bit cramped but cozy. The fireplace was cold and dead, but the night was quite warm enough already. The battered old sofa and chairs had been dragged from their ordinary positions into a rough circle. Faro had claimed the entire couch for himself, legs propped up on one arm and head hanging off at the other, upside down. It was a testament to Faro that he could make even this awkward position look graceful, if not particularly dignified. He was a slender youth, with short dark hair and a face like a hatchet, dressed in well-tailored gray velvet.

Behind him, Johann Maurisk-whom, for reasons Raesinia had never quite understood, everyone addressed by his family name-paced beside the window. He was as thin as Faro, but where Faro was lithe and graceful, Maurisk had the sunken-eyed look of a desert hermit. He was constantly in motion, walking back and forth, toying with his shirt or rapping out an unconscious rhythm on the windowsill with long, bony fingers.

Cora stepped back, took a deep breath, and made a visible effort to get control of herself.

“It worked!” she said. “I mean, I knew it would work, if everything went the way you said it would, but now everything has, and I’m having a hard time believing it. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen when the markets open again on Monday?” She giggled. “The whole Exchange is going to be swimming in coffee beans! I know at least three firms that have been hoarding for months, waiting for bad news, and now I hear they’re clearing out the warehouses. You won’t be able to sell the stuff for two pennies a bushel!”

“I’m thinking of putting up nets below the Grand Span,” Faro said. “We could fish the jumping bankers out of the river and go through their pockets.”

Maurisk slapped the windowsill and turned to glare at Faro, who smiled back impishly. Maurisk appeared to completely lack a sense of humor, which left him ill at ease in Faro’s company.

“I take it the news has reached the market, then?” Raesinia said.

“This afternoon,” Cora said. “We saw De Borg himself strutting about like the top peacock, rubbing everyone’s faces in it.”

“And we did well?”

Cora gaped, made speechless by this colossal understatement. Faro, grinning upside down and head lolling like a corpse, said, “Quite well, apparently. I don’t pretend to understand the specifics of it, but I gather we’ve just about hit the jackpot.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Cora protested. “I bought De Borg’s paper at ten pence, on a ninety-five-point margin, and as of close today it was back to par. After fees and so on, that gives us a return of about a hundred and eighty to one.”

Truth be told, Raesinia didn’t follow the specifics, either, but she trusted Cora’s assessment. She’s a prodigy, after all. That last number made her sit up and take notice, though. Raesinia was no financier, but she could multiply, and a hundred and eighty to one meant that the little pool of money their circle had laboriously accumulated had been transformed overnight, as if by alchemy, into a substantial fortune.

“I’m not really recommending it,” Faro said, “just throwing the idea out, really, but you realize that we could just take the money and run. Go to Hamvelt and live like princes for the rest of our days.” He looked around the room, from Maurisk’s burning eyes to Raesinia’s guarded ones, and sighed. “Fair enough. I’m just saying.”

“It’s not about the money,” Raesinia said.

“Of course it’s not about the money,” Maurisk said. “I’ve always said money is only a distraction. We should be out there”-he stabbed a finger at the window-“raising the awareness of the common-”

Faro laughed and slid off the couch like a cat, landing in a crouch and rolling his shoulders before straightening up.

“I think awareness is not our problem,” he said. “Everyone is perfectly aware of what’s going on. They just don’t see anything they can do about it.”

“Then we need to tell them-” Maurisk began.

“In any case,” Raesinia said, raising her voice before the usual argument could get started, “we’re on our way.”

“We certainly are,” Faro said. “Though God knows to where.” He slapped his thighs. “This calls for a drink, I’d say. Let me go and get something.”

He went out, and Raesinia turned to Maurisk. “What about Ben and the doctor? Are we expecting them?”

“Not tonight,” he said, with a glower. “They’re in Newtown. Reconnaissance, Ben calls it, though he wouldn’t tell me what he’s expecting to find.”

Cora waggled her eyebrows and gave a lewd giggle, and Maurisk snorted. This was a joke; neither of the last two members of their cabal was likely to be found in any of the South Bank’s notorious brothels.

“Well, I’ve got news. I suppose we can fill them in later.” Raesinia paused as the door opened and Faro returned, with two bottles under each arm. “I’ve had word from my contact at the palace.”

“Oh?” Cora perked up. “Anything I can take to the Exchange?”

“I’m. . not sure. The king is going to name Count Mieran to the Ministry of Justice.”

There was a pause. Faro uncorked one of the bottles and started setting up mugs on a side table.

“This is the same Count Yonas or some such who has been smiting the heathens so heroically in Khandar?”

Raesinia nodded. “Count Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran.”

“And what do we know about him?” Maurisk said.

“Not much,” Raesinia admitted. “But there’s no love lost between him and Orlanko.”

“That’s got to be good for us, then,” Cora said. “The enemy of my enemy, and all that.”

“I don’t know,” Faro said. “I’ve found that most of the time the enemy of your enemy can be relied on to stick a dagger in your back while you’re busy with the first fellow.”

“We’ll see soon enough,” Maurisk said. “It’s Giforte who really matters. If Count Mieran puts someone new in as head of the Armsmen, it’ll tell us a bit about what he plans. If he promotes Giforte instead-”

“Then I’ll drink another toast,” Faro said. “Giforte is a crusty old fart with more breeding than brains. Not that there’s any shortage of such around His Majesty.”

“Long may he reign,” Cora said, and the others echoed her automatically.

“Here,” Faro said. “Better to do that with wine in hand.”

Maurisk glared at him while Faro distributed the mugs, then looked up at Raesinia.

“Was there anything else?” he said. Maurisk was a teetotaler, yet another point of contention between him and the hard-drinking Faro.

“Not at the moment,” Raesinia said, accepting a mug herself.

Maurisk’s habitual scowl deepened. “Then I will say good evening.”

He went for the door, dodging Faro’s attempt to offer him a mug, and let it bang closed behind him. Faro stared after him for a moment, giving his best impression of an abandoned puppy, then laughed and turned back to the others. “And I will say good riddance.” He took a long sip from his mug and swallowed thoughtfully. “Honestly, Raes, what possessed you to bring him into this?”

“He’s smart, and he believes in taking the country back from Orlanko,” Raesinia said. “And he takes it seriously.” She brought the mug to her lips.

The wine was actually rather good, Raesinia thought. In spite of its run-down appearance, the Blue Mask kept a good cellar. The unwashed floors and ratty furniture were a deliberate affectation, an act; situated as it was on prime real estate beside the University, the rent on the Mask was probably higher than many noble town houses.

An act. Raesinia stared into the depths of her mug, letting the conversation drift around her. Faro talked enough for three, anyway, pretending to flirt with Cora and laughing hugely at his own jokes.

It’s all an act. Raesinia Smith was an affectation, just like the Blue Mask. So, for that matter, was Raesinia Orboan, the delicate, empty-headed princess she played at Ohnlei whenever formal ceremonies demanded it. She might have been real, once, but she’d died four years ago, coughing her lungs out in a bed stinking of piss and vomit. What had risen from that bed was. . something else, an imposter.

She felt the binding twitch, ever so slightly. It wouldn’t let her get drunk-she suspected it saw the inebriated state as a problem to be corrected like any other. Once, as an experiment, Sothe had procured a gallon of potent but awful liquor and Raesinia had downed the lot in a single sitting. All it had produced was a powerful need to visit the toilet.

There were only three people in Vordan who knew what kind of creature lurked underneath her masks. One was Raesinia herself, and another was Sothe, whom she had come to trust with her life. The third was the Last Duke, Mallus Kengire Orlanko. It was Orlanko who had intervened when Raesinia ought to have died. He’d called in his backers, Sworn Church priests in black cloaks and glass masks, and they had done something.

At the time, Raesinia hadn’t appreciated the brilliance of it. Now she understood all too well. The king had no sons, not since Vansfeldt, so what better way to keep the future queen under your thumb? Let even a whisper of the truth escape-that the princess was cursed, damned, not even human-and the mobs would be howling for her head, with every priest in the city egging them on. When the king died. .

Long may he reign. Raesinia took a pull from her mug. But he wouldn’t; anyone could see that. Already the city lived in fear of the duke’s Concordat, and the tax farmers squeezed the common folk to pay the Crown’s debt to Viadre. When her father died, Raesinia would ascend the throne, but Orlanko would be king in all but name. His northern allies would come seeking their rewards, and no doubt Raesinia would find herself married to some Murnskai prince, while Borelgai profiteers looted the kingdom and Sworn Priests burned the Free Churches.

And so Raesinia Smith had built her little conspiracy, step by step, lying to everyone. The depth of her betrayals-not telling Cora and the others who she really was, breaking her father’s confidences-roiled her stomach, but there was no other option. If Orlanko found out she wasn’t the empty-headed, pliable princess he thought she was. .

Cora laughed, and Faro grinned. Raesinia looked away from them and stared down into her mug. It’s not a betrayal, not really. We all want the same thing. Power in Vordan for the Vordanai, and the end of the Last Duke. No more tax farmers, no more Borelgai bankers muscling honest merchants into poverty. No more disappearances in the night and mysterious bodies floating in the river. No more screams from the depths of the Vendre.

It was the right thing to do. She knew it was. Even Father would understand that, wouldn’t he?