The Shadow Throne

CHAPTER SEVEN

RAESINIA

Raesinia’s candle had burned down to a stub, floating in a saucer of molten wax. Her hand was splotchy with ink, and there was a spot on her index finger where the pen had rubbed it raw that would be a blister tomorrow.

Or, at least, it would be if she were a normal, living person. She set down the pen and felt the binding twitch, and the itchy pain was replaced with a cool numbness. The red spot faded away as though it had never been, leaving plain, unblemished skin.

She’d been working on the speech for nearly six hours straight. After they’d found Danton, Sothe had insisted she spend a day at Ohnlei, putting in appearances and playing the dutiful daughter. Raesinia hated it. Her grief was a palpable thing, a tight, hot ball in her throat, but parading it in front of everyone made her feel like a fraud. She’d visited her father’s bedside with Doctor-Professor Indergast, but the king hadn’t awoken. His breathing was terrifyingly weak under the duvet.

I’m sorry, Father. She’d spent a long time by the bedside, gripping his hand. I’m sorry I have to lie to you. I’m sorry I can’t stay. Then, once darkness fell, it was time for another fast trip down from the top of the tower so Sothe could smuggle her into the city.

Raesinia didn’t get tired anymore, in the normal sense of the word, but she was still subject to a kind of mental exhaustion. Too many hours of concentration left her feeling as if her eyeballs had been boiled in tar. She grabbed her elbows behind her head, arched her back, and stretched, feeling tiny pops in her shoulders and all up and down her spine.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ben raise his head, eyes surreptitiously locked on her breasts. Raesinia hurriedly unbent and crossed her arms over her chest with an inward sigh. Ben’s infatuation, which she had regarded at first as a curiosity, was getting more and more problematic. He tried to act like the soul of courtesy, even when it meant getting in her way, and he was more insistent that she not expose herself to anything that might be dangerous. Raesinia, who went out of her way to do anything that was dangerous on the ground that it was better for her to be in the middle of it than anyone else, was left in an awkward position.

And what if he just comes out with it? She’d seen a look in his eye a couple of times that seemed to indicate he was on the verge of a confession of love, and only a hurried change of subject had distracted him. If he ever managed to spit it out-Then what? Break his heart, and risk him leaving the group? That didn’t sound like Ben, but Raesinia didn’t have much experience when it came to men and romance. Or else. . play along? How? That possibility was just a blur in her mind, a vaguely unthinkable gap. I don’t think I could fake love well enough to fool him.

It would have been easier for all concerned if she had actually fallen in love with him. She wasn’t certain she was still capable of that, though. Aside from Cora, he was probably her best friend among the conspirators. She could see, objectively, that he was kind, honest, idealistic, even handsome. But love? No.

Maybe the binding sees love as an illness, like drunkenness, and purges it before it has a chance to settle in. She wouldn’t mind that, on the whole. As far as she could tell, love was mostly good for making people act like morons.

Oh well. She looked down at the paper, where the ink had dried by now, and picked it up carefully to add to the stack. That should do it.

“Finished?” Ben said.

“I think so,” Raesinia said. “You two will have to look it over.”

Maurisk, who had his own portable writing desk set up in a corner of the room, gave a derisive snort.

“You already decided not to use my version,” he said. “So I don’t see what good my advice will do.”

“We all agreed that your version was excellent,” Raesinia said, trying to be soothing. “It would have done credit to a University symposium. It’s just that the common people aren’t up to your level, that’s all.”

Not to mention that your version was three hours long. Raesinia had no doubt that Danton could make an exhaustive history of the practice of banking in Vordan sound riveting, but she personally wouldn’t have been able to stand it.

“We should be educating them, then, instead of lowering ourselves to the lowest common denominator.”

“You’re still sore about the slogan,” Ben said.

“‘One eagle and the Deputies-General,’” Maurisk said, and sniffed. “What does that even mean? Our grievances go far beyond the price of bread, in any case, and it’s no good calling for the deputies without saying what you want them to do.”

“It’s caught the popular attention,” Raesinia said. “And you’ve been writing those broadsheets. That’s what will educate people in the end.”

“If you’d let me give a proper speech, instead of letting that lummox do everything, we might be farther along now,” Maurisk said. “He doesn’t read what I write properly.”

Raesinia wanted to point out that Maurisk’s writing was as dry as week-old bread crusts, but she refrained. The door opened and Faro came in, the noise of the common room of the Blue Mask following him for a moment before he shut the door behind him. He’d covered his customary finery with a heavy black cloak, and carried a thick leather satchel under one arm.

“God,” he said, “I never want to do that again. I felt like everyone on the street was watching me.”

“You look ridiculous in that cloak,” Maurisk said. “You might as well carry a sign saying ‘I’m up to no good.’”

“I’d be happy to,” Faro said. “Much safer than one saying ‘I’m carrying enough money to buy a small city.’ Besides, it’s essential. Cloak-and-dagger work, you know? Cloak”-he pushed the cloak back, revealing a steel gleam at his belt, opposite where he normally buckled his sword-“and dagger! I wouldn’t feel properly dressed otherwise.”

“You didn’t have any problems?” Raesinia said.

“Not unless you count the pounding of my heart.” Faro handed her the satchel. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t have all gone, in daylight.”

“We would have been noticed.” Raesinia undid the tie and riffled through the contents. Everything seems to be in order.

“I thought we wanted to be noticed,” Faro said.

“Not until tomorrow morning,” Raesinia said, retying the satchel. “All right. I’ll take this on to Cora.”

This, as expected, drew a protest from Ben. “I really wish-”

She cut him off. “I know. But let’s face it: I’m a lot less threatening than you are. We don’t want to spook anyone. I’ll be perfectly safe.” She couldn’t tell them that, in addition to her own personal immortality, she’d have Sothe riding escort. “You concentrate on going over the speech and getting Danton ready for tomorrow.”

“All right.” Ben got to his feet and met her by the door, catching her off guard. He wrapped his big arms around her in a tight hug, crushing her against his chest. “Be careful.”

Raesinia forced herself to relax, waiting patiently until he let go. She fussed awkwardly with her hair for a moment, then turned to the others and nodded.

“See you in the morning.” She paused. Something more seemed needed. “This is going to work. I can feel it.”

“He’s getting too forward,” Sothe said, from the darkness beside the Blue Moon’s entrance.

“Who? Ben?” Raesinia didn’t bother to ask how Sothe had been watching. Sothe seemed to know everything. “He’s harmless.”

“He’s besotted with you.” Sothe fell into step beside Raesinia. “That can be dangerous if you let him take liberties.”

“Given everything we’re involved in,” Raesinia said, “I think Ben is more or less the least of my worries, don’t you?”

Sothe frowned but didn’t answer. She led Raesinia around into an alley beside the tavern, where one of Vordan’s ubiquitous hired cabs was waiting. The driver tipped his hat respectfully, which Sothe ignored, vaulting into the carriage and turning to help Raesinia up after her. She rapped on the wall, and a snap of the driver’s reins coaxed the horses into motion.

This wasn’t a new cab, so they clacked and jolted over the cobbles. Raesinia patted the satchel again, to make sure it was still there, feeling an echo of Faro’s anxiety. It was an awful lot of money. Certainly enough to kill for, or try to, if anyone knew what they were doing.

“I’m worried about our security arrangements around Danton,” Sothe said after a while, apropos of nothing.

“I don’t think he’s a target,” Raesinia said. That had been preying on her mind. Danton went along cheerfully enough, but he’d never asked to be a part of any of this. “He’s too public a figure now. If he were arrested, or someone took a shot at him, the backlash would be worse than anything Danton himself could accomplish. That was the whole point of bringing him out in the open.”

“I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about us. It’ll be obvious that someone is pulling Danton’s strings, and Orlanko will be looking.”

“I thought your trick with the couriers was supposed to cover that.” Once they’d ensured that a steady stream of uniformed couriers was coming and going from Danton’s hotel suite, it was easy to slip an extra one through, letting the cabal members come and go without being followed.

Sothe waved a hand dismissively. “It won’t hold for long. It makes it too obvious we have something to hide. He’ll figure out a way through, depend on it.”

“It doesn’t have to hold for long,” Raesinia said. “Just long enough. My father is not getting any stronger.”

“Nevertheless-”

A splashing sound from outside drowned her out for a moment. They’d been following the Old Road south from the Dregs, avoiding the bridged section of the river around the Island. Just south of the University, the road ran across the Old Ford, a wide stretch of river that was only ankle-deep in places, made more passable over the years by the addition of large, flat stones to form a sort of causeway. The barrier to river navigation this created required a time-consuming portage for most vessels, and according to legend this blockage had been the original seed that had sprouted into the city of Vordan itself.

Beyond the ford lay Oldtown, a tangle of timber-and-plaster buildings and mazy cow paths. It was a hard place to find your way around during the day, much less in darkness. This cabby apparently knew his business, however, and once the carriage had splashed out of the ford it picked up a little speed and proceeded confidently into the curving streets.

Raesinia glanced at Sothe. “All right. You’re worried. What do you want to do about it?”

“I’d like to take a little more overt action against a few of Orlanko’s watchers.”

Raesinia winced. With Sothe, “overt action” usually meant “body parts floating in the river.” “Won’t that just draw his attention?”

“We’ve already got his attention. That goes double after tonight. I want to slap his hand, make him think a little harder before he sticks it out again.”

“Well. Security is your bailiwick.” Raesinia had been amazed at how naive the rest of the cabal could be. Perhaps she was paranoid, or perhaps she just knew Orlanko. Ben and Maurisk appeared to think that they could get away with giving false names and speaking in low voices. Without Sothe running interference, she was sure they’d all have ended up in the Vendre long ago. “Do what you need to do, but be careful.”

Sothe snorted. “I don’t need you telling me to be careful.”

The carriage came to a halt, and a rap from the driver indicated that they’d arrived at their destination. Raesinia opened the door and hopped down, looking back at Sothe. “Where will you be?”

“About.” Sothe waved vaguely. “I’ll be close if you need me.”

“Just don’t do anything precipitous. We can’t afford for this to get out of hand.” Raesinia hesitated. “And if anything does go wrong, make sure to get Cora out of there first.”

Sothe grimaced, but she could see the logic in this. After all, she can always fish me out of some drainage ditch if it comes to that. Cora could get hurt. Sothe nodded, and Raesinia turned to face the building she’d been driven to.

It was a big one, by Oldtown standards, two stories high and as long as several ordinary houses. It had once had real glass windows, too, though these had long ago been covered over with boards and canvas tarpaulins. Its stone walls and the brass double-circle bolted over the doorway identified it as a church. A few crumbling statues that might have been saints before the local boys had made a game of throwing stones at them perched over the gutters.

The big double doors at the front were tightly closed, but a side door was invitingly open, shedding a warm orange glow into the shadowed street. Raesinia picked her way toward it, carefully; the streets of Oldtown were packed earth, liberally sprinkled with horse dung. She could make out sounds from inside as she got closer. A group of people were singing, not particularly well but with considerable spirit.

The church-the Third Church of the Savior Karis’ Mercy, as the blackened metal letters on the door proclaimed-was the domain of a Mrs. Louise Felda. Her husband, Father Felda, had been the Free Priest to the Third’s congregation for well over forty years. Technically, he still was, though his declining energies in his old age had restricted his duties. As he became bedridden, his wife had taken over his duties, until she was more fully in charge than he had ever been.

Mrs. Louise Felda was a large and vigorous woman who looked like a giantess beside the shriveled form of her husband. Nowadays, she split her time between making sure his needs were cared for and bringing her idea of Karis’ mercy to the people of Oldtown, as best her resources would allow. This meant beds for the sick and the desperate, helping hands for those who weren’t right in the head, and warm meals for as many as she could manage. Raesinia had often thought that the city could do with more priests along the lines of Mrs. Felda.

Cora had grown up here, taken in as a soot-stained little girl and put to work helping the mistress wash bedding and change dressings. When she got older, she’d gone to work as an unofficial courier in the Exchange, delivering messages for pennies as the business of the nation clattered around her. That was where Raesinia had found her, back at the very beginning, when all she had was a vague notion and a burning need to do something. .

Raesinia shook her head and walked through the door. The interior of the old church was one enormous room, its wooden internal walls long ago torn away to expose the massive supporting beams that held up the roof. Here and there, small sections were partitioned off by hanging curtains to provide a bit of privacy. Bedrolls lined both walls and covered about half the available floor space at one end of the building, while the other end had a huge hearth and kettle and a table big enough to seat twenty, stacked high with dirty, mismatched crockery. A group standing in front of the fire was the source of the impromptu concert, which had segued from a hymn about Karis’ mercy to a bawdy song about a young man who couldn’t locate his belt buckle. The lyrics of the latter were mercifully obscure.

There were more people about than Raesinia had seen on her previous visits. A big crowd had gathered in the open space between the table and the beds, standing in small groups and talking to each other in low tones. They looked considerably more hale than Mrs. Felda’s typical strays, who were usually crippled, elderly, insane, or all three at once. These people, though obviously poor, were mostly young men and women, with the occasional child huddling against its mother’s skirts.

Cora was hovering near the edge of the crowd, talking to a group of women in colorful skirts and shawls. She caught sight of Raesinia and hurried over, looking agitated.

“Raes,” Cora said. “You made it.”

“No problems,” Raesinia said.

“And you’ve got. .” Cora’s eyes flicked to the satchel.

“I’ve got everything we need.” Raes eyed the crowd. “Are you sure we should go through with this?”

“None of these people know who we really are,” Cora said. “Even if one of them talks to Orlanko, we won’t be in danger.”

“I’m not worried about us,” Raesinia said. “I’m worried about them. If it goes wrong tomorrow, we could have a riot on our hands.”

“This was your idea, Raes.” Cora looked at the floor. “It’s the best chance we have of really hitting them where they’ll feel it without getting anybody killed in the process.”

“I know, I know.” She’d been the one who talked them all into the plan to begin with. Somehow, though, she hadn’t imagined coming face-to-face with the people who were going to be on the sharp end. Risking her own life-not that she was really risking it, a traitorous part of her mind supplied-was one thing. But we’re crossing the line here. No going back after this.

“It’ll be all right,” Cora said. “We’re going to have Danton ask everyone to stay calm. You know how convincing he is.”

Raesinia nodded. There was an odd gleam in Cora’s eyes, she thought. The girl’s genius had made this plan possible, and she was clearly eager to see it to fruition.

“I suppose we’ve got to do something with these letters,” Raesinia said. “You’re certain we don’t have any trouble here?”

“Oh yes. I know half of these people, and that half knows the other half. They’re mostly friends and relations of our regulars.”

“Where’s Mrs. Felda?”

“Upstairs.” Cora looked a little embarrassed. “I haven’t told her all the details. I don’t think she wants to know. Better for her if someone comes asking.”

“Okay. Let’s get started.”

Cora called for attention, and the assembled people stopped their whispering and looked up at her. Raesinia jogged over to the big table and clambered up on it to give herself some extra height, wishing they’d been able to bring Danton in to handle this part. She was used to lots of eyes on her-life at Ohnlei had been good training for that-but she knew she didn’t cut a terribly imposing figure.

“Um,” she began, and gritted her teeth. “Hi. I’m Raesinia Smith. I’m going to assume that Cora’s filled you in on the basics.”

“Only that we’ve got t’ go over t’ the Island tomorrow,” someone shouted. “An’ that we’ll get some money.”

“That’s about the shape of it,” Raesinia said. She set the satchel down, undid the laces, and extracted a single thin sheet from the stack inside. “This is a letter of deposit on the Second Pennysworth Bank for a hundred eagles. If you queue up at the bank and hand this over, they’ll give you a hundred eagles.”

“No, they won’t,” someone shouted. “Goddamned Borel bankers wouldn’t give a stiff like me the time of day.”

“If you show them this, they have to give it to you. It’s like a contract. If they break their word, none of the other banks will trust anything they’ve written.” Raesinia flourished the letter. She wasn’t sure how many people in the crowd could read, but it looked impressive enough, with a gilt border and embossed seal in the Borelgai colors.

“So that’s it?” someone near the front said. “We just got to take that paper and walk up to this bank? Sounds too damned easy to be worth a hundred eagles.”

“Together,” Raesinia said. “That’s important. Everyone has to go together. We’re going to gather at Farus’ Triumph before the bank opens, and Danton will make a speech, and then we’ll all go to the bank.”

The mention of Danton’s name sent a buzz through the crowd. Raesinia was surprised. She didn’t think his calls for the Deputies-General would have much resonance in Oldtown, where even an eagle a loaf might put good bread out of reach. Clearly, though, a few of those present had heard him speak, and the power of that voice had touched them out of all proportion to their understanding of what he’d said.

Dear God. He could make himself king, if he had half a brain to call his own. Thank Karis we got to him before someone else did. She gave a guilty wince at the thought but pushed it away.

“Why’re you givin’ away money?” said another, sharper voice. “What’s in it for you?”

Raesinia glanced at Cora, who shrugged helplessly. Staring out at the crowd, Raesinia fumbled for an answer they’d accept.

“Because every one of these letters means money out of Borel pockets,” she said. “Vordanai money, back to the Vordanai people where it belongs!”

This got a ragged cheer. Raesinia was no Danton, but, she reflected, it was easy to get a good response when you were handing out cash.

“Now,” Cora said, “let’s form a line. Remember, you need the letter to get the money, so make sure you keep it safe and don’t get it wet. .”

Raesinia entered Farus’ Triumph from the west, having taken a circuitous route over the Saint Vallax Bridge. Sothe had insisted that the members of the cabal not arrive as a group, and that they keep their distance from Danton unless something went badly wrong. Raesinia could see the sense in that-Orlanko’s eyes would be everywhere-but it gave her an itchy sense of powerlessness, as though the thing she was about to unleash was already out of her control.

Which it is, of course. She might be able to stop Danton from giving his speech, but what the crowd would do then was anybody’s guess.

Farus’ Triumph was one of the many great public works-including Ohnlei itself-erected by Farus V in honor of the military achievements of his late father, made possible by using the vast resources that Farus IV had expropriated from the dukes and other rebellious nobles.

It was a huge stone-flagged square, a quarter mile across, built in the very center of the Island. The square had four subsidiary fountains at the center of its four quadrants, boxing in one great central monster of statuary and foaming water. An equestrian statue of Farus IV, rearing with sword in hand, formed the centerpiece, while closer to ground level a ring of saints looked up at the king adoringly while various nymphs, water sprites, and the occasional swan spouted streams of water into a broad reflecting pool.

On the north side of the statue the pool was split by a stone staircase leading up to a flat disc that went all the way around the column, above the nymphs but well below the dead king. This had been the rostrum from which Farus V had loved to speak to the multitudes, at least until the ruinous expense of his projects had nearly wrecked the state and turned the commons against him. Since then, tradition had made the platform available to anyone who wished to speak publicly. The implicit understanding was that nothing treasonous or blatantly commercial was permitted, on pain of the displeasure of the Armsmen and the Last Duke. Danton’s speech today would push the boundaries of both, Raesinia thought, but Orlanko would have plenty of reasons to be angry anyway.

From the northwest corner of the square, Raesinia could see that the space was beginning to fill up, though from this distance it was hard to tell how many were Cora’s friends-of-friends from last night and how many were simply confused onlookers. There was a fair number of Armsmen as well, conspicuous with their head-tall staves and dark green uniforms.

She made a half circuit of the square, dodging touts and street vendors. In addition to the purveyors of food and drink, the pamphleteers seemed to be out in particular force today. Raesinia recognized several of her own broadsheets, along with quite a few others that had picked up the banner. ONE EAGLE AND THE DEPUTIES-GENERAL! blazed in huge type across half the papers she saw, along with DOWN WITH THE SWORN! NO OATHS TO ELYSIUM! NO MORE FOREIGN BLOODSUCKERS! and a great deal of anti-Borelgai raving.

The latter made Raesinia more than a little uncomfortable. The arrogance and general foreignness of the Borelgai, along with their dedication to the Sworn Church and domination of the banking and tax-farming establishment, made them an easy target for heated rhetoric. Some of Danton’s speeches had played on that theme, though Raesinia had done her best to keep the focus on the Church and the bankers rather than the Borelgai nation. Unfortunately, her efforts had not been enough to prevent a deep vein of anti-Borel sentiment from exploding upward along with the outpouring of anger they’d been hoping for. In particular, a great many young men of Vordan, having grown up with their fathers’ bitter stories of the War of the Princes, seemed to think that the best thing to do would be to go another round and hope to even the score.

Near the northeast corner of the square was a café, with wrought-iron tables and chairs set up in a jealously guarded bit of street space. One of these tables was already staked out by Ben, who sat with a cup of coffee by his side and his feet propped up on a second chair. Raesinia drifted over idly, as though she’d happened to see someone she knew, and he gave her a smile and gestured to another seat.

“Getting busy over there,” Ben said. “Anyone following you?”

“I don’t think so,” Raesinia said. Actually, Sothe was following her, which meant that any tail Orlanko had assigned would be having a bad time. “You?”

“Not that I could see.” He checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes to showtime, assuming Danton stays on schedule.”

“That’s up to Faro.”

“Maurisk and Sarton are camped out at the Exchange. I think Maurisk is still sulking because you took out that piece explaining the essential inequity of fractional-reserve lending.”

“He means well.” Raesinia sighed. A flash of movement caught her eye. “Here comes Cora.”

The teenager was visibly excited, bouncing across the flagstones as though she might be ready to take flight with any step, though bags under her eyes told of a night without sleep. Raesinia didn’t know whether the rest of the cabal ever wondered how she herself was able to stay up nights, sometimes for days at a time, with no ill effects. Maybe they think I’m a vampire.

“I think it’s going to work!” Cora said, too loudly. Raesinia winced, but the noise of the crowd would probably cover any casual conversation. “Look at all these people. It’s got to work!”

“No way to tell, until Danton does his thing,” Raesinia said. “Are you all right?”

“Just a little tired,” Cora said, flopping into a chair. “After this is over I think I’m going to sleep for a week.”

“After this is over,” Ben said, “I intend to get very, very drunk.”

“If we get away with it,” Raesinia said. “I don’t think they allow liquor in the Vendre.”

“We should get closer,” Cora said, bouncing back up from her chair and peering at the fountain. “Don’t you think we should get closer? We won’t be able to hear anything.”

Raesinia glanced at Ben. “I think it would be appropriate to join the crowd at this point, don’t you?”

He nodded. The inner circle of onlookers, those who’d known what was going to happen this morning, was now surrounded by a much larger crowd that had seen the gathering and wandered over out of simple curiosity. All around the square, people were leaving the cafés and heading inward, so as to be close enough to catch a glimpse of whatever had attracted the attention of so many people. The conspirators did the same, Raesinia and Ben strolling casually while Cora raced ahead.

They found a spot near the outer edge of the throng with a decent view of the central column, and Raesinia took a moment to assess the character of the crowd. The air was abuzz with the expectation of something, but there was less anger than she’d expected. Nearer the center, the mass of people were mostly poor workers, students, women, and vagabonds, but on the outskirts there were a fair number of middle- or upper-class types who wanted to see what the spectacle was about.

That was good, in Raesinia’s book. Anything that decreased the risk of outright violence. The specter of a riot, with the inevitable casualties and arrests, still haunted her. Not to mention that if the Armsmen have to shut down the Exchange, this will all have been for nothing.

A flurry of shouting and scattered cheers at the front of the crowd told them something was happening. Eventually a solitary figure emerged onto Farus V’s rostrum, dressed in a dark, sober coat and a respectable hat. Faro had done wonders with Danton-he’d trimmed the wild beard and slicked back his hair, then taken him on a round of the Island’s best tailors and haberdashers until he looked every inch the reputable man of business. He was almost handsome, in a rough sort of way, as long as you didn’t spend a minute talking to him to discover he had the mind of a five-year-old.

“My friends,” he said, spreading his arms wide to encompass the crowd.

Even though she knew what was coming, Raesinia couldn’t help shivering as that voice rolled over her. It echoed across the square with effortless power, slicing through the buzz of a thousand conversations and silencing them midsentence. It rang with stentorian authority off the cobbles and made the shopwindows rattle in their frames. It wasn’t the voice of a rabble-rouser or the shrill screech of a fanatic, or even the rolling, practiced tone of a veteran preacher. It was the calm, knowledgeable voice of a man of the world, sharing a few facts of life with a beloved but impetuous companion. Raesinia half expected to feel an avuncular hand patting her firmly on the shoulder.

“My friends,” Danton repeated, as the murmur of the crowd died away. “Some of you know me. Some of you have no doubt heard my name in the paper. To those who are strangers, I will begin by saying that I am Danton Aurenne, and a little bit about why I have been compelled to speak.”

“Compelled” was a nice touch, Raesinia thought, as the speech rolled onward. She’d written it, apart from a few of the more technical flourishes, but seeing it in her own hand on an ink-splattered page and hearing it ring out across a mob of thousands in the middle of the Triumph were very different matters. Raesinia’s heart beat faster as Danton picked up the pace. He seemed to have an instinctive feel for the material-God knows he doesn’t understand it-and gradually let his slow, measured delivery take on more emotion and power as he went along.

Banking, he said, was an old and honorable tradition. There had been bankers in Vordan as long as there had been a Vordan, helping people through bad times with loans, providing safe haven for surpluses in good years, showing restraint and compassion to debtors whose luck had gone sour. Danton’s father-an imaginary figure, of course-had instructed him in that way of doing business, and when he’d come to manhood he’d fully intended to follow that ideal.

When Danton paused, the whole square was hushed, as though everyone present were holding their breath at once.

“But things are different now, aren’t they?” he said.

An incoherent mass of shouts and cheers answered him, until he cut it off with a gesture. Then he explained just how things were different. The bankers had changed, and the banks had changed with them. They were foreigners now, outside the community of which they had once been pillars. Interested only in how much profit-how much of the sweat and toil of good, honest people-they could drain out of Vordan entirely. Parasites, sucking the lifeblood of a country like a gang of swamp-bound leeches. The bankers and the tax farmers-Raesinia was proud of how she’d slipped that conflation in-were to blame for all the ills of Vordan. If not for them, there would be work for everyone. Bread would be an eagle a loaf again.

“One eagle!” someone shouted, and it quickly became a chant. “One eagle and the Deputies-General! One eagle and the Deputies-General!”

“The Deputies-General,” Danton mused, as though it had just been suggested to him.

It would be the answer. Representatives of the people, working together in confraternity to solve the people’s problems, under the august blessing of the Crown. But it wouldn’t happen unless they made it happen.

“But,” Danton said, “we must hit them where it stings. ‘Burn down the banks,’ they tell me. ‘Burn down the Exchange.’ But what’s the use in that? The workers in the bank are Vordanai like you or me, and they’d be thrown out of work. The farmers who sell their food on the Exchange are Vordanai, like you or me. The Armsmen are Vordanai. Would you force them to arrest their own brothers? No. Our enemies are not things, not mere assemblies of iron and stone, vaults and marble floors. Our enemies are ideas.

“So, what can we do?”

He reached inside his coat and drew out a slip of paper. When he unfolded it, gilt lettering flashed in the sun.

“This is a bill on the Second Pennysworth Bank. It represents a promise to pay the bearer one hundred eagles. A promise-that’s all a bank really is, in the end. Promises.” He held the paper out at arm’s length, between two fingers, as though it were a stinking dead fish. “So we can do this.”

His other hand emerged from his coat pocket holding a match. He struck it on the stone of the column, and it flared brilliantly for a moment, provoking an intake of breath from the crowd. Danton held it to the corner of the bill, and it grudgingly took fire, curling up toward his fingers and gouting thick black smoke.

“This is what their promises are worth, when all is said and done,” Danton said. As the flames licked toward his fingers, he let the bill fall, blazing as it drifted to the stone. “And we have to make them see it, too.”

He turned his back on the still-burning bill and walked off the rostrum. Faro would be waiting for him on the steps, ready to hustle him out of the square. In the meantime, the crowd waited in stunned silence for a few long moments, not quite realizing that the speech was over. Then, as if on cue, it erupted in a single voice, a throaty combination of a roar of triumph and a scream of rage.

At the center of the tight-packed mob were the vagrants from the Third. They’d waited patiently for Danton to appear, but now that he was done, they were eager to receive their promised reward. They began to shove their way through the crowd in a body, headed east, for the bridges that connected the Island with the Exchange. The rest of the crowd parted to let them pass, then filled in behind them, dragged onward by curiosity and the power of Danton’s voice. It was like a comet falling to earth, with the vagrants at the head and everyone else as the trailing, blazing tail, aimed directly at the Vordan headquarters of the Second Pennysworth Bank.

“My word,” Sarton said, looking down from the balcony. “There m. . m. . must be a thousand carriages down there.”

Faro, uncharacteristically, had thought ahead and reserved a balcony suite in the Grand, one of Vordan’s finest hotels. It overlooked the Exchange and happened to have an excellent view of the granite-and-marble facade of the Second Pennysworth Bank. So Raesinia, leaning on the balcony rail, had a box seat at the grand spectacle of one of mankind’s classic debacles: a run on the bank.

The Exchange was actually larger than Farus’ Triumph, but not nearly as impressive. It was simply a large, open, irregular space, dirt-floored and rutted with cart tracks. On a normal day it would have been scattered with clusters of men seated at tables or behind portable desks, with flags fluttering behind them on little poles like the pennantry of medieval jousters. Other men milled around them, running from one station to another, shouting incomprehensibly and receiving shouts or hand signals in return. Cora had explained it to Raesinia, once: each station was a gathering of those interested in buying or selling a particular thing or class of thing, with the seated men representing the large, established firms and the ones who shuttled back and forth their prospective customers. Hundreds of millions of eagles changed hands here daily, in some ethereal way that involved nothing so concrete as a handshake. A shout, a thumbs-up, or a nod of the head was enough to start a chain reaction that, hundreds of miles away, might cause a ship to be loaded with goods and sent off around the world.

And Vordan was only a distant third among the great commercial cities, Cora said. The Bourse in Hamvelt was bigger, and the mighty Common Market of Viadre was large enough to swallow them both together with room to spare. Cora talked about the Common Market of Viadre in the same dreamy way that a priest might discuss the kingdom of heaven.

Today, though, all that had been roughly overturned, the tables knocked aside, the traders driven away by the mob. The banks ringed the periphery of the Exchange, their templelike construction seeking to impress a sense of their permanence and majesty by sheer force of architecture. The Second Pennysworth was one of the newest among these, a Borelgai transplant, and its building was the grandest of all. A queue-if something so disorderly could be dignified with the name-stretched from its doors and wound out into the Exchange, until it lost its identity and dissolved into a sea of pushing, shouting men.

Carriages were normally banned from the Exchange, but today none of the rules seemed to apply. They had begun to arrive not long after Danton’s speech, and as the hours passed the trickle had become a flood. Moreover, the vehicles that turned up had been getting grander and grander, sporting coats of arms and liveried footmen, until it seemed that half the nobility of Vordan was crammed into the market.

Somewhat at the head of the line were the vagrants Cora and Raesinia had handed out bills to the night before. They had served as the pebbles that, tossed onto a snowy slope, dislodge a growing, rolling avalanche of ice and dirt that flattens villages in the valley below. Raesinia watched with an odd mix of awe and terror as the thing she’d created roared onward, devouring everything in its path.

It was all about fear, Cora had explained. Banks were built on trust, and the antithesis of trust was fear. Even with the profits she’d made, they didn’t have enough capital to hurt a behemoth like the Second Pennysworth. But a little priming of the pump, combined with the magic of Danton’s voice, meant they didn’t have to.

Inside the bank, some poor manager was watching his worst nightmares come true. In theory, anyone who held one of those bills was entitled to turn up at the door, whenever they liked, and demand actual clinking metallic stuff in exchange. The bank’s very existence was predicated on its ability to meet these promises. In practice, of course, only a few people would do this, but every banker lived in fear of the day that the people who had entrusted him with their money turned up en masse to demand it back. For the Second Pennysworth, that day was today. Every man in the queue had a bill he wanted paid now, for fear the bank would not be around tomorrow to pay it. Every bill had to be met with coin from the cashiers, with strained, frozen smiles. But there was not enough coin in the vaults for everyone, and the crowd knew it.

Shortly after opening, a Second Pennysworth official had come out to proclaim, nervously, that the bank was completely sound and no one had anything to worry about. He’d even tried a little joke, to the effect that if people wanted to set fire to bills of his bank, that was completely all right with him, since it would after all only make it sounder.

It hadn’t helped. Everyone knew that bank managers only said things like that when they were worried; when the banks actually were sound, they sat in their offices and met complaints with an angry, scornful silence. Everyone in the Triumph had heard Danton’s speech, then watched a squadron of determined-looking people march across to the Exchange and head straight for the Second Pennysworth to turn in their bills. That was enough for many, and the sight of the queue stretching out past the doors tipped the balance. The bank had become a sinking ship, and no one wanted to be the one left without a lifeboat.

“There’s a line at the Crown, look,” Cora said. “And another at Spence amp; Jackson. It’s spreading.”

“Of course,” Raesinia said. “If a respectable institution like the Second Pennysworth can go down just because someone gives a speech, then what other bank could be safe? Much better to cram your coin in a sock and hide it under your mattress.”

“I should have invested in socks,” Cora said. “Or mattresses.”

Raesinia patted her on the shoulder. “Sorry. This must be hard for you to watch.”

“Not. . exactly.” Cora looked momentarily shifty. “It has its advantages.”

Raesinia quirked an interrogative eyebrow. Cora sighed.

“I was going to tell you,” she said. “But there wasn’t time.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing much. You know how I had to buy all those bills so we could give them away?”

Raesinia nodded.

“Well, I had to have some kind of a cover for why I wanted so much Second Pennysworth debt, or else people would have figured out something was up. So I arranged to sell Pennysworth bills at the same time, to make it look like we were just moving some investment around.”

“But if you sold the bills-”

“I arranged to sell them in the Viadre market. They’re not due for another three days. It takes time to ship the things to Borel, after all.”

“But you haven’t got the bills anymore. We gave them away.”

“Right.” Cora smiled. “Actually, when I saw the prices, I ended up selling a lot more than I ever bought.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Raesinia said, struggling to follow, “is that someone is going to be very angry with you when it turns out you’ve sold merchandise you can’t deliver?”

“Oh no!” Cora looked genuinely surprised at the idea. “No, you don’t understand. Once the bank collapses, the bills will be practically worthless. I’ll just buy the purchasers out of their contracts at a couple of pennies on the eagle. They might still be angry, but I think most of Viadre will be in a panic once the news of this gets there.”

“So. .,” Raesinia prompted.

“We get to keep the money from the sales,” Cora said, in a speaking-to-children voice. “But we don’t actually have to deliver anything.”

“So you’ve made money.”

Cora nodded.

“A lot of money?”

She nodded again, a little hesitantly. “I didn’t think I should do it without asking you first, but we didn’t have very long, and if I’d taken the time to track you down, the market would have closed. .”

“Cora,” Raesinia said, taking her hand. “Come with me.”

Cora’s face was a mask of panic as Raesinia dragged her through the balcony doors and into the suite. Sarton was still watching the crowd, but Ben was there, and Faro had brought up a canvas sack full of bottles. When he saw Raesinia, he picked up a glass flute full of sparkling white and waved it in her direction.

“Raes!” he said. “Come on! We’re celebrating!”

Raesinia took the flute from Faro and presented it to Cora.

“You deserve it,” Raesinia said. “After we win, I’m going to ask the deputies to make you Minister of Finance.”

I really will, Raesinia thought, as the teenager sipped the bubbly wine. God knows she couldn’t be worse than the last few men who’ve gotten the job. Her father had many fine attributes, but paying attention to eagles and pennies was not one of them, and his Treasury heads tended to be chosen for their political connections rather than their competence. Then there was Grieg, one of Orlanko’s minions, who’d spent the last five years building the tax farm into his private empire. A little girl would make for a nice change of pace.

“By the way,” Faro said, “I had to stash Danton in the front bedroom. We’ll have to figure out some way to get him out without anyone noticing.”

Raesinia rounded on him. “You brought him here?”

Faro shrugged. “His room at the Royal was mobbed after the speech. I couldn’t think where else to put him.” He caught Raesinia’s expression. “Relax. Nobody saw us come in.”

And how the hell would you know? Faro had a high opinion of his own skill and daring, but Raesinia had her doubts. He’s certainly no Sothe.

Ben patted her on the shoulder. “Relax, Raes. It’s just until the storm passes. Have a drink, would you?”

Raesinia sighed, but accepted a flute and sipped at the wine for form’s sake.

They still don’t take it seriously. Cora had the excuse of youth, but the rest of them. . Why am I the only one who seems worried?

Some time later, they’d emptied half the bottles, and the crowd on the Exchange was finally dispersing under the stern eyes of dozens of Armsmen.

The Second Pennysworth had suspended payments just before noon, admitting to the world that it couldn’t make good on its promises. That was the turning point Raesinia had fretted over, the instant where the crowd might turn into a mob and exact violent retribution. Fortunately for all concerned, the gradual gentrification of the panic over the course of the morning meant that by the time the bank actually failed, a good proportion of those waiting in the queue were of the well-bred classes. There were shouting matches, a little shoving, and the occasional swooning or fit of hysterics, but it was no longer the type of crowd to start hurling bricks through windows. By then, too, the Armsmen were out in force, responding with unusual rapidity to the developing crisis. Raesinia had watched the lines of green form and thicken throughout the morning, and sent up a silent thanks to whoever had organized the usually lackadaisical defenders of the peace.

Sarton and Maurisk had left shortly thereafter, the former to whatever he did in his free time-nobody seemed to know-and the latter to bash out a broadsheet about how the bankruptcy of the Second Pennysworth proved the essential bankruptcy of Borelgai-style finance. Back in the suite, Ben and Faro were playing some kind of game that involved dice and many, many glasses of wine. Cora was dozing on the sofa, curled up like a cat. Raesinia found herself wandering out of the living room and into the little anteroom, where doors led to the pair of bedrooms and the tiny private kitchen.

One of the bedroom doors was open a few inches, and a wan light shone from within. Raesinia went over and found Danton sitting on a neatly made bed, still wearing his hat and boots. He looked up, his face splitting into a broad, childlike grin.

“Hello, Princess!”

Raesinia slipped into the room and eased the door closed. “Hello, Danton. What are you doing in here?”

“Thinking,” Danton said.

“Thinking about what?”

He blinked at her, as though that question made no sense. After a moment, he nodded at a half-full glass flute on the nightstand. “Faro gave me some stuff to drink, but I didn’t like it.”

“No?”

“Too many bubbles. They went up my nose.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Is there any beer?”

God Almighty. A surge of guilt broke across Raesinia like a tidal wave. Look at him. He doesn’t understand any of this. He didn’t choose this. We’re just using him, and we’re going to end up getting him killed before it’s all over.

You’re just using all of them, her conscience taunted her. Danton is no different from Ben, or Faro, or Cora. They’re just tools to get what you want. If one or two of them get broken along the way, what’s the difference?

They all chose this, though. Maurisk, Sarton, Ben, even Faro. They have their own reasons for being here.

And Cora? She doesn’t have any idea what she’s getting into.

Raesinia swallowed hard. Danton was still smiling at her. It was hard to reconcile this childlike expression with the man he’d been-or appeared to be-standing on the column in Farus’ Triumph. Does he know what he’s doing?

“Danton,” she said, “that was a good. . story you told this afternoon.”

“Did you like it, Princess?” His joyful tone made her heart lurch sickeningly. “There were a lot of people listening.”

“There certainly were.” She hesitated. “Did you understand it? The story, I mean. Do you know what it means?”

Again the look of incomprehension, as though what she’d said was a contradiction in terms. “It’s a story, Princess.”

“But. . the people listening. What did they think it meant?”

“People like stories. They like to shout, but it’s good shouting.”

Raesinia’s binding, the demon in the pit of her soul, gave an odd little twist, as though it were turning over in its sleep. Probably getting rid of the last of the alcohol, she thought regretfully. It would have been nice to let her consciousness dissolve in bubbly white wine for a while, like the rest of the cabal. Or even to be able to put my head down and take a nap.

“I’ll see if Faro brought any beer,” she said.

“Thank you, Princess!”

She’d only opened the door a fraction when she heard the knocking. Someone was rapping at the outer door of the suite, only a few feet away. But nobody is supposed to know we’re here.

Probably just the hotel staff. She fought off incipient panic and smiled at Danton. “I’ll be right back. You just stay here and. . think, all right?”

“All right!”

He settled himself on the bed, and Raesinia went back into the hall and shut the door behind her. Loud voices were coming from the sitting room, where Ben and Faro were still at their gaming. She didn’t think anyone else had heard the knocking.

The outer door had no convenient peephole, as a lower-class hotel might have. Raesinia frowned, then settled her weight against the door, bracing her legs against any attempt to force it open.

“Yes?” she said, barely loud enough to be audible. “Who is it?”

“Raesinia? Is that you?”

“Sothe?” Her maidservant/bodyguard had been adamant about keeping herself hidden from the other members of the cabal. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you alone?”

“For the moment. Everyone’s out by the balcony.”

“Good. Open the door.”

Raesinia took her weight off the door and thumbed the latch, letting it open a few inches. She kept her boot wedged against the base so that a sudden push from the outside wouldn’t throw it wide open. Sothe was visible through the resulting crack, and Raesinia relaxed and opened the door the rest of the way.

“Good,” Sothe said. “Voices are easy to fake. Now help me with her.”

The open door revealed that Sothe was standing beside a young woman in the smart gray-and-black livery of the hotel. The woman’s head was resting on Sothe’s shoulder, and it was obvious that Sothe’s arm around her waist was the only thing keeping her up. At first Raesinia thought she was stumbling drunk, but as Sothe shuffled into the suite her limp, dangling limbs made it clear she was completely unconscious.

Raesinia stood aside and pressed the door closed behind them.

Sothe, surveying the suite, nodded toward the bedrooms. “Are those empty?”

“Danton’s in one of them.”

Sothe’s expression tightened into a frown.

“The other one should be.”

“Good. Get her legs.”

Raesinia grabbed the mystery woman about the ankles and lifted her feet off the floor. Together they manhandled her into the second bedroom, and Sothe maneuvered her onto the bed and let her fall. Her head thumped heavily onto the covers.

“Sothe,” Raesinia said, “who is this? And what’s wrong with her?”

Sothe glanced back out into the suite and shut the door behind them. “What’s wrong with her is that she’s dead.” She indicated a detail Raesinia had missed: the leather-wrapped hilt of a long-bladed stiletto, sticking out of the woman’s left side just below her armpit. “As for who she was, I can’t tell you precisely”-Sothe made another knife appear in her hand, as if by magic-“but she was definitely Concordat.”

Raesinia was silent for a moment. Sothe immediately set to work, sawing through the waistband of the dead woman’s skirt and then slitting it in two down the length of her leg, peeling her clothes off like a University savant removing the skin from a new specimen.

“You’re sure she was-” Raesinia began.

Sothe sighed. She tore the skirt aside with a rip of fabric, revealing a leather strap around the corpse’s thigh, which held several thin blades in cunningly designed sheathes. Sothe pulled one of these out and sent it humming across the room to bury itself in the wall with a tick a few inches from Raesinia’s ear.

“Throwing knives are not a common accessory for hotel maids, even in Oldtown,” Sothe said, “much less maids at the Grand. She was Concordat.”

“All right,” Raesinia said. The knife in the wall was still buzzing slightly. “Did you kill her?”

“Of course I killed her.”

“Can I ask why you’re stripping her naked?” Sothe had started slitting the woman’s blouse up toward her collar.

“Because I’m looking for something, and we don’t have a lot of time.” Sothe jerked the dead woman’s undershirt up like an impatient lover, pawed at her breasts, and grinned in triumph. “Got you. Some things never change.”

“Sothe. .”

Sothe held up a hand, bending over the body. She came up with a long, thin, flat paper, curved where it had been pressed against the woman’s skin.

“Pockets are too risky,” Sothe said. “And you have to keep it on you. Some of the men used to keep it up their arseholes, but I always preferred sticking it on somewhere intimate with spirit gum.” She frowned down at the body. “I wonder who’s teaching them that trick now.”

“What is it?”

“Cipher. One-use, good for a couple of hundred words. The only other copy is with some clerk under the Cobweb.” Sothe unfolded the packet into a small square of onionskin paper, then folded it back up and tucked it away. “It’s how she was going to report in.”

“Ah. So you’re going to send in her reports?”

“Just one report. They burn the cipher after use. Keeps it secure.” Sothe shook her head. “I’ll try to salvage something out of this.”

“Salvage something? Have you seen the crowd outside?” Raesinia felt a little of her excitement returning. “Sothe, it worked. We brought down a bank. That will hit the Borels where it hurts-”

“I don’t mean the banks. You brought Danton here. Do you know how many people are following him right now, after the speech he gave? Now they know he came to a hotel room, and they’re going to ask who else was there. That’s all they’ll need.” Sothe shook her head bitterly. “How many times did I tell you to keep away from him? We can’t afford to let Orlanko tie the two of you together.”

“Faro brought him,” Raesinia said defensively. “He didn’t have anywhere else to stash him. I should have realized they couldn’t go back to the Royal. We could have made other plans-”

“We can worry about fixing the blame later. Right now we have to get you out of here.”

Raesinia nodded, trying to focus. “Does Orlanko have anyone else watching the place?”

“There’s two men in grooms’ uniforms stuffed into a hayrick in the stables,” Sothe said grimly. “I think we’re clear for the moment, but that won’t last. You have to come with me.”

“What about the others?”

“Warn them if you like,” Sothe said. “Just don’t take too long about it. After that, they’re on their own. We need to split up anyway.”

“If the Concordat ties them to Danton-”

“If Orlanko figures out that you aren’t the wilting dove he’s been led to believe you are, he’ll clap you in irons until your father is dead and he’s got you safely married off, and this whole project is for nothing,” Sothe said. “Now come on. I’ve got to get you away before I can clean up here.”

“All right,” Raesinia muttered. She looked down at the body. “Don’t you think you should. . cover her, or something?”

Sothe rolled her eyes and grabbed the trailing edge of the blanket, folding it back over the half-naked corpse. Raesinia hurried out to the living room, hoping fervently that Ben and Faro were still sober enough to walk.