The Shadow Throne: Book Two of the Shadow Campaigns by Wexler Django

Author:Wexler, Django [Wexler, Django]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

WINTER

“I think,” Winter said, “that getting them started tearing down buildings may have been a mistake.”

“We needed a timber for the ram,” Jane said. “Besides, I didn’t tell them to—”

She was interrupted by a drawn-out crash as the second story of an engraver’s shop leaned drunkenly out over the street, wobbled, and collapsed into a pile of broken beams and brick dust. A cheer rose from the crowd, and before the rubble had settled, looters were swarming over the wreckage. Larger groups milled around, uncertain what to do next, until someone shouted that a handsome marble-fronted building up the street was the headquarters of a Borelgai fur importer. With a shout, the mob rushed in that direction.

“I didn’t tell them to start pulling down the whole damned street,” Jane finished, lamely. She gave a halfhearted shrug. “What am I supposed to do?”

“This was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“Rescuing Abby and the others was my idea. Not all this . . .” She waved one arm to encompass the carnival of destruction and shook her head, at a loss for words.

Winter felt as though she should have been horrified, or even terrified, but a night without sleep and the stress of worrying about Jane made her simply numb. The rescue mission—or mob, or riot, or revolution, whatever it was—had grown beyond any possibility of control; that much was clear. She could feel the circle of her cares contracting, as it had done in Khandar when the Redeemer cavalry had come over the rise. The regiment, the country, the city, and even Janus would have to look out for themselves. Winter only had enough energy to concern herself with what was within arm’s reach.

That meant, primarily, Jane. She’d been bouncing from one extreme to the other, alternating between a strange, manic energy and moments of black, vicious temper. The exhaustion Winter was feeling had to be a hundred times worse for her, with everyone looking to her for answers. Winter remembered all too well how draining that could be.

Another crash, from farther down the street, barely registered. The mob had quickly learned the best technique for demolition: a rope, tied tight around key beams, could be tossed out into the street and drawn by hundreds of hands until the whole front of a building came crashing down. Other groups were wandering about with sacks of broken bricks, looking for unshattered windows, or collecting scraps of wood to feed to the bonfires. Anything associated with the Borelgai or the duke was the target of special ire, and Winter had watched furious rioters feed thousands of eagles’ worth of fur or fine fabrics to the flames.

Jane’s Leatherbacks brought in scraps of information, but their picture of what was going on outside the immediate area was sketchy. The Armsmen had rallied on the east side of the Island, protecting the Sworn Cathedral and the bridges to the Exchange. As best Winter could tell, they seemed uninterested in challenging the mob west of Farus’ Triumph, in spite

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