Cyte met Winter’s eye. They got up together and walked a ways down the railing. Inquisitive glances followed them, but no one spoke.
“You know why they call this the Widow’s Gallery?” Cyte said.
Winter shook her head.
“In the old days-the very old days, around the time of Farus the Conqueror-the Pontifex of the White decided that the churches had drifted too far toward being social centers instead of places for contemplation of the sins of mankind. He blamed it on unattached women, who were apparently smashing around society like loose cannons. So Elysium decreed that no women unaccompanied by a husband or male relative would be permitted to attend services.
“Of course, the women still wanted to come, and the local hierarchy was reluctant to lose their contributions. Some bishop came up with the idea that the women would subscribe funds for the construction of a balcony like this, so they could watch the service without being at it. And, since the unattached women who had money to spare were mostly widows, they called it the Widow’s Gallery.”
Winter forced a chuckle. “I’m glad I wasn’t born in the eighth century.”
Cyte tested the railing, found it sturdy enough to support her, and leaned against it with her chin in her hands. “Sometimes I feel like I was,” she said, nodding toward the floor. “Look.”
Abby was just standing up to speak in answer to the sweaty merchant. Aside from a few wives on the back benches, she was the only woman in the room.
“It was Jane who took the Vendre,” Cyte went on. “She turned the mob into an. . an army, practically. She sent us in to open the gates. Without that, the queen never would have given us the deputies! But if you look in the newspapers, you’d think Danton killed every Concordat soldier himself and cracked the doors of the prison with one blow of his mighty fist.”
“People listen to him,” Winter said. “He’s a symbol.”
“All he does is give speeches. Where is he now, when we need someone to shut these idiots up?”
“In his rooms, I think,” Winter said. “He’s supposed to have a big speech before lunch.”
“More platitudes.” Cyte snorted. “It should be Jane down there.”
“The queen invited her,” Winter said. “She sent Abby instead. This sort of thing. .” She shook her head. “Jane isn’t good at it.”
“Did she send you, too?”
Winter colored slightly. “No. I’m here on my own.”
There had been a few tense moments over that, back at the Vendre, which the Leatherbacks were still using as their temporary headquarters. After Jane had told Abby to speak for her at the deputies, Winter had announced that she was going as well. The expression on Jane’s face-half-perplexed, half-hurt, with a tiny hint of guilt thrown in for good measure-was something Winter wished she could forget.
She’d made some excuse about wanting to be present at such a historic moment, which Jane hadn’t bought. But Winter had been adamant. If she’d hung around the fortress, Jane would have cornered her eventually, and then there would be no avoiding the conversation she desperately did not want to have.
So I ran away. Again.
She swallowed and changed the subject. “What about you? You look a bit poorly, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Cyte stared gloomily down at the floor below. “It’s been a busy week.”
“Be honest.”
“I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about. . you know. That night, in the Vendre.”
Winter nodded, sympathetically. “The first time someone tried to kill me, it was a while before I got a good night’s sleep.”
“It’s not even that,” Cyte said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I was scared-I mean, of course I was. But. .”
Winter waited.
“There was a guard I. . stabbed. In the stomach, right through him. I barely even thought about it. He was going to kill you, kill me if he got the chance, and I just. . did it.” She brushed her hand against her leg, as though trying to wipe something away. “It was so easy.”
Winter was silent. She tried to remember the first man she’d killed, but the truth was that she didn’t know. In a battle-even the little skirmishes the Colonials dealt with before the rise of the Redeemers-you rarely knew if a shot had hit or missed. When someone fell it was anyone’s guess if he’d been deliberately killed or clipped by a stray ball. In an awful way, that made it better. She’d felt like throwing up the first time she had to clean up a battlefield and bury a handful of enemy corpses, but there wasn’t anyone she could point to and say, “I ended that man’s life.”
“I know you thought I volunteered for that on a whim,” Cyte said, and raised a hand when Winter started to protest. “It’s all right. You tried to talk me out of it, and I appreciate that. The truth is that I did my thinking before we even got to the Vendre. When we heard what the Concordat was doing, and people in the cafés started talking about marching, I thought. . this is it. I told myself, ‘If you’re going out there, you have to be prepared for it. Are you ready to die, if that’s what it takes? Are you ready to kill?’ And I decided that I was, but it took. . I don’t know. It felt like a big thing to decide.
“And then, when it finally came to it, it was easy. Just a little thrust.” She held out her hand. “Just like I practiced in front of the mirror. I barely even noticed what he looked like until afterward. I was too busy worrying if there was someone else behind him who was going to stick me with a bayonet. It was only afterward that I started to think about it, and I wondered, Is that what it’s supposed to be like?” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Or is there something wrong with me?”
There was a long silence. Winter felt as though she were supposed to offer something here, some piece of worldly advice from a sergeant to a young soldier. But this wasn’t Khandar, she wasn’t a sergeant, and Cyte wasn’t a soldier and was only three years younger besides. And anyway, what the hell am I supposed to say to that? She suddenly remembered rescuing Fitz Warus from Davis’ cronies, cracking Will over the head with a rock just to get him out of the way. She’d killed him, it turned out, without thinking about it or even really meaning to.
If there’s something wrong with you, it’s wrong with me, too. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it out loud.
“Excuse me,” someone said. “Are you Winter?”
They looked up to find a bearded young man in the colorful clothes of a dockworker waiting with a polite air. He had an odd, gravelly accent, and something about the way he stood gave him a military bearing. She pushed away from the rail, brushing fragments of crumbling wood from her hands.
“I am,” she said, cautiously. “Who are you?”
“Just a messenger.” He took a folded page from his breast pocket and handed it to her. “Read it soon, and make sure you’re alone when you do.”
“Why? Who’s it from?”
The young man’s eyes flicked to Cyte, and he shrugged. “It’s what I was told. Good luck.”
“Good luck?” Winter echoed, baffled, but the messenger was already jogging back toward the stairs, raising little puffs of dust with every step. Winter looked down at the note, then over at Cyte.
“I’ll be with the others,” Cyte said, stepping away from the rail.
Winter unfolded the page. It bore only a few lines, in an elegant, aristocratic hand that made the signature redundant.
Winter-
Concordat action against the Deputies is imminent. I am on my way with help. Stall.
Janus
Her fingers tightened on the page, driven by a sudden, furious anger. He drops me here for weeks, without so much as a word, and now he tells me Orlanko is on the way and I’m to stall? How? Start a goddamned circus to keep them occupied? She glanced down at the hall floor, where Abby was still speaking, and fear replaced rage. Oh, Balls of the Beast. If the black-coats show up here, it’s going to be panic. What the hell does Orlanko think he’s doing?