Abby caught Winter’s eye and took a deep breath.
“Sorry,” she said. “It just makes me angry. That’s how I ended up here in the first place. Anyway, the fishermen were complaining, and Jane asked them why they didn’t do something about it. To make a long story short, they had a few more drinks, and then the whole pub went down to the nearest tax farm office and torched the place.” Abby smiled. “That was when the tax farmers found out the Armsmen are happy to take bribes to stay out of the Docks, but it’s much more expensive to get them to come in.”
“So Jane started fighting the tax farmers?”
“Not all by herself,” Abby said. “She got people organized, like a general. After a while things settled down. We let them take enough to get by, they don’t get greedy, and nobody’s head gets broken. And the locals, uh, express their gratitude.” She waved back toward the dining room. “That’s where most of this comes from.”
“These are the Leatherbacks I heard so much about, then,” Winter said.
“Yeah. I don’t know how the name got started, but the fishermen wear those leather aprons, and eventually we started wearing them, too.”
“‘We’? You mean the girls here go out and fight?”
“Not all of them,” Abby said. She was grinning. “Just the older ones. And Jane never made anyone go. They just didn’t want to let her go off by herself.”
I suppose I’m hardly one to complain about girls fighting. Still, she hadn’t joined the army with the expectation of actual combat. Everyone said Khandar was supposed to be a nice, safe, boring post at the end of the earth. The rest of it just sort of. . happened.
“I’m just amazed you get away with it,” Winter said.
“Like I said, most of the tax farmers got the message after a while. They’ve got better things to do than bash their heads against a wall. And we don’t see much of the Armsmen around here.”
“What about Orlanko? I thought he was supposed to know everything.”
Abby’s steps slowed slightly. “That’s. . more complicated. The head man in the Concordat for this part of the Docks is named Phineas Kalb. He and Jane have an arrangement.” Abby looked at Winter and sighed. “He makes sure we don’t turn up in the reports, and every couple of weeks he comes by and some of the girls. . entertain him.”
That took a moment to sink in, like a bomb with a slow-burning fuse, but when she caught the meaning, Winter exploded. “What?”
She said it louder than she meant to, and the girls passing them in the corridor looked over curiously. Abby grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her into the nearest open doorway, which led to a storeroom half-full of sacks of potatoes. Winter rounded on her.
“You’re telling me Jane sends girls off to. . to pleasure some secret policeman?” Winter was practically vibrating with rage, though she couldn’t have said at whom. At Abby? At Jane? After what happened to her, I can’t believe it. “I don’t believe that.”
“Jane told me you wouldn’t understand,” Abby said. “The girls volunteer to do it.”
“Sure,” Winter said. “They volunteer if they want to keep getting fed. I’ve heard this story before.” No better than goddamned Mrs. Wilmore.
“No,” Abby said. “Winter, listen to me. Before we all found out about this, Jane was doing it herself. We practically had to hold her down to let someone else go in her place. She’s. . still angry about that.”
Winter paused in mid-rage, uncertain. Abby took the opportunity to kick the door to the storeroom closed, then rounded on Winter.
“Listen.” There was a catch in her voice, and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I know you and Jane go back a long way. God, if I’ve heard her talk about you once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. But you haven’t been here for the past year, all right? You look at this now”-she thumped the wall, quite hard-“and it all looks so neat and tidy, and you don’t see what it took to make it this way. What we all had to do, but Jane more than anyone. So if she wants to move you in like a long-lost. . sister, that’s fine, that’s her choice. But don’t you fucking dare think you can sit in judgment of her.”
There was a long pause. Winter had faced down many things-Feor’s enormous fin-katar, a horde of screaming Redeemer cavalry, the leering face of Sergeant Davis that still featured in her nightmares-and by those standards this skinny teenager, hands balled into fists, eyes red and gleaming, was not much of a threat. But. .
She’s right. Winter closed her eyes. I wasn’t here. I didn’t come back for her. Jane did what she had to do, not just for herself but for all these people, while I ran away and hid in a hole until someone came and dragged me out. She let out a long, shaky breath.
“I’m sorry.” Winter opened her eyes to find Abby wiping her face on her sleeve, still trembling. “Abby. I’m really sorry. I. . wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s all right.” Abby blinked away a few stray tears and managed a smile. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you. I haven’t been myself lately.”
To Winter’s surprise, the scene in Jane’s room looked like a conference she might have found in Janus’ tent outside Ashe-Katarion, albeit only if all the officers had been in drag. Jane sat at her big table, which was half-covered by a hand-drawn map of the Docks, each crooked alley surrounded by carefully penciled notes and annotations. Becca and Winn sat on one side of the table, Min and Chris on the other. There were two conspicuously empty seats, one to either side of Jane.
“Took you long enough,” Jane grumbled.
“Sorry,” Abby said. No trace of her rancor remained, except for a slight reddening of the eyes. “We had to finish up at breakfast.”
She took a seat at Jane’s left hand, and Winter slid into the chair that was obviously meant for her, feeling uncomfortable all over again. Apart from Abby, she’d barely exchanged a word with any of Jane’s lieutenants. For the most part they kept their eyes on Jane, but Winter found herself the subject of the occasional sideways glance. Not hostile so much as curious, she decided. I can hardly blame them. I don’t have any right to be here, really.
“We have problems,” Jane announced, once everyone was seated. “More accurately, one problem, and his name is the Most Honorable Sir Cecil fucking Volstrod.”
“Bloody Cecil,” said Winn. She was a tall, skinny woman, her well-muscled arms crosshatched with thin white scars.
“A tax farmer,” Abby said to Winter. “One of the worst.”
“I take it you filled her in?” Jane said.
“More or less.” Abby and Winter exchanged a look.
“Bloody Cecil kept our peace for a while,” Jane said, “but he was never happy about it. We all remember what happened last time he tried to throw his weight around.”
Winter was about to say that she didn’t, but from the way everyone around the table looked down, she thought she probably didn’t want to know.
“Unfortunately,” Jane said, “Bloody fucking Cecil has apparently been playing the markets with company money, in the hopes of raking off a bit more for himself.” She tapped a folded note in front of her. “Or so we are led to believe, anyway. Thanks to Danton and his pack of idiots, Cecil is in something of a bad spot right now, and he doesn’t have long to get out of it. That means he’s coming to the Docks, tonight, for a bit of impromptu smash-and-grab, and he’s bringing every hired leg-breaker he can get his hands on.”