Covenant's End (13 page)

Widdershins managed another polite chuckle. “So where
are
you taking me? The Basilica?”

“No. Suvagne knows that many of the Shrouded God's priests are among Renard's allies. She'll have people watching. Besides, there's as much unrest in Sicard's ranks right now as there is everywhere else in this godsforsaken city. Actually,” she admitted, “I'm not entirely
decided
on where to hide you. I'm not sure any of our Ragway safe houses is secure, and the others—”

“That's okay,” Shins interrupted, almost brightly. “I know where we should go!”

“Of course you do. Why do I just know I'm not going to like this?” the priestess complained.

“Because you don't like anything.”

Silence, for a time, save for the shuffling steps.

Not, obviously, a situation Widdershins would let stand indefinitely. “Igraine?”

“Hmm?”

“Only
half
-drowned? Really? I'm improving faster than I thought.”

“Shut up and walk.”

“Of all the plans you've ever hatched,” Igraine growled, peering around the shadowy street corner at their startlingly well-lit destination, “this one is inarguably one of the most
Widdershins
.”

“Oh. Well, thank you!”

“That wasn't a compliment!”

“You think not?” Shins sniffed “Shows what you know.
Nobody
plans the way I do!”

“Now
that
, I agree with.”

Widdershins scowled, shooing a few early-season flies away from the drying bloodstains peeking around the edges of Renard's cape. “Look,” she explained, and not for the first time, “it's perfect. He's probably not even
in
Davillon! His family's got no properties or interests here, so when things started getting bad…. But I'm sure he's kept the rent on the place. He'd want to make sure he didn't have to live in the ‘squalor' of a
regular
house if and when he returns, yes? So it should be empty, and there's no chance anyone'd think to look for us
here
!”

“That's because we're not going to get in the door without being stopped and reported! I'm covered in dust and cobweb from the tunnel, and you look like a raw fillet trying to rise above its station!”

The younger woman drew herself up, proud and straight, and then slumped again with a wince at the tug on her slowly scabbing wounds. “I've gotten in there before!” she protested.

“Uh-huh. Through the front entrance?”

“Well, no…”

“And how many walls are you going to be climbing in your
current
condition?”

“Oh, come on!” Shins protested. “We just need a diversion of some sort.”

“Hmm. All right. You pass me the cloak, so your wounds are obvious, and then go collapse in the street. Then, when everyone's gathered around you…”

“Yes?”

Igraine offered an almost helpless shrug. “I'll leave.”

Widdershins's first comment was directed at Olgun, not the priestess. “How do you snort like that without a nose?” Then, more loudly, “Cute plan.”

“I thought it had some charm to it.”

“May I,” Shins asked haughtily, “make an alternate suggestion?”

“I was almost certain you would.”

It didn't require much, all in all. A nearby stable provided the raw materials. (“Raw materials,” in this instance, meaning “horses.”) A bit of shouting and arm-waving bolstered by a surge of artificial panic from Olgun, and the beasts began rearing and screaming, agitated without quite being alarmed enough to injure themselves.

After that, as the building's private guards and those few people out and about in the street gravitated toward the commotion, it was simple enough for Igraine to help Widdershins stagger away from the stable, as though she'd been injured by a frenzied hoof.

And then they really did just walk through the front door.

The one and only time Shins had previously visited the Golden Sable, she hadn't seen the entryway, the open lobby, the broad halls. Carpet, thick and lush enough to warm a bear in winter, led to a series of doors here, a massive staircase there. Clean-burning lanterns of polished brass and scintillating crystal held the shadows at bay to all but the deepest corners. Several servants in livery or other fine outfits looked down their noses at the shoddy pair, but none of them said a word. They all had their own duties to think about, and probably assumed Shins and Igraine would be hearing an earful from their own employer soon enough.

Three flights up, several corridors in, and they finally halted at what Widdershins
believed
was the proper door. (Having only ever entered the suite via the window, and never having set foot in the rest of the building, “believed” was as certain as she was getting, and “guessed” was probably a more honest assessment.)

“This place is unbelievable!” Igraine sounded almost offended rather than impressed. “This is an
inn
?”

“Not exactly,” Shins said, hesitantly kneeling beside the door and fumbling for the last few picks that remained hidden in her belt and boots. “The Golden Sable's sort of long-term manor-sized suites for the high and flighty who aren't in town often enough to be worth buying something more permanent. Comes complete with servants, if you don't have your own. The Davillon Home for Wayward Aristocrats.”

“However often the Finders hit this place,” the other woman muttered, “it's not enough.” She started, then, and the faint
clank-slosh-fwump
as Shins took a swig of something from a faceted crystal decanter, then set the vessel down beside her as she worked. “Where in the Shrouded God's name did you get that?!”

“One of the aforementioned servants. He was too busy sneering at us to pay attention to the contents of his tray.

“Oh, don't give me that look! I have so much dried blood coating my mouth and throat, I couldn't even smell the frog-hopping stables! It's pure luck I'm even still able to
talk
!”

“I don't know if ‘luck' is the word I'd have—”

“Shut up and have some brandy.”

Igraine did nothing of the sort, instead looming over Shins's shoulder and wincing at the occasional
click
within the lock. “Do you want me to do that?”

“I'm a little better at it than you are,” Shins insisted, tongue slightly protruding in concentration as she worked the tumblers.

“You're also injured,” the priestess pointed out.

“That's why I'm only a
little
better at it. And there's that look again. You're going to get bored of it
eventually
, yes?”

“Not at this rate.”

“You're way too uptight about this.” Shins leaned back in triumph as a much heavier
clank
announced the lock's unconditional surrender. She reached up, using the latch to heave herself to her feet as she slowly, silently began to open the door. “I told you, he's not going to be here.”

“And if you're wrong?”

“Then we reason with him. I'm not exactly his favorite person in the world—or even in this hallway—but he
can
be reasoned with. We
aaaaaughk!!!
”

Something yanked the door away from her, taking her already precarious balance with it. Shins crashed headlong to the carpet, unable to catch herself or even to react at all, save to bite back a whimper at the renewal of agony across her back and stomach. Inch by inch, she twisted her neck until she lay on her cheek rather than her aching nose, struggling to see.

What she saw was the unwavering tip of a rapier, some few inches from her eyeball, and the onyx-haired, hawk-featured man standing at the other end of it.

“I suggest,” said Evrard d'Arras, “that you start reasoning.”

She squirmed, occasionally thrashing, caged by shackles of fever between waking and sleeping, dreaming and thinking. Sweat plastered the light sheets to her body—light yet stifling, as though it were thick wool in the height of summer. Even had she the presence of mind to kick it off, though, as she had a time or two already, the result was just a fit of shivers instead.

The faint buzzing of Olgun's touch, the burning at the edges of the wounds, the ointments Igraine had applied after washing off
the worst of the grime and gore, the unfamiliar itch of the bandages and the bed, combined in Widdershins's feverish, semiconscious mind into a skintight covering of twitching, biting, dancing ants. She moaned, absently slapping at herself, and rolled over yet again, further twisting the sheet into a veritable rope of cloth.

Voices from the next room, voices from inside her head; she found it difficult to tell, between the bouts of oppressive silence, which were which. Still, a time or two, she'd caught snippets of conversation that were, she was
almost
sure, passing between the priestess and their rather grudging host.

“…wasn't going to throw her out in the street in that condition,” Evrard was snarling, or so she thought. “I'm not a savage! But you need to get her the hell
out
of here!”

“She's in no condition to be moved!” Igraine's voice lashed back. “And even if she were, I've nowhere to take her.”

“Not my concern. Damn it, Vernadoe, you know what she did to me, to my fam—”

“Oh, don't even
start
. She's a thief. That's what she does. Your family hadn't even
seen
that stuff in years!”

“Not the point, and you—”

“And I rather clearly recall you fighting alongside her almost a year ago.”

Soft thumps suggested pacing, followed by the much louder and quite distinctive
thud
of fist on wall. “That was an emergency! Just because I've decided I don't necessarily want her dead doesn't mean I've forgiven her, that she has any right to ask me for any sort of aid! The bloody
gall
of that little…”

At this point the voices were drowned out by a semi-waking dream in which Shins could only hear the horrid laughter of that ghostly chorus that had accompanied the creature Iruoch, except this time Robin's voice sounded clearly among them. Before she could even begin to contemplate
that
, she was out again.

And awake once more, to the sound of heated argument. And out again. Awake to the slam of a cupboard of some sort; for no reason she could articulate, she was quite certain it was a wine closet. Then out again.

Jolted away by the staccato, percussive clatter of a fist banging on the front door. The slow, soft patter of feet creeping across the carpeted foyer.

She pushed herself up on wildly trembling arms that felt less like flesh and bone, and more along the lines of a desperate effort to support her weight on two snakes doing headstands. The muscles in her back and her stomach seemed to be trying to switch sides. Nevertheless, no matter how difficult, she was determined not to lie here helpless, to go see who had arrived and what was happening in the rest of the suite.

It was a determination she kept all the way back down to the mattress, and once more into uneasy, hallucinatory slumber.

It was the cold—gentle, soothing—that finally woke her properly, hauling her slowly but steadily through the depths of fever and pain and exhaustion. A soft, cool touch, washing away some of the sting across her skin. She felt the shimmer of Olgun's power as the god worked his own magics, adding his influence to the herbs and clean water that Widdershins knew, without checking, were contained in the soft cloths caressing her.

Sheer bliss, in that peculiar way that pain can be a relief when it replaces a greater agony; Shins almost sighed aloud.

At which point, four semi-related thoughts sprinted across her mind in quick succession, chasing one another like maniacal weasels.

Gods, that's so much better on my back than that fig-flipping blanket was, even if the smell
does
remind me of week-old tea! Dumb sheet felt like it was woven of hemp!

It would've been nice of everyone to keep their voices down, though. What if they'd woken me up before the balm did? I'd have felt like—

Wait, “everyone”? Why is this room suddenly so crowded?