Covenant's End (23 page)

“That's you, in case there was any confusion.”

Rittier felt himself held aloft on equal parts rage and mounting terror.

The distant noble continued, making Rittier wonder how he kept from shouting himself hoarse. “If you wish to challenge the legality of all this before a magistrate, I'm sure you'll have that opportunity.
If
you surrender. If you insist on making this personal, on dueling me gentleman to gentleman, I accept—but I have no choice but to demand our duel be to the death! As part of Her Grace's…message.”

“My lord…” the captain began. Rittier brushed him off. He was hardly the world's greatest duelist, but he was better than most casual swordsmen. And the fellow shouting at him definitely had the superior tone of the aristocracy, not the gruffer mien of a military man. Killing him wouldn't get House Rittier out of this mess, but it would give their allies time to act. Legally or…otherwise.

“And what,” he called back, drawing his rapier and taking a few muscle-loosening swings, “is the name of the miscreant I'll be punishing for this assault upon my property and person?”

“Evrard d'Arras!”

Rittier's rapier halted in mid
swoosh
, and if his face had paled before, the blood must surely now be pooling in his toes.

“Captain?” Rittier was fairly proud of how steady his voice was.

“Yes, my lord?”

“Please send our messenger back out and inform Monsieur
d'Arras that, while we intend to protest this atrocity most strenuously in a court of law, for the time being House Rittier surrenders to city custody.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Thick with smoke, with dust, with powdered stone, the air in the Finders' Guild's upper hallways seemed more solid than the walls crumbling around them. Coughing, choking, hacking, and spitting were as prevalent as shouting and screaming—questions, orders, demands, and cries of far less coherent meaning. Guns fired, crossbows twanged, and projectiles of every sort gouged furrows into flesh and brick alike.

The cannonballs, along with the first fusillade of flintlocks and blunderbusses, had opened the building like a jar of preserves, cleared those halls of any initial lines of defense, thrown the thieves into absolute, panicked chaos. Now the guards moved in, creeping through the haze, firing at any sign of movement, any sound of resistance. Still, they knew that beyond those clouds, the Finders were also regrouping; that both sides were now equally blind, until the battle moved farther into the complex. That once the element of surprise wore off, no matter how well orchestrated the assault, the guards were going to start taking casualties. It was just the cost of this sort of raid.

“This sort of raid,” however, didn't normally include Widdershins—and Olgun had no eyes for the smoke and particulate to blind.

“Hold your fire!” She hoped the shout, coming from the ranks behind, would carry enough weight for the front-line soldiers; guess she'd soon find out.

Olgun's power wrapped around her as she broke into a sprint, flowing through her like a waterfall washing over her soul. She ran, leapt, kicked off the wall to one side, braced both hands on a startled guardsman's shoulders as she arced overhead. Her feet struck the floor
between the massed soldiers at one end of the hallway, the clumped thieves at the other, and went airborne again just as rapidly. Tucked into a tight ball, one flip over—then a trio of rolls below—either side's line of fire. She shot upright from the final tumble, one last dive over the heads of the first of the Finders, landing on her hands in the midst of the group until she finally sprung into a standing crouch once more, rapier in hand.

Pity nobody actually
saw
any of that.

“Here, boys,” she taunted—and then spun.

Twisting, lunging, sidestepping, ducking, never because she saw the danger coming, but because Olgun guided her every move, a faint but unmistakable pressure on her limbs to which she reacted faster than thought. She leaned back at the waist and knees, almost horizontal, as a pair of blades flashed through the space she'd just occupied, and then struck out with two lightning-quick ripostes of her own. Cries of pain, the clatter of metal on the floor, followed by the thump of bodies.
Moaning
bodies; Olgun knew that she'd prefer to avoid killing if she could help it.

Just as he knew she'd not hesitate if she
couldn't
help it.

The shouts from all around were wild, panicked. The Finders had no idea who, even what, had plummeted into their midst; they knew only that it wasn't hindered as they were. Through the haze, dancing this way and that with the currents in the hall, they must have caught a flash of steel here, a blur of gray there, always gone before stinging, tearing eyes could make sense of it.

The click of hammers punctuated Olgun's warning, and Shins only smiled. Sparks snapped and sizzled before those hammers fell, a trio of flintlocks spat balls of lead, and three of the Finders fell screaming in pain, shot by their own confused and horrified allies.

Step, pivot, parry across, parry high. The clash of steel was swift as the patter of rain, as though the storm outside had elected to join the assault. Shins lunged, felt her rapier punch through something
soft and whimpering; dropped into a low crouch beneath another thief's thrust and spun, kicking the ankles out from beneath the woman who'd just tried to stab her. The heavy
thunk
against the floor suggested this particular enemy wouldn't be getting up again anytime soon, but Shins stabbed her through one leg, just to be sure.

Finally, dispersed as much by the wind of Shins's own movements as anything else, the haze began to clear. Small patches of stone wall grew visible to either side. The blood oozing across the floor glistened in the lanternlight, and only then did Shins become aware of the faint and rather disturbing
squelch
of every step.

Still
, she thought with a shudder,
at least I'm not lying in it.

The seven Finders scattered around her, sprawled across the floor and all sporting various holes that neither nature nor the gods had granted them, weren't so lucky.

Well, maybe
one
of the gods granted them, sort of…

The eighth thief, still standing only by virtue of the fact that he'd been farthest to the back when all hell broke loose, hung limp as an under-stuffed scarecrow. His lip quivered, tears actually ran down his face, and the trembling that was only faint in his arms had, by the time it traversed the length of his sword, become violent enough to make the tip little more than a metallic blur.

Shins smiled. He squeaked, dropped his rapier, and sank to his knees, hands clasped on his head.

“Good call,” she told him. “You're going to grow to be a wise old man.” And just like that she was sprinting down the corridor, heading ever deeper into the complex and leaving the cleanup to the guards who followed.

Face drenched in sweat, Renard plunged into a chamber in the lower passages of the Guild, sliding to a halt behind a small cadre
of Finders. Most were clad in casual clothes, even sleepwear, but the guns and blades they carried were well kept and ready to go.

They'd been, the lot of them, watching the room's
other
entrance, having piled up tables and chairs to form makeshift cover. All of which made sense, since the direction they faced led out into the halls, from where any invader would surely approach, while Renard had appeared from below.

“Coming up…from behind!” he gasped at them, doubling over with hands on knees. “Don't know how, but…they found one of the secret entrances! They're just minutes behind me!”

Immediately, swearing up a storm, the gathered Finders shoved furniture a few paces over, slipping around to the other side. They'd show the damn Guard, though! Bloody lawmen expected to take them by surprise; well, they were going to walk right into a wall of lead instead.

Renard made his way to the opposite side of the room, taking up position beside the door they
had
been watching.

The door from which, of course, the Guard would
actually
be coming. Yes, Renard had led them in through one of the hidden passages; just not the one he'd implied.

Rapier loose in its scabbard, a flintlock in each hand, Renard stared at the backs of men and women who really should not have thrown their lot in with Lisette, and waited for the firing to start.

“We're going to have to go room by room,” Paschal ordered, however reluctantly. He bitterly begrudged the time it would take, but this had to be done right.

He just hadn't expected the hallway to have this bloody many doors! They mocked him in the flickering lanternlight, teeth in an insufferably smug grin.

“Teams of four. Two in, clearing the room, two in the hall as backup. Nobody does anything alone, and no enemy contact is too minor; you run into someone or find something important, you call out.
Immediately
.”

All standard procedure for an operation of this sort, but the major wasn't about to let his people get sloppy. Not with
this
.

“Colliers! D'Ilse! Reno! You're with me!” He didn't bother to check as he began his march down the long corridor. He knew they'd fall in.

The entire passage echoed with the clatter of heavy boots kicking open doors, of orders shouted, of desks turned out and papers examined. Only on occasion did those sounds include any hint of violence, and when they did, it appeared little more than a few quick shots. The bulk of these rooms, clearly, were empty, and the inhabitants of those that weren't had, more often than not, wisely chosen surrender over resistance.

For all that it was going well, Paschal frowned. The problem with being this methodical was that it would take forever just to reach the far end of the hall. If anyone waited farther on, they'd have plenty of time to set up a proper ambush or escape in the chaos.

“We're starting at the other end,” he announced to the trio on his heels. “We'll move back this way and meet up with everyone in the middle.”

From there, for a brief while, it become routine. Kick in the door; dash inside, eyes and bash-bangs tracking quickly across every corner, digging through every shadow; a minute of more intense searching, to ensure nobody hid behind the furniture and no blatant dangers or evidence lay scattered openly; and on to the next room. Paschal and d'Ilse inside now; Colliers and Reno inside the next, while they waited in the hall; then Paschal and d'Ilse again. Familiar, efficient as clockwork.

And with the familiarity of repetition, even the most professional of guards could grow, however slightly, inattentive.

Paschal was already sweeping into the darkened room, slipping aside to clear the doorway, when the room flickered and barked with the sound of a single shot. Constable d'Ilse cried out from behind him; no way to tell how bad it was, though the fact that she kept up a string of muttered expletives was proof enough, at least, that the wound hadn't been lethal. The others should come bursting in, drawn by the sound of trouble, but the major had no attention for them, either.

No, his focus fixed entirely on the brass barrel of his flintlock, and the enemy—crouching low by a door in the far wall—at the end of it.

He returned fire, the thunder even more deafening than before, and then the enemy was
lying
by the door in the far wall. Except for small bits of his shoulder, which were splattered across it.

The injured man screamed; the injured woman cursed a bit more before subsiding into the raspy breathing of suppressed agony. Colliers knelt beside her, treating the wound as best he could, while Reno moved quickly to secure the prisoner—not that he was apt to go anywhere any time soon.

Which left Paschal to check that far door. None of the
other
offices he'd seen in this hall had a second door….

Narrower than the exit to the hallway, it was otherwise functionally identical. The major slammed it open, charging in with rapier in hand…

A massive shape loomed from the shadows, a tall and barrel-thick figure wielding an equally massive pistol.

Idiot. Gods damned bloody idiot! “Nobody by themselves!” I'd have a constable on latrine duty for pulling something like this!

Paschal crossed the distance between them in a desperate lunge, blade outstretched—a blade the colossal thief sidestepped with ease—his other hand grabbing for the gun even as it fired…

“
Ow!
Gods bloody dammit!”

The pain was sharp, biting, sending tingles of aggravation throughout his entire arm. Still, it was preferable to having been shot. He and the large-framed Finder both stared for an instant at the flintlock—and the flint clasped in the hammer, which had come down not on the striker but on the web of flesh between Paschal's thumb and forefinger.