Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure (25 page)

Seven…Eight…

On nine, having fully established the interval, she shifted the gun back into position, trusting Cyrille to keep the pattern.

Ten.

The door boomed shut. The flintlocks fired. On the chests of the two Crows nearest the gong, one sitting, one standing, a strange crimson flower seemed to blossom for an instant before they fell.

Shins was sprinting, flintlocks discarded, before the echoes faded. Utterly startled at what had just happened, torn between the instinct
to defend himself or reach for the gong, the Crow hesitated for several heartbeats.

It was enough. The race wasn't even close.

Cyrille jogged up beside her as she finished cleaning her blade. “Think it worked?”

“It didn't for me, but I was right next to the stupid things. I assume the inventor of the firearm was a deaf man, yes? Ow.”

“Oddly, I don't really care if it worked for
you
.”

“Just like a man,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing. I don't hear anyone coming running, or any change in the sounds from the next passage. So yes, between distance and the acoustics, yeah, I think the slam might've hidden it.”

“‘Think’ is good,” Cyrille said with a weak grin. “But ‘know’ would be better.”

“When I know, I'll tell you.” Shins sheathed her rapier, stepped over the nearest body—with a shudder, but thankfully nothing more—and prodded at the rear wall. “Yep. Plaster.”

They looked at one another, spoke in unison. “The postern?”

“But how?” the boy continued on his own. “I told you, it's totally impassable! Even if they'd managed to find it—”

“Then they have an alchemist,” Shins told him in sudden comprehension, “who could almost certainly whip up something to eat through the whole thing, overgrowth, bars, whatever.”

Cyrille let out a heavy breath. “Then they just throw up a painted wall of plaster so nobody happens to stumble over it.”

Shins continued to study it, then pointed out a very simple latch built into the “wall” to keep it shut. “That's got to be how they're planning to get out,” she observed. “Pretty clear they were already in the castle before the guests showed up, but maybe they've been coming and going all this time.”

“So let's go! We need to tell Veroche and the guards about this.”

Shins's nod was blatantly hesitant, would've been even had she
not
been chewing on her lip as though it were her last meal.

“Shins?”

“It's going to take a while for Veroche to get her people mobilized and moving. And we still don't know what they're walking into. I'd really like to find out.”

“That means wasting more time!”

“No, it doesn't. You go. I'll stay here and—”

“Forget it, there's no—!”

“Cyrille!” She stepped close, so close, almost touching. “You said it yourself. There's no time! I'm not going. That means you
have
to. They need you to.”

“But—”

“
I
need you to.”

Cyrille's eyes abruptly glistened in the flickering lantern light, but he nodded. “Shins…” He closed the last step, tentatively, and wrapped her in a tight hug—
not
, she gratefully observed, with any effort to kiss her. “Please, please be careful.”

“When am I not?” she asked, squeezing back. She
felt
him draw the breath to respond, and spoke before he could. “Of course I will, you turkey. You do, too, all right? You're the closest the Delacroix have to ‘decent.’ I'd be miffed if I saved the family for nothing.”

Again she acted before he could respond, this time disengaging herself from his arms, offering him a parting smile, and vanishing into the shadows.

He watched until she'd utterly faded from sight, and for some time afterward as well. It was, rather unpleasantly, the various growing stenches of the three dead bodies and their various effluvia that snapped him back to the moment.

Right. Time. We have no time. Got to tell Veroche about this.

Cyrille strode back to the door, gripped the latch, pressed, pushed….

Nothing happened. The door refused to budge.

“That's not hopeful,” he mumbled, frowning.

He let go, gripped it again, clicked the latch, pushed hard.

Nothing.

Shins was long gone. He wouldn't know how to find her without stumbling into the Crows first. And now, it seemed, he couldn't leave, either.

Cyrille stood before the door, clutching the handle uselessly like an idiot, and all he could think to say was, “Bloody godsdamned fucking…hens.”

Had it been a larder? Wine cellar? Perhaps even a good old-fashioned dungeon? Widdershins had no real way of knowing. Now, it was merely an enormous section of castle full of broken and jagged interior walls that had once subdivided the whole area into numerous smaller chambers and halls. A few of those walls still met the ceiling; a few were nothing more than lines of brick on the floor; most fell at random intervals between the two. An archway here or a frame with a dangling hinge there was in no way sufficient to tell an observer anything more than “Yes, this was, in fact, a room.”

Shins
did
note that these walls appeared thinner, and built of flimsier brick, than most of the castle's interior. Perhaps they'd decided what to do with this place after Pauvril was constructed?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. “Perhaps” didn't matter. What mattered was figuring out what use the place served
now
.

She'd had no difficulty finding it, and a wild boar playing the tambourine could have sneaked up close without effort. Multiple
conversations, clicks and thumps and clatters, and a peculiar gloopy bubbling sound that made Shins think of boiling sewage all emanated from within. So, too, did a burning, acidic stench that made her eyes water and probably would have corroded the zills and the fabric off the aforementioned tambourine.

Unfortunately, “close” wasn't good enough, and “in” looked to be a lot harder. While the mechanical sounds came from far in the back, some of the conversation was much nearer the archway Widdershins had approached. A
lot
of Crows occupied this particular nest, and the young thief wasn't particularly eager to try going through them all.

It took some time, but she finally found an alternate way into the man-made cavern of shattered rooms: a smaller door, perhaps for the servants, down at the hallway's far end. For most people, this entrance might have proved useless, as Shins was now separated from her goal by a veritable maze of partial chambers and collapsing walls.

Then again,
most
people would have wanted to make their way via the floor.

Shins scampered up the nearest partial wall and hauled herself atop. The varying heights would prove tricky, and she'd have to make a few jumps to clear the largest gaps, but those didn't worry her. She should even be able to stay hidden; the Crows had lanterns scattered throughout much of the area, shining through the cracks and crevices to where she now stood, but the shadows up here remained thick, and few of the thugs were likely to be looking
up
.

Sometimes on hands and knees—where the footing was particularly precarious or the risk of discovery high—otherwise at a walking crouch the envy of any tightrope performer, Widdershins made her way across the broken chamber.

Her brief journey ended near the rear wall, perched above a scene unlike anything she'd ever seen. A number of Crows (“How hopping big
is
this gang, anyway?” she demanded of Olgun) scurried this way
and that around a contraption that appeared to be the offspring of a witch's cauldron and a drunken octopus.

A great basin sat on an iron tripod, a fire burning beneath it with a sickly greenish flame. Numerous spouts and tubes protruded from the thing, most of which were capped. Other tubes—some of various metals, some of glue-sealed leather, a few of glass—led to the cauldron from other, smaller decanters, all standing on tall poles or hanging from the ceiling. These fed various substances into the main basin, a constant admixture of gods-knew-what sorts of ingredients. It was from here that the burning miasma emanated, along with clouds of something that wasn't quite steam, nor quite smoke.

The Crows were moving constantly, gathering various treasures from a massive heap and dumping them into the cauldron. Utensils and dishes, jewelry and picture frames—all of it either gold or silver.

Finally, from a single open spigot near the base of the cauldron, a steady flow of grayish sludge poured into an enormous bowl, carved of stone. As the bowl came near to being full, other Crows would come and drag it away, panting and cursing and straining, while a fresh bowl was put it its place.

And capering about the whole affair like a madman, screeching orders and adjusting tubes, was Fingerbone, alchemist of the Thousand Crows.

“Don't ask me,” she whispered, replying to Olgun's unspoken query. “I haven't the first idea.” A brief pause, contemplating, and then, “I'm guessing all the gold and stuff is some of what was confiscated from the Carnots, yes? They said the house assets were being kept here until it was decided…”

She trailed off, more puzzled than ever, as two of the Crows gathered by the bowl of sludge. Wearing heavy gloves, they gathered some of the stuff in an iron dipper, then poured it carefully into a small mold, also iron.

A spherical mold. A mold of just the right size for…

Ammunition.

“Holy gods.”

Lead. In a complete reversal of what alchemists had tried to do for centuries on end, Fingerbone was transforming the gold and silver of the Carnot treasury into lead.

And then Maline and the Crows were shooting hostages with it.

Understanding crashed down on Widdershins as though Maline had appeared to explain it to her, so abruptly it made her head swim. This wasn't about the oily bastard getting his people back; this was a theft, one she had to admire just a bit even through her mounting revulsion.

Whatever riches or rewards the Carnots had promised the gang for their cooperation obviously had not been forthcoming, so Maline had decided to take what profit he could. The people of Aubier and the noble houses, however, weren't about to let him and the Crows just walk away. Oh, they'd play along, so long as he had hostages, probably even let him leave the castle, but they wouldn't be planning to let the Crows go far.

Maline and his people were good enough, tough enough, quick enough, that the bulk of them could probably escape any pursuit—but not if they were encumbered with pounds and pounds of gold.

In a few weeks, however, when things in Aubier had returned to normal and the people had let down their guard, it wouldn't be difficult to sneak back in and
dig up the bodies of the murdered hostages.

Cyrille had told her it was far easier to reverse an alchemical change than to cause it—easier and cheaper. The Crows would still turn a hefty profit, especially if the reagents they were using now to instigate the change had been purchased with Carnot funds rather than their own.

It also, she realized, her stomach lurching, explained why Maline was being so quick with his executions. If the Crows were going to smuggle out enough “lead” for this to be worthwhile, he'd need to shoot each hostage multiple times.

Every
hostage multiple times. Maline wasn't planning to leave a single one of them alive.

The whole room spun as Shins tried to take it all in, tried to wrap her mind around the magnitude of the Crow's murderous plan. She felt ready to vomit, actually breaking out in a sweat. It took her a moment, in fact, to realize that part of what she felt wasn't disgust or horror at all, but Olgun screaming a warning in the back of her mind.

Her hands—the only bare skin that had come into contact with the top of the broken walls—and to a much lesser extent, her knees, were slowly beginning to sting.

“Oh, figs.”

Shins tried to stand, tried to retreat, but her limbs felt heavier than the lead below. Her vision blurred, the room lurched, and the young woman toppled from the wall, landing with a pained grunt.

When she looked up again, blinking to clear her vision, she found herself surrounded.