Thief's Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) (35 page)

Claude, chest heaving and forehead glistening with sweat, emerged from behind his minions and glared around him. “You wait outside,” he said, gesturing to one of the men. The others, along with Jean Luc and the demon, followed him inside, their boots muffled by the worn carpeting.

The door slid shut behind them, but their sight adjusted rapidly to the sickly light of the uneven lanterns and torches, the artificial gloaming that presaged the fall of a night that never came. Claude quickly recognized the chapel for what it was, and his gaze slowly traveled across the humanoid form of the idol, coming to rest upon its heavy hood of black cloth.

“Here,” Widdershins said, appearing from behind the statue. “Your proof.” With an almost contemptuous flip of her wrist, she sent the mask drifting unevenly down to the floor.

The chapel filled with horrified screams, as men and monster looked upon the unveiled face of the Shrouded God.

Beneath the upraised hand that shielded her eyes, Widdershins saw the assassin Jean Luc collapse to his knees, screaming until his cheeks had reddened and his eyes bulged. All around, she heard other men following suit, though she dared not look.

And as it seemed he could scream no more, that his lungs must collapse for lack of air, his voice took on a horrible, liquid tone. Jean Luc thrashed on the floor, vomiting everything in his gut, heave after heave until there was utterly nothing left.

Still it refused to stop, for the curse of the Shrouded God was nothing less than the most primal font of thievery itself.

Need. Want.
Hunger.

When she could actually
see
the flesh, the meat, the muscle fading—when his skin sank ever nearer his bones with each purge, as the substance of his body was eaten away, almost
deflating
before her eyes—Widdershins finally had to look away, her own whimpers scarcely audible above the hideous gurgles that had once been screams.

Only when the noises finally stopped and the chamber began to reek of purged and rotted flesh did she open her eyes. Bodies lay strewn across the room, gaunt as famine victims and glued to the matted carpet by a viscous sludge. Even the demon lay sprawled, its leathery hide clinging to its bones. It moved, struggling to rise, apparently too potent for the curse to slay, but for the nonce, at least, it was vulnerable.

Keeping her eyes carefully downcast and her back to the idol, Widdershins reached down and, with a shudder of revulsion, peeled the statue's hood from the carpet where it lay. She felt her way along the sculpture until she finally found the head, and gasped audibly in relief as she pulled the hood back over its face.

All right, all she had to do now was find some way to keep the demon down, and—

Olgun's scream was almost too late. A long, wide blade flickered from the darkness, and Widdershins's desperate forward roll might have saved her life, but only just. Fire flashed through her as the steel punched into her back just above the kidney, and her blood rained down to mix with the vile mire soaking into the carpet.

Struggling through the pain and the crawling of her skin as she rolled across the foul floor, Widdershins rose to her feet and spun, hefting the rapier that had fallen beside the body of Jean Luc.

Claude stood before her, sword in hand. A trickle of blood running down one side of his chin was the only sign of the Shrouded God's curse. Perhaps the Apostle had averted his eyes before the magics had taken hold—or maybe, just maybe, he had taken shelter behind his own divine protection.

“Well played,” he growled, the tip of his sword slicing abstract patterns through the air before him. With a scowl, he shrugged the cloak from his shoulders. “You almost had us. But Cevora protects his own, and none can stand before him.”

“I'm not standing before him,” Widdershins grunted, rapier steady in one hand even as she pressed the other to her bleeding wound. “I'm standing before
you.”

She lunged, ignoring the tearing in her back. She had to end this fast, turn her attention back to the demon before it recovered its strength.

The Apostle's blade, though far heavier than her own, swept up with astounding speed to meet the assault. They stood a moment, steel against steel, the stares they exchanged sharper than any sword.

Widdershins's rapier was gleaming lightning, striking from one direction almost before she had completed her thrust from the last. It whistled as it cut through the air, and the ring of metal on metal was so rapid it became a single prolonged screech.

But through it all, Claude's blade intercepted even the swiftest strike. His heavy sword was more than enough to turn her weapon away, yet quick enough to slice through the gaps opened by his overwhelming parries. Widdershins bled from half a dozen wounds, tiny scrapes that sapped away her swiftly fading strength, yet she delivered none in return. Sweat poured down her face and his, gleaming in the light reflecting off the flashing blades.

Claude was good, but he wasn't
that
good; not as skilled as Lisette had been. But in that earlier struggle—gods, had it been so recent?—Widdershins hadn't been weighed down so terribly, by grief, by exhaustion, by the pain of her vicious wound.

She hadn't faced a foe who, just perhaps, had his own god guiding his hand, even as she did.

And she knew, she
knew
, that this was a fight she could not win.

Widdershins spun, wincing at the pain of her injury even as she ducked under a slash that would have opened her scalp had it connected. Dropping almost into a crouch, she reached out with her empty hand and—struggling not to think about what she was doing—scooped up a handful of the semiliquid remains spread across the floor and hurled it at her foe. Claude saw it coming, turned his face away to avoid getting the horrible stuff in his eyes and mouth—but it was enough to halt him in his tracks, if only for the briefest instant.

Widdershins was off at a limping sprint, standing at the door before the Apostle had taken a single step. With desperate speed she hauled it open, sliding it into its stone moorings, and came face to startled face with the guard Claude had left outside.

For a heartbeat they stared, she having utterly forgotten he was there, he having heard nothing of the conflict within, thanks to the heavy walls and door. And then he was yanking his flintlock from his belt, bringing it up and around with expert speed, finger already tightening on the trigger…

Widdershins hissed Olgun's name, and the deity reached out to caress the weapon—not to stop it, not to blow it to splinters, but to ignite it
early
. The flint slammed down without the trigger's urging; black powder flashed and sparked. The thug's eyes had only begun to widen as the lead ball hurtled harmlessly past Widdershins's shoulder—and sank, with a dull tearing sound and a horrified grunt, into the chest of the man charging up behind her.

The soldier stared in growing horror, Widdershins in shock, Claude down at his chest in bewildered disbelief.

“I don't understand,” the Apostle whispered, tears forming in his eyes. “Cevora…”

And then he fell, first to his knees, then facedown in the putrid carpet.

Widdershins stepped forward, kneed the remaining guard in the groin as he stood stunned, and cracked him over the head with the pommel of the rapier for good measure.

“Nice
shot, Olgun!” she crowed, laughing through her pain. She felt the god within beaming with pride.

“Don't let it go to your head, though,” she added. “I don't want to still be hearing about this a month from now.”

She
swore
she could feel him stick his tongue out at her.

Widdershins wanted nothing more than to leave. She hurt all over, she'd begun to feel slightly faint from exertion (and probably blood loss), and she knew it was only a matter of time before the thieves regained their courage and came hunting for whatever had invaded their home. But she'd come here for a reason, and that purpose remained undone.

Leaning over the unconscious thug, she carefully removed the powder horn at his waist and made her way back into the reeking chamber of horrors that had lately been a shrine.

It wasn't dead. The inhuman form had survived a three-story plunge back at the tenement, waded through a barrage of bolts and bullets, refused to be slain by the curse of a god not its own. But it lay, grunting and twitching, struggling to regain the strength that had been ripped from it. Some hideous viscous sludge of a color that Widdershins had never before seen—she could describe it only as some hideous combination of blue and death—oozed across the floor where the demon had puked it up, slowly bubbling and eating away at the carpet.

Moving as rapidly as her aching body would allow, keeping half an eye on the demon at all times, Widdershins skittered about the room, packing the horn with all the black powder carried by every one of Claude's thugs. Then and only then did she lean down beside the demon.

“Go back to hell,” she whispered.

Widdershins shoved the horn unceremoniously into the beast's upturned mouth, as far down its throat as it would go, and fled the room. She paused once in the doorway, just long enough to yank one of the torches from the wall and hurl at the writhing, choking form, before slamming the door.

The thunderous blast made her ears ring even through the normally soundproof portal. Carefully she cracked it open once more, peered into the chapel just to be certain, and smiled.

And twenty-six souls, hovering in the ether around Adrienne Satti for two long years, drifted away to their long-sought rest.

“Now,”
she told Olgun exhaustedly, “would be a good time to go home.”

Even as she spoke, she realized that she knew exactly where “home,” from now on, had to be.

It was the very last respect she could pay.

SEVERAL DAYS FROM NOW
:

“Well,” the girl began hesitantly, voice husky with suppressed grief, with tears long since cried, “I guess that's the end of it.” Robin looked around her, gripping the haft of the broom as though she sought to prevent the tool, and all it represented, from disappearing.

The common room looked good, better than it had in months. The employees, and Robin in particular, had done a marvelous job of cleaning up. The floor was free of dust and debris, and scrubbed so that all but the most stubborn stains had given up in despair. For the first time in years, the twin scents of alcohol and sawdust were stronger than the lingering aura of stale sweat. The tables, too, were cleaned and polished to within an inch of their lives…. All the tables but one. That one was gone, Widdershins having fed it piece by piece into the blazing hearth.

The serving girl still didn't know, really, what had happened. Part of her wanted to push, to demand an explanation, but she'd never do that to her friend. Shins would tell her the entire story if and when she was ready, and not a moment before.

“It looks good, Robin,” Widdershins said softly from behind her. The girl felt a comforting hand close over her shoulder. “She'd have been proud of what you've done with the place.”

With a piteous wail, Robin dropped the broom and fell against the newcomer's chest, sobbing miserably. Widdershins clasped her arms around the girl and let the spell subside.

Even once it had, she kept a worried eye on Robin, watching for a relapse of the near madness that had gripped her the night Genevieve died. She'd suffered no similar attacks since, but Widdershins walked on eggshells around her, terrified that she might set off another episode.

But it was more than the memory of her lost friend that had Robin so distraught. As the sobbing wound down, Widdershins distinctly heard a muffled, “What am I going to do?” from the tousled black mop of hair against her breast.

“What else would you do, Robin? You'll pull yourself together, organize the others when they get here, and get this place ready to reopen. You've got no idea the amount of business we've lost already.”

Robin jerked back from her friend's embrace as though she'd been shoved, her red-rimmed eyes wide. “Shins,” Robin began, trying to keep her voice steady, “there's not going to be any reopening. You know what Gen's father thought of this place! He'll probably just close it down, or maybe sell it, and in either case—”

“Robin, what makes you think Monsieur Marguilles has any say over what happens?”

The girl blinked, and despite her grief, Widdershins laughed at the befuddled look.

“Genevieve's will explicitly grants ownership of the Flippant Witch to someone else.”

“But Gen didn't
have
a will!” Robin exclaimed. “She kept putting it off.”

Widdershins smiled sadly. “You're forgetting the kinds of people I work with, Robin. By the time Marguilles gets here to take possession of ‘his' tavern, I'll have a will so perfect that Genevieve herself wouldn't have recognized it as a fake.”

“Is…is that right?” The girl sounded doubtful. “I mean, would Gen have approved?”

“More than she'd have approved of her father selling her home to some stranger, I think.”

Robin felt herself starting to smile as well, for the first time in almost a week. “And this new owner would happen to be…?”

Widdershins casually buffed her nails on her vest. “Of course,” she finally admitted, “I don't know the first thing about running a tavern, so that's pretty much going to be your job. It means, I'm afraid, that I have to insist on paying you more, but I'm sure you'll underst
ooof!!
”

Trying her hardest to gulp in some much-needed air, Widdershins gently disentangled herself from the world's most aggressive hug. “I take it you're happy with the decision,” the thief croaked.

“You could say that,” Robin replied.

“Is that why you tried to crush me to death just now?”

Startlingly, the girl's smile grew wider. “I thought it might be best to get you out of the way before you changed your mind.”

For a long moment, Widdershins just stared at her, and then nearly collapsed with laughter.

“Which reminds me,” Widdershins remarked afterward, tousling Robin's hair fondly. “I have a thing or three I've been putting off, myself. Now that the bar's taken care of…”
And you, too
, she added silently, “I really ought to get to them. You get this place ready to open by tomorrow night or it's coming out of your pay, you hear me?”

Even from outside, Widdershins could faintly hear the young girl whistling as she once more swept the already pristine floor of the common room.

Standing in the midst of a filthy bedroom, heaps of clothes and assorted bric-a-brac hiding the old, termite-eaten floor, Henri Roubet desperately shoved the pieces of several outfits into a satchel already bulging at the seams.

He wasn't entirely certain how it had all gone wrong, but he knew that it couldn't possibly have gone any worse. The Apostle was dead, his men were dead, and Widdershins had not only seen his face but
heard his name
! He'd flinched even then, when Jean Luc introduced him, but he'd figured it didn't matter. She was going to be dead, and he was going to be rich.

Well, so be it. He was still good at his job, bum hand notwithstanding, and the Apostle had paid him more than enough over the years. He could start over in some other city without difficulty, live for quite some time before he even had to worry about finding a new position. In fact, much as he'd have enjoyed the riches promised him, this might even prove the better option. In another city, the weight of his past and the suspicion of the Guard wouldn't be hanging over his shoulder. He just needed to—

He froze, satchel falling from limp fingers at the feel of the cold metal mouth kissing his skull. Nobody could have snuck up on him here! Just dropping a damn pair of trousers made the floorboards in this pesthole squeak! And yet there the man was, visible just out of the corner of Roubet's eye, flintlock pressed to the back of his head.

“Why?” the former Guardsman asked softly.

“Because Widdershins isn't a murderer,” Renard Lambert said to him. “And Genevieve would never have wanted someone like
you
to turn her into one.”

Henri Roubet closed his eyes tightly as the hammer fell.

Renard glared for a few moments at the corpse of Henri Roubet, then casually stuck the flintlock back in his belt. He tugged briefly on the fingers of his glove, blew on them to clear them of any excess powder, and turned toward the door.

Widdershins would be angry when she heard; she doubtless still believed that she actually wanted to find Roubet and kill him herself. Well, let her believe it. Renard knew better. And he knew that someday she'd understand, maybe even thank him.

Genevieve certainly would, looking down from wherever she might be.

He grinned suddenly, even as his hand touched the latch. It wasn't like him to be so spiritual. That's what he paid the guild priests for.

One last glance behind, taking in the cluttered room that reeked of unwashed clothes (and, with a growing insistency, spilled blood), and Renard sighed. Damn, but that girl was awfully hard to watch out for. As it was, the Finders would be expecting some sort of punishment—quite a lot of punishment—for her part in the recent massacre. He'd have to make sure he and the priests were on the same page, explain that her actions had prevented the rise of a power that might have threatened the guild, even the Shrouded God himself. Most of them wouldn't believe it, but at least it would quell the uproar. Still, maybe he should ask her to consider lying low for a few weeks…As though there was a chance in hell she'd agree.

And there was so much else to do, as well: rebuilding the guild's membership, appointing a new taskmaster, figuring out what to do with Lisette now that she'd proved herself utterly untrustworthy…. Perhaps she'd make a good public example, show the others the dangers of working against their leader, but that might just entice her followers and allies to further conspiracy…. Gods, but the work never ended! Sometimes, Renard wondered if it had even been worth taking the damn position in the first place.

Renard Lambert, Shrouded Lord of the Finders' Guild, disappeared into Davillon, grumbling over the inconveniences of love and duty.

With a low groan of exhaustion, Major Julien Bouniard of the Davillon City Guard tore his gaze from the mounds of paper littering his desk like so many bird droppings, and clasped two fingers to the bridge of his nose. It was late, long past the end of his shift. The candles and lanterns guttered, the low background hum faded as the day shift trickled out to go home, the night shift out to their assigned patrols.

Julien knew that he could have, should have, given up and gone home, taken a fresh crack at this in the morning. It had been going on for days, now, form on top of form, briefing on top of briefing. But he'd ordered his men to get this whole mess done and over with as rapidly as possible, and Julien Bouniard wouldn't ask anything of them that he wasn't willing to do himself. So, with a frustrated shake of his head, he determined to return to work for at least another hour, opening his tired eyes—

And nearly leaped out of his skin through his own mouth when he saw that the thin wooden chair across from his desk was no longer vacant.

“That was an interesting yelp,” the Guardsman's visitor said dryly, prodding at one ear with a finger. “I think you've just deafened every dog within two city blocks.”

Julien glared, one hand clenched at the tabard covering his chest, the other on the butt of his flintlock. “Gods above, Widdershins! If you're trying to kill me, pull steel and have done with!” A few deep breaths seemed to calm him; at the very least, he stopped clutching at his breast as though he was having heart palpitations. “I'm not as young as I used to be,” he told her more steadily.

You have no idea
, she thought with a touch of bitterness. What she said was, “Really? I am. I gave up aging a few years back. Nothing to be gained from it, really.”