Thief's Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) (8 page)

NOW
:

It was not a pleasant place, this chamber. The walls, all
five
of them, were a dull ebon stone, set with equally dark mortar. The floor and ceiling, both black marble, were smooth and unbroken. The room possessed only a single door, and that substantial portal—constructed of a heavy, darkened wood—led to a small antechamber. An ingenious system of gears and pulleys prevented the outer door of that tiny vestibule from opening unless the inner door was firmly shut, and vice versa. Thus protected, and completely windowless, the shadowy inner chamber had never been exposed to the searing touch of day.

Really,
really
black, basically.

Standing within this room, lit only by a pair of torches that hung opposite the door, a visitor could truly believe he stood on the brink of eternity, staring into the primordial darkness that skulked beyond the borders of creation.

Between those flickering brands lurked the room's only other feature. Embossed into the otherwise blank wall were the head and torso of what, in the impotent lighting, might be mistaken for a man. The shoulders and arms were human in every particular, if perhaps too heavily muscled. The head was the proper shape, topped by an unruly mop of hair that billowed behind, carved into the wall with exquisite detail.

All of which was designed eventually to direct the viewer's attention to the figure's face.

The entity's features were hideous, terrifying as the fading memoríes of a recent nightmare, and equally as bewildering. Oh, this was not the mask of some horrific monster; no fangs, no fur, no scales. No, the face was human, beautiful even. It was also utterly devoid of mortal emotion. Surely this was the bust of some madman, a being incapable of experiencing, or even understanding, the urges, desires, hates, and fears that should have been his birthright. It was the face of pure need, pure hunger, an evil that sprung not from some cause, nor any great malevolence, but pure predatory instinct. Beast it was, wolf or serpent or lion, scarcely concealed behind a mask of man.

Before the great idol waited two figures. The first was Roubet, his eyes wide with a pungent blend of fear and greed. They darted between the graven image and the other man, a man clad in robes of midnight blue that almost, but not quite, blended with the surrounding darkness. This was a man who had paid Roubet well, since before he was forced from the Guard; a man he would address by no name or title other than “Apostle.”

Henri Roubet refused to admit, even to himself, that he knew the Apostle's other name, for fear of how that knowledge would be rewarded.

“You're certain they're coming?” the Apostle asked, glancing irritably at the fane's outer door.

The soldier and spy neither sighed aloud nor rolled his eyes, though he was tempted to do both at this third or fourth repetition of the question. “I'm certain, Holiness. They'll be here. I imagine they just need—”

A dull gong reverberated through the black walls, and the room began to rumble with the sound of grinding gears.

“—a bit more time,” Roubet concluded as the inner door slid aside.

There were six of them, of varying heights, varying demeanors. This one wore heavy leathers, stained dark and well creased; that one dressed in the bright and jarring plumage of the Davillon aristocracy, down to the razor-sharp rapier at his side; and a third was garbed entirely in black, nigh invisible against the ebon backdrop of the chamber.

They did, however, share a profession in common. And they were all quite good at it.

“Has Roubet explained why you're here?” the Apostle demanded without preamble.

“I'm willing to take a stab at it,” the leather-clad man replied. His voice was deep, gravelly, thanks to the jagged scar that ran across his neck. “I'm guessing you want someone killed.”

“If I want comedy,” their host rejoined, “I'll hire a jester. Of
course
I want somebody killed, you blithering imbecile!”

The leather-clad killer shrugged. “Ask a stupid question—”

The nobleman—or the assassin garbed as one—stepped forward, cutting off his companion. “It's been some time since you've asked us to meet with you personally. And while your errant Guardsman was somewhat terse, I could hear the excitement in his voice. I can only assume you've located Adrienne Satti.”

“Very good, Jean Luc. I'm glad to see there's at least
one
brain amongst you.” To the group at large, he continued, “Indeed, I have found our wayward cultist—something, I must remind you, none of you has managed in
two years.”
He met their eyes, reminding them one by one of his displeasure; and one by one, these hardened assassins turned away. “And indeed, I'll be calling on your talents to assist me with her final disposition. But for now, all I want you to do is locate her alias—Roubet will fill you in—so that you can find her when necessary. She is
not
your current target. I have an entirely other commission in mind for you.”

A smattering of confused murmurs arose from the group. The chamber's bizarre acoustics bounced them back as a veritable hissing chorus.

“I'm sure, by now,” the Apostle continued, rather than awaiting the obvious question, “that each of you has heard of the dignitary soon to grace our fair city with his presence?”

The room echoed again, not with puzzled whispers but a series of stunned gasps.

“I see that you have.” The Apostle smiled, a gleam of white amidst the unrelenting black. “Let me tell you what I require….”

The door slammed behind her with an awful ring of finality, the snapping trapdoor of a gallows. The private rooms of the Flippant Witch were plain, simple: six chairs and a single table in each, and nothing more. Nonchalant, or at least trying hard to appear that way, Widdershins confronted the trio who'd shepherded her in here. A jaunty smile fixed on her face as though glued to her jaw, she hopped up to sit on the table, her legs crossed demurely and dangling over the edge.

“Brock,” she greeted the hulking boulder of a man.

“I'm so pleased you remember me, Widdershins,” he rumbled, a cruel little grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

“What? No, actually, I didn't. I just have a habit of cursing in High Chicken when I'm startled. Brock!
Brock
-brock-brock-brock-brock-brock! Bu-
caw
!” She blinked coyly. “See? Like that.”

The grin slid from Brock's face, leaving a faint trail, and his teeth ground against one another. “Oh, you're
funny,”
he growled.

“I am? Really? I'm so glad you told me. Based on your expressions, I'd never have guessed that—that—”

Her voice broke into a nervous gulp as the glowering twist to Brock's visage shifted even farther down the spectrum from “unaamused” toward “homicidal.” Widdershins decided that, just maybe, Brock-baiting was not the healthiest pastime to engage in.

With his short-cropped dark hair and rock-solid jawline, Brock might even have been deemed handsome, if someone of a far gentler persuasion had resided behind his face. Though a member in good standing of the Davillon Finders' Guild, Brock wasn't actually a thief. He was, rather, one of the guild's “negotiators”—or, in more mundane terms, a leg-breaker. He was no less a blunt object than the weapon he favored.

He stepped nearer the table, his tread shaking the floorboards into spitting tiny puffs of dust. Widdershins's eyes, of their own accord, flickered to the enormous hammer at his side.

In her agitation, and in spite of her determination not to taunt the man any further, she blurted, “Gee, Brock, I didn't know you were a blacksmith. What—what were you planning to forge with that?” She chuckled nervously, and wished now she hadn't sat atop the table. Her position offered little room to retreat. “You know, when they talk about members of the Finders' Guild ‘forging' things, that's not really what they mean. See, most people in our line of work prefer pen and ink. It's really a lot more—”

“Shut. The hell. Up.”

She did just that, leaning back ever farther as Brock loomed nearer, until it seemed that she might wind up lying flat on her back in order to meet his gaze. He finally stopped, however, no more than a foot away.

“You annoy me,” he told her succinctly. “That's never a wise idea.”

“It's a habit,” she retorted instinctively. “What do you want with me?”

“What do I usually want from people, Widdershins? What they owe the guild. And you, girl, are a little behind.”

His fellow thugs smirked at the entendre.

Widdershins scowled despite herself. Lisette again—it had to be. Nobody else would be riding her yet about a job she'd just completed
yesterday.

He could, she supposed, have been speaking of other, older jobs, but she'd never held back on those. Well, not much;
everyone
held out a
little.
…

“I don't know what you're talking about!” she insisted, indignant.

The others chuckled once more, having heard it a thousand times from a thousand mouths. Brock shook his head. “Of course you haven't,” he said snidely. “This is all a big mistake.”

“Well, yes, it is! And besides,” she added quickly as his hand settled on the heavy mallet, “if you kill me, the guild never gets what I
supposedly
owe them! They'd be unhappy with you for that, yes?”

“I'm not supposed to kill you,” Brock told her, his breath a caustic cloud mere inches from her face. “I'm not,” he added, sounding vaguely put out by the whole thing, “even supposed to break any bones. I'm just supposed to make sure that you remember our conversation.” He smiled an uneven, gap-toothed smile as his hammer slid loose with a slimy hiss. “I think you'll remember.”

“Oh, absolutely,” she told him, forcing a laugh through a dry mouth. “Never forget a word of it. You've set me straight, Brock. No sense in wasting any more time on me!”

“This will go easier,” he told her, hefting the mallet, “if you don't fight.”

“Probably,” she agreed, slamming her shins with crushing force up between Brock's legs and into one of his few tender spots. “But ‘easy' is
boring.”
She smiled at the shocked expressions of the other enforcers, even as their boss slid to the floor with an agonized whimper. “Wouldn't you agree, boys?”

They needed only seconds to shake off their stupor, to advance on the tiny thief, snarls on their faces and blades in their fists. But in those precious moments of confusion, Widdershins rolled backward, rising to her feet in the center of the table, rapier in hand. The wood creaked beneath her weight, shifted precariously, but held. The blade carved tiny circles in the air as she waited, watching, as the thugs fanned out to flank the table.

Widdershins had time for precisely two thoughts. The first was a brief prayer of thanks for Genevieve's high ceilings; the second a tense whispered instruction to Olgun to “Watch my back!” And then there was no more time for thought at all.

The first enforcer, a scar-faced man with a scraggly blond beard and matching yellow teeth, lunged across the table's edge, attempting to cut Widdershins's ankles out from under her with a wickedly curved dagger. It was, at their respective heights and angles, an impossible parry. The sensible move would have been for Widdershins to step back out of reach.

Which, of course, would have put her squarely in line for a similar attack from the man's companion, a smaller, rat-faced fellow with pockmarked skin. And it would have worked, if Olgun hadn't been bellowing a warning in Widdershins's mind. She indeed stepped backward, but instantly kicked out behind her with her other leg. The thug's vision filled with a blur of soft black leather, and by the time he'd realized that what he saw was the business end of a boot, it had already spread his nose across his left cheek with an unfortunate snap.

The bearded man, having brilliantly reached the conclusion that things weren't going as planned, hurled himself up onto the table, rising in a knife-fighter's crouch. Widdershins, stooping slightly herself, circled warily. She stepped right and he moved to follow, neither looking away, neither daring to blink. Step, follow. Step, follow. Step…Widdershins could barely keep from grinning. Gods, but the man was a nitwit! Follow…The bruiser scowled, uncertain why this impudent bitch was smirking at him. Step, follow.