by Ari Marmell
Plumes of smoke rolled through the empty doorway, a choking, searing cloud…
Lisette heaving herself back the length of the room, snagging the desk with one hand as she rolled across it, hauling it over with a strength she simply could not have possessed and then taking cover behind…
Guns roared; geysers of splinter or dust erupted where lead balls flatted against wood and stone…
Voices shouted behind the smoke, the words tumbling over and wrestling with one another, and Shins understood none of it, wasn't entirely sure what it was…
Blood seeped across the stone floor from uncounted open wounds, and Shins watched it, fascinated by every ripple, struggling to recall why it was important…
Another detonation, louder than any flintlock, and the chamber filled with smoke, smoke of briny scent and peculiar violet hue.
That's not right. The smoke here's supposed to be gray, yes? To match the Shrouded Lord's…shroud…
More yelling, more gunfire, a touch of prayer…
Prayer?
She was sure she knew what was happening, if she could just have a moment to tell herself, to think, to—
“I've got her!” Hands closed around Shins's upper arms, hauling her upright. She decided, somewhat dreamily, that it was a good thing she didn't know if she ought to fight or not, since she really couldn't, anyway.
“Who've y'got?” she mumbled, then cried out as an arm brushed against one of the open welts across her back.
An indrawn hiss sounded from the figure holding her upright. “Good gods, Widdershins. What did they do to you?”
“Bad things,” she replied with a fervent nod, before bursting into tears.
The other voice quivered, as though on the verge of joining her. “Come, dear lady. Let's get you out of here.” Then, in a much louder shout, “Fall back! The smoke's not going to impede the bitch for long!”
“The hell do you think we're doing?!” someone else called out, followed by an abortive shriek and a sudden, sickeningly wet thump.
“You're right,” Lisette growled through the obscuring haze, from precisely where the prior call had come. “It won't.”
“It doesn't have to,” the man—definitely a man, she'd decided—holding Shins muttered. She felt herself being half-guided, half-dragged, from the room. More than once she stumbled…No. No, she was essentially in a single long stumble in which she occasionally managed a halfway steady step. Each time, her supporter's grip tightened or shifted to catch her, and each time she winced or gasped or wailed in agony.
“For the fucking gods’ sake, someone help me with her!”
Someone slipped beneath her other arm, balancing her between the two of them, and their pace increased dramatically. Every step, every jostle, every moment was a new blade of anguish, but Widdershins gritted her teeth and let herself be carried along, slowly reawakening.
The hall was choked with smoke, but not nearly so badly as the chamber had been. Olgun's touch, shaky but as comforting as ever, hummed around the edges of her wounds, worked at shoveling the thickest of the cobwebs from her mind. And finally, she began to more clearly make out what was happening around her.
The man on her left, the one who'd only just appeared, she didn't know, though the general posture and shabby upkeep said “Down-and-out thief” to her. But the other, shorter one…
Well, though he currently lacked his accustomed ostentatious hat with even more ostentatious feather—which he would no doubt claim he had plucked from the tail of a phoenix—she could not possibly have failed to recognize the ornate mustache or deep-blue eyes, to say nothing of the bright-blue and white and yellow and violet of the tunic and half-cape.
“Renard?!”
Her old Finders’ Guild mentor offered a genuine smile between harsh gasps for breath. “As ever and always at your service, Lady Widdershins.”
Had her arm not already been around his shoulders, and were she not currently being dragged at a near running pace through the Guild's chapel, she could have hugged him.
Wait. The chapel?! Why the—
But Shins received her answer before she could ask. Several more of who she presumed were Renard's people waited therein, standing perhaps a third of the way around the chamber from the idol of the Shrouded God—around a gaping trapdoor that Widdershins had never known existed!
“Bwuh?” she inquired.
“I know every secret of this place,” Renard said as he gestured for the others to clear a path. “This was the nearest hidden ingress to where I figured you would be. Well, the nearest one I trusted, now that Lisette knows of the concealed passage from the Shrouded Lord's chamber itself.”
“Let us,” a rather more imperious voice insisted, “save the questions and answers until we're clear. If that's all right by all of you?”
Shins craned her neck, wincing at the pain. Almost beside them was a dark-haired, dark-skinned, darkly-clad woman, of sharp and almost-but-not-quite regal features.
Igraine Vernadoe, priestess of the Shrouded God. Widdershins realized it must have been she who'd been praying earlier.
“Didn't know you cared,” Shins managed with the faintest smile.
“I could still be talked out of it,” Igraine warned as she dropped through the trapdoor.
Renard followed, and the next moments were sheer torment as several hands clasped Widdershins's body and—gently as they could, which under the circumstances wasn't very—lowered her down. Renard took one of her arms again, Igraine the other, and they proceeded down the cramped, dust-choked, web-bedecked passageway at what could, at best, be described as an impatient shuffle.
“Others not…” Shins gagged at the sudden inhalation of dust, sneezed hard, and spent the next minute or so waiting for the world to stop spinning beneath the onrush of pain from her injuries. “Not coming with us?” she finally croaked out.
“I still have a few people loyal to me left in the Guild,” Renard said, drawing an unexplained glare from the priestess. “That's how I knew you were there, dear lady; they dispatched a runner to me the instant you arrived. If all went as planned, in the chaos of the incursion, nobody should be able to identify them as having assisted the ‘invaders.’ They should have been able to reseal the trap, too, so that the bitch and her people can't follow us.”
“And,” Igraine added as they passed one of the old wooden support struts, “if they do appear to have found the tunnel, we have other safeguards in place.”
Following her gaze, Shins noted a parcel of some sort tied to the beam. A parcel with a fuse protruding from it.
“Notice there are no torches or lanterns?” Renard asked. “Very sensitive fuses. Bring a flame anywhere near them, and…loudness ensues.”
Shins blinked, felt Olgun doing…whatever his equivalent of blinking was. “But I can see.”
“Luminescent fungus. Deliberately cultivated long ago. Of course, anyone who finds the tunnel but doesn't know about that is going to assume they require a torch…”
“Got it. Thereby loudness.”
“Precisely.”
Shuffle. Shuffle. Step.
This is actually starting to hurt a little less. “Thank you.” Heartfelt but silent, audible to no mortal listener. A warm glow, hesitant but growing stronger, in response.
Stumble.
But only a little less.
Shuffle. Shuffle.
And only then did her mind begin finally to catch up with the events of the last few minutes.
Wait one frog-hopping minute! “I have people still loyal to me…”? Not us. Me.
“How do you know Lisette knows about the escape tunnel in the Shrouded Lord's office?”
“Renard…” the priestess warned.
“Oh, what difference does it make now, Igraine?” he grumbled. “I know because I used it to get away from her the first time. And it was a near thing, believe you me.”
Shins could only shake her head, which—under the circumstances—didn't accomplish much save to drag
her hair through the wet blood across her back, and then brush the tips across the pair helping her. “Renard Lambert. The Shrouded Lord. I have to confess, I didn't see that coming.”
“Anonymity is the whole point,” Igraine groused. “Or it's supposed to be.”
“Does it really matter anymore? I'm not in charge. There is no more Shrouded Lord. And even if there ever is again, we both know it won't be me, not after Lisette took over on my watch. No way the priests would allow it.”
Shins heard a low mutter from the woman to her left, but it certainly didn't sound like a denial.
“I wasn't a good fit, anyway,” he admitted to Widdershins, shifting her weight on his shoulders a bit. “I'm not ruthless enough. Never have been. The Finders might have been a little nicer under me, but they also weren't nearly as profitable. Even if Bitch Suvagne hadn't returned and yanked the rug out from under all of us, I probably only had a couple of years left before I was replaced. A process, I should hasten to point out, that I might or might not have survived.
“No, when all this is over, someone else gets to take up the burden. I'm done with it.”
“Someone obviously thought you were right for the position,” Shins said after another moment.
“How do you mean?”
“A position that powerful, where being imposing is basically your job…?”
“Yes?”
“Well, they clearly waived the height requirement for your sake!”
Igraine's normally tight expression shattered in a burst of laughter, however reluctantly. Olgun joined her, though only Shins knew, and after a prolonged gawp, so did Renard himself.
When he'd calmed again, he squeezed Widdershins's shoulder, as lightly as he could manage. “You've been missed, my dear. And I think Igraine and I both needed that. Hasn't been a great deal to laugh about these days.”
Shins elbowed him—so weakly it really wasn't much more than a faint brushing, but all she could manage for the nonce. “If you've been trying to lie low,” she scolded, “those colors aren't exactly the most inconspicuous. You look like a birdhouse. Without the house.”
“I do not, alas, dress so fashionably on a daily basis under the circumstances. Tonight, however, was a special occasion.”
“I can't imagine why,” Igraine interjected. “It's not as though you needing to be rescued from obscene quantities of danger is an uncommon occurrence.”
“Hey! I resent that uncomfortably accurate assessment! Guys…Renard…” The passageway tilted, perhaps attempting to buck her off, and her head and body began once again spinning in multiple directions at once, including a few she'd never heard of. “I need…I need a few minutes. I'm sorry.”
“No apologies.” The priest and the former Shrouded Lord carefully sat Shins down on the gritty floor. Renard swept his half-cape from around his shoulders and draped it across hers, so she need not lean her lacerated back against the unyielding and rather dramatically dirty wall. She offered him a soft smile and a grateful nod; even that was nearly enough to make her topple over, vomit, or both.
Renard's fingers twitched with every wobble, reaching to catch her. “Gods, you…Igraine, can't we do something? I don't understand how she's conscious, let alone at all mobile!”
“Well, we all know Widdershins isn't a normal girl, don't we?” The priestess knelt, gently prodding at the younger woman's injuries. “If she…Heavens and hells, you should be dead!”
“It's almost…hurtful how many people…seem to think that of me,” Shins gasped, flinching at every poke.
“I have some clean rags, enough to slap a few makeshift bandages on the worst of these, but—”
“Just keep me from…falling apart for a few days.”
“Olgun can handle the rest?” Igraine asked. Then, at Widdershins's start, “This entire city is in turmoil, not just the Guild. I've been spending a great deal of time consulting with His Eminence Sicard. I have a much better understanding of your—situation—than I did.”
“Sicard has…a big mouth.”
“I'm sure you'll have your chance to yell at him.”
“Can we,” Renard begged, “discuss this someplace where we can all be a bit less filthy and bleeding?”
“You're starting to talk like her,” the priestess accused.
Shins snorted, winced, tried to think of a term to encompass both, and gave up. “He should be so lucky.” Another rough gasp. “He's right, though. It shouldn't be too hard to get to the Witch from why are you all giving me that look?”
Indeed, not only could she see it from her two fellow former Finders, she felt it from her third companion as well.
“Widdershins,” Renard pointed out gently, “the very first place Lisette is going to try to find you would be…” He finished with a shrug, clearly feeling it unnecessary to spell out any further.
Shins wondered if she had enough blood left to blush. Her cheeks certainly gave it a solid effort. “I knew that,” she grumbled. “I just wanted to see if you remembered.”
“I know I'm going to regret asking, but why, by the entire Pact, would I have forgotten?”
“Well, you and Igraine are both all blurry, and have been since you showed up. How am I supposed to know what else might be wrong with you?”
Renard and Igraine shared a wry and somehow vaguely resigned glance. “It's like you foresaw the future,” the woman said blandly.
Shins's own expression, however, had fallen dramatically. “We still need to go, though,” she insisted. “If Lisette shows up and I'm not there…Robin, and the others…”
“You're in no shape to help them,” the foppish thief replied.
“No, but you are!”
“Shins—”
“Look, you and Igraine and the others have been in hiding for a while. You have safe houses and message drops, yes? So she and I'll find somewhere to hole up and then let you know where. But I need you to do this!”
She can't get hurt because of me. Not again…
“Okay, but…Igraine can go just as easily as I can. I'll take you to—”
“No. Robin, may—need a lot of convincing just now. And she knows you. She trusts you. Ish.”
“Trustish?” Renard protested, his tone forced and weak. “I don't believe that's in any way a legitimate word.”
“And now you're talking like someone else I know,” Shins sighed, ignoring Olgun's own somewhat strained chuckle. “Renard, there's nobody else. I'm running out of allies. I can't ask the Guard to protect her. Even if anyone there would listen to me, I'm wanted for killing…actually, I have no idea who the figs I'm supposed to have killed!”
“I'd heard that you were wanted,” he told her thoughtfully. “But I'd not been able to learn why. Only that the word comes down from on high.”
“Lovely. And today was going so well. Point is, it has to be you. It needs to happen this way. I need for it to. Please.”
“Oh, just go,” Igraine ordered. “We both know you're going to give in eventually, so why waste the time?”
“You'll take care of her?” the former Shrouded Lord almost begged.
“No, I'm going to knock her over the head, steal her purse, dump her in a kennel somewhere, and run off to Rannanti with the proceeds.” Then, when the two thieves stared at her, “Get out of here, Renard.”
After one last moment of reluctant fidgeting, he got. For a minute or so after that, the women just sort of studied each other.
“It took both of you to get me this far,” Shins said finally. “Can you get me out of here on your own?”
“You'll have to take more of your own weight. But I'm stronger than I look.”
Shins forced herself to her feet, almost gasping in relief as a tiny current of Olgun's power ran through her. With his help, she could take more of her own weight.
Barely.
She chuckled, even as she caught herself with one hand against a support beam before she could stumble. “I think it's more important right now,” she commented through a tigh
t grin, “that you be stronger than I look.”
Igraine clucked her tongue once, adjusted Renard's cloak around Widdershins to hide the horrid bloodstains and the immodest rips in her tunic, and then wrapped her own arm about the younger woman's shoulders.
“I've seen half-drowned kittens,” she said as they began a slow, unsteady walk toward the passageway's end, “that looked stronger than you do.”
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!”