by Ingrid Hahn
“You will do no such thing.” In the black, there was nothing to see, but she had the sound of a woman who’d crossed her arms below her breasts. The very thing that a day or so ago would have driven him to kiss her senseless.
“I don’t plan on helping you. I’ll just wait outside while you—”
“No!”
“It’s no great mystery to me that it happens, you know.”
“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful.” She spoke with measured patience. “Please know that I cannot express my indebtedness to your . . . impulse to stay with me, they are noble and just.”
“But?”
“But if you think you’re going outside with me while I relieve myself, your reach is extending just a bit too far.”
“Any instance in which you make yourself vulnerable, I need to be there to ensure your safety.” Ensuring her safety included preventing her from going the rest of the way to Paris without him. She’d left his care once. He wouldn’t put it past her to try again.
Before he could try to talk himself out of the idea, there came sounds like she was beginning to bounce. She huffed. “Oh, have it your way.”
A few minutes later, she emerged from the ramshackle hut behind the inn. Roland had been stomping his feet for warmth in the starless, moonless night. A glow came from the torch in the sconce on the inn’s wall, the fire low from having burned steadily through the night. The dim caress lent her eyes an ethereal quality as if she were a member of a distant fey race.
He ran his fingers through his loose hair.
“You see? No one about. I’m quite safe.” She reached to brush out her skirts and with one stroke of her hands over the fabric, winced.
“What’s this now?” Taking her by the wrists, he twisted her palms up for his inspection. She was cold to the touch. He brought her closer to the torch for a better look. The skin was red from light abrasion and torn in places like splinters had been picked out with a clumsy instrument. “How did this happen?”
She tried to withdraw. “’Tis of no matter.”
He held fast. “Everything about you is of greatest importance and I don’t take kindly to you keeping secrets.”
That earned him a glare full of glinting daggers. “If I stop to fuss over each and every trifling thing, I shall die of old age before ever reaching Paris.”
“You must trust me, Sidonie.”
“You don’t trust me.”
The accusation took him aback. He hadn’t known himself that it was true before she hurled the words at him—but it was true, wasn’t it? Part of him didn’t. Maybe because he didn’t fully trust himself. “Give me reason to trust you and I shall.”
A hard thump from inside the inn made them both start. A rumpled older gentleman emerged and bid them a good-natured bonjour as he passed them in the direction of the privy.
Roland blinked. Sure enough, in the sliver of time between leaving the inn and now, the first hint of the ashen dawn smeared over the tree line to the East. After countless years with Jacques at Bramville, it was startling to realize daybreak could ever take him by surprise.
Sidonie lowered the register of her voice. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Thanks to me.”
“No thanks to you. I could be deep in the heart of Paris right this very moment.”
“Do you honestly believe that if you’d left instead of staying last night that’s where you’d be?”
She pressed her lips together, gaze falling. “I’m going to have to face him, you know. It’s the only way.”
It’d been a long while since Roland had seen her father, but Cordumont was not a man easily forgotten. How like him she was. The profound strength that made the father ruthless made the daughter—well, if not fearless, exactly, then uncompromising.
The him to whom she referred, however, was not her father. But the man following them.
“Is it?”
“After he took the rest of them, I thought I’d escaped him. I thought I’d slipped right through his fingers. But . . .” Her face took on a faraway look. “But I’ve been going over it in my mind, again and again. And now I’m not sure. He might have allowed me to get away so I would believe I had escaped. He might have let me go.”
Roland wanted to tell her he was sure that couldn’t have been the case, but the reassurance would have been hollow. Sidonie deserved more from him. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“To toy with me.” She sighed, rubbing the ends of her fingers over her brow. “Or because he thought I might lead him to a greater prize.” She stole a wary glance at him. “In which case, like a fool, I might have played right into his hands.”
Him. She meant him. He was the greater prize. Because of Jacques.
Roland took her by the shoulders. “No, I will not have this. There is no time for doubts, no time for second guesses. You did what you believed you must. Forget me. I might not trust you, but I have faith in you. If something happens to me, you will not blame yourself. Promise me that. Promise me now.”
“He won’t have you.”
“I am not your concern. Promise me.”
A gust of wind flapped her skirts and rustled the hem of his cloak. From the stables, the sound of a screaming horse slashed the air.
Her eyes were wide, a look of understanding and resolve crossed her features. His grip on her tightened.
“It is him. He’s found me.”
“What?”
Her next words came out in a rush. “In Paris, there is a small church tucked back at the far north end of Rue du Miège. L’église des anges oubliés.” Church of the Forgotten Angels.
“You’re talking nonsense.” If she thought they were about to be separated . . .
“In the church toward the front there is a niche where a statue of Saint—”
“Sidonie, stop.” Roland felt as though he’d been shoved into freezing water.
“Let me go.” She was calm and steady, almost unnaturally so.
“I’d sooner go to the devil.”
“You know you can’t keep me. You’ll force me to use precious strength getting away from you. I can’t afford the loss.”
“We’re going inside. Now.”
Unmoving, she stared beyond Roland into the night, still, alert, and pale. “He’s here. And he wants me.”
Chapter 17
Without thinking, Roland started dragging her to the door. One moment he had her, firm and solid in his arms, the next moment she was walking away from him into darkness. The sudden loss of her mass against the force by which he’d been holding her brought him to his knees with a crack on dirt frozen hard as rock.
Damn fool of a witch. Damn, damn, damn. “Come back, you. This isn’t the time.”
He launched himself, grabbing for her hem. Too late. Darkness swallowed Sidonie whole as he landed on the ground belly-down.
Roland leapt to his feet. He could barely hear over the frantic beating of his heart. He couldn’t lose her. God, how much blood would be on his hands if she died thinking she were protecting him when everything she’d done had been to save her brethren?
The medallion—all at once it flashed in his mind, the image of the silvery surface he’d polished before leaving Bramville. What it meant . . . it wasn’t a keepsake. Neither was it a relic of his mother’s secret trade.
Suddenly, he understood. It was for him. A message. He’d been born to protect her.
It’d be hours yet before there was enough light to see by. For all intents and purposes, nighttime still held the world in its blinding clutches.
With no other choice, he sank into the pitch.
~ ~ ~
The inquisitor’s man would toy with her? Very well. But he’d have to try a damn sight harder if he wanted her. Sidoni
e alone would have been prize enough. Another witch for him to torture and kill in the name of holy righteousness. Now she had Roland, too. And Roland put the inquisitor’s man closer to Jacques. For such a prize to fall into his twisted fingers . . .
Her throat was dry, her belly empty, her bones weary. But she had to push onward. Under no circumstances could the inquisitor’s man have the slightest hint about her weakened state.
Sidonie’s game led her through the dankest and most impoverished of Paris’s most putrid corners. The inquisitor’s man followed, maintaining a respectable distance, closing in so as not to lose sight of her where the streets were crowded, falling back where the streets were empty.
Church bells began toiling midday. She darted down an alleyway, only just avoiding the path of a pair of matched grays pulling a coach at a fast trot.
She pulled back to let the conveyance pass, the servant on the back jeering at her.
She dared not look back, but this was becoming absurd. They’d been going since dawn. He must have known she knew he followed her. Did he think to play her game until she collapsed?
He wanted her to reveal something. Wanted her to play her hand too soon. Lead him somewhere.
Very well, he could have the church.
She reversed course, heading back to cross again to the other side of the river, passing, bold as anything, the king’s palace, her head high. Any number of loitering servants or nobles could have happened upon her. But nobody paid any mind to a woman of advanced years garbed in such low attire.
The sight of an approaching carriage made her heart trip. Curse her arrogance. She didn’t need to see the crest of woven willow branches to recognize the Cordumont conveyance.
What was her father doing in Paris? The king never came. He hated the place. It was widely believed he’d never return.
Sidonie skirted the side of the square, head low. At the last minute, she dared a glance under lowered lashes and locked eyes with a woman gazing dreamily out the window. The woman caught sight of Sidonie and her mouth fell open, eyes going huge. Just as quickly, she softened, a wistful smile touching the sides of her lips. She raised her hand to touch the glass.
Manette. Sidonie’s heart lurched with longing to call out.
And then the coach was gone.
One last look at her sister. What a gift. Later, Sidonie would have to remember to light a candle in thanksgiving for the chance sighting. Manette might have been required at court, but at least she’d be safe. So far as the inquisitor or his man knew, Manette carried none of the abomination polluting Sidonie.
That was, if he knew the family of Sidonie’s origin at all. One could never tell what information those men gathered, or from whom.
By the time Sidonie pushed open the heavy doors to the church, midday mass had begun. With the hood of her cloak, she covered the cap upon her head.
The air within was rough with the hazy perfume of incense—still and cold. The priest stood upon the altar, his back to the congregants, young servers in long robes flanking him as he chanted in Latin.
Sidonie dipped her finger in holy water, crossed herself, and offered a curtsy toward the front. She skimmed her eyes through the room. No sign of Roland. Not good. She could only pray he’d done nothing foolish.
She came up the side aisle one niche at a time until she turned the corner into the north transept.
The church door opened and shut. Cold awareness made her skin pucker. Her hair stood on end. The inquisitor’s man. His footsteps came up behind her. He inhaled and exhaled. Inhaled and exhaled.
Sidonie bowed her head and clasped her hands before her.
A looming figure stepped from the shadows before her and her heart leapt into her throat. Roland. Oh, thank heaven. He’d come. He’d found her.
Roland leveled a dark glower over her shoulder. Clutching the closure of her cloak around her throat, she turned to meet her would-be captor’s eye.
The pale irises kept a tight ring around a pinprick of a pupil. His gaze was void. Leaden. Heavy lines defined the elongated features of his narrow skull. He raised his chin at her. And, with a slow bow, he was gone.
Sidonie turned to Roland, finding wild desperation in his eyes. When she tried to brush past him, he caught her by the arm. “Wh—”
She glowered and pressed a stern finger against her lips.
At the very back, almost hidden behind far more ornate shrines, stood an ancient statue. It was weathered almost beyond recognition as if it had spent the better part of five hundred years out of doors. She lit a candle, offered a coin, and knelt a long moment with only the picture of her sister’s face in her mind. Let Manette be safe. Let her live well. Let her sister’s secrets go with her to the grave, but not for many years to come.
Sidonie glanced back to double-check that nobody observed. Finding no eyes upon her, she rose and pushed open the wooden door hidden in plain sight in the decoration alongside the niche. She motioned Roland to follow.
They reached the bottom of the narrow steps. The walls were lined on either side with bones, skulls to the left, femurs, tibias, and other long bones to the right. The occasional pelvis upset the mosaic-like order. Flickering torchlight made them assume an even yellower cast than they had naturally, none of them having been bleached white in the sun.
Roland studied the grotesque sockets of one head that in life could only have belonged to a gargoyle. He grabbed her by the arm. “What are we doing here?”
“I had to give him something.”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it ends now. First you ran from me in terror thinking I was him. Then when he did come, you all but waltzed into his arms. It makes no sense.”
Indignant, she pulled herself up. “I did no such thing.”
“You brought him here, though, didn’t you?”
“I could feel him wanting something from me.”
“What does bringing him here so close to you serve?”
“Where’s your horse? Is he tied outside?” She wouldn’t leave the creature, but didn’t want to have to come back for him if they foolishly forgot him now.
“I stabled him. Answer my question.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. In some ways, he affects me profoundly. In other ways, he’s completely closed off.”
“All the more reason not to run from me.”
“I think I can safely promise never to do it again.”
He looked aghast, evidently shocked that she joked about her death. “That wasn’t humorous, that was horrid.”
All the same, she couldn’t help but smile. “It was humorous, and what you can’t make light of, you only lend power to. I won’t do that with Death. It won’t be pointless. I’ve lived a good life.” She drew near to caress the lean definition of his chest under his clothing, voice gone sandy. “And look what I found in the end.”
He took her hands. Bare skin to bare skin. “Don’t.”
She paused. “You’re right.” And stepped back. “Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“Out of here.”
They wound through the crypt, the torches growing more and more intermittent the deeper they went. A fresh burst of an icy breeze brushed her cheeks. “You feel that? We’re almost there.”
They were in full darkness only a dozen or so steps before the flat light of an overcast sky illuminated their path.
“You see?” She pointed to the divots in the stone wall at the end of the tunnel leading up to a gap above.
“I won’t fit through there.”
“You will, you’ll see. The old crone who first took me this way fit through, and her girth was thrice yours.” She re-appraised him. “Well. At least double.”
They came to the terminus. Roland craned his neck back, asse
ssing the opening. “Perhaps. Where does it lead?”
“To safety.” She reached for the first divot to climb out of the crypt.
“Sidonie, wait.”
“Yes?”
Roland looked haunted, but it was easy to guess it wasn’t due to walking through the tunnels of human remains. “You said you gave him something.”
“I gave him the location of this church. What did you think . . .?”
Roland gave a guilty sidelong glance. “You said he wanted you. And you went.”
“Oh. You thought I—” It didn’t need to be said. She knew. She would have known even were she not a witch. He thought she’d given the inquisitor’s man her body.
“Did you?” Roland’s next words came out in a rush. “It doesn’t make any difference to me. You could have done it with legions. Him. Men like him. The scum of the earth or the whole of our king’s court. I don’t care. It wouldn’t change how I look at you.”
She eased herself down from the wall. “I thank you for that, Roland, but when do you think I would have had time?”
“It doesn’t take long.”
“For you, maybe.”
He snorted once, a brief smile flashing on his face, but instantly went serious again. “I only wish to know how long I must let him suffer before I send his spirit to the beyond.”
She pressed her lips together in disapproval. Roland’s thoughts must be checked. It started in the mind. Once a man justified his actions to himself, he acted upon the world. He thought it was just one thing. But it wasn’t. It was a whole series of steps. Go down one, the next wasn’t so far away. “You mustn’t.”
“He can’t be allowed to go on living. I know his kind. I can almost smell it on him. The darkness. The insatiable need to inflict pain on others.”