by Ari Marmell
Chandler chortled again. “Physically, maybe, but—”
“Enough!” It wasn't a shout, just the slightest raising of the matriarch's voice, but every other mouth snapped shut as tight as the visor on the antique suit of armor.
“I can at least comprehend,” Calanthe continued, “where Cyrille's idiocy comes from, though I expect better of a Delacroix, regardless of age. But you, Jourdain…You've been at this for years. You know better.”
“This…woman,” the armsman protested, as angrily as protocol would permit, “incapacitated both my men—”
“And we'll be having words regarding that, as well, rest assured,” the matriarch said stiffly. Half the others were smirking, now, cruelly amused at the notion of the guards coming out second in such a “fight.”
“I ordered him to stand down!” Cyrille finally burst in, unable to contain himself. “Widdershins isn't the enemy, Mother. She could've killed us all, and she didn't. She's trying to help, and I think we could use it. She wants to figure this out as much as—”
“Silence!” The matriarch all but lunged to her feet, and everyone in the room flinched openly. “Cevora deliver us,” she growled, “from smitten children!”
“Mother, I—”
“You will not speak again until directed to, Cyrille.”
“But—”
Malgier took a step forward, snarling, hand raised. Cyrille cringed away from the coming blow, but Calanthe raised her own hand in signal.
“I don't believe that'll be necessary this time, Malgier. Will it, Cyrille?” Then, at his questioning look, “I asked. You may answer.”
“No, Mother, it won't.”
“Good.” Gracefully, she resumed her seat, Malgier returning to his place at her side. “This…‘Widdershins.’” The contempt she infused into that single word would have poisoned an entire flower garden. “Clearly not of refined blood or breeding. No woman who was would call herself that.”
Cyrille opened his mouth, closed it again.
“A mercenary, perhaps? A criminal? Few people develop the sorts of talents you describe for honest goals. Professional soldiers, for the most part, and she sounds like no soldier to me. You two may have very well had your hands on our enemy and allowed her to go!”
Jourdain shifted his weight to his other foot, the closest the guard would come to overt fidgeting. “Madam, I…Apologies, may I speak?”
“My instruction was to Cyrille, not to you.”
“Of course. Madam, while I am the first to agree with you that your son's judgment is somewhat…impaired on this matter…” If he noticed Cyrille's glare, he offered no sign of it. “…I do have to say, I believe he may be correct about this woman not being the foe we seek. It's true that she could have slain any or all of us, and clearly made a point not to do so. She seemed genuinely curious about the blight, and I saw no sign that she possessed any sort of magic that would allow—”
“Are you so modest, Jourdain,” Anouska asked; her voice, like her face, was nigh identical to her mother's, “that you've kept your sorcerous expertise from us all these years?”
A glower from Calanthe was enough to silence both her eldest daughter and the snickers that followed, but the point had been made. “I'm no expert, of course—” Jourdain began, his cheeks flushed.
“Yes, I believe we've just covered that,” the matriarch said dryly. No snickers, this time; nobody would dare.
“You have been doing this a long while,” she continued, “and I know your instincts, in general, to be good. So I'm inclined to think there is at least a chance that you are correct, that this Widdershins is not the source of our difficulties.”
Cyrille began a deep sigh of relief, a sound and a sensation both swiftly interrupted.
“Which does not,” Calanthe announced, “in any way make her our ally. She might represent a rival, looking to take advantage. She might be some hoodlum seeking her own profit, or some drifter hoping we'll reward her ‘assistance.’ And it might just be that our good guardsman is mistaken about her.”
The grinding of Cyrille's teeth nearly drowned out the twins’ glass marbles.
“I do not trust her presence. I do not trust her motives. I certainly do not trust her judgment!” The woman shook her head, not dislodging so much as a curl or ringlet of hair. “The Carnots. Really! Even a cursory understanding of Aubier would have inspired her to choose a more likely culprit as her scapegoat.
“I want to know who she is, where she is, why she's here. And until I am convinced her efforts are neither hostile nor detrimental, I want whatever she's doing stopped.”
Then, “Oh, speak your mind, Cyrille. You're beginning to sound like a teapot.”
The breath all but exploded from him. “Mother, we shouldn't waste this opportunity. She could be of great help to us! She could assist in determining what is happening to our fields! She could—”
“Warm your blankets for a few nights, Brother?” Helaine taunted, snapping a marble into the air and catching it again as it fell.
“Serving girls not good enough for you?” her twin added.
Again Josephine—Fifi—looked up from her gaudy lantern. “What's wrong with extra quilts and a bed warmer?”
At least the sudden silence that accompanied the incredulous stares turned her way made it unnecessary for Calanthe to shush her children yet again.
“Cyrille…” She no longer even sounded angry, just exasperated and perhaps a bit tired.
“Yes, Mother?”
“Gather some of the guards and groundskeepers, and go and supervise the cleanup of this latest blight.”
Jaw held rigid, the young man nodded, turned on a heel with almost military stiffness, and pushed past the servants on his way through the door.
“Josephine, go assist him in gathering what he needs for another night ride, and then go to your room and go to bed.”
“Yes, Mother.” Fifi gathered up her lantern; offered Arluin a friendly smile, all the others a puzzled blink; and followed Cyrille from the room.
“As for the rest of you,” she continued, gaze sweeping the chamber, somehow seeming to meet everyone else's eyes simultaneously, “it appears we need to have yet another chat about behavior and decorum….”
Head down, clinging to the wall like a lizard—albeit a lizard with long hair, a cloak, and battered leathers—Widdershins drew back from the curtain-covered glass. She felt her ears tingle, or rather she felt them cease tingling with anything but winter's chill, as the influence Olgun had extended to assist in her eavesdropping fully receded.
“Are we absolutely certain Alexandre was related by blood to these people?” she inquired of the god, disbelief and revulsion soaking her words despite how softly she spoke. “Because I'm not entirely convinced they're related by species.”
She crept along the side of the manor, hand over hand, foot over foot. Her pace was slow, lest fingers chilled by wind, or brick made slick by frost, overcome even her own ingrained talent and divine assistance.
Not that a fall from this height would remotely endanger her. It'd just be embarrassing, especially in front of Olgun. And since she was always in front of Olgun…
“Yes, Olgun.” This reply, to his latest surge of memory, came with the obligatory eye roll. “I have met a few hoity-toity high-and-mighty myself, you know. That's the funny thing about stealing money—it always seems to be the rich people who have the most of it. I knew full well what to expect when we came out here.”
She flipped heels over head, pushing off from the wall to land on her feet in the dirt-stained snow, then glanced back over a gray-cloaked shoulder. It was, indeed, an aristocrat's home. The stone walls, whitewashed (if perhaps beginning to flake); the sweeping eaves; the glimmering windows of glass…While it might have been slightly smaller and more worn, it would have fit quite well with the manors of Davillon's Rising Bend district.
More so, to Widdershins's urban mind, than it did here. The house loafed like an old cat, not on an estate of gardens and foun
tains and winding paths, surrounded by stone walls or iron fences, but in the midst of the Delacroix farmlands. Rolling fields stretched out in most directions, broken only by the occasional copse of trees or half-frozen stream, smelling—even in the midst of these frigid months—of loam. Shins found the juxtaposition almost dizzying.
Or maybe that, too, was just her revulsion at the behavior of a good man's distant and not-so-good relatives.
“I know, I know,” she reassured the little god as she swept across the fields, leaving no trail that would last until morning, easily sidestepping the patrolling guards. “They're not all that bad. Cyrille seems like he might be a decent sort, I suppose. A little dim, though, yes? And maybe a few of the others, but most of them…? Guh!” The shudder began as exaggeration, then turned real thanks to a gust of winter. “I'd rather give muscle rubs at a leper colony than live with those people.”
More imagery from Olgun, and this time Shins didn't have it in her to be sarcastic. Over a year after his death, over three since they'd parted ways, the memories of her father-in-all-but-blood still pierced her. “I know. We're not here for them. We're here for him. I'm not quitting, Olgun. I'm just…You think we could hire someone to help them so we could leave?
“What? I don't know how we'd pay them! Maybe steal something? I've heard I'm good at that. I suppose we could sell your body, if you were willing to stoop that low…and had a body….
“Oh, shut up. You and your nonsense ideas.” A final glance around to ensure none of the Delacroix patrols were near—the distant castle, made ghostly in the silvery light, appeared to be reaching desperately for the half-clouded moon overhead—and then she darted into the nearby trees. Here, the shadows were so deep, the guards could very literally have stepped over her and never known she was there.
“C'mon, Olgun. They don't believe the Carnots are involved? Let's go gather them their proof so we can get out of this nest of rats and vipers before we get…I don't know, venomous fleas or something.
“It could happen!
“Shut up. We have evidence to find.”
“How can there not be any evidence?!”
Widdershins, who had long since mastered the paradoxical art of ranting and raving under her breath, in almost complete silence, ranted and raved under her breath in almost complete silence.
She was perched on a rooftop, now, rather than clinging to a wall, half-crouched over a shingled peak, steady as she might have been on solid ground. Both her ratty cloak and a weathervane (the latter of which would have looked far more appropriate out in the farmlands, perhaps atop the Delacroix manor, than it did here) twisted fiercely in the wind, which was unbroken at this height by walls or trees. It brought tears to her eyes, tiny gnawing teeth of cold to her cheeks and ears, but she would neither blink nor flinch—less out of any need to prove a point than because she was just that annoyed.
Or, perhaps, to prove the point that she was just that annoyed.
From here, she could observe much of Aubier, at least so thoroughly as the moonlight and the occasional lanterns permitted. As had been the case with the domicile on which she perched—a three-story cube of stone with a roof, larger and nicer than many she could see, but nowhere near either the size or quality of the Delacroix estate—she found herself less than impressed with what she saw.
Aubier couldn't decide if it was a town bloated to the size of a small city, or a small city that still nostalgically called itself a town. Roads alternated in no discernible pattern from cobbled to frozen dirt; from short and straight to as crooked and winding as a snake eating a worm. Homes ranged from shabby but honest shacks to pretentious houses larger than they needed to be but smaller than they clearly wanted to be. Open spaces of dirt might, in warmer seasons, have served as parks or public gardens within the town-slash-city limits, or as more farmland without.
And the lack of any genuine sewer system, such as Davillon and Lourveaux boasted, contributed to a bouquet that was foul enough even in winter. In summer, Shins just knew she'd be asking Olgun if he could temporarily remove her nose, or at least turn it inside out.
None of which was the actual reason for the frustration that burned the young thief like a virulent rash, threatening to tether her to this backwater place and miserable family for far longer than she'd hoped.
“Seriously, Olgun! I'm actually asking. Use your divinitiness. Knowledge unobtainable to mortals. How can we have found nothing?”
As Shins was “actually asking,” Olgun actually answered. Where Widdershins had refused to squint against the frigid gusts, her eyes narrowed sharply against the god's images.
“Don't even say that! The Carnots are involved; nothing else makes sense! Well…All right, you didn't say it, but…Don't do what it is you do instead of saying it.
“We know they moved against House Delacroix, drove them out of Lourveaux, yes? We know that a whole gaggle of the family left Lourveaux not long after the last Delacroix, who never made it here. Lazare Carnot was one of them. House patriarchs don't just wander off, so where the flopping hens are they?”
Because they certainly were not here, in the ancestral home of the Carnot bloodline in Aubier. Widdershins had scoured every room, every hallway, every nook, every cranny. The Carnots, at least locally, were largely dull and unobservant, the epitome of the laziness that could overcome an aristocrat when ambitions were all but extinguished. Guards and servants were few, and easily avoided. Only once had she even come near to being discovered, by a man she believed to be head of the household staff. And at no point had she discovered any sort of secret more incriminating or sinister than an illicit liaison or a bit of cheating on local taxes.
She had even located a hidden cupboard, one that blended so well with the surrounding walls that the family itself clearly had forgotten its existence. The dust within was more than enough proof that at no point in generations could a house patriarch, or anyone else, have been concealed within. The old furniture and somewhat faded finery belied any recent influx of coin or influence, and the fact that the bulk of the family appeared content to laze around the house did not inspire Shins to believe they were engaged in some great conspiracy of nobles. She'd gone ahead and gathered the addresses of the few other properties—several shops and a small warehouse—the Carnots owned in Aubier, and she'd check them all just to be sure, but none of them struck her as a likely hideout.
In short, as she'd bemoaned to Olgun multiple times in a scant few minutes, they had no proof, not even the tiniest shred of evidence, of anything whatsoever.
Some unnatural union of a growl, a sigh, and a groan rolled from her throat, almost freezing on her tongue before it fell away to vanish in the night. “I don't know, Olgun. Maybe we are on the wrong track? I mean, this could be coincidence, yes? The Carnots can't be the only rivals of the Delacroix trying to take advantage of all the Church nonsense and political silliness. I guess we ought to at least check some of the other…
“What? No, I don't know how many Houses have a presence in Aubier, or which ones are competitors! How would I possibly know that? And where would you have been when I learned it? Napping? Bath time? Napping during bath time? I…Do gods bathe? I mean, you don't really have a body to wash, I suppose….”
Another growl-sigh-groan. “Point is, yes. I know it'll take forever if we have to look into all of this House by House, but what choice do we have?”
At which point the first smile in many hours began to lurch hesitantly across Widdershins's face as she abruptly realized exactly what choice they had.
“Name's Jourdain, right?”
The mustached armsman turned, as did the trio of others whom he led. The street was only moderately crowded, most of the market-goers having run their errands earlier in the day and most of the vendors having not yet closed up, but still it took Jourdain a moment to spot the source of that voice.
Unsurprising, perhaps, given that she wasn't standing in the street at all but was perched on a windowsill some feet above him,
cast in growing shadow by the angle of the lazily setting sun.
“Widdershins,” he said, his voice neutral. The other guards stirred; no doubt they'd been told to watch for a strange woman with that stranger moniker. “Not precisely the most inconspicuous place for a conversation.”
“You missed me until I called your name, yes? Besides, who says I'm trying to be inconspicuous? Maybe my entire goal is to…conspic.”
Jourdain's face remained straight, but the other three guards blinked almost perfectly in unison. “What do you want?” the elder soldier asked.
“Just to ask you a few questions. Well, and also hear some answers. I mean, it'd be a bit wasteful to only want to ask questions and not get any answers, yes?”
Jourdain openly glanced around him. While most passersby were blind to the young woman's presence and too far to hear the conversation over the din of the market, some few had indeed stopped to watch in puzzlement as four armed household guards conversed with what was either a very peculiar person or an even more peculiar windowsill. “So come down here and talk to us like a normal person.”
Shins's laugh was almost more of a bark. “Like a normal person that half of you think is your enemy, and the other half are still under orders to question? I think I'm going to decline.”
“What? How—?”
“If it helps, I'm declining regretfully.”
“How did you know our orders—?”
“Sorrowfully, even. I might cry.”
In point of fact, it was taking all she had not to laugh—not least because Olgun was “humming” a tune of mournful disappointment as accompaniment to her “regrets.”
Two of the Delacroix guards reached for their pistols, but a raised hand and an eyebrow-creasing glower from Jourdain halted them in their tracks. “Why would I answer any of your questions?”
“Uh, because I'm trying to help your employers? Maybe?”
“I still have strenuous doubts as to your motives.”
“Oh!” Widdershins slapped and rubbed her gloved hands together, hoping to restore a bit of the warmth that even the leathers had failed to retain, then waited for a small cluster of evening shoppers to pass between her and the guards. “That's not a problem. I don't doubt my motives, and since I'm the one you're telling, that makes it perfectly safe.”