by Ari Marmell
“Why should we believe a single word you have to say?” Calanthe demanded. If she was at all afraid of Shins, it certainly didn't show.
“Better question,” she replied, sheathing her sword, “is why shouldn't you? Or at least hear me out?”
“Mother?” Josephine clutched her lantern to her chest, trembling like a child. “Make her go away!”
Arluin's expression went cold at his sister's plea, and he took a single step toward the intruder, fists clenched.
Oh, crepe. Time to cut straight to the point, then; she couldn't afford to build to it if things were about to go violent again.
“There's a traitor in House Delacroix.”
That, at least, rooted everyone to the spot.
Calanthe cast a quick glance at Cyrille, who flushed and looked like he wanted to climb into his own pockets.
“Not what I meant,” Shins snapped.
“Nonsense,” Calanthe spat, even as several of the others protested, often with more intensity and vulgarity both. “We're family. Nobody here would turn on us.”
“Did you send Malgier to kill me?”
For the first time, the matriarch blanched, her fingers tightening on the arms of her chair. “No,” she admitted. “I wouldn't send my people to commit cold-blooded murder unless I had no choice. I certainly would not have had them open fire outside a bloody hostel! Malgier thought he would ingratiate himself; he will learn otherwise.”
“Don't have quite the leash on your family you believe, then, do you?”
Anouska and the twins growled. Calanthe's lip curled.
“Malgier can be overzealous, but he is protective of the family, and he is loyal!”
“Like a guard hound,” Widdershins suggested.
“If you like.”
“If he's a hound,” the thief asked sweetly, “what does that make his mother?”
Cyrille slapped both palms against his face as if he were trying to wipe it off his head.
Before the half a dozen indrawn breaths could transform into furious shouting, Widdershins stepped forward and slapped something down on one of the small library tables. Several of the Delacroix offspring were too far back to see what it was, but the nearer, and Calanthe herself, could make it out just fine.
“I took this,” Shins told them, “from two of the Thousand Crows. Whom I found on your property. They also had these.” She tossed the gruesome-smelling wineskin to the floor beside the table. “I think you'll find it's the source of the blight.”
“How do we know these aren't yours?” Calanthe asked, but it was a reflex, a protest without heart. Clearly, she was running out of reasons to suspect that this was some elaborate ruse.
“So, it's a map of our properties,” Helaine scoffed. “So what? Anyone could make such a thing.”
“Anyone could,” Widdershins agreed. “See, I'd wondered for a while how the Crows were doing it. Just sort of poking at it, while I thought mostly about other stuff. I mean, your grounds are extensive, yes, but your patrols are pretty thorough. I had trouble getting past them…”
She glanced sideways at Cyrille, who nodded subtly. The boy had sent servants to collect the injured men, then. Good. The iceberg of guilt in her gut melted just a bit.
“…and trust me, I'm better at this sort of thing than the Crows are. They might've gotten through once, maybe twice, but not as often as they have.”
“Except they clearly did,” Calanthe observed.
“Clearly. How did they know which of your fields were related to your textile interests, as opposed to food crops? They did only try to poison your textiles, yes? It's not as though the fields are labeled or look all that different during winter.”
“There are people who know,” Arluin muttered, “hired hands and the like.” But he, too, sounded uncertain.
“The Thousand Crows,” Shins continued relentlessly, hammering each point home, “have no magic. Their ‘sorcerer’ practices alchemy. No mystical scouting of your properties.
“They needed someone inside who could tell them where the patrols were assigned, when to strike, where to strike. With that.” She pointed at the map.
“This doesn't show our guard patrols,” the eldest son protested. “It can't. We determine them nightly.”
“But it is divided into sections. It'd be easy to communicate a few numbers, even at a great distance. You just need the right tool, something that could be seen from clear across the fields. Something like, say, a blinking light. In unusual colors, maybe, so it's easily picked out from among the other lights in the house?”
Dead, utter silence, like the corpse of a mime. Every eye in the room fixed on Fifi; her expression was blank, her hands clenched on her favorite toy.
Then Calanthe began to laugh.
It started with a tremor in her shoulders, scarcely visible beneath her gown, then grew to a soft, dignified chuckle. The old woman raised a hand to her lips, but they did nothing to muffle the tittering, and then the open, full-throated guffaw. Most of the others were close behind, a variety of chortles, snickers, and outright cackles. Of all the Delacroix, only Arluin, Josephine, and, of course, Cyrille, refrained.
Well, that could maybe have gone better. Not that Shins had expected a credulous response, but still, the open mockery was vaguely disturbing.
Just as abruptly, the matriarch went silent, her jaw tense as hardwood. It took a minute, but the others slowly followed her lead, the cacophony fading.
“If you're not dishonest,” Calanthe snarled, “you're insane. Of every member of my family you could have pointed to, it wouldn't be less believable if you'd chosen me! Josephine is harmless.”
“I'm not even sure she knows how to count as high as that map goes,” Chandler muttered.
“Hey!” Fifi protested, at the same time Arluin snapped, “Don't speak of your sister that way!”
Calanthe silenced the lot of them with a raised hand. “I'm going to offer you one last opportunity to leave,” she began, “under the assumption that you're a fool, not an enemy. Would you care to take it?”
Widdershins smiled, in part to cover the grinding of her teeth. Anytime now…
“There's an easy way to prove it.”
Finally!
Cyrille stepped away from the smaller door, moving to stand beside Widdershins. “A quick search of Fifi's room.”
Again the library filled with angry and indignant protests. Arluin looked ready to start swinging, and Calanthe appeared as cold as Widdershins had ever seen.
“Mother?” Josephine asked, quivering.
“It's not going to happen, Josephine. Cyrille, I don't know what this girl has told you, but—”
“There would have to be a copy of the map.” Calanthe seemed taken aback as much by the interruption as the words, but either way, she permitted Cyrille to speak. “A means of matching the numbers, section to section, to be certain of no miscommunication. We do a quick search for a map like this one. If it's not there, I'll help deliver Widdershins to the reeve myself.”
This was it, then. Everything she and Cyrille had discussed hinged on these next moments. Would they go along with it, if only to assuage any tiny flicker of doubt? Would the traitor have such a map? It wasn't probable she would try to memorize it—the divisions were many, the odds of error high—but neither was it impossible. Would they—?
Calanthe gazed, unblinking, first at Widdershins and then her youngest son. Widdershins thought she saw the barest quirk of the matriarch's lips. And it was all the thief could do to keep from bursting out in laughter herself.
She's going to go for it just so Cyrille can see for himself that I'm wrong! To “break my spell.”
“Very well,” Calanthe said. “But I will hold you to this, Cyrille. Josephine, dearest, wait here with the others. Anouska and I are just going to poke around your room a bit, all right?”
“I don't like her!” Fifi wailed, pointing at Widdershins.
“I know. As soon as we're done, she'll be gone. For good
. Anouska, shall we—?”
“No!” Fifi actually stamped her foot, scowling. “I don't want you looking through my room. It's not nice.”
Anouska shook her head. “We'll put everything back—”
“Don't want it!” She hugged the lantern to her chest, squeezing it as though it were a stuffed animal. “I'm allowed my privacy, too. Just like all of you.”
“Josephine, you stop this!” Calanthe ordered. “What's gotten into you? You have the staff in your room on a regular basis!”
“Um…” Arluin practically chewed his beard, clearly not certain he wanted to speak. “The staff haven't been permitted in Fifi's room for weeks. She's been doing her own straightening. Hugh mentioned it to me, once, while collecting my laundry. We dismissed it as just another of her whims.”
Nearly everyone was standing at this point, save the matriarch herself, and the attentions they'd turned on Josephine were perhaps a touch less certain, a touch less sympathetic, than they'd been.
“I don't understand!” Tears ran freely down Josephine's face, now. “Mother, don't do this!”
“I'm afraid I have to, Josephine.”
The face behind those tears and curled locks of hair twisted in sudden rage. The hatred and resentment seemed almost to push at her flesh from within, angry snakes behind a mask of skin. Not since the inhuman Iruoch had Widdershins seen an expression so horrid; she wasn't certain she'd ever seen it on a human being before.
“Fine!” It was a banshee shriek, raw and ragged. Widdershins throat hurt just thinking about it. “Fuck you all!”
Josephine spun and hurled her lantern against one of the looming bookcases. Glass shattered. Burning oil, such a tiny amount, sprayed out from the wreckage.
The books ignited instantly.
Widdershins was moving almost as instantly, springing across the room, vaulting over any furniture in her path. “Move that sofa! Get the carpet out of the way!”
The bookcase itself was hardwood, heavy; maybe enough to smother the flame before the burning tomes ignited the wood itself. But only if half a dozen things went right.
“Olgun, I can't move this thing! I need every—”
Except, she realized, she wasn't working alone. Arluin appeared only a step behind her, arm raised to shield his face from the sparks and embers. He saw her scrabbling for a handhold, away from the flames, nodded once, and dashed to the other side of the bookcase. “On three!” He called, then coughed as a puff of smoke drifted his way.
Shins glanced back, saw Anouska, Chandler, and Calanthe herself dragging the sofa that would otherwise have interrupted the bookcase's fall, as well as the carpet beneath it. This was as good as it was going to get.
“One!”
“Olgun, I need you to try to make sure any of the books that slip out…”
“Two!”
“…fall straight, so they're still beneath the wood, don't go scattering across the—”
“Three!”
Face turned away, eyes squinting against the heat, Widdershins heaved, even as she felt Arluin do the same. Her arms quivered, muscles protesting; Olgun's power surged through her, but not so much as she might have hoped, not with the god also focusing on the burning books. The bookcase teetered, rocked back, settled itself straight, teetered forward once more…
And finally tumbled with a resounding, ember-spouting crash.
Olgun came close. Only a few bits of burning paper or showers of sparks escaped from beneath the massive weight, and those were easily smothered by the curtains Shins and Arluin tore from the window. By the time they were done, even the tiniest tendrils of smoke had ceased to trickle from beneath the fallen furniture, and the wood itself remained blissfully not on fire.
Widdershins only then realized she was hearing a sound unrelated to the fire, a shrill howl that only vaguely shaped itself into vile obscenities and gruesome curses.
Her hair fallen loose, all semblance of childish innocence gone, Fifi struggled and screamed. Cyrille and Helaine held her arms pinned behind her, slowly marching her away from the main doors at which she'd apparently made a final dash. Judging by their expressions and the emotional tremor of their limbs, Widdershins was pretty certain that, had the fire caught and spread, Josephine might well have found herself flung into its embrace.
She halted her tirade as Widdershins approached, her glare hotter than her lantern had ever been. She spit, once, but Shins sidestepped the splatter without breaking stride. The thief stopped just beyond arm's reach, finger held to her lips in thought.
“Middle children,” she observed. “Always under the most scrutiny, yes? Doesn't do the younger ones any good to scheme and play politics, but you guys? Only have to discredit a few siblings to become top dog of the heap.” Then, softly, “Hush, Olgun. They're my metaphors, and I'll mix them as I choose.”
She spoke aloud once more. “Playing dumb was clever. Keeps that scrutiny off you. Don't know if I could've done that for years on end, but I guess the role came naturally.” She smiled sweetly. “Please, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that your part in all this wasn't just the spoiled brat who's not inheriting as much as she thinks she's due and”—she stepped back a few paces, scooped up the evidentiary wineskin, and held it up as emphasis—“wants to punish her family for it.”
“Stupid bitch.” It was Fifi's only overt reply, but the slow flush in her cheeks and grinding of her teeth were all the answer Shins needed.
“So, here's what you're going to do—” Widdershins began.
“Go to hell! I'm not doing anything for you!”
“Oh, yes, you are.”
Shins and Josephine both turned to watch as the matriarch of House Delacroix approached. Her cheeks were puffy, her eyes rimmed in red; whether from the face full of smoke or a show of humanity Shins would never have dreamed her capable of, the thief wouldn't dare guess. Whatever it was, whatever she had been feeling, showing, she was granite now.
“You are going to do precisely what you are told. Without argument, without hesitation, without deception. Am I clearly understood?”
“Mother, you can go to hell, too. Am I understood?”
From the sequence of gasps, one might've thought that talking to Calanthe that way was a more shocking sin than Fifi's initial betrayal, or trying to burn them all alive.
“You stupid, idiot girl!” For all her defiance, Josephine recoiled from the sudden venom in her mother's voice. “You were smarter when you were playing dumb! What are you expecting out of this? Grounding? Chores? Maybe even exile to one of our other properties?
“You are going to prison, Josephine! I will hand you over to the reeve and testify against you at your hearing myself!”
The girl's face went pale, as did several of her siblings’. “Mother? I—”
“Don't call me that. How would you care to be treated by the constabulary and the courts? As noble blood, or a nameless peasant? Shall I disown you before or after your sentence is passed?”
Josephine literally stopped breathing for a moment before breaking down in racking, heaving sobs. “Mother,” Arluin said tentatively, “perhaps we should—” He flinched, his speech smothered beneath the matriarch's disapproval.
“Your cooperation,” she continued, hammering her daughter with every word, “determines at what point of the process you cease to be my child. Do you understand now?”
The girl's frantic nods splattered the toes of Widdershins's boots with tears. Contemptuous of Fifi's petty, selfish treason, she couldn't help but feel a bit of pity for the weeping aristocrat.
“So,” Widdershins repeated, “here's what you're going to do….”
When the wagon trundled to a halt, when the bouncing and juddering over uneven cobblestones ceased to rattle his bones like dice in a gambler's hand, it still took him some time to realize that they had truly stopped; that this was not some pause mandated by late-night traffic or the driver taking the time to reorient himself, but a final destination.
Emphasis, qui
te possibly, on final.
His disorientation wasn't just from the discomfort of the ride itself, though that was severe enough; Major Archibeque of the Davillon Guard wasn't nearly so young as he used to be, nor were his joints so resilient. Still, had it been only wooden wheels clattering on uneven roadway, he'd have been a tad sore at worst. Archibeque, however, rode not on the bench at the wagon's front, but stretched out in back, buried under foul-smelling heaps of old fabric and scraps. And the beating it had taken to get him there made the everyday aches of aging absolutely pale in comparison.
His memories of how it had happened were jagged, broken, and sporadic at best. He'd been walking home, tired, after his shift. He was, it seemed, always tired after his shift, these days; ever since the Guard had lost several of its best people around the so-called Iruoch affair. No, Archibeque wasn't fool enough to believe the rumors that the actual fairy-tale creature had appeared in Davillon, but whatever the truth, the repercussions had been real enough.
So he'd already been at rather less than his best when the first of the thugs had jumped him just outside his house.
He recalled a brief tussle; lashing out, connecting with a fist here, an elbow there. Cost someone teeth with that one, he hoped. In the end, however, he'd had no chance even to draw rapier or pistol, let alone for victory.
Archibeque did have the presence of mind, however, to note that his attackers wielded saps and small clubs, and that even during the worst of the beating that followed, they took special care to avoid his face, head, or neck.
Someone badly wants me alive.
Not a comforting thought, that, but also their mistake. He'd been a fighter all his life, and if they thought age had robbed him of that spirit, they were sorely—
“Up and out, geezer!”
He felt the weight atop him shift, hands close around his wrists and collar, before he was manhandled from the wagon. Archibeque blinked, studying his surroundings.