by Ari Marmell
Now she took a last look around, drew in a long, deep breath. “All right, Olgun,” she exhaled. “You ready?”
There was no mistaking the god's nervous response for anything but a heartfelt no.
“Ah, buck up, Olgun. It'll be fun, yes?”
She got no response to that at all. With an unconcerned shrug, she slipped away from the edge of the roof.
There was, Hubert lamented silently as he shifted foot to foot in the sickly moonlight, absolutely no justice in this world. Normally, that was a good thing, what with him being a thief and all. But tonight, as the air grew pregnant with the weight of coming rain and he shivered in his “unobtrusive” clothes, he felt more than a little bitter.
And why was he stuck out here, on this gods-forsaken night, while most of his companions were either inside enjoying dice and spiced wine, or out relieving citizens of their encumbering coins? Why was he garbed as a beggar when he preferred the newest styles of the aristocracy?
It was because he, Hubert Juste, member in good standing of the Finders' Guild and loyal servant of the Shrouded Lord, had proven himself trustworthy enough for guard duty. It was, he'd been told repeatedly, an honor. This was a Good Thing. It meant that he'd been noticed by the people above, people who mattered. He was on his way to big things with the guild, no doubt about it, big things indeed!
Hubert huddled closer inside his beggarly disguise, winced as the first corpse-cold drops of an icy drizzle pelted him in the face, and cursed the whole bloody lot of them.
If this is what comes of proving one's worth, let's just see how well I do on my next job, damn them all to—
“Excuse me.”
Keeping to his beggar routine, Hubert coughed, forcing a moist, phlegmy sound through his throat, and lurched forward with a slight stumble. Inside his coat, he dropped a hand toward his thin-bladed dirk, and the alarm whistle that hung at his side. Between this and the visitors of a few nights ago, this place was getting downright popular. “Some'at I kin do fer ya, missy?” he wheezed.
“Actually, yes,” she simpered softly, her tone seductive, one arm slinking out as though she intended to embrace or caress the filthy miscreant. “My name is Widdershins,” she told him. “I'm Taskmaster Lisette's most wanted. I intend to drug you, and force you to be my guide.”
Hubert blinked, startled. “What—?”
Widdershins opened her palm, now directly beneath the bewildered guard's face, and blew. The powder, clenched tight in her fist to prevent the rain from transforming it into so much paste, billowed out in a thick cloud. Hubert gasped, backpedaling, but it was far too late.
He staggered, all but slapping himself as he grabbed for both his whistle and his blade. The former fell back to his chest unsounded, swinging pendulously on its lanyard as he collapsed in a torrential choking fit. His dagger clattered to the cobblestones, the tip bent and the blade notched by the impact. Hubert fell to his knees, ripping even more holes in his patchwork pants.
Widdershins glanced around furtively, brushing hair and rainwater from her eyes. Once she was satisfied nobody had seen them, she reached out and helped the dazed fellow to his feet. The air sparked with a surge of Olgun's power, enhancing even further the effects of the drug on the sentry's system.
“What's your name?” Widdershins asked softly, shivering as a rill of rainwater cascaded down her back.
“Hubert Juste,” he answered dreamily.
“Hubert, how are you feeling?”
“Funny,” he admitted, punctuating the sentiment with an almost girlish giggle.
Widdershins couldn't help but grin in response. “It is funny,” she admitted, watching him nod vigorously in agreement. “Hubert,” she said, voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, “I need you to help me with something. Can you do that?”
“I can help!” he insisted, still nodding. Widdershins worried that his head might fly off and go bouncing down the street, gibbering softly.
“I don't know,” she hemmed. “This is pretty tough….”
“I can do it! I'm good at shtuf—stuff!”
“Maybe you are, at that,” she conceded. “All right, Hubert, I need you to guide me through the Finders' Guild. You see, I've only ever been in the upper levels, and the lower floors have all sorts of bloodthirsty guards, and tricky passages, and I'd so hate to get hurt down there. You wouldn't want that, would you?”
“Oh, no!” he insisted, nodding his head yes.
“Good. Then lead the way, my friend.” She followed his unsteady but determined tread through the main doors, pausing only to retrieve his abandoned dagger from the street. There was nothing she could do to prevent the thieves from discovering their sentry had vanished, but she could at least remove any evidence that something untoward had happened. Let them wonder.
They'd barely passed the front door when she learned that it wasn't to be that easy.
“Hey! Hubert!”
From a platform above the door, a slender young woman, built much like Widdershins herself, dropped to the floor. She was garbed in tight red hose, brown boots, and a blue tunic cut so low that Widdershins actually started to blush. Her hands clasped a small crossbow—presumably, or so Widdershins guessed, because it'd do less harm to the walls than a flintlock if she had to fire it indoors. The weapon was sufficient indication that, despite her wardrobe, she meant business.
“What the hell do you think you're doing?” she demanded, getting right up in Hubert's face and staring up at him. “You know damn well you're not to leave your post for any reason, certainly not for some doxy off the streets!”
“Especially when he can just walk through the doors and have his pick of any doxy from inside, right?” Widdershins asked mildly.
The other thief spun angrily, straight into a brutal right hook. She staggered, her eyes rolling so far back in her head that she could probably have counted the wrinkles in her gray matter, and fell with a dull thud.
Widdershins shook her aching fist and considered. She really didn't want to have to kill anybody here. On top of any moral compunctions, she'd be in enough trouble over this as it was. With no other option, she stashed the senseless brigand in a nearby coat closet, tying her hands and feet with the woman's own boot-laces, and gagging her with the tiny scrap of fabric she'd apparently mistaken for a shirt. Hubert, his confused expression betraying no understanding of the situation, resumed his guided tour. The passages grew dim as they continued, lit only by the occasional lantern or torch. Widdershins pulled one burning brand from the wall to carry with her as she walked.
As they moved into the heart of the guild, deeper than she'd ever gone before—save once, when her initiation had required her to swear certain oaths at the feet of the Shrouded God—Widdershins found herself stunned at the magnitude of the task she'd so blithely undertaken. The complex was enormous, easily the size of a large palace. The halls were so twisted and confusing that “labyrinthine” scarcely did them justice. She imagined that the architects had dropped an enormous handful of string, or perhaps some sort of noodle, and designed their floor plan on the resulting patterns. Thieves stood guard at random intervals, in scattered intersections. Thankfully, none of them seemed to recognize her on sight—unsurprising, given the size of the guild's roster—but still, without Hubert's presence to justify her own, Widdershins was pretty sure she'd have been stopped for more than polite questioning. Without the presence of her drug-confounded escort, Widdershins knew that all her precious skills would have availed her naught. She'd have been hopelessly lost, and quite probably dead, and neither her own abilities nor Olgun's guidance could have saved her. As it was, she walked in fear that one of the sentries would know that her guide was supposed to be outside, rather than in, and stop them anyway.
On they walked, forever onward, footsteps echoing forlornly through darkened halls. Some of the passageways showed signs of regular usage: The dust on the floor was thin; torches occupied the sconces along the walls. Others appeared to have survived untou
ched for decades. Guards grew scarce; cobwebs hung thick; the air stank of mold; sconces were empty or sprouted only rotted wood that could no longer hold a flame. Obviously her drugged guide wasn't exactly taking the most direct route through the place—not that Widdershins had any destination in mind more specific than “where the important rooms are”—and she could only hope they'd indeed wind up somewhere worthwhile. Well, not her only hope. She prayed that Olgun could retrace the path they'd taken, should circumstances demand a hasty withdrawal.
But it seemed, finally, that they might just be getting someplace. Signs of regular passage and the echoes of distant voices grew more common with each subsequent hallway, until it became clear that they traveled through a major hub of the complex. Widdershins tensed, alert to the slightest sign that they might no longer be alone.
They encountered no one at all. Widdershins didn't know if most of the thieves were engaged in other pursuits, or whether it was sheer dumb luck, but it made her as nervous as it did relieved. Hubert, his pace slackening and his eyes beginning to glaze like a pastry, jerked to an unsteady halt before a heavy iron door. “Center,” he murmured, his voice thick, his tongue dry.
“The center?” Widdershins repeated. “Of the complex?”
“Yeah…”
“What is it?”
“Chapel.” Hubert giggled again, a flaccid sound. “We should go pray.”
Widdershins barely caught him before he slumped, unconscious, to the floor.
Ah, well. I suppose he lasted as long as I needed him to.
Widdershins put her ear to the metallic portal. She heard nothing beyond, but then, it was a hefty door. When Olgun's own divine senses confirmed her observations, however, Widdershins confidently gave the door a heavy shove—rather shocked at the ease and silence with which it opened—and dragged the slumbering sentry inside with her.
The chamber sparked the vaguest of memories. She'd been here only once, over a year ago, and then only for a few moments. It held a number of softly gleaming lanterns that pressed the shadows up to the ceiling where they hung, a thin, dark awning. Wormy tendrils of smoke reached sinuously from those tiny lights, intertwining at the ceiling and flowing through numerous concealed holes.
The young woman's attention was drawn to the towering stone statue at the front of the room. Her curiosity piqued, she glided, ghostlike, up the dais and around the podium.
Other than its prodigious size, the carving could have represented an ordinary man. His garb was loose, a style popular many generations back. The only other oddity was the statue's head, covered by a thick, heavy cloth of darkest jet.
She thought she remembered it being a lot more impressive.
“The Shrouded God,” Widdershins intoned melodramatically. “Beware his terribly wrathful terrible wrath.”
Olgun chuckled disdainfully.
“You know,” she said, reaching upward, “I've always wondered…”
Her fingertips had brushed against the roughly woven hood before Olgun screamed in her mind, a shriek the likes of which she'd never heard. She stumbled away from the idol, palms pressed to her ears.
“Ow! Purple steaming hell, Olgun! What was that for?”
The god continued to shout his warning at her—more calmly and far more softly, at least.
“Oh, come on,” she scoffed. “It's not like there's really some spooky ancient curse on whoever looks at the stupid thing.”
Her eyes widened at the sense of absolute certainty that washed over her soul.
“There is? What does it do?”
No answer. Either Olgun didn't know, or he didn't want to tell her. Widdershins cast a final glance at the statue and decided to let the issue drop.
“All right, all right. Look, the Shrouded Lord's office has to be close to the chapel, right? So let's head out there and find him, and maybe we can get this damn thing resolved before—”
“You!” There was enough venom in that single word not merely to knock a person dead, but to sicken the worms and beetles who would feast upon the corpse.
“Or,” Widdershins muttered, “we can let someone find us dillydallying about here.” She spun, one hand clasping the hilt of the rapier, and stared into the face she'd grown to hate with every fiber of her being.
Lisette Suvagne, her fiery mane radiating about her head like a corona, stepped over the insensate body of Hubert Juste. Her eyes all but glowed from within.
“I don't know how you got in here, you little scab, but I'm glad you did!” The taskmaster stopped halfway through the chapel. With a low, eager sound, her rapier slid obscenely from its scabbard, her dagger appearing as swiftly in her left hand. The blades glinted dully in the lantern light. “It's so much more satisfying this way.”
Widdershins's own blade whipped over her back, cut fine lines in the air before her. “Hello, Lisette. You're looking stressed, did you know that? Are you taking proper care of yourself?”
The redhead smiled. “I'm going to feel a lot better in a few minutes, Widdershins.” Cautiously, she took several steps; Widdershins did not walk, but leapt from the side of the idol to meet her. They stood only feet apart now, close enough for the tips of the rapiers to kiss one another with a metallic chime.
“So what happened, Lisette? I haven't seen you this upset since d'Arras Tower.” She smiled sweetly. “You're not still miffed about that, are you?”
The taskmaster lunged with a bestial snarl. Widdershins parried casually, contemptuously smacking the blade aside, retreating rather than taking the obvious riposte. Lisette flailed briefly, scrambling to retain her balance with an undignified whirling of limbs.
“I'll see you dead, bitch!”
“Only if the ceiling falls on me, Lisette.”
The room echoed, as though a rain of nails had suddenly fallen from the night-blackened skies. Over and over, the taskmaster's rapier lashed at the black-clad intruder. Her dagger was the flickering sting of a scorpion, seeking any opening the rapier might leave.
Nothing connected. Widdershins pivoted impossibly fast, twisting to face any direction from which Lisette could attack. Her arm flashed up, out, to either side; her wrist turned at impossible angles, whipping the thin steel into the path of the taskmaster's weapons.
They moved swiftly across the chamber, Widdershins deliberately falling back before Lisette's furious assault, concentrating entirely on defense, refusing to take so much as a single stab at the foe. Though gilded in a veneer of style and civility, trained into her during her years as the ward of a nobleman, Widdershins's swordplay was, at its core, brutal, direct—not fencing but street fighting. Nothing in her experience should have allowed her to turn away blow after blow as she was, yet she kept her lone blade constantly interposed between both Lisette's weapons.
The taskmaster was good, very good. But Lisette, for all her faith, didn't have a god watching over her shoulder and guiding her blades. And slowly, slowly, she began to tire. She found herself flinching from counterattacks that never came, her eyes drifting dangerously to follow Widdershins's footwork when they should remain focused elsewhere.
And then, as their path took them past the towering idol of the Shrouded God, Widdershins lashed out with the tip of her blade and scored a thin line straight down the stone deity's crotch.
Lisette froze, shocked to the core of her being, more horrified at Widdershins's blasphemy than she could ever have been at merely mortal suffering. And in that instant of paralysis, when Lisette's jaw and fingers had both fallen slack, Widdershins stepped in and slammed her rapier down on the taskmaster's sword, knocking it from her fist to skip and skitter across the carpeted floor. Even as Lisette turned, cognizant once more of the danger, Widdershins grabbed the taskmaster's left wrist with her own free hand and, with only a modicum of exertion, drove Lisette's own dagger deep into the woman's upper thigh.
“If we're through playing now,” Widdershins told the woman, now lying curled around a growing pool of blood, “I'd really like to ask you a few que
stions before you bleed to death.”
“Go to hell!” Lisette gasped around broken sobs. She tried to crane her head, to look up with some last show of dignity; but her leggings, already plastered to her skin by the torrent of blood, pulled rudely at the gaping wound, and she couldn't so much as shift her weight for the pain. “Killing me won't stop them! They'll come after you, no matter what!”
“I don't know, Lisette,” Widdershins said thoughtfully. “I think I'd be doing them a favor by popping whatever sack of contagion you have for a heart. I'm sure there are quite a few here who would send me flowers. Maybe a nice fruit basket.”
“Even if that's true,” the taskmaster wheezed, “the Shrouded Lord doesn't take kindly to being disobeyed.”
“I didn't disobey anything until you'd already punished me for it,” Widdershins protested. “And it's certainly a bit of overkill to throw a blooming demon at me, don't you think?”
Lisette laughed aloud, the sound changing to a gurgle of pain as the movement jostled her injured leg. “I'll tell Brock you think so highly of him,” she gasped.
Maybe it was her tone, but the young thief didn't doubt the woman for a moment. Lisette really didn't know what Widdershins was talking about. Someone else was trying to kill her, someone outside the guild—the same someone who had slaughtered Olgun's cult! She was after the wrong people!
Sheathing her blade, she delivered a swift and brutal kick to Lisette's injured leg. Then, as the taskmaster's scream drowned out all other sound, she slid open the door behind her and slipped out the winding corridors. Long before Lisette's cries could attract attention in the largely empty halls, Widdershins was already gone, lost in the labyrinthine corridors, leaving only the fading echo of her footsteps to prove she'd been present at all.
ALMOST TWO YEARS AGO:
Even in darkest night, life continued in Davillon's central market. Though stalls and shops were long since closed, windows shuttered and doors thoroughly locked, the marketplace offered other attractions. Illicit deals and unlawful exchanges occupied shadowed culs-de-sac, dimly lit offices, corner booths in smoke-filled taverns—anywhere the participants could place at least one wall at their back. And for each audible voice lurked another individual whose mouth remained firmly shut, ready to cut the strings of a purse or the flesh of a throat. The nighttime market, without the scents of fruits and perfumes and sweetmeats, was redolent of sweat and drying horse manure.