False Covenant wa-1

by Ari Marmell

  And after a single, quick glimpse of what was happening, she just as rapidly retreated back into the dining room. A number of the City Guard were assembled outside, led by one Major Julien Bouniard. Widdershins actually would have loved to talk to him just then, to see a friendly face-and that was all it was, by the gods, no matter what her heart rate was doing! — but on the off chance that she escaped this mess with her Madeleine Valois guise intact, the last thing she needed was to give any Guardsman, even one she more or less trusted, the opportunity to see through it.

  But while she didn't know why the Guard was here, she'd seen enough to know what it was that the constables had found, and what had caused their obvious consternation.

  The street beyond the gateway to the estate was strewn with a handful of bodies, bodies that would never have been visible from the house if several of the constables hadn't been gathering them for study and transport. Tabards and weapons suggested that the dead included both Lamarr men-at-arms and actual Guardsmen-probably the men and women assigned to protect the Marquise's soiree. At this distance, Widdershins couldn't possibly begin to determine how they'd died, other than that it was bloody. Olgun might have enhanced her vision enough for her to do so, but that would require her to remain in sight of Julien and the others for longer than she was comfortable with.

  Not that Julien and the others were staying outside. Although a few Guardsmen remained behind to watch over the bodies until a wagon arrived, the major himself led the bulk of his squad straight for the front door. The guests fell back as the constables burst in with hands on hilts. Julien Bouniard first began snapping orders to the household men-at-arms, essentially drafting them into his command until further notice, and then demanded to see Berdine Jolivet at once. The marquise herself-certainly not far from the commotion that had disrupted her well-planned evening-began worming her way through the throng. As said throng was too tightly packed to easily give way before her, it took her a few moments to reach the major; moments that Widdershins, in turn, used to back even farther away.

  “Olgun?”

  But she didn't have to ask. Already, people were “conveniently” shifting and shuffling, moving just enough that Julien wouldn't have a clear line of sight to Widdershins even if he happened to glance in her direction.

  At which point, now that she had a few seconds to think and to breathe, it occurred to Widdershins to check behind her.

  Yep. Evrard was gone. Apparently, whatever he had in mind, this was no longer the audience for it.

  “Well,” she sniffed at Olgun, “I hope he's sore enough that it hurt to walk out of here.”

  She'd expected a chuckle (or rather, the pocket god's emotional equivalent). What she got, instead, was a moment of pensive silence, followed by an abrupt surge of horror and an irresistible urge to make for the stairs.

  “Whoa! Olgun, what-?”

  Olgun kept tugging at her mind.

  “Oh, sure. Suddenly dash out for no reason? That's not exactly the best way to avoid attention, you-”

  If Olgun had a voice, per se, it would have risen to a shriek. She swore she could feel phantom hands shoving her toward the steps.

  “All right! I hope you know what you're doing….”

  The staircase itself was a sweeping wing of broad, shallow steps, lush carpeting, and polished hardwood banisters. Widdershins had actually ascended about a third of those steps, one hand lifting the hem of her skirts so that she could walk unimpeded, when the first voice called out for her to stop.

  Julien. Of course.

  Widdershins proceeded as though she hadn't heard a word of it. A few more steps passed beneath her feet.

  “Mademoiselle!” Much harsher this time. “I'm not going to ask you again! Until we've determined what happened outside, we cannot allow anyone to-”

  But by that point, Widdershins had gotten far enough up the stairs so that, after a tingling in the air to indicate Olgun's assistance, she could more than smell the faint ambiance wafting down from above.

  Blood. And peppermint.

  “Oh, no…” Widdershins broke into as much of a run as the combination of stairs and skirts would permit. “Hurry!” She barely had the presence of mind to stick with her slightly higher-pitched “Madeleine” voice, scarcely caring anymore if Julien identified her or not. “Hurry!”

  Nobody below knew what she knew, of course, or even understood what was at stake. But there could be no mistaking the genuine tremor in her voice. Instantly not only the constables, but the Marquise de Lamarr and a huge swathe of her guests, were following her up the stairs. Slowly at first, but spreading rapidly, nervous gasps and horrified mutters spread through that portion of the assembly who already knew precisely what was so important about the upper floor.

  Widdershins dashed across the balcony above, whipping past a gold-framed portrait of Berdine Jolivet's grandfather and setting a light banner of Vercoule swaying and flapping in her wake. By the time she reached the door from which the awful scent emanated, the fastest of Julien's constables was pounding along directly beside her, his expression one of puzzlement and a growing fear to which he couldn't put a name.

  She felt sorry for him.

  The door flew open; Widdershins could never afterward remember whether it was she or the constable who'd shoved it. After a single shocked instant, she could only look away, her back pressed to the wall in the hall outside, and sob into her open hands. The constable, all professional detachment washed away, was huddled over across the open doorway, struggling not to retch.

  She'd expected the bodies, ever since she'd first detected the horrid combination of odors. She'd even expected their dried, cracked, and shriveled condition, though that expectation had done little to prepare her for the experience of actually seeing them. But she did not, could not, have anticipated that there would be so many.

  Or that they would be so small.

  The corpses had been laid out and positioned as neatly as you please. Some reclined on the sofas, blankets tucked up under their chins. Others sat at the tables, hands resting on cups or saucers. Still others sat cross-legged on the floor, board games open between them. One, larger and presumably older than the rest, clad in a formal gown, was carefully leaned against the inside of the doorframe, as though observing the rest.

  On the far wall, huge and uneven letters, scribbled in green wax crayon, read:

  Where, oh where, is your little god now?

  The hallway around Widdershins began to fill with a rising flood of humanity, and by the time it occurred to her to suggest that the constables shut the door and not permit the parents to see what lay within, it was far, far too late.

  Never, in a life filled with trouble and difficulty, had Widdershins ever heard screams and cries the likes of which now echoed through her mind, blazing trails of memory that might never fade. She clapped her tear-wet hands over her ears and clenched her teeth until her jaw pounded, yet she couldn't begin to drown them out. Each sob, each shrieked and grief-drenched name, was a dagger in her gut.

  Widdershins knew to whom, precisely, that taunting message was delivered. And if it wasn't her fault that Iruoch had killed, it was, at least, because of her that he had killed here.

  “Where were you? Where were you?!”

  She finally looked up, drawn by the despairing cry. One of the guests, a young noblewoman in a gown of white and gold, her wig askew and her makeup smeared into multicolored whorls, was pounding with both fists on a constable's chest. The poor man was trying to explain, but between the horror of what he'd seen and the emotional onslaught, he appeared to have forgotten how to form complete syllables.

  Many of the assembly, the Marquise de Lamarr included, had shoved their way into the room, unheeding of Julien's protests. Some had fallen to their knees beside their sons and daughters; some stood in the chamber's center, unable to bring themselves any nearer the malformed bodies.

  But many of the others, whether or not they'd had children present (as, indeed, mo
st did not), turned toward the Guardsmen as though summoned by that one woman's cry, a sudden fire igniting in their expressions. Several of the mourners within rose as well, and began converging on the protesting (and rapidly paling) constable.

  “My lords and ladies, please!” Julien stepped forward, his palms out, until he stood beside his beleaguered soldier. The other constables, with more or less subtlety, swiftly converged on their commander. “I assure you that we're doing everything we possibly can in order to-”

  “Everything you can?!” It was the same woman screaming, but the expressions on all the faces around her suggested that it could just as easily have been any one of them. “Ives is dead! My baby-my baby's gone! What good is ‘everything you can do’ now?!”

  Widdershins could hear the sound of fists clenching, of feet shuffling forward as the mob (and it was a mob, now) drew ever nearer the Guardsmen in their midst, packed themselves ever more tightly into the stifling hall. The soldiers themselves stood, as best the confined space allowed, in a rough circle, their backs toward each other. Julien continued to reason, even to plead, with the aristocrats, but his words were bumblebees in the face of a gale, blown away before they even had the chance to fly. The angry, ragged breaths of the assembly were a hot and humid gust, but it was far more than these that caused every man and woman in uniform to sweat.

  Should the dam burst, should the partygoers boil over from misdirected anger into violence, the Guardsmen weren't numerous enough to fight them off without the use of weapons. Yet if the constables were to draw steel on a crowd of grieving aristocrats…

  Widdershins huddled at the edges of the throng, forcing herself to breathe. Every impulse in her body urged her to push forward to Julien's side, not to allow him to face this threat alone. (Or rather, without her, since the presence of the other constables more or less made any real definition of “alone” inapplicable.) But what could she do? The presence of one more warm body wouldn't avert the crowd's fury, and any sudden action on her part might very well provide the spark to set the whole thing off. She found herself dancing from foot to foot as she struggled to make up a mind that was as tumultuous and confused as the situation in which she found herself.

  A tingle in the air, another surge of Olgun's power, and Widdershins felt her hearing both expanding and narrowing, a sensation with which she was becoming quite familiar. And she heard, with a sense of abrupt relief that was nigh a physical blow, the sound of boots and voices and shouted orders on the pathway through the estate's front lawn.

  More constables, presumably having accompanied the corpse wagon for which Julien's men had earlier sent. For the second time in minutes, Widdershins-who normally saw the silver fleur-de-lis as nothing but a nuisance-might just have been saved by the immaculately timed arrival of the Davillon City Guard.

  “I assume,” she whispered to Olgun, “that you won't be too jealous if I offer a quick prayer of thanks to the Pact later?”

  Olgun's relief, a close match to her own, was answer enough.

  “Do you think you can…?”

  Her voice trailed off, but her vague gesture toward the packed hallway was more than enough. Again she felt the air around her grow charged, felt Olgun reaching out to the furthest limits of his power, catching the sounds from below, carrying them, augmenting them.

  For an instant, just an instant, everyone nearby, rather than Widdershins alone, could hear the sounds of the approaching soldiers.

  With a single, communal exhalation that was half-breath, half-sigh, the mob deflated. Shoulders slumped, half-raised fists fell, and eyes that had burned themselves dry in anger once more began to glimmer with tears. And if the Guardsmen, too, were seen to sigh-albeit in utter relief-well, they could hardly be blamed.

  Widdershins was already moving, heading not for the stairs or the door but for the nearest unobserved window. She hadn't, as Madeleine, done anything wrong, but she couldn't afford the time it would take to answer questions right now (to say nothing of the risks involved if Julien himself should interrogate her). Now that the immediate danger had passed, there was far too much to do.

  The first step of which was a visit to the Finders' Guild. Neither the Shrouded Lord nor the taskmaster had summoned her for the meeting she'd requested, but this could no longer wait. They'd see her now, because she wasn't prepared to give anyone a choice in the matter.

  Iruoch wanted to make this personal, did he? Fine, then. “Personal” was something with which Widdershins had a lot of practice….

  Gods damn it all, how did she keep doing that?!

  Evrard d'Arras stalked furiously along the avenue, though his determined pace was somewhat unsteadied by the ache that radiated from his privates, as well as the bloody handkerchief he pressed on occasion to his reddened nose and split upper lip. Although he was obviously wounded (if only mildly), and dressed in the finest fabrics, he hesitated not an instant before turning his steps toward Davillon's less-reputable quarters. The pockets of illumination through which he moved grew more sporadic as functional street lamps became ever more rare, and the eaves protruding from the buildings grew worn and filthy, but Evrard would have welcomed it, had he noticed it at all. A part of him hoped that he might be confronted by some ragged robber, or perhaps even the same fiendish creature he'd briefly faced a few nights previously. He'd have given much for the opportunity to legitimately run someone through right about then.

  An opportunity he was supposed to have had before now.

  As it happened, nobody disturbed him; in fact, of the few people he did encounter on the streets at such an hour, most of them very consciously moved to clear his path. He couldn't help but notice the garb on the pedestrians was beginning to run to extremes: The majority of them were either dressed in tattered outfits that were little more than rags, obviously too poor to have anywhere else to go no matter how dangerous the darkness got; or else were wrapped in blatant finery, the servants of men and women so rich that they could afford to send their lackeys out on errands regardless of the perceived hazards.

  The contemplation of all this bought Evrard perhaps a minute and a half of distraction before his mind returned to his objective and his cheeks once more began to burn.

  He'd underestimated her. Aggravating as it was to admit it to himself, and despite the many warnings from his informant not to do precisely that, he'd underestimated the tenacity, the skill, and the patience of the wretched little thief. Everything he'd done, everything he'd threatened to do, even the various slurs and insults he'd hurled across her face like a leather gauntlet-words that, though he'd never have admitted it, made him feel soiled and dishonored for speaking to a lady, no matter how lowborn-and still she'd refused to act as she was supposed to.

  The first time, well, she'd had her friend to restrain her. So be it, that sort of thing was to be expected. But tonight? The arrival of the bloody Guard at precisely the right moment to prevent him from pushing the matter, lest he draw unwanted attention? Had she arranged that? And if so, by every member of the Hallowed Pact, how?

  Well, so be it. Evrard had planned to be patient about this, meticulous, to turn the screws ever so slowly tighter until the woman called Widdershins-no matter how much self-control she might have-could react in the only human way left to her. But no more. Her stubbornness, the growing discord in Davillon itself, and (had Evrard been honest enough with himself to admit it) the burning shame and humiliation of her various assaults on his person had all combined to convince him that it was time to jump straight to his final ploy.

  She already believed the worst of him, so she'd readily believe that he would do everything he threatened. And if even the threat was enough to besmirch his own personal honor, well, it was worth it if it enabled him to restore his family's.

  The night had grown aged, or rather the morning had already been birthed and was struggling to take its first steps, when Evrard marched up the handful of stairs and hurled open the front door. Before the wood had even finished rebounding fro
m the stone, he had his rapier in his right hand, a small flintlock pistol in the left. The thunderclap of the shot, followed instantly by the crack of the ball embedding itself in the stone and mortar of the hearth, was more than sufficient to draw every eye in the sparsely populated tavern. Various mugs and tankards thumped down across a smattering of tables, a few of them sloshing their contents over the scarred wood.

  “I assume,” he announced, his tone calm but carrying, “that nobody here cares to be hurt.” A flick of his wrist beneath his coat and the pistol he'd just discharged was replaced by a second, loaded and ready to fire. “Good. I don't care to hurt anyone. So let's keep this friendly, and we can all leave satisfied.”

  “What…?” The voice was small, clearly frightened. “What do you want?”

  Evrard smiled as the girl appeared from around the bar, impressed despite himself that she had the courage to face him, rather than cowering in hiding. “Robin, was it?” he asked, not unkindly.

  Her short brown hair bobbed in a single, shallow nod.

  “Good. What I want, child, is for you to come with me.” Then, as the blood drained from her face, “I've no intention of hurting you-just so long as you make no trouble for me. I simply require the honor of your company for a few hours, nothing more.”

  A red-bearded server began to advance from the back of the room, his hands clutching the base of a broom as a makeshift cudgel, and several of the customers rose to their feet, fists clenched.

  “Admirable,” Evrard said. “You have worthy friends, Robin. Believe me when I tell you that I'd truly hate for you to lose any of them.” His expression changed not a whit, his friendly smile never faltered, but both the rapier and the flintlock rose by a fraction of an inch….

  “Guys, stop!” Her steps were awkward, her knees locked, but Robin emerged and made her way reluctantly toward a fate that she imagined would probably be far worse than Evrard actually intended. “Don't get yourself killed over this. Please.”