by Marmell, Ari
“Your Eminence,” Widdershins began, unsure how to proceed, “I'm really not here to hurt you.” She wasn't consciously aware of her fingers pulling at the hem of her sleeve, nor of the fact that she was chewing idly on a lock of her blonde wig. “I—”
“I know that, Adrienne. That is what Delacroix just called you, yes?” De Laurent's smile held no mischief this time, merely the comforting expression of a gentle old man who knew more about the world—and probably about you—than you did. “It's such a pretty name. May I ask why you changed it?”
Widdershins, who'd expected to be the one asking questions, found herself caught off guard. “Adrienne is…wanted for some pretty awful crimes, Your Eminence. Widdershins is just a thief. Though I suppose you think stealing is bad enough.”
“I'm not here to judge you. And as long as it's just the two of us, you might as well call me William. ‘Your Eminence' gets so unwieldy. ‘Excuse me, Your Eminence.' ‘If you say so, Your Eminence.' ‘Hey, Your Eminence, can you pass the mustard?'”
Widdershins laughed. It was a clean sound, pure, washing away at least a tiny portion of the past weeks. De Laurent smiled gently.
When her laughter faded, he spoke again. “Aren't you going to introduce me to your other friend?” he asked softly.
Every muscle in Widdershins's body locked up. “Excuse me?”
“My dear, I'm an archbishop of the High Church. I've been known, on occasion, to ask a favor of the gods, something the common man might think of as magic. A nudge of good luck here, a flash of insight there. These events are not the result of sorcery, but neither are they simple manifestations of chance. Sometimes the gods even nudge things for me without my knowledge. Little coincidences—such as, for instance, a thief appearing at just the right moment to save my life from some particularly bold assassin.
“I know the presence of the divine, my dear. And you have a god looking over your shoulder.”
“His…his name's Olgun,” Widdershins admitted, uncertain how many more surprises she could stand in her life.
“Olgun. He's not a god of the Pact, or I'd have heard of him.”
“Do…” She swallowed. “Do you have to, I don't know, report him or something?”
De Laurent smiled. “Worship of a pagan deity is frowned on by the Hallowed Pact, but it's not forbidden. So long as he doesn't work against the Pact, or flaunt the fact that he's not abiding by all of its strictures, I see no reason why either the Church or our gods should see him as an enemy.”
She nodded. “I sort of picked him up at the same time I…stopped being Adrienne.”
“Do you want to talk about it, child?”
Without entirely knowing why, for the first time since she'd told the whole bloody and painful tale to Genevieve, she did.
“It was about six years ago,” she began, her voice fading, carried back across the sea of years to a far but never forgotten shore. “I was just a pickpocket on the streets, really. One day, I was watching the shops in the marketplace…”
Claude maneuvered through the front door as best he could, arms laden with parcels, and glowered at the servants who had taken so long to admit him. “Find a place for these,” he demanded, shoving the packages into the chest of a startled doorman, and suggesting by his expression just where the fellow might stick them. Barely waiting long enough for the man to take the weight, he spun and strode up the stairs, taking them two at a time in his long-legged stride.
Even as he approached the master's office, his scowl deepened. No doubt the old coot would have something else that needed doing, some new banal task that would occupy time Claude really didn't have. But he wasn't about to overtly disobey, and he certainly didn't want anything to go wrong with the archbishop's arrangements…
But Alexandre was neither hard at work on the books, nor shouting instructions to this servant or that. He sat behind his desk, staring dreamily off into space, a strange grin flittering about the edges of his mouth.
“Sir?” Claude asked, gently shutting the door behind him. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing's wrong, Claude.” Alexandre turned to him, still smiling. “I think…We have to keep this secret, of course, at least for now. Until we can make things right.”
“Um, of course, sir. Keep what secret, exactly?”
“She's alive, Claude. She's alive, and maybe…maybe she'll come back to me.”
The servant's eyes widened briefly, then narrowed. “Perhaps, sir, you'd better tell me everything.”
And he stood, listening, with his hands clasped behind his back so Alexandre couldn't see the violent clenching of his fists.
The candle guttered madly, little more than a floating wick in a pool of gooey wax by the time the young woman's narration finally ended. She'd left out almost nothing—nothing save Alexandre's own worship of Olgun, for that was not her secret to tell. Her throat was raw, and she was surprised, albeit only mildly, to discover that her cheeks were damp once more.
William de Laurent leaned back in his chair. He folded his hands in his lap to prevent himself from overstepping the bounds of propriety, for at that moment all he wanted was to reach out and comfort this poor girl who had suffered so much, persevered through hardship and horror the likes of which few could imagine.
“You are truly blessed,” he said at last, his own voice hoarse with suppressed emotion.
She couldn't help it; she laughed, loudly and bitterly. “You have a unique sense of fortune then, William.” She punched the name ever so slightly, as though pointedly reminding him that he'd given her permission to use it.
“You misunderstand me, Adrienne. Yes, I said Adrienne. You no more stopped being Adrienne when you took the name Widdershins than this desk”—here he thumped a fist against the solid wood—“would become, say, a mule, just because I were to call it one.
“But what I mean is that you have a strength about you that enabled you to come through all this. That is a blessing. And more to the point, it amazes me utterly that Olgun—and I mean no offense to your god, you understand—hasn't gotten you killed by now.”
“What?” Widdershins blinked twice, her own mounting indignation both channel and counterpoint to the deity's own sudden ire. The air around her tingled. “Olgun's saved my life more times than I can count! He's gotten me out of some unbelievably tight spots, and he's usually the one trying to talk sense into me! What could possibly drive you to say something like that?!”
“Again, you misunderstand.” The archbishop leaned toward her, resting both elbows on the desk. “Adrienne, Olgun never told you the full import of what you did for him two years ago, did he?”
Her stomach tightened, and for a frantic moment she fought a sudden urge to flee. “What do you mean?”
“You saved Olgun's life.”
This time, the laughter died before it left her throat. It sounded absurd—save a god's life, indeed!—and yet, it felt right.
“Adrienne, there are a great many theories and philosophies within the High Church. Sitting around and debating the unknowable is something that overeducated old men like me enjoy so much, we've made it part of our official ecclesiastical duties. And one of the things on which we choose to speculate is the nature of the gods themselves.
“Why do you suppose the gods seek our worship?” he asked her. “What do you suppose they would do—they would be—without us?”
“Olgun?” Widdershins asked hesitantly. There was nothing, nothing from the god save an embarrassed silence.
“Consider that most of the gods of the Pact come to us from the scattered tribes and communities before the founding of Galice. That a god of great import in one city might oversee a single bloodline or guild in another. That they are older than modern society, and yet so few of them—or at least, of those we still acknowledge—demand observances that would be considered immoral to contemporary thought.
“Some of us in the Church believe that our worship actually shapes the gods—not so much as they shaped us, of course,
but what traits the bulk of a god's worshippers believe he has, he has. What emotions we believe he feels, he feels. And without our faith, without mortals to honor and revere him, he would cease to be. He would…Well, in all ways that matter, he would die.”
“No.”
“You are Olgun's last living worshipper, Adrienne. If you perish, so, I fear, does he.”
“But I'm not the only one who believes in him!” Widdershins insisted, half lunging from her seat, all but tripping herself in the folds of her gown. “You believe in him now!”
“I believe, but I do not worship him. That's what they need from us. Devotion, not simple acknowledgment.”
Widdershins wanted to scream, to lash out, to cry, to deny it all, and she couldn't quite figure out why. Was it just the idea of bearing such an enormous responsibility? Wasn't it enough that she was liable to get herself killed by her own thoughtless actions? She had to take responsibility for the life of an “immortal,” too?
“If I'm the only one keeping him alive,” she said, brightening as she saw her way clear of the archbishop's smothering web of revelation, “then he'd be doing everything in his power to protect me! So what the figs is all this about him getting me killed?”
De Laurent smiled gently. “Listen to what I've been saying, Adrienne. Our worship gives them life, power, and personality. I would imagine that the fewer worshippers a god has, the more each individual shapes his nature. Your relationship is, if you will, monogamous. Just you, just him; something, I might add, that is absolutely unique in my experience. Neither of you is consciously aware of it—well, I'm sure you're not, though I guess I ought not speak for a deity—but you've been shaping each other's disposition since the day of the murders.”
The thief rocked backward, found herself sprawled crookedly across the plush, upholstered cushions. I don't want to hear this!
“You're a risk taker, Adrienne. You told me you always have been. You also told me it's gotten worse in the recent past, that you've been taking chances even when you knew they were dangerous, even stupid.”
“Because of Olgun,” she whispered, hands clenched at her sides. “I've made him more prone to taking risks…”
“Which he has been, albeit unintentionally, channeling back into you,” de Laurent concluded. Then, at the look of betrayal that shone so clearly on her face, he quickly added, “You should hold no malice for Olgun over this. I doubt he was any more aware of this than you.” He paused long enough to give a hefty shrug that lifted his entire cassock. “And even if he knew, there's little he could've done about it. Even the gods can no more escape what they are than can man.”
“Is that true?” Widdershins demanded, her attention clearly focused elsewhere. De Laurent felt nothing at all, but the young woman nodded slowly, accepting whatever silent response she'd received.
“All right,” she said a moment later. “That explains a lot of what's happened to me—not least of which is my attempt to rob you, which has to qualify as ‘stupid' if anything I've done ever has. But it doesn't get us any nearer to figuring out what's going on, or who's trying to kill you.”
“You seem awfully convinced it's not your thieves' guild,” de Laurent noted, stroking his chin. “Are you so certain?”
“I was there, William. I told you, I saw no evidence of ritual in their chapel. More to the point, they didn't have the first clue what I was talking about when I accused them of sending that thing after me.”
“These are thieves, Adrienne. I'm sure lying is something at which they're more than a little proficient.”
“I'm a thief, William,” she retorted. “Telling when thieves lie is something at which I'm more than a little proficient.”
“I see.”
“Besides, why would they want to kill you? That would draw exactly the sort of attention that the guild usually bends over backward—and bends other people over backward—to avoid.”
“Maybe.” The old man leaned slightly forward, as though suddenly intent on memorizing the patterns of swirls and whorls in the polished wood of his desk. His fingers idly traced the designs, over and over.
Widdershins remained patient for almost a full minute. “You,” she blurted out finally, “are trying to work up the nerve to tell me something.”
De Laurent smiled sheepishly. “It's not that I don't trust you at this point, especially given what you've confided in me. It's just that this is a Church matter, not one I can discuss lightly with anyone.” He paused again, considering.
“I'm not in Davillon to determine whether it's time to appoint a new bishop, and which of the various candidates I should recommend. Oh, I'll do that while I'm here—it's well past time anyway. But that's an excuse, nothing more.”
“Then why—?”
“There are ways other than worship,” de Laurent told her, apparently changing the topic, “for a god to draw power, though none as long-lasting or as steady. That's why people offer tribute, or sacrifice animals, and why some of the more vicious cults still practice human sacrifice, for all that the Hallowed Pact forbids such travesties. An item, or a life, dedicated to a god brings that god power.”
“I'm sure that's very interesting, but—”
“Recently, the pure of faith in the High Church have felt something, Adrienne. We've received dreams, visions, omens. There is, at the risk of sounding terribly melodramatic, a dark power growing in Davillon, and I can assure you it's not because someone's been successfully proselytizing. And I'm now all but certain that it is this power that spawned the inhuman minion hunting you, and sent it to destroy Olgun's cult two years ago. I've come to learn what it is, and if possible, to deal with it.” He frowned. “And yet, beneath its darkness, there's an almost familiar—”
He clamped his teeth together as his guest bolted upright, head cocked as though listening to a voice he couldn't hear—which, no doubt, she was. In a flash, she was standing beside the window, back pressed firmly against the wall. Taking a quick breath, the thief made ready to sneak a peek, but first she needed a favor.
“Olgun,” she whispered, “it's kind of dark out there.”
It was more than just a request for help. It was her way of saying she'd already forgiven him for anything he'd done, deliberately or not, her way of saying, “Things are the same as they always were.”
And Olgun replied, a torrent of relief and more than a little joy coloring the rush of power she felt as the air took on its characteristic charge.
Widdershins crouched before the window. With only the top of her head exposed, she rapidly scanned the ground. Her vision, sensitive as a cat's thanks to Olgun's efforts, ranged over topiary and stone-cobbled path, over bushes, around trees.
There!
Advancing up the walk, in what would have been full view if there had been a sun in the night sky, came a column of City Guards led by Julien Bouniard. They moved at a brisk march, hands on hilts, and Widdershins had no doubt at all why they were here.
Had Alexandre betrayed her after all? Had he allowed her to stay just to stall her while he yelled for the Guard? Panic tried to force its way up her throat like a bad meal, and she swallowed hard to keep it down.
No. No, that wasn't him. If he'd planned to turn her in, he'd have done so, confidently and openly. But however they knew, they were here now. Time later for asking questions.
“A problem?” de Laurent suggested from behind her.
“Major Bouniard and a whole mess of constables. Which I guess, yeah, is a problem.”
“They may not be here for you at all.”
Widdershins smirked. “You break any laws lately, William?”
“Stay,” the archbishop all but begged. “I'll speak for you, Adrienne. Maybe I can help you reclaim your life.”
She stared, and for a moment, she almost agreed. But, “No. No, I can't risk it. Maybe later.
“And William? Thank you.” She reached out, rested a hand fondly on his arm.
Just like that, she was gone, scampering down the
outside walls and vanishing into the trees, well out of sight of the constables on the path. Pieces of habit and wimple fell away, revealing her ubiquitous black, as she vanished into the night.
And all the archbishop could think to say, wrapped up as he was in worry for Widdershins's safety, was, “At least she opened the window this time.”
“Claude!”
The servant halted, his feet on two different steps, and allowed his lord and master to catch up to him on the stair. “What is it, sir?” he asked blandly.
“There are Guardsmen on the premises, Claude!” His voice lowered into a conspiratorial hush. “How could they have found out so swiftly that she was here?”
“I couldn't say, sir. But we'd best check on her and His Eminence, don't you think?”
They darted up the stairs, trying to keep themselves to a brisk walk, rather than the headlong charge that would alert the other servants that something was amiss. They had perhaps a minute before the Guardsmen reached the door, maybe two or three more before the soldiers talked their way past the doormen and made it upstairs. Teeth grinding in impatience, Alexandre flitted down the hall, Claude on his heels. They swept past the hanging paintings and the various idols of Cevora until finally they reached the men assigned to watch the archbishop's door and burst as one into the room. Eyes alert for danger, the two men-at-arms followed them inside.
De Laurent turned away from the open window. “Missed her by just an instant, I'm afraid. But I don't believe she'll have any trouble eluding the soldiers outside.”
“Delighted to hear it,” said Claude, even as Alexandre broke into a relieved grin.
And then, before the archbishop's horrified eyes, the servant turned and sank a long-bladed dirk into the aristocrat's gut. Alexandre's eyes grew wide and he clutched at the blade, hands fluttering like wounded birds, before he toppled to the floor.
Claude grinned a horrid grin, and a second blade appeared in his fist even as Alexandre's men converged on him….