by Marmell, Ari
“Run!” she hissed at her fellow Finders. “Get out!”
“But…but our score!” one of them protested—whined, really.
“You think these are the only constables here, you idiot? They were waiting for you!” She pointed imperiously at the injured man. “Get him and get!”
They got, hauling their companion upright and vanishing through the doorway to the front hall.
And, as though in answer to Widdershins's prediction, another door—this one across the ballroom and leading deeper into the house—flew open as though shot. Through it marched another pair of Guardsmen, these two in full uniform: black tabards emblazoned with the silver fleur-de-lis, equally black plumed hat, and medallions showing the silver face of Demas, patron god of the Guard.
One, blond with a goatee, was a stranger to her. But the other, with hair and mustache of rich brown, she recognized all too well.
“Oh, no…” She was sprinting, despite an ankle made slightly wobbly by the earlier drop, before she might be recognized in turn.
There were few in the city, and none in the Guard, who knew her face as well as Major Julien Bouniard. She'd always been sure she'd never call one of the Guard a friend, but Julien was starting to challenge that certainty.
Unless, of course, he identified her as part of the group of thieves who'd invaded the home of the Marquis de Ducarte, at which point, she was fairly sure, any burgeoning friendship would end with the slamming of a cell door.
From the sound of things, as best she could tell in the thumping, pounding tumult, only a couple of them were following her as she fled. Probably, she guessed, Julien and his other uniformed friend. The other Guardsmen, the ones disguised as servants, were either still flailing about beneath the banner or, more probably, had taken off in pursuit of the other escaping thieves.
Well, Julien was good, no doubt of that. And while Widdershins didn't know the man with him, she had to assume the major had chosen only good people to work with him on this. Nevertheless, the day she couldn't outrun two Guardsmen was the day she deserved to be arrested.
She pulled streamers off the wall as she passed, shoved over the occasional chair or unlit candelabra, hoping to tangle the feet of her pursuers. Again, it wasn't that she doubted she could stay ahead of them, but why take the chance that they'd come close enough for a clear shot? She took a small flight of stairs in a single leap and found herself nearing one of the manor's side doors, presumably meant for deliveries and servants. It hung open before her, and Widdershins found herself wondering briefly if some of Squirrel's gang might have already used it as an escape route. Not that it mattered; a few more steps and she'd be…
Olgun's cry of alarm warned her a split second before the much more human grunt of pain would have. She twisted in the doorway, slouched uncomfortably so she could keep the hood over her face, and gasped at the scene playing out before her.
Two of Squirrel's thieves—she could tell, even with the masks, that they were not part of the group whom she'd helped escape—were closing in from behind the pursuing Guardsmen. The blond constable she didn't know had staggered back against the wall, his right arm bleeding freely from an ugly gash across the bicep, his bash-bang having fallen to the floor at his feet, discharging its payload harmlessly into the wall when it hit. Even as his face paled with pain, he struggled to draw his rapier, however awkwardly, with his left hand.
Julien himself had dropped into an expert duelist's stance. Widdershins wasn't certain what had happened to his own firearm; he held his rapier unerringly straight, but he was having more than a little difficulty trying to cover both opponents at once.
No, not both. All three. Even as Widdershins watched, Squirrel himself—a deep bruise creeping across the lower half of his face like a fistful of grape jelly—stepped from a side passage to join the others.
“You're losing your touch, Olgun,” she muttered softly. “Well, of course your touch! I mean, you know that I can't hit that hard….”
Squirrel growled something unintelligible, drew his stiletto with his left hand—and with his right, produced what could only be Julien's own flintlock! Widdershins couldn't begin to guess when or how he'd gotten his hands on it, but then, he was a thief, after all. That's what he did.
Except now he was about to become not just a thief, but a Guard-murderer.
And Widdershins couldn't afford to worry about her own escape any longer.
“Olgun!”
A flash of divine power, a spark from nowhere, and the bash-bang discharged before Simon could pull the trigger, while he was still bringing the weapon up to fire. The ball shot past Julien, ruffling the edge of his tabard rather than punching through flesh and bone, and gouged an ugly hole in the wall behind him.
Multiple astonished stares flickered to the disobedient weapon, and in that moment, Widdershins struck. Her own rapier—currently lacking its defensive wire basket so that the hilt could lie flush against her back—was now out and moving. The thug to Squirrel's left screamed and dropped to one knee, clutching at an arm that was now bleeding far more fiercely than the wounded Guardsman's.
Squirrel and the remaining thief spun, their faces twisting with a betrayed fury, and then recognized their error almost immediately. Squirrel broke into a run even as his remaining friend turned back to face the Guardsmen and received Julien's blade high in the chest for his trouble. Widdershins winced as the body dropped; she'd really hoped that Julien would strike to wound, as she had, even though she knew that wasn't how they were trained. She was only vaguely aware of Simon shoving past her and disappearing out the door.
Olgun shouted another warning, but there was little Widdershins could do. She gawped up, face pale, into Julien's twisted features; felt his fists close with bruising pressure on her upper arms.
“What the hell are you doing here, Widdershins?!” He was screaming at her, furious. She couldn't remember ever having seen him quite this way before, and she'd seen him in some truly ugly situations.
“I…Julien, I…”
“What are you doing here?”
“Julien, you're hurting me….”
His face rocked back as if she'd slapped him; his hands dropped away as though she were suddenly burning to the touch. “I…I'm sorry, Shins.” His eyes dropped for just a flicker of a second, then locked on hers once more. “Give me a reason.”
“A reason…?” Her thoughts were spinning wildly, enough to make her dizzy. She couldn't follow the conversation, didn't know what he was asking.
“Give me a reason not to arrest you,” he whispered. “Please, Shins, something. Anything.”
Widdershins had believed, well and truly believed, that nothing else that happened this evening could possibly surprise her. She was wrong. Even Olgun was stunned into silence.
“Please…”
Gods, he was practically begging. He really didn't want to have to take her in. Widdershins's peculiar sense of vertigo was, if anything, growing worse. She felt sick, her face feverish.
“I…I was an invited guest here, Julien. Not ‘Widdershins,’ I mean, but—uh, someone else. A noblewoman that I, uh, sometimes call myself…”
What am I doing?! I can't tell him this! He can't know this! Olgun, make me shut up!
But clearly, Widdershins's mouth was a far stronger force than even a god might contend with. Olgun did no such thing, and she kept right on babbling.
“I, uh—not dressed like this, of course. I mean, this isn't exactly, um, the height of fashionable party wear, you know? Maybe…maybe next year?”
Oh, gods, kill me now.
“And do you expect me to believe,” Julien asked softly, “that you weren't here to scout the place?”
“Uh…I wasn't…” She offered a limp-wristed wave toward the fallen thugs. “I wasn't part of that. I swear it, Julien, I wasn't…”
“Why didn't you run? You could have kept running.”
Widdershins's thoughts finally stopped spinning—froze, in fact, crystallized
into a single, solid certainty. She looked up, finally meeting his gaze, and felt her heartbeat quicken even as her breathing slowed.
“I couldn't let them kill you,” she told him.
For somewhere between a second and a century they stood, staring at one another—and then Julien took a single step back. “Go.”
Widdershins, despite the ghostly chains of questions and uncertainties that dragged at her ankles, obeyed as swiftly as her feet could manage.
Constable Paschal Sorelle, of the Davillon City Guard, pressed a wad of moderately clean cloth to the gash in his arm and, with a pained gasp or two, staggered over to stand at his commanding officer's side.
“Sir? I don't suppose you'd care to explain that?”
Major Bouniard tore his attentions away from the darkness into which Widdershins had vanished and bestowed a disapproving frown on his lieutenant. “Did I miss a promotion ceremony, Constable? Am I supposed to explain myself to you now?”
“Not at all, sir.” Paschal's tone, though thinned by the pain of his wound, was deliberate enough to suggest that he was choosing his words very carefully. “You needn't explain a thing to me. But, ah…you will have to explain yourself to command, sir.
“That's not,” he added swiftly, “a threat, of course, sir. Merely a statement of fact.”
“I know that, Constable.”
“Just wanted to be sure, sir. You'll write your report as you see fit, of course, sir, but I've also got to write mine, and…Well, the operation was overall a success, sir, but I'm not sure this last incident casts you in all that flattering a light.” Paschal's face softened imperceptibly in the flickering lantern light. “I don't want to cause you any problems with command, sir. I really don't. But—”
“Say nothing more about it,” Bouniard ordered, clapping a hand on Paschal's shoulder (on the uninjured side, of course). “You report the events exactly as you saw them. If there's any trouble coming my way, I brought it on myself. First lesson I learned from Major Chapelle, back when I joined up: You don't sacrifice your integrity for anyone, not even a colleague. You hear me, Constable?”
“Loud and clear, sir.” Then, after a moment, “She's certainly a unique one, sir.”
“She is that, Constable. You did note that she acted to assist us, didn't you?”
“Of course, sir. And it'll be in my report, make no mistake.”
“I was certain it would be, Paschal.”
Julien Bouniard once more turned his face to the darkness; Paschal Sorelle turned his own toward his commander.
“Come on, Constable,” Julien said finally, turning away from the door. “Let's get that arm looked at.”
Aubert and Osanne Noury weren't stupid. No, really, they weren't, not normally. What they were, however, were newlyweds; Osanne had only been a Noury for about seventy-two hours, give or take. So when the couple found themselves up and alert less than an hour before the dawn, they perhaps cannot be blamed, in their distraction, for deciding to take a romantic stroll in the moonlight.
It shouldn't have been all that great a risk, really. The new Noury couple dwelt in Rising Bend, one of Davillon's richer (and therefore, safer) neighborhoods. Nor were they planning to go too terribly far from home; the worst they could have expected to encounter, unless they were struck by a truly devious misfortune, would have been a desperate beggar or maybe a particularly brave robber. So…stupid, yes, but not very.
Except that the misfortunes of that night were, indeed, truly devious.
It began with a whisper, one that scythed clean through Aubert's and Osanne's soft giggles. They could make out no words at all, just a series of sounds beneath someone's breath, rasped at the very limits of human hearing. Once, the spooked couple might have dismissed it as a trick of the wind; twice, as the foraging of some feral animal digging in the refuse of an unseen alleyway.
But when it continued—indeed, when the sound clearly began to creep closer, despite the lack of any visible movement in the feeble glow of the streetlights and the cloud-covered moon—they could no longer even pretend that its source could be anything so mundane.
“Who…?” Aubert cleared his throat, tried again. “Who's out there?” To his credit, it must be noted that, though armed with nothing more than a small dagger—a utility tool more than a weapon—he did step in front of his unarmed wife, placing himself between her and whatever danger he couldn't quite perceive.
And then the whispers crumbled, breaking apart into a throaty, guttural, liquid laughter. Osanne whimpered; Aubert's dagger twisted and fell from an abruptly sweat-soaked hand.
The laughter grew—nearer, rather than louder—and finally, something moved in the darkness.
It might have been human—could have been human, by general shape if nothing else. A dark silhouette, shadow in shadow, seemingly without face or feature. It clambered across the nearest wall, moving sideways yet hanging head-down, some horrible mockery of crab and insect both. And even as it moved, the horrid chafing laugh continued, echoed…
Stopped. Even as the shape moved back into the darkness, becoming once again invisible, the sounds utterly ceased.
But only for an instant. The laughter resumed once more, this time from the opposite side of the street. Shadows shifted in the lantern light, and the figure seemed to reappear on a building behind the terrified couple without having bothered to cross the intervening space. Osanne swayed on her feet, nearly fainting, while Aubert's hose were suddenly warm and wet.
They ran, then, screaming and crying, both dagger and dignity left on the cobblestones of what should have been a safe and quiet street. The dark figure did not pursue; but the laughter followed them, in their dreams, for months to come.
Robin allowed herself a deep, heartfelt sigh and slouched briefly against the back wall, where in a more traditional (and wealthier) establishment than the Flippant Witch, a large mirror might have hung. It wasn't a posture particularly welcoming to customers—but then, as there were precious few of those today, and all of them were regulars, it didn't seem particularly inappropriate, either.
The teen and the tavern were quite similar in many respects; both friendly enough, but fairly drab and unremarkable on the surface. She was a slender slip of a girl, lightly dusted with freckles as if by a stingy confectioner, wearing her hair chopped short and sporting nondescript tunic and hose. She was accustomed to being mistaken for a boy at any distance—encouraged it, in fact, when she was traveling the streets of Davillon—though at her age, that was becoming less and less likely with each passing season.
Until about six months ago, Robin had been a serving girl at the Flippant Witch tavern; it hadn't been an easy life, or a rich one, but she'd been happy enough. Now, despite her age, she was one of its managers, carrying enough responsibility to bruise those tiny shoulders of hers. If she hadn't cared so much—about both the tavern's current owner, and the lingering memories of its former—she might have gone to find some other employment by now.
Assuming there was any to be found, these days.
Frowning, chewing on the corner of her lip, she looked once more over the common room. There wasn't much to the Flippant Witch: a squat, hunkering building that, other than that selfsame common room, contained only a kitchen, a storeroom, and a few small, private parlors. Sawdust, firewood, and a mélange of alcohols wafted on the air, laced just around the edges with stale sweat. The scents had soaked into the rafters, the wooden tables, even the small stone altar of Banin. (Neither Robin nor the tavern's owner actually worshipped Banin; they kept the icon out of respect for an absent friend.)
Unfortunately, said scents were finally starting to fade. A chamber that, this time last year, would have been crammed to capacity by multiple dozens of patrons now housed only a fraction of that number. Casks and bottles stood almost full, or even unopened; in the kitchen, cuts of meat hung uncooked, loaves of bread slowly went stale. It was quiet enough in the common room to hear the passersby outside. On occasion, the servers didn't even ha
ve to deliver a customer's order to the bar or the kitchen, as Robin and the cook could listen to them clearly enough all the way from the table.
The Flippant Witch wasn't dying, necessarily, but she was most assuredly sick. And Robin hadn't the slightest idea of how to fix it. With a second sigh far too large to have been contained in such a small form, she drifted out from behind the bar and went to go see if she could help at the tables.
“Kinda quiet in here, isn't it, Robs?” The words, though slightly slurred, remained entirely comprehensible. No surprise, really; since the speaker spent more or less every waking hour in his cups, he'd certainly learned how to function by now.
Robin offered a small smile to the man seated at the corner table. Rough, unshaven, dressed in clothes that were more wrinkled than a bathing grandmother—and as much a fixture of the Flippant Witch as the furniture.
“Reading my mind again, are you, Monsieur Recharl?” she asked lightly, and then had to force herself not to laugh at his confused blinking.
No, he hadn't been reading her mind. It was the same question he'd asked every day for the past two months. So, since it always satisfied him, she offered the same answer.
“It's the same everywhere in Davillon, monsieur. Things are bad all over; you know, with the Church and all.”
“Right,” he said. His blinking continued. “That thing with, uh, with the bishop…”
“Archbishop,” Robin corrected gently. “William de Laurent. Yeah.”
Indeed, ever since the murder of the archbishop last year, many of the Church clergy had made their displeasure with Davillon clear in no uncertain terms. Merchants were “encouraged” to do their trading elsewhere; major liturgical events were held in alternate cities; and priests at pulpits across Galice sermonized on the evils of the nation's newly crowned “most depraved and violent” city.
It wasn't very “Churchly,” but it was certainly very human.
And the result, in a short two seasons, was an economic downturn of a size Davillon hadn't seen in generations. Several priests had been beaten and robbed in retaliation, souring the city's reputation with the Church even further, and Robin was a little surprised that their newly appointed bishop—what was his name? Sicard, right?—hadn't been lynched or assassinated within weeks of his arrival.