by Ari Marmell
Judging by the sudden sense of disapproval-the emotional equivalent of a saddened headshake-she was fairly certain he couldn't.
“Don't you have any say over the doings of your own worshippers? Because I've got to tell you, the way they were running this thing…”
Her throat closed and her eyes widened, first in surprise at hearing the name “Adrienne Satti” spoken by the gravel-voiced sergeant, and then in mounting horror as the implications sank home. A hole opened in the pit of her stomach, just wide and deep enough for her soul to drop slowly and painfully through it. She watched, barely comprehending, as the bulk of the Guardsmen departed, leaving a trail of bloody bootprints in the corridor beyond the chamber door.
“Oh, gods…” Not even a whisper, now, but the faintest susurrus of exhaled breath. “Oh, gods, they think I did this!” For the second time in an hour, she had to blink hard to keep the tears from falling. “How could they possibly think…” Adrienne felt, once again, a touch of sympathy in the back of her mind.
“This is your fault!” she exploded at him, her fear turned suddenly to anger. “If you hadn't stopped me from going down to them, I could have explained it! I could have told them what really happened! Now it's too late! I-”
“Had better come down from there right now, Mademoiselle Satti, before I am forced to shoot you down.”
Adrienne froze, cursing her own stupidity. She peered downward, past the dusty beams on which she lay, past the horned form of the god. The remaining Guardsman looked up at her, an odd expression plastered across his scruffy face. His rapier hung sheathed at his left hip, but in his right fist he clenched a gleaming flintlock pistol-a Guard-issued special with a frame molded of brass rather than wood, reinforced to function as a brutally efficient head-breaker. In her youth, before the aristocracy, Adrienne had more than once been on the butt-end of those so-called bash-bangs.
But rarely had she stared so squarely down the barrel of one.
“I'm not going to ask a second time,” the Guardsman warned.
Adrienne slid off the beam. Limber as a double-jointed cat, she swung from the nearest horn and clambered down the statue without pausing for breath (or to acknowledge her incorporeal partner's sudden squawk of indignation at having his likeness used as a stepladder). In seconds, Adrienne stood upon the blood-slick floor.
Frowning thoughtfully, the Guardsman took a moment to examine his catch, difficult as she was to see beneath the filth and caked blood. She looked to be maybe fifteen, give or take a year or two; still somewhere in that nether realm between childhood and womanhood. Her hair, to judge by the few unsoiled strands he could see, was an earthy brown, and her eyes shone with a blue-green hue so liquid that he almost expected to see waves. A small, ever-so-slightly upturned nose sat in the center of a slender face. Impossible to tell precisely what her outfit had looked like; what remained of it gave the rather hideous impression that she'd fashioned her wardrobe from the scraps left over on a slaughterhouse floor.
“Do you normally find blood so fascinating?” Adrienne finally barked irritably. “Or am I special?”
“Rather clever of you to hide out here until we'd departed,” Constable Roubet told her casually, flintlock aimed unerringly at her bloody cleavage. “A pity you didn't notice me, or it might've worked.”
“I was distracted,” she muttered, shooting an aggravated glower toward the statue. “But look at me, Constable. You can't honestly believe me capable of this, can you?” She pressed her right hand to her heart-more than a bit melodramatically-and blinked at him. “I only survived by hiding in the rafters. I can only thank the gods that the killers weren't as observant as you were, or else-”
“Shut up before I shoot you.”
Adrienne's jaws snapped shut with an audible click.
“Even if I believed a word of it,” the Guardsman told her, shaking his head, “it makes no difference. I'm not the man making the decisions here.”
The young woman nodded slowly. “I think I'd like to speak to an advocate just as soon as possible.”
Roubet smiled grimly. “I'm sure you would. If you hadn't tried to kill me during your escape, you might have lived long enough to do just that.”
“What are you talking…?” And then she understood, and her knees threatened to give way. “You're not a Guardsman,” she whispered hoarsely.
“I am, actually. But I'm also a great deal more.”
Frantically, she judged the distance between them. Twelve feet, give or take. She could cover that swiftly enough, but not so fast that he couldn't pull the trigger. And even if she reached him, she wasn't armed.
“So what is it, then?” she asked, stalling desperately for time. “Dead women tell no tales? You blame all this on me and the real killers go free?”
“Something like that.”
Roubet's arm straightened, the bash-bang shifting until it came directly in line with her heart. The barrel gaped open before her, an endless tunnel to hell.
“I'm sorry, Olgun,” she whispered, unable to look away from the pistol. “I tried.”
She felt a brief surge of emotion from the near-dead god, followed by the faintest tingling in the air. She had just enough time to wonder if she'd imagined it before the flintlock's hammer crashed down with a deadly clank-
And detonated with a sharp crack and an ear-rending screech of metal. Shrapnel ripped through the soft flesh of Roubet's hand and arm, scored the stone floor in a staccato patter that punctuated the Guardsman's cry of pain. With a resounding thud, the remainder of the now useless weapon dropped to the floor, sending cracks shooting through a small blot of dried blood.
Roubet himself followed an instant later, clutching the bleeding wreckage of his hand to his chest and sobbing inconsolably.
“Well,” Adrienne said finally. “That was convenient.”
She felt a brief swell of satisfaction from her divine partner-but it was no match for her own sense of satisfaction as she darted forward and kicked the whimpering man in the head until he was well and truly unconscious.
“We've got to get out of here,” she told the god seriously, limping on a vaguely sore foot as she moved toward the long passage and the stairs beyond. “They think I did this, and I sort of doubt that Lefty here is going to tell them otherwise. We've got to hide until I can figure out what to do, or how to get back to Alexandre.”
Another questioning probe.
“I don't know,” she admitted. “It doesn't matter, really. I grew up out there, remember? The Guardsman hasn't been born that can find Adrienne Satti when she doesn't want to be found!”
Olgun's doubt, when it came to her, was almost tangible. She concentrated on it, so she wouldn't have to confront her own.
CHAPTER ONE
Eight years ago:
Brick walls and wooden fences were the borders of her world, roads of dirt or broken cobblestone its fields, rickety staircases its trees. The city wasn't just “a big place” at her age, her size-it was all there was, all there ever could be.
She'd spent much of that day exploring the nearest reaches of that world, along with a number of friends who, like her, were ducking out on the various chores with which they were tasked. Rag-clad and dirt-faced, they moved in a feral pack, yipping and screeching and giggling. Their chins dripped with the juices of fruits they hadn't paid for; their wrists and arms and shoulders ached with the iron grasp of merchants who snagged them before they could run. But there were always more vendors, and those swift or fortunate enough to catch them were far less numerous than the shopkeepers who never knew they'd been robbed. The children pushed, slipped, shoved, and squeezed through barricades of flesh and cloth, making their way through the bustling markets and crowded streets. The heat of bodies pressed together in the throng was enough to make them sweat, despite winter's chill in the air and a light dusting of snow on the rooftops. They shouldn't really have been here unsupervised, so far from home, but their parents had long since given up forbidding them to go.
Young as she was, however, the girl had some vague sense of responsibility. While everyone knew that adults thrived on giving children meaningless busywork, there were some chores that needed doing. And of course, she wouldn't want her parents to worry. (The fact that it was growing late, and that her stomach-unsatisfied by purloined produce-was rumbling for dinner had, of course, nothing at all to do with her abrupt decision to head for home.)
A few shouted farewells, a few insults and protruding tongues, and she left her friends behind. She didn't quite skip along her way, for even if she'd been a happy enough child, the traffic on the roadways wouldn't allow for it. But she was, at least, as carefree as her lot in life would allow. Today, given her own limited frame of reference, had been a good day. She watched, with a delight that she hadn't yet outgrown, as clouds of dirt puffed up around her worn and ragged shoes.
The forest of legs thinned notably as she moved farther from the market, and she began to shiver as the season coughed and wheezed across her skin. She kept her head low, wrapped her arms about her chest in a quest for the warmth her tunic failed to offer, and mumbled aspersions upon her friends. It must, after all, have been their fault she'd stayed out so late.
It wasn't the change in the constant roar of the city's voice; people were always shouting about something or other. It wasn't the faint stinging in her eyes, or the almost dainty cough that kept traveling up and down her throat like a yo-yo. No, it was instead the sudden gust of warmth, a comforting yet confounding relief from winter's winds, that finally drew her attention from her feet.
She saw, at first, nothing but the various muted colors and shoddy fabrics that covered the legs and backs of the people before her in the road-more of them, in fact, than was entirely normal. Higher her gaze drifted, higher still, to the flickering glow and the plumes of smoke twisting their way skyward.
Even at her age, she knew full well the dangers of fire, especially in a neighborhood as poor as this. Should she run the other way? Find a place to hide? Offer, however small and feeble she might be, to help?
Mother and Father would know. Again winding between, around, and under a thicket of limbs, the hitch in her breath now as much fear as it was smoke, she wormed her way through the evergrowing crowd.
And then she was near enough to see precisely which building was on fire.
The frantic adults simply stepped over her as she fell to her knees in the middle of the road, and her scream was just another voice, lost amidst the many voices of the city.
“…and as ever and always, to your endless grace, Vercoule. To you, our most humble thanks for the prosperity you have brought us, the safety you have brought us. For Davillon, which is both your gift to us, and our greatest testament to you. In your name, above all, we pray. Amen.”
Sister Cateline smiled shallowly at the dull, mumbled chorus of amen, already drowned out by the scraping of cheap wooden spoons on cheap wooden bowls, scooping up mouthfuls of cheap porridge (probably not wooden, but who could really say for certain?). Stretched out before her were a quartet of long tables, crammed to bursting with unwashed children clad in undyed frocks. There had been a time, oh so long ago, where Cateline felt horrible that the convent couldn't provide a more comfortable life for these unfortunate waifs; when she would've felt guilty that the blue and silver of her own habit was so much better kept than the clothes they offered these lost souls.
Once, but not now. Still she did all she could, but no longer lamented her inability to do more. She'd seen too many of them in her years, and she simply couldn't afford to care any more than she had to.
She strode forward, wending her way between the tables, and stopped just as swiftly, pinned in place by two tiny, red-rimmed eyes. The new girl-what was her name…?
“You're not hungry, child?” Duty, more than genuine concern, but at least she'd bothered to ask.
“Who's Varcool?”
Cateline felt her jaw drop.
“You don't know Vercoule, child?” she asked, gently correcting the girl's pronunciation. Many of the nearby children had stopped to listen, some scoffing at the new kid's ignorance, others-just perhaps-hoping for answers to questions they'd never had the courage to ask.
When the girl shook her head, Cateline continued. “Why, he's our patron god! Vercoule, above all others, watches over Davillon.”
“What others?”
“The gods of the Hallowed Pact, of course.”
“What's the hollow pact?”
Good gods, was nobody teaching these children anything? Little heathens, running the streets of Davillon. The nun really wanted nothing more than to get the children finished up and put to bed, but even her cynicism recognized a spiritual obligation when it appeared before her.
“It refers to all the gods of the High Church, child. Uncounted gods ruled before our forefathers carved Galice from the lands of the barbarian tribes. The one hundred forty-seven greatest of them joined together over civilization, promising to watch over humanity.”
“And Varcoo-Vercoo-”
“Vercoule.”
“Vercoule's the biggest?”
Cateline smiled. “I certainly think so.” Then, somewhat more seriously, “Here, in Davillon, he's the greatest. In other cities, he probably stands as the patron of only a single guild, or a bloodline-just as, for instance…” She cast about for a moment. “As Banin is the patron of two or three of Davillon's noble houses, but elsewhere, he might be the patron of a great guild, or even an entire city.”
The girl nodded slowly as though she understood, though Sister Cateline doubted that was the case. The nun had just begun to turn away, when-
“Can I ask one more question?”
Cateline repressed a sigh. “One more. Then you need to eat your supper.”
“If Davillon has so many gods, how come not one of them got off his butt and saved my mommy and daddy?!”
Sister Cateline actually fell back a step, hand raised to her lips. A whisper of astonishment swept through the other children, but here and there, the nun was certain she heard a mutter of angry agreement from among the worst of the hard-luck cases.
Well, it was positively past time to nip this in the bud!
“Young lady, that is not an appropriate way to speak of the gods!”
“When they explain themselves to me, I'll apologize.”
The nun had the girl by the wrist and was dragging her out the door before the second round of shocked gasps-and supportive murmurs-had finished making the rounds of the hall. “We're going to have to teach you some manners and respect, child!”
“Stop calling me child!” the girl spat, not even bothering to try to pull away as she was hauled off to gods-knew-where. “My name is Adrienne.”
Adrienne did not, as it happened, learn either manners or respect from Sister Cateline, or any of the other nuns either. Despite the chains, the locks, the heavy doors, and the fact that she frankly had nowhere better to go, she was gone from the convent after only a few days-before the welts of her lashing had even fully faded.
Sister Cateline wasn't truly sorry to see her go. That one, she was certain, would have been nothing but trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
Now:
It was, all of it, enormous. The Doumerge property was enormous, the manor at its center was enormous, and the ballroom deep within that house was-no surprise, by now-enormous.
And the chaos within, slipping further out of control by the minute, was rapidly becoming enormous as well.
A cluster of musicians sat upon a raised platform off in one corner, isolated from everyone they were hired to entertain. Furiously they played, lobbing their music into the crowd like arrows, reproducing some of the most popular tunes currently making the rounds of courts and noble soirees throughout Galice. Their outfits-the musicians, that is, not the pieces of music, though those t
oo were arguably gussied up and overdressed-were lavish fabrics in a hypnotic mishmash of garish colors. Tunics and vests hung haphazardly; wigs sat askance atop sweaty heads; abused fingers ached in protest. For five hours they'd played, with never more than a few minutes between songs, and the torment didn't promise an end anytime soon.
For all that their music accomplished, they might well not have bothered. The ballroom, packed so full that dancing required advanced planning and possibly tactical diagrams, hovered at a volume just shy of tectonic movement. Every voice was a bellow, each and every speaker struggling to be heard over every other. The music, to them, was nothing more than extraneous noise, an obstacle to be shouted over.
The table was long, and laden with a quantity of food not merely sufficient to choke a large elephant, but also to bury its remains. Every variety of animal, it seemed, could be found at some spot along that buffet, smothered in sauce or breading or dressing or gods alone knew what. Beef, venison, fowl of every possible variety, at least a dozen types of fish, eggs of both fish and fowl, escargot, every vegetable known to man-it was all here, and no matter how much the guests ate, a criminal amount of food would go to waste. The smell alone was heavy enough to satiate a smaller appetite without a single bite.
The house had been well prepared, in expectation of the night's revelry. Paintings and tapestries hung high on the walls, well beyond reach of drunken fingers or spilled foods. Most were pastoral or mythic scenes, but several depicted the golden pyramid of Geurron, patron deity of the d'Orreille line, and a scant few boasted the sun-and-crown of Vercoule, Davillon's High Patron.
Fires blazed happily in numerous hearths, determined to enjoy the soiree. Various herbs and scents were sprinkled upon the logs, filling the room with a bizarre combination of odors that spun around the guests before rising to cluster at the ceiling's arches and buttresses. The carpets, lush and thick, had been brushed in expectation of the guests' arrival. Servants, immaculately groomed, stood at attention or bustled about the rooms, preparing this, refilling that, and basically playing the part of so many trained hounds, always running and fetching.