Thief's covenant wa-1

by Ari Marmell

  But…but…Oh.

  For just a moment, Pockmark's eyes focused on the bash-bang in the guard's fist-not the one the man had when he came in, but the one belonging to the unconscious constable beside whom he'd knelt.

  “Well…Shit.”

  They were, as last words go, not terribly inspired. But Eudes felt, before the floor rushed at him and the world went away, that they were at least an accurate assessment.

  A few seconds, long enough for the pounding of his heart to subside at least a bit and his breath to come more easily to his lungs, and Major Julien Bouniard rose to his feet. He even managed to be almost steady at it. His own weapons once again firmly in his grasp, he scanned the poorly lit hall, alert for any new attack, but it seemed the man he'd just killed was alone.

  Three steps, check the body-indeed, quite dead-and then a sprint down the hall, ignoring the rising chorus of catcalls and questions from within the crowded cells. Only one door was ajar, only one prisoner missing, and he couldn't even find it in himself to be remotely surprised.

  Julien wasn't certain precisely what had happened here-when Widdershins had escaped, who the dead man might have been, whether he'd come to free Widdershins or with a darker purpose in mind-but one thing, at least, he knew.

  The thieves and criminals of Davillon had brought their struggles and their corruption into the house of Demas. And that was simply unacceptable.

  Clarence Rittier, the Marquis de Ducarte and likely successor to the rule of Davillon should anything befall the duchess (gods keep her), was as much a bull of a man as the Baron d'Orreille had been a weasel. His features were squat and broad, as though he stared at life with his face pressed up against a window, and the rest of him followed suit. His coarse brown hair was currently masquerading behind a wig of longer brown curls, his cuffs were properly billowed, his coat and breeches were of the finest brown cloth-and despite the best efforts of his personal tailors, it all looked little shy of ludicrous on him. You can put a bull in formal wear, but he'll always be a bull.

  The ballroom of his manor house churned with chatting, dancing, and aimlessly wandering aristocrats. So packed in were they, Rittier was quite certain he would soon see them hanging from the rafters, their finery flapping listlessly about them. The guest of honor himself, William de Laurent, hadn't made his appearance, probably would not for some hours, and most likely found the entire fiasco as arduous as the marquis did. But such was the price to be paid for power and privilege in Galicien culture.

  Rittier turned, surveying the irritating creatures currently infesting his private domain, and nearly ran smack dab into one. A striking young woman with blue-green eyes, a wig of blonde tresses, and a velvet green dress cut distractingly low was drifting past as he pondered, and he scarcely pulled himself up short in time to keep from running her down.

  Another social butterfly. “I beg your pardon, mademoiselle. How clumsy of me. Pray forgive me.”

  “Hmm? Oh!” The girl curtsied, her expression vaguely vacant. “No harm done, my lord.”

  “I'm so glad to hear it. Might I have the honor of your name?”

  “Madeleine Valois, my lord,” she told him. “This is a most excellent soiree, my lord, if I may say so.”

  Ninny. “A pleasure to meet you, Madeleine. I'm so glad you're enjoying my party.”

  “Me too,” she breathed vapidly.

  Fists and teeth clenched of their own accord. “Well, Mademoiselle Valois, I fear I have other guests I must see to. If you'll excuse me?”

  She curtsied once again, giggling softly. Rittier fled the landing as rapidly as courtesy permitted.

  Madeleine rolled her eyes at the marquis's back and swallowed a laugh. But while tormenting the nobility might be a hoot, it was growing near time for Madeleine to vanish for the night.

  She regally climbed the broad and carpeted stairs, which opened onto an indoor balcony that offered a full view of the ballroom below. Once she was certain nobody watched her, Madeleine ducked beneath the balcony's guardrail, dropping out of sight of anyone on the lower floor. She darted swiftly to the nearest door, allowed herself (and Olgun) a brief moment to listen for any sounds behind it, and slipped inside.

  It appeared to be a guest room, or so she guessed from the plain bed, dresser, and wardrobe she spotted before the door clicked shut. The chamber once more plunged into darkness, interrupted only by the twinkle of stars just barely visible through the tree overhanging the room's only window.

  Within seconds, Widdershins had stripped off the velvet gown, rolling it into a careless parcel. The chill air of the room raised goose bumps across her flesh. More than a little uncomfortable standing around only partially clad, she slipped into the black-hued tunic and gloves she'd withdrawn from a large sack she'd kept well hidden beneath the folds of her dress. (She took a moment to thank the gods of the Pact that those stupid bell skirts were all the rage this year. She could probably have smuggled two backpacks, three extra outfits, and a trained mule under that thing. True, stuffing the gown into the sack meant breaking the hoops, and they wouldn't be cheap to replace, but you couldn't have everything, could you?) She shoved the bundled dress into the sack, followed by that abominable wig. Belt of tools and picks now strapped to her waist, rapier at her back, hair tied back with thick black yarn-she was ready to go.

  “Madeleine Valois has left the party,” she whispered softly. “She asked me to make her apologies.”

  Olgun chuckled.

  “All right,” she continued, voice low, “it doesn't much matter what we get, as long as there's no doubt who it belonged to.” Widdershins padded back to the door as she spoke, soundless as the ghost of a cat. “As soon as we-”

  Her right foot struck something limp and yielding, something that scraped across the carpet with a faint rustle, something she'd apparently stepped over and missed through sheer dumb luck when entering the darkened room.

  Statue-still, Widdershins strained her senses. Sight was useless in the black; her ears detected no hint of noise save her own pounding heartbeat; her nose-wait! She did smell something, something with a familiar tang.

  With agonizing slowness, Widdershins silently retrieved her flint-and-steel box with one hand, and what appeared to be a tiny iron cube with the other. It was, in fact, a miniature lantern, one she'd acquired at no little expense. The oil reservoir within was pathetic, allowing for a burn of less than five minutes. But it was easily concealed, and directional to boot. Widdershins lit it now, keeping the aperture at its narrowest, and directed the tiny beam at her feet.

  One of the marquis's maids, if Widdershins could judge by the uniform. She lay haphazardly on the floor, one hand stretched over her head. It was that limp and lifeless limb Widdershins had kicked on her way toward the door. The poor woman's mouth was twisted in an eternal expression of crippling terror, and the front of her dress was drenched in blood.

  There was something so utterly cold-blooded about the whole affair, it made Widdershins's head swim. The maid couldn't have been murdered here; there wasn't enough blood on the carpet. Someone had casually opened the woman's chest, and then tossed the body in here…Why? To hide it, obviously, at least for a short while.

  Which meant, Widdershins realized with a sickened lurch, that the killer was assuredly still here. Unless someone bore this simple domestic servant one hell of a grudge, she wasn't the intended target. Most probably she'd stumbled on something she shouldn't have seen.

  And if someone was to die here tonight, it didn't take a lot of detective work to identify the most likely victim.

  “Oh, figs…” Good heaping helping of gods, her luck couldn't be that bad, could it? What were the odds that…?

  A moment's frantic thought-which actually took two moments, since first she had to fight down a moment's panic-and Widdershins realized that perhaps this wasn't nearly the coincidence she'd first thought. Rittier was, after all, the archbishop's first host in Davillon, and this, the first party he was scheduled to attend. That made
tonight the first real opportunity to get at him-the distraction of the ball, combined with absolute knowledge that His Eminence would be present-and no assassin worth his salt would let such an opening pass him by. Indeed, that was why she'd chosen to act tonight, and she'd just wanted to lighten the man's purse!

  “Would it be too much to ask that something go smoothly, just once?” she inquired of the room, the gods, and the universe at large. “Just for the novelty of it?”

  Her only response was a swell of concern from Olgun.

  “You're right. We have to get out of here, and quick!”

  The god couldn't have agreed more.

  “Then it's settled. We leave. Now.”

  Again, she felt Olgun's heartfelt assent. Yet she didn't move. Her feet seemed to have taken root in the carpet.

  “The window would be best,” she continued lifelessly. “The tree's right there. I can climb it to the ground, and we'll be gone with none the wiser.”

  She felt Olgun's growing impatience, a buzzing hornet biting at her neck and head. Still, she found herself most assuredly not moving.

  The murdered maid stared at her accusingly, and Widdershins's shoulders slumped in defeat. She took a moment, her movements quite calm and methodical, to extinguish her miniature lantern and replace it in her pouch. She took a deep breath.

  And then she was running, not to the window but out the door and into the hallway, careless of stealth now, speed her only priority. Olgun's startled squawk echoed in her mind as she pounded toward the stairs that would take her to the uppermost stories where she assumed-hoped-the guest of honor would be lodged.

  “I know, I know!” she muttered between gasps and gritted teeth. “But we have to do this!”

  The doubt washing over her was thick enough to drown in.

  “Look, I just escaped gaol not two days ago. Who do you think they'll suspect if de Laurent winds up dead?”

  Olgun wasn't particularly impressed with her argument. Which was just fine, since Widdershins wasn't taken with it either. Bouniard knew she hadn't a violent offense to her name, and wasn't likely to think she was starting now.

  And yet she ran, taking the steps three at a time, driven by a need she couldn't explain to Olgun because she didn't understand it herself. Maybe later, when she found a few minutes to think-

  Olgun shrieked even as her foot hit the top step, and something sliced from the shadows of the hall, something that gleamed in the flickering lantern-light of the top floor. Memories of Brock's brutal assault assailed her as she hurled herself violently aside.

  The rapier etched a line of fire across her ribs, but the wound was shallow. It bled freely and it hurt like hell-particularly when added to the lingering traces of stomach pain that clung tenaciously, even after several days-but it wouldn't slow her down.

  Her desperate evasion carried her clear over the banister, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach into the empty space beneath her. Throwing her legs out to the side, she spun completely over, like a roast turning on an invisible spit. For one heart-stopping instant, she was looking straight down at the floor almost forty feet below.

  She lashed out, grabbing at the balcony's guardrail. Muscles screaming with the strain, aided by a swift boost from her guardian god, Widdershins yanked herself over the banister to land in a panting heap on solid floor.

  Her side throbbed where the blade had cut her, her arms burned with the strain of her frantic acrobatics, and the pounding of her heart threatened to shatter her rib cage from the inside out. She wanted nothing more than to lie where she was, but she needed neither Olgun's warning nor the sound of running footsteps to know that her assailant hadn't abandoned his attack.

  She did not rise, did not draw steel. She waited, favoring her injury, luring him closer.

  The assassin lowered his rapier, echoing the lance of a charging knight of old, aimed unerringly at her bloodied rib cage. With a flex of her feet, the thief rolled at the last second, both palms planted firmly in the lush carpet. Even as the startled assassin stumbled past, braced for a thrust that never landed, Widdershins shifted the entirety of her weight to her already wearied arms and kicked back, mule-like, with both feet.

  The assassin's grunt abruptly swelled into a crescendo of fear as he struck the guardrail and toppled over the balcony.

  “Turnabout,” Widdershins quoted to Olgun, “is fair-oh, son of a monkey!”

  It was at that point, when the first screams wafted up from the ballroom below, that Widdershins pinpointed the flaw in her hastily conceived plan. Dropping assassins onto the heads of frolicking revelers did not, even by the most lax definition of the term, constitute stealth.

  Despite his worry, Olgun couldn't help but snicker.

  “Oh, shut up! I swear, one more comment from you, I'll have someone make me a new pair of god-skin boots!” She ran even as she spoke, one hand pressed tightly to her wounded side, and tried not to think about the fact that she'd probably just killed a man. She heard the commotion below rise to a fever pitch, detected the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Rittier's bodyguards, no doubt.

  Lovely. Could this evening possibly get any better?

  Fortune, however, hadn't abandoned her entirely. There were, Olgun indicated to her, only three living souls in the immediate vicinity, and only one shone to him with the light of true faith and divine favor. Without hesitation, fully aware that lots of men with pointy objects were liable to surge from the staircase at any moment like some metal tidal wave, Widdershins hurled herself at the door. It flew open, crashed resoundingly against the wall, and the thief, face caked with perspiration, left side with blood, stumbled into the chamber.

  An old man in a black cassock rose from behind a sizable writing desk, gazing at her with a startling lack of alarm. One hand was held behind his back; the other rested with deceptive casualness on a staff of office more than thick enough to serve as an efficient head-breaker.

  “Is there something I can do for you, young lady?” he asked disapprovingly, as though her ill-mannered entry was his only cause for concern.

  “Have to get out!” she wheezed, panting for breath, wincing as the pain in her ribs flared anew. “You're…in danger! You-”

  Shouts and racing footsteps sounded in the hall beyond the bedchamber, echoing from the stone walls.

  “Rats!” the young intruder spat, with feeling. De Laurent raised an eyebrow.

  And then she vanished through the window to the musical accompaniment of shattering glass, even as Rittier's personal guard, led by the red-faced marquis himself, burst through the door.

  “Umm, Your Eminence…” Clarence Rittier, the powerful bull of a man, felt himself shrinking beneath the archbishop's unwavering stare. “Are you…are you all right?”

  The old man responded not at all, didn't even blink. The Marquis de Ducarte, fully aware that this hideous breach of the dignitary's security would land squarely on his oversized shoulders, realized that he was in for a very unpleasant night.

  In the shadows at the corridor's far end, unseen by any of the so-called guards, Jean Luc-aristocrat, assassin, and guest at the marquis's ball-grimaced in thought. He didn't mourn the death of his companion; he'd never been all that fond of the man. The Apostle, however, would be ill-amused that Jean Luc hadn't fulfilled his commission. William de Laurent remained very much alive, and after the events of tonight, he would doubtless stay that way for a while. Rittier would be paranoid-almost certainly wouldn't leave the archbishop alone for an instant, probably not even long enough for de Laurent to fill his chamber pot with his own holy water. And while Jean Luc considered himself one of the best, he wasn't about to make an attempt on a man that well guarded.

  No, the Apostle wouldn't be happy about this, but it didn't matter. Because Jean Luc had something else for him, a face he'd recognized as he hovered unnoticed in the dark of the hall.

  For weeks, now, they'd searched for Madeleine Valois, and failed. It seemed as though the noblewoman simply didn't exist be
yond the bounds of high-society parties-and now Jean Luc knew why.

  All this time, they'd been looking for an aristocrat, when they should have been hunting a thief.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Three years ago:

  “Stop fidgeting, Cevora damn you! This would be long over if you'd just stand still and let the man get on with his business!”

  “I can't help it!” Adrienne complained, glowering at Claude and shrinking from the tailor's hands as they pawed and prodded her. “He keeps poking me with those needles and-Ow!” She spun and smacked the harried old fellow across the face, raising a bright red blemish on his cheek.

  Claude's lips twisted in a snarl, and he raised his own fist. “Don't you ever dare-”

  “Claude!”

  He and Adrienne froze as one, he ready to strike, she cringing from it, as Alexandre Delacroix entered the chamber.

  “That will be quite enough, Claude.”

  “But sir, she struck-”

  “And I shall speak to her about it. You, however, will never raise your fist to her. Is that clear?”

  “Sir-”

  “Yes or no will do, Claude.”

  “Yes, sir,” the servant all but snarled, jaw clenched. Then, “May I go, sir? I've evening mass to prepare.”

  “By all means, go. And you,” Alexandre continued as Claude stormed from the room. “Why you are hitting my servants?”

  “Look!” Adrienne held up a finger, oozing a tiny trace of crimson.

  Alexandre Delacroix raised an eyebrow at the tailor. “Are you hurting her, Francois?”

  “Only because she'll not stand still, Master Alexandre.” The man's voice was laden with a soul-deep weariness, his entire sentence one long sigh of exasperation.