False Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) (14 page)

“…the patrols along the southwest edges of the district.” The suggestion was coming from one Major Archibeque, a grizzled veteran with leather-brown skin, iron-gray beard, and a perpetual squint. Technically, he held no greater rank than any of the other majors present at the meeting. Unofficially, as everyone expected him to be promoted to commandant of the Guard when their current leader retired, his words carried a lot more weight than his rank suggested. At the moment, he was leaning over a scarred oaken table, gesturing at it as though it held a map of the city. (It didn't—the maps weren't currently handy, as this had been a last-minute, haphazard meeting—but every man and woman present knew Davillon's layout well enough to get the point he was trying to make.) “It'll mean drawing some manpower away from other quarters, but since most late-night travel comes from the direction of the markets, it seems to me that…”

He trailed off with a faint growl at the sound of a fist pounding on the door to the mess-hall-turned-conference-room. “Enter!” Every head in the chamber glanced toward the young constable who appeared in the doorway.

“Apologies for disturbing you all, sirs, but there's a visitor here for Major Bouniard.”

Julien rose from his own seat, cast an apologetic glance at Major Archibeque, then returned his attention to the messenger. “A visitor? At this hour?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And can't this wait, Constable? I'm rather—”

“She's insisting that it's an emergency, Sir. And she's injured.”

Julien's fists clenched. Injured?
She?
Assuming it wasn't a fellow member of the Guard—and the constable would surely have said so, were that the case—he knew pretty damn well who it had to be.

“Major?” he asked.

Archibeque nodded brusquely. “Go on, then. We'll fill you in on what we decide.”

Bouniard held himself to a moderate (if stiff-legged) pace as he departed the room and followed the constable, even as every muscle twitched, demanding he break into a sprint. After what felt to be about three or four years of passing along the drab, flattened carpets, and the pockets of greasy smoke belched forth by the cheap oil lamps that were the hallways' main sources of illumination, he finally reached the door to his own office.

“Didn't know where else to put her, sir,” the constable said in response to the unasked question. “I didn't think we ought to have a young woman bleeding in the foyer, right?”

“You
did
call for a chirurgeon, I assume?” Bouniard demanded.

“Of course, sir. Not sure why he hasn't arrived, but—”

“Then go see what's taking him!”

The constable recoiled from the abrupt shout, then offered an abortive salute and sprinted away. Bouniard grunted and threw open the door.

Yep, that's who he'd thought it would be.

“Hey, Major,” she said weakly.

“Widdershins, I…Gods!” It was only as she turned away from his desk, on which she'd been leaning (and probably looking for confidential papers, no doubt) that he saw the sheer quantity of blood plastering her tunic to her skin.

“We've got to stop meeting here,” she said with a pale, shaky smile. “I keep mixing with questionable elements like the Guard, my reputation's going to—to…”

Julien caught her before she hit the floor, but it was a very,
very
near thing.

From yet another rooftop—one several dozen yards from the action, but near enough to make out the gist of what was going on—three fleshy masks of terror had observed the bloody confrontation. They'd marveled at Widdershins's dramatic entrance, widened at the appearance of her opponent, cringed at the horrid death he'd delivered to the first of the black-garbed pair, and struggled to keep up with the inhumanly swift duel that followed. Some long minutes before, the inhuman creature had freed himself from Widdershins's rapier, yanking it free of the stones between which it was wedged and leaving a ragged tear in his coat. Head tilted and muttering to himself, he'd wandered off—perhaps in pursuit of the fleeing thief, perhaps merely on his way to whatever endeavor might appear next on his itinerary.

And still they gawked, unable to quite believe what they'd seen, until the stench of spilled blood and freshly slain bodies wafted over to them on the gentle breeze.

“Well,” Squirrel said, trying to keep his voice from quivering (and, it should be noted, failing miserably). “I guess we have some idea of what's haunting the streets, huh?”

“Are you fucking
joking
?” This from the larger, lumbering thug on the left. “Yeah, we
saw
it, but I sure as hell have no idea what the hell it
is
!”

“For that matter,” said the third, “what's going on with Widdershins? Sure, I've heard she's a fast little scab, but
that
…”

Squirrel shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe she's a witch. Hell, maybe she's linked to that—that whatever it was. All I know is, we've gotta report all this to Remy, maybe even the Shrouded Lord. They'll know what to do.”

“I don't think
anyone's
gonna know what to do.”

“Oh, but you're
so
wrong!” All three Finders went stiff, petrified at the voice that drifted over the eaves. “
I
know what to do. I
always
know what to do!”

The wide-brimmed hat hove into view first, followed by the rest of the creature's form, until it crouched upon the shingles, knees and elbows jutting at impossible angles. For a moment only it held that pose, then rose to its feet, seemingly oblivious to the precarious slope at the roof's edge.

“Spying eyes are naughty eyes,” the creature scolded, wagging a single, dagger-long finger at them. “They shall perforce have to be plucked.”

Unlike his two panicked friends, who immediately bolted for opposite sides of the roof, Squirrel held his ground. It wasn't bravery, not in the least; rather, his own dread caused him to freeze instead of flee. But whatever the cause, it saved his life, at least for a moment.

Their enemy sprang, a single leap carrying him halfway across the roof, and a few sprinting steps were more than enough to catch up to the slower of the two fugitives. Those terrible fingers lashed out, snagging Squirrel's companion at the neck and the right side of his ribs. He screamed, even as Widdershins had screamed, as those fingertips fastened themselves to his flesh.

The creature flexed, swinging his hands until his arms crossed at the elbows, and the victim's scream grew shrill as entire swathes of his flesh simply
unraveled
, peeling away like the outer layers of an onion. The body, glistening in fascinating spiral patterns where raw muscles and organs now lay exposed, convulsed as it hit the rooftop, and the shriek swiftly went silent.

But the thief's murderer wasn't through with him. Allowing the streamers of flesh to flutter away into the darkness, he lifted the twitching body overhead and hurled it just as the other fleeing Finder had begun to clamber over the edge of the roof. The two bodies collided with a dull thump, followed by a second, wetter slap as both hit the ground beside the structure. The sound of children cooing and applauding echoed from the distance. And then, for a moment, there was silence.

The dark figure stared at Squirrel, his head once again slightly tilted as though not quite certain what he was looking at. Squirrel stared back, unable to blink. His entire body shook with the beating of his heart, and he was only scarcely aware of the wet warmth running down the inside of his leg.

“You…you…”

“I, I?” the creature asked, advancing in one of his peculiar dancer's steps.

Simon swallowed hard. “You don't want to kill me.”

“I don't?” The head straightened, then cocked to the other side. “I'm rather certain—entirely positive, in fact—that I really, really do.”

“That's—that's because you haven't thought it through….” The thing was closer already, so much closer than he should be.

“Oh, I haven't?” Another surge, and he was
right there
, filling Squirrel's field of vision. His right hand lashed out and those impossible fingers cupped Simon's face—
almost
. They hovered, half an inch from his flesh, close enough that he could feel the wind of their twitching in the scruffy hairs on his cheeks. “And you're going to explain it to me? I'm
so
excited!”

“Um, it's just…I can help you! You need someone who knows this city!”

“I do? I seem to be doing fine without one.” Again the fingers twitched, and Squirrel twitched with them.

“What about her?” he shrieked.

“Her? Her, her, her? Her who?”

“The girl you just fought! Widdershins!”

The fingers vanished from around his face with a series of rapid snaps. “Widdershins? Her name is Widdershins?”

“It's—it's what she goes by, anyway.”

“Goes by? Goes by? A name is a name is a name! Is this hers?”

“Yes! Yes, it is!”

“Widdershins…” His mouth moved around the syllables, bending and twisting. “And her god? Do you know her god?”

“I…You mean the Shrouded God?” Then, at the narrowing glare, “No! That is, I don't, but I can help you find out! I know people who know her! Know her very well! Know where to find her!”

“I see…Little god, tiny god, where have you been? Out and about in a silly girl's skin! Little god, tiny god, where have you been…” The figure began capering about the roof, spinning in ever-widening circles—and just as abruptly, after a full minute of rhyming, stopped.

“Very well.” A single step, and he once again loomed over Squirrel, blotting out the moon and stars. “You will be my vassal, my guide, my northern star. Tell me what I want to know. Show me where I want to go. And learn all you can about this…Widdershins.” A fingertip tickled the skin beneath Simon's ear, drawing only a faint line of blood. “You have my oath, Boy-Thief. No harm will come to you, so long as you remain my servant.”

“I…Thank you. Ah, my lord.”

“Splendid!” The creature stepped back and clapped his hands. “We have a friend! Oh, goody, goody!

“Tell me, friend…. What's a nice place to find someone to eat around here?”

So wrapped up was Bishop Sicard—apparently in reading the holy treatise that lay open before him across the desk, but more accurately within his own tumultuous thoughts—that he failed to notice the first two knocks on his chamber door. Only the third sequence of raps penetrated the cloud of cotton encompassing his mind. He grunted once, smoothed his bushy beard with one hand while rubbing at bloodshot eyes with the other, and called, “Enter!”

For a moment, Sicard thought that a complete stranger had stepped into his study, even though he couldn't imagine a circumstance in which the guards would have allowed such a stranger to wander in alone at this time of night. He was just rising to his feet, whether to call for help or defend himself he wasn't certain, when the newcomer doffed his ragged cap and filthy cloak to reveal the blond, tonsured head and lanky frame of Brother Ferrand.

“Well.” Sicard returned slowly to his chair, struggling to keep a scowl of embarrassed anger from his face. “I see you've got the ‘incognito’ bit down.”

“I assumed, Your Eminence, that wandering around town in a monk's cassock would probably not be conducive to my efforts.”

“Right, fine.” Sicard waved distractedly at the nearest chair, into which Ferrand allowed himself to slump. “So I assume you've learned something about the young noblewoman?”

“Uh…” Ferrand squirmed in the chair, causing the wood to squeak, and coughed once.

“Succinct,” Sicard noted, “but not precisely helpful.”

“Her name is Madeleine Valois,” the monk told him. “Something of a social butterfly. Popular enough at parties, but without many close personal friends that I could find. Nobody actually seems to know her all that well.”

Silence for a moment, broken only by Sicard's fingers drumming on the desk. “And?”

“And, well, that's all I've found so far, Your Eminence.”

“That's all?”

“She is, as I said, not especially well known on anything but a superficial social level. Shows up at all the right parties, says all the right things, and is otherwise about as forgettable as day-old bread.”