Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure (14 page)

“Hey, Cyrille.”

The resulting sound wasn't quite a squawk, wasn't quite a yelp, wasn't quite a gasp. As best she could describe it, it sounded like an angry chicken slapping a puppy with a fish.

“Could you repeat that?” Widdershins asked. “Define it? Possibly spell it for me?”

The boy, who had been lying atop his quilts, fully dressed, brooding so intently at the ceiling that it had almost certainly begun to feel irritable, wore an expression very similar to the aforementioned
hypothetical fish. “Widdershins?! How…How did you get in here?”

From her current seat on the corner of a writing desk—a large thing of cherrywood, carved with various designs to perfectly match the bed, the chair, the wardrobe, and even the wainscoting, silly aristocrats—Shins gestured over one shoulder with a quick jerk of the head. “Came in the window.”

“Came in the…I've been in this room all night!”

“So?”

“I didn't hear a thing!”

“So?”

“How…? What…? How…?”

“You know, I was just having a very similar conversation earlier this evening.”

Since Cyrille's expression, though highly amusing, didn't seem likely to change any time soon, Shins took the opportunity to look around. Other than the aforementioned furniture, any single piece of which was worth more than every apartment Widdershins had ever owned or stayed in back in Davillon, the room was…well, as equally ostentatious as the furniture. The carpet was thick enough to serve as armor, the water basin and toiletries on the bureau were genuine silver, the quilt was ermine, and the chamber was completely bare of the discarded clothes that were, in Widdershins's experience, common to all adolescent boys’ living spaces. (Thanks, she was certain, to the efforts of the servants, not Cyrille himself.)

“Sorry to see the family's doing so poorly,” she scoffed.

“I'm sorry, what?”

Widdershins swallowed a sigh. “Nothing. Never mind.”

The exchange, brief as it was, snapped Cyrille out of his shock. “How did you know which room was mine?”

“Um, I kept looking until I found you. Did you know that nobody in your family seems to actually
sleep
?”

Cyrille chuckled. “Oh, we do. Just not until morning. Sleeping at night is just so ‘
common
.’ So what's everyone up to, then?”

“Remarkably boring stuff, for the most part,” she said with a shrug. “At least, the ones with rooms on this side of the house. The twins seem to be practicing card tricks.”

“They do that,” Cyrille said with a nod. “Card tricks, coin flips, all that. I think they think it's creepier, or at least more impressive, if they perform all their little quirks and tricks in unison.”

“Fifi,” Shins continued, “whose room is a mess, by the way, is experimenting with hairstyles in the mirror and, believe it or not,
not
playing with that silly glass lantern of hers.”

“The miracles of the gods are many and strange.”

“And the one girl who wasn't at your family meeting the other night…” Widdershins trailed off abruptly, blushing.

“Marjolaine,” Cyrille offered with a half smile. “And yes, she does that. Frequently. Mostly because of how much it upsets Mother. You'd be surprised how many servants have been dismissed—or been beaten by Malgier—because of her. Why are you looking at me that way?”

“This is a really frog-hoppingly awful family you have, Cyrille.”

“‘Frog-hoppingly’?”

“Don't change the subject.”

“Shins…” Cyrille rose from the bed, then glanced back at it as if only just now realizing what it was. His gaze flickered to meet hers, and his face reddened, but he kept speaking. “They're not all that bad. Well, I mean, Malgier, maybe, and a few of the others. But mostly we bring out the worst in each other. House politics, status. There aren't a lot of Delacroix bloodlines left in any positions of wealth.”

Fewer than you think.
But even Widdershins, to whom
tact
meant little more than the past tense of
tack
, knew better than to say that just now.

“We've given a lot to Aubier,” he continued. “Provided for many
of its poorer citizens. We're just…” His hands twitched as though literally groping for words.

“Rude and bad-tempered as badgers in the process,” she finished for him.

“Um…”

“Badgers with hemorrhoids,” she clarified.

“Shins…”

“Badgers with hemorrhoids and ingrown toenails.”

“Were you going to tell me why you sneaked in here?”

“Oh! Right. I need an extra set of eyes, and someone to tell me who's from Aubier and who's a stranger. You're elected. Let's go.”

“Wait, what? Go? I don't—”

“You believe I'm trying to help you and your family, yes?”

“Yes,” Cyrille answered without hesitation.

“Then trust me. I need your help to help me help.” And then, much more softly, “What? It made perfect sense, and he followed it just fine!”

Indeed, Cyrille didn't appear at all confused. If anything, the expression on his face suggested…

Disappointment? Hurt?
Why the figs would he be hurt?

He stood, tense, arm rising as though he wanted to reach out to her. “Is that…the only reason You're here?” He sounded almost plaintive.

“I don't…. Why else would I be here?”

Cyrille's hand fell back to his side. “Never mind. Wait just a minute, let me get my boots and my sword. Then you can explain to me how you plan to get us both off the property.”

Shins leaned back, watching him gather his belongings, well and truly befuddled.

Nor could she quite figure out why Olgun was projecting the very distinct impression of rolling his eyes at her.

Getting off Delacroix lands hadn't ultimately proved that difficult. Cyrille might have lacked either Widdershins's skill or her god-given advantages, but he still had her to guide him, to watch and listen for any sign of the household guards. Furthermore, she'd gone briefly ahead to see if the two unconscious Crows had been discovered yet; when she realized they were gone, clearly having recovered and limped away, she left their lantern where they had lain, burning merrily away. That should attract attention, swiftly enough and in sufficient quantities, to make escape in an alternate direction that much easier.

Once off the House grounds, it was, perhaps ironically, the young Delacroix who took over as guide. This was, primarily, because he knew Aubier's streets and Shins didn't—but also because, even though they went nowhere near the gang's territory, the thief was nearly paranoid about watching for the appearance of the Thousand Crows.

Several hours before dawn, they had made their way to the Carnot property, scrambled atop a nearby house—or rather, Widdershins scrambled and Cyrille struggled—and firmly planted themselves.

And then they waited.

And waited.

“It's a natural phenomenon,” she explained the fifth or sixth time her companion expressed his boredom. “The hours between midnight and dawn pass three times slower for me than anyone else. You're just near enough to be caught in it, I'm afraid.”

More waiting.

“Let me get this straight.” Cyrille glanced at the palm of his glove, wet from the melted frost coating the roof, then idly wiped it dry on his cloak. “We're here to spy on the Carnot household. To see if anyone suspicious, or anyone I recognize as a foreigner to Aubier, enters or leaves.”

“Unless we changed the plan when I wasn't listening,” she confirmed.

“And we're doing this here, even though we both agree they're not going to be open or obvious about such things, and you aren't even certain the local Carnots are involved, because you don't know where the Thousand Crows are holed up, so we can't spy on
them
.”

“We've been through this already, yes? I'm positive we have. I think I remember actually being there for it.”

“You know there are multiple inns and hostels in Aubier that cater to outsiders, right? If you're correct about the Carnots coming here from Lourveaux, we know about when they'd have arrived. It'd take a bit of digging, but at least you'd be watching people you
know
are part of what's going on.” Cyrille sounded smug as a king's cat, presumably at having come up with a course of action Widdershins had missed.

“Mm-hmm. Cyrille?”

“Um, yes?”

“I'm an outsider to Aubier.”

“Yes.”

“The Thousand Crows, and possibly your mother's people, are looking for me.”

“Yes…”

“Where do you imagine, first and foremost, they'll be looking?”

Had his face fallen any harder, it might have cracked not only the frost, but a shingle or two beneath it. “Oh.”

Widdershins reached over, gently patting his hand. “If the Carnot house proves a dead end, that'll have to be our next step, yes.
But first I'd rather exhaust the options that
don't
involve putting us in undue proximity to people who want to stick pointy things into me, all right?”

Cyrille cast the strangest look her way, but nodded.

And so, more waiting.

The dawn began to break, casting the shadow of Castle Pauvril over Aubier like a giant (and mildly arthritic) sundial. The streets began to bustle with first a trickle, then a flow of humanity. And the pair of youths on the rooftop watched as that trickle and flow continued to have absolutely nothing to do with the Carnot household.

“Hey, Cyrille?”

The boy glanced up from where he'd been tracing idle patterns in the frost. “Hmm?”

“You're an aristocrat,” Shins observed.

“Um, yes?”

“Formal education? Tutors and classes and books you didn't want to read to learn facts you couldn't have cared about less?”

“Yeah…”

“How come nobody uses alchemy anymore?”

Cyrille blinked, shifted around to sit with his legs crossed, wincing only slightly—at the cold of the roof on his rear, Shins assumed.

“I mean,” she continued, “if it actually
works
…”

Her companion nodded slowly, squinting a bit as he worked at dredging up the memories of old history lessons that—as she'd theorized—he hadn't really given a damn about.

“Alchemists worked for generations before they started getting results,” he began slowly. “Once they did, the formulas and recipes and all that proved maddeningly complicated. Something like one person out of ten could make them work with any regularity, and that's just drawing from the people who got through their years of apprenticeship.

“It also proved ludicrously expensive. The different reagents—uh, alchemical ingredients—needed to make the more interesting procedures work…Yes, a few alchemists even managed to turn lead into gold, but it was so costly, the profit margin was surprisingly low. And when it came to more basic stuff—poisons, medicines, solvents—there were just far easier sciences. Ultimately, alchemy became a curiosity, a hobby practiced by the occasional rich or half-crazy eccentric, nothing more.”

Widdershins, of course, had honed in at least partly on the gold. “Low margins,” she said, “but still profitable, yes? So why would it vanish so completely?”

Cyrille's gaze grew unfocused. “I'm not entirely sure I'm recalling this right,” he admitted. “I only half understood it back then. Near as I can explain, though, objects and elements resist transformation through the alchemical sciences. Which means, it's difficult and expensive to create a solution that'll turn lead into gold, or nickel into iron. It's much easier, and much
cheaper
, to create a substance that'll
undo
the process.”

“Ah. So even if you pulled it off, odds were the law or your enemies or whoever would catch you in it.”

“Precisely. There was a brief period where the reagents to reverse the changes had a wider market than the ones to cause them. In the end, it just wasn't really worth it to anyone.”

“Except lunatics like Fingerbone,” she muttered.

“Uh…”

“Seriously, who goes by ‘Fingerbone’? Who masters something like alchemy and then devotes its use to a gang of thieves? And who the happy hopping horses is
that
?”

“Uh,” Cyrille reiterated. Then, following Widdershins's insistent scowl and pointing finger, “Oh!”

The “Oh” in question was a balding, broad-shouldered fellow in brocades and fabrics at the absolute lowest end of what could be
called “fine.” He moved casually, just another man on the street, going about his early-morning business, worthy of Widdershins's attentions
only
…

Because he'd stepped onto said street from within the Carnot property.

“Name's…” Again Cyrille's face screwed into odd shapes as he struggled to remember. “Josce Something. I've seen him around at a few shops and events. Highly trusted Carnot manservant. I think he might even be head of the household staff, which is curious.”

Shins, who'd just been starting to relax, tensed up. “Why curious?”

“Well, he's only been in their employ about half a year. That's remarkably swift advancement, so we just figured he'd come to them from a different branch of the…Oh, come on! Don't give me that look! That was well before the Lourveaux Carnot bloodline left!”

“Which doesn't mean they couldn't have sent someone ahead to get their little scheme rolling,” she snarled. “Come on. Let's get moving before we lose him.”

“He could just be running an errand!” Cyrille protested.

“Fine. Feel free to stay here. There's important frost to be melted.”

Grumbling, the aristocrat followed.

As it turned out, “get moving before we lose him” had been unduly optimistic. They very nearly lost him multiple times
after
they were moving.

Widdershins recognized the techniques the moment Josce began employing them. Innocent stops to examine this shop or chat with that person, very slight twists of the head to study the street reflected in a window. This “servant” was ever alert, ever watching for anyone tailing him.

And he was subtle. He was
good
. Certainly not what one would expect in a model majordomo.

Shins found herself with the same problems she'd had earlier, and then some. Wide streets, routes and twists she didn't remotely know, long swathes where rooftop pursuit was out of the question—plus a very perceptive mark and a companion who was about as unobtrusive as a collection plate.

It took every trick she knew, splitting up multiple times, and every bit of extra help Olgun could provide. Thanks to the tiny god, she spotted a faint twitch just before Josce turned, giving her the opportunity to duck aside; or someone in the crowd stumbled slightly, passing between Cyrille and the Carnot servant, briefly blocking the latter's view.

Still, they fell constantly farther behind, and by the time they'd reached the southeast edge of town—not one of the several directions through which Shins had yet either entered or exited—even Olgun had to admit they'd lost the man completely.

“Well,” Cyrille offered, “there's nothing out here but a few farms and the like. Can't be
that
hard to find him again, can it?”

Widdershins couldn't tell which of his struggles was the more obvious, the one to sound chipper or the one to hide his fatigued gasping from the long, brisk walk. She decided to glare at him with equal vehemence for both.

“Yes, I
know
,” she hiss-snapped at Olgun. “We
don't
have any better options! Stop ruining a perfectly good glare!”

By then, however, she'd lost the moment. With ill-concealed poor grace and a childish urge to kick something in the roadway, she turned to seek likely prospects among the farms and barns.

In less than an hour—or so Olgun informed her; with the overcast rapidly building between her and the sun, Shins couldn't have been sure—they proved Cyrille right. As they'd seen no trace of Josce on the road ahead, nor moving across the largely barren fields, only
a handful of buildings stood near enough to have hidden him. They found him at the third: an old grain mill, wind-driven, at the very edge of a property.

“Not sure which House owns this field,” the aristocrat admitted in a whisper. “Mother would lecture.”

“Let her.” Shins crept nearer, feet silent over the dry and pebbly soil. Cyrille was rather less quiet, but thankfully, it shouldn't matter. Even before they got close, Widdershins could hear the grumble of rolling, grinding stone from within. She looked up at the tattered blades, idly rotating in the wind, and nodded.

“They've engaged the millstone.”

Cyrille snorted. “You think Josce sneaked out here to make grain out of season?”

“I think a man constantly watching to see if he's being followed is probably going to worry about eavesdroppers, too, yes? You turkey. Come on, let's see if we can find somewhere we can hear them over that racket.”

The mill itself was old, worn, surrounded by flakes of stone and shreds of sailcloth. Footing was uneven, the air redolent of powders both grain and rock. What slight noise could be heard over the grinding from within was lost in the creaking and squeaking of the sails above. Widdershins still moved softly, silently, if only out of habit, and Cyrille did his best to mimic her efforts.

The front door was a no-go, not even to be considered. Unfortunately, that didn't leave a great many options, since the designers—for some reason—hadn't felt the need to include a wide variety of windows in the structure.

Given that even Widdershins, city girl to her soul, had heard of the dangers of stirring up too much dust in a mill, she couldn't say she blamed them. Still, it was grossly inconvenient, bordering on rude.

It was Cyrille (and when had
he
gotten ahead of her, in their
gradual circumnavigation?) who spotted the one exception. A small, horizontal rectangle with thick, wooden shutters that currently hung wide open, it faced onto an expanse of empty field. Perhaps it was intended to air out the place if the powders and dusts
did
accumulate to a choking or explosive degree? Shins could only guess and could barely bring herself to care. At the moment, she was more concerned over the fact that the boy was
standing right in front of it
as he waved her over!