Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure (5 page)

Their guest raised an imaginary goblet in toast to Shins's comment, lips bent in a crooked and oddly mischievous smile. “All right, that should be simple enough.”

“Mm. Right. So, Wid—uh, Madeleine has been in the city less than three days, yet she seems to have enemies here.”

“Shocking,” the other man murmured—and then seemed genuinely shocked in turn when Widdershins's response was to stick her tongue out at him.

“It's true that she does have a penchant for attracting hostile intent,” Maurice said, earning his own stuck-out tongue in turn, “but in this case, these men were watching for her long before she turned up. We've no idea how they knew she was coming, let alone why they want her.”

“
I
didn't know I was coming until recently,” Shins added. “And I didn't tell anybody.” Then, more softly, “You don't count as ‘anybody.’ Oh, you're not insulted. You do too know what I meant!”

Again she came back to the conversation halfway through a sentence. “…pretty sure I'd know if any of the underground guilds or major gangs had their eye out for someone in specific,” the fence was saying. “Obviously I can't be positive, and there are always freelancers and smaller bands whose doings remain secret simply because nobody's noticed them yet. But if I had to wager, it'd be that you're not looking for someone in the community of the extra-legally
inclined. Or if you are, they're nothing more than hired watchers for someone else.”

Extra-legally inclined. Need to remember that one
…. “So who, then?” Shins asked.

Something passed over the man's expression as he studied her, something invisible and yet nearly tangible enough to dislodge his hat. Something that looked an awful lot like understanding.

Oh, figs…
“Olgun…” It wasn't even a breath, the syllables scarcely vocalized at all. “I think he just figured out we're not here on Church business.”

From somewhere just behind and to the left of her soul, she felt the god's reply; agreement, and acknowledgment that he was ready for whatever was about to happen.

Except that neither of them were. Without so much as the flicker of an eyelid, he resumed speaking, answering the question Shins had all but forgotten she'd asked.

“You may have noticed,” he suggested, “that the city's in a bit of an uproar at the moment?”

“In the same way this place is ‘a bit’ unappetizing, yes.”
Why are you still helping us?
Had she read his expression wrong? Was he planning some sort of double cross? Or had he simply decided that, as the request had come from a clergyman and he was here anyway, he might as well see it through?

“The craft guilds and the Houses have noticed, too. There's more political maneuvering, backbiting, intrigue, and manipulation going on in Lourveaux—and indeed, across Galice, so long as Church and government eyes are distracted—than there are diseases in a brothel.”

Charming.

“I've heard nothing of this!” Maurice protested. “The Church wouldn't—”

“Wouldn't tell just anyone even if they knew,” Shins interjected. “Not when they don't have the manpower to do anything about it.”

“Precisely!” Again the stranger offered an imaginary toast. “Assuming your ‘spies’ are anything more than the result of a personal vendetta, I find it far more likely that your enemy is political—House or guild—than criminal.”

“Same thing, aren't they?” Blandly as she spoke, her mind was racing. She'd accrued more than enough personal vendettas in her life—but all were local to Davillon. Even if one of her…misunderstandings…had been enough to inspire a hunt for her across Galice, she could think of nobody who had both the means and the slightest chance of knowing she might visit de Laurent's grave.

Then again, how the happy frog would any of the Houses have known to look for me here, or even wanted to?

She could just leave. Get out of Lourveaux and vanish once again into the back roads and small towns of Galice. Get so lost that it wouldn't
matter
who was looking for her.

And spend the rest of her life wondering who
else
was out to get her, and why.

Gods, I'm so tired of politics
….

“I think,” she sighed, “that you'd better tell us what you've heard….”

The next hour was spent hunched over, so near the table they could
smell
the stains in the wood, engaged in low, raspy, sometimes nigh-inaudible conversation.

Nigh-inaudible, and definitely—at least for Widdershins—incomprehensible. House Blah had bribed a city council seat away from House Whatsis. Parties unknown were slowly buying out the properties and goods of the Someone Guild. This craftsman was broke; that House was losing everything; and none of it meant the first thing to Widdershins, who was barely keeping awake, let alone following along. Surely none of this had the slightest thing to do with her….

A name, vaguely familiar, finally hooked her attention like a trout.

“I'm sorry, House What?”

Maurice and the fence both jumped, apparently having grown accustomed to the idea that they basically had the conversation to themselves. “Carnot,” the stranger repeated. “House Carnot.”

A shudder ran through thief and god both. House Carnot had bloodlines in almost every major city, Davillon included. Gaston Carnot, the marquis de Brielles, had died in the bloodbath that had forced Adrienne Satti to adopt a new name and had left her the final surviving worshipper of an obscure, foreign deity.

They'd never been close, Gaston and Widdershins, but she wasn't likely ever to forget—him or any of the others.

Still, the Carnots
were
spread far and wide. The fact that she recognized the House meant absolutely nothing.

“And they're doing what?”

“I was just getting to that. Using means both legitimate and il-, they've more or less been crushing a long-term rival into the dust. Buying out properties, hiring away workers, stripping city permits, cutting off access to government contacts, undercutting prices, and the like. They didn't have much presence left in Lourveaux, so it wasn't hard for the Carnots to drive them completely from influence—and from the city entirely, if rumor is to be believed.”

“Uh-huh.” Widdershins found her attention, and even consciousness, starting to wander once more. More out of obligation than interest, she forced the last question out. “And which rival House have they been stomping all over?”

“Um…That'd be House Delacroix, I believe.”

Widdershins knew, with absolute certainty, that she spoke for Olgun as well as herself when all she could say was, “Of course it is.”

But at least she wasn't sleepy anymore.

Mugs clinked, dishes clanked, servers bustled, customers babbled. Individual sounds, largely of contentment and satiation if not happiness; together, however, they became far more. This was the voice, the song, and the easy, relieved sigh of the Flippant Witch.

Stained but not filthy, worn but not dilapidated, old but not yet sickly, the tavern played host to several dozen patrons, lost in drink or conversation. They, like the establishment itself, were enjoying the best season Davillon had known in over a year. The displeasure of the Church and the interdiction on trade no longer weighed upon the citizens’ shoulders; trade and travel thrived; and if the custom at the Flippant Witch couldn't yet compare to its glory days under the late and lamented Genevieve Marguilles, then at least the tavern had regained its health.

Now that the city was in a better way—and now that
she
wasn't running the place.

That was the only way Robin allowed herself to contemplate her absent friend: as “she.” As “her.” Actually hearing that name, saying that name,
thinking
that name was enough to make her feel too much that she'd sworn to herself she'd never feel again.

It was a vow she renewed every time she cried herself to sleep, utterly determined that
this
time would be the last—but at least that was only once or twice a week, now, rather than nightly.

To most of her patrons and friends, Robin looked well enough. Although still painfully slender, still more girl than woman, she'd begun to truly shed the last vestiges of childhood: gawky becoming graceful; freckles lightening a bit, though surely they would never
vanish against the pallor of her skin. She still chopped her hair raggedly but, either by choice or by inattention, had allowed it to grow longer than was her wont, so that it now hung just past her shoulders.

That, when added to her position of authority over the Flippant Witch, had begun attracting attention of boys and men that even the most drab, baggy, unflattering apparel couldn't deflect.

Gods, it's obnoxious!

“Pardon?”

Robin glanced up into the red-bearded face of Gerard, one of the Witch's oldest employees, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. Didn't mean to say that out loud.”

He offered her a grin that she knew, from experience, was a friendly one—despite teeth so discolored and uneven he looked as though a mountain range sprouted from his gums.

“You did, though. So
what's
—oh, three more of those for the teamsters in the back—what's obnoxious?”

“Nosey employees,” she huffed in feigned exasperation, “who eavesdrop on conversations so private, they involve fewer than two people.” An exaggerated flounce carried her to the barrels stacked behind the counter; she returned with fistfuls of foaming tankards that she thrust at Gerard along with a mischievous wink. The beefy server chuckled, wiped an imaginary splash of ale from his faded blue tunic, and vanished amongst the tables with the drinks.

It was all an act, and they both well knew it. Robin pretended to be cheerful; Gerard, and the others, pretended to believe it. In truth, she'd had precious few reasons to be cheerful in half a year and more.

“Hey, Robin!”

Few.
Not
none
.

The young woman's smile grew broader and far more genuine as she turned, recognizing that voice despite the distorting sounds of the semicrowded room. “Faustine!”

The newcomer—one of several, as customers continually came
and went, passing through the Witch's doors—offered a bashful smile of her own in return. The flickering of the fire in the hearth across the chamber and the various smoking lamps cast flowing hair, normally only a slightly blonder hue than moonlight, in dancing shades of orange. Faustine slipped through the crowd, gracefully if not nearly as effortlessly as Wi—as
she
would have done, and slipped up to the bar. A quick flip of her skirts, long enough to be fashionable without keeping her from the constant running required of her, and she perched upon a rickety stool that had just been vacated by a staggering drunk.

Shoving a few more tankards out of the way, and ignoring the occasional call for drink or food, Robin sidled along behind the counter, then took Faustine's hands in her own. Faustine's face flushed, eyes darting to either side. She clearly started to pull away, and just as clearly stopped herself. Looking down at the countertop, she instead squeezed her own fingers tight around Robin's.

“I didn't expect to see you today,” the tavern keep told her, delight and excitement just audible in a voice no longer accustomed to conveying them.

“I…Oh…” Although Robin's elder by half a decade or more, it was the new arrival who continued to stammer, bashful as a schoolgirl. “I…didn't actually expect it. To be here, I mean. Tonight.” Then, at the younger woman's puzzled blink, she mustered up an apologetic smile. “I'm here working. Not…Not that I'm not glad to be here…”

Robin nodded, thoughtful…And then waited. And waited.

“Faustine?”

“Oh!” The courier laughed nervously, then released Robin's hands to dig into the small pouch all but hidden by her vest and skirts. The paper she handed over was thick, cheap, sealed in wax without the slightest hint of sigil or signature.

“Who'd be messaging me?”

It was a rhetorical question; one that—like her earlier outburst—
she hadn't meant to speak aloud. Still, Faustine shrugged. “I don't know, Robin. Came home after a crosstown delivery and found it on the stoop, along with my standard fee and an open note that just said ‘Sorry I missed you.’ It's not really the sort of thing I usually courier, but…” Another shrug, another bashful smile.

Robin nodded, cracked the wax, flipped open the paper…And would almost certainly have sprouted icicles had she frozen any more thoroughly.

Genevieve's grave. Now. Please.

“Robin?”

The girl barely heard. All she could do was stare.

“Robin, what's wrong?”

Was that
her
handwriting? It didn't
quite
seem to be—and Robin had spent more than long enough staring at that damned note
she'd
left behind when she ran away—but it was close. A little rough, a little sloppy…

Just the sort of difference one might expect in a missive dashed off in frightened haste.

“Please…Robin, you're scaring me!”

She finally looked up, and wondered what her own face must look like, to have Faustine's looking so stricken.

“I have to go.”
Is that
my
voice? It sounds too hollow to be mine
….

“Go where? What does it
say
?!”

“I'm sorry. I can't, I…have to go.”

Without another word to anyone, without a glance at the unserved customers, without so much as stopping to find her coat, Robin was out in the chill of the evening, skinny legs carrying her far faster than it appeared they ever should.

For the briefest instant, Faustine and Gerard caught one another's gaze. He knew Robin well enough; she had heard the stories more than frequently enough; neither had the slightest doubt who could inspire the girl to such haste.

Though her lips quivered ever so slightly and every muscle in her face went taut, Faustine bolted from her seat and followed.

Robin grew only vaguely aware that Faustine was following, could scarcely even register it as important. Nor did she attach any significance to the fact that the courier, who spent hours a day walking if not running across Davillon, struggled to keep up with her.

Her lungs burned with effort and chill; her breath steamed; people came and went in flashes of shocked or angry faces, shouting or cursing the girl who brushed past them or, in one or two cases, shoved them aside with a strength that belied her size.

None of it registered, none of it mattered. There was no world beyond her destination, the road she traveled, and the maelstrom of emotion that roiled around her mind, threatening to drag it under and drown it. Fear and anger and hurt and worry and more love than she wanted to admit and just maybe a tiny flickering ember of hate….

She knew she neared the cemetery by the smell, the scent of soil and growing things, otherwise alien to this time of year. The city and the Church made every effort to keep the various graveyards (or the wealthier ones, at any rate) lush or at least passable, regardless of season, though their efforts were often symbolic at best. It was another half minute before the gate itself hove into view.

Robin skidded to a halt, her chest heaving, her whole body shaking for reasons utterly unrelated to the cold. She braced herself against the iron with a hand, bent almost double, and still felt herself starting to collapse….

She didn't see or even feel the hands catching her until she hung almost limp from their grip. “I've got you, sweetie.”

“F-Faustine?” Was Faustine even supposed to be here? Was that a good idea? She couldn't think past the pounding in her head and heart…

“It's me. Come on.”

Arms wrapped around Robin's shoulders, helping her stand straight once more. Slowly the spots began to fade from her eyes, the agony and nausea from her gut.

“Faustine, I—”

“It's her, isn't it?”

Robin had swallowed enough tears of her own to recognize them unshed in someone else; the tremor of a word, the twitch of a face. Fully cognizant of everything around her for the first time since she'd read those words, she lightly brushed a finger across the other woman's cheek.

“I think it is,” she said simply. “And I
have
to.”

“I know.”

“Will you…come with me?”

Robin hadn't known a human visage could twist in that many emotions at once, but when Faustine's finally settled, it was on a sad and gentle smile. “Came this far…”

Arms around each other, they passed through the gate and made their way along the snow-lined footpaths.

It was only a bit later that Robin finally thought to wonder why nobody had asked their business. The cemetery gates didn't precisely close at sunset, but they always picked up a guardsman or two to watch until they
did
shut, after dark.

Must've just missed them
…. She was too exhausted, too distracted, to consider anything else.

She'd have known the resting place of Genevieve Marguilles even had she not been here multiple times before, both on her own and with…
her
. Unlike every other grave around it, the grasses that grew on that grave, the flowers that blossomed around the stone and the ivy that crawled along its surfaces, truly
were
evergreen. Something
she
and Olgun had done….

Except this time, it wasn't just a minor god's magic sustaining the
foliage where Genevieve's body lay. It was the blood of four
additional
corpses, scattered across the grave and the nearby grass, their deaths recent enough that the wounds still oozed in the rapidly cooling air. Browning streaks marred the headstone; flowers lay crushed beneath the dead.

“Oh, gods…”

Robin staggered from Faustine's grip, reaching out as though she could somehow wipe away the desecration with a swipe of her palm. The world blurred behind burgeoning tears, which she could only just blink away.

She heard the rustle of the courier's skirts, a faint scrape of leather, and then Faustine was again at her side, dagger in one hand, small-barreled flintlock in the other.

The woman
did
run around Davillon day and night, after all.

“Aww, how cute. I didn't expect
two
of you.”

Both women spun to stare at a figure across the path, in the lee of a small mausoleum; little more than a smaller shadow in the larger. Robin had the vague sense of a hooded cloak, but precious little else.

“What have you
done
?!” That last was a shriek, but she couldn't contain it.

“Two pheasants with one shot,” the woman—woman? Yes, the voice was definitely female—informed them. “First, just a bit of a message.” A hand-shaped blur waggled at the bodies. “Recognize any of them?

“No? Huh. Must not be much family resemblance. That aristocratic and dignified corpse there on top is one Gurrerre Marguilles, patriarch of his house—until recently—and father of poor, rotting, beetle-infested Genevieve. Gurrerre declined an opportunity I offered him and, well, I think this rather makes a statement.”