Read Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure Online

Authors: Ari Marmell

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction / Science Fiction, #Fantasy, #Magic

Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure (8 page)

BOOK: Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure
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More imagery from Olgun, and this time Shins didn't have it in her to be sarcastic. Over a year after his death, over three since they'd parted ways, the memories of her father-in-all-but-blood still pierced her. “I know. We're not here for them. We're here for him. I'm not quitting, Olgun. I'm just…You think we could
hire
someone to help them so we could leave?

“What? I don't
know
how we'd pay them! Maybe steal something? I've heard I'm good at that. I suppose we could sell your body, if you were willing to stoop that low…and had a body….

“Oh, shut up. You and your nonsense ideas.” A final glance around to ensure none of the Delacroix patrols were near—the distant castle, made ghostly in the silvery light, appeared to be reaching desperately for the half-clouded moon overhead—and then she darted into the nearby trees. Here, the shadows were so deep, the guards could very literally have stepped over her and never known she was there.

“C'mon, Olgun. They don't believe the Carnots are involved? Let's go gather them their proof so we can get
out
of this nest of rats and vipers before we get…I don't know, venomous fleas or something.

“It
could
happen!

“Shut up. We have evidence to find.”

“How can there not be
any evidence
?!”

Widdershins, who had long since mastered the paradoxical art of ranting and raving under her breath, in almost complete silence, ranted and raved under her breath in almost complete silence.

She was perched on a rooftop, now, rather than clinging to a wall, half-crouched over a shingled peak, steady as she might have been on
solid ground. Both her ratty cloak and a weathervane (the latter of which would have looked far more appropriate out in the farmlands, perhaps atop the Delacroix manor, than it did here) twisted fiercely in the wind, which was unbroken at this height by walls or trees. It brought tears to her eyes, tiny gnawing teeth of cold to her cheeks and ears, but she would neither blink nor flinch—less out of any need to prove a point than because she was just that annoyed.

Or, perhaps, to prove the point that she was just that annoyed.

From here, she could observe much of Aubier, at least so thoroughly as the moonlight and the occasional lanterns permitted. As had been the case with the domicile on which she perched—a three-story cube of stone with a roof, larger and nicer than many she could see, but nowhere near either the size or quality of the Delacroix estate—she found herself less than impressed with what she saw.

Aubier couldn't decide if it was a town bloated to the size of a small city, or a small city that still nostalgically called itself a town. Roads alternated in no discernible pattern from cobbled to frozen dirt; from short and straight to as crooked and winding as a snake eating a worm. Homes ranged from shabby but honest shacks to pretentious houses larger than they needed to be but smaller than they clearly wanted to be. Open spaces of dirt might, in warmer seasons, have served as parks or public gardens within the town-slash-city limits, or as more farmland without.

And the lack of any genuine sewer system, such as Davillon and Lourveaux boasted, contributed to a bouquet that was foul enough even in winter. In summer, Shins just knew she'd be asking Olgun if he could temporarily remove her nose, or at least turn it inside out.

None of which was the actual reason for the frustration that burned the young thief like a virulent rash, threatening to tether her to this backwater place and miserable family for far longer than she'd hoped.

“Seriously, Olgun! I'm actually asking. Use your divinitiness. Knowledge unobtainable to mortals. How can we have found
nothing
?”

As Shins was “actually asking,” Olgun actually answered. Where Widdershins had refused to squint against the frigid gusts, her eyes narrowed sharply against the god's images.

“Don't even say that! The Carnots
are
involved; nothing else makes sense! Well…All right, you didn't
say
it, but…Don't do what it is you do instead of saying it.

“We
know
they moved against House Delacroix, drove them out of Lourveaux, yes? We know that a whole gaggle of the family left Lourveaux not long after the last Delacroix, who never made it here. Lazare Carnot was one of them. House patriarchs don't just wander off, so where the flopping hens
are they?

Because they
certainly
were not here, in the ancestral home of the Carnot bloodline in Aubier. Widdershins had scoured every room, every hallway, every nook, every cranny. The Carnots, at least locally, were largely dull and unobservant, the epitome of the laziness that could overcome an aristocrat when ambitions were all but extinguished. Guards and servants were few, and easily avoided. Only once had she even come
near
to being discovered, by a man she believed to be head of the household staff. And at no point had she discovered any sort of secret more incriminating or sinister than an illicit liaison or a bit of cheating on local taxes.

She had even located a hidden cupboard, one that blended so well with the surrounding walls that the family itself clearly had forgotten its existence. The dust within was more than enough proof that at no point in generations could a house patriarch, or anyone else, have been concealed within. The old furniture and somewhat faded finery belied any recent influx of coin or influence, and the fact that the bulk of the family appeared content to laze around the house did not inspire Shins to believe they were engaged in some great conspiracy of nobles. She'd gone ahead and gathered the addresses of the few other properties—several shops and a small warehouse—the Carnots owned in Aubier, and she'd check them all just to be sure, but none of them struck her as a likely hideout.

In short, as she'd bemoaned to Olgun multiple times in a scant few minutes, they had no proof, not even the tiniest shred of evidence, of anything whatsoever.

Some unnatural union of a growl, a sigh, and a groan rolled from her throat, almost freezing on her tongue before it fell away to vanish in the night. “I don't know, Olgun. Maybe we
are
on the wrong track? I mean, this
could
be coincidence, yes? The Carnots can't be the only rivals of the Delacroix trying to take advantage of all the Church nonsense and political silliness. I guess we ought to at least check some of the other…

“What? No, I
don't
know how many Houses have a presence in Aubier, or which ones are competitors! How would I possibly know that? And where would you have been when I learned it? Napping? Bath time? Napping during bath time? I…Do gods bathe? I mean, you don't really have a body to wash, I suppose….”

Another growl-sigh-groan. “Point is, yes. I know it'll take forever if we have to look into all of this House by House, but what choice do we have?”

At which point the first smile in many hours began to lurch hesitantly across Widdershins's face as she abruptly realized
exactly
what choice they had.

“Name's Jourdain, right?”

The mustached armsman turned, as did the trio of others whom he led. The street was only moderately crowded, most of the market-goers having run their errands earlier in the day and most of the vendors having not yet closed up, but still it took Jourdain a moment to spot the source of that voice.

Unsurprising, perhaps, given that she wasn't standing in the street at all but was perched on a windowsill some feet above him, cast in growing shadow by the angle of the lazily setting sun.

“Widdershins,” he said, his voice neutral. The other guards stirred; no doubt they'd been told to watch for a strange woman with that stranger moniker. “Not precisely the most inconspicuous place for a conversation.”


You
missed me until I called your name, yes? Besides, who says I'm trying to be inconspicuous? Maybe my entire goal is to…conspic.”

Jourdain's face remained straight, but the other three guards blinked almost perfectly in unison. “What do you want?” the elder soldier asked.

“Just to ask you a few questions. Well, and also hear some answers. I mean, it'd be a bit wasteful to
only
want to ask questions and
not
get any answers, yes?”

Jourdain openly glanced around him. While most passersby were blind to the young woman's presence and too far to hear the conversation over the din of the market, some few had indeed stopped to watch in puzzlement as four armed household guards conversed with
what was either a very peculiar person or an even more peculiar windowsill. “So come down here and talk to us like a normal person.”

Shins's laugh was almost more of a bark. “Like a normal person that half of you think is your enemy, and the other half are still under orders to question? I think I'm going to decline.”

“What? How—?”

“If it helps, I'm declining regretfully.”

“How did you know our orders—?”

“Sorrowfully, even. I might cry.”

In point of fact, it was taking all she had not to laugh—not least because Olgun was “humming” a tune of mournful disappointment as accompaniment to her “regrets.”

Two of the Delacroix guards reached for their pistols, but a raised hand and an eyebrow-creasing glower from Jourdain halted them in their tracks. “Why would I answer any of your questions?”

“Uh, because I'm trying to help your employers? Maybe?”

“I still have strenuous doubts as to your motives.”

“Oh!” Widdershins slapped and rubbed her gloved hands together, hoping to restore a bit of the warmth that even the leathers had failed to retain, then waited for a small cluster of evening shoppers to pass between her and the guards. “That's not a problem. I
don't
doubt my motives, and since I'm the one you're telling, that makes it perfectly safe.”

This time Jourdain
did
blink, along with the other two guards.

“So where,” she continued before they could react any further, “would I find the Thousand Crows? Or any of Aubier's organized criminal guilds, really. I'm not picky.”

Jourdain's face began to darken.

“Only, I've already visited something like two hundred and ninety inns and taverns…”

Olgun gently corrected her with what could only be described as the emotional equivalent of
eleven
. Widdershins gently ignored him.

“…and even the occasional bathhouse, gods have mercy on my eyes, seeing as how they, or at least the neighborhoods you find them in, are usually the best place to uncover your more unsavory sorts. Even tried one across town, uh…Kind of grungy? Caters openly and specifically to strangers to Aubier?”

“All inns cater to foreigners and strangers—” Jourdain began, but one of the others cleared his throat.

“She means the Open Door, sir. Makes a big show of being friendly to outsiders. Wide menu, lots of servant types, welcome banners for them that reads, and overcharges for the lot.”

“Right,” the young woman confirmed. “That one. Went there, even though the people I'm looking for are local. Found nothing. Whole
lot
of nothing. Enough nothing to choke a…um…Well, it doesn't matter
what
it would choke, because enough nothing to choke
anything
is certainly something!”

This time, the blinking from the guards and the small assembled audience was nearly enough to generate a noticeable breeze.

“I told you before,” Jourdain snarled, “this business of a ‘sorcerer’ is rubbish. Even if it weren't, the Crows are nothing but a band of thugs. I haven't the slightest idea where to find them, and I doubt most of
them
know where they're going to be from one miserable night to the next. And Aubier
has
no organized crime. That I know of,” he added, withering just a touch beneath Widdershins's incredulous and mildly contemptuous sneer.

“Uh-huh.” She watched the three guards for a moment, quickly studied the growing crowd, then back to Jourdain. “And you wouldn't tell me if you knew?”

“That's entirely possible.”

“Jourdain, who are the other major gangs besides the Thousand Crows?”

The guard captain could barely be bothered to shrug. “I have no idea. Most of them come and go.”

“Mm-hm. So if the Crows are just another gang, the stories of a sorcerer are nonsense, and there's nothing special about them, why are
they
the ones that you—and everyone else, it seems—have heard of?”

“Chance,” he snapped at her, but some of the blustery certainty had washed away.

Widdershins opened her mouth to say something else—a gesture that stretched itself into a broad smile at the sudden tingle of Olgun's magics, and the clattering and cursing as someone was “encouraged” to trip headlong over the detritus in the old apartment behind her.

Did they
really
think I hadn't noticed when they sent the fourth guard away a few minutes ago?

Meant it was time to go, though, before someone down there decided to draw again.

“Olgun?”

An answering surge of anticipation, and then Widdershins rose to her full height on the narrow ledge, offered Jourdain a jaunty wave, and leapt. The by-now familiar surge of power and the feel of a semisolid boost in midair more than allowed her to clear the gap to the window of the next apartment over; a second such surge, and she landed smoothly and securely on a stretch of wood a cat might have had difficulty crossing. Widdershins slipped through the window, made a beeline for the door, and had blended into the streets of Aubier before Jourdain and his men had so much as reached the second floor.

“Are you insane, woman?” The jowly tavern keep leaned over the bar—seeming almost to engulf portions of it in his grimy shirt and pudding-like flesh—to breathe some truly unique fumes into Widdershins's face. Clearly the man was not averse to sampling his own wares; he could almost certainly have cleaned the countertop of grime and stains simply by exhaling on it a time or three.

“Probably,” she replied. She'd long since given up on trying to maintain the friendly smile with which she'd begun the day. All she managed now was to keep the snarl of frustrated anger from her countenance, and even with that less ambitious goal, her jaw and her back teeth ached from the effort. “But it's a simple enough question, yes?”

“You think you can just walk up to a fellow and ask something like that?” Shins found the wobbling of his fleshy face almost horrifyingly hypnotic. “You trying to get me in trouble with
both
sides of the law?”

“Oh, for the love of pastries…Look, I've been to about two hundred and ninety of these stupid places…”

Eleven
, Olgun corrected again.

“At every single one of them, I've done everything but hang a sign around my neck. Tried all the signals and hand signs and slouches I learned to get the local thieves’ attention, but I'm not
from
here, so I don't know the local cant and people probably just thought I was twitching from slow poison. Even picked a few pockets here and there,
almost
obviously enough for even a
city guardsman
to notice! You have any idea how hard it is to be that careless on purpose?”

Olgun mildly suggested that the barkeep probably did not, as it no doubt came far more naturally to him.

“So yes!” Her rant now teetered on a knife's edge between exasperation and simmering rage. “I barking well
am
asking you! Just point me to someone in this dungheap who can tell me what I—!”

“You need to leave, lady,” the man hiding behind the jowls insisted. “Now!”

It wasn't the stares or the low mumbles of the common room's patrons, all of whom had now abandoned drink and conversation to turn her way. It wasn't even the soothing balm of Olgun's presence, which—despite his obvious efforts at calming her down—was tinged with an unmistakable anger of its own.

No, it was the barkeep's face—the quivering lip, the bulging
eyes, the fearful shake of his head as he retreated from whatever it was he saw in her own twisting expression—that quenched her fury like a sudden rain.

Gods, what is
wrong
with me?

She spun and all but fled the tavern, holding her breath until she was through the door so that she couldn't accidentally utter a single word that might make things worse. She was blocks away—she didn't even know in which direction she'd turned—before she stopped shoving through the evening traffic and slowed herself long enough to think.

“Olgun?” Her whispers came between heaving breaths, gasps from exertion far more emotional than physical. “What's happening to me? I wanted to pull steel on that man!”

A flicker of imagery and emotion, reminiscent of the energies she felt anytime they worked in unison.

“But…it's never been like
this
,” she told him. “Me being sad makes you sad which makes me sad, me being reckless makes you reckless which makes me reckless, and all that. We've known that for a while now, yes? We've both been angry before, though, and it's never made me want to…to…

“Do you think Iruoch did something to us before we killed him? To me? He was magic; he could have infected us or something! Couldn't he?”

The deity's reply made it quite clear that, no, he did not attribute their shared anger to that murderous creature of the fae. What he
did
attribute it to, however, was a concept too complex to accurately convey in emotion and imagery. Widdershins couldn't begin to understand it.

Or maybe, she
almost
admitted to herself, she just didn't want to.

She was neither
so
distracted, however, nor so introspective, as to miss the obvious. Or even the not so obvious.

“I see them,” she assured an abruptly nervous Olgun. “Three that
I've noticed. Probably at least twice that many in total, yes? Don't suppose you can tell if they're Thousand Crows or someone else?

“Well,
I
don't know how you'd know! Maybe they have tattoos or custom-brocaded smallclothes you might have spotted! I'm just asking! Oooh, you…Any witchcraft or sorcery, anyway?”

None, or so his answering emanations suggested. None he could
sense
, anyway, which was, after his confusion over the spreading blight on the Delacroix property, rather less reassuring than Shins might otherwise have found it.

“Another alleyway, do you think? Or maybe…Oh, figs…Olgun, is the street clearing out because it's getting dark, or do you think the good folks of the neighborhood have some idea what's coming?

“Right. Me, neither.” A quick scouring of the street, eyes flitting like a drunken moth, until…“There. You ready? Right. Me, neither.”

A shallow grin, a slight quickening of breath, and Widdershins abruptly burst into a run, angling across the haphazardly cobbled street toward the heavy wooden structure she'd selected. The sound of pounding feet, shoving bodies, and curses rather more vicious than “figs” all conspired to inform her, in no uncertain terms, that her pursuers had abandoned any semblance of stealth.

Really hope those shutters are as flimsy as they look
…. “Olgun?”

The air tingled and tickled appropriately in response; Widdershins took one more sprinting step, and dove.

Wooden slats split with a series of cracks, like a mouthful of broken teeth. Widdershins erupted from a cloud of splinters, a leather-clad brunette cannonball, untouched by the jagged bits save for a few shallow rents in her gloves. A second cloud, this one of dirt, erupted as she hit and rolled across the packed earthen floor. Surging back to her feet, she took in the entire structure at a glance before dashing quickly to the left.

BOOK: Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure
10.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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