Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure Read online

  A flex of both legs—she ignored the brief agony of protesting joints; hadn't this sort of thing been easier when she was more of a child?—and she was standing once more, launched upright by muscle both her own and Olgun's. She stood several paces before her quarry, drawing her rapier—a weapon won from one of the world's finest duelists, who had decided at least temporarily to cease trying to kill her—with a theatrical flourish.

  He produced a blade as well—something between a large knife and a short sabre—but the expression on his face, which strongly suggested he had just mistaken a chamber pot for a washbasin, was evidence enough that they both knew precisely how this fight would end.

  “This doesn't need to be painful,” Shins told him. The tip of her rapier sliced tiny patterns in the air between them, so swift and so complex that she could have been knitting with it. “The only thing pointed we have to exchange are questions…Oh, figs.”

  With a cry rather more desperate than fearsome, the stranger lunged, sword held high.

  “Why is everyone but me stupid, Olgun?” The thief pivoted on one heel, letting her opponent's charge carry him clear past her—then continued her spin, rapier extended, so the tip sank just half a finger's worth into the man's left buttock.

  One more long step, closing even as he toppled with a porcine squeal, brought her near enough to slap the weapon from his hand before he hit the dusty bricks.

  “I'd have that looked at,” she told him, gesturing idly at his rear end with her rapier before wiping it clean on his coat. “Assuming you can find anyone willing to look that close.” With the blade free of blood, she slashed a corner from that coat, making him wince and yelp before he realized he hadn't been cut. She handed him the wad of fabric; he stared for a moment in utter incomprehension.

  “Oh, for…You'd prefer not to bleed to death from your backside, yes? If nothing else, that'd be a seriously embarrassing epitaph!”

  Grumbling something made unintelligible by humiliation, anger, pain, and—well, grumbling—he pressed the makeshift bandage to the wound in a motion that apparently struck the tiny northern god with no small measure of amusement.

  “No!” she insisted in response to Olgun's newest image, “I will not make a joke about that! Holy hopping horses, when did I become the mature one on this team?!”

  Choosing, after a long and indecisive moment, not to answer the unspoken questions—or assumptions of lunacy—written clearly across her opponent's face, Shins sheathed her rapier with a flourish even more dramatic than when she'd drawn it. “This,” she told him almost thoughtfully, as though picking up on a conversation inconveniently interrupted, “doesn't need to be any more painful. Agreed?”

  He nodded vigorously, then winced; apparently even that tiny jostle tugged at the new addition to his hindquarters.

  “Oh, a smart decision! I'm so glad. I was afraid that wound I gave you might've caused brain damage.”

  Olgun burst into silent hysterics.

  “Hmm…” Idly tapping a nail against her teeth, making an obvious show of her nonchalance, Shins allowed herself a moment to examine the alleyway in which they'd been fighting. (If, Olgun pointed out in a surge of amused contempt, one could call what the fellow had offered a “fight.”) Other than cheap brick rather than cheap cobblestone or unpaved dirt, it was…well, an alley. Close-leaning, decrepit buildings, lots of grime, smatters of garbage, and the stench of same—though rather less overwhelming, in the winter cold and blanket of snow, than in warmer seasons.

  It had, indeed, been a poor choice of ground to hold; yards from the mouth, the narrow lane ended in a high fence, presumably marking the border of some courtyard or other private land beyond.

  “Dived in without looking,” she commented, idly pacing. “Got more than you expected, yes?”

  She'd meant it as a throwaway comment, a casual taunt at a big, rugged-looking fellow who had just been laid low (and made to sit funny) by a teenage girl. It required neither Olgun's aid, however, nor her years of experience dealing with the most disreputable scum Davillon could belch up, to recognize the knowing, almost guilty look that flickered across his grimacing face.

  “But you did expect it, didn't you?” It wasn't a surprise to her, really. She'd known from Olgun's earliest warning that he'd been deliberately following them, and a lifetime of what some might call paranoia but others would recognize as hard-won experience had suggested the target probably wasn't the young monk.

  Yet, for all that she'd expected it, she felt her stomach clench and her soul shrivel at the implications; felt the embers of rage she'd been nursing since Davillon, fueled by guilt and fanned by hate, flare once more.

  “Why were you following me?” She only realized after she'd spoken that her voice had dropped to little more than a whisper—or a soft growl.

  “Following? No, I wasn't! I was just—”

  Shins took two steps to the side, flipped the man's discarded blade into the air with a foot, then—accompanied by the telltale prickle of Olgun's assistance—caught it and hurled it in the same movement. It sank into the road by his left hand, sliding so perfectly between the bricks that the handle scarcely quivered before coming to a full stop.

  “Paid to,” he said then, nearly stumbling over the words. “Bunch of us, supposed to watch for you, or at least a girl of your description, warned you were dangerous, none of us believed it…”

  “And you were told to watch Wil…the archbishop's tomb?”

  Had the thug nodded any more frantically, Shins would have expected that his head was trying to pop loose and make a run for safety while she was distracted by the rest of him.

  Any grim amusement at the thought, however, was brief enough.

  Who in Lourveaux knew her that well?

  Even back in Davillon, the people who would likely have thought to watch for her here numbered less than a dozen, at least so far as she knew. Almost none of them had the means to acquire eyes here, let alone the motive….

  Maurice…?

  Shins and Olgun both dismissed the thought almost as soon as it surfaced. The monk didn't have a dishonest bone in his body; his mere presence made other people's bones more trustworthy. Besides, it'd been him who warned her of the watchers in the first place, and while Shins had encountered people whose schemes were convoluted enough to involve that manner of deception—including a few clergymen—again, Maurice wasn't remotely one of them. So…

  “Who?” The young woman dropped into a crouch, the better to lock eyes with the wounded man. “Who hired you to—”

  “There! That's her!”

  “Oh, come on!” Shins didn't even need to turn to know what she'd see, though she did so anyway. Several of the citizens who'd seen her almost attack Maurice, and then take off after this fellow here; and along with them, a small patrol of the Church guard. They wore red tabards and simple breastplates, rather than the blinding and puffy garb she'd seen before—perhaps they dressed like mating birds only when guarding holy sites?—but they carried the same halberds, and did so with the same apparent skill.

  And these particular guards were carrying their weapons in Widdershins's direction, rather rapidly.

  “Olgun? This is your doing, yes? Some sort of a prank?”

  She knew, of course, that it wasn't; was already fleeing down the alley before she even sensed his answer. But it almost wouldn't have surprised her if he had claimed credit. Of all the lousy timing…

  The soldiers didn't bother to increase their pace. What would be the point? They were only steps behind her, and in the time it would take even a skilled climber to top the fence…

  “Little assistance, Olgun?”

  Her next step came down on nothing at all, a boost from nonexistent hands. She soared, higher than any normal leap could take her, angled not toward the fence—which was still too high to clear—but the wall beside it. The sole of one boot slapped against old wood, Olgun's power tingled in the air yet again, and Widdershins literally kicked off the wall, launchin
g herself higher still.

  She heard the sprinting guardsmen break into a bout of very un-Church-like cursing as she sailed easily over the fence, landed in a crouch in the dirt of what might once have been someone's vegetable garden, and raced away into the streets of Lourveaux….

  Wondering just how far she'd have to go from Davillon to escape this sort of thing, and who the frogs and fishes was after her this time!

  “Tell me again,” the monk growled around a mouthful of gummy sludge, “why I agreed to accompany you to this revolting establishment?” He was still garbed in clothes that could, with extreme accuracy, be described as un-monk-like; nonetheless, he stood out in this rougher crowd like a maypole in a graveyard.

  Shins looked up from the scuffed and discolored table, grateful for the excuse to turn her attention away from her own—and she used the word loosely—“meal.” The goop in the bowl purported to be stew, but the young woman was quite sure it was lying on that score; she could just tell, by the expression on its face. Even Olgun seemed borderline nauseated, and he neither ate nor even possessed a stomach to upset.

  “Because you agreed to help me figure out who's looking for me,” she reminded him, “and you said this was the only place your…secret contact”—she barely kept the snicker from her voice—“would meet you.”

  “And why am I helping you, instead of fleeing back to the cemetery or the basilica as fast as my sandals can stand?”

  “Because you're wearing boots, for one thing.” Shins took a sip of watery ale, which was absolutely vile but still three steps above the pseudo-stew, then added, her voice friendly, “And second, because if you won't help me, I'll just have to scour Lourveaux for answers all on my own.” She didn't even attempt to make the eyelash flutter that followed appear at all genuine.

  Olgun guffawed in her head, and she was hard pressed to keep from joining in, at Maurice's horrified shudder—not at fear for her safety, she well knew, but at the thought of what might happen to Lourveaux with her loose in its borders. He glared at Shins for a long moment and then, with what sounded like an honest-to-gods “harrumph,” turned his face back to his bowl.

  “Did he just choose eating more of that unholy corruption over talking to us, Olgun? I think I might be insulted! Are you insulted? I feel insulted. You should smite him. Are you allowed to smite monks of other religions? Or is that, I don't know, rude or something?”

  For some time she went on, nattering at Olgun—and Maurice, when he wasn't sufficiently blatant about ignoring her—but all the while, her eyes flickered left and right, her casual gestures and shifts allowing her to survey the room.

  She was not especially taken with what she saw.

  It was, in a word, tavernish. This, in itself, was hardly surprising, what with it being a tavern and all. Shins hadn't been able to read the sign on the way in, but then, nobody could, as it hung, face turned inward, from a single chain that had long since rusted. The inside was a labyrinth of mismatched tables, rickety chairs, sagging floorboards, and rafters whose population of rats probably kept the place well stocked in stew meat. The patrons ranged from merely down on their luck to genuinely and even proudly disreputable, which at least had the advantage of producing enough body odor to overpower the so-called food.

  Given the sorts of establishments she'd frequented in Davillon—the Flippant Witch was more upscale than this place, but not by terribly much, and she'd run that one for a while—Widdershins felt right at home.

  And that, in essence, was the problem. She knew enough to recognize that at least a few of the people here could prove dangerous, but she hadn't the first notion of who was connected to whom, what factions might be at play, or what the local underworld etiquette might be.

  The more she thought about it, the less amused Widdershins grew. When Maurice had begun talking clandestine meetings and shifty dealings, she had literally laughed until she cried. Even minutes ago, it had taken everything she had not to do so again. But she'd been expecting silly, upper-class-slumming sordid.

  This place? This was authentic sordid. An honest monk shouldn't know people who knew people who knew people who would frequent this place!

  “Maurice…” Then, when he appeared to still be ignoring her, “Maurice!” That, and a well-aimed spoon bouncing off the bridge of his nose, finally snagged his attention. “Maybe you'd better tell me about this ‘contact’ of yours, yes?”

  “I thought we agreed that you weren't going to ask any questions.”

  “That was back when I didn't take you seriously. Now I'm un-agreeing.”

  Maurice appeared to be chewing his cheek, but perhaps he was simply struggling not to lose the so-called stew he'd foolishly so-called eaten; Shins couldn't be certain from across the table. Several times his lips began to part, he drew breath to speak, and several times he clearly decided against whatever he was going to say.

  “That's all right, Maurice.” Shins leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, smiling cheerfully. “I'll just follow him after our meeting. We can learn all we need that way, can't we, Olgun?”

  The monk looked as if he'd just seen a ghost, and realized he owed it money. “You can't!”

  “Uh…Actually, it seems pretty simple, yes? Just watch him and walk where he does.”

  “Widdershins…” So distracted was he, Maurice had actually begun fidgeting with the bit of stew left in his bowl. The thief was moderately horrified to realize that it was briefly retaining whatever shape her companion's fingers molded it into. “I know you're good. I know Olgun makes you better.”

  She sniffed, but didn't interrupt.

  “But you don't know Lourveaux. He does. And he's pretty good at this, too. He'll spot you.”

  “Doubt it. But if so…” She tried to shrug, a gesture that did little more than make the chair quiver. “I'll just ask him directly.”

  “You have no idea the damage you could do!” Maurice all but whined.

  “Not a clue,” she acknowledged, voice chipper. “Gods know what I'll be interfering with.” Then, in response to an unspoken comment, “What? Um, no. Do you know? Well, then I didn't mean all gods, did I?”

  And back to her less-intangible conversation partner: “Stop looking at me like I'm crazy.”

  “Why, is it supposed to be a secret?”

  Widdershins was too busy waiting for Olgun's guffaws to stop filling her head to actually respond to Maurice.

  By the time her thoughts cleared and she regained the presence of mind to glare, Maurice had clearly come to a decision.

  “I won't tell you his name,” he said firmly. “But he's…Um…”

  “Not the most informative thing you've told me, that.”

  “He's a…purveyor, and former acquirer, of…exotic wares.”

  “He's an ex-thief and smuggler, and now a fence,” she translated.

  Maurice could offer only a grin more watery than the ale. “Well, yes.”

  Widdershins threw her hands up, very nearly knocking her chair, and herself, entirely over backward. “Why didn't you just say so? It's not like you're going to offend my sensibilities….” She trailed to a halt, slowly cocking her head to one side. “And since my brain's finally caught up with my mouth, you shouldn't even know anyone like that! Why doesn't he offend your sensibilities?”

  “Who says he doesn't?”

  Whatever comment she was about to make was brought up short by the thread of bitterness suddenly winding its way through the monk's voice. She merely nodded instead, not so much urging as allowing him to continue.

  Apparently done fidgeting with the food, Maurice was now absently turning and sliding the bowl in which it lived. “The Church has…lost a lot over the centuries. Texts. Holy relics. Art.” Twist, slide. Slide, twist. “Sometimes pieces can't be located—or, once located, retrieved—by, um, entirely legitimate means.” Twist, slide. “So, the guard looks the other way regarding this man's illegal activities, so long as he keeps them subtle and bloodless, and in return, on occasion…”
Slide, twist.

  “He provides stolen goods for you.” Widdershins hadn't thought she had a high enough opinion of the Church to be disappointed any further. Something about the sheer mundaneness of this all, however, made it worse.

  “Recovered goods,” Maurice corrected her, but it was a halfhearted protest at best. Twist. Slide.

  “Uh-huh. Typical. Just…typical. And how do you know all this?”

  For the first time—not merely in this conversation, but any and all of those she'd had with him—the monk's features went stiff, his eyes hard.

  “There aren't many saints in this world, Widdershins. Even good men sometimes have to get their hands a little dirty. Or at least their assistant's hands.”

  It was Olgun—wasn't it always Olgun, these days?—who kept her from lunging from the chair, hauling off, and smacking the man across from her. The god's spiritual whispers, downy and soothing, damped down her anger enough that it passed before she did something idiotic, rather than after.

  How dare he?! How dare he talk about William that way?

  Except…Maurice had known the archbishop closely, served him for years. Shins had known the man for an evening.

  Might be a bit of a pedestal I've put him on, yes?

  Whether she'd spoken to Olgun or merely thought it, she wasn't certain, and ultimately it didn't matter. Before the little deity could respond, assuming he'd heard her at all, the guest whom they'd awaited finally deigned to arrive.

  He wore the sort of finery that ensured he stood out in a dive like this one without standing out at all. That is, fancier than everyone else here, but not so bright, so rich, so colorful that he appeared to come from a different world. Just a member of the downtrodden who happened to make it good. The gazes that followed him were envious, the mutters of those who stepped aside for him just a tiny bit annoyed, but none crossed the unseen border into “hostile.”