by Ari Marmell
Taller than Robin, she was, at a guess, probably closer to Widdershins's age, maybe older. Her hair was the sort of blonde that the old tales might have called gossamer or moonlight, but for which Shins was quite content with “blonde.” She wore what looked very much like a fancier version of Robin's own clothes, topped with a tightly laced vest of black.
“Who…?” Shins actually felt dizzy, turned her focus back to Robin, again began to ask, “Who…?” And only then did her brain finally register the room's final surprise.
Robin leaned on a thick cane, her fingers going bloodless, so tightly were they pressed into the wooden grip.
Shins was not, quite clearly, the only one overwhelmed. That near-deathgrip suddenly trembling, Robin stumbled. Her old friend gasped, moved to catch her, but the stranger reached her first. She wrapped an arm around Robin's waist, steadying her, and even when the younger woman stood upright once more, the other kept a gentle, supporting hand on her shoulder.
Finally, it appeared Robin had pulled herself together, at least enough for words. “Widdershins?”
Shins almost broke, then and there. The thick concoction of doubt and fear, delight and hope, hurt and yearning and, yes, anger…it was a toxin, leeching into her heart, her lungs, her soul. Crying openly, she all but threw herself into her friend's arms, slowing only at the last second as she remembered Robin's unsteadiness and her cane. The stranger, once she was certain that Robin was not, in fact, to be knocked from her feet, glided a few steps backward, her own expression a blank mask.
And for a few intense, glorious moments, the two old friends held tight to one another and wept together.
Only for a few moments. Robin pulled back without warning, so quickly that it was Shins's turn to stagger. She caught herself, looked into her friend's face, jaw already moving to ask a question…
She saw, though Robin's face was wet with tears, that her lips had gone flat, her eyes flinty.
“I'm glad to see you're not hurt,” the younger woman said in a near monotone. “We've been worried for a long time.”
“Robin? I—”
“Did you just get in, Shins? You smell like a used saddle.”
It was just the sort of comment Robin would have made in good humor, but there was nothing behind it here. These were the motions, and she was determined to go through them.
“Robin?” Shins tried again. “Are you…not happy to see me? Did I do someth—”
The other woman, standing back and silently seething this whole time, erupted. “Did you do something?!” Shins actually jumped at her voice, found herself backpedaling as the stranger advanced. “How can you even ask her that?! How dare you ask her that?!”
“What are you talking about, you crazy—?”
“Faustine,” Robin said at the same time, but the woman didn't hear her.
“You abandoned her!” Faustine accused, her finger an angry dagger jutting at Shins's chest. “You were her best friend, her only family! The only one that made her feel safe! And you just walked out, leaving her to wonder if you were ever coming back, how she was going to make it, if you were even alive or dead! You selfish, heartless—!”
Shins saw nothing but fire, heard nothing in the pounding of her ears except the roar and crackle of that flame. Not since Aubier, where she learned her self-loathing anger and Olgun's own fury had enflamed one another, had she felt anything close to such rage. She hadn't thought herself capable of it, anymore, but here it was, sucking her in, wrapping its ugly tendrils tight about her.
She lashed out, fast and brutal, a blow that might well have caused this Faustine severe or lasting injury. Even as she attacked, however, Olgun was there; Olgun was always there, ready to save her from any danger. Even herself.
Flowing as if through a burst dam, a torrent of emotion crashed through her burning anger. Dredged from the depths of her mind, the nesting place of dreams, they flooded through her, summoned and guided by her own personal god.
And Shins knew—she remembered—with whom she was truly furious. Why Faustine's words had so viciously stung.
Because Widdershins had long accused herself of precisely the same thing.
No way, in that fraction of a second, for her to halt the strike she'd begun. Between her own reflexes and Olgun's aid, however, she was able to slow it, flatten her palm, transform what would have been a bruising, possibly bone-breaking blow into a vicious shove. The woman staggered back almost to the wall, nearly toppled, gasped in pain as she clutched her chest, but nothing more. Nothing worse.
“You have no idea!” Shins screamed, her fists tight and shaking. Even in her tirade, though, she couldn't miss Robin limping clumsily, awkwardly to Faustine's side. “You have no hopping idea what I'd been through! What I'd seen! What I'd lost! I had to get out for a while! I had to—”
This time, when Faustine interrupted, her voice was calm, almost soft, yet wrapped around a core of jagged iron. “Had to walk away from someone who counted on you, someone who'd seen just as bad? Had to make sure that she lost someone, too?”
Shins felt Olgun stepping in again, ready to calm her down despite the ever-heating furnace of his own anger, but this time it wouldn't prove necessary. Faustine's words were a thick coat of frost filling Shins's, heart and throat, ice that even her lingering fury couldn't melt.
“Who are you?” she demanded when she finally could choke out a few words. “Why are you even here?”
It was Robin, however, who answered. Very deliberately, like a performer on stage, she transferred her cane to her other hand so she could wrap her right arm around Faustine's waist. “Faustine, this is Widdershins. You kind of figured that out. Shins, this is Faustine. My girlfriend.” The words were an announcement, yes, but also a challenge, a gauntlet thrown at Widdershins's feet.
Shins, by this point, was beginning to feel as though she and her language skills had perhaps become separated, having lost track of one another back when they were being pursued by the guards. Her eyes blinked, her jaw went slack—or maybe it was the other way around; she was befuddled enough that it could have been—and yet another moment passed while she struggled to remember what her voice was for and how to use it.
“Girlf…what do you mean, girlfriend?”
“What does it usually mean?” Robin retorted. Then, as Shins continued to stare, unable to absorb so much at once, the younger girl sighed, wrapped her arms around Faustine's neck, and pulled her down until their lips met. Faustine stiffened, at first, quivering as though she wanted to run, then all but melted into the kiss.
“Sorry,” Faustine muttered as they finally came up for air. Her face was flushed so deeply she looked more floral than animal. “I'm…still not used to other people seeing…”
“Shh. I know.” Robin, still holding the other woman tight, turned again toward Widdershins. “Is that clear enough?” she demanded, somehow defiant. “Or do I need to slide her hand up my skirts?”
“Robin!” Faustine shouldn't have been able to go any redder, but she managed. It was a miracle enough blood remained in the rest of her body to keep her standing.
Widdershins's own shock and bewilderment, however, blew violently apart, a heap of leaves and twigs in a gale. She'd overplayed it, Robin had; she was too challenging, too hostile.
“You want me to have a problem with this,” Shins accused. “You want me to be upset. Why? So you have another reason to be angry with me?”
“That's horseshit!” Robin's expression twisted, angry and ugly, but she also blushed faintly and couldn't quite seem to meet her friend's gaze.
With a final off-kilter frown at Robin, Faustine said, “It's not like she needs another reason, Widdershins.”
“Why?! Look, just because I—!” Gently, perhaps even tentatively, Olgun directed her thoughts back to Robin's cane.
“I'm an idiot,” Shins whispered. This time, Olgun didn't even make the obvious retort. “What happened, Robin?”
The girl wilted. Eyes downcast, she shuffled back
ward to sit in, almost fall into, the nearest chair. Still studying the floor, she hiked up her skirt—that skirt Widdershins had thought, from the moment she arrived, was so out of character—practically to her waist.
“Gods…” Hardly helpful, but Shins had no idea what else to say.
Robin's right thigh bore a grotesque wound, one Shins knew even at a glance must have been inflicted by some sort of blade. For all that it had scarred over, it clearly wasn't terribly old. The flesh, still faintly reddened, puckered and wrinkled around it, somehow obscene in its contours and bulges. The whole patch of flesh cratered inward a bit, as though a bit of the tissue beneath had just given up entirely and atrophied away.
“For days, nobody could tell us if I would live or die.” Her words were bitter, throat-stinging and eye-watering, equal parts rotten horseradish and bile. “It was weeks before I could even start to walk. I'm never going to run again, Shins. I can't stand through a full shift downstairs. It burns with the slightest touch or change in the weather. They tell me that'll probably fade one day. Probably. One day.”
“Oh, Robin. I'm so—”
“Don't you dare. Don't you dare!” She was on her feet again, however shaky, and Shins honestly expected the cane to come hurtling at her any second. “This is your fault!”
“That's not fair! I know that if I'd been here—!”
“Fair?! Gods dammit, Shins, this was directed at you!”
Shins couldn't tell whether she or Olgun was the more stunned, the more paralyzed. “…what?”
“This was a message for you. Because nobody knew where to find you. I was just honored with the task of playing messenger.
“If you'd been here—if you'd been standing with your friends, instead of turning your back on the people who…” The tiniest choke interrupted, but Robin fought past it. “…the people who love you, this would never have happened!”
The atmosphere in the chamber had long since melted to liquid, then frozen to glass. Now it shattered, every shard a blade, every blade slicing clean across thoughts and dreams and memories. They bled as fiercely as any physical wound. Widdershins had no memory of choosing to flee, no memory even of the tavern as she passed through, or the peculiar response she must have gotten from Gerard as she flew by. She couldn't even make herself care, when the thought finally occurred, that she might well be committing a smaller echo of the same sin for which she'd just been fearsomely rebuked. She knew only that every breath, every heartbeat, brought her closer to falling apart, and she could not be caught in Robin's accusing stare when it happened.
She felt Olgun's presence, of course, as she always did, but she could take no comfort in it. No, not so; she perversely would take no comfort in it, refusing to acknowledge his gentle but insistent tug. She could not let herself be soothed by anyone else—not even a god—who relied on her. It felt wrong. Dishonest.
Water on cobbles and mud between cobbles sprayed from beneath her heel with every heavy step. Frigid as it was, she welcomed the predawn rain, even yanking her collar loose so it could wash over her neck, her shoulders, her back, as well as through her hair, across the upturned face she aimed stubbornly at the clouds.
It felt clean. Smelled clean. It was the only thing tonight that had.
She stood, still, soaking, letting her thoughts run away in rivulets like the dirt of her journeys. Until, when it was already so close that any enemy could have done her serious harm, she heard the splashing steps of someone's approach.
Her rapier had cleared the scabbard up to the tip before Shins realized precisely who she was looking at.
“You have a lot of gall,” she spat at the other woman, whose own blonde hair was now plastered flat to her scalp and shoulders. “What the hopping hens do you want?”
“You actually do say that,” Faustine marveled. “I thought she was exaggerating.”
“Why didn't you warn me she was coming?” Shins hissed at Olgun while waiting for the woman to say something that actually mattered. The little god, who'd been trying to get her attention for some time now, huffed off to go grumble in some metaphysical corner.
“Look, Shins…”
“No. Uh-uh. Nope. Only friends get to call me that.”
The small cascade of water shifted as Faustine raised an eyebrow. “Because ‘Widdershins’ is so much more formal?” Then, when Widdershins refused to respond, “Can we at least go back inside to talk?”
“Feel free.”
Faustine sighed, a sound stolen away by the weather long before it could reach anyone. “Widdershins, you…we think you may be in danger.”
“And you came to bask in it, yes?”
“Oh, gods dammit! Robin's angry! She's in awful pain, body and soul. But she wouldn't want you to be hurt, and you know it!”
“Do I?” She'd meant it as a challenge, but it emerged a plea.
“Of course you do. Robin loves you, Widdershins. Your leaving couldn't have hurt her so badly if she didn't.”
Shins nodded dumbly. Though still unwilling to go back inside the Witch, she at least stepped into the doorway of a building across the way, motioning Faustine to follow. The overhang couldn't keep the rain completely off them, but it was better than nothing.
“And why do you care if I get hurt?” she asked. No challenge or confusion, this time, just honest curiosity.
“Because she does.”
A second, firmer nod. “She doesn't know you came after me, does she?”
“No. And she'll be upset when I come back soaked. But she would have thought of this, if she was clear-headed, and she'd have wanted you to know.”
“All right. I'm listening.”
“Your friend Renard?”
Shins couldn't quite hold back a crooked half-smile, thinking of the strutting, peacock-ish fop of a thief. So full of himself, yet the most stalwart friend and mentor—well, former mentor—she could have asked…
The smile fell as though the rain had washed it off her face. “What about him? Did something happen?”
Faustine actually took Shins's hand in her own; the thief stiffened but forced herself not to pull away. “We don't know,” she admitted. “He always came by the Witch regularly. Said it was just because he could drink for cheap, but Robin and I both knew he was checking up on her.
“Couple of months ago, he came by, fretting like I've never seen him. He told us something was wrong. Something in the Finders’ Guild.”
Ah. Funny how they keep popping up, yes?
“He didn't say much,” Faustine continued, “just told us to start being extra careful. Said things were getting rough, and he didn't know how much he could protect us.
“That was the last time he came by with any regularity, Widdershins. And he hasn't shown up at all in weeks. We figured, you've already had problems with the Guild in the past, so with gods-know-what going on…”
Shins had to swallow twice before she could answer, clearing her fear for Renard from her throat. “Thank you,” she said, only slightly grudgingly. “I…don't suppose you know what he meant by ‘getting rough’?”
“He didn't say specifically,” the other woman answered. “But between Robin's place at the tavern and my job—I'm a local courier—we both hear things. Lots of things.
“There's a lot going wrong in Davillon right now, and part of that is the Finders’ Guild. They've gotten brutal. Vicious. And overt enough that everyone's scared. I mean, they were always dangerous, but now it's like they're shedding blood for the fun of it!”
Shins pulled free of Faustine's grip and began to pace—which, given the size of the canopy, meant basically one big step in each direction. It was a testament to how distracted she was that she didn't start to feel really, really foolish.
“Doesn't make any sense,” she muttered, a sentiment to which Olgun could only vehemently agree. “What's the Shrouded Lord thinking?”
A particular doubt took root in her mind, planted by divine effort, and blossomed.
“You think so?”
Then, answering herself before he could, “You may be right. I can't imagine why he'd change so much, but if he's not in control anymore…. But who in the Guild would be so…?”
So completely, so abruptly did Widdershins freeze that Faustine jumped. The cold, the wet, the world, even the deep ache of Robin's reaction to her homecoming, all of it was gone. There was nothing for Shins, nothing around her, nothing to her.
Nothing but a gaping darkness and a slowly growing ember of pure, murderous hate.
Robin's wound was a message. A message for Widdershins.
The wound in Robin's upper thigh.
And the Guild had turned suddenly sadistic, brutal…
“Who attacked Robin?”
Shins didn't know what she sounded like, but it couldn't have been pleasant; Faustine actually retreated a step. “Wh-what?”
“The attacker. The one who stabbed her. Who was it?”
“We…we don't know…”
“Describe her!”
Faustine squeaked something only marginally intelligible. Then, “It was a woman! She was fast, so impossibly fast! We didn't…I couldn't see her face, not in her hood, but her hair was an almost brilliant red…. Wait. How did you know it was a ‘her’?”
But Shins was no longer listening to anything but the voices in her head, her own and Olgun's both.
Lisette.
She had wondered, on and off. After the men she'd had to kill in Castle Pauvril—not in self-defense, as she'd done before, but coldly, deliberately, for a greater good—the guilt had almost crushed her. And though she'd hoped she didn't have it in her at all, she'd wondered, idly, in the days that followed, what it might take for her to kill, to murder, without remorse.
Now, she knew. Now, Widdershins not only could kill, she swore she would.
And just this once, she would revel in it.
The weather had finally—if only partly—cleared, sometime around midmorning. The rain deteriorated into a soupy fog, the kind that, though more subtle than any precipitation, still managed to soak through and moisten just about everything.
