by Ari Marmell
“If I want comedy,” their host rejoined, “I'll hire a jester. Of course I want somebody killed, you blithering imbecile!”
The leather-clad killer shrugged. “Ask a stupid question—”
The nobleman—or the assassin garbed as one—stepped forward, cutting off his companion. “It's been some time since you've asked us to meet with you personally. And while your errant Guardsman was somewhat terse, I could hear the excitement in his voice. I can only assume you've located Adrienne Satti.”
“Very good, Jean Luc. I'm glad to see there's at least one brain amongst you.” To the group at large, he continued, “Indeed, I have found our wayward cultist—something, I must remind you, none of you has managed in two years.” He met their eyes, reminding them one by one of his displeasure; and one by one, these hardened assassins turned away. “And indeed, I'll be calling on your talents to assist me with her final disposition. But for now, all I want you to do is locate her alias—Roubet will fill you in—so that you can find her when necessary. She is not your current target. I have an entirely other commission in mind for you.”
A smattering of confused murmurs arose from the group. The chamber's bizarre acoustics bounced them back as a veritable hissing chorus.
“I'm sure, by now,” the Apostle continued, rather than awaiting the obvious question, “that each of you has heard of the dignitary soon to grace our fair city with his presence?”
The room echoed again, not with puzzled whispers but a series of stunned gasps.
“I see that you have.” The Apostle smiled, a gleam of white amidst the unrelenting black. “Let me tell you what I require….”
The door slammed behind her with an awful ring of finality, the snapping trapdoor of a gallows. The private rooms of the Flippant Witch were plain, simple: six chairs and a single table in each, and nothing more. Nonchalant, or at least trying hard to appear that way, Widdershins confronted the trio who'd shepherded her in here. A jaunty smile fixed on her face as though glued to her jaw, she hopped up to sit on the table, her legs crossed demurely and dangling over the edge.
“Brock,” she greeted the hulking boulder of a man.
“I'm so pleased you remember me, Widdershins,” he rumbled, a cruel little grin playing at the corners of his mouth.
“What? No, actually, I didn't. I just have a habit of cursing in High Chicken when I'm startled. Brock! Brock-brock-brock-brock-brock-brock! Bu-caw!” She blinked coyly. “See? Like that.”
The grin slid from Brock's face, leaving a faint trail, and his teeth ground against one another. “Oh, you're funny,” he growled.
“I am? Really? I'm so glad you told me. Based on your expressions, I'd never have guessed that—that—”
Her voice broke into a nervous gulp as the glowering twist to Brock's visage shifted even farther down the spectrum from “unaamused” toward “homicidal.” Widdershins decided that, just maybe, Brock-baiting was not the healthiest pastime to engage in.
With his short-cropped dark hair and rock-solid jawline, Brock might even have been deemed handsome, if someone of a far gentler persuasion had resided behind his face. Though a member in good standing of the Davillon Finders' Guild, Brock wasn't actually a thief. He was, rather, one of the guild's “negotiators”—or, in more mundane terms, a leg-breaker. He was no less a blunt object than the weapon he favored.
He stepped nearer the table, his tread shaking the floorboards into spitting tiny puffs of dust. Widdershins's eyes, of their own accord, flickered to the enormous hammer at his side.
In her agitation, and in spite of her determination not to taunt the man any further, she blurted, “Gee, Brock, I didn't know you were a blacksmith. What—what were you planning to forge with that?” She chuckled nervously, and wished now she hadn't sat atop the table. Her position offered little room to retreat. “You know, when they talk about members of the Finders' Guild ‘forging' things, that's not really what they mean. See, most people in our line of work prefer pen and ink. It's really a lot more—”
“Shut. The hell. Up.”
She did just that, leaning back ever farther as Brock loomed nearer, until it seemed that she might wind up lying flat on her back in order to meet his gaze. He finally stopped, however, no more than a foot away.
“You annoy me,” he told her succinctly. “That's never a wise idea.”
“It's a habit,” she retorted instinctively. “What do you want with me?”
“What do I usually want from people, Widdershins? What they owe the guild. And you, girl, are a little behind.”
His fellow thugs smirked at the entendre.
Widdershins scowled despite herself. Lisette again—it had to be. Nobody else would be riding her yet about a job she'd just completed yesterday.
He could, she supposed, have been speaking of other, older jobs, but she'd never held back on those. Well, not much; everyone held out a little.…
“I don't know what you're talking about!” she insisted, indignant.
The others chuckled once more, having heard it a thousand times from a thousand mouths. Brock shook his head. “Of course you haven't,” he said snidely. “This is all a big mistake.”
“Well, yes, it is! And besides,” she added quickly as his hand settled on the heavy mallet, “if you kill me, the guild never gets what I supposedly owe them! They'd be unhappy with you for that, yes?”
“I'm not supposed to kill you,” Brock told her, his breath a caustic cloud mere inches from her face. “I'm not,” he added, sounding vaguely put out by the whole thing, “even supposed to break any bones. I'm just supposed to make sure that you remember our conversation.” He smiled an uneven, gap-toothed smile as his hammer slid loose with a slimy hiss. “I think you'll remember.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she told him, forcing a laugh through a dry mouth. “Never forget a word of it. You've set me straight, Brock. No sense in wasting any more time on me!”
“This will go easier,” he told her, hefting the mallet, “if you don't fight.”
“Probably,” she agreed, slamming her shins with crushing force up between Brock's legs and into one of his few tender spots. “But ‘easy' is boring.” She smiled at the shocked expressions of the other enforcers, even as their boss slid to the floor with an agonized whimper. “Wouldn't you agree, boys?”
They needed only seconds to shake off their stupor, to advance on the tiny thief, snarls on their faces and blades in their fists. But in those precious moments of confusion, Widdershins rolled backward, rising to her feet in the center of the table, rapier in hand. The wood creaked beneath her weight, shifted precariously, but held. The blade carved tiny circles in the air as she waited, watching, as the thugs fanned out to flank the table.
Widdershins had time for precisely two thoughts. The first was a brief prayer of thanks for Genevieve's high ceilings; the second a tense whispered instruction to Olgun to “Watch my back!” And then there was no more time for thought at all.
The first enforcer, a scar-faced man with a scraggly blond beard and matching yellow teeth, lunged across the table's edge, attempting to cut Widdershins's ankles out from under her with a wickedly curved dagger. It was, at their respective heights and angles, an impossible parry. The sensible move would have been for Widdershins to step back out of reach.
Which, of course, would have put her squarely in line for a similar attack from the man's companion, a smaller, rat-faced fellow with pockmarked skin. And it would have worked, if Olgun hadn't been bellowing a warning in Widdershins's mind. She indeed stepped backward, but instantly kicked out behind her with her other leg. The thug's vision filled with a blur of soft black leather, and by the time he'd realized that what he saw was the business end of a boot, it had already spread his nose across his left cheek with an unfortunate snap.
The bearded man, having brilliantly reached the conclusion that things weren't going as planned, hurled himself up onto the table, rising in a knife-fighter's crouch. Widdershins, stooping slightly herself, cir
cled warily. She stepped right and he moved to follow, neither looking away, neither daring to blink. Step, follow. Step, follow. Step…Widdershins could barely keep from grinning. Gods, but the man was a nitwit! Follow…The bruiser scowled, uncertain why this impudent bitch was smirking at him. Step, follow.
With a very brief cry and a dull thump, he stepped clean off the table to land, seat first, on the unforgiving floor.
Laughing openly now, Widdershins crossed the wood and delivered a sharp, swift kick to the man's temple. He collapsed next to his bloody-faced companion like a sack of very ugly grain.
“Well,” Widdershins said snidely to the room at large, “I think you boys have accomplished your mission here. I guarantee you, this is an evening I'll remember for a very long eeeep!”
That bit of extemporaneous grammar was the result of Brock surging abruptly to his feet, red faced and roaring like a goosed tiger. His hammer slammed down, a thunderbolt hurled from the heavens, directed not at Widdershins but at the table. Wood splintered, the entire surface tilted sharply, and Widdershins, with a brief squeak, was on her back and sliding.
She found herself fetched up in a twisted heap at Brock's feet, rapier lying uselessly just beyond her grasp. A sick feeling roiling inside her gut, as though she'd swallowed a live and very frisky eel, Widdershins pushed the hair from her face, blinked the dust from her eyes, and peered up with a wan smile.
“Brock? You're a reasonable man, yes? I know that we can come to some sort of understanding if—Brock, your orders! You're not supposed to kill me, remember?”
Apparently, he did not remember. With an inarticulate bellow, he raised his hammer high, fully intending to pulp the young woman's skull between the weapon and the floor.
Widdershins kicked him in the groin again.
Brock couldn't have frozen any more utterly had he gazed lovingly into the face of a gorgon. For interminable seconds the tableau held: the massive enforcer standing above her, immobile as the earth itself; Widdershins, foot still buried someplace unpleasant, equally motionless. And then the air in Brock's lungs joyously escaped to freedom with a sudden whoosh. His pupils actually crossed, his grip went slack, and…well, Widdershins didn't see what else, since she had to scramble madly to remove her face from the path of the hammer that now tumbled from nerveless fingers. It hit hard, splintering the wood beside her ear and ripping several strands of hair from her head.
When Brock followed his weapon to the floor a moment later, she was forced to scuttle aside once more, this time to avoid being crushed by three-hundred-some-odd pounds of thug.
Battered and dust-caked, Widdershins bent to retrieve her rapier, clucking her tongue at the mess they'd made of Genevieve's furniture, and marched haughtily from the room. She felt a faint glimmer of satisfaction from Olgun.
“Oh, please. Like you helped.” She frowned at his indignant protest. “Yes, you warned me of the guy behind me. Well, thank you so much. You couldn't maybe have actually done something about one of them? I almost got my head turned into so much carpeting.”
Genevieve was on her in a flash, slowed only marginally by her bad leg. “Gods, Shins, are you all right?”
Widdershins probably would have replied, but her friend's violent embrace was only marginally looser than that of a hungry boa constrictor. Genevieve failed to notice the faint bulging around the thief's eyes.
“I'm so sorry!” the barkeep sobbed over and over. “Gods, I'm so sorry.”
“Gen—” Widdershins finally managed to croak. “Air…”
“Oh!” Flushing an embarrassed crimson, Genevieve loosened her death grip and stepped back. Widdershins gasped in what might have been gratitude.
The other patrons of the Flippant Witch, she noticed, were staring at them with a fascinating mixture of expressions, and Widdershins decided that this probably wasn't a conversation to have in public, or even anywhere vaguely public-adjacent.
“Robin!” she shouted (after sucking in a few more deep breaths), summoning the small serving girl to her side.
“Is she all right?” Robin asked with a concerned glance at her employer.
Great, Widdershins grumbled silently. I'm the one who almost got pulped into a pastry, and the brat wants to know if Genevieve's all right. “She'll be fine, Robin. We just need to talk for a few minutes. Can you handle being in charge out here for a little while?”
“Oh, sure. I've run an entire shift before. But you tell me if you need anything.” She looked up at Widdershins, expression iron-hard and insistent. The thief couldn't help but laugh.
“I'll do that,” she chuckled, again tousling the girl's hair. Then, taking Genevieve by the shoulders, she led her disconsolate friend toward another of the private rooms, snagging a decanter of wine and a goblet from the bar as they passed.
“Did they hurt you?” Widdershins asked softly as they neared the door.
“What? Oh, no, not…not at all.” Genevieve's eyes clouded again, and she sniffled loudly. “They just…they wanted to know when you'd be here next. I didn't want to tell them anything, Shins, I swear to Banin I didn't! But—”
“Hush, Gen. It's all right. I understand.” She did, too. Brock was frightening enough to Widdershins, accustomed as she was to the sorts of people with whom she shared Davillon's shadows. For someone like Genevieve Marguilles, he'd be downright terrifying.
There was, however, one little detail she needed to know.
“Gen,” she asked, voice calm, “you didn't tell them…that is, about me, did you?”
“Tell…” For an instant, her mouth quirked in puzzlement, and then her face fell. “No, of course not! Gods, I'd never—”
“I know,” Widdershins assured her. “I just had to ask.”
Genevieve, so far as Adrienne knew, was the only other human being alive who knew that Widdershins had once been Adrienne Satti. If she were ever identified and arrested, Widdershins knew she couldn't expect anything resembling a fair trial, or even a clean execution. When it came to vindictiveness, the aristocracy could have taught the Finders' Guild a thing or two.
But with that unpleasant possibility thankfully out of the way, there was nothing remaining but to comfort her traumatized friend as best she could.
When Widdershins released her hold on Genevieve's shoulders to shove open the narrow door, she discovered that their so-called private room was already occupied.
A short but impishly handsome fellow sat smugly in the farthest chair, his booted feet propped up on the edge of the table. The twinkle in his azure eyes vaguely belied the frown of concern that twisted his lips and jet-black mustache.
Genevieve, already as jittery as a wine-addled monkey, loosed a shrill cry. Widdershins merely put a comforting hand once more around her friend's shoulder and scowled at the intruder.
“What in the name of Khuriel's left shoe are you doing here, Renard?”
Renard Lambert rose to his full unimpressive five-foot-seven and bowed extravagantly. He wore today a long tunic of the finest fabrics, constructed in panels of white and sapphire blue, and trimmed in gold embroidery. His boots boasted bright buckles—and, Widdershins knew from experience, several hidden daggers—and he sported a deep purple half cape and a white flocked hat with an ostrich plume.
“Do the gods even wear shoes, dear Widdershins?” he asked her.
“If you don't tell me why you're here, and why you felt it necessary to frighten my friend half to death, you're going to be eating your own shoes. So spit it out!”
With a magnanimous gesture, the finery-bedecked man motioned for them to come in. As though we needed his invitation.
“It's all right, Gen,” she said softly to her pallid friend, steering her gently through the doorway. “He's harmless.” She cast a sideways glance at the smiling popinjay. “More or less.
“Renard,” she continued, once she'd firmly shut the door behind them, “this is Genevieve Marguilles, the owner of this tavern and, therefore, your host. Genevieve, Renard Lambert, a friend—acq
uaintance—of mine, and an incorrigible thief. Keep an eye on your silverware, your coin purse, and possibly your hair. He's almost as good as he thinks he is.”
“You wound me, Widdershins,” Renard complained. “As you say, we are guests in this dear lady's establishment. I never steal from a host, Mademoiselle Marguilles. Bad for the social standing.”
“Thief?” Genevieve tensed, as though she would bolt from the room. Widdershins passed her a goblet of wine, which the innkeep drained in one long swallow. “Is…,” she started, faltered, choking shallowly on her drink. “Is it really a good idea to be talking to him? I mean, after…”
Renard's smile faded. “I am indeed of the guild, Mademoiselle, but I can assure you that I strongly disagree with some small number of their more draconian policies—at least where my friends are concerned. Neither of you has aught to fear from me.”
“That's true enough,” Widdershins agreed blandly, refilling Genevieve's drink. “Since he knows I'd kill him three times if he tried anything.” Then, despite herself, she grinned at the injured look on his face.
“Actually,” she grudgingly acknowledged, “Renard's always done right by me. He was my assigned trainer when I joined the guild. Helped me assimilate, showed me the ropes.”
“Since otherwise you were liable to get yourself hanged from one of them.” Renard smiled.
“And he's got a serious hate for certain people who hate me, so I guess that puts him on my side. Whether I want him or not,” she couldn't help but add.
Renard, classy and urbane Renard, stuck his tongue out at her.
“All of which,” she concluded, “has taken us kind of away from the point. Which was, why were you skulking about in here?”
“I,” Renard sniffed, “do not skulk. I sneak. I prowl. I have even, upon occasion and at need, been known to lurk. But I have never once—”
“—managed to keep silent for two minutes straight,” Widdershins interrupted. “Would you shut up and answer the question?”
