Thief's Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure)

by Marmell, Ari

  Adrienne's luck turned in other areas as well, and she found herself in Darien's company on as many social occasions as religious ones. And that, too, seemed to open further the doors of high society, to smooth the rough edges with which the aristocracy treated her.

  And then, one night, he appeared beside her as Olgun's services came to an end, and the small crowd began to disperse.

  “We should get a move on, love,” she said to him with a smile. “Don't get me wrong, I prefer listening to cats mate than going to opera, but if you don't want to be late…”

  “Actually,” he said, his face strangely serious, “we're not going to the theater tonight. There's someone you need to talk to.”

  Adrienne frowned, but followed as Darien led her across the room, his boots reverberating on the heavy stone. Finally, they stood before another gray-robed figure, his deep hood obscuring his face. She'd seen him earlier, standing near the back of the service, and had wondered who he was, but had forgotten all about it during the service.

  He reached up, slowly—were his hands trembling?—to draw back his hood. Adrienne's eyes grew wide, and a surge of joy wrestled with a vague sense of betrayal deep in her gut.

  “Hello, Adrienne,” said Alexandre Delacroix.

  For long minutes they walked, side by side, along the streets of one of Davillon's higher-rent districts—away from either the shrine or the estate, but also far from anywhere they might feel unsafe.

  “Why?” she finally asked. She could have meant any one of a dozen questions.

  Alexandre sighed. “I've wrestled with this since the day we met, Adrienne.”

  “Stop wrestling and start explaining.”

  He couldn't help but chuckle. “Olgun turned my fortunes around, Adrienne. House Delacroix was destined for poverty, for disgrace, for social exile. I was desperate for a way to save the House—to save myself—and Olgun offered it.”

  “And Cevora?”

  The aristocrat's face fell. “Cevora has been patron of my House for generations beyond counting, and he's been good to us in our time. But either he chose to withhold his favors recently, or they proved insufficient for the tasks at hand. Either way, I shall never fail to honor Cevora for all he's done, for so many years of watching over us. I worship him still. But I grant my faith to Olgun as well, and he has honored me in return. It's why I've allowed Claude to take over most of the religious duties of the household. I revere Cevora, but it didn't feel right for me to be leading the services, you see?” Alexandre smiled shallowly. “Just as well, really. From the day I hired him, Claude took to the worship of Cevora as though he were born to it. I think he's more devout than I ever was.”

  “All very nice,” Adrienne said, face turning briefly jaundiced as they passed beneath a streetlight in dire need of a good cleaning. “But that's not really what I meant, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” Alexandre stopped and turned, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Adrienne, I believe Olgun willed us to meet that night.”

  “I'm sorry, what?”

  “By the evening we met, I'd been attending Olgun's services for slightly more than a year,” Alexandre explained. “And it was everything I could do to keep it a secret—from my own servants, especially. You can just imagine how well Claude took it when I missed evening mass once every week or two.”

  Adrienne snickered.

  “I'd just decided, while on my journey, that I'd have to attend less often—or perhaps find someone who could attend in my stead. But of course, there was nobody I could possibly trust enough to do so. Don't you see, Adrienne? I'd just begun contemplating that, and suddenly there you were! It couldn't be a coincidence!”

  “Is that the only reason you took me in?” she asked quietly.

  “At first,” he admitted. “But only at first, Adrienne. I swear it.”

  “All right,” she said, pretending that the streetlight wasn't blurring behind unshed tears, “but you never told me about Olgun! If I was supposed to be your—your…” She waved her hands helplessly.

  “Proxy?” Alexandre provided.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “At first, because I had to be sure I could trust you. And then because I was afraid you'd feel used, that I'd taken you in with ulterior motives—which, of course, I had. But I discovered I was more worried of you leaving than I was about being found out.

  “And finally, though I was attending less and less often, my fortunes didn't fall. And I realized that Olgun must still be happy with me. That maybe he'd brought you to me for an entirely different reason—because you needed me.”

  Adrienne's cheeks glistened, for she wept openly now. With a soft cry, she threw herself into the old man's arms. And she pretended, as he held her close, not to notice his own tears shining in the lamplight.

  “Of course,” he said, clearing his throat and stepping back, “when young Lord Lemarche asked permission to induct you, I could hardly say no, could I? Best of both worlds and all that.” Alexandre looked down at her with a sudden gleam in his eye that had nothing to do with tears. “You could do worse, you know.”

  Adrienne flushed and elbowed him in the ribs, but she laughed as she did it, and she felt as light as a feather as they began the long walk back home.

  “Excited, love?”

  Adrienne smiled, standing on tiptoes to kiss Darien's cheek. “Maybe a little,” she admitted, fluttering a coquettish smile swiftly hidden beneath her acolyte-white hood. “I've waited months for this.” Hands clasped, they wound their way together down the spiraling stair.

  This would be her last service as a probationary member of the sect. Tonight, she would replace her white robe with the darker gray worn by the others. She could participate directly in services, rather than parroting back the congregational replies. She could speak without waiting for an older member to acknowledge her.

  Fairly prosaic benefits, at best, but a sense of anticipation clung to her throughout the service like a second skin. Her only regret, though she fully understood, was that Alexandre's other, more public duties kept him away from this special gathering.

  Just like that, it was done. The hour passed, Timothy uttered his closing benediction, and the service concluded with a cheerful announcement that today they welcomed a new sister in Olgun. Congratulations were offered (most of which were even sincere); the hidden lever was pulled; the horned idol sank slowly and majestically into the floor.

  And the door to the cult's underground sanctum flew open with a deafening crash. Through it roared an apparition so terrible that several of Olgun's more weak-willed worshippers went quite literally mad at the sight of it.

  It was accompanied by several human compatriots, but Adrienne never got a good look at them. Her gaze locked in fascinated horror on the demonic entity that even now ripped jagged, iron claws through poor Timothy's ample girth. It lifted him by his innards, his feet kicking spastically as blood poured across his killer in some twisted baptism. Before the merchant finished twitching, the creature dropped him, driving the claw on its left thumb through the screaming face of Marie Richelieu. Her terrified cries rose in a brief crescendo of agony, ending in a hideous rattle as her skull broke apart.

  With each second, another of Adrienne's friends died horribly, organs and limbs ripped from their housing and strewn about the room like so many children's toys. Blood sprayed across the chamber, a red-tinged geyser that soaked Adrienne and the others down to the skin. Some of Olgun's rapidly shrinking congregation scattered in panic, only to find their exit blocked by the demon's human allies. Several chose that route anyway, preferring a clean death on assassins' blades to dismemberment by the long-limbed monstrosity. Still others, like Adrienne herself, stood rooted in place. She couldn't move enough even to blink away her tears when Darien's left shoulder vanished completely into the creature's gaping maw, disintegrating between those inhuman jaws.

  Adrienne might have stood with the rest, paralyzed, until death took her in its own sweet time, but something pu
lled her from her stricken trance: a single stab of terrible, almost childlike fear. It came not from the screams of her dying companions, nor from the depths of her own mind, but with the unmistakable “voice” of Olgun himself.

  The god, Adrienne realized with a lurch that nearly stopped her heart, was frightened. “We’re Olgun’s only worshippers, Adrienne,” Darien had told her. So what happened to a god when his worshippers, all his worshippers, were gone?

  That thought spurred her into motion where fear for her own life and limb had not. As the others fell around her, reduced to so much bloody chaff, Adrienne found her hands and feet moving of their own accord. Skills that had lain dormant for years flared to life; fingers and toes grasped at cracks and crevices in the wall. In two blinks of an eye, she was up among the rafters, invisible in the depths of shadow.

  And she watched, helpless, as the world turned red beneath her….

  NOW:

  It wasn't that Olgun had chosen to remain silent.

  No, the tiny deity hadn't warned Widdershins of the hideous presence seeping into the room because he had failed utterly to notice it. It was only Widdershins's own reactions, the wave of unadulterated terror and helpless panic flowing suddenly through her that alerted Olgun that something was wrong.

  And he froze.

  Confronted by something completely beyond his experience, the god found himself paralyzed. It shouldn't have been possible! Nothing, nothing should have been able to slip by him! And yet, his last disciple was threatened by something that he just couldn’t see. The forgotten god knew fear, and still he hesitated, his mind struggling to cope with the shock.

  Though the creature remained undetectable to Olgun's divine senses, the signs of its passage were visible, written across the fabric of reality in a script only a god could read. The shift of floorboards beneath its weight, the play of dust around it as it moved, even the currents in the air—all signaled the presence of something otherwise unseen.

  And there was so little he could do! Even when she called upon him, channeling his resolve through the conduit of her faith, his abilities were feeble indeed. Only the simplest magics remained within his purview, and that was with Widdershins's focus guiding his own, her will and conviction providing Olgun tools with which to work. Without her consciously calling on him, without her motivation to channel his own, he was very nearly helpless.

  Nearly, but not entirely. The impossible was beyond his reach; the improbable might yet be feasible.

  With an act of will unlike any he'd attempted in a thousand years, Olgun focused what little power he retained. Widdershins didn't even notice the tingle in the air as the creature lunged, jaws agape and claws outstretched to rend her limb from bloody, twitching limb. Its clawed foot landed hard as it loomed over her, the shadow of death itself.

  Olgun's power reached its peak, and the floor, weakened by years of neglect in this poverty-stricken tenement, eaten away by dampness and rot, gave out.

  With a startled cry, the hellish creature tumbled through the splitting floorboards, unable in the cramped space available to spread its patagia and slow its fall. The creature's momentum was more than enough, even without Olgun's continued prodding, to send it through the third floor as well, and the second, and the first. The beast finally slammed to a halt in the earthen floor of the cellar, covered in dust and splinters and very, very angry.

  People screamed on the stories above, the entire building swayed like a ship at sea, but the structure held.

  Stairs fell away beneath its feet as the creature pounded upward. It burst through the doorway atop the staircase, door dangling loosely from one clenched fist, to find the room empty.

  That was all right, though. It could find her again.

  The creature sniffed, inhuman eyes narrowing in aggravation. The scent was gone! The spiritual trail, the unique tang of Widdershins's soul that it had followed all the way from the Flippant Witch, had vanished.

  The midget deity must have blocked the scent, much as the demonic beast had used the power of its own divine patron to hide from Olgun. Irritating, but merely inconvenient. It had other ways to track its quarry down.

  “Everyone getting you settled in all right, Your Eminence?”

  De Laurent glanced up from the desk that was the only salient feature of his current office, provided by the second of what was to be an interminable number of hosts. “Good evening, Major. Yes, everything is satisfactory, thank you for asking.”

  “No further problems?” Julien asked, still standing in the doorway.

  “Would your men not have told you if there were?”

  “They would. Still…”

  “Yes, still. No, nothing untoward. Won't you come in for a moment?”

  “I can't, Your Eminence. Too much to do. I just wanted to make sure you were well, and to apologize that I haven't been around much personally these past few nights.”

  “Quite all right, Major. Your men have been more than satisfactory. They—”

  “Excellent. Good night, then, Your Eminence. I'll check in again tomorrow.”

  Brother Maurice appeared in the doorway even as Major Bouniard, looking back over his shoulder, passed through it. “He's looking a bit ill, don't you think?” the young monk asked.

  But the archbishop, his face pensive, shook his head. No, not ill. The major was beginning to look exhausted.

  And perhaps more than a little frightened.

  “Widdershins,” Renard whispered, voice muffled behind his scented kerchief, “were you able to get—gods above!”

  Genevieve raced forward, grabbing her best friend by the shoulders as the young thief staggered. “Shins, what happened?!”

  Widdershins bled from a dozen scrapes and splinters inflicted by the collapsing floor, perspired freely from her flight down the rickety stairs and her terror at her worst nightmare returned from the Pit.

  Her vision swam. The grimy, filth-encrusted alley twisted and warped beneath a second, transparent image of her friends and fellow congregants spread in oozing chunks across the floor of Olgun's shrine. It wasn't enough that the Finders' Guild wanted her dead. It wasn't even enough that they'd summoned some fiend from the deepest dark to hunt her down. But now, to learn that they were responsible for the worst chapter in her life, that it was they who had forced Adrienne Satti to vanish with the stain of murder and worse than murder besmirching her name, ignited a fire in Widdershins's soul.

  “I am tired,” she told Genevieve, voice colder than winter, “of running.” Her hard stare flickered to Renard, who mumbled something under his breath and looked away. “You'll see she has a safe place to stay until the tavern opens, yes?”

  “I'm not sure you should—”

  “Please, Renard. I need you to do this for me.”

  “Of course,” he said softly.

  Widdershins took several steps before Genevieve's hand closed on her shoulder. The thief peered at it as though not entirely certain what it was.

  “Shins, wait! You can't go running off by yourself! You're—”

  “Going to the guild, Genevieve,” Widdershins whispered.

  The barkeep blanched visibly. “What?”

  “They're sending demons after me now, Gen. This has to stop.”

  “Demons? Shins, you're crazy!”

  That brought a brief bob of a head and the flutter of deep auburn hair. “Quite possibly,” the thief admitted. “I'm serious about the demon, though. And I'm serious about taking this back to the guild.” For an instant, her face softened, her façade cracked. “Gen, I don't want to die. And I don't want you to get hurt. I have to find out what this is about, and I have to do something about it, and I have to do it now. I'm sorry.”

  Gently, she raised her left hand to her right shoulder, lifted Genevieve's pale and trembling fingers from her tunic, and vanished once more into the clustering shadows.

  Widdershins crouched on a rooftop across from the Finders' Guild hall—the same rooftop, in fact, that Bouniard and Chape
lle had chosen as their own vantage point, though of course she had no way of knowing that. In all official records and upon any casual inspection, the building on which she'd locked her gaze was simply a large office for a company—relatively unsuccessful, at that—specialized in pawn-brokering, money-lending, and insurance policies on long-distance caravans.

  Few people on either side of Davillon's law-and-order divide remained ignorant of the place's true nature. But everyone who attempted to infiltrate the place was murdered in some brutal fashion, and even if the City Guard had possessed the manpower and the cannon to take the place by main force, the Hallowed Pact forbade open war between two organizations with patron deities. So the Guard pretended they didn't know about the place and left it well alone; it was the only sane thing to do.

  Tonight, Widdershins was ever so slightly south of sane, and she wasn't about to let anything as insignificant as near-certain death come between her and the answers she so desperately needed.

  She'd made a quick stopover after parting company with Gen and Renard, darting briefly into an apothecary's shop that the proprietor foolishly thought was closed for the evening. Her own knowledge of herbs and medicines would have fit on an arrowhead, while still leaving room for a jaunty sonnet. Olgun, however, was more than able to fill in the gaps in Widdershins's knowledge. In a matter of moments, she'd gathered what she needed and flitted from the shop.