Covenant's End (11 page)

The ghostly children cooed; the trio of fae nodded in unison.

“In the interim, they ride the magics they've bestowed upon
me,” Lisette continued, now clearly bragging. “Lets them manifest in Davillon for small periods of time. And they
so
wanted to be here for you, specifically.”

Shins figured she was supposed to ask why and kept her teeth clenched tight. She wouldn't offer the satisfaction.

“For the same reason,” Lisette said, as though she actually
had
asked, “we've eased the pain of your injury.

“Part of our bargain is that I let them in on the fun, you see.”

The adolescent-looking fae with the reflective eyes advanced, then, the lashes on his left hand twitching,
writhing
, living tendrils of inhuman hatred.

“I wonder,” Lisette pondered aloud, “if their tender ministrations will kill you before you have the chance to bleed to death. I wonder if they'll feel it when a god
dies
.”

Not like this. It wasn't supposed to go like this. I'm so sorry, Olgun…

The vile creature raised its hand to strike, but Shins couldn't even see it through her tears.

This time, the dream was different.

Bishop Sicard awoke screaming, his cheeks glistening and his beard soaked with tears. Still he'd seen no recognizable images, gleaned no clear meaning from the baroque nightmare.

He knew only that somewhere, someone suffered. Somewhere, the world teetered on the verge of losing something infinitely, irreplaceably precious.

Again Sicard buried his face in his hands. And for long minutes, grieving for he knew not what, the holy man wept.

She couldn't remember her name, for even the
concept
of name, of self, had fallen away. If her whole world had become agony before, now there was no such thing as “world.” No consciousness.

No awareness.

No memory.

Not even a desire for it all to stop, because she couldn't recall that there ever had been, or ever could be, anything else.

She screamed, a constant, despairing keen, with no realization that she had ever
not
been screaming. Body, mind, and soul, she began to break, fractures running ruthlessly through her; fractures that, if permitted to widen, could never possibly heal. Still she didn't care, because she didn't even know she
could
, and beneath her, all around her, the abyss gaped, nearer, ever nearer…

Something else? Was there something else? She'd lost the very
notion of “else,” but it came slowly trickling back as she heard it. Not in her ears, not only in her mind, but somewhere betwixt and between.

She screamed—and he screamed with her. The agony was not hers alone; he suffered, as she had never, ever known he
could
suffer.

He?

Olgun!

Olgun? Then that would make me…

Opening her eyes in that moment was the second hardest thing Widdershins had ever tried to do.

Remembering
Widdershins,
being
Widdershins, was the hardest.

But she was. And she did. Because he needed her to.

She saw only the floor on which she lay, dark stone covered in dust and grit; and in the corner of her vision, a blurry lump, only slightly brighter in hue, that might have been the leg of a table or a…

Desk. The Shrouded Lord's desk.

As if that single second of sight had opened her other senses as well, the room rushed in on her. She remembered where she was. She smelled the years of boots treading across this stone, the lingering residue of the incense that used to fill the air, smelled—and tasted—the blood and worse that trickled from between her lips.

She heard Lisette, gloating at how she'd found something so much better than the “weak, cowardly god” who'd abandoned her when she needed him most; how her allies would render the Church as impotent as the Shrouded God.

She heard the distant laughter of children, cooing and cackling, and—more closely—the breathing of the child-sized creatures actually present.

And she heard the faint whistle of the creature's switches in the air before they landed again across her back.

Oh
, gods,
it hurt!
Again she screamed, without intention, and it
was only the howl of Olgun's own pain that kept her from slipping back under. No individual stroke was nearly so bad as having been stabbed in the stomach, but they just. Kept. Coming. She could feel her skin welting, opening, bleeding, burning.

They were more than whips, more than just injury. It was
unclean
, a physical and even moral degradation. The magics contained within were poisonous, unholy,
obscene
.

Which, she realized in the portion of her mind she'd managed to wake up, explained Olgun's response. He didn't just experience the pain through her, as he normally would; wasn't just afraid, for himself or for her. He actually
felt
the lash of every “finger,” his essence torn and abraded no less than her own skin.

She wondered, with a horrified shudder, if her god had
ever
experienced direct pain like this. As awful as she felt, at least it wasn't a
totally
unprecedented experience for her! Poor Olgun…

The creature raised its hand yet again, Shins began to tense in anticipation of the next blow—and Olgun
whimpered
.

Absolute fury, molten, searing, coursed through Widdershins's veins. Her scream grew louder still, tearing at a throat already savaged by stomach acids and bile, but no longer was it a cry of pain.

The fae torturer's lashing digits descended once more—and Widdershins, impossibly, rolled to her feet to meet them.

It wasn't that she'd somehow ceased to feel the pain. It roared over her, flames licking from her gut and her back, digging white-hot blades across every nerve. What survived of her clothes were drenched in blood, shreds caked tight to her skin. And it was only that blood, still thickly oozing over her stomach, that prevented her, when glancing down, from spotting bits of herself that were never intended to see the light of day.

None of that had gone away. She hadn't escaped anything. Shins knew full well that nothing but a stubborn anger kept her body from giving out beneath her like an empty sack.

But in that single, liberating moment of fury, she didn't
care
.

Lisette and even the fae, almost comically astonished, seemed unable to react. Shins's fist closed tight around three of the creature's switches, squeezing them into a thick bundle, and yanked him off balance. Still shouting in a voice growing ever more hoarse, she allowed her entire body to follow her arm in a forceful spin, hauling as hard as she could. Her enemy stumbled as she pivoted, almost staggering into her from behind, when the elbow of her other arm shot backward, cracking him hard across the bridge of his nose.

The fae, she knew from her own experience, weren't particularly susceptible to injury. She knew, too, that her divine connection to Olgun made her a partial exception to that rule.

Howling in pain, the creature threw her off, launching her across the chamber. She slammed into the far wall and collapsed in a boneless heap, every nerve screaming, the whole world flashing, sparking, strobing. Still, she saw blood—or a thin liquid that was
probably
blood, though it more closely resembled a wet and runny water-based paint—trickling from her tormentor's nose.

And, she noted when her vision began to clear, from the noses of his various child-sized companions, as well.

The distant children ceased their laughter. The fae, masters and minions, stared at Widdershins as though not entirely sure what it was they were looking at. Lisette gawped, at a loss for words for the first time the young thief could ever recall.

Through a mask of blood, coating her lips, staining her chin, welling up through her teeth, Widdershins tossed them all a broad, unwavering smirk.

They were going to kill her; she couldn't even hope otherwise. She had absolutely nothing left to fight with. They might even break her, first.

But she'd tainted it for them. They'd hit her with everything, buried her under tortures and torments, and she'd still bloodied
them. Their perfect vengeance, their easy victory, was neither. Not entirely.

It was, under the circumstances, the best she could ask for.

Apparently, Shins wasn't the only one in awe of her own efforts. After a moment's hissed discussion between Lisette and her allies, the fae faded away. Once more they were only shadows, collecting around the flame-haired thief, and then even that thin veil was gone. Just Lisette, again—albeit Lisette with a whole array of inhuman magics.

“I'm impressed,” she said, striding across the room, her steps a slow drumbeat as she neared. “Honestly, I am. I keep reminding myself not to underestimate you, and still you keep surprising me.”

A pace or two from where Shins lay, she stopped, dropping into a crouch so they might better see one another. “You're still more dangerous than you should be,” Lisette observed. “And while it's not exactly my usual way of doing things, even
I
think that degree of determination and sheer gutsiness should be rewarded.

“So no more torture, little scab. No more pain.” From the back of her belt, she produced a small flintlock. Beneath her thumb, the
click
of the hammer locking into place was deafening. “Time to end it. Maybe you can go see your little god.”

The barrel, so tiny from any other angle, gaped open like a darkened cave when viewed face-on. Battling every remaining instinct, Shins refused to shut her eyes.

Everything happened so fast, once the first
bang!
finally sounded, that it took Shins far more concentration than it should have to realize she wasn't dead.

The first was a gunshot from
outside
the chamber, echoed and amplified by the enclosed confines of the hallway. Lisette jolted back, startled, standing upright…

The second
bang
blew the heavy door to the Shrouded Lord's former sanctum clear from its frame.

Only Shins's position slumped against the wall, beside that
door—or former door—saved her from the blast, as she was certainly in no condition to have avoided it. Already battered into uncertainty, her mind and senses threw an absolute fit. Her vision strobed again, offering only quick, still images of everything happening around her; her ears rocked from ringing to utter silence, allowing only the occasional sound in through their drunken staggering.

Dust and tiny shards of stone raining down, the petrified remains of a refreshing spring rain…

Plumes of smoke rolled through the empty doorway, a choking, searing cloud…

Lisette heaving herself back the length of the room, snagging the desk with one hand as she rolled across it, hauling it over with a strength she simply could not have possessed and then taking cover behind…

Guns roared; geysers of splinter or dust erupted where lead balls flatted against wood and stone…

Voices shouted behind the smoke, the words tumbling over and wrestling with one another, and Shins understood none of it, wasn't entirely sure what it was…

Blood seeped across the stone floor from uncounted open wounds, and Shins watched it, fascinated by every ripple, struggling to recall why it was important…

Another detonation, louder than any flintlock, and the chamber filled with smoke, smoke of briny scent and peculiar violet hue.

That's not right. The smoke here's supposed to be gray, yes? To match the Shrouded Lord's…shroud…

More yelling, more gunfire, a touch of prayer…

Prayer?

She was sure she knew what was happening, if she could just have a moment to tell herself, to
think
, to—

“I've got her!” Hands closed around Shins's upper arms, hauling her upright. She decided, somewhat dreamily, that it was a good
thing she didn't know if she ought to fight or not, since she really
couldn't
, anyway.

“Who've y'got?” she mumbled, then cried out as an arm brushed against one of the open welts across her back.

An indrawn hiss sounded from the figure holding her upright. “Good gods, Widdershins. What did they do to you?”

“Bad things,” she replied with a fervent nod, before bursting into tears.

The other voice quivered, as though on the verge of joining her. “Come, dear lady. Let's get you out of here.” Then, in a much louder shout, “Fall back! The smoke's not going to impede the bitch for long!”

“The hell do you
think
we're doing?!” someone else called out, followed by an abortive shriek and a sudden, sickeningly wet thump.

“You're right,” Lisette growled through the obscuring haze, from precisely where the prior call had come. “It won't.”

“It doesn't have to,” the man—definitely a man, she'd decided—holding Shins muttered. She felt herself being half-guided, half-dragged, from the room. More than once she stumbled…No. No, she was essentially in a single long stumble in which she occasionally managed a halfway steady step. Each time, her supporter's grip tightened or shifted to catch her, and each time she winced or gasped or wailed in agony.

“For the fucking gods' sake, someone help me with her!”