Covenant's End (27 page)

Honestly, she barely knew what she was saying. It didn't matter. Lisette was arrogant, a talker, always had been.
So keep her talking and taunting! Every extra second Faustine and Sicard have…

Either the Gloaming Court had added mind-reading to the powers they'd granted her, however, or—more likely—Lisette had simply grown tired of trying to get a rise out of her enemy. Perhaps, even in the midst of her overconfidence, she'd recalled what happened the last time she'd taken the opportunity to gloat, to draw things out.

The shadows about her swirled faster, sliding over her skin, a dancer's train of dark silk, as she took her first step from the stoop. “I may awaken feeling like the floor of a stable,” she sneered as she approached. “But for tonight, I—
we
—are as strong as ever. How does that make you feel, little scab?”

“Like I'm still waiting for you to actually come here and prove it,” Shins snapped. At which point, despite her defiant words, she did the only sane thing she could.

Olgun's power pumping through her body, augmenting muscle and blood and bone as never before, Widdershins
ran
.

Every extra second…

The first time she had nearly fallen, her bad leg scooting out from beneath her against the treacherously slick cobbles—the first time she'd been saved from a short, painful stumble only by the sudden tightening of Faustine's grip around her waist—Robin had only yelped aloud, startled and a bit embarrassed.

The second and third times, she'd cursed a blue streak, profanities that would make the average longshoreman sound more like Widdershins.

This, in the lee of an old gothic building, its gargoyles huddled miserably against the storm and cringing from the lightning that made them visible, was the fourth.

“Go on without me.”

Faustine turned her head, dragging a snake of wet hair across her neck, to gawp. At first Robin assumed it was disbelief, until she realized that her words had been swallowed by the latest crash of thunder.

“Go without me!” she shouted.

Now
it was disbelief. Then the older woman's face hardened and she continued on, Robin clasped to her, apparently not even planning to acknowledge the request.

Until Robin locked both her feet, and Faustine could either stop or drag her over to fall against the cobblestones.

“I don't know why you think there's a chance in hell—!” Faustine began.

Robin brushed her fingertips over her lover's sodden cheek, halting her in mid-sentence. “You run all over town every night. You could be at the Basilica in minutes. It's going to take an hour or more, if you stay with me.”

“I don't care! I'm not leaving you alone!”

“If Lisette comes after me, there's nothing you can do. If anyone else does? Even robbers are at home on a night like this. But Gerard's place is only a quarter-mile from here. Even I can walk
that
.” Much as she tried, much as she had other concerns at the moment, she couldn't quite silence the bitterness. “I'll be safe there.”

Faustine actually stomped her foot, which would have soaked Robin's shoes if they hadn't already absorbed all the water they could possibly hold. “No!”

Robin smiled, even as her gaze hardened. “This is important. You know it is. Shins is out there, fighting, maybe…” She swallowed once, moved past it. “I know you worry about me. Want to help me. What you can do for me right now, tonight, is to help
her
. Please.”

A taut, almost violent shaking came over Faustine's shoulders—and then they slumped in resignation. “Swear to me you're going straight to Gerard's,” she pleaded. “That you're not going to try to go back and do something stupid.”

“I promise. I know I can't do anything—and I'm not leaving you.” Robin stretched up on her toes for a kiss—brief, all too brief—and then stepped back. “Now run, damn it!”

One more second of reluctance, and then she was gone, gracefully slipping away as though racing between the torrents.

Robin sighed, and then, before she could stop herself, called out as loud as her lungs could manage. “I love you!”

In the moment, Robin realized with some dismay that she couldn't remember if she'd ever said that to her before. She hoped Faustine had still been near enough to hear.

Then, for just a few heartbeats, she looked back the way they'd come.
Maybe, just maybe I could…

No. I can't. And we all know it.
Besides, she'd promised.

With a second, deeper sigh, Robin shuffled across the street and set her feet toward Gerard's tiny flat.

Another cry of warning, a surge of panic from Olgun. They came so fast and frequent now that Shins was having trouble distinguishing one from the next. She dove, rolling painfully over the road thanks to her inhuman speed. Mud splattered up even as the blades swept down, not merely ringing loudly against the cobblestones but actually carving divots into them.

Lisette was keeping up,
and
her arms were again somehow warping, winding, slashing, and stabbing at Shins from a good fifteen feet away, or even more. It just seemed unfair, perhaps even
rude
, for her to do both.

The swords spun and whipped around each other, swirling in circles that no human arms—even bizarrely lengthened and disjointed as Lisette's now seemed to be—could have managed. On the rare occasions Shins had felt it safe even to glance over her shoulder, she'd seen the woman coming after her and the steel flashing, but she'd been utterly unable to make out the movement of the limbs between, or even how they connected to the shoulders anymore.

Not even Olgun's help could allow her to see through the rain, the blurred steel, the writhing shadows.

The
height
.

Fae-ridden, leaking dark magics, Lisette didn't follow Widdershins from directly behind. She hung suspended, above the level of the streetlights, from wavering limbs of shadow. They skittered silently, unevenly, the horrible offspring of spiders and the very specific darkness found only under the bed; stepping across ground or the walls of surrounding buildings with equal facility. The awkward gait flopped Lisette around at the apex of those shadowy, segmented legs, until she looked as boneless and yielding as a corpse in a waterfall.

Despite that, her inhuman arms remained steady. The blades grew closer with every slash, and Lisette herself with every step.

Widdershins could hear the expected and despised giggling chorus of children, the tang of herbs and sweets beneath the olfactory weight of the storm.

How can she be this hopping
fast
?!

“I have decided,” she gasped to Olgun as she rolled back to her feet and made a sharp turn down a narrower street to her left, “that I prefer…the kinds of spirits…that don't have bodies and…just possess people. Do those really exist, too? Can we get one…instead of fae next time?”

The little god was too busy projecting another warning to answer.

Lisette had come to the intersection and simply thrown herself sideways, the limbs of shadow changing direction inhumanly fast, pushing off the opposite building to absorb momentum. Shins's desperate turn had only resulted in her pursuer
gaining
ground.

“Got anything more?”

She'd guessed Olgun's answer before she'd even asked.

Blades sliced over one another like murderous scissors, coming together mere inches behind her. She ducked forward, stumbled, barely regaining enough balance to keep from toppling face-first to the road. Fast as she was sprinting, she wondered idly if a fall like that would've saved Lisette the trouble of killing her.

Her chest burned, her side was splitting. The aches were coming faster than Olgun could quell them. She'd never asked this sort of speed or strength from him for longer than a few seconds. Neither knew how long she could endure it; both knew the answer had to include a “not very.”

Again the end of the block loomed, a wall of void and water. Again Shins broke left, but this time, as Lisette began to pivot, she jumped at the nearest corner wall. Spinning her body up and back, she struck the building feet first, with enough momentum from her impossible run to take a good three or four steps
up
the sheer side. Another leap, entirely horizontal, and Shins shot past her opponent, breaking again into a mad dash the instant she hit the street.

That
, even the fae couldn't react to immediately. For the first time since the chase began, Shins gained a few yards.

It wouldn't last, she knew it wouldn't last, but maybe she could—

“
Enough of this!
” It was Lisette's voice, rattled by the uneven motion, but it wasn't
just
her voice. Beneath it, Shins heard Embruchel's horrible twin tones.

The lower half of the former Taskmaster's face was pitch-black, now, and looked as though she'd been drinking tar. Without any apparent movement, without “retracting” or shrinking in any way, her arms were human again, holding their twin blades crossed over her chest.

But where limbs of flesh had returned to their natural state, one of the limbs of shade lengthened.

Lisette had chosen her spot deliberately, no doubt: directly beside one of the flickering streetlamps. At that angle, the leg—had it been real, had the light not been diffused by the rain—would have cast its own shadow halfway down the block.

As the leg
was
shadow, it
stretched
that far.

Shins felt a crushing pain in her side as she was hurled into a tangled heap on the street's far side. She throbbed from a hundred different bruises, probably bled from a hundred different cuts, though any blood washed away before she could be sure. And she knew it was only Olgun, desperately yanking the threads of luck and chance, which had saved her from far worse injury.

“I guess we're done running,” Widdershins whispered. “I'm sorry. I hope it's long enough.”

Wincing, she stood, drew her rapier, and turned to face her enemy.

It began with the faint thump of the doors to the grand chapel. Unusual and perhaps more than a bit gauche for anyone to enter while
the bishop himself was speaking, sermonizing, but hardly unheard of. Sicard only remembered later than he'd even noticed; at the time, the sound failed to register.

Then the low mutters and whispers started, sprouting at the rearmost pews and swiftly blossoming through the congregation, echoing along the vaulted ceiling. A few attendees stood, trying to see over their neighbors, curiosity about the disruption temporarily overwhelming piety or politeness.

Only then did Sicard trail off, going silent in the midst of praising Vercoule—of all 147 gods of the Hallowed Pact, the one most venerated in Davillon itself—as the newcomer revealed herself to him.

A young woman, blonde, in skirts more rain than they were fabric. They slapped audibly against her legs with every step, spattering congregants with cold water. She ignored it all; the weight, the discomfort, the propriety. Although staggered and gasping, she struggled up the aisle with a pace and intent that suggested she was still trying to run.

And several of the Church soldiers, weapons raised, were converging on her.

“No!” Sicard stepped to the edge of the dais, a hand raised. “Let her pass.”

It might have been a foolish call. Given what had occurred recently, she could have been some trick, an agent of the fae or of Lisette. It didn't feel right, though. Everything he saw shouted that this was an exhausted, desperate woman.

Even as he ordered she be allowed to approach, however, his brow furrowed as much in anger as curiosity. The sheer impropriety…. That frown deepened further still as she stumbled up to the dais, leaving fat puddles to soak into the carpet of every single step.

“Young lady, if this is not absolutely the most urgent—”

Struggling to breathe, she wheezed something at him. Though
he hadn't been able to make it out, a frisson of alarm ran through him all the same. “I'm sorry, what was that?”

Again she rasped at him, carefully forming each word between ragged breaths.

Sicard, suddenly dizzy, had to grab tight to the pulpit to avoid falling. He could only guess how pale he must appear, but he'd lost enough blood from his face that it had actually gone chilly.