False Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) (17 page)

“My people couldn't…? You have an awfully high opinion of your own fighting skills, I see.” Then, his grin fading, “We
already
reinforced the patrols when this whole mess started. We really don't have more constables to spare. But I'll talk to command about trying to concentrate them further.”

“All right. Renard?”

“Yes, General Widdershins?”

“Stop that. I need you to arrange a meeting for me with the Shrouded Lord. Or at least with Remy.”

Renard's mustache twisted as he frowned. “I can report back everything you've—”

“No. There's…” She forced herself not to glance at Julien as she spoke. “There's other stuff I need to talk to them about.”

If the Guardsman recognized that Widdershins had all but admitted she was keeping some of the details secret from him, it didn't show on his face.

“Ah. All right, I'll see what I can do.”

“And
you
,” Julien said, straightening, “are going to get some sleep.”

“But I—”

“No. You're still recovering. And frankly, Widdershins, this doesn't involve you. I'm sorry you had to face Ir—whatever this thing is, but you're not a Guard.”

“And you have other problems,” Robin reminded her softly.

Evrard! Gods, she'd actually
forgotten
! Mortified, she initially wanted to blame Olgun, to accuse him of tricking her into focusing on other issues, but she knew she'd just gotten caught up in it all.

“I want to know what's going on, what this thing is,” she admitted.
And why Finders were masquerading as a supernatural thug before the
real
supernatural thug showed up!
“But that's all. I'll try to gather information, but beyond that, I'll stay out of it. Promise.”

She swore she could actually
feel
the mattress buckling beneath the weight of their combined disbelief, but nobody challenged her outright.

“I'll stay with you,” Robin offered.

Widdershins shook her head. “I need you to manage the Witch, sweetie.”

“But—”

“Please, Robin.”

Robin stared down at the floor for a moment, then rose. “All right.” She leaned down and gave her friend a kiss on the cheek. “You get better quick, though, or I might just take the whole tavern somewhere safer.”

“I'll remember that.” Widdershins smiled—a smile that swiftly faded as, for just an instant, Robin turned an angry glare on Julien Bouniard. But before Widdershins could be sure she'd even seen it, and
certainly
before Julien himself might have noticed, the girl left the room. Renard offered another low bow, tossed his hat onto his head with a jaunty flip of the wrist, and followed.

When the door drifted shut, and Widdershins realized that she was alone with Julien—Olgun's constant presence notwithstanding—she caught herself preparing to scream for Robin to come back.

This is so stupid! I've been alone with Julien before! I—

He scooted one of the chairs away from the desk, and rotated it so he could sit facing her. The worry he felt for her was so clear in his eyes, it practically obscured their color.

Oh, figs…

Renard Lambert felt his back growing tense, his tunic bunching up as his shoulders rose to his ears (or so it felt, anyway). Each step he took was a struggle, and he wondered which would overcome him first: the urge to glance over his shoulder so often he'd probably break his neck, or the burning need to break into a mad sprint for the door.

He did neither, of course—by the Shrouded God and the rest of the Hallowed Pact, he'd walked calmly
into
the Guard station, he'd bloody well walk calmly
out
of it!—but it was a near thing.

The occasional suspicious glance cast his way by passing constables actually helped calm him down, rather than wind up him any further. It wasn't as if the bulk of them knew his face, and even if some
did
recognize him, well, he wasn't currently wanted for anything. (Not because he hadn't
done
anything, of course.) All they knew was that here was a colorfully dressed character wandering the halls, and while that wasn't exactly normal, neither was it automatically cause for alarm. He certainly wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of seeing how nervous the place made him.

Of course, he realized glumly, they might just assume that he was an aristocrat come to bail his daughter, or some other young relative, out of trouble.
I
, he grumbled to himself,
am really not enamored of this whole aging thing.

Robin—who could indeed have been his daughter, if only just—marched a few steps ahead of him, and kept whatever thoughts she might have had entirely to herself. Her pace, however, was stiff enough that Renard had no doubt she was just as troubled as he, if presumably for other reasons.

Gods, even when he
had
gotten away from here, there was so much to do! He'd picked up readily enough on Widdershins's hint that she had more to tell him, things she couldn't say in front of the major. (And the thief couldn't repress a scowl at the thought of Julien Bouniard,
especially
the thought of Bouniard alone with Widdershins.) He'd certainly have no trouble arranging a meeting with the Shrouded Lord—and he wondered if Widdershins would ever puzzle out
that
particular secret, because if anyone ever did, he knew, it'd be her—but he wanted a couple of days to look into this “Iruoch” matter himself before said meeting. Plus, there was all the usual night-to-night business of the Finders' Guild to deal with, and the mess with Simon Beaupre, and then there was…
Bloody hell, it's a wonder I have time to take a piss! If this had been anyone but Widdershins, I never would have taken the time to—

They had, by this time, passed by the desk sergeant on duty as well as the sentries nearest the entrance, and Robin was pushing open the heavy door to reveal the lowering skies of late afternoon beyond. As she did so, she turned, and Renard couldn't help but note the sour expression she directed not at him but
past
him, back down the hallway from which they'd come.

And he wondered.
I know why
I'm
so damn irritated at Bouniard. I'm honest enough to admit to jealousy. But what the hell has
she
got to be so grumpy about?

But since he would never be so uncouth as to ask, and since she'd already darted out into the street before he could have done so even if he'd wanted to, his curiosity remained unsated.

For roughly 150 years—or maybe a
little
less time, but Widdershins wouldn't have sworn to it—the thief and the Guardsman just watched each other. Or rather, near each other, neither quite willing to maintain eye contact for more than a heartbeat or so.

“Uh,” Widdershins finally said.

“Yes?” Bouniard straightened in his chair, practically at attention.

“You, um, you saw the scene? Where Iruoch killed those people?”

“Not me, personally, but some constables scoured it.” He offered no objection to her use of the name Iruoch—less because he'd begun to believe, she assumed, than because, well, he had no better name to offer.

“I don't suppose you found my sword?” she asked, her voice small and miserable.

“Your…” He shook his head. “I didn't hear reports of
any
weapons found. Someone must have taken them before our people arrived. I'm sorry.”

“If it was Squirrel,” Widdershins muttered darkly, “I'll kill him. Then I'm going to find a healer, revive him, and kill him again.”

“I didn't hear you,” Julien said blandly. “I'm
sure
you just said that you were going to find him and ask him, politely, if he had your blade.”

“Yeah. That, too.”

Another few decades passed….

“Widdershins, about last week?”

She blinked. What was he talking ab—Oh.
That
.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said sweetly.

“Uh-huh. The Ducarte estate?”

“Oh. That.”

“You're stealing again,” he accused her.

“What's the matter, Bouniard? You afraid of having someone out there you can't catch? I'm too challenging for you, maybe?”

“I'm serious. I can't…That is, I don't want…”

“Don't want what?”

Julien shrugged, looking away.

What could she tell him? That the Flippant Witch wouldn't survive without some “outside income”? That it was all she was good at? That she was
bored
? Somehow, she was pretty sure that none of those would fly.

And why am I bothering to explain myself?!

“Look, Julien. I promise you won't catch me doing anything illegal.” It was an old joke between them, but this time, he didn't seem amused.

“I'm serious, Widdershins,” he said again.

“You know, I think I almost picked up on that the first time you told me.”

“But you obviously aren't.”

“Well, no. Wouldn't want you accusing me of stealing your mood, would we?”

More glaring, more silence. A silence that broke as Julien scooted his chair back with a low scuffing across the carpet and began to pace.

“You shut up,” Widdershins breathed. Olgun, who hadn't actually been about to say anything at all, continued not doing so.

“Uh, Julien?”

He halted his pacing, his back toward her. “What?”

“Um, given that I've been out for a day, and that you're probably keeping a pretty close watch on what's happening in Davillon…”

“Hmm?”

“I was wondering if, well, if you knew who's throwing the next high-society ball or dinner party. And when.”

Oh, yeah, this was
exactly
the right time to ask him that, Widdershins! Graceful as a three-hoofed pig on a stack of turtles, you are.

He was facing her again, though his expression couldn't have been any more astonished if he'd just discovered that she'd been smuggling a street mime in her cleavage.

“Have you
utterly
lost your mind?!” The major was too dignified to actually shriek, but only just.

“Uh, maybe? What are my options?”

“I should have arrested you last week! Maybe you'd actually learn something from a few months in gaol!”

“What makes you think I'd have let you hold me that long? You couldn't manage it last time!”

Widdershins couldn't help but laugh as Julien's hand, seemingly of its own accord, dropped down to clutch at the keys on his belt—the keys that she'd used to escape the last time she'd been incarcerated.

Then, deciding that goading him any further was probably neither the wisest nor the most productive course of action, she said, “Look, I'm not looking to rob anyone. I told you, I want to find out more about what's going on in the city, as well as about some problems of my own. Nobody gossips like aristocrats, and nobody has more ears throughout Davillon.
That's
why I want to go; not to steal anything.”

“And I should believe that why, exactly?”

“When have I ever lied to—”

“Do you
really
,” he growled at her, “want to finish that sentence?”

“Ah, no. No, I don't think I do. Julien…” She sighed and finally, steadily met his gaze with her own. “Whatever else I might do, whatever tricks I might pull, I'd never make you complicit in something you wouldn't approve of. I swear it.”

His face froze an instant longer and then cracked and softened. “I believe you. Which may say less about your honesty and more about my fracturing sanity, but there we are. The Marquise de Lamarr is throwing a soiree of some sort tomorrow evening—she's asked for a few of the Guard to bolster her own security—but that's probably too soon. Next week, the Baron—”

“No, tomorrow should work.” Widdershins swung her feet off the mattress, wincing but refusing to retreat before the pain. “Are my shoes around here?”

“Widdershins…”

“Because I'm pretty sure I had shoes when I got in. I really don't go out without 'em all that often….”

“Widdershins, lie down. You're hurt. Give it a few days!”

“I heal fast, Julien. We've been through this.”