False Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) (29 page)

She hadn't meant to just blurt it out, but at least—other than his heaving breath—she'd finally silenced the shouting old goat.

When he finally did relocate his voice, Sicard didn't seem certain what to do with it. “What…You…Did you just say ‘Iruoch’?”

Widdershins struggled to control her own breathing, her own temper, and sat back down. “I did.”

“Iruoch's a fairy tale, you stupid girl! A story!”

“Like the cavalier d'Ouelette?” she challenged.

“A story,” he repeated. “One of many I tell, to make a point. To teach. It doesn't mean I believe them, any more than my adult parishioners do. If you think I'd accept for one instant—”

“Look, you don't have to believe that he's
literally
Iruoch! But there's
something
unnatural hunting Davillon, and it sure as figs isn't
me
!”

“Ridiculous. You—”

“Ah, Your Eminence.” Ferrand sounded as though he'd rather cover himself in salt and dance for the lions than get involved, but he did so nonetheless. “I
have
been keeping an ear on what's going on, and it's true that there's definitely some sort of magic involved in these murders. The bodies—”

“That just proves that her heathen god has given her powers of witchcraft, Ferrand! She's the only murderer involved! She—”

By which point, Widdershins's patience, already stretched so far it would ache for days, snapped. With a sound somewhere between a grunt and a shriek she lunged from her seat, calling on Olgun's aid as she moved, less in control now even than she'd been when confronting Igraine in the shrine of the Shrouded God.

One hand on the edge of the table was enough to vault her across the room, not at the bishop, but at Ferrand. Her calves crossed around his knees and she twisted as she fell, sending him crashing to the carpet. It wouldn't hurt him much, except maybe his pride, but it would keep him out of the way just long enough…

Sicard was already recoiling, hand reaching for the staff of office leaning on the back of his chair, but he might as well have been swimming through cobweb. Widdershins was back on her feet—or, more accurately, one foot. The other rose, then fell in a heel kick atop one of the carafes, shattering it across the marble. A simple cartwheel, and she came up directly beside the bishop, one arm wrapped around his neck, the other clutching a curved length of broken glass that had previously been the decanter's handle. Her hand should have been bleeding all over it, but Olgun's will had allowed her to avoid every other shard on the tabletop.

It was all over before Widdershins's chair had finished its slow topple to the floor.

“If I were the murderer you believe me to be,” she hissed into the pallid clergyman's face, “you'd be dead. And I'd be out that window in another three seconds.”

At which point she dropped the makeshift weapon and was in the process of righting her chair before the guard outside had finally shaken off his shock at the abrupt eruption of sounds and thrown open the door to see what was amiss.

“Brother Ferrand tripped,” she said to the sentry's stunned face.

“He did no such thing!” Sicard's voice lacked the certainty it had held only moments before, but if he was having doubts now, it wasn't stopping him. “I want that creature in chains!”

“Well,” she said softly to Olgun, already beginning to flush with embarrassment at her brief lapse of control.
What in the name of the gods is
wrong
with me? First Igraine, now Sicard?
“That probably wasn't the
smartest
thing I've ever done. That argument worked so well with Igraine…”

Martin approached, one hand on his pistol, and she was just trying to decide if it was worth resisting when Igraine herself appeared in the office doorway. Paschal Sorelle was beside her.

And
they
were followed by Julien Bouniard! Even though she'd known he was nearby, watching in case the bishop had slipped by her, she couldn't repress a gasp of relief (or
was
it just relief?) at the sight.

Julien, for his part, took one look at the broken glass, a second at Widdershins, and then just shook his head.

“I don't know what
you're
doing here, Major,” Sicard said, far more calmly. “But you couldn't have picked a better time. This woman is a thief and a—”

“You can save it, Your Eminence,” Bouniard said. “We heard all of it.” Then, when the bishop and the thief both gawped at him, “When Igraine saw you being escorted into the back, we improvised. Cup against the bishop's window. Thank you for pulling the curtain, by the way. Otherwise, you'd have spotted us in a second.”

Sicard was scowling, his jaw working, no doubt trying to recall if, in the heat of the moment, he'd said anything too terribly self-incriminating.

Widdershins was only too happy to help. “Which means,” she crowed, “they heard you admit that
you
arranged the initial attacks! Before the people actually started dying!”

“That doesn't justify your attack on me,” he insisted, though he'd begun to pale. “Major, I intend to press charges with the full weight of the Church.”

“And you have that right,” he said. “Of course, in the process, Igraine and I will have to testify to what we heard—and of course, if we make such a claim in court, we must inform the Church as well.”

“Why are you aiding this girl?!” Sicard demanded. “She's a murderer!”

“Actually,” Bouniard told him, “she's not.”

“I—what?”

“She has, in fact, been assisting us in our attempts to
stop
the creature committing these crimes.”

“Creature? You don't honestly—”

“Yes, Your Eminence, I do. I've seen its handiwork—including the injuries Widdershins suffered the first time
it tried to kill her
.”

“She could have faked—”

“No. She couldn't.”

Sicard literally fell backward, and it was only sheer luck that the chair was near enough to catch him. “But…William de Laurent? She—”

“I was there for some of those events as well, Your Eminence. She did everything she could to
save
the archbishop. And she lost her own closest friend in that mess.”

Widdershins turned away, memories of Genevieve—and, spawned by those, a new flare of concern for Robin—briefly overwhelming her.

“I was so sure.” Sicard's palms were shaking as though abruptly stricken with palsy. “I was
so sure
. It
can't
be because of us, we made
certain
…”

“What
exactly
did you do, Your Eminence?” Julien asked, not unkindly. But the old man—growing visibly older by the moment—seemed unable to answer. The monk knelt beside his master and held his trembling hand.

“Why,” Widdershins couldn't help but mutter, “does everyone want to blame me for everything?”

She hadn't intended to be overheard, but by one pair of ears, she was. “Because you're secretive,” Igraine said. “And you're impetuous. And you do find yourself near the center of trouble far more often than is good for you. And because some of us can sense that there truly is something abnormal, even unnatural about you. But mostly because you really, really annoy people.”

Widdershins couldn't think of a better reaction than to stick her tongue out. “Igraine?” she asked a moment later in a whisper, careful that nobody else in the room might hear. “Is what you heard really enough to start an inquiry? I mean, he only kind of touched on—”

“We didn't hear a damn thing, Widdershins,” she answered as quietly. “Cup against the window? We barely made out every fifth word.”

Olgun somehow
emoted
an “Eep!” and Widdershins stared through horror-widened eyes. “You mean…?”

“We just came running when we heard things get messy, and hoped that you'd gotten
something
useful from him.”

Widdershins couldn't tell whether she wanted to sob or hit someone, and was just deciding that she needn't choose one over the other when Sicard coughed once and straightened his shoulders.

“All right, Major,” the bishop said. “I don't know what's happened, or where things went wrong, but I never intended for anyone to suffer. I'll tell you the whole story.”

“
Would
you? Oh, splendid!” Every head in the room flinched in mounting dread as the door to the office slowly drifted open once more, admitting that awful, dual-toned voice. “I just
love
a good story!”

“Where
is
she?”

Robin watched from her seat—a comfortable, cushioned chair in the center of the room—as her captor paced as if
he
were the one caged. Her prison wasn't especially arduous; in addition to said chair, she had access to a table with an array of juices, cheese, and pastries, as well as a chamber pot if nature should demand its due. The only sign of her captivity at all was the manacle about her wrist, and the length of chain attached to it. Bolted to the leg of the table, it allowed her a substantial amount of freedom, though not enough to reach any of the four walls of the cavernous, and largely empty, chamber. A storage room or a warehouse, no doubt.

For his own part, Evrard passed to and fro beneath one of the room's rows of windows. A second table supported a carafe of wine and several loaded pistols; he'd spent substantial time with the first, and relatively little with the second.

“You could've left her a note, you know,” Robin told him, lifting a goblet of fruit juice to her mouth. (The cup was flimsy, a lightweight wood—very obviously provided because it would prove utterly ineffective as a makeshift weapon.)

Evrard ceased his pacing long enough to glare.

“No, really,” Robin continued. “I mean, if you
wanted
her to find you, then you could just—”

“She'll find me,” he snapped. “My family only
owns
a few properties in Davillon.”

“Like the tower?” Robin asked innocently.

“You're pushing it, child!”

Maybe she was; maybe she should just keep her teeth together. Robin was no Widdershins. Not a fighter, not brave, not…

But she also wasn't stupid, and damn it all, she wasn't just some tool to be used and thrown away at need!

“I don't think so,” she said, trying with only debatable success to work a touch of steel—a touch of Widdershins—into her tone. “You're not going to hurt me, Evrard.”

“So sure of that, are you?” His own goblet, of equally flimsy wood, cracked in his hand, sending rivulets of purple cascading across his fingers.

“Yes. Come on. You practically begged Gerard and the others not to make you shoot them when you abducted me. Hell, you
apologized
when you snapped this stupid cuff on my wrist!” She jingled the chain for emphasis, as if he could possibly have thought she meant some
other
manacle. “The food, the drink…You're not exactly a traditional kidnapper, you know.”

“I'm not a kidnapper!”

Robin just looked at him.

“I'm
not
.”

She held up her wrist and once again shook the chain.

Evrard growled something unintelligible. Turning back to the nearer table, he lifted the carafe of wine and began to pour, then flinched as the liquid dripped through the cracked vessel. With a grunt he tossed the useless cup to the floor and took a large and very unaristocratic gulp from the decanter itself—a decanter which was, Robin couldn't help but note, already half-empty.

“Classy,” Robin said. Evrard pulled a second, smaller chair out from the table and slumped into it.

“I'm no kidnapper,” he insisted again, sulking.

“My chain and I would like to debate that.”

“Gods
damn
it! This is all
her
fault, you know!”

“Who? Widdershins?”

Evrard's lips actually peeled back from his teeth at the sound of that name. “Who else?”

“This is
her
fault, is it? Maybe she paid you to kidnap me? There are easier ways of firing me, if that's what she—”

“This isn't a joke!” Evrard was again on his feet and again pacing, though this time it was toward and away from his less-than-willing guest, rather than parallel to the windows. “I didn't want it to come to this. She was supposed to…” He stumbled to a halt, then shrugged. “I thought that surely
this
would do it. But no, apparently your precious Widdershins won't even put herself out for her so-called
friends
!”

“She'll be here!” Robin realized she was screaming and forced herself to calm. “You don't know her. She'll be here, and you'll wish she wasn't.”

“I doubt it.” Evrard shook his head and returned to the carafe of wine. “I don't believe anymore that she has even
that
much honor.”

Robin didn't remember rising to her feet. “
Honor?!
” She was shouting again, and this time couldn't be bothered to care. “You're talking about honor?
You?!
You threatened to destroy her life! You
kidnapped me!
And over what? A few stolen treasures that your family hadn't bothered even to
look at
in a decade or more? What gives you the right to impugn
anyone's
honor?”