Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure (18 page)

Night descended. The waning moon hauled itself into the sky, frequently stopping to rest on the backs of passing clouds. Traffic throughout Aubier grew sparse as lanterns and hearths began to
gleam through shuttered windows across the city. The snow let up, replaced by biting winds and the occasional finger of sleet.

And Widdershins, for the third time since she'd come to this godsforsaken place, crept carefully through the Delacroix fields, drawing ever nearer the main house.

She was scarcely recognizable as the same person she'd been the last time. She shivered in the cold, lacking any sort of cloak, warmed only by her leathers, her constant motion, and her searing, resentful fury. She was covered in chimney ash, her face and hands and clothes caked with the stuff. It had taken everything Olgun could do to keep her from leaving a trail when she'd crept off the Second Home's rooftop. (The soldiers might have left enough tracks, in their search, that her own prints wouldn't show, but regular clumps of flaking ash would have been another story altogether.) Her ribs and legs throbbed where they'd bruised; her chest ached and her throat burned from both the cold air and the choking smoke she'd had to endure for long minutes on end. She stank of sweat, wood smoke, and desperation.

Twice she'd dropped flat, hiding in the shadows and the rolling divots in the plain as Delacroix guards passed nearby on patrol. Both times, she'd had to squelch an urge to stand and draw their attention, just as an excuse to vent some frustration.

This place was poison to her. This
family
was poison. How could they possibly be related to the man she'd known, so long ago?

She knew the window she wanted this time and headed straight for it. Sure enough, there he was, asleep in his bed. She could see, from the redness in his cheeks and puffy eyes, that he'd been crying before he fell asleep. No doubt the matriarch's discipline had been harsh, perhaps even physical. But the point was, Cyrille was safe, or relatively so. He had, indeed, been grabbed by his own family, not by the enemy. He didn't need saving—at least not of any sort she could provide.

Which meant there was nothing left holding her here.

“Come on, Olgun. We're leaving.”

They were a few dozen yards from the house before Olgun realized she didn't just mean leaving the
property
. Multiple visions of Alexandre Delacroix, striking and intense, flickered across her vision.

“I don't
care
!” she snapped back. “I've tried as hard as he could ever have asked, even harder! They tried to
kill
me, for pastries’ sake!”

More imagery, more emotion.

“And do you know for sure it
was
just Malgier being a raving idiot? That it wasn't on Mommy's orders? Because
I
don't! No. Leaving. Now.”

Then, “No. No! I
don't care!
Alexandre would understand. And even if he
would
be disappointed,
I don't care!
I don't!”

A final surge of emotion, sharp, stabbing.

“No, I…don't care if you're disappointed, either.” But she'd have had to be both unconscious and deaf to miss the quiver of doubt in her own protest.

She had, by then, gotten some slight distance from the house—and apparently at least a few yards beyond the boundaries of good fortune. Arguing too loudly with Olgun? Failure to pay attention, to drop into hiding at the first sound? Whatever the case, even the combined abilities of god and thief weren't infallible.

“Hold where you are, hands on your head!”

“Oh, figs.”

A trio of them, household guards, faintly glowing specters in the diluted moonlight. Shins couldn't tell in the gloom if these were men she'd run into before—though she couldn't imagine the Delacroix employed
too
many more armsmen than she'd already encountered—but she
could
make out the muskets pointed her way.

“I'm tired of this,” she growled, not bothering to keep her voice down.

“Then perhaps,” the first of the guards began as he neared, “you shouldn't go places you're not—”

Widdershins sidestepped and jumped, hurling herself at him while clearing his line of fire. The soldier, with an abortive sound that might have been distantly related to a yelp, swung his weapon around, struggling to bring it back on target.

Her hands closed on the barrel, yanked the musket from his grip, and then drove it back again, slamming the stock into his face. The guard screamed through split lips and missing teeth, gurgling horribly as he folded. Widdershins crouched, hurling the musket like a javelin and then catching the semiconscious soldier, interposing him between herself and the other two guns.

Or one gun, rather, as her makeshift projectile knocked one of the remaining guards reeling.

Recognizing that opening fire was a poor option, the nearer man charged, throwing his musket aside and pulling his rapier. Shins dropped the wounded man and met her attacker halfway, parrying a single thrust, pirouetting past him, and—as she'd done with the Thousand Crows in the foundry—focused instead on the more distant foe, the one clearly unprepared for her attack.

Her sword took him deep in the shoulder before his own blade had fully cleared its scabbard.

She heard a noise in the air, a vicious tremor, and realized she was literally snarling as she flung herself back at the middle guard. Steel kissed and sang, and the third man fell, crying out and clutching at a knee that had just been broken by an inhumanly powerful kick.

They'd live, all three of them. Shins sniffed, knelt to wipe her blade clean on one of their cloaks, thought about taking one to warm herself, began to reach for the clasp…

The guard spasmed, clutching, clawing at his mutilated knee. It seemed, in the faint light and against the uneven earth, to flex at angles no human limb should bend.

Three men who would live—but who would not soon, perhaps would not
ever
, live as they had. Whose bodies might never fully recover.

Widdershins felt her stomach lurch, her gorge rise. She doubled over, and only Olgun's calming touch in her gut, her mind, her soul kept her from dropping fully to her knees, vomiting profusely over the grass.

“What's happened to me?” She couldn't even cry; wanted to, felt as though she
needed
to, but the tears wouldn't come.

And Olgun had no answer she could comprehend.

It took a moment, but she finally brought herself under control and stood. “All right, we can't just leave them here. I could fire a shot from one of their muskets. That should bring someone running, yes? Another patrol, or maybe somebody from the house?”

She glanced that way even as she had the thought, watched the faint twinkle of firelight in many of the windows…

Something slipped into place in her mind, so abruptly it made her jump and dragged a startled squeak from Olgun.

I know how they did it. I know how the Crows and the Carnots pulled it all off.

Shins absently patted the pouch on her belt that still held the map she'd acquired from the unconscious thug some nights past. A map that showed the Delacroix properties, broken into numbered sections. She tapped, and she peered across the field at the house, a dull hulking shape with glinting windows, and tapped some more.

“I'm done with this,” she insisted.

Olgun said nothing.

“They'll figure it out for themselves. Or maybe they won't. I don't care.”

Nothing.

“I'm just going to draw some attention so these men get help, and then we are
leaving
.”

Still nothing—an emotional void, bereft of the slightest sensation or response.

“Oh,
figs!
”

Widdershins broke into a jog back toward the Delacroix house.

And Olgun smiled.

“All right, Cyrille.” The matriarch's voice was cold, flat, a thin sheet of ice over a bottomless, sunless lake. “We're here, as you requested. You do, of course, have something of
such
tremendous import that it absolutely could not wait for a more reasonable hour?” Her lack of expression, lack of tone, promised very unpleasant results if he did not.

Cyrille nodded, only half-listening. “As he requested” indeed! It had taken close to an hour of arguing, insisting, pleading, even shouting—and it had been, it seemed, the last that had convinced Calanthe, if only because it was so greatly out of character for her youngest son.

So here they were, gathered in the library as they had been the night Shins had come into his life. Or almost as they had been. Mother took the same central chair, a queen ruling her tiny domain from her tiny throne. Arluin stood nearby, his attentions on the bookshelves while waiting for someone to speak. Anouska, opposite her mother like a younger reflection; Josephine with her lantern, the twins with their coins. Marjolaine was absent, as always, but this time, so was Malgier. Apparently he was confined to his chambers until the matriarch decided on a fitting discipline. Cyrille had known Malgier was in serious trouble, but not for what. Not until—

“Did you drag us down here to spend what's left of the night gawping?” Anouska demanded of him.

A quick blink, and he was back in the moment. “No. First, though…Mother, would you permit me to dismiss the servants, please?”

Multiple scoffs, then, from his siblings. Chandler and Helaine
asked, in unison, “Don't want to embarrass yourself in front of the help?” Several of the others rolled their eyes, and even Arluin looked skeptical. Hell, the servants by the door were, themselves, only scarcely managing to hide their entitled smirks.

“Don't be tiresome, Cyrille,” Calanthe scolded. “Nothing you could possibly have to say, no family business involving you in any way, is so sensitive as all that.”

“You might be surprised. Mother…Please.”

Calanthe studied him, much as though she were attempting to discern what strange species of being he was, and then waved a pair of fingers behind her without looking back. The two servants started a bit, as did several of the Delacroix, but they knew better than to argue. The heavy doors clacked together behind the departing attendants.

Cyrille earned himself even more scoffing and muttering from his siblings as he moved to the door and threw the heavy bolt, ensuring nobody could open it from the outside. He wandered to the other, smaller door, locked that one as well.

“If you're quite finished,” the matriarch began, no longer even pretending to conceal her impatience, “perhaps you could tell us what this is about before dawn begins to—”

She was staring at him, suddenly alert, and Cyrille had no doubt why. He'd seen his reflection in the window as he moved to the second door. His face was ghastly pale, his lip trembling despite his efforts to bite it still.

“What have you done?” she hissed at him. The rest of her children went still, their attentions snagged by her tone.

“I—”

“He hasn't done anything.” He didn't know precisely where she'd been hiding; in a chamber such as this,
how
she'd been hiding. He knew only that she seemed to appear from nowhere as she spoke. “All he did was arrange an opportunity for us to talk. So let's talk, yes?”

Shins had no idea how many blades or other weapons to expect. It was one of the details Cyrille hadn't been able to guess at, when she'd snuck into his room to plan. Thankfully, it appeared only two, as the two eldest children drew steel—Arluin a heavy dueling dagger; Anouska a wicked, fat-bladed stiletto. With Olgun's aid and aim, a quick crescent kick sent the latter weapon spinning across the library to land in the corner, while a series of quick thrusts and twists with her rapier yanked the larger blade from Arluin's hand. Shins stepped in, caught it, hurled it, in one smooth motion, her fingers alive with a touch of the divine.

It sank deep into the wood of the smaller door, just beside the latch, blocking the bolt from sliding back. A few quick sidesteps and she stood before the larger door, blocking the only other easy exit from the library.

“You could try shouting,” she said to the Delacroix, who thus far hadn't gotten much past the wide-eyed, slack-jawed gasping stage. “But even if your people heard you, they're not getting in anytime soon. If I
wanted
to hurt you, I'd have plenty of time to do it. Hopping hens, I could have done it just
now
.” She waved her sword idly at Anouska and Arluin. “Can we
please
, for just a moment, accept that I'm here for reasons that
don't
involve blood, pain, and the ruining of such fine outfits?”

Calanthe turned her head, not toward Widdershins but toward Cyrille. Her youngest son visibly quailed before whatever it was he saw, shrinking back, his lips trembling. Only then did the matriarch focus on Widdershins again.

The thief knew she wasn't exactly at her most presentable. Despite quick efforts to clean up in Cyrille's room, much of her face and neck were smeared with ash. Her clothes were spotted with it, her hair thickly dusted. Trails ran through the darker splotches, where her sweat
had sluiced bits of it away before threatening to freeze in the cold. She didn't even want to know what she smelled like to other people, but was fairly certain she could turn wine to vinegar at thirty paces.

“Why should we believe a single word you have to say?” Calanthe demanded. If she was at all afraid of Shins, it certainly didn't show.

“Better question,” she replied, sheathing her sword, “is why shouldn't you? Or at least hear me out?”

“Mother?” Josephine clutched her lantern to her chest, trembling like a child. “Make her go away!”

Arluin's expression went cold at his sister's plea, and he took a single step toward the intruder, fists clenched.

Oh, crepe.
Time to cut straight to the point, then; she couldn't afford to build to it if things were about to go violent again.

“There's a traitor in House Delacroix.”

That, at least, rooted everyone to the spot.

Calanthe cast a quick glance at Cyrille, who flushed and looked like he wanted to climb into his own pockets.

“Not what I meant,” Shins snapped.

“Nonsense,” Calanthe spat, even as several of the others protested, often with more intensity and vulgarity both. “We're family. Nobody here would turn on us.”

“Did you send Malgier to kill me?”

For the first time, the matriarch blanched, her fingers tightening on the arms of her chair. “No,” she admitted. “I wouldn't send my people to commit cold-blooded murder unless I had no choice. I
certainly
would not have had them open fire outside a bloody hostel! Malgier thought he would ingratiate himself; he will learn otherwise.”

“Don't have quite the leash on your family you believe, then, do you?”

Anouska and the twins growled. Calanthe's lip curled.

“Malgier can be overzealous, but he is protective of the family, and he is
loyal
!”

“Like a guard hound,” Widdershins suggested.

“If you like.”

“If he's a hound,” the thief asked sweetly, “what does that make his mother?”

Cyrille slapped both palms against his face as if he were trying to wipe it off his head.

Before the half a dozen indrawn breaths could transform into furious shouting, Widdershins stepped forward and slapped something down on one of the small library tables. Several of the Delacroix offspring were too far back to see what it was, but the nearer, and Calanthe herself, could make it out just fine.

“I took this,” Shins told them, “from two of the Thousand Crows. Whom I found on your property. They also had these.” She tossed the gruesome-smelling wineskin to the floor beside the table. “I think you'll find it's the source of the blight.”

“How do we know these aren't yours?” Calanthe asked, but it was a reflex, a protest without heart. Clearly, she was running out of reasons to suspect that this was some elaborate ruse.

“So, it's a map of our properties,” Helaine scoffed. “So what? Anyone could make such a thing.”

“Anyone could,” Widdershins agreed. “See, I'd wondered for a while how the Crows were doing it. Just sort of poking at it, while I thought mostly about other stuff. I mean, your grounds are extensive, yes, but your patrols are pretty thorough.
I
had trouble getting past them…”

She glanced sideways at Cyrille, who nodded subtly. The boy
had
sent servants to collect the injured men, then. Good. The iceberg of guilt in her gut melted just a bit.

“…and trust me, I'm better at this sort of thing than the Crows are. They might've gotten through once,
maybe
twice, but not as often as they have.”

“Except they clearly did,” Calanthe observed.

“Clearly. How did they know which of your fields were related to your textile interests, as opposed to food crops? They
did
only try to poison your textiles, yes? It's not as though the fields are labeled or look all that different during winter.”

“There
are
people who know,” Arluin muttered, “hired hands and the like.” But he, too, sounded uncertain.

“The Thousand Crows,” Shins continued relentlessly, hammering each point home, “have no magic. Their ‘sorcerer’ practices alchemy. No mystical scouting of your properties.

“They needed someone inside who could tell them where the patrols were assigned, when to strike,
where
to strike. With that.” She pointed at the map.

“This doesn't show our guard patrols,” the eldest son protested. “It
can't
. We determine them nightly.”

“But it
is
divided into sections. It'd be easy to communicate a few numbers, even at a great distance. You just need the right tool, something that could be seen from clear across the fields. Something like, say, a blinking light. In unusual colors, maybe, so it's easily picked out from among the other lights in the house?”

Dead, utter silence, like the corpse of a mime. Every eye in the room fixed on Fifi; her expression was blank, her hands clenched on her favorite toy.

Then Calanthe began to laugh.

It started with a tremor in her shoulders, scarcely visible beneath her gown, then grew to a soft, dignified chuckle. The old woman raised a hand to her lips, but they did nothing to muffle the tittering, and then the open, full-throated guffaw. Most of the others were close behind, a variety of chortles, snickers, and outright cackles. Of all the Delacroix, only Arluin, Josephine, and, of course, Cyrille, refrained.

Well, that could maybe have gone better.
Not that Shins had expected a credulous response, but still, the open mockery was vaguely disturbing.

Just as abruptly, the matriarch went silent, her jaw tense as hardwood. It took a minute, but the others slowly followed her lead, the cacophony fading.

“If you're not dishonest,” Calanthe snarled, “you're insane. Of every member of my family you could have pointed to, it wouldn't be less believable if you'd chosen
me
! Josephine is
harmless
.”

“I'm not even sure she knows how to count as high as that map goes,” Chandler muttered.

“Hey!” Fifi protested, at the same time Arluin snapped, “Don't speak of your sister that way!”

Calanthe silenced the lot of them with a raised hand. “I'm going to offer you one last opportunity to leave,” she began, “under the assumption that you're a fool, not an enemy. Would you care to take it?”

Widdershins smiled, in part to cover the grinding of her teeth.
Anytime now
…

“There's an easy way to prove it.”

Finally!

Cyrille stepped away from the smaller door, moving to stand beside Widdershins. “A quick search of Fifi's room.”

Again the library filled with angry and indignant protests. Arluin looked ready to start swinging, and Calanthe appeared as cold as Widdershins had ever seen.

“Mother?” Josephine asked, quivering.

“It's not going to happen, Josephine. Cyrille, I don't know
what
this girl has told you, but—”