Covenant's End

  Shins landed on the first one's shoulders, felt a few disturbing crunches beneath her feet as he just folded under her. He managed maybe one quarter of a scream. She felt a brief pang of sympathy, but…well, it was better than if she'd just up and stabbed him.

  Wasn't it?

  A crumpled human, especially one now capable of bending in a few spots that nature had not intended, makes for very unstable footing, and even Widdershins's enhanced reflexes weren't perfect. She stumbled a step toward the squishy fellow's companion.

  As he appeared locked in place, however, his senses and his brain arguing over what had just happened, she decided to turn it to her advantage.

  (Mostly so the whole wobbly landing would appear—to her enemy and Evrard both—planned and deliberate. But she wouldn't have admitted it under torture, and neither of the witnesses could hear Olgun snickering about it.)

  The stagger transformed into a forward roll, her palms slapping wetly on the cobblestone, and the thug had just enough time for the strangest expression to cross his face before both of Widdershins's boot heels did likewise. When all was said and done, and the dust—or rather, spray—had settled, he lay sprawled on his back in the street, Widdershins sitting comfortably atop him. The initial impact might or might not have been enough to render him unconscious, but the fact that Shins currently had one foot resting heavily on his throat removed all doubt.

  “Evening,” she said as Evrard stalked closer, fists and jaw quivering.

  “Showing off?” he spat.

  “Uh, no.” Not exactly, anyway. “Nobody here worth bothering to impress.”

  “I could have taken them!”

  “Sure. If you'd noticed them. And if they were normal robbers.” She rose, stretched hard until something in her back popped, and then began wandering in the same direction Evrard had been heading. Given no other option—especially since that remained the way he had to go—the aristocrat joined her.

  “‘Normal robbers’?” he demanded.

  “Yeah. As in, robbers who plan to rob you. Like normal.”

  “And what else would they have been?”

  “Spies for Lisette, who knows you were involved in the fight against Iruoch and might have noticed you asking questions. In which case, sure, you could still have taken them—unless their job was just to follow you and confirm where we were, and that you were working with us, in which case you'd never have known they were here. Well, until the Finders showed up to stab us in our sleep. Probably with fire.”

  “Stab us with…?”

  “This way, they don't see where you're going, and they didn't really see who or what hit them.”

  “So which are you?” Evrard asked.

  “Huh?”

  “A who or a what?”

  “Cute,” Widdershins said. “A few years of practice, just like that, and you could really be marginally less unfunny.”

  “I…” He glanced abruptly downward, something having snagged his attention. “You're wearing a rapier.”

  “So are you,” she pointed out.

  “Yes, but you did not have a rapier when you left. In fact, you asked me to lend you one of mine.”

  She shrugged. “And you said no. So I borrowed from someone else.”

  “I see. And does this someone else know you ‘borrowed’ his sword?”

  “Well, by now he probably does…”

  Footsteps, the very sporadic murmur of other pedestrians, the faint sizzle as the occasional bead of water worked its way inside the burning streetlamps. Otherwise, silence.

  “I'm afraid I wasted my day,” Evrard began. “I didn't learn any—”

  Two raised fingers and a quick “Shh!” stopped him cold.

  “Not now,” Shins told him. “Wait until everyone's gathered. Then we can all report to each other at once.”

  “But I just told you I don't have anything to—”

  “So wait until we're all together and then don't report anything.”

  Evrard actually swayed, appearing almost drunk. “You want me to wait,” he said, slowly and clearly, perhaps making sure they were both speaking the same language. “And tell the group I've got nothing. Without telling you, alone, right now, that I've got nothing.”

  “Precisely.”

  “For the love of the gods, why?!”

  Shins stared at the man as though he'd gone mad for even asking. “I don't want to lose track of all the details.”

  Once again, footsteps, the very sporadic murmur of other pedestrians, the faint sizzle as the occasional bead of water worked its way inside the burning streetlamps. Otherwise, more silence.

  “How did I let myself get talked into this?”

  He hadn't really been asking Shins, hadn't even meant to mutter it aloud; it was just another repetition of what had become the evening's anthem. Yet, without even looking his way, Widdershins answered.

  “Because you and your family spent almost a decade doing nothing but playing at manners and propriety as ‘guests’ in another country, yes? Followed almost immediately by your silly obsession with getting revenge on me.”

  “Silly—?! You stole dozens of our family heirlooms! Gods’ sakes, Lisette only hates you because you beat her to robbing my—!”

  “Now that that's all behind you, you haven't the faintest wiggling idea what to do with yourself or your life. You're bored, you're completely aimless, and you're looking for something to do that actually matters.”

  Evrard rocked, raising fingertips to his cheek as though he'd been slapped. “You have no idea what you're talking about!”

  “Oh.” Another of Widdershins's shrugs. “Okay.”

  “You don't!” he insisted.

  “Okay. And Lisette's a few strands short of a mop, anyway. She'd have found some other reason to hate me. No reason to blame yourself.”

  The aristocrat roared something that, at closest, was related to genuine words solely by marriage, and stormed ahead, his rapier an angry and twitching tail, with nearly enough force to leave an Evrard-shaped hole in the fog. Shins stood, blinking, in his wake.

  “What'd I say?”

  Olgun could only sigh.

  “I'm worried,” Robin conceded, doe-eyed and imploring, from her spot at the end of the sofa. Around the room, the various conspirators took this seat or that, while Evrard—fulfilling his duties as host, for all that he constantly grumbled about it—passed around brimming goblets and morsels of those fruits available in this peculiar season.

  To everyone other than Faustine, who was nowhere to be seen.

  “I told her to stay here!” Shins fumed, not merely pacing but stomping as though the carpet were made of spiders. “I didn't want you alone!”

  “Calm down, Shins. I wasn't. She didn't leave until Renard got back.”

  “I'm not sure that's any safer,” she growled.

  “I daresay, I can hear you,” the older thief protested from across the chamber, idly studying a crystalline vessel of a rich wine.

  “I'm not surprised; it really isn't much of a dare.” Shins cast about the room, sort of idly flailed her hands a bit, and then resumed her previous spot beside the hearth. “Gah!”

  “Widdershinsian catastrophe or not,” Robin insisted, “I still have responsibilities.”

  “‘Widdershinsian’…?”

  “I have to make decisions about the Witch, and for that I need to know how business is running. You're lucky I just asked her to go, but I knew I'd slow everything down too much if I went along.”

  “Oh, all right. Point made. Let's start with the basics. Broad strokes. If Faustine's not back after that, we'll go look for her before we get down to details. Okay, Robs?”

  Robin appeared rather less than okay, but she nodded agreement.

  “Good. Evrard hasn't learned anything, so let's start with you, Igraine.”

  “Certainly,” the priestess began. “I've been…uh, Widdershins?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is Evrard supposed to be turning that col
or? Because that doesn't look entirely natural to me.”

  “I'm sure he's fine. You were saying?”

  “O…kay…. Since I wasn't trying to drag a bloody, collapsing companion with me, I had no difficulty in reaching the Basilica. I spent the day speaking with his Eminence Sicard's people. No new information, but I can confirm that there's almost perfect overlap between the Houses whose priests are claiming to be able to ward off this latest supernatural threat, and those that have refused to put soldiers on the street to help keep the peace. And also that not a single one of them has suffered any sort of attack by the fae, at least not that's become public knowledge.”

  Shins chewed the ends of her hair a moment. Then, “All right, Renard?”

  “Ah, my dear lady, I am sorry to say I discovered nothing from my Guild and underworld contacts we had not already known. I fear I'm in the same spot as Monsieur d'Arras. Albeit apparently less crimson about it.”

  More unintelligible grumbling from Evrard.

  “What of you?” Renard asked, after sparing the aristocrat no more than a passing glance.

  “Oh,” Shins replied, “right. Well, I'm wanted for the murder of…” She swallowed, hard; it was still so difficult to say. “Major Julien Bouniard.”

  It proved impossible to make out Robin's, Renard's, or Evrard's responses beneath Igraine's strenuous and rather unpriestly “Horse shit!” but Widdershins was pretty sure they all amounted to that same general sentiment.

  “Kind of what I said, only with less, uh, feces. And not everyone believes it. Julien's friend Paschal knows better. But the order came from the top.”

  “Commandant Archibeque?” Renard asked.

  “Yep. Oh! Also, he's possessed by Lisette's fae.”

  That, of course, required more than a bit of elaboration. Shins had just gotten everyone to stop shouting questions at once and had begun to explain what had occurred at the headquarters of the Guard, when a faint, even timid, rap on the front door halted her in mid-word.

  They all knew who it probably was, yet hands dropped to weapons and muscles went tense until Evrard, after a careful peek through a tiny sliding window, hauled the door open and stepped aside for Faustine to enter the suite.

  Her hair and skirts hung limp, weighted down and fatigued by the damp, and all of that made perfect sense. Shins's gaze flew almost instantly to the woman's face, though. The redness, puffiness…that wasn't rainwater glistening on her cheeks. Faustine had been crying, and hard.

  Shins felt a faint tingle in her nose, almost like a building sneeze, except spiritual. She knew what it meant, knew Olgun had sensed something she couldn't, and needed her to smell it, too.

  He guided her, softly, gently, and there it was. Clinging to the courier's clothes.

  The faintest, lingering whiff of smoke.

  And Shins knew. As thoroughly as if Faustine had already spoken, as if she herself had witnessed it, Shins knew. She slumped hard against the stone of the hearth, and only that kept her from the floor.

  “A problem in Davillon that's not my responsibility,” I thought. I'm so stupid…

  Olgun's comforting touch warmed her from within, and she was grateful, but she could barely even feel it.

  “Faustine?” Robin was on her feet, hand clasped unconsciously to her throat. “Shins? I don't…. What's going on?”

  “It's…Robin, it's…” Faustine's voice cracked. She took a single step, arms raised, then froze, blatantly uncertain what to do, knowing only that these would be among the hardest words—for herself and the woman she loved—that she would ever, could ever say.

  “It's gone. Oh, Robin, I'm so sorry. The Flippant Witch is gone.”

  Candles flickered, a few of them guttering, adding more of a waxy scent to the room than any great degree of illumination. Oil lanterns and the chandelier sat cool and dark; nobody had felt it proper to wander around lighting them.

  The gloom seemed more appropriate to the mood.

  “Everyone got out,” Shins said softly to the weeping girl beside her. Robin, completely limp, still hiccoughing now that her body could no longer handle the sobs, huddled near one end of the sofa. She shook inside the circle of Faustine's arms, wrapped around her, while Widdershins lay what she meant to be a comforting hand on Robin's shoulder. She hoped it was comforting; she knew it wasn't.

  A quick flicker, and she found herself catching Faustine's eye. The courier offered a wan smile through her own tears, and Shins returned it. The both of them struggled to hold back their own grief, to be strong for the woman they both loved, each in their own way, and both barely managed. For that moment, at least, Shins and Faustine completely understood one another.

  “The property's still mine,” the thief continued, growing desperate. “We can—we will—rebuild. It'll be just like new…”

  Robin sniffled, and Shins could think of nothing more to say. In fact, this was far from the first time she'd said precisely that, since Faustine's revelation, in the hopes that repetition might penetrate Robin's grief.

  Except that Robin didn't want the Flippant Witch “like new.” Neither did Shins.

  Something else Lisette had taken from her. One more mark on an ever-growing list.

  “Why is she doing this?” Renard muttered. For a long time, everyone else had remained silent, out of shared grief or at least respect, but the night wouldn't wait indefinitely.

  “Are you kidding?” Igraine snapped, less angry than incredulous. “She didn't need any better reason than to hurt—”

  “No, no, I get that.” Renard reached upward to idly stroke the feather he was accustomed to wearing in his hat, apparently only recalling when his fingers came together that he currently wore no such thing. “I mean…all of this. Everything she's doing, everything we talked about last night, I'm still not seeing how it's all connected.”

  “I think I am,” Widdershins said. Then, “Did you guys practice that? Even your blinking's synchronized.”

  When the staring and blinking continued to happen, and further speech continued to not happen, Shins squeezed Robin's shoulder one last time and stood, idly meandering from sofa to hearth and back. “I ran into some, uh, political maneuvering when I was away, so I've sort of been thinking along those lines. It came together when I found out the snake had her talons in the Guard, too.”

  “A snake with talons?” Renard gibed, for all that his voice remained strained.

  “A very dishonest snake. I'm sure she stole the talons from something that needed them more than she did.

  “Look at it all together. Davillon's on the edge of panic and a collapse of law and order. The city's been pretty well isolated from outside help. The Church is paralyzed trying to deal with about a thousand crises at once. The major Houses are on the edge of open conflict—at least political, if not actual violence.

  “The fae are responsible for the weakening of the Church and appear to be cooperating to bolster the claim that the priests of these minor Houses can protect people. Those same minor Houses have not put soldiers on the street, so they're in a good position to hunker down and ride out what's coming, without taking the kind of damage their bigger rivals will. And some of those Houses have new leadership—almost as if the old patrons were in the way of something, yes?”

  Nods all around.

  “And the Guard, too,” Faustine interjected in growing understanding. “We never did get a really good reason why they've suddenly devoted so much manpower to guarding the walls, and it's partly the lack of those soldiers on patrol that's forced the Houses to step in.”

  “Precisely!” Shins spun so quickly her hair made a hail-like pitter-patter across the wall beside the hearth. “So in other words, Lisette—who already runs the criminal underworld in Davillon—is poised to see Houses and priests, who are presumably loyal to her, rise to become the predominant legal powers in the city. And she has enough influence to keep the Guard too busy to do anything about it, if not actually make them assist.

  “Government. Comm
erce. Church. Law. Underworld. She told me the whole city would be hers, but…I thought she was just taunting me. I don't think so anymore.”

  “Gods,” Igraine marveled. “It's absolutely insane, and it's enough of a twisted web to make a spider dizzy, but…she really just might do it. Lisette may be on the verge of ruling Davillon!”

  Faustine, however, was shaking her head. “For how long, though? A city in that much chaos, and possibly with the fae running free? How long could she possibly maintain that?”

  “I don't think she cares about anything that far ahead,” Shins said. “I think as long as she gets her reign as queen of the heap, nothing else matters.”

  “There is no way,” Evrard declared, leaning so far forward in his seat that his grip on the armrests was all that kept him in it, “that either the Church or the Galicien throne would allow someone to just step in and take over a major city!”

  “What would they do about it?” Renard countered. “The military and the Church are both occupied at the border. All they know is that there's some social chaos happening here, and that's no different than half a dozen other cities. Lisette could have the situation stabilized, with nobody the wiser, long before any official eyes turn this way.”

  “And even if the throne did find out,” Igraine added, “if Lisette's smart enough to play along, pay taxes, do everything the nation expects a city government to do…the cost in money and lives to take Davillon by force might not even seem worth it.”

  “Politics,” Robin all but spat.

  “Could we maybe tell people?” Shins asked without much confidence. “Stir up the rest of the city against her? Her control's nowhere near absolute, yet.”

  “How would we prove any of it, dear Shins?” Renard asked. “We certainly won't get the Guard to turn against the orders of their commandant without overwhelming evidence, and trying to get all the major Houses to do anything together is rather akin to neatly stacking live eels.”

  “No!” Robin sat bolt upright, fists clenched, visibly startling the hell out of Faustine. “None of this crap! No negotiations, no schemes, just kill the bitch!”