“The Shrouded Lord?” she prompted.
“Yeah, don't know. She says he's dead, but…she's avoided talking about who was under the mask, and she gets pissy—pissier—if he comes up in conversation. So maybe he's not as dead as she wants.
“Might as well be, though. He's out, and she's already purged most of the Finders who were specifically loyal to him.”
“Uh-huh.” The tip of the rapier twitched. “I can't help notice that didn't include you.”
Somehow, without shifting his grip, Remy managed to look as though he wanted to shrug again. “I do my job. I'm loyal to the Guild, not any one person.”
“Uh-huh,” Shins said again. “Also you didn't want her to open you up like a chest of drawers and reorganize your insides by color and size.”
“There was that,” he admitted.
“So she took the Shroud, then?”
“Nah. Seems happy enough running shit as herself.”
For the first time in the conversation, Shins found herself taken aback. “I thought the priests would've mandated it. It's a requirement, yes? To honor the Shrouded God?”
“Yeah, about that? Lisette's also purged the ranks of senior priests. Thinks she's got her own way of doing things in mind.”
She wanted to turn to Olgun, ask him what the frogs was going on, but she could feel his confusion as intensely as hers. Lisette had always been a fanatical worshipper of the Shrouded God, a zealous follower of his teachings. What could have changed?
A faint groan, clearly unintentional, pulled her thoughts back to Remy. “Almost done,” she told him, sympathy just dripping from every word. “Why all the bloodshed all of a sudden?”
“Orders.” His breath grew more labored with every word. “She wants…people afraid of us…wants bodies in the street. Seems to be trying…to stir up the Guard and…the Houses both. No idea why.”
“Because she's nuttier than a squirrel's larder.” Even as she said it, though, something about it nagged at her. Lisette was crazy, always had been, but there was always purpose behind her actions. “All right, last question. Maybe. What are your orders regarding me?”
“Locate…follow and watch. Nothing…else.”
Makes sense, given that the posters offered a reward for information about me, not body parts.
“You think Lisette wants to kill me herself, yes?”
“Maybe. Or she's got…some other scheme in mind. Either way, she wants you alive…for something.”
“Well…” Shins stepped back from the ledge, instinct and divine intervention all but painting her in shadow, leaving enough clear space for an exhausted, shaking Remy to haul himself up. “It'd be seriously inconsiderate to keep her waiting.”
Thick blankets of fog rolled in, but by the time Widdershins approached the Ragway District, they'd begun to dissipate. All that remained were thin tendrils and small accumulations of a lighter mist, seeping up from between the cobblestones. The ghosts, perhaps, of yesterday's storm-drenched passersby.
The shops and houses grew steadily more worn, more rickety, in some cases absent entirely. It was rather like walking through a mouth of bad teeth. Didn't smell much better, either. No sewers, here. No street cleaning. No comfort. No hope. Not in Ragway.
Widdershins didn't notice. She'd been through the district too many times before.
The building was an old, brick-shaped thing, supposedly the home of insurers and pawnbrokers barely breaking even. More or less everyone in the city knew the place's true purpose, though.
She knew she was watched by at least three separate sentries, even if she hadn't spotted them yet. It didn't stop her from striding right to the front door and knocking like the gods’ own tax-collector.
“It's called being confident!” she breathed in reply to Olgun's observation. “Not cocky. Well, yeah, that's because I'm not worried.”
I'm not. This isn't the Apostle and his demon, or Iruoch, or even Fingerbone with his weird goops. It's just Lisette!
Footsteps sounded behind the door, followed by the sound of a latch disengaging.
I'm not worried. Then, aloud, “Uh, but be ready to run anyway.”
A panel in the door slid open, granting Shins a view of deeply shadowed eyeballs—and them, in turn, a view of her.
Given their sudden, almost comical growth, the young thief had to assume she'd been recognized.
“Widdershins,” she announced casually. “To see Lisette Suvagne. I have an appointment.”
The panel slammed shut, and for some time there was silence nearby. Thunder and a howling wind both cracked that stillness at one point, but far in the distance, well beyond the walls of Davillon.
“Sounds like tomorrow's going to be unpleasant,” she casually observed. Her partner didn't reply.
Footsteps again, and for all her bravado, Shins tensed. It wasn't impossible that the door would open onto a bristling array of flintlocks and crossbows, and she needed to be ready to…
But no. The door did open, revealing only two young thieves, similar enough in appearance that they might have been brother and sister. He wore mostly browns and grays, she deep blues and crimson, but both were heavily armed—and both kept their weapons sheathed.
“Follow us,” the woman said. “We'll take you to her. You're going to have to surrender your blade, though.”
“Only if you're prepared to accept it handed over point first and very, very fast,” Shins replied, smiling prettily. “Possibly more than once. Not saying you're clumsy, but it can be a tricky sort of thing to hang onto.”
After which, following a minute's energetic discussion between the two Finders, Shins was ushered back outside and left to wait while the sentinels returned to Lisette for additional instructions. She managed to wait until she'd heard the door latch and the footsteps move away before she cackled aloud.
“I don't think the old snake's going to like having to repeat herself,” she told Olgun.
Indeed, when the door opened once more some minutes later, the woman was holding a hand tight to a bloody nose and lips, while her partner, or brother, or whatever, sported what was already proving to be a dark and nasty black eye.
“I'm not sure your new boss is a very nice person,” Shins observed. The others merely glared and turned their backs, confident that—or else not caring if—Widdershins would follow.
“And you called me cocky!” she quietly crowed—yes, she'd learned how to do that—to her god. “Look at Lisette's arrogance! The only way she even had a chance was if we had to fight our way through the whole hopping Guild to reach her! Now? Ha!”
Indeed, Shins was feeling better than she had at any moment since she discovered her flat had been…profaned. She'd handily beaten Lisette once already, and she and Olgun hadn't worked together as smoothly then as they did now. Even if Lisette had spent every intervening minute practicing, she didn't stand a chance.
Alert for trap or ambush, just in case—though she was fairly sure she'd encounter no such thing—Widdershins followed her guides into the winding tunnels that were the true headquarters of the Finders’ Guild.
And toward one of the few violent clashes, in a lifetime full of them, she was actually looking forward to.
Onward and downward. Through a complex of deliberately twisting passageways, as though someone had dropped a platter of wet noodles; past chambers both open and sealed, of purposes both blatant and hidden. Shins couldn't help but glance sidelong at the darkened chapel, that oddly shaped room with the heavy portals and the fabric-masked idol of the Shrouded God. Glance, and shiver at the memories of the statue's awful curse.
And all of it swimming in a miasma of breath and sweat, wrapped in a chorus of whispers and snickers, beneath the fascinated stares of scores of Finders. Some moved cleanly aside, some bristled and threatened first, but all cleared the path walked by her two guides. Most recognized her, either personally or by description. Many of those offered vicious grins or contemptuous sneers; Shins never had been one of the more pop
ular members of the Guild. Some, however, couldn't quite seem to meet her eyes, or cast their looks with a furtive discomfort.
They're afraid. And not of me.
An ember of doubt tried to ignite in the primal reaches of Widdershins's mind. She swiftly crushed it out.
It's just Lisette.
Still, “You are memorizing the way out of here, yes? This place still confuses me.”
Olgun assured her that he was, which meant the uncertainty she felt in him had to be caused by something else. “What's bothering you?”
But to that, he could offer no clear answer.
The door to which the two thieves finally led her surprised Widdershins not at all. This was the audience chamber of the Shrouded Lord, or at least it had been. Of course the usurper would rule from here.
“I think I can find my own way from here, thanks,” she said to her guides. She was a tad taken aback when they both nodded and stepped aside. Shrugging, she pushed the door ajar and slipped through.
The most notable aspect of the room was that she could see the room. The Shrouded Lord had always kept it full of rolling, incense-perfumed smoke; vapors that blended to near perfection with the tattered storm-cloud fabrics that made up his own uniform, as well as the sheets draped over the desk. The effect had been a ghostly—if also scratchy and irritating—fume wherein the Shrouded Lord was only another partially formed apparition.
Now? It was just a room, an office much like any other in the Finders’ Guild's upper ranks. The walls were a bit soot-stained, perhaps, but the massive hardwood desk was a thing of art, the chairs arrayed about it soft and welcoming, the single bookcase loaded to groaning with stacks of papers and parchments. The braziers, which had once spewed that thick incense, now served as the resting places of pricey oil lanterns, brightening the room rather more evenly and cleanly than torches ever could.
And that was everything, really. Everything save the office's lone occupant.
“Took you long enough,” Lisette complained, rising to her feet behind the desk. “Hello, little scab.”
If anything, she looked even meaner than Shins remembered. Her face had hardened and sunken with age; the younger thief likened it to a plow protruding from her thick mass of crimson hair. Her lips were thin, her teeth exposed in a tight smile that had nothing whatsoever to do with friendliness. Otherwise she looked normal enough, clad in greens and blacks, topped with a vest that so perfectly matched her hair it must have been custom made.
She wore no weapon to be seen, but Shins wasn't foolish enough to assume she had none ready behind that monstrosity of a desk.
“I'm surprised, Lisette. I figured you'd have spruced this place up once it was finally yours, make it more you. This…” She indicated the desk and bookcase. “This doesn't even come close to tasteless.”
“Oh, and I'm so deeply sorry to have disappointed you,” Lisette replied. “I did think of doing a more substantial redecorating, but it didn't seem worth the effort. I don't intend the heart of my domain to remain here for too long.”
“And where do you expect to be ruling from, Your Malignancy?”
“Wherever I choose. City Hall, perhaps. Or maybe Luchene Manor? I've always rather liked the look of that place.”
Widdershins felt her grip on the conversation beginning to slide, or at least cause rope burns. “You—”
“Honestly, though, at the moment I'm thinking the Basilica. It's such a nice place, and it would certainly send a message, don't you think?”
“You think you're going to run the whole city?” It was almost a squawk, so incredulous was Widdershins. Then, at the other woman's casual shrug, “You're even crazier than when you left! For pastry's sake, you couldn't even run a conspiracy within the Guild without being exposed.”
For the first time, Lisette's false smile slipped into a more honest sneer. “Yes, and whose fault was that?”
“It's about to be mine again, you dog!” The lingering shreds of Olgun's unease vanished beneath a surge of fury; Shins had her rapier in her hand without ever consciously choosing to draw it. “You should have stayed away, Lisette. You should not. Have touched. My friends.”
“The living or the dead?” the former taskmaster asked dryly.
“And you really shouldn't have just let me walk in here.” Widdershins's tone could have frozen the remaining oil in the lanterns.
“The truth is,” Lisette continued, “I gave serious thought to torturing you for a few months after you got home. You have so many weaknesses, little scab. But, well, I have a lot to do, still. So, alas, I decided to deny myself the pleasure of a slow revenge.
“That does not mean,” and now that tight, ugly smile was back, “I wasn't going to allow myself a personal one. Really, you think I'd have gone to all that trouble to extend my invitation with Genevieve's, Alexandre's, and Julien's rotting, vermin-eaten carcasses if I was just going to have one of my people kill you? You. Are mine.”
The room had been clearer, under its old cloud of smoke, than it was now beyond the blazing red in Shins's vision. “You didn't have a chance against me even before the limp, you snake!”
“Whose limp? Mine? Or Robin's?”
Shins lunged.
The sharp tingle of Olgun's power and she was airborne, clearing the space between herself and her enemy in a single leaping step. Her front foot landed atop the desk as she thrust, the tip of her rapier a bolt of steel lightning, tracing a line between the two women faster than the human eye could possibly register.
It never even came close.
Lisette folded out of the way, leaning far enough at the waist that the blade passed only through empty space. Then, whipping her body around so she now bent forward rather than back—without straightening in between!—she slammed a backhanded fist into Widdershins's ankle.
The impact knocked the young thief's foot completely out from under her. She crashed down on the desk, chest first, a burst of air blasted from her lungs. It was sheer luck, or perhaps quick thinking from Olgun, that kept her fist clenched around her rapier.
She wasn't sure what had just happened, only that she had no time to ponder it. Her god screaming a warning at her, she punched down with both fists—one empty, one wrapped about the sword hilt—propelling herself back and upward, off the desk to land in the center of the chamber.
A heavy bladed dagger, clutched in Lisette's fist, sank into the hardwood where Shins's back had just been, scarring the wood and utterly blunting the tip.
“Do you have any idea,” she shrieked, hurling the ruined weapon aside, “how much this desk is worth?!”
“How did you do that?” Shins demanded, shocked to her core and starting—far, far too late—to feel the first genuine stirrings of fear.
Lisette's answer was almost a purr. “There are powers in this world, you damn fool. Powers greater than you can imagine, and powers more than capable of concealing themselves.
“From you or your wretched, insignificant pet of a god!”
The words were weapons, rocking Widdershins, stunning her—and Olgun, too—far more than any physical blow. Her mouth opened, but she couldn't force whole concepts to pass through it.
“What…? How…?”
But Lisette was already moving. This time it was she who landed atop the hardwood, and though Shins was far too taken aback to be certain, it looked less like she had jumped and more as though she had simply lifted both legs, at once, high enough to reach the desktop. She wielded a rapier in one hand, a new dagger in the other, and Shins hadn't even seen her draw. Lisette froze for an endless instant, crouched atop the desk, and then her legs straightened in a tremendous leap.
Passing within a rat's knuckle of the ceiling, she soared over Widdershins's head in an arc so impossible it almost hurt to see it. By any natural law, she should have struck hard against the stone ceiling, or else covered perhaps half the room, at most, in her flight. Instead she landed at the far door, having already twisted to wind up facing her opponent.
/> “Are you beginning to understand,” Lisette hissed, exhaling pure malevolence, “how badly you fucked up in coming here?”
“I think so,” Widdershins said through a wan, sickly smile. “So, time to call it lesson learned and go our separate ways, yes?”
“Ah, yes, I well recall the famous Widdershins's wit. But no, my mocking gutter bitch, we're not done. I have so much yet to teach you!” Rapier and dagger swirling around past one another, Lisette advanced.
“Olgun…?”
Another surge of divine power, and the older woman's foot caught on an up-curled edge of rug. It should have sent her tumbling into the waiting chairs, granting Widdershins a second or two of opportunity to try to get past her, make for the door…
It didn't happen. Even as the toe of Lisette's boot made contact with the heavy weaving, the rug twitched, yanking that awkward fold from her path before it could begin to trip her up.
Olgun gibbered, and Shins felt a very great deal like joining him. Palms sweating, heart pounding, she retreated toward the desk.
“Such childish little tricks you two rely on,” Lisette taunted. “Not much more than divine sleight of hand. Would you care to see something…rather more interesting?”
“If it's all the same—” Shins's reply began with words; it concluded in a terrified cry, hers and Olgun's both.
Still spinning, Lisette's weapons advanced, suddenly seeming to attack Shins from all sides. Yet Lisette herself hadn't taken another step. It was impossible to see for sure—the whirling steel, and her efforts to either dodge or parry it, occupied the entirety of the young thief's attentions—but she swore her enemy's arms had simply reached across the intervening space, lengthening to compensate. Every time she allowed herself a fraction of a blink to look past the weapons, though, to actually try to study those arms, she couldn't quite focus on them. As though she tried to examine them through tears and a thick heat haze.
The superhuman speed with which Olgun infused her limbs, the extra warning he gave, the manipulations of chance that ensured her rapier was so often in place to catch an incoming attack—only these had kept Shins alive thus far. Her entire body was drenched in sweat, now, her arms stung from half a dozen tiny cuts where she hadn't quite moved fast enough. She couldn't recall ever growing so tired, so swiftly, or feeling Olgun falter so soon in his own exhaustion.