“Uh…” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Robin, that's not, well, not exactly how he looked. His hair wasn't…” She tried to shrug, and succeeded only in jostling the other girl's head. “I don't think we've got enough reason to believe that—”
“It's him,” Robin insisted, sniffling, and raised her head. “Iruoch's come to Davillon.”
“It's nonsense,” Julien insisted. “It's just a folktale. A child's rhyme.”
“Pure silliness, dear girl,” Renard agreed.
Widdershins nodded. “See, Robin? Besides, there haven't been any fairies in Galice in hundreds of years.”
“Like there haven't been any demons, Shins?”
The thief actually felt herself wilt. “Olgun?” she asked, scarcely vocalizing. “It's not Iruoch, right?”
Olgun's silence was worse than any confirmation he might have offered.
“Oh.” Then, somewhat more loudly, “Uh, guys? I don't know if Robin's right about who or what this thing is, but we know it's real, and it's magic, and it's really, really not friendly. Does it honestly matter what his name is?”
When nobody offered her any reply more intelligible than a grunt of agreement, she continued. “Jul—uh, Bouniard, can you increase the patrols?”
Julien grinned. “Widdershins asking for a greater Guard presence on the street? Are we certain the world's not ending?”
“Keep talking, Bouniard, and you'll wish it was.”
The major's grin only widened, and Widdershins had to bite her lip to keep from matching the expression. Trying to force herself to remain on topic, she said, “I don't actually think any of your people could take on Iruoch—or whoever he is—but maybe he won't attack groups.”
“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.”
“Not that fast, you don't!”
And it was actually true. Widdershins's shoulder and chest burned, aching far more than she would have expected. Was Olgun's power less effective against such an unnatural wound? Maybe so—but she was doing better than anybody else would have been, even if she wasn't exactly her full self.
And she sure wasn't about to spend another night in Julien's office! In its own way, and for its own reasons, the thought scared her as much as Iruoch himself.
“I'll be fine, Julien. And I'm going.”
He stood before her, arms crossed. “And if I put men at all the exits, with orders not to let you leave?”
“How many windows does this building have?” she asked smugly. “I'm pretty sure you can't spare that many guards.”
“Guards on the office door, then.”
“Sure. Just as soon as you explain to them that you've had me stashed in here for a day or so. That'll go over real well.”
“I could arrest you,” he insisted, but she knew from the slump of his shoulders that he was starting to surrender. “I can hold you for a while before we have to start worrying about charges and trials and all that.”
Widdershins smiled, stood—with only a single wince of pain—and, unconscious of what she was about to do until she was doing it, ran the tips of her fingers across his cheek. “But you wouldn't do that to me, right?”
“No,” he admitted. It came out somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “I wouldn't. Just…Be careful, Shins.”
“I'm always careful.” Widdershins stretched up on her toes and planted a kiss right at the corner of Julien's mouth—not on the lips, no, but not quite on the cheek, either. And then, before either of them could react to what had just happened, she was out the door and gone.
Without, it's worth pointing out, her shoes.
Julien was still standing in that precise spot, staring at the empty mattress and trying to remember how to form a cogent thought, when his door shook with a familiar, military cadence.
“Uh…” He shook himself, wishing briefly he had a snifter of brandy available, or at least a bucket of ice water in which to dunk his head. “Enter!”
Paschal pushed the door open, saluted (with the wrong hand, but given his injured arm, that was acceptable), and then looked with some bemusement at the mattress.
When it became clear that nobody would be answering his unasked question, he spoke. “So
rry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you should know…”
“Yes, Constable?”
“The thief we discussed last week? Widdershins?”
Demas, does this whole damn city revolve around her?! “What of her?”
“We've orders to arrest her on sight, sir.”
Julien blinked rapidly enough that Paschal could probably feel the breeze. “Why? What's she accused of?”
“Not entirely sure, sir. The request came from the bishop's office.”
“What?!”
“Apparently, due to her rumored involvement in the death of Archbishop de Laurent—”
“She was trying to save the man!”
“So I've read in the reports, sir. Nevertheless, given the unnatural events surrounding that tragedy, and given her proximity to what's happening now, they want her brought in until they can determine for themselves whether she's responsible or otherwise involved.”
“And we're taking instructions on how to uphold the law from clergymen now, are we?”
The constable's look was more than enough to convey the various meanings that he couldn't, as Julien's subordinate, actually come out and utter.
“Yes, yes, you're right. Well, I can assure you that I have no notion of where Widdershins is at this point in time.” As opposed to what would have happened if you'd shown up five minutes ago. Widdershins, your luck is incredible! “But I will, of course, keep a lookout and do as we've been ordered.”
“I had no doubt of that, sir.” Paschal frowned behind his goatee. “Major, I'm sorry to be the one to put you in this position. I know that you're friends with the woman.” If there was just the tiniest hesitation before the constable pronounced “friends,” well, both men chose to ignore it.
“Bah. It's not as though you gave the order. Better to hear it from you, anyway.” Julien took a single step toward the door, then paused. “You do understand, of course, that given all the troubles facing Davillon just now, any hunt for a street thief—however genuine our efforts may be—cannot possibly take priority over other concerns.”
“I'm quite sure,” Paschal said with an almost straight face, “that nobody could argue that.”