“There is that. But—”
“And if you'll trust me just long enough to come with me, His Eminence, the bishop, should confirm it. Unless you think I've got him in my pocket, too.”
“Suppose,” he said slowly, “I'm not prepared to trust you even that far?”
Widdershins sighed loudly. “Do you think I want to be here, Evrard? Do you think I want to be talking to you, instead of dropping something heavy on you from a very great height? We need you!”
“Why should I help you?” He asked it as an honest question, with no challenge in his tone.
“You're not. You're helping all of Davillon. You're helping a whole bunch of people who'll be slaughtered by this creature if it's not stopped.”
“And why do you think that matters to me, either?”
“Because you care about your family's honor. And because you were about to let Robin go.”
“Damn it…” She knew she had him wavering, could literally see the indecision working its way across his features. “Widdershins, I don't know…I—”
“When this is all over,” she pressed, “assuming we're all still around, I'll challenge you to your stupid duel.”
“Will you, now?”
“I swear it. Time and place of your choosing.”
“And my rapier?” he asked, apparently just to be ornery.
“This isn't your rapier. But if I'm dead, you're welcome to take it.”
“All right…All right.” He somehow seemed to nod with his entire body as the decision was made. “Just let me get properly dressed.”
Widdershins smiled brightly. “Don't forget to untie the valet on your way out.”
“I don't know,” Widdershins hedged, her fingertips trailing across a dusty stretch of old, cracked marble. “This is starting to feel a little disrespectful, don't you think?”
Sicard turned slowly away from his painstaking preparations, accompanied by a melodious popping in his back and cracking in his knees, and sighed. In the tone of a man repeating himself for the umpteenth time, he said, “The creature is most uncomfortable on hallowed ground, so we require just such an advantage. A cramped space, with lots of surfaces to climb, favors him over us, so the church would be inappropriate, even disregarding the danger to innocents. This truly is our best option, Widdershins. I think the families would understand—and I know the gods will.”
Widdershins frowned even as she nodded, glancing around once more at the array of tombstones and burial plots stretching away in every direction. They had set up shop at a crossroads of the footpaths that wound between the rows of resting dead, and Julien had stationed members of the Guard at the entrance to dissuade mourners and visitors from entering, but she still didn't feel as though they were even remotely alone.
She knew, also, that she should be upset that—despite his high-sounding justifications—Sicard had chosen the Verdant Hills Cemetery, which serviced workers, craftsmen, and other citizens of moderate means, rather than one of the wealthier, upper-class graveyards with which he'd probably have been more familiar. (He'd told them it was so Iruoch wouldn't have the mausoleums on which to climb, but Widdershins wasn't sure she bought that logic.) Should have been upset, except that she could only give thanks, however ashamed she might feel of herself for it, that neither Genevieve's nor Alexandre's graves would be impacted by what was to come.
His Eminence, apparently realizing that no further questions or objections were forthcoming, returned to his efforts, laying out a broad circle of various herbs and incense, fine links of silver chain, small two-faced mirrors, and other esoteric components for his forthcoming mystical endeavors. Widdershins, in turn, tore her gaze off the stretches of thick green grass and sprouting flowers, the meticulously carved stones and raised patches of earth, and studied her motley allies instead.
No Robin; Widdershins had shouted and ordered and eventually threatened to tie the girl up until she swore to remain behind. The thief understood her friend's burning need to help, but really, she could have done little except put herself, and the others, in greater danger. Similarly, no Constable Paschal. Julien had stationed him with the other soldiers at the gate, to ensure that no innocent mourners wandered into danger, but the man's injured arm would have made him a liability in the battle to come. He knew it, of course, which is why he'd swallowed his pride and accepted the “lesser” assignment.
All of which left, in addition to Widdershins herself (and Olgun, of course): the bishop, who would be responsible for the casting and maintaining of the enjoining incantation; Igraine, who would do what she could against Iruoch, but served primarily as Sicard's assistant; Brother Ferrand, who would share (as much as the spell would allow) in Olgun's power; Evrard d'Arras, who stood off on his own, shoulders stiff and chin raised against the mistrustful glares constantly lobbed in his direction; Renard Lambert, resplendent in his usual finery, who had won the coin toss and would be linked to Evrard, in order to share his dueling acumen; and Julien Bouniard, whose own loss of that coin toss had probably rendered him relatively useless in the coming confrontation and had sent him into a furious sulk, though he was doing his damnedest not to show it.
And they were supposed to not only stand against Iruoch, a creature from myth and fairy tale who had already taken everything Widdershins could throw at him—twice—but to destroy him. It would have been laughable, if it wasn't quite so terrifying. Despite her every effort to remain upbeat, Widdershins found herself looking again and again at the various grave plots around her and wondering if her own final resting place would be so neat and tidy.
So preoccupied was she in her grim ruminations that she almost missed it when Renard suddenly pushed away from the tombstone against which he'd been leaning and strode purposefully to Evrard's side. Only Olgun, metaphorically tapping her on the shoulder and pointing, was enough to draw her attention. Worry wrapping her fingers into fists, she sidled closer to listen in.
“…threats you're planning to make,” Evrard was saying, not even deigning to face the shorter man, “you needn't bother. Widdershins asked me to be here. Our personal issues can wait until later.”
“Maybe yours can,” Renard replied. “Maybe hers can. But I wasn't consulted, and I made no such agreement.”
Still Evrard refused to turn, but Widdershins didn't miss—and Renard could not have missed—the slow slide of his hand toward the hilt of his rapier. She felt her breath catch.
“What would you have of me, then, Monsieur Lambert?” the aristocrat asked.
“A token, nothing more. A sign that you can, at least while our interests coincide, be trusted.”
“And what form might such a token take?”
“Just this, Monsieur d'Arras: the name of the man who told you that Widdershins was responsible for the theft at your tower.”
That same gasp, trapped a moment earlier, now exploded from Widdershins's throat. In all the chaos, all the other priorities, she'd completely forgotten that was even a question!
“You didn't just stumble across that information,” Renard was pressing. “While it wasn't precisely a secret within the Guild, it's not the sort of thing any of us would speak of in public.”
Widdershins couldn't keep out of it any longer. “And Genevieve's will! You knew enough to question the veracity of the will! Only someone with contacts deep in the Finders would have known enough to do that!” If she realized that she'd just more or less confirmed to Evrard that the document was, indeed, a forgery, it happened too late for her to swallow the words.
“And what if,” Evrard asked them, “I choose not to reveal my sources at this time?”
“Then, Monsieur d'Arras, you either prove all the rumors of your skill by killing me—and thus do without me in the coming battle—or I disprove them by killing you, and His Eminence links me with the major instead of you. But I'll not put my life, or Widdershins's, in the hands of a man I cannot trust even in the face of a common foe.”
Evrard pursed his lips in thought, and t
hen nodded sharply. “I owe this person nothing. I made no oath of secrecy, and I knew from the beginning that she had her own purposes and agenda in telling me of what happened.”
“She?” Renard snarled. Widdershins just scowled.
Of course. Who else could it have been?
Another nod. “She. A woman with hair like the reddest leaves of autumn, and a notable limp. Her name was—”
“Lisette,” Widdershins hissed. “Lisette Suvagne.”
“I see I wasn't wrong in assuming the two of you had some past history,” the aristocrat said blandly.
“A bit.” Widdershins sneered. “Did she tell you that the reason she hates me was because I got to your tower before she did?”
All traces of humor faded from Evrard's face. “She…No, she neglected to mention that detail.”
“Thought she might have. Renard?”
“I can't speak for the Shrouded Lord,” Renard said, an odd inflection to the words. “But I'm fairly certain you can count on the Finders' Guild making every effort to hunt her down. Even after she was removed from the Guild, she should have known that her oaths remained binding—especially as a former taskmaster!”
“It won't help,” Evrard said. “She's not in Davillon. Or, well, she wasn't when we last spoke.”
“We have reach,” Renard said, though he refused to expand any further on the topic. What he did say, some moments later, was, “Thank you, Monsieur d'Arras. That answer was more helpful than you know. Shins, you should have killed her when you had the chance.”
“I'm getting that, yes.”
“Would that be when you gave her the limp?” Evrard asked.
“As a matter of fact, it—”
“His Eminence is ready,” Igraine called to them.
All thoughts of the traitorous Lisette instantly forgotten—well, most thoughts of her, anyway—the three of them, along with Julien Bouniard and Brother Ferrand, gathered around the kneeling priests.
“We'll start with Messieurs Lambert and d'Arras,” Sicard said. “I know how long the spell's effect is supposed to last, but I do not know how the presence of Olgun might alter such details. So I'd prefer to link Widdershins and Ferrand second, in case the incantation is foreshortened.” He paused briefly. “Ferrand, are you certain about this? You're not required to—”
“I'm certain, Your Eminence.”
Sicard sighed. “I knew you were going to say that. Very well, if everyone but Lambert and d'Arras would kindly step back…?”
So they did, while Renard and Evrard knelt before the bishop. Sicard began to chant in a language predating modern Galicien. At times, both his hands rested on his subjects' heads, while at others he would reach down for the mirror, or the silver chain, or even for the incense and herbs that currently burned and fizzled in a small iron brazier, wafting a sweetly floral scent across the cemetery.
“I don't like this,” Julien said from just behind her.
“I think you may have mentioned that,” Widdershins told him, leaning back against his chest and reaching down to lightly clasp his left hand in hers. “A time or two. Or three. Or eighty-seven thousand.”
“I'm serious, Shins. I'm no use to you if I'm not part of this spell. We should—”
“Julien, we have been through this, you know.”
“Yes, but I haven't won, yet.”
Widdershins laughed softly. “Now you're starting to sound like me.”
“Oh, gods. That's all I need.”
She slowly faced him, let go of his hand so she could cup her left palm against his cheek. “You'll do what you can. And it will help me to have you here, no matter what.”
“And when this is over?” he asked her softly.
He sounded sure, so sure, that there would be an after. Widdershins wasn't. She stretched up on her toes and kissed him, oh so briefly, then spun away to stand where she could watch Sicard casting his spell.
Where she wouldn't have to ponder the answers to Julien's questions, spoken or unspoken.
It was perhaps ten or fifteen minutes later when the two men rose, staggering and staring first at their own hands, and then at each other, as though not entirely certain of what they were seeing. Sicard took a moment to sip from a small bottle and to restock the herbs in his brazier, while Igraine nodded for Widdershins and Ferrand to step forward.
“You ready for this, Olgun?” Widdershins asked softly. And then, “Heh. Well, if it makes you feel any better, neither am I.”
“Are you certain he'll come to us?” Igraine asked as the pair of them crouched in the dust. “This is a lot of wasted time and effort if he doesn't.”
“You want me to lay odds, Igraine? I can't.” Widdershins shrugged. “But he was able to sense me at the Lamarr estate from halfway across town, and he definitely considers me a threat, now. I think, if there's effectively two of me, it'll attract his attention pretty quick.”
“I think it would attract anyone's,” Julien stage-whispered from off to the right. Several of the group chuckled, and Widdershins found herself unaccountably blushing.
“Are we doing this, or what?” she demanded.
“We are,” Sicard told her. “Try to relax. Breathe evenly, think calming thoughts, and…Um, please ask your god not to do anything at all…well, not to do anything, really. I can't begin to guess what might happen if he interferes.”
“I don't think I need to. He can actually hear you, you know.”
“Oh. Uh, yes, of course.” The bishop took a final deep breath. “Very well. Let's begin.”
For all that the incantation seemed to go on indefinitely, when the effect finally came over her, it was nigh instantaneous. One moment, Widdershins was kneeling in the dirt, wishing she could scratch her knees, irritated at the bishop's sweaty palm on her head and his constant droning in her ears. The next, she was listing to the side, barely keeping her balance, as her senses and her mind went to war over a conflicting array of perspectives.
It wasn't as though she were actually in two places at once, not precisely. She saw the world from only one perspective, as always. What she had, instead, was two parallel tracks of recent memories. At any given second, she was staring at the bishop, or a nearby tree, or the array of tombstones. But one heartbeat later, she could recall not only that vista at which she'd been looking, but another angle on the cemetery, from somewhere off to her left: a different tree, a different side of Sicard, or even—gods, even herself, flailing around and trying to catch her balance. She didn't see what Ferrand saw, but she remembered seeing what he'd just seen.
The earth lurched beneath her feet, her stomach heaved, and Widdershins wondered how her sanity—how anyone's sanity—could stand up to this.
Sicard continued to chant, his voice growing rough and jagged, and the world began to steady, her thoughts to cease their drunken capering and once more fall into some semblance of order. As if controlled by an expert stagehand, a thick curtain swayed shut between her own perspective and her memories of what Ferrand saw—or had seen, or whatever it was. She still received the occasional muffled sound or brief glimmer of light, but it was a minor distraction at worst, easily ignored. Only if she deliberately chose could she peek through the curtain and share in the monk's own experiences.
“Well…” Widdershins staggered to her feet and reached out a hand to help Ferrand in doing the same. “Did the earth move for you, too?” she asked him.
Ferrand opened his mouth, shut it, and looked away, blushing.
“It seems to have worked normally,” Sicard said, also rising. “But I can't be sure….”
“I don't know,” Ferrand said. “I don't feel any different.” Then, at Widdershins's startled look, “I mean, no, that's not…We're linked. I can remember what she sees, what she hears.”
“Which, incidentally, is creepy,” Widdershins added. Only then did she realize how dry her mouth was, and reached out a hand for the bishop's flask. He handed it over without question.
“Uh, yes, that's one wor
d,” the monk agreed. “But I mean…Well, I thought I would feel your, um, your magics, or Olgun's power, or something. But I don't—”
“That,” the thief said just a tad smugly, “is because he's not doing anything.”
“Uh…”
“Olgun?” Far too softly for the others to hear, she continued, “Olgun, are you all right?”
The waft of emotion Widdershins received in reply was a good-humored, teasing contempt at the very idea.
“Well, excuse me, Your Divinitiness! Some of us aren't used to more than one point of view at a time! Guess that's why you're the god, and we're just poor little…Ooh, you're impossible! It's not too late for me to trade you in, you know. I bet I could get a whole herd of good-quality horses for…” It was right about then that Widdershins realized her voice had risen, and that she was being very studiously examined—possibly to determine which asylum would best suit her—by more or less everyone else present.
“What?” she challenged. “You talk to your gods in your ways, I'll talk to mine in mine.”
Oddly, that didn't seem to assuage any of them.
“Fine. Ferrand? Pay attention.” Widdershins sprinted for the nearest tree and leapt. Soaring past the first layer of branches, she finally wrapped her fingers around a particularly thick bough close to twenty feet above the grass. She swung, the bark refusing to bite into her skin, and flipped backward, clasping another, higher branch with her knees. There she hung, her hair dangling, arms crossed over her chest, and smiled at her audience. The air around her hummed and crackled with the touch of Olgun's power.
Brother Ferrand himself had literally staggered back and slumped to the ground, sitting against the side of a weather-worn grave marker. “My gods…”
“Well, one of them,” Widdershins said. At which point, rather belatedly, a thought occurred to her. “Olgun? If Ferrand's drawing on your power—even through the bishop's spell—does that mean he's likely to start including you in his worship when this is all over with? And if he does, what does that mean for you and me?”
She was somewhat less than comforted to interpret the god's response as indicating that he wasn't sure. Of course, Olgun could always refuse to accept a mortal's worship—but the longer he remained Widdershins's god alone, the more he risked dying if something should happen to her.