Lost Covenant: A Widdershins Adventure

  More images, and this time they did put an end to her tears—not in comfort, but in shock. As vividly as she'd ever experienced anything he'd shown her, she was back in his underground shrine. Back watching, helpless and terrified, as her fellow worshippers were ripped apart, over a score of people reduced to the scraps in an abattoir. It looked real, sounded real, smelled real. For an instant, she was once more the girl who had lost everything twice, who didn't understand what she and Olgun were to become for each other. A girl alone, utterly and completely.

  “Why?” She didn't even know if she was speaking aloud, or just thinking, until she sensed a reply. “Why would you show me this?”

  Olgun's reply, when it came, was a ripple across the image, warping like a melting mirror. When it steadied once more, she stared not at the corpses of friends those years ago, but the bodies slowly piling up at the foot of Castle Pauvril. More bodies began to appear on the heap in her vision, people she knew for a certainty hadn't yet been murdered, with Calanthe Delacroix atop the gruesome knoll.

  The vision shifted, not warping this time, but rotating, coming around to show her the gathered citizens of Aubier, gaping helplessly at the growing carnage. By garb they were varied: soldier and servant, blacksmith and baker, craftsman and carpenter.

  But their faces were, all of them, Widdershins herself.

  Now she understood. Now they were real, as real to her as the men she'd killed. Nobody else would have to feel what she'd felt, not while she still breathed. And sure as hens not because she'd fallen apart over what, ultimately, she'd truly had to do.

  Shins rolled over, clasped Cyrille's hand, and allowed him to pull her to her feet. She ran her own fingers across her cheek; tears only, not blood, thankfully.

  She went body to body, collecting flintlocks. Only three remained ready to fire, the others having lost their powder as they were strewn across the room. She handed one to Cyrille, jammed two in her belt, and nodded.

  “We're not done,” was all she said.

  Cyrille, failing utterly to repress a relieved grin, answered with, “We'd better get to it then.”

  Widdershins matched his smile—and if it didn't quite reach her eyes, at least it was a heartfelt attempt—and started down the rightmost branch.

  Which, in turn, led to no small amount of wandering aimlessly.

  Pauvril wasn't huge, as castles went, but it wasn't exactly a house, either. These back sections consisted of far more hallways and small rooms than the front, which was mostly larger chambers. The dust back here wasn't remotely as thick, which would have made tracks hard to discover under even the best of circumstances—and as the two of them were forced to rely on Shins's tiny bull's-eye lantern, lest someone spot the light, these circumstances weren't even in the running for “best.” The occasional clank or clatter might have indicated the Crows’ location, but the echoing passages made pinpointing those sounds a futile endeavor.

  They were on the verge of resuming their mutual recriminations when Widdershins paused, tilting her head and sniffing.

  “Do you smell that?”

  Cyrille scowled. “I smell musty stone and the oil from that damn lamp.”

  “No, not those! The other smell!”

  He, too, sniffed. “Nope. Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on! Are you blind?!”

  “Um…”

  It was at this point that Olgun politely, yet smugly, pointed out to Widdershins that perhaps she couldn't take sole credit for being able to detect the mild odor, and that—unlike her—Cyrille didn't have a god actively assisting.

  “Oh.” A pause, then, “Well, it's this way.”

  She set off with more certainty, now, choosing this route and that, until even Cyrille's mere mortal nostrils could detect the scent. “That's plaster,” he whispered. “Fresh, but not too fresh. Couple of days, maybe.”

  A peculiar notion began to congeal in Shins's head, but it wasn't quite viscous enough yet for her to grasp.

  She also had more immediate concerns.

  “Noises ahead!” Cyrille hissed.

  “I hear them.” And indeed, they clearly were ahead, now, not mere echoes bouncing around the halls. She doused the lamp, working her way ahead in the dark, her hand on the wall, Cyrille's on her shoulder.

  One final fork in the passage, and it was clear they'd reached their destination. The sounds came from the left, now obvious as a mixture of voices and machinery. To the right, a trio of thugs sat around a crate they were using as a makeshift table. Two played some game of dice or other, occasionally bouncing a die off the oil lamp also sitting on the box, while the third watched.

  All right, what's wrong with this portrait?

  On a tripod beside the crate hung a large gong. The striking mallet leaned against the wall beside it. Obviously, an alarm of some sort, which might have made perfect sense, had the Crows not been guarding the terminus of a dead-end passage.

  The notion Shins had been trying to grasp earlier, when her companion identified the scent as plaster, now rose up of its own accord to shake hands and introduce itself.

  “A few yards back,” she whispered, “I felt a door as we passed. Go back to it, then come back and tell me if you see me silhouetted against their lamp.”

  “Uh, why?”

  “Because the door won't come to us, yes? Go!”

  Grumbling, he went, hand trailing on the wall as hers had done. Just a bit later he was back. “I can, but just barely.”

  “Barely will do.” She broke out the stolen flintlocks, making sure they were both still ready to shoot. She raised them, one in each fist, and settled in a runner's crouch.

  “Go back to the door again, then watch me. I'm going to mark out a ten count. On ten—not before, not after, on—I want you to slam that door as hard as you can.”

  To his credit, he understood immediately. “Can you make both shots from this distance and reach the third before he sounds the alarm?”

  “Of course I can!”

  “You're sure?”

  “Of course I'm sure!”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “Of course I am!”

  Cyrille's grumble as he went back to the door seemed to be exactly the same as he'd grumbled earlier.

  Shins braced herself, held one of the pistols out to the side, and began tapping the barrel against an imaginary table.

  One…Two…

  “Olgun? I'm not the best shot with these things….”

  She felt the brush of something incorporeal across her hands.

  Seven…Eight…

  On nine, having fully established the interval, she shifted the gun back into position, trusting Cyrille to keep the pattern.

  Ten.

  The door boomed shut. The flintlocks fired. On the chests of the two Crows nearest the gong, one sitting, one standing, a strange crimson flower seemed to blossom for an instant before they fell.

  Shins was sprinting, flintlocks discarded, before the echoes faded. Utterly startled at what had just happened, torn between the instinct to defend himself or reach for the gong, the Crow hesitated for several heartbeats.

  It was enough. The race wasn't even close.

  Cyrille jogged up beside her as she finished cleaning her blade. “Think it worked?”

  “It didn't for me, but I was right next to the stupid things. I assume the inventor of the firearm was a deaf man, yes? Ow.”

  “Oddly, I don't really care if it worked for you.”

  “Just like a man,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I don't hear anyone coming running, or any change in the sounds from the next passage. So yes, between distance and the acoustics, yeah, I think the slam might've hidden it.”

  “‘Think’ is good,” Cyrille said with a weak grin. “But ‘know’ would be better.”

  “When I know, I'll tell you.” Shins sheathed her rapier, stepped over the nearest body—with a shudder, but thankfully nothing more—and prodded at the rear wall. ??
?Yep. Plaster.”

  They looked at one another, spoke in unison. “The postern?”

  “But how?” the boy continued on his own. “I told you, it's totally impassable! Even if they'd managed to find it—”

  “Then they have an alchemist,” Shins told him in sudden comprehension, “who could almost certainly whip up something to eat through the whole thing, overgrowth, bars, whatever.”

  Cyrille let out a heavy breath. “Then they just throw up a painted wall of plaster so nobody happens to stumble over it.”

  Shins continued to study it, then pointed out a very simple latch built into the “wall” to keep it shut. “That's got to be how they're planning to get out,” she observed. “Pretty clear they were already in the castle before the guests showed up, but maybe they've been coming and going all this time.”

  “So let's go! We need to tell Veroche and the guards about this.”

  Shins's nod was blatantly hesitant, would've been even had she not been chewing on her lip as though it were her last meal.

  “Shins?”

  “It's going to take a while for Veroche to get her people mobilized and moving. And we still don't know what they're walking into. I'd really like to find out.”

  “That means wasting more time!”

  “No, it doesn't. You go. I'll stay here and—”

  “Forget it, there's no—!”

  “Cyrille!” She stepped close, so close, almost touching. “You said it yourself. There's no time! I'm not going. That means you have to. They need you to.”

  “But—”

  “I need you to.”

  Cyrille's eyes abruptly glistened in the flickering lantern light, but he nodded. “Shins…” He closed the last step, tentatively, and wrapped her in a tight hug—not, she gratefully observed, with any effort to kiss her. “Please, please be careful.”

  “When am I not?” she asked, squeezing back. She felt him draw the breath to respond, and spoke before he could. “Of course I will, you turkey. You do, too, all right? You're the closest the Delacroix have to ‘decent.’ I'd be miffed if I saved the family for nothing.”

  Again she acted before he could respond, this time disengaging herself from his arms, offering him a parting smile, and vanishing into the shadows.

  He watched until she'd utterly faded from sight, and for some time afterward as well. It was, rather unpleasantly, the various growing stenches of the three dead bodies and their various effluvia that snapped him back to the moment.

  Right. Time. We have no time. Got to tell Veroche about this.

  Cyrille strode back to the door, gripped the latch, pressed, pushed….

  Nothing happened. The door refused to budge.

  “That's not hopeful,” he mumbled, frowning.

  He let go, gripped it again, clicked the latch, pushed hard.

  Nothing.

  Shins was long gone. He wouldn't know how to find her without stumbling into the Crows first. And now, it seemed, he couldn't leave, either.

  Cyrille stood before the door, clutching the handle uselessly like an idiot, and all he could think to say was, “Bloody godsdamned fucking…hens.”

  Had it been a larder? Wine cellar? Perhaps even a good old-fashioned dungeon? Widdershins had no real way of knowing. Now, it was merely an enormous section of castle full of broken and jagged interior walls that had once subdivided the whole area into numerous smaller chambers and halls. A few of those walls still met the ceiling; a few were nothing more than lines of brick on the floor; most fell at random intervals between the two. An archway here or a frame with a dangling hinge there was in no way sufficient to tell an observer anything more than “Yes, this was, in fact, a room.”

  Shins did note that these walls appeared thinner, and built of flimsier brick, than most of the castle's interior. Perhaps they'd decided what to do with this place after Pauvril was constructed?

  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. “Perhaps” didn't matter. What mattered was figuring out what use the place served now.

  She'd had no difficulty finding it, and a wild boar playing the tambourine could have sneaked up close without effort. Multiple conversations, clicks and thumps and clatters, and a peculiar gloopy bubbling sound that made Shins think of boiling sewage all emanated from within. So, too, did a burning, acidic stench that made her eyes water and probably would have corroded the zills and the fabric off the aforementioned tambourine.

  Unfortunately, “close” wasn't good enough, and “in” looked to be a lot harder. While the mechanical sounds came from far in the back, some of the conversation was much nearer the archway Widdershins had approached. A lot of Crows occupied this particular nest, and the young thief wasn't particularly eager to try going through them all.

  It took some time, but she finally found an alternate way into the man-made cavern of shattered rooms: a smaller door, perhaps for the servants, down at the hallway's far end. For most people, this entrance might have proved useless, as Shins was now separated from her goal by a veritable maze of partial chambers and collapsing walls.

  Then again, most people would have wanted to make their way via the floor.

  Shins scampered up the nearest partial wall and hauled herself atop. The varying heights would prove tricky, and she'd have to make a few jumps to clear the largest gaps, but those didn't worry her. She should even be able to stay hidden; the Crows had lanterns scattered throughout much of the area, shining through the cracks and crevices to where she now stood, but the shadows up here remained thick, and few of the thugs were likely to be looking up.

  Sometimes on hands and knees—where the footing was particularly precarious or the risk of discovery high—otherwise at a walking crouch the envy of any tightrope performer, Widdershins made her way across the broken chamber.

  Her brief journey ended near the rear wall, perched above a scene unlike anything she'd ever seen. A number of Crows (“How hopping big is this gang, anyway?” she demanded of Olgun) scurried this way and that around a contraption that appeared to be the offspring of a witch's cauldron and a drunken octopus.

  A great basin sat on an iron tripod, a fire burning beneath it with a sickly greenish flame. Numerous spouts and tubes protruded from the thing, most of which were capped. Other tubes—some of various metals, some of glue-sealed leather, a few of glass—led to the cauldron from other, smaller decanters, all standing on tall poles or hanging from the ceiling. These fed various substances into the main basin, a constant admixture of gods-knew-what sorts of ingredients. It was from here that the burning miasma emanated, along with clouds of something that wasn't quite steam, nor quite smoke.

  The Crows were moving constantly, gathering various treasures from a massive heap and dumping them into the cauldron. Utensils and dishes, jewelry and picture frames—all of it either gold or silver.

  Finally, from a single open spigot near the base of the cauldron, a steady flow of grayish sludge poured into an enormous bowl, carved of stone. As the bowl came near to being full, other Crows would come and drag it away, panting and cursing and straining, while a fresh bowl was put it its place.

  And capering about the whole affair like a madman, screeching orders and adjusting tubes, was Fingerbone, alchemist of the Thousand Crows.

  “Don't ask me,” she whispered, replying to Olgun's unspoken query. “I haven't the first idea.” A brief pause, contemplating, and then, “I'm guessing all the gold and stuff is some of what was confiscated from the Carnots, yes? They said the house assets were being kept here until it was decided…”

  She trailed off, more puzzled than ever, as two of the Crows gathered by the bowl of sludge. Wearing heavy gloves, they gathered some of the stuff in an iron dipper, then poured it carefully into a small mold, also iron.

  A spherical mold. A mold of just the right size for…

  Ammunition.

  “Holy gods.”

  Lead. In a complete reversal of what alchemists had tried to do for centuries on end, Fingerbone was transforming the gold
and silver of the Carnot treasury into lead.

  And then Maline and the Crows were shooting hostages with it.

  Understanding crashed down on Widdershins as though Maline had appeared to explain it to her, so abruptly it made her head swim. This wasn't about the oily bastard getting his people back; this was a theft, one she had to admire just a bit even through her mounting revulsion.

  Whatever riches or rewards the Carnots had promised the gang for their cooperation obviously had not been forthcoming, so Maline had decided to take what profit he could. The people of Aubier and the noble houses, however, weren't about to let him and the Crows just walk away. Oh, they'd play along, so long as he had hostages, probably even let him leave the castle, but they wouldn't be planning to let the Crows go far.

  Maline and his people were good enough, tough enough, quick enough, that the bulk of them could probably escape any pursuit—but not if they were encumbered with pounds and pounds of gold.

  In a few weeks, however, when things in Aubier had returned to normal and the people had let down their guard, it wouldn't be difficult to sneak back in and dig up the bodies of the murdered hostages.

  Cyrille had told her it was far easier to reverse an alchemical change than to cause it—easier and cheaper. The Crows would still turn a hefty profit, especially if the reagents they were using now to instigate the change had been purchased with Carnot funds rather than their own.

  It also, she realized, her stomach lurching, explained why Maline was being so quick with his executions. If the Crows were going to smuggle out enough “lead” for this to be worthwhile, he'd need to shoot each hostage multiple times.

  Every hostage multiple times. Maline wasn't planning to leave a single one of them alive.

  The whole room spun as Shins tried to take it all in, tried to wrap her mind around the magnitude of the Crow's murderous plan. She felt ready to vomit, actually breaking out in a sweat. It took her a moment, in fact, to realize that part of what she felt wasn't disgust or horror at all, but Olgun screaming a warning in the back of her mind.