Thief's Covenant Part 14

Lisette seethed, but there was precious little she could do.

"Hers was the only door open; she was the only one missing," the Guardsman continued. "I can't say if he was there to free her or to kill her, but either way, a Guardsman is dead because of it. If you're going to start coming into our house, we cannot justify allowing-"

"Major, I respect the risk you took in coming here. And while I know you didn't do it for our sake, an open war would indeed be as bad for us as for you-perhaps worse. So let me a.s.sure you, I did not authorize any operation within your gaol, either to free or to kill one of your prisoners."

"I see. But I can't just accept that on faith and forget that it ever-"

"Nor am I asking you to. Taskmaster?"

"What?" she asked, voice sullen.

"You will spread this announcement for me. Whoever is responsible for this act has one day to come forward. If he does so, he will be turned over to the Guard for punishment."

"That's hardly a convincing-"

"If he does not, and I later learn who he is, it will be I doling out punishments."

"Oh."

The major looked as though he wanted to object, then thought better of it.

"Further," the Shrouded Lord added, turning his gaze toward the Guardsman once more, "should you succeed in identifying the rest of the conspirators before we do-a.s.suming you have real proof, Major-n.o.body in the guild will lift a finger to shelter them from you, nor to take vengeance for their arrest and sentencing.

"I should think that this-in addition to your being allowed to leave here unharmed-should be more than sufficient to avert any additional conflict that might arise from this unfortunate misunderstanding?"

"I should think so," the Guardsman agreed, unable to keep a touch of relief from his voice.

"Excellent." The Shrouded Lord pulled a small rope all but hidden in the smoke, and the door opened once more. "Show this fellow out," he ordered. "Politely."

"Ah, of course," the thief acknowledged. And then he was gone, the major trailing behind.

"I a.s.sume you had no prior knowledge of this, Taskmaster?"

"Of course not," she offered, her tone sullen.

"I'm so glad."

"This doesn't change what Widdershins did. We still have to-"

"No."

Lisette's jaw dropped.

"I am gravely disappointed in Widdershins's actions," the Shrouded Lord told her, his sepulchral tones weighted down with a light frosting of regret. "But even if Jean Luc's accusations are true-"

"We've no reason to a.s.sume they're not, my lord," Lisette insisted, panicked as she felt her long-awaited victory slipping through her fingers. "It fits her pattern. Underreporting her takes, refusing to pay us our due...There's no reason to think that she wouldn't-"

"I will hear it from her. The a.s.sa.s.sin has been useful in the past, but he's not one of us. I will hear her confession, or her denial, from her own mouth, as I would any other of my thieves. More to the point and as I was saying," he continued, trampling the objections forming on Lisette's lips, "even if the a.s.sa.s.sin's told us the truth, Widdershins is also clearly mixed up in something larger, something that seems to involve rogue elements within my own guild. And I won't have that sort of thing in my house, Taskmaster. So listen and listen well, Suvagne. I want her brought in alive."

Though these were his chambers, and it was his custom to dismiss visitors from his presence when their audience was concluded, the Shrouded Lord rose to his feet with those words. Two steps backward and he'd vanished into the smoke-hued curtains, leaving Lisette to fret and fume in the thick haze.

"How'd it go, lad?" Chapelle asked, falling into step behind the stiff-legged major.

"I'm alive," Julien said, holding out an open hand. "So I guess as well as I had any right to expect."

The old sergeant placed the younger man's rapier into the waiting palm, waited for him to strap it on, then handed over his bash-bang as well.

"I think I learned something important," Julien said finally. "The Finders aren't behind what happened. They don't want a war any more than we do, and they're worried de Laurent might just authorize one."

"a.s.suming," Chapelle noted, "that you can believe a word they said to you."

"a.s.suming that, yes." The rest of the walk was silence, broken only by their heavy footsteps.

STILL NOW:.

"Ouch!"

"Oh, stop fidgeting, Shins. This would all be over if you'd just stand still for a d.a.m.n minute!"

"I can't help it," the thief complained with a vague sense of dej vu, shrinking from her friend's skillful, but not terribly gentle, touch. "You're hurting me!"

"Oh, in Banin's name, Shins! You're such a whiner!" Genevieve retorted, pressing a strip of cloth over the wound, trying for the third time to sop up the excess blood. "It'll hurt a lot more if I have to keep reapplying this stupid thing, so stop dancing like some drunk floozy and let me get this done! And it wouldn't be feverish if you'd just come to me straightaway, you know."

Widdershins gritted her teeth, partially against the pain, primarily to avoid saying something thoughtless. It's never a wise prospect to annoy the person currently poking and prodding at one's seeping wounds.

After her dramatic dive from the archbishop's window to the grounds of Rittier's estate, she'd made a beeline through the alleyways of Davillon toward one of her many bolt-holes, hiding out for almost a full day before she was convinced that neither the City Guard nor any Finder enforcers had followed her from the estate. Only then had she, limping and reluctant, found her way to the Flippant Witch. She'd nowhere else to go, though she wouldn't have blamed the barkeep for sending her away at the door.

Genevieve had, of course, done no such thing. Tired as she was from a busy night at the tavern, Gen took her friend in her arms and led Shins back inside to sprawl out on one of the tables. Only after Gen had relit the lamps, gathered supplies, offered Shins a stiff drink to dull the pain, and begun to tend to the embarra.s.sed thief's injury did she set in on the lecture.

Widdershins didn't hear most of it. She was too busy having a silent argument with her ever-present partner.

"Tell me again," she hissed at him, "why you can't just fix this up like you did the last time?"

She knew the answer, of course, even before she felt Olgun's irritated sigh. She'd been injured enough times to know that there was only so much healing the G.o.d could provide-and only so much a mortal body could take.

In other words: suck it up and deal like any other human being. It's not that bad.

"Easy for you to say!" she growled in response to his exasperation. "You're not the one with notches on your ribs! I-ouch!"

Which pretty much brought the conversation full circle.

"All right," Gen finally announced, straightening up and arching her back with several loud pops. "I think I've got most of the, um, leakage taken care of. I just need to clean the wound one last time, slap a few new bandages on it, and you should be fine."

Widdershins opened her mouth to ask some question or other, only to find a tumbler of spirits pressed to her lips. Startled, she drank, and very nearly coughed up a vital organ. Her chest heaved, tears ran down her face, and her throat threatened to crawl from her mouth and quit the whole situation in protest.

"Wha...?" she croaked eloquently.

"I thought it might take the edge off," Gen told her, the bottle held in one hand, several loose bandages fluttering from the other.

"Off of what?" Widdershins gasped.

"This," Genevieve said, and proceeded to pour a double serving of the powerful beverage over the open wound. The resulting scream was something akin to a banshee who'd stubbed her toe.

"Wow," Genevieve exclaimed, putting the bottle down so as to free up a finger, which she used to prod carefully at her ringing ears. "I didn't know a human being could make a sound like that."

Widdershins, now curled up so tightly in a fetal ball she could have pulled her boots on with her teeth, whimpered something largely unintelligible, but distinctly ending with the words "...kill you with fire."

"Come on, Shins," Gen said tenderly. "You're going to set it to bleeding again if you keep pulling against it, and I still have to apply the bandages." A task she completed swiftly and surely, wrapping the wound so tightly that Widdershins felt her rib cage might just pop out through her head and shoulders, like someone squeezing a lump of soap.

"Well," Widdershins breathed as she forced herself to sit upright atop the unyielding (and bloodstained) table, "it certainly wasn't the most pleasant experience I've ever had, but-"

The front door of the Flippant Witch gave a series of loud clicks and swung inward. Renard Lambert, his blue-and-purple finery resembling a plum in the twitching lanterns, practically hurled himself through the open doorway.

"Widdershins!" he called loudly, cape flowing behind him, "I-gaaack!" He ducked, barely in time to avoid the carafe that shattered loudly against the wall just behind his head. The tinkling of broken gla.s.s, a dangerous entry chime indeed, sounded around him.

"Oh," Genevieve said, her tone only vaguely contrite. "It's just your friend. Sorry, Renard."

"Sorry? Sorry?! What the h.e.l.l were you-ah. Um, h.e.l.lo, ah, Widdershins."

Widdershins, who had lurched to her feet as the door opened, was suddenly and forcibly reminded by Renard's stunned stare that Genevieve had disrobed her in order to get at the rapier wound. Blushing as furiously as a nun in a brothel, she ducked behind her blonde-haired friend and groped desperately for her shirt.

"Didn't mean to take your head off, Renard," Genevieve said, mainly to distract him. "But you rather startled us."

"Quite understandable," the popinjay responded absently, his eyes flickering madly as he fought to locate some safe place to put them.

"Were you here for any particular reason?" Genevieve asked icily. "Or did you just come by to ogle my friend?"

"There b.l.o.o.d.y well better be a reason!" Widdershins chimed in from behind Genevieve, her voice m.u.f.fled by the tunic she was currently pulling over her head. "a.s.suming," she continued, stepping once more into view, fully clad if somewhat rumpled, "he wants to leave here with all the parts he carried when he entered."

Renard straightened. "I most a.s.suredly did have a higher purpose in coming here, dear ladies, though if I were to grow cra.s.s enough at my age to make a habit of 'ogling,' I could only hope to find two subjects as lovely as-"

"Get on with it!" they snapped in unison.

"Right." Renard's expression fell. "Widdershins," he said seriously, "the guild's coming for you. Soon."

"Tell me something I don't know, Renard."

"They've already murdered one Guardsman to do it."

Pain and blood loss could no longer account for her pallor. "What?"

The flamboyant thief offered an abbreviated recounting of the tale that was making the rounds throughout Davillon's underbelly, concluding with "You're lucky you got out before he arrived."

"Well, yes, but that's Brock holding a grudge. I don't-"

"Not anymore. Maybe it's just been a personal vendetta so far, but now the guild itself is involved. The next time they come for you, it'll be fully authorized, with the word of the Shrouded Lord behind it."

"Why?" It came out as a child's whine.

"It seems that someone's been spreading stories about you making some foolish attempt to rob the archbishop."

"Oh, Shins," Genevieve lamented, sinking down into the nearest chair.

"It can't be! Renard, that's not possible! No one saw me there except the archbishop himself!" She seemed oblivious to the fact that she'd just confirmed to Renard that the story was true. "Except..."

"Yes?"

Widdershins, too, fell into a chair. "De Laurent must have described me to Julien Bouniard. That, or the a.s.sa.s.sin could have had an accomplice who spotted me warning the archbishop."

Renard blinked. "a.s.sa.s.sin?"

"Uh, yeah. Long story. I'll tell you later."

"But-"

"Long. Story. Tell. Later."

"Um, right. Whatever the case, Shins," Renard told her, "you need to get out of here. I can't be much more than an hour ahead of them. Right now, their orders are to take you alive and relatively unharmed, but you know how unpredictable these things get. Especially since Brock's leading one of the packs."

"All right, let's go." Stiffly, Widdershins rose once more, wincing as she bent to retrieve her rapier and tools from the floor. "Gen, you're coming with me."

"What? I-"

"Look, Gen. Normally, you being my friend wouldn't be sufficient cause for the guild to bother you. It's bad for business to pester the merchants when they haven't done anything wrong. But right now, they just might be angry enough to take it out on you. So you're coming with me. You can come back later, during business hours, when it's safe."

"But-"

"Now."

Genevieve sighed, but she knew better than to argue. The oddly matched trio were out the door almost instantly, leaving nothing but bloodied cloths and a newly stained table behind.

Jean Luc and Henri Roubet met in a small outdoor cafe, illuminated only by candles on the tables, where a group of friends would draw no attention, and n.o.body on the street could see them well enough to make out a face. The Apostle's two thugs sat nearby, the bandage-wrapped figure looming behind them.

"...sound very happy," Roubet was reporting. "Seems she never showed the first night, and when they set up to watch the place tonight, they found the tavern empty. They don't have enough people to keep an eye on it every minute of the day, but they'll be back there eventually. They seem pretty sure she'll appear there sooner or later, and right now, Brock's willing to watch and wait."

"And does this tavern have a name?" Jean Luc asked, sipping at a small cup of tea, pinky finger pointing skyward.

"The Flippant Witch."

"Show me."

Both men looked up as the otherworldly thing spoke behind its mask of bandages, its voice causing the table to tremble, the candle flame to dance.

"Of course. Do you mind if we just finish-?"

"Show me now."

Technically, Jean Luc was in charge. That didn't stop him and Roubet both from rising instantly to their feet, unwilling to argue.