False Covenant

CHAPTER SIX

So furious was Widdershins's burning anger, her determination, and yes-though she'd never have admitted to it-her fear, that it took several moments of intense emotional “shouting” before Olgun was able even to attract her attention.

“What? No!” She cast an ugly glance at the nearest passerby, who was currently staring at her, and then continued in a much lower tone of voice. “No, I do not think this is a dumb idea. In fact, I think this is the best idea anyone has ever had in the history of anyone ever having ideas!”

That response, if nothing else, was apparently enough to cause dizziness, because she'd pushed through the rapidly thinning crowd-most people were hurrying home, if they were out at all this late in the evening-and had covered another two blocks or so before…

“Well, I don't care if you think it's a bad idea! You're not the one who's about to lose your best friend's life's work, are you? What would you even know about-”

Widdershins actually moaned aloud and stumbled, barely catching herself before careening into the worn and discolored wood that was the nearest wall. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt something from Olgun that powerful, that overwhelming. She actually found her gut clenching with a shame that very much reminded her of those times she'd bitterly disappointed Alexandre.

“You…Olgun, I'm so sorry. I know what you've lost. I had no right to say that to you. Forgive me?”

Acceptance, grudging for an instant, then growing stronger-but still tinged with more than a little anger, and more than a lot of worry.

“But you won't lose me, not over this. No, I don't know who he is, but you and me? We can handle anything, yes?”

She was moving again, struggling to catch up before she lost Evrard completely, and though she could sense Olgun's grumbling, she could sense, too, that he wasn't about to argue any further.

The street steadily evolved from mud with the occasional cobblestone to well cobbled with the occasional pothole-and even those began to fade as Evrard's path drew him, and Widdershins, ever nearer Davillon's richer districts. Any doubt the thief might have had regarding her adversary's nobility (in birth and blood, if not in demeanor) was swiftly washing away.

So who was this guy? And why did he harbor such hatred for her?

Evening had taken her leave of the city some minutes earlier, leaving night to assume its rightful place. The roads weren't empty, not entirely, but pedestrians were sparse, and Guardsmen ever more common. Widdershins found herself with no crowds in which to hide; forced to resort ever more often to shadows, doorways, and alleyways any time Evrard thought to look around, her pace slowed and her quarry began to pull ahead. She realized, with a weight in her stomach as though she'd swallowed a whole goose-and not one braised and roasted, either, but feathered and honking-that she was on the verge of losing him entirely.

She peered briefly toward the rooftops, wondering if the “thieves' highway” might not be a wiser option, but quickly dismissed the idea. She didn't know this part of town well enough, didn't know if she'd find herself stranded before a gap too wide to cross. No, best to keep to the roads, maybe even to sacrifice stealth for speed and just hope that the irritating aristocrat wouldn't happen to check behind him at any point where Widdershins couldn't-

The rest of the thought was lost in yet another surge of emotion from Olgun, but this was not anger, nor was it directed at Widdershins specifically. It was, as best she could determine once she had a moment to gather her scattered wits, an intense puzzlement, tinged with, just perhaps, a tiny sprinkling of fear.

“What? Olgun, what?”

An urging, then, as though he was trying to guide her way.

“No! Olgun, Evrard's going that way. I'm not…No! I don't care what might be down that way, I'm not letting-”

She felt a surge in the air around her, as well as within her own mind, and recognized the sensation of Olgun's power. The voices of the few other pedestrians in sight resounded in her ears, each word burning itself into her thoughts. She could hear footsteps as clearly as drumbeats, her own heart as though it had crawled up into her skull (perhaps in search of a better view).

Just as swiftly as it began, it faded. No, not faded, narrowed. Sounds fell away as though she were moving past them, until she heard only what was occurring several streets off to her right.

Gasps. Running. And the occasional scream, not quite loud enough to carry itself normally to her ears.

“It's nothing to do with us,” she insisted, struggling to spot Evrard's flapping coat in the darkness ahead. “I wouldn't even know about it without your stupid jumbo god ears, so-”

She felt, as though it were her own, Olgun's desperate curiosity, his need to know what bizarre power he'd sensed moving through the city.

“I don't care. I've got to learn what Evrard-”

He drew from her thoughts a distinct memory of the Shrouded Lord's directive, to learn precisely what was haunting Davillon.

“I don't care!”

Her hearing focused even further, until she could make out little but the ever-increasing shrieks of terror.

“I don't-oh, figs!” And with a last, vicious glance toward Evrard's retreating back-though it might just as easily have been directed at Olgun-she was sprinting toward the sounds of fright that nobody else on the street nearby could possibly have heard.

Her senses swiftly faded back to normal levels-there were, she knew, limits to how much power Olgun could exercise on her behalf-but it wasn't long before she no longer needed them. The screams, now clearly incorporating no small degree of pain as well as terror, drew near enough for her to hear on her own. Had she been any farther away, even Olgun wouldn't have detected whatever it was that had attracted his attention; had any of the patrols been nearer, rather than concentrated on the main thoroughfares, they could have dealt with this and Widdershins wouldn't have had to abandon her own pursuit.

“We're gonna talk about this later, Olgun,” she snipped at him. Then, once she'd narrowed down her destination to a nearby side street, and realized, further, that there was indeed a building overlooking said street (a glassware shop, if she wasn't mistaken), she swiftly began to climb. Better to approach the trouble, whatever it might be, from an unexpected angle, yes?

In point of fact, the “side street” wasn't much wider than most alleyways she knew. The rear of multiple establishments bordered it on both sides; in fact, had the entire street been this way, rather than just these few blocks, it actually would have been an alleyway.

But it was the alley's-that is, the street's-inhabitants, rather than its design, that snagged her attention as she peered out over the edge of the sloping roof, hands itching as they pressed up against the rough, wooden shingles. Two young men-either well-dressed servants of some noble, or rather cheaply dressed aristocrats themselves-crouched, huddled against the shop next door to Widdershins's own perch. One clutched at a red-smeared arm and stomach, and, though there didn't appear to be enough blood to suggest that either wound was especially dangerous, they were pretty clearly painful. The other fellow was holding his friend's shoulders, as though that would provide any protection against their attacker. An attacker clad all in swathes of black fabric; he looked, to Widdershins, like the Shrouded Lord's disreputable second cousin.

But from her raised vantage, Widdershins could also see something that the two victims on the ground most assuredly could not: A second dark figure, garbed identically to the first, clinging to the shadow-cloaked wall just beneath the eaves of a building some ways down the street.

“So, Olgun. These guys what you sensed?”

Apparently, the god wasn't sure-she detected more than a touch of doubt.

“Well,” she continued as the silhouette on the street produced a narrow blade, laughing as he (it?) made threatening jabs at the two sniveling travelers, “guess we should do something, yes? Care to lend a hand?”

She felt the tingling in the air once again, this time concentrated around her legs and feet. Grinning manically, Widdershins backed away from the edge of the roof, drew her rapier, and charged.

It was, every step of it, impossible-but impossible was a specialty of this particular partnership. With almost inhuman speed, Widdershins cleared the entire length of the roof and leapt, sailing majestically across the gap. She twisted as she flew, the envy of any acrobat, flipping over so that her feet landed against the wall of the opposite shop. She tucked and pushed, propelling herself once more across the street, this time angled and hurtling directly at the dark-clad figure who appeared utterly frozen in shock.

He began to move, and Widdershins had the barest instant to note that he was far faster than he should have been; not that much slower, in fact, than she herself at that moment. But it wasn't fast enough. Her rapier punched through muscle and flesh even as she collided with the target, knocking him, winded and screaming, to the earth. Had she wanted him dead, he'd have been dead. As it was, it would be some time before his perforated shoulder would work properly.

Widdershins rolled backward and came once more to her feet, rapier held before her en garde, but it wasn't necessary. Not only was her target rolling on the street, clutching his wound and screaming in a very human voice, but his presumed partner-the other mysterious silhouette-had plummeted from his perch on the wall. He, too, was doubled over and groaning in pain, though Widdershins could only guess why. Had her appearance so startled him that he lost his grip, causing him to injure himself in the fall?

Well, whatever the case, it was time to learn more about these…Guys? Bandits? Monsters? Whatever. Widdershins, taking only a moment to make vaguely reassuring “There, there, it's all right” noises to the two weeping gentlemen, reached down and yanked away the hood that covered her fallen opponent's face.

“Hey! I know you!”

And she did, at that. Not all that well; she wasn't even certain what his name was. Ricard? Rupert? Something with an R and two syllables, she thought. But that wasn't the point. The point was where she knew him from.

Monsieur R-and-Two-Syllables was a member of the Finders' Guild!

But hadn't the Shrouded Lord made it pretty clear that the Guild wasn't involved in these events? And why would anyone mistake Ricard-or-Whatever for some sort of phantom? Widdershins may not have been all that close to him, but she knew full well that the fellow wasn't a warlock of any sort!

“Olgun? What the hopping horses is going on?”

There really shouldn't have been an emotional equivalent to Olgun chewing the inside of his cheek in nervous confusion. Nevertheless, that was precisely the impression Widdershins received.

“Fat lot of good you are, then. So are these guys magic?”

Faint and confused, but the answer was a definite yes.

“And are they what you sensed before?”

No puzzlement at all, this time. Absolutely not.

“Then what-?”

“Oh, my, oh, my! Blood and pain and beautiful songs! They've gone and started the celebration without us, and we shall be greatly put out if there's no more cake to be had!”

The worst wasn't the hideous two-toned voice, that of a grown man and a child speaking in unison, though that alone was enough to make every hair on her arms and neck stand firmly at attention. Nor was it even the figure itself, which scuttled headfirst down a nearby wall using only its impossibly long fingertips, the rest of its body held straight as a board, its coat and hat refusing to fall despite gravity's insistent tug.

No, what caused the blood to drain from Widdershins's face as though it, too, were trying to escape, and made the rapier twitch and vibrate in her trembling fist, was Olgun's silent shriek of absolute terror. She'd sensed the like from him only twice before: once when he'd almost been slain by the wholesale slaughter of his cult, of which Widdershins herself was the only survivor; and once, a few years later and mingled with near-helpless frustration, when he'd done his best to help her face down the demon responsible for that slaughter.

This creature she faced now-for, no matter his mostly human shape, human he clearly was not-was no demon, or at least not the same sort of demon she'd faced before. But whatever he was, he was enough to scare a god.

A tiny, weak god with only a single worshipper, yes, but a god for all that.

Widdershins sucked in her breath to speak, and was overwhelmed by the scent of peppermint. Somewhere, as though hidden behind the buildings that surrounded them, a chorus of children giggled in the dark.

“Run,” she ordered. The two pedestrians, though scarcely able to stand on shaking knees, didn't need to be told twice. The broad-brimmed hat of the creature clinging to the wall shifted as though he watched them go, perhaps deciding whether or not to give chase.

“Don't even think it, Bug Man,” Widdershins told him with-she hoped-more bravado than she felt.

“Don't need to.” The hat tilted again; this time, the face beneath seemed to be examining Widdershins herself, as well as the men who'd fallen-one directly, one less so-to her unexpected attack. “Girls and boys!” The figure began to chant. “Girls and boys, girls and boys, some for eating, some for toys!”

Widdershins felt the rapier slip slightly in her hand, clenched her fingers in a futile attempt to wipe the sweat off on the hilt. “I, uh…I don't think I plan to be either, thanks.” And, much more softly, “Olgun, what is that?!”

But, other than the sensation that it was very, very old, she got nothing but bafflement and fear from her unseen ally.

“Oh, you're so welcome!” The creature dropped from the wall, flipping as it fell to land feetfirst on the grass beside the street. “She thinks she has a plan. That's so cute!”

The chorus of children cooed, as though having discovered a little, lost puppy.

“Where is that coming from?!” Widdershins herself wasn't certain whether the question was addressed to Olgun, the gaunt figure, or the world in general, but it was the creature who answered. And for the first time, he sounded honestly puzzled.

“You can't see them?” he asked.

It was, given the current state of Widdershins's nerves, absolutely the worst answer he could have given. She shuddered and found herself desperately glancing around, despite her best intentions, searching for an army of slack-faced, staring children creeping up behind her in the dark. There were none, of course, but in that moment of distraction, the creature lunged.

Not at her, no. Fast as he moved-and he was unbelievably fast-he might not have crossed the distance between them before she could once again bring up her guard. But Widdershins wasn't his target. Bending neatly sideways, he reached out with those impossibly long, flexible fingers, and snatched up the dark-clad figure who had fallen, a few minutes before, from the neighboring building.

With a single arm, he hefted the screaming man toward his face. Widdershins fell back with a whimper at the rough tearing sounds that followed, and felt the bile rising and stinging in the back of her throat as the body shriveled and dried, in a matter of instants, into a desiccated, leathery slab. (She didn't even notice the cries of agony emerging from the second man, whom she'd earlier stabbed.)

“Ooh, yummy, yum, yum! He tastes a bit of magic, doesn't he? Extra spice is extra nice!” The creature advanced as he “ate,” and when he allowed the body to fall, he was finally near enough for the ambient moonlight and the nearby flickering lanterns to illumine the face and figure beneath the flopping brim. “Will you also taste of magic, little girl? Or was this one a special appetizer?”

His features were, other than being grotesquely emaciated, human enough at first glance. The skin was pale; the icy green eyes and ivory teeth gleamed even in the night, as though reflecting a light whose source she could not see. Hair of a filthy, stringy black hung limply from within the hat, the brim of which was stained with a glistening grease.

Her second glance-the one in which she noted the figure's cheeks and jaw rippling, as though something moved just beneath the flesh, attempting to distend his mouth in ways it was never meant to flex-was quite sufficient to put the lie to any sense of humanity.

His hands were even worse. His thumbs were relatively normal, perhaps slightly longer than they should have been, but every other finger was hideous. The shortest was a foot long, and all of them were narrow, pointed, twitching, bending in ways and in places they should never have bent. Widdershins couldn't help but think of them less as fingers than as the legs of some monstrous spider.

And that, in turn, stirred up memories in the farthest reaches of Widdershins's mind, the faintest recollections of childhood. But whatever those memories were, they refused to surface on their own, and she wasn't about to take the time and effort to dredge them up now.

“Gonna need everything you can give me, Olgun,” Widdershins whispered.

His response was a ferocious urge to run.

“Oh, no.” Much as a very large part of her agreed, Widdershins stood her ground. “I don't want that thing at my back! Besides, you're the one who pushed me into this in the first place, remember?”

Olgun might have responded to that, had their inhuman enemy not beaten him to it. “And who do you talk to, in the silence, in the dark, hmm? You cannot see my friends, so you invent one of your own? How very silly of you.”

Widdershins didn't even bother asking how he'd heard the words that she'd barely even formed on her tongue, let alone spoken aloud. “Why don't you step closer, and I'll introduce you?”

The creature's shoulders hunched, his head lowered, his impossible fingers twitched. “I think…I would like that.”

The unseen children cackled, and the two opponents-one blessed by a god, one utterly ungodly-hurled themselves together in the center of the roadway.

Any observer (and there may or may not have been one; Widdershins had no idea if the man she'd stabbed remained conscious or not) would have seen little more than a blur of movement. The creature advanced in a series of dancing steps and graceful twists, almost pirouettes. Each step should have taken him in a different direction from every other, yet somehow he glided toward Widdershins in a perfectly straight line.

For her own part, Widdershins simply charged, propelled by Olgun's energies beneath her pounding feet, carrying her far more swiftly than her steps alone.

Even as they converged, those impossibly long fingers swept through the air, clutching at the young thief's body, but she wasn't there to be hit. An arm's length from her foe, Widdershins dropped to her knees, allowing her momentum to carry her onward. It should have been an impossible slide, across the rough and muddy cobblestones of the street, but she felt the hum of Olgun's power in the air-a power that allowed her to “coincidentally” hit the slickest, smoothest stretch of stone, that smoothed over the worst of the bumps and crevices. Her knees were scraped raw, portions of her hose shredded, but it was enough to carry her beneath her enemy's attack and past him, thrusting her rapier into his thigh as she went.

Or rather, she tried to thrust her rapier into his thigh. Despite the swiftness and unexpected angle of her attack, the creature jumped back a fraction of a second before the blade struck home. His leap carried him clear to the nearest wall from which he now hung-again, by his fingertips only, which were stretched out behind him. Despite the sudden acrobatics, his coat and hat remained as immobile as ever. His eyes first went wider than any Widdershins had ever seen, then narrowed into glinting green slivers.

“Godly!” It somehow emerged as a high-pitched growl, improbable as the concept might seem. His chorus of children began to wail as though someone had just stepped on their favorite toys.

Widdershins flexed her legs and sprang to her feet, ignoring the pain in her knees. “Noticed that, did you?” Not much use in trying to deny it at this point…“How'd you enjoy that, you creepy critter?”

“I don't think you're fun anymore.”

A flex of the fingers sent him hurtling once more across the roadway to land before Widdershins. For several long moments, the air was filled only with the swooshing sounds of blade and digits. No matter how swiftly she attacked, no matter at what peculiar angles she held her rapier, Widdershins couldn't strike fast enough to land a blow. Each and every time, the creature danced nimbly aside or, on occasion, parried with a single finger against the flat of her blade.

For his part, he hadn't laid a finger on Widdershins, not due to her speed-even with Olgun's aid, the inhuman thing was far faster than she-but because the god kept interfering in other ways. A tingle in the air, and her opponent, despite his unnatural grace, skidded briefly in a thin layer of wet mud. A hum that only Widdershins could hear, and her rapier just happened to be in precisely the right spot to block an attack that she never would have seen coming. It was very much an evenly matched contest.

For about half a minute, give or take. At which point it abruptly became clear that Widdershins and Olgun were reaching the limits of their combined endurance, and their opponent was very much not.

Widdershins slowed, just a heartbeat; her luck faded, just by a hair. And that was enough.

Four of those fingers dragged across her, starting at her left shoulder and running across her collarbone to the neck. She heard a terrible scream, and failed to recognize the voice as her own; heard a ragged tearing, and was scarcely coherent enough to recognize the sound as coming from her clothes and her flesh both. The fingers didn't cut, didn't shred, not exactly. No, they simply fastened to her skin through the fabric, much as they must have fastened to the walls the creature climbed. And when they pulled away, they peeled away narrow strips of flesh with them. Blood coursed down Widdershins's chest, and what tiny portion of her mind remained capable of thought grew nauseated at the sight of tiny banners-made up of twisted strips of skin, strings of muscle, and cloth-that wiggled cheerfully from her attacker's fingers.

She felt the rough cobbles beneath her palms, pressing into her knees, and only then realized that she'd fallen. The film of mud across those stones was mixing slowly with the blood that leaked from her frayed wounds, as well as a small puddle of vomit that she must have coughed up as she stumbled.

“But our little girl cries!” She heard the foul voice, sensed the presence looming over her, and could barely crane her neck enough to look up. The creature was slowly running the stolen strips of flesh-her flesh-across its tongue, leaving nothing but dry, wrinkled sticks of leather that it casually tossed to the earth. “Where is her god, to wipe away her tears? Shall I kiss them better, little priestess? I have such comforting kisses. I swear to you that, should you but allow me, you'll never cry again. Never, ever, ever, ever…” The figure began to bend, wriggling fingers reaching, reaching…

“Olgun…”

The tiny god's power surged, flowing through her chest, her shoulder, tingling in the wounds like cold water. It barely helped; far less than it should have, for Olgun had, in the past, relieved the hurt of worse wounds than these. Indeed, the pain surged anew each time it faded, a stubborn, unnatural tide that refused to bend to Olgun's will.

But it helped enough, just enough, that Widdershins could still move-and move far faster than her assailant could possibly have anticipated.

With a hoarse cry she struck, wincing at the sound of steel on stone, and then she rolled upright and ran, staggering and stumbling over her own feet. Laughing maniacally in its dual voices, and joined by the ubiquitous chorus of giggles, the creature began to pursue-only to be yanked abruptly to a halt.

Widdershins hadn't missed, no. She couldn't possibly have slain the creature even if she'd hit it, not with a single weakened stroke. Instead, she had plunged her rapier through the hem of her attacker's coat and wedged it between the cobblestones. That weapon-one she'd carried for years, the one that had brought her into the life of Alexandre Delacroix, thus shaping who she was today-had saved her for the final time.

Abandoning the blade, sobbing as much over its loss as for the agony that racked her, Widdershins dashed around every corner she could, keeping to the darkest reaches, using every trace of Olgun's power not to lessen her own pain, but to hide her trail from one whose senses were far more than human. She was blind to the city around her, deaf to its sounds; only the next step, the next stumble, the next pool of shadow mattered. Her trick would buy her only a handful of seconds, before the creature wrenched the sword free or ripped his coat from the blade. She had to be out of sight by then.

It had to be enough.

She needed help; needed a place to collapse, to figure out what to do next. And since she wasn't about to risk leading that thing to her friends at the Flippant Witch-nor did she think it probable that the Finders would appreciate her dragging a second monster into their midst-that left her only one option. If she lived long enough to get there…

“…the patrols along the southwest edges of the district.” The suggestion was coming from one Major Archibeque, a grizzled veteran with leather-brown skin, iron-gray beard, and a perpetual squint. Technically, he held no greater rank than any of the other majors present at the meeting. Unofficially, as everyone expected him to be promoted to commandant of the Guard when their current leader retired, his words carried a lot more weight than his rank suggested. At the moment, he was leaning over a scarred oaken table, gesturing at it as though it held a map of the city. (It didn't-the maps weren't currently handy, as this had been a last-minute, haphazard meeting-but every man and woman present knew Davillon's layout well enough to get the point he was trying to make.) “It'll mean drawing some manpower away from other quarters, but since most late-night travel comes from the direction of the markets, it seems to me that…”

He trailed off with a faint growl at the sound of a fist pounding on the door to the mess-hall-turned-conference-room. “Enter!” Every head in the chamber glanced toward the young constable who appeared in the doorway.

“Apologies for disturbing you all, sirs, but there's a visitor here for Major Bouniard.”

Julien rose from his own seat, cast an apologetic glance at Major Archibeque, then returned his attention to the messenger. “A visitor? At this hour?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And can't this wait, Constable? I'm rather-”

“She's insisting that it's an emergency, Sir. And she's injured.”

Julien's fists clenched. Injured? She? Assuming it wasn't a fellow member of the Guard-and the constable would surely have said so, were that the case-he knew pretty damn well who it had to be.

“Major?” he asked.

Archibeque nodded brusquely. “Go on, then. We'll fill you in on what we decide.”

Bouniard held himself to a moderate (if stiff-legged) pace as he departed the room and followed the constable, even as every muscle twitched, demanding he break into a sprint. After what felt to be about three or four years of passing along the drab, flattened carpets, and the pockets of greasy smoke belched forth by the cheap oil lamps that were the hallways' main sources of illumination, he finally reached the door to his own office.

“Didn't know where else to put her, sir,” the constable said in response to the unasked question. “I didn't think we ought to have a young woman bleeding in the foyer, right?”

“You did call for a chirurgeon, I assume?” Bouniard demanded.

“Of course, sir. Not sure why he hasn't arrived, but-”

“Then go see what's taking him!”

The constable recoiled from the abrupt shout, then offered an abortive salute and sprinted away. Bouniard grunted and threw open the door.

Yep, that's who he'd thought it would be.

“Hey, Major,” she said weakly.

“Widdershins, I…Gods!” It was only as she turned away from his desk, on which she'd been leaning (and probably looking for confidential papers, no doubt) that he saw the sheer quantity of blood plastering her tunic to her skin.

“We've got to stop meeting here,” she said with a pale, shaky smile. “I keep mixing with questionable elements like the Guard, my reputation's going to-to…”

Julien caught her before she hit the floor, but it was a very, very near thing.

From yet another rooftop-one several dozen yards from the action, but near enough to make out the gist of what was going on-three fleshy masks of terror had observed the bloody confrontation. They'd marveled at Widdershins's dramatic entrance, widened at the appearance of her opponent, cringed at the horrid death he'd delivered to the first of the black-garbed pair, and struggled to keep up with the inhumanly swift duel that followed. Some long minutes before, the inhuman creature had freed himself from Widdershins's rapier, yanking it free of the stones between which it was wedged and leaving a ragged tear in his coat. Head tilted and muttering to himself, he'd wandered off-perhaps in pursuit of the fleeing thief, perhaps merely on his way to whatever endeavor might appear next on his itinerary.

And still they gawked, unable to quite believe what they'd seen, until the stench of spilled blood and freshly slain bodies wafted over to them on the gentle breeze.

“Well,” Squirrel said, trying to keep his voice from quivering (and, it should be noted, failing miserably). “I guess we have some idea of what's haunting the streets, huh?”

“Are you fucking joking?” This from the larger, lumbering thug on the left. “Yeah, we saw it, but I sure as hell have no idea what the hell it is!”

“For that matter,” said the third, “what's going on with Widdershins? Sure, I've heard she's a fast little scab, but that…”

Squirrel shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe she's a witch. Hell, maybe she's linked to that-that whatever it was. All I know is, we've gotta report all this to Remy, maybe even the Shrouded Lord. They'll know what to do.”

“I don't think anyone's gonna know what to do.”

“Oh, but you're so wrong!” All three Finders went stiff, petrified at the voice that drifted over the eaves. “I know what to do. I always know what to do!”

The wide-brimmed hat hove into view first, followed by the rest of the creature's form, until it crouched upon the shingles, knees and elbows jutting at impossible angles. For a moment only it held that pose, then rose to its feet, seemingly oblivious to the precarious slope at the roof's edge.

“Spying eyes are naughty eyes,” the creature scolded, wagging a single, dagger-long finger at them. “They shall perforce have to be plucked.”

Unlike his two panicked friends, who immediately bolted for opposite sides of the roof, Squirrel held his ground. It wasn't bravery, not in the least; rather, his own dread caused him to freeze instead of flee. But whatever the cause, it saved his life, at least for a moment.

Their enemy sprang, a single leap carrying him halfway across the roof, and a few sprinting steps were more than enough to catch up to the slower of the two fugitives. Those terrible fingers lashed out, snagging Squirrel's companion at the neck and the right side of his ribs. He screamed, even as Widdershins had screamed, as those fingertips fastened themselves to his flesh.

The creature flexed, swinging his hands until his arms crossed at the elbows, and the victim's scream grew shrill as entire swathes of his flesh simply unraveled, peeling away like the outer layers of an onion. The body, glistening in fascinating spiral patterns where raw muscles and organs now lay exposed, convulsed as it hit the rooftop, and the shriek swiftly went silent.

But the thief's murderer wasn't through with him. Allowing the streamers of flesh to flutter away into the darkness, he lifted the twitching body overhead and hurled it just as the other fleeing Finder had begun to clamber over the edge of the roof. The two bodies collided with a dull thump, followed by a second, wetter slap as both hit the ground beside the structure. The sound of children cooing and applauding echoed from the distance. And then, for a moment, there was silence.

The dark figure stared at Squirrel, his head once again slightly tilted as though not quite certain what he was looking at. Squirrel stared back, unable to blink. His entire body shook with the beating of his heart, and he was only scarcely aware of the wet warmth running down the inside of his leg.

“You…you…”

“I, I?” the creature asked, advancing in one of his peculiar dancer's steps.

Simon swallowed hard. “You don't want to kill me.”

“I don't?” The head straightened, then cocked to the other side. “I'm rather certain-entirely positive, in fact-that I really, really do.”

“That's-that's because you haven't thought it through….” The thing was closer already, so much closer than he should be.

“Oh, I haven't?” Another surge, and he was right there, filling Squirrel's field of vision. His right hand lashed out and those impossible fingers cupped Simon's face-almost. They hovered, half an inch from his flesh, close enough that he could feel the wind of their twitching in the scruffy hairs on his cheeks. “And you're going to explain it to me? I'm so excited!”

“Um, it's just…I can help you! You need someone who knows this city!”

“I do? I seem to be doing fine without one.” Again the fingers twitched, and Squirrel twitched with them.

“What about her?” he shrieked.

“Her? Her, her, her? Her who?”

“The girl you just fought! Widdershins!”

The fingers vanished from around his face with a series of rapid snaps. “Widdershins? Her name is Widdershins?”

“It's-it's what she goes by, anyway.”

“Goes by? Goes by? A name is a name is a name! Is this hers?”

“Yes! Yes, it is!”

“Widdershins…” His mouth moved around the syllables, bending and twisting. “And her god? Do you know her god?”

“I…You mean the Shrouded God?” Then, at the narrowing glare, “No! That is, I don't, but I can help you find out! I know people who know her! Know her very well! Know where to find her!”

“I see…Little god, tiny god, where have you been? Out and about in a silly girl's skin! Little god, tiny god, where have you been…” The figure began capering about the roof, spinning in ever-widening circles-and just as abruptly, after a full minute of rhyming, stopped.

“Very well.” A single step, and he once again loomed over Squirrel, blotting out the moon and stars. “You will be my vassal, my guide, my northern star. Tell me what I want to know. Show me where I want to go. And learn all you can about this…Widdershins.” A fingertip tickled the skin beneath Simon's ear, drawing only a faint line of blood. “You have my oath, Boy-Thief. No harm will come to you, so long as you remain my servant.”

“I…Thank you. Ah, my lord.”

“Splendid!” The creature stepped back and clapped his hands. “We have a friend! Oh, goody, goody!

“Tell me, friend…. What's a nice place to find someone to eat around here?”