Thief's covenant

CHAPTER SIX

Now:

In a rattling, bumping, shuddering, jostling carriage on the roads beyond Davillon, an elderly and normally distinguished voice complained for the umpteenth time, “Tell me again, Maurice, exactly what they've gotten me into.”

Maurice-Brother Maurice, to be proper about it-smiled broadly. He leaned back in his insufficiently padded seat, his blond-tonsured head bobbing with the rocking of the heavy coach, and folded his hands inside the brown sleeves of his robe.

“Nothing at all, Your Eminence. There's absolutely nothing of any importance regarding your visit to Davillon. This is all just an elaborate scheme of the Church to force you into weeks of uncomfortable, rear-bruising travel in this abominable contraption, all for the amusement of your superiors and subordinates alike.”

“Ah,” the older passenger said. “Just as I suspected. Then why have you rebelled against this great Church conspiracy to inform me of it?”

“Well, after all, Your Eminence, I'm suffering too.”

“The fickleness of youth,” the high official lamented sadly. “Why, I remember the days when suffering for one's faith was considered noble.”

“I believe that I'm sufficiently noble already, Your Eminence. I fear that if I spend too many more days with my backside being pounded into pulp by this carriage I shall be more noble than the king himself, and then I shall have to be executed for treason against the crown.”

“I'm sure the Church will protect you, Maurice. You must have done something for her over the years.”

The young monk of the Order of Saint Bertrand, dedicated entirely to attending the needs of High Church officials, could only laugh. The other man chuckled softly in turn and resumed gazing at the tree-bedecked countryside. He couldn't see much of it through the window of the ornate carriage that was, as Maurice complained, bruising its inhabitants to within an inch of their lives. Traveling in luxury, indeed!

William de Laurent, archbishop of Chevareaux, was getting on in years, despite his every effort to intimidate those years into keeping their distance. His hair was thin and gray, his face marred by more than its share of crevices and chasms, but his grip was strong, his gaze and his mind both sharp. His black robes of office draped him in a flowing aura, and the silver-forged Eternal Eye, supreme symbol of the High Church representing all 147 gods of the Hallowed Pact, hung about his neck. His shepherd's-crook staff of office leaned beside him.

He grimaced sourly as his limited view of the countryside was blocked by one of the outriders and began instead to contemplate his destination. The official purpose of his visit was a tour of Davillon, an inspection to identify any issues that needed correcting before a new bishop could be appointed, and to best determine which of the various candidates was most appropriate. That alone would have proved tedious enough; William looked ahead to the months of interaction with the city's aristocracy with, if not actual dread, then at least dread's distant cousin. The archbishop was a kindly old man, but he did not suffer fools-gladly or otherwise-and the nobility of Galice, he often felt, consisted of nothing but.

Essential a duty as it might be, though, it was also merely an excuse, a curtain behind which the Church might hide the true purpose of his visit.

The gods of the Pact smiled on their own, and the most faithful of Galice benefited from their divine influence. Oh, nothing the common man would recognize as “magic,” none of the ancient sorceries of myth or fairy tale. But coincidence often placed them in the vicinity of momentous events. Fortune smiled upon them and frowned mightily upon those who opposed them. And sometimes, when the moon and the stars and the winds were right, they received warnings: dreams and omens, never clear but always urgent.

And William de Laurent had sensed…something. Something stirring in the dark, while the world slumbered in blissful ignorance. Something in Davillon.

William de Laurent unconsciously clenched his fists, stared out the window at the passing scenery, and prayed.

“I'm tellin' you, she came this way!” The pockmarked fellow's voice was nasal, atonal, nearly as ugly as the face from which it emerged. The fact that his nose had recently been broken, and was likely to heal as crooked as a peg-legged usurer, probably had something to do with it.

“Sure.” The other man, with the scar and the scraggly beard, idly (but very carefully) scratched at a bug bite on his neck with the edge of a curved blade. “She's just hiding behind the rats.” He kicked a chunk of refuse, watched it bounce off the alleyway's nearest wall. It left a cluster of roaches where it hit, all of which swiftly darted off into the shadows.

“Damn it, she was here!”

Scarface shook his head. “You let me know what Brock says when you tell him we lost her.”

“Me?! Why do I-?”

“Because you're the one who lost her.”

“I didn't lose her!” The first thug scowled. “Look, she could still be here, right now. There's doorways-”

“Shallow. You see anyone hiding in ‘em?”

“There's windows-”

“Boarded up.”

“What about…?” Pockmark gestured over and behind them. “Those steps?”

“Those rickety things?” They both turned, looking upward. “We'd have heard something if she'd been climbing those-”

And then they did hear something, all right: A few faint shrieks as bolts and wood separated, followed by a deafening clatter as the entire staircase broke away from the structure's walls. Boards and nails came crashing down from on high like a god's abandoned construction project, and Brock's two associates had just enough time to dread the pain that was coming their way before they found themselves bruised, battered, and buried.

Widdershins peered over the lip of the building, blinking the dust from her eyes, chin leaning prettily on one fist. In the other, she clasped the rapier that had, with Olgun's assistance, served right nicely as a prybar to loosen the bolts of the ramshackle staircase. “Got ‘em!” she crowed.

Then, her grin fading, “Well, no, I couldn't have collapsed the stairs without you. So, sure, I guess we got them, but…”

Another pause. “Yes, I know I couldn't have made the climb without them hearing me without your help either! What's your-? What? No, it wasn't ‘you,' it was we. I was the one-Oooh!” Widdershins literally threw her hands in the air-managing through sheer luck to avoid sending her sword hurtling over the precipice-and stalked away from the edge. “You are such a glory hog! Just because I couldn't have done it without you does not mean you get the credit! What? I don't care! You're a god; you make it make sense!”

With astounding speed, she made her way down the building's other side (despite the lack of anything resembling stairs) and out into the street, still muttering the entire way. But even as her mouth continued the argument, such as it was, her mind was already moving on to other concerns. Concerns like “If I hadn't spotted them, that could have gone a lot worse for me.”

It was getting near time for Widdershins to make a few uncomfortable decisions.

The days had slid past as though someone had greased them, blurring one into the next as the archbishop's arrival drew nigh. Streets, alleys, and courtyards-some of which had lain beneath such thick layers of refuse that nobody of the current generation had ever seen the cobblestones-were swept out and scrubbed clean, the better to glint with pristine dishonesty as de Laurent rode past. The homeless and destitute who normally dwelt along these lanes were encouraged to move on. A number were arrested “on suspicion,” to be kept under lock and key-and out of sight-until the city gates clanged shut behind the departing backside of William de Laurent and his entourage, many weeks hence. Banners of House crests, guild icons, and a multitude of holy symbols dangled from walls and windows, or even bridged the gaps between buildings. Between the sundry colors spread throughout the streets and the untidy heaps of trash waiting to be carted away, Davillon was starting to resemble the playroom of a very large and very spoiled child.

Through it all crept Widdershins, her mind just as focused on the day of His Eminence's arrival, though for entirely different reasons. She performed a few small jobs in the interim, nothing spectacular, nothing to draw attention. The City Guard was on high alert; Lisette was looking for any excuse to have her drawn and quartered. (Pockmark and Scarface, as she'd thought of them since that day in the Flippant Witch, had only been the latest Finders she'd had to duck-though she hadn't felt the need to drop part of a building on any of the others.) It was, frankly, all she could do to gather sufficient funds to keep the damn guild off her back.

And off her friends'.

Despite her relatively light schedule, Widdershins hadn't found the time, in the week since the fight with Brock, to go back and visit Genevieve, to make sure she was all right.

No, that wasn't true. She'd not found the time because she hadn't looked. A part of her feared to go back, and it had taken her this long-and the recent encounter with Brock's cronies-to talk herself into it.

The crowds were heavy as always, the ambient sound thick enough to ladle into bowls and serve as a soup course, but Widdershins slipped gracefully through the temporary cracks in the wall of humanity. Making her way again through the colorful flag- and banner-strewn marketplace, which was slowly but surely beginning to resemble the leavings of a rainbow with digestive upset, she found herself once more on the steps of the Flippant Witch.

She'd awakened at the ungodly hour of noon, so the tavern wasn't open for patrons. On the other hand, she knew that Genevieve typically arrived early, to ensure that the place was suitable for human habitation when the doors opened for the ravening hordes of drunks and drunks-to-be.

On yet a third hand (she was starting to feel vaguely like an octopus), the fact that Genevieve was probably here didn't mean a blessed thing. Even assuming she wasn't deliberately avoiding Widdershins, she might well ignore any knocking at the door before business hours. Doubtless every day saw a few drunkards convinced that they were worthy of special consideration.

With a dismissive shrug-either the door would open or she'd pick the bloody lock-she rapped loudly on the heavy wood.

“We're closed!” came the immediate response. “Come back in about two hours!”

“Gen?” Widdershins called back. “Gen, it's me!”

A moment passed, then a moment more. Widdershins was just about to slink away in dejection when she heard the sound of a heavy lock-followed by a second, a third, and two deadbolts. The heavy portal swung ponderously inward.

“Hurry up before you're spotted!” Genevieve hissed. “If they see me letting someone in early, I'll never hear the end of it!”

Widdershins darted into the darkened room. The shutters stood firmly closed, the huge stone hearth bereft of flame. Only the lanterns burned merrily away, sucking greedily at their reservoirs of oil, but their light was sullen and cheerless, as though they, too, were drinking away their sorrows. In the maudlin illumination, even the white cross of Banin seemed gray and dour.

“Is it always this gloomy before you open?” Widdershins asked, her voice artificially light.

“It's usually worse, but I've sent the skulls and implements of torture out for cleaning.”

Widdershins blinked. “You're feeling better,” she observed, her tone almost accusatory.

Genevieve shrugged, and returned to stacking several bottles of her most popular spirits behind the bar, where they'd be well within easy reach come evening. “I suppose I am, at that,” the proprietor admitted blandly as she worked. “Who'd have thought it?”

Widdershins stepped to the bar, watching her friend work for a few moments. At which point Genevieve slammed down one of the bottles-Widdershins jumped at the sound-and spun to face her.

“Why haven't you been back to see me, Shins?” No anger, there, only the vague seeds of hurt. “After what happened, I really needed a friend.”

Widdershins swallowed, her throat suddenly tight as a noose. She looked down at the bar, shamefaced. “I thought you were upset at me,” she admitted, suddenly a berated child rather than the adult she strove to appear. “I didn't think you'd want to see me.”

She looked up at the touch of Genevieve's hand on her own, saw the blonde noblewoman smiling sadly. “Shins, I'm, um, not exactly an admirer of what you do. And the people you do it with scare the hell out of me. But you're still my best friend. Which,” she added with a sudden smirk, “may say more about me, or about this damned city, than it does about you, but there you have it.”

Widdershins forced herself to match her companion's own smile. “I'd say it just goes to prove how lucky you are.”

Genevieve snorted, returning to the bottles. Widdershins continued to watch her work, her mind a playful kitten pouncing briefly upon a dozen different thoughts.

Then, “I am glad you're here, Shins,” Genevieve said over her shoulder as she deftly stacked the glass carafes, “but I can't help wondering why.”

“Do I have to have a reason?” the thief asked her, her attention dragged back to the issue at hand.

“You said you thought I was angry at you. Why pick today to come here and risk being smote by my great and terrible wrath?”

Widdershins sighed. “I ran into some of those guys again.” Genevieve's widening eyes suggested that she needn't specify which guys she meant. “It's all right,” she added swiftly. “It'll be at least a few days before they're up to causing any trouble. And they can't even pin it on me, not for sure.”

“But they will anyway, you know.”

“Yeah,” the thief acknowledged. “They probably will. Anyway, it just made me think-about what happened, about what could happen. So…” A shallow shrug. “Here I am. Lucky you.”

“Uh-huh.” Genevieve reached out and poked her friend in the sternum. “Tell me another.”

“It's true!” Widdershins protested. “Also, ouch.”

“All right, it's true. But there's more. I'm a barkeep, Shins. I hear more half-truths every week than you've told in your life.”

“Well, uh, there is one thing…”

“It's always ‘one thing.'”

“I want you to come with me next week,” Widdershins confessed.

The other woman blinked. “With you? Where?”

“The procession. I was planning to go and watch the archbishop arrive.”

“Shins…”

“I'm not going to do anything! Honest, I'm not! I just want to see what all the fuss is about.”

“I see. And this is in no way a means of thumbing your nose at the guild? Basically chanting ‘I'm not touching him! I'm not touching him! Nyah, nyah!' and then running away like a little girl? Or maybe about seeing who's all gussied up in their finest to greet him, so you know who to rob after he's gone?”

Widdershins mumbled something unintelligible.

“I see,” Gen told her. “What'd we just learn about me and half-truths, Shins?”

“I'm not asking you to do anything wrong, or dangerous,” Widdershins insisted. “I just want some company.”

“Half the city's going to be there.”

Widdershins shrugged. “So all of a sudden you're uncomfortable with crowds? You own a tavern!”

“I prefer my crowds to be less…crowded.”

“You,” Widdershins said, rising, “don't get out enough. It makes perfect sense that you're my only friend. I'm a thief. I live in the shadows. I have no life. You, on the other hand, are a nobleman's daughter, even if he's not really all that noble, and you own a very popular tavern. So how come you don't have more friends?”

“I have lots of friends! There's Robin, for instance.”

“She works for you.”

“Well, how about Gerard?”

“Same as Robin. Employees don't count.”

“Ertrand Recharl!” Genevieve announced smugly.

Widdershins scoffed. “Ertrand's not a friend! He's a drunk who keeps trying to get under your skirts!”

“All right. Well, there's that fellow who always sits at the corner table over there, the one with the beaver-skin cloak. He's always fun to talk to.”

“If you don't know his name, Gen, you don't get to call him a friend. I'm pretty sure that's actually a rule, somewhere.”

“So what's your point with all this, other than chopping down my self-esteem like a fir tree?”

“My point, Gen, is that you don't get out often enough, and that the celebration tomorrow is the perfect place to start.”

Genevieve's eyelids lowered until they showed only thin crescents. “And you felt it necessary to point out that I should have more friends-besides you-as a way of convincing me to go to the celebration with you?”

The younger woman grinned widely. “You got it.”

“Widdershins, you have absolutely lost your mind. I couldn't think of a less logical argument if I sat down and worked at it.”

“Perfect! If it's not logical, you can't argue with it. I'll be at your place at noon.”

The door slammed, and she was gone.

Genevieve shook her head, bemused. There was a great deal to be done before opening. And as for next week…Well, she hated to disappoint her friend, but there was no help for it. She was absolutely, positively, not going to that stupid parade. Not a chance. No way. Under no circumstances. No.

“Isn't this fun?” Widdershins shouted happily. “I told you you should get out!”

Genevieve gritted her teeth and tried to think about something other than throttling Widdershins with her bare hands.

She still wasn't sure precisely how this had even happened. One moment she was flopped out blissfully in bed, sleeping off a hectic but profitable night of drink-filling and food-slinging at the Flippant Witch, without a care in the world, snugly cocooned against the late autumn chill.

The next, Widdershins was in her bedroom, having picked the bloody lock, and practically dancing with excitement, shouting at Genevieve to hurry up and get dressed. It was barely after noon-the depth of night, as far as the tavern keep was concerned. This was absolutely outrageous behavior, even from a close friend, and Gen resolved to berate the thief soundly, just as soon as she had a moment to fully wake up, to regain her equilibrium, to…

They were outside and halfway through the marketplace before Genevieve reassembled her scrambled wits sufficiently to speak. And by then, of course, it was far too late. Genevieve smiled a tight, closed-mouth smile, wondered briefly how Widdershins had managed to get her dressed (with most of the laces tied properly, even!), and then grudgingly went along.

A decision she now bitterly regretted as the inexorable press of the gathering crowds hurled the pair this way and that, two floating bottles on the seas of Davillon's populace. The crowd was a living thing, moving and even breathing as one. The sensation was unpleasantly akin to that of being swept away by a very loud and sweaty tide.

Speech was very nearly impossible: lean over, shout at the top of your lungs in your friend's ear, scream your throat as raw as if you'd gargled with glass shavings, and it was still necessary to repeat yourself two or four times before the object of your comment (which probably wasn't all that important anyway) wandered out of view.

It was hot, too. Not the heat of the day-it wasn't all that long until winter-but the heat of thousands of bodies, each pressed uncomfortably close in a macabre parody of intimacy. The miasma of perspiration and perfume was enough to fell an ox at thirty paces.

Sweating in unladylike rivulets, jostled by strangers, bruised in uncountable tender areas by the morass of accidental blows, Genevieve hunched her shoulders against the storm of sound and fury and struggled to imagine a worse sort of hell.

Widdershins, of course, seemed perfectly happy, but Widdershins was weird.

“Hey, Olgun!” Widdershins whispered, confident he could hear no matter what. “Isn't this neat?”

The god's reply felt vaguely patronizing. She felt very much like she'd just been told, in all maternal seriousness, “Yes, dear, it's very nice. Why don't you go play over there for a while?”

“You don't think this is impressive?” she asked incredulously, drawing a curious stare from a nearby merchant who, through some fluke of acoustics, heard her clearly. The flabby, pasty-faced widower, flattered that a young woman might look his way, had opened his mouth to reply when it finally dawned on him that the girl was talking to herself, not to him.

Lunatic.

Olgun, during this time, had expressed to Widdershins, in no uncertain emotions, that nothing humans did impressed him-present company excluded, of course-and that a larger concentration of clowns might make them funnier, but generally not any more awe-inspiring.

“Oh, so we're clowns, are we? Just put here for your amusement? A little different than the way the creation myth tells it, yes?”

Widdershins's private deity smiled an amused smile, and refused to emote any further on the topic.

The obstinate thief wasn't about to let the subject drop, but as she opened her mouth to shout some witty rejoinder at her little pocket god, she felt Genevieve's fingers clenching on her arm.

“What is it?” she asked, hoping her expression would be enough to carry her meaning, since the words almost certainly would not.

Genevieve, eyes wide with a contagious anticipation that she'd tried her damnedest to elude, pointed over the heads of the crowd toward the heavy, iron-bound gates that were Davillon's main ingress. Huge pennants slowly rose and unfurled to wave majestically over the nearby buildings. The Eternal Eye stared down from several banners, as though it could clearly see their every thought, and didn't much approve of a one of them.

The crowd surged ahead, prevented from becoming a stampede only by the lack of space to build momentum. Truth be told, it would be more accurate to say that the crowd shuffled forward, a glacier of clothes and flesh. Whispers, audible only because so many people repeated them, scampered through the ranks of the waiting masses.

“Did you see that?”

“The banners went up! He's here!”

“Here? He can't be here! It's but two hours past noon!”

“He's early! Did you hear? The archbishop's arriving early!”

And then the whispers were blown from the air like so much skeet by the blast of two dozen trumpets, announcing the arrival of His Eminence, the esteemed William de Laurent, archbishop of Chevareaux.

Music blared, banners waved, and thousands of people shouted their unbridled joy (even if most were celebrating not the archbishop's arrival-which meant little to them-but simply the opportunity to celebrate). Only those who'd waited since the earliest hours of the morning, ensuring that they got a street-side view or high vantage, would actually see the pristine white carriage, flanked by a dozen horsemen and followed by another seven or eight coaches carrying the archbishop's staff. The rest of the crowd would see nothing more exciting than the back of someone else's head.

One hand locked with bulldog determination on Genevieve's wrist, Widdershins slipped, slid, twisted, squeezed, weaseled, pushed, shoved, elbowed, and otherwise forced her way through the living barricade isolating her from her goal. She even went so far, on occasion, as to call on Olgun: here a woman broke into a sneezing fit, forcing her to stagger aside and allowing Widdershins to slip through the gap; that fellow there felt his belt buckle give way, once more clearing a path as he fled, red-faced, holding his pants up with his hands. In a surprisingly brief span, the barkeep and the burglar forced their way street-side, gaining an unobstructed view of…

“A carriage,” Genevieve muttered in her companion's ear, shaking her head. “All that, and you get to see a carriage. I hope you're happy, Shins. I know I haven't been this excited in minutes.”

“It's not the carriage, Gen!” Widdershins announced gleefully, refusing to look away from the snowy stallions, the luxuriously curtained windows, the ponderous gilded wheels. “It's the passenger!”

“But you can't very well see the passenger, now, can you?” Sometimes I just don't understand that girl!

“No, but I know that he's-oh, figs.”

Genevieve tensed. “What? ‘Oh, figs' what?!”

“There.” Widdershins pointed at one of the soldiers: not an outrider who'd ridden from Chevareaux, but one of the eight or so Davillon Guardsmen who'd fallen in with the ostentatious procession as an additional honor guard.

“That's Julien Bouniard,” she whispered softly. “Right out in front.”

Genevieve raised an eyebrow. “Oh, come on, Shins. It's not as though he's going to just pick you out of a crowd like this. The man's got more important things on his mind, don't you think?”

Widdershins chewed her lower lip and said nothing.

The young constable, whom she'd first watched from the rafters on that awful day two years ago, insisted on intertwining himself back into her life with all the persistence of a recurring dream. Now a major himself after a meteoric rise through the ranks, he was one of the city's best, his name cursed by many of Davillon's extralegal entrepreneurs. Good as she was, Widdershins had been arrested a handful of times over the years-and more often by Bouniard than anyone else. He always made her more than a little nervous, even though he couldn't possibly know that Widdershins was also Adrienne Satti.

But Genevieve was right. No matter how skilled, how experienced, how observant he was, he'd not likely single her out of a crowd of thousands. With a deep exhalation, Widdershins forced herself to relax and enjoy the parade.

Julien Bouniard sat ramrod-straight, hands loosely clutching the reins. His tabard and uniform had been pressed and steamed, their lines crisp enough to shave with. The sterling fleur-de-lis and polished medallion of Demas glinted in the sun, and the feather in his flocked hat had been supplemented with the blue-and-green staring eye of a peacock plume.

Charlemagne, his gray-dappled steed, whickered in impatience at their plodding pace. He wanted to run, to prance ahead, at least to canter. Even a brisk walk would be nice. But no, here he was, trudging down the cobblestones, surrounded on all sides by other, inferior equines and the gargantuan wheeled contraptions, at roughly the pace of a mule with gout.

“Easy, Charles,” Julien comforted him, laying a steady hand alongside the animal's neck. “I don't like it either.”

The horse snorted once more, unimpressed.

Julien couldn't help but smile beneath his thick, walnut-brown mustache (an affectation he'd adopted along with his promotion to major, hoping it would make him look old enough for the part). He understood the beast's frustration-shared it, in fact. Ceremonial duties like this were enough to make him long for a fast-paced day of paperwork.

The Guardsman, ever alert for ambush, scowled as he spotted familiar features in the crowd. He knew, even without asking, that he'd never get permission to leave the procession. He was the ranking officer, and it was essential, or so it had been drummed into his head a million times over the past weeks, that the city make the best of all possible impressions on its revered guest.

So what sort of impression would it make on His Eminence if a street thief swiped his mantle off his shoulders, or used him as bait for some other, local catch? She wasn't the first known criminal he'd spotted in the crowd, and he'd deal with her as he had the others.

By taking no chances.

Pulling very subtly on the reins, Julien urged the warhorse to fall back a few paces, drawing even with the white-enameled carriage door. Leaning over, he rapped with leather-gloved knuckles on the rickety wooden portal.

The shade rose smoothly, the curtains drew back, and a kindly old face peered outward. “Is there a problem, Major?” William de Laurent asked curiously.

“Nothing serious, Your Eminence,” Julien told him politely, bowing his head in a curt show of respect. “I've spotted a known criminal in the crowd, and-”

“Another one, Major? Had a bumper crop this year, did you?”

Julien frowned. He was walking a tightrope here, and he knew it, trying to balance the archbishop's safety on one hand, his impression of Davillon on the other.

“No more than any city's plagued with, Your Eminence. Crowds offer a lot of opportunities, though, so here they come.”

“Of course. And you would like to dismiss a guard to run off and apprehend this criminal, as you did the last one?”

“Ah, perhaps two guards in this instance, Your Eminence.”

The archbishop raised an eyebrow. “Is that necessary, Major? Might he not simply be here to enjoy the spectacle?”

“She, Your Eminence. And she very well might be, yes. On the other hand, I've experience with this particular thief. She's extremely resourceful, a ghost when she wants to be, and absolutely unencumbered by the weight of common sense. I'd feel better knowing that she was out of the way, and thus not planning to rob you blind-pardon me for saying so-for the duration of your visit. At the very least, I'd like to encourage her to move out of your general vicinity.”

Julien was fully prepared to argue his case further, as politely as possible, but de Laurent simply smiled. “I believe you're worrying unnecessarily, Major. But I'm hardly qualified to tell you how to do your job. Dispatch your men if you think it best. I think I'll survive the hordes of assassins without them until they return.”

Julien smiled broadly. “Thank you, Your Eminence.”

William de Laurent nodded and closed the shade. Julien gestured to the nearest two guards, both of whom broke ranks and approached. As their horses plodded sluggishly forward, Julien growled his instructions.

When the two Guardsmen wheeled their horses around in her direction, Widdershins could no longer share Genevieve's confidence.

“Move!” she shouted, grabbing her friend by the hand and pulling her back through the crowd they'd battled moments earlier. “Gods, I don't believe this! What are the odds?”

“I'd have said pretty slim, but under the circumstances…,” Genevieve told her, eyes slightly glazed.

“There must be hundreds of known thieves in this crowd! Why is he singling me out?!”

“How many of those hundred thieves put themselves at the front of the crowd?”

“Well now's a fine time to point that out!”

Genevieve twisted, owl-like, glancing nervously behind her. The Guardsmen moved quickly, though there was insufficient room for their mounts. The crowd parted, shoved with swift-moving hands where the black-and-silver tabards weren't enough to clear the path.

With a sudden jerk, Genevieve yanked her hand from Widdershins's grip. “They're not after me, Shins!” she shouted, already separated from her friend by several layers of the milling assemblage. “I'll be fine! Run!”

“But-”

Genevieve pointed at the oncoming guards, moving through the throng far faster than she could match with her bad leg. “Run!”

Widdershins ran, first plowing through the crowd with all the grace of a runaway yak, then, once she'd calmed, more nimbly, dancing around people rather than knocking them aside. The Guardsmen gradually fell behind, and Widdershins burst from the mob and bolted for the nearest alley. All she needed was to get out of their sight for a handful of seconds and they'd never see her again.

Olgun screamed at her as she rounded the corner, but for once, even the great Widdershins's feline reflexes weren't fast enough. Something whistled from the shadows of the alleyway, crashing hard into her stomach. The thief doubled up, the agony a blade stabbing through her. She heard a strangled cry echoing from the darkened alleyway, and only faintly recognized the voice as her own. She found herself on her hands and knees in the garbage, violently retching up the contents of her stomach.

Vomit, she realized with a dull horror, mingled with blood.

A thoughtful look on his face, Brock materialized from the alley, his hammer swinging casually in a one-handed grip. “Oh, that doesn't look good for you, Widdershins,” he commented, poking with one booted toe at the unpleasant mess she'd heaved up. “I think you may have ruptured something.”

“Brock…,” Widdershins croaked through filth-encrusted lips, glaring with pain-deadened eyes.

“Are you upset, Widdershins? You're speaking in Chicken again.” A look of rage twisted the enforcer's face just before he kicked his victim in the stomach, the force of the blow lifting her from the ground.

Widdershins screamed. Her stomach felt as though she'd swallowed a brimming mug of molten iron, and she spat up another mouthful of bile-tinged blood even as she landed, shoulder first, on the cobblestones. Unable to act, to think, she curled into a tight ball around the pain, gasping, lacking breath even to fuel the anguished sobs that racked her chest and throat.

“Hurts, doesn't it?” Brock continued conversationally, idly spinning the hammer. “A lot?” He smiled abruptly. “Maybe even more than being kicked-twice-in the pomegranates? More than having a damn staircase dropped on your head? Well, I'll do you a favor. I'll make the hurting stop.”

“Can't…” Widdershins gulped several mouthfuls of air, trying to focus. “Can't…kill me…”

“Oh, can't I? Everyone knows your reputation for acting before you think, you stupid little bitch! No one'll doubt it when I say that you attacked me first.”

“Olgun…,” she coughed, unable to whisper.

“Olgun?” Brock squinted. “Who the hell is Olgun? And why should I care if he believes me?”

“Help…” Another cough, another mouthful of brackish blood. Widdershins spit it out, nauseated at the metallic taste, the slimy feel as it oozed over her tongue and between her teeth. It splattered across the cobblestones in a thin red spray, dotting Brock's shoes.

“That was rude,” he told her. “A guy might start to think you didn't care for him.”

Widdershins wasn't listening. She lay huddled and shaking, and struggled to bite back a sob of relief as she felt the familiar tingling in the air around her, felt the deity's divine touch. The pain, a roaring blaze, dimmed to a low flame-still intense, still agonizing, but no longer crippling. She wouldn't be dancing any time soon, but at least she wasn't bleeding to death internally. Her stomach muscles spasmed as Olgun set to right several bits that had been ripped apart by Brock's brutal assault. She tried not to cringe at the feel of things shifting around inside her. Olgun had saved her…partially.

She'd have to finish the job herself.

“Brock…,” she croaked again.

“Yes?” the larger man asked pleasantly, stepping closer so he might hear. “Something you want to say before this is all over?”

“You're an idiot.” Fighting past the agony that permeated her body, Widdershins punched upward, aiming at the same target that had worked so well the last time.

The blow landed between the man's legs with a loud clang. Widdershins bit her tongue to keep from crying out. Her fist throbbed, and one of her fingers had gone numb. The man was wearing a bloody codpiece under his pants!

Brock laughed, a vicious, ugly sound. “Anything else?” he asked.

Ignoring the tremor in her hands, Widdershins reached out with a strength Brock could never have expected, yanked the hammer from startled fingers, and let it fall heavily on his left foot.

Brock's high-pitched scream wasn't nearly enough to drown out the cracking of bone.

The huge enforcer collapsed, clutching at his shattered limb, even as Widdershins rose. She swayed, her stomach throbbing, as the adrenaline slowly faded from her limbs. Olgun had healed her as best he could, but without a few days of rest, she had nothing left to give.

Well, almost nothing. She had one last thing to take care of before she passed out, or collapsed, or whatever it was she was about to do. Widdershins was no murderer, never had been; but she couldn't let Brock come after her again, not knowing what he would do to her. Her arms trembling with the effort, sweat beading on her forehead, she raised the hammer in both hands. Her stomach heaved once more, and not just with the pain of her wound, but she ignored it as best she could, fully prepared to remove Brock from her life in the most final way imaginable.

“Don't move!”

Widdershins's fingers went slack, and the hammer fell to the street with a dull clatter. Her face pale, the thief stared over her shoulder.

Flintlocks drawn, the pursuing Guardsmen stepped into the alley. The first shifted to the side, bash-bang aimed unerringly at her chest, while the other yanked a pair of manacles from his belt.

“Widdershins,” the second man, dark-haired and thick-bearded, intoned as he approached. “By order of Major Julien Bouniard, you are under arrest on suspicion of thievery.” He glanced over at the fallen lump of quivering flesh that was Brock. “And assault,” he added smugly.

Oh, no. No way. She wasn't about to go back to gaol. Not like this, not just because Bouniard was paranoid, and certainly not for defending herself against that towering slab of filth!

“Olgun,” she began, focusing on the flintlocks. “I think that…that…”

The alley danced maniacally, the pain in her gut flared once more, and Widdershins collapsed, unconscious, to the cobblestones.

They watched, concealed in the shadows of a broken window above, as the two guards moved in, one kneeling by each of the fallen figures. Heavy manacles clattered shut around the thief's limbs. “Hey,” the man at her side called to the other. “She's pretty bad off. I'm going to need your help carrying her so we don't make it worse.”

“Who cares if we make it worse? She's just a-”

“You explain that to Major Bouniard.”

A soft grumble. “What about this one?”

“He in any danger?”

“Doesn't look like it. Not with her gone, anyway. He'll be walking funny for a while, though.”

“Then we'll send someone back to check on him after we get her squared away.”

“All right.”

With a level of care that at least somewhat belied his cavalier attitude, the second constable aided the first in lifting Widdershins, keeping her fairly level. Slowly, carefully, they made their way from the alley and back toward the horses they'd left behind.

A few minutes more, to make sure the Guardsmen were well and truly gone, that any incidental sounds would be lost to the dull roar of the crowded streets beyond. Only then, when they were certain, did Pockmark and Scarface emerge into the open-the former still limping, and both of them sporting bruises, unhealed abrasions, and stubborn splinters.

“We could've taken them,” Pockmark insisted as they hurried to the knoll of quivering flesh that was their boss.

“Murdered two of the Guard? Without explicit orders from the taskmaster or the Shrouded Lord? I don't bloody think-”

“You're godsdamned right you don't!” Brock's voice was muffled by garbage and road dirt, tinged with hysteria. “You should've killed them! You should've killed all of them!”

“Are you all right, Brock?” Scarface asked as he knelt in an unconscious echo of the constable who had been here moments before.

In answer, Brock managed to push through the pain long enough to reach out and smack the other man across the face hard enough to make his beard stand on end. Then, once the fellow had managed to pick himself off the ground, “Help me up, you moron.”

It actually required both men to heft the colossus, and even then it was a struggle that left all three puffing and panting, but once he was upright, Scarface alone was able to support him.

“You,” Brock ordered through pale, clenched jaws. “Get out there and find those guards. They can't have gotten far carrying the little bitch.”

“Uh…,” Pockmark began.

“I'm not telling you to attack them in the middle of the crowd, damn it! Just follow them, find out which prison they stick her in. Then meet us back at the guild, so we can do some planning.” He was already turning away, practically dragging the man on whom he was leaning. “Widdershins isn't getting out of gaol alive.”