Thief's covenant

Delacroix's face twisted in puzzlement, then lit in comprehension. Softly, he chuckled. “I'm flattered you think so highly of me, child, but I fear you ascribe to me motives far more noble than I deserve. You were running smack dab through the middle of a crowded market, and the blunderbuss is not a precise weapon in even the most expert hands. The truth is, I was afraid that some of Claude's shot would strike bystanders in the crowd. If I could have been utterly certain of his accuracy, I'd have allowed him to fire.”

Adrienne's mouth worked, but no sound emerged.

The aristocrat read her mind, or at least her expression. “What happened two years past is just that, child: past. You've saved my life tonight, and that wipes clean a great many sins. You are in no danger from me. After you've recovered, you'll be permitted to leave. Unharmed, I assure you.”

That simple statement, far from bringing the reassurance Delacroix intended, served instead to dredge up the recollection of why she'd run in the first place.

“Pierre…,” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Delacroix nodded slowly. “Pierre Lemarche? Yes, I recognized him. I knew his father, before the family's unfortunate decline. I fear he didn't survive the altercation. It looked as though one of the bandits killed him before the attack even began.”

He looked on kindly, sitting silent as Adrienne wept.

Only when the girl had cried herself out did he continue. “I understand,” he said, his tone sympathetic. “My wife passed nearly two years gone. Not long after you and I met, actually.” Another pause. “What's your name, child?”

She sniffed once, trying to focus past the grief and the pounding agony in her skull, wanting nothing more than to drift off to sleep for a very long time. “Adrienne,” she told him softly.

“Adrienne. Adrienne.” He repeated the name, rolling it about his mouth, examining the taste just as he would a fine vintage wine. He seemed to be contemplating something, something beyond the simple presence of the girl before him, and through her pain, Adrienne grew afraid.

But for now, at least, there was little to be done. She couldn't run, couldn't even stand. And so she lay where she was, her head leaning back upon the bouncing bench, with its insufficient padding. And all she could do was pray that this strange aristocrat told the truth when he told her he meant no harm.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Now:

Julien Bouniard strode past the ponderous door, rough with age but sturdy as the day it was hewn. He yanked the gauntlets from his hands as he walked, sticking them haphazardly through his belt. His nose wrinkled in distaste beneath the assault of the clinging mildew. Through ugly, claustrophobic corridors he passed, his path illuminated only by cheap lanterns suspended from the ceiling. The damn miserly city bookkeepers wouldn't even spring for decent lighting down here. The lamps were so poor that the light from one barely reached the circle of illumination from the next, and they smoked something awful, a constant irritant to the eyes and throat.

A second door, identical to the first, slowly materialized from the darkness before him. He fumbled at the keys on his belt, clanking them together softly, and unlatched the gargantuan lock with a resounding click.

The room beyond was cleaner than the hall, though this wasn't really much of an accomplishment, and was lit by modern lanterns far more efficient (and far less suffocating) than those in the cramped passage. A faded beige rug-or at least it was beige now, though Demas alone knew what color it might have been when new-covered the stone floor, and several old tapestries partially concealed the walls. An enormous desk occupied the room's far side, a series of cabinets stacked beside it, and yet a third door-not only locked, but barred with an iron-banded shaft as thick around as Julien's calf-lurked beyond.

The fellow behind that desk, garbed in a uniform that mirrored Julien's own, glanced up from beneath an uneven black hairline. He recognized Bouniard, of course, but policy was policy. Instantly he aimed a pair of enormous crossbows, swivel-mounted to the desk, in the newcomer's direction.

“Today's password!” he demanded harshly.

“Holy water.”

The other guard stood and saluted. “Major,” he offered with far more courtesy.

“Jacques.” Julien nodded. “Be seated.” The constable sat, his chair digging furrows in the carpet, and the major was just opening his mouth to speak when his jaw fell ever so slightly agape. Shouts, muffled to the point of utter incomprehensibility, and the clattering of something beating on the bars, penetrated even the heavy door.

“Is there a problem in there, Constable?” Bouniard asked seriously, mustache wrinkling as he frowned.

“Not really, sir. The new tenant's making a racket. Doesn't feel she belongs here, arrested unfairly, all the usual hogwash-but, uh, louder. To be honest, Major, I've sort of drowned it out.”

“I see. And she's been at it since she got here?” He sounded more than a little amazed.

“Well, after a fashion, sir. She's kept it up ever since she woke up, but that wasn't much more than two hours ago. I-”

“Woke up?” Julien leaned forward, hands on the desk. “Was she injured?” His damn ceremonial duties had kept him from hearing more than a perfunctory report on Widdershins's arrest.

“Again, Major, after a fashion. Way I hear tell, she was pretty bad off, but it wasn't our guys who did it. Seems they walked in on her and some big ox of a fellow having it out in the alley.” He grinned. “Seems it was his life they saved, too, not hers.”

Julien suppressed a grin of his own. That does sound like her. Aloud, he said, “I suppose I'd better go see to her, then. She's seen a healer?”

“Yes, sir. He felt that rest would be sufficient treatment.”

“Well, she'll have plenty of time for that here.” He paused. “The other man?”

“Sir?”

“The one she was fighting with.”

“Ah. Couldn't say, sir. I understand he was long gone by the time any of our people got back there.”

“I see. Be sure to get his description and pass it to the men, if it hasn't already been done. I'd like to have a word or two with him about fighting in the streets.” Especially with a girl.

“I'll see it's done just as soon as I'm off shift, sir.”

“Splendid, Constable. Which cell?”

“Twenty-three, sir. Put her in there alone, since she was hurt and all.”

Jacques muscled the bar from its brackets, letting it thump heavily to the floor, and turned his key in a lock far more intricate than those on the previous doors. It swung open with a ghostly groan, a maw that opened into the depths of hell. With a shrug, Julien stepped through.

Another hallway, mildewed, smoky, and ill-lit with cheap lanterns, but this one was far from featureless. Every ten feet stood a door of heavy iron bars. And behind some of those gates stood, sat, or slept a rogue's gallery of Davillon's more unpleasant (or, in some cases, merely unfortunate) inhabitants. Catcalls, shouts, threats, and pleas rained down in a veritable blizzard as the major strode the hall. He made a clear show of ignoring them all.

Until he reached cell twenty-three, anyway. Widdershins, garbed in the drab brown that was Davillon's standard prisoner's wardrobe, her face marred by a few lingering trails of dried blood, shouted angrily and slammed her prison-issue ceramic mug-now cracking and crumbling into so much powder-into the bars.

“Those cost money, you know,” Julien told her calmly.

Widdershins glowered at him. “You let me out of here, Bouniard! Right now!”

“What's with the hysterics?” he asked, arms crossed over his chest and standing well beyond arm's reach.

“I just wanted to get your bloody attention! Now let me out!”

“You know better than that, Widdershins,” Julien told her, not entirely without sympathy.

The young woman sagged, her ruined cup falling from slackened fingers. “Bouniard, I didn't do anything!” This time, she added silently.