Thief's covenant

“Oh, figs…” Good heaping helping of gods, her luck couldn't be that bad, could it? What were the odds that…?

A moment's frantic thought-which actually took two moments, since first she had to fight down a moment's panic-and Widdershins realized that perhaps this wasn't nearly the coincidence she'd first thought. Rittier was, after all, the archbishop's first host in Davillon, and this, the first party he was scheduled to attend. That made tonight the first real opportunity to get at him-the distraction of the ball, combined with absolute knowledge that His Eminence would be present-and no assassin worth his salt would let such an opening pass him by. Indeed, that was why she'd chosen to act tonight, and she'd just wanted to lighten the man's purse!

“Would it be too much to ask that something go smoothly, just once?” she inquired of the room, the gods, and the universe at large. “Just for the novelty of it?”

Her only response was a swell of concern from Olgun.

“You're right. We have to get out of here, and quick!”

The god couldn't have agreed more.

“Then it's settled. We leave. Now.”

Again, she felt Olgun's heartfelt assent. Yet she didn't move. Her feet seemed to have taken root in the carpet.

“The window would be best,” she continued lifelessly. “The tree's right there. I can climb it to the ground, and we'll be gone with none the wiser.”

She felt Olgun's growing impatience, a buzzing hornet biting at her neck and head. Still, she found herself most assuredly not moving.

The murdered maid stared at her accusingly, and Widdershins's shoulders slumped in defeat. She took a moment, her movements quite calm and methodical, to extinguish her miniature lantern and replace it in her pouch. She took a deep breath.

And then she was running, not to the window but out the door and into the hallway, careless of stealth now, speed her only priority. Olgun's startled squawk echoed in her mind as she pounded toward the stairs that would take her to the uppermost stories where she assumed-hoped-the guest of honor would be lodged.

“I know, I know!” she muttered between gasps and gritted teeth. “But we have to do this!”

The doubt washing over her was thick enough to drown in.

“Look, I just escaped gaol not two days ago. Who do you think they'll suspect if de Laurent winds up dead?”

Olgun wasn't particularly impressed with her argument. Which was just fine, since Widdershins wasn't taken with it either. Bouniard knew she hadn't a violent offense to her name, and wasn't likely to think she was starting now.

And yet she ran, taking the steps three at a time, driven by a need she couldn't explain to Olgun because she didn't understand it herself. Maybe later, when she found a few minutes to think-

Olgun shrieked even as her foot hit the top step, and something sliced from the shadows of the hall, something that gleamed in the flickering lantern-light of the top floor. Memories of Brock's brutal assault assailed her as she hurled herself violently aside.

The rapier etched a line of fire across her ribs, but the wound was shallow. It bled freely and it hurt like hell- particularly when added to the lingering traces of stomach pain that clung tenaciously, even after several days-but it wouldn't slow her down.

Her desperate evasion carried her clear over the banister, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach into the empty space beneath her. Throwing her legs out to the side, she spun completely over, like a roast turning on an invisible spit. For one heart-stopping instant, she was looking straight down at the floor almost forty feet below.

She lashed out, grabbing at the balcony's guardrail. Muscles screaming with the strain, aided by a swift boost from her guardian god, Widdershins yanked herself over the banister to land in a panting heap on solid floor.

Her side throbbed where the blade had cut her, her arms burned with the strain of her frantic acrobatics, and the pounding of her heart threatened to shatter her rib cage from the inside out. She wanted nothing more than to lie where she was, but she needed neither Olgun's warning nor the sound of running footsteps to know that her assailant hadn't abandoned his attack.

She did not rise, did not draw steel. She waited, favoring her injury, luring him closer.

The assassin lowered his rapier, echoing the lance of a charging knight of old, aimed unerringly at her bloodied rib cage. With a flex of her feet, the thief rolled at the last second, both palms planted firmly in the lush carpet. Even as the startled assassin stumbled past, braced for a thrust that never landed, Widdershins shifted the entirety of her weight to her already wearied arms and kicked back, mule-like, with both feet.

The assassin's grunt abruptly swelled into a crescendo of fear as he struck the guardrail and toppled over the balcony.

“Turnabout,” Widdershins quoted to Olgun, “is fair-oh, son of a monkey!”

It was at that point, when the first screams wafted up from the ballroom below, that Widdershins pinpointed the flaw in her hastily conceived plan. Dropping assassins onto the heads of frolicking revelers did not, even by the most lax definition of the term, constitute stealth.

Despite his worry, Olgun couldn't help but snicker.

“Oh, shut up! I swear, one more comment from you, I'll have someone make me a new pair of god-skin boots!” She ran even as she spoke, one hand pressed tightly to her wounded side, and tried not to think about the fact that she'd probably just killed a man. She heard the commotion below rise to a fever pitch, detected the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Rittier's bodyguards, no doubt.

Lovely. Could this evening possibly get any better?

Fortune, however, hadn't abandoned her entirely. There were, Olgun indicated to her, only three living souls in the immediate vicinity, and only one shone to him with the light of true faith and divine favor. Without hesitation, fully aware that lots of men with pointy objects were liable to surge from the staircase at any moment like some metal tidal wave, Widdershins hurled herself at the door. It flew open, crashed resoundingly against the wall, and the thief, face caked with perspiration, left side with blood, stumbled into the chamber.

An old man in a black cassock rose from behind a sizable writing desk, gazing at her with a startling lack of alarm. One hand was held behind his back; the other rested with deceptive casualness on a staff of office more than thick enough to serve as an efficient head-breaker.

“Is there something I can do for you, young lady?” he asked disapprovingly, as though her ill-mannered entry was his only cause for concern.

“Have to get out!” she wheezed, panting for breath, wincing as the pain in her ribs flared anew. “You're…in danger! You-”

Shouts and racing footsteps sounded in the hall beyond the bedchamber, echoing from the stone walls.

“Rats!” the young intruder spat, with feeling. De Laurent raised an eyebrow.

And then she vanished through the window to the musical accompaniment of shattering glass, even as Rittier's personal guard, led by the red-faced marquis himself, burst through the door.

“Umm, Your Eminence…” Clarence Rittier, the powerful bull of a man, felt himself shrinking beneath the archbishop's unwavering stare. “Are you…are you all right?”

The old man responded not at all, didn't even blink. The Marquis de Ducarte, fully aware that this hideous breach of the dignitary's security would land squarely on his oversized shoulders, realized that he was in for a very unpleasant night.

In the shadows at the corridor's far end, unseen by any of the so-called guards, Jean Luc-aristocrat, assassin, and guest at the marquis's ball-grimaced in thought. He didn't mourn the death of his companion; he'd never been all that fond of the man. The Apostle, however, would be ill-amused that Jean Luc hadn't fulfilled his commission. William de Laurent remained very much alive, and after the events of tonight, he would doubtless stay that way for a while. Rittier would be paranoid-almost certainly wouldn't leave the archbishop alone for an instant, probably not even long enough for de Laurent to fill his chamber pot with his own holy water. And while Jean Luc considered himself one of the best, he wasn't about to make an attempt on a man that well guarded.