Thief's covenant

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 glass, 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 hell were you-ah. Um, hello, 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 bloody well better be a reason!” Widdershins chimed in from behind Genevieve, her voice muffled by the tunic she was currently pulling over her head. “Assuming,” 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 assuredly did have a higher purpose in coming here, dear ladies, though if I were to grow crass 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 assassin could have had an accomplice who spotted me warning the archbishop.”

Renard blinked. “Assassin?”

“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 nobody 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.”