Thief's covenant

written across the fabric of reality in a script only a god could read. The shift of floorboards beneath its weight, the play of dust around it as it moved, even the currents in the air-all signaled the presence of something otherwise unseen.

And there was so little he could do! Even when she called upon him, channeling his resolve through the conduit of her faith, his abilities were feeble indeed. Only the simplest magics remained within his purview, and that was with Widdershins's focus guiding his own, her will and conviction providing Olgun tools with which to work. Without her consciously calling on him, without her motivation to channel his own, he was very nearly helpless.

Nearly, but not entirely. The impossible was beyond his reach; the improbable might yet be feasible.

With an act of will unlike any he'd attempted in a thousand years, Olgun focused what little power he retained. Widdershins didn't even notice the tingle in the air as the creature lunged, jaws agape and claws outstretched to rend her limb from bloody, twitching limb. Its clawed foot landed hard as it loomed over her, the shadow of death itself.

Olgun's power reached its peak, and the floor, weakened by years of neglect in this poverty-stricken tenement, eaten away by dampness and rot, gave out.

With a startled cry, the hellish creature tumbled through the splitting floorboards, unable in the cramped space available to spread its patagia and slow its fall. The creature's momentum was more than enough, even without Olgun's continued prodding, to send it through the third floor as well, and the second, and the first. The beast finally slammed to a halt in the earthen floor of the cellar, covered in dust and splinters and very, very angry.

People screamed on the stories above, the entire building swayed like a ship at sea, but the structure held.

Stairs fell away beneath its feet as the creature pounded upward. It burst through the doorway atop the staircase, door dangling loosely from one clenched fist, to find the room empty.

That was all right, though. It could find her again.

The creature sniffed, inhuman eyes narrowing in aggravation. The scent was gone! The spiritual trail, the unique tang of Widdershins's soul that it had followed all the way from the Flippant Witch, had vanished.

The midget deity must have blocked the scent, much as the demonic beast had used the power of its own divine patron to hide from Olgun. Irritating, but merely inconvenient. It had other ways to track its quarry down.

“Everyone getting you settled in all right, Your Eminence?”

De Laurent glanced up from the desk that was the only salient feature of his current office, provided by the second of what was to be an interminable number of hosts. “Good evening, Major. Yes, everything is satisfactory, thank you for asking.”

“No further problems?” Julien asked, still standing in the doorway.

“Would your men not have told you if there were?”

“They would. Still…”

“Yes, still. No, nothing untoward. Won't you come in for a moment?”

“I can't, Your Eminence. Too much to do. I just wanted to make sure you were well, and to apologize that I haven't been around much personally these past few nights.”

“Quite all right, Major. Your men have been more than satisfactory. They-”

“Excellent. Good night, then, Your Eminence. I'll check in again tomorrow.”

Brother Maurice appeared in the doorway even as Major Bouniard, looking back over his shoulder, passed through it. “He's looking a bit ill, don't you think?” the young monk asked.

But the archbishop, his face pensive, shook his head. No, not ill. The major was beginning to look exhausted.

And perhaps more than a little frightened.

“Widdershins,” Renard whispered, voice muffled behind his scented kerchief, “were you able to get-gods above!”

Genevieve raced forward, grabbing her best friend by the shoulders as the young thief staggered. “Shins, what happened?!”

Widdershins bled from a dozen scrapes and splinters inflicted by the collapsing floor, perspired freely from her flight down the rickety stairs and her terror at her worst nightmare returned from the Pit.

Her vision swam. The grimy, filth-encrusted alley twisted and warped beneath a second, transparent image of her friends and fellow congregants spread in oozing chunks across the floor of Olgun's shrine. It wasn't enough that the Finders' Guild wanted her dead. It wasn't even enough that they'd summoned some fiend from the deepest dark to hunt her down. But now, to learn that they were responsible for the worst chapter in her life, that it was they who had forced Adrienne Satti to vanish with the stain of murder and worse than murder besmirching her name, ignited a fire in Widdershins's soul.

“I am tired,” she told Genevieve, voice colder than winter, “of running.” Her hard stare flickered to Renard, who mumbled something under his breath and looked away. “You'll see she has a safe place to stay until the tavern opens, yes?”

“I'm not sure you should-”

“Please, Renard. I need you to do this for me.”

“Of course,” he said softly.

Widdershins took several steps before Genevieve's hand closed on her shoulder. The thief peered at it as though not entirely certain what it was.

“Shins, wait! You can't go running off by yourself! You're-”

“Going to the guild, Genevieve,” Widdershins whispered.

The barkeep blanched visibly. “What?”

“They're sending demons after me now, Gen. This has to stop.”

“Demons? Shins, you're crazy!”

That brought a brief bob of a head and the flutter of deep auburn hair. “Quite possibly,” the thief admitted. “I'm serious about the demon, though. And I'm serious about taking this back to the guild.” For an instant, her face softened, her facade cracked. “Gen, I don't want to die. And I don't want you to get hurt. I have to find out what this is about, and I have to do something about it, and I have to do it now. I'm sorry.”

Gently, she raised her left hand to her right shoulder, lifted Genevieve's pale and trembling fingers from her tunic, and vanished once more into the clustering shadows.

Widdershins crouched on a rooftop across from the Finders' Guild hall-the same rooftop, in fact, that Bouniard and Chapelle had chosen as their own vantage point, though of course she had no way of knowing that. In all official records and upon any casual inspection, the building on which she'd locked her gaze was simply a large office for a company-relatively unsuccessful, at that-specialized in pawn-brokering, money-lending, and insurance policies on long-distance caravans.

Few people on either side of Davillon's law-and-order divide remained ignorant of the place's true nature. But everyone who attempted to infiltrate the place was murdered in some brutal fashion, and even if the City Guard had possessed the manpower and the cannon to take the place by main force, the Hallowed Pact forbade open war between two organizations with patron deities. So the Guard pretended they didn't know about the place and left it well alone; it was the only sane thing to do.

Tonight, Widdershins was ever so slightly south of sane, and she wasn't about to let anything as insignificant as near-certain death come between her and the answers she so desperately needed.

She'd made a quick stopover after parting company with Gen and Renard, darting briefly into an apothecary's shop that the proprietor foolishly thought was closed for the evening. Her own knowledge of herbs and medicines would have fit on an arrowhead, while still leaving room for a jaunty sonnet. Olgun, however, was more than able to